MUSIC: Come enjoy the Whitney after dark tonight as the museum's live showcase series invites Dan Deacon (pictured) to the stage. If you haven't seen Deacon before, get ready for some Casio keyboard electro-rock compositions and an art dance party. Friday // 7pm // Whitney Museum [945 Madison Ave] // Pay what you want EVENT: The Moth Story Shop presents “The One that Got Away: Stories from South Street Seaport” tonight. The following storytellers will......

Natasha Lyonne – remember her? – has resurfaced, and not at the morgue! In fact, the young hellion seems to be doing quite well for herself – at least that’s the portrait painted by this convivial Times profile, in which reporter Robert Simonson smokes Marlboro Lights with her on the roof of Theater Row, where she’s to appear in the new Mike Leigh play Two Thousand Years. Though off the horse, the actress isn’t all......

Wallace Shawn has long enjoyed a fruitful career as a character actor in mainstream movies (Clueless, Princess Bride, Chicken Little). He also happens to be one of the world’s most significant dissident writers. His plays The Designated Mourner, Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Fever – to name just a few – have garnered much praise (and controversy) for their unflinching examinations of brutality. Shawn’s plays are political but not polemical; through his writing he......

On Sundays, Gothamist runs opinion pieces on issues relevant to life in New York. The views expressed below belong entirely to the author. How far can you go with making a character outrageous – an outrageous parody, outrageously offensive, the works – without ending up by making him or her merely a joke? That’s one of the questions Mike Leigh plays with in Abigail’s Party, which is having its NYC premiere thanks to The New......

You know it's the Oscars when P. Diddy busts out the velvet suit! Gothamist loves the Oscars, and we're going to attempt to do a little liveblogging. We might need to order a vat of caffeine and an EMT team at the ready; not because Chris Rock will be boring, but because we think that Gil Cates might kill us with his newfangled ideas and because we're meh about this year's nominees in the big......

The NY Times has Jennifer Steinhauer, recently released from the clutches of City Hall, look at the rash of British tourists visiting our fair city. Reasons for coming include the weak dollar (there are some things foreigners and New Yorkers can thank President Bush for), the fine drinks at NY watering holes, Macy's, the fact that we sorta speak the same language, and T.G.I. Friday's - everything that makes this city great. A spokesperson for......

A new film by prolific English director, Mike Leigh (Topsy Turvey, Secrets & Lies) is cause for celebration and luckily for those not quick enough on the draw to purchase advance tickets to his newest, Vera Drake, at the New York Film Festival, it also opens theatrically this weekend. Like his previous pictures which illuminate the mundane details of working class life in Britain, Vera Drake chooses a seemingly ordinary woman to portray. Played by......

Fall is truly the best season of the year, because that's when the New York Film Festival begins. The NY Times has a special section dedicated to the NYFF (tips on how to score tickets to the films - most of which are sold out) . A.O. Scott Movies > Movie Review | 'Look at Me': Good Taste, Sour Lives" href="http://movies2.nytimes.com/2004/10/01/movies/01LOOK.html">reviews Agnes Jaoui's Look At Me and the NY Times is also asking readers......

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced the lineup for the New York Film Festival 2004, and it looks like NY will again benefit from being, arguably, the world's last major film festival by getting films that have played at other festivals by the time the NYFF starts October 1. Opening the festival will be Agnes Jaoui's Look At Me (premiered at Cannes); Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education (also at Cannes) is the centerpiece, as......