Beautiful Losers is coming to town later this week, screening at the IFC Center from August 8th to 28th. The film documents and "celebrates the spirit behind one of the most influential cultural moments of a generation. In the early 1990's a loose-knit group of likeminded outsiders found common ground at a little NYC storefront gallery. Rooted in the DIY (do-it-yourself) subcultures of skateboarding, surf, punk, hip hop & graffiti, they made art that reflected......

Last year two biopics about John Lennon's assassination made the festival rounds, and are now poised to hit theaters in 2008. One, titled Chapter 27, stars Jared Leto as Mark David Chapman and an actor named Mark Lindsay Chapman portraying John Lennon. While it may be an accurate casting to have Leto playing someone who kills music, his involvement in the film will likely have us choosing the second biopic, The Killing of John Lennon......

SKATE: Free skating at Bryant Park just got...more free! Now you can get free rental skates every Wednesday provided you are one of the first 100 people to get over to The Pond Exhibit Area. 6 to 7:30pm // Bryant Park // Free MOVIE: If you have 5+ hours to spare, catch the uncut version of Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, which he called “the sum total of my life as a filmmaker.” The original......

MOVIES: A lavishly restored print of Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s visionary film The Holy Mountain has been making the rounds this year; it’s back again this weekend at IFC Center for a pair of midnight screenings. First released in 1973, The Holy Mountain has grown into a cult classic for its surreal, psychedelic imagery and a serpentine, metaphysical storyline, which takes as inspiration, among other things, "The Ascent of Mt. Carmel" by St. John of......

FOOD: If you haven't been indulging enough this holiday season, have we got a sweet soiree for you. Chocoholics come together tonight to indulge in the finest goodies from around the world. Expect music, cocktails and a giant chocolate buffet. 6:30pm // Katra Lounge [247 Bowery] // $15 THEATER: The Irish Repertory Theatre has turned to Dublin native George Bernard Shaw’s comedy The Devil’s Disciple, which was his first financial success in 1897 after a......

It's hard to say what enigmatic actor Crispin Glover is best known for: Back to the Future's George McFly? His role in Charlie's Angels? Almost kicking David Letterman in the head? If Glover has his way, he'll ultimately make his mark with his trilogy of films exploring the ways in which the monolithic American movie industry systematically excises various taboos from cinema. The first film in the series, the surreal non-narrative What Is It?, employed......

Jonathan Lethem Selects BAM Cinématek Starting next Monday and running through the middle of November, Brooklyn author and Friends of BAM chairperson Jonathan Lethem will be programming the cinématek with some of his favorite movies. Fans of his writing know that Lethem loves pop culture but this series doesn't really have more of an over arching theme than that it features some of the author's most beloved films and plain ol' good movies. There are......

READING: Our interviewee from yesterday, Adrian Tomine, will be reading tonight at Book Court. The graphic novelist not only has his work in some of the more prestigious rags, he's also got a full length graphic novel, titled Shortcomings. 7pm // Book Court [163 Court St, Cobble Hill] // Free At a very different reading in Manhattan, Chris Matthews will be promoting his new political memoir Life's a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About......

If recent viewings of Grizzly Man and Rescue Dawn have you intrigued with Werner Herzog's work, check out his legendary Fitzcarraldo about Klaus Kinski trying to bring opera music to the Peruvian jungle, which is now playing at IFC Center with a new print. If you ever wondered why Herzog referred to himself as the "Conquistador of the Useless," Fitzcarraldo is the project that really encouraged his brilliant madness. It's one of the greatest potential......

THEATER: In November, Tom Stoppard’s latest smash hit Rock ‘n’ Roll will transfer from London to Broadway (delighting Rushmore fans by bringing Brian Cox – AKA Dr. Guggenheim – in tow.) In the meantime, fans of our most intellectually dazzling living playwright can plug into Stoppard Goes Electric, an evening of three short teleplays that Stoppard penned for BBC early in his career. According to the Boomerang Theatre Company, which is producing the program, some......

W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism Brooklyn Academy of Music Repressive political regimes and free-wheeling cultural expression can go together hand in hand, and the flowering of film in Yugoslavia during the '60s is a great example of it. BAM Cinematek is devoting a series this month to this Black Wave, a film movement that combined "artistic, sexual, and ideological freedom with a sense of humor." One of the major features in this group of films......

Sometimes for critics of critics, there's a desire for the critical to set aside the sniping and actually make something. Film critics and bloggers Andrew Grant of Like Anna Karina's Sweater and Aaron Hillis, a writer for The Village Voice, Premiere, and IFC News [pictured right to left] are doing something like that with the creation of their DVD distribution company Benten Films and the release of their first title, LOL on Aug. 28. As......

The New Decade: Hong Kong Film BAM Cinématek A pervasive theme in the films coming out of the prolific national cinema of Hong Kong has been their transfer over to China in 1997. The Brooklyn Academy of Music is putting a spotlight on this preoccupation in their current series The New Decade: Hong Kong Film. Running through the end of next weekend, the series offers a number of intriguing prospects made in the last 10......

Dans Paris at IFC Center For some reason in French film even the stupidest fights between couples or siblings or ex-spouses seem oh so romantic. In Dans Paris, an entry in last year's Cannes Film Festival, director Christophe Honore attempts to capture a small sliver of the manic life for two bickering brothers living with their argumentative father in a small apartment in Paris. Romain Duris plays Paul, the elder brother, who's recently returned to......

Manhattan Film Forum Following the overwhelming success of the Woody Allen series at Film Forum last winter, they've brought back the new 35mm print of the Woodman's classic ode to our great city for a one week run. Sitting back in the air conditioned dark, feeling the George Gershwin soundtrack and the stunning black and white photography wash over you, you'll fall for this metropolis and this movie all over again. As Allen's character Isaac......

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation (directed by Eric Zala) It may be hard to imagine what hardcore movie fans did before the advent of the Internet's forums, blogs and YouTube videos, but you can take a trip down the Betamax memory lane with Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation playing tonight and tomorrow at 8 pm at Anthology Film Archives. A group of preteens in Mississippi over the course of seven years......

30 Years of Kino International Film Society of Lincoln Center In the creation of great cinema, a far-thinking and nurturing distributor is almost as important as the artists they're supporting. This year one of those historically important movie companies, Kino International turns 30 years old and in celebration of their fine work over the years the Film Society is showing two weeks worth of films all originally released by Kino. The movies featured in the......

New York Asian Film Festival IFC Center and Asia Society Grady Hendrix and the Subway Cinema crew know a thing or two about Asian cinema. Actually, that's a serious understatement. Every year these film fanatics cull the international market in search of Far East movie gems, often films without U.S. distribution, to show to an eager and enthusiastic New York audience. This year the fest moves to the IFC Center in the West Village and......

THEATER: Gertrude Stein is regarded as an avant-garde intellectual whose adventurous prose has long overshadowed her plays – despite her Broadway hit Four Saints in Three Acts. (Who could forget?) A crack team of downtown experimental theater types are now hoisting six of Stein’s one-acts out of obscurity with a production in the East Village. The evening, irresistibly dubbed Steinese Takeout, boldly embraces Stein’s radicalism and runs with it. How radical are these plays? “How......

Open Roads: New Italian Cinema Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center For the seventh year running, the Film Society at Lincoln Center brings New York audiences some of the best new films Italy has to offer with their series "Open Roads." The program this year includes selections by a whole range of filmmakers, from established ones like Mario Monicelli (who just turned 92!), to the new guard who are making more "independent" work. Just some of......

Herzog [Non] Fiction Film Forum Madman. Genius Auteur. Whether you think German director Werner Herzog falls into the camp of the former, the later or a mix of the two, the next three weeks at Film Forum will be a great chance to get better acquainted with this fascinating, prolific filmmaker's documentary works. Renowned for bringing his camera to inhospitable locales in search of the unfilmable and profiling the penultimate fringe characters, Herzog's most recent......

Day Night Day Night (directed by Julia Loktev) Living in New York and going about your daily life post-9/11 you really can't help but have the possibility of a further terrorist attack lurking in the back of your mind. This morbid potential tragedy is the subject of Julia Loktev striking first feature which played at this year's New Directors/New Films Festival and gets a theatrical release this weekend. However instead of making a big budget......

The Gates (directed by Albert Maysles and Antonio Ferrara): As the Tribeca Film Festival winds down this weekend, the lovely closing film couldn't be more fitting for Gothamists. Perhaps you recall the orange hullabaloo in Central Park two winters ago around Christo and Jean-Claude's art piece, The Gates. But what you may not be aware of is the ongoing artistic relationship between the documentarians the Maysles brothers (also known for their doc on the Beales,......

A Manhattan jury found four women guilty of gang assault for attacking a man outside the IFC Center last summer. The man, Dwayne Buckle of Queens, said that the group of lesbians attacked him because he was straight, while the women contended Buckle had used slurs and threw a cigarette at them - and that another man stabbed him. Patreese Johnson, who claimed Buckle said, "I'll f--- you straight" to her, was found not......

BusinessWeek assistant managing editor and blogger Bruce Nussbaum may have been one of the 40 most powerful people in design (back in 2005), but he was no match for State Supreme Court Justice Edward J. McLaughlin. In coverage of a group of lesbians on trial for allegedly beating up a straight man outside the IFC Center (best trial ever?), the Post mentioned that Nussbaum was removed from the jury. Apparently Nussbaum upset Justice McLaughlin for......

In two weeks at IFC, a screening of Orphans will be shown in memory of one of the films' stars. Lily Wheelwright, the 24-year old who played one of the two estranged sisters in the film, Rosie, died on March 22nd. In the film, the twenty-something sisters reunite five years after the death of their parents only to "revisit their treacherous history." In real life, Ry Russo-Young (the writer-director) and Wheelwright were friends while growing......

David Byrne's foldable Montague mountain bike has been stolen. The avid city biker rode in the 5 Boro Bike Tour last year, commenting: "The organizers close the FDR drive, the BQE, the Belt Parkway and the Verrazano-Narrows bridge on one side — so we get the thrill of riding in the middle of the street, not having to stop at red lights and no worries of the ubiquitous jaywalking peds on suicide missions." This past......

Remember when a filmmaker claimed that a group of lesbians attacked him outside the IFC Center last summer? And it was revealed that the women felt they were defending themselves, with one woman saying, "I admit I did cut him one time for my own safety"? Well, the case has made it to court. Manhattan prosecutors say that Dwayne Buckle was viciously attacked - he was stabbed, punched, and kicked - by Patreese Johnson, Venice......

Car makers are flocking to the city with the New York International Auto Show opening this weekend (media previews start tomorrow) at the Javits Convention Center, and there's one particularly NYC-focused exhibit: Taxi '07. In honor of the taxi's 100th birthday, the Design Trust for Public Space has corralled many taxis "transformed" for the future to be displayed outdoors in an inner roadway at the Javits Center. There's “The World’s Fastest Taxi" (a hydrogen-powered......

They don't make "downtown It girls" like Edie Sedgwick any more, which is why it's fortunate that Andy Warhol spent so much time capturing her on camera during the height of their artistic collaboration. The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens is devoting a retrospective to these films starting this weekend and running through Apr. 8. Featuring 15 16 mm movies, many loaned by the Museum of Modern Art, the series also includes footage......