Photograph of Queens native Amy Ryan, nominated for best supporting actress for her role in Gone, Baby Gone At 8:30PM (following a half-hour red carpet special), the 80th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will begin, finally putting an end to the "There Will Be Oscar" or "Oscar Country for Old Men" type headlines. You can prep yourself with the Oscar nominees list as you watch (or avoid) red carpet coverage. You could read NY Times......

The Oscars are in town! Well, at least some 8-foot Oscar statues for the official New York Oscar night celebration at the Carlyle hotel, where east coast industry folk will come together Sunday night as the show goes down in Hollywood. Nominees were announced on January 22nd with Best Picture nods going to Michael Clayton, Atonement, There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men and Juno. The love and buzz continues to surround the......

LEARN: It's that special time again when hipsters gather round to discuss home-buying. The informational event clues in those looking for new digs about the logistics of purchasing their very own pad. Learn from Licensed Real Estate agents, Mortgage Brokers and Real Estate Attorneys whilst you sip on a cocktail or two. 6:30pm // Huckleberry Bar [588 Grand St, Williamsburg] // Free EVENT: It's like a never-ending President's Day this week; tonight enjoy a......

MOVIE: As the Oscars approach, take a look back at one of the past films to be granted a golden statue. Tonight Agatha Christie's classic mystery Murder on the Orient Express leaps from the page to the big screen when the 1974 movie is shown at Film Forum. Starring Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall and Anthony Perkins, the movie will help you hone your crime-solving skills (and possibly make you think twice about taking Amtrak).......

The producer of Pan's Labyrinth, the Oscar-winning film that partially delves into the world of abuse, may in fact have done some abusing of her own. A lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court yesterday against Frida Torresblanco. Her nanny, Angelica Hernandez, claims she was treated like a virtual slave. Hernandez (who was hired in February 2007) worked up to 150 hours a week for seven months in the producer's Tribeca apartment and brought home......

Photograph of Kathy Bates and AMPAS President Sid Ganis announcing the nominations by Chris Pizzello/AP While the writers' strike continues and prospects of an awards ceremony are unclear, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences went ahead and announced the contenders for their 80th annual back-slapping ceremony. Oscar-winning friend of the academy Kathy Bates was on hand to announce this year's golden picks. From Bob Dylan to Michael Clayton, many of the nominations......

As The Daily Show and Colbert Report are just moments away from filming their first shows in quite some time, picket lines are standing strong outside of their studios. WGA spokeswoman Sherry Goldman tells us, "These pickets will be against the media conglomerates – NBC and Viacom - and not the specific hosts who we understand were forced to return to the air without their writers who remain on the picket lines." Just because the......

The New York Film Critics Circle met yesterday to vote on their “Best of” list for 2007; widely viewed as a barometer for the upcoming Academy Awards, the critics pride themselves as “a principled alternative to the Oscars, honoring esthetic merit in a forum that is immune to commercial and political pressures.” But if one anonymous member is to be believed, the meeting sounds more like a “principled” excuse for an Aint It Cool News-style......

The Wind That Shakes The Barley (directed by Ken Loach) Nominated for BAFTAs, beloved at Cannes and ignored by the Oscars, Ken Loach's movies get great treatment overseas but are barely a blip on the radar of American movie audiences. It's a crying shame too because Loach has the ability to elicit almost documentary-like, naturalistic performances from his actors and his working class, social justice narratives are always provocative. His most recent movie, The Wind......

As mentioned last week, Oprah is gearing up for her New York invasion in September..the first in ten years! Some new info has come out about what she has planned for her big shows -- though there are no shocking details. First of all, Letterman will be a guest. The two have fueded in the past, but Oprah will welcome the late night host with open arms when she's on his home turf. People reports......

Only 2 weeks after his 89th birthday, Swedish film and theater director Ingmar Bergman passed away at his home on Fårö Island this morning, the Associated Press reports. "Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, confirmed the death, and Swedish journalist Marie Nyreröd said the director died peacefully during his sleep. Bergman never fully recovered after a hip surgery in October last year, Nyreröd told Swedish broadcaster SVT." As the New York Times......

This Memorial Day weekend offers the most 2007 weddings so far in the NY Times' Weddings & Celebrations section: A whopping 43 weddings! But, of all the announcements, our favorite is the one of Thea Spyer and Edith Windsor. Spyer, a 75-year-old psychologist in Manhattan, and Windsor, a 77-year-old retired computer systems analyst for IBM, were married in Toronto earlier this week, but actually met decades ago.Dr. Spyer and Ms. Windsor met in 1965 in......

Gutenberg! The Musical! may not have been about the Police Academy star, but tonight's installment of Inside Joke is. But before The Gute heads off to The UCB Theater to discuss the art of comedy, he sat down with Gothamist to discuss what he's hiding from TMZ. You do quite a bit of work with the homeless and foster children. What attracted you to these two causes? Years ago, I got involved with helping......

It really seems like Robert De Niro and Al Pacino have co-starred in a lot of movies together, but they haven't. Sure, they had a couple of scenes together in "Heat", and both starred in "The Godfather 2" (though they never shared screen time) - but that's about it as far as collaborating has gone for these two legends in their own time. The good news for fans of the actors is that it's......

If you detected a frisson of fabulous excitement scorching the air this morning, it’s because the 61st annual Tony award nominations were announced! (For those who may not fathom the awesome significance of the Tonys, the awards are the Broadway theater world equivalent of the Oscars and named for Antoinette Perry, an actress, director, producer and who passed away prior to the first award show in 1947.) Turning a profit on Broadway takes a perfect......

Matthew Barney: No Restraint (directed by Alison Chernick) Love him or hate him, Matthew Barney's artwork is always provocative. Dressing in elaborate costumes and makeup, constructing baroque tableaux and often involving petroleum jelly, Barney's moving and still film works are less like a conventional movie and more like sculpture. If you attended any of the massively popular exhibitions of either his Cremaster series at the Guggenheim museum or a marathon screenings of his films, surely......

We were fortunate enough to be at the Time Out New York Eat Out Awards last night to watch the winners of both the Readers' Choice awards, chosen by readers who made over 14,000 submissions, and the Critics' Picks awards, selected by the TONY staff. The coveted plates hang on restaurant and bar walls throughout the city. Four gold plate awards went to those who won some of the top honors -- A Voce, for......

The annual Gambero Rosso Slow Food Italian Wine Tasting reminds us a little of the Oscars. People lined up outside the Puck building anxious to get in, half the men are dressed in Armani and everybody’s dying to find out who will be the big star of the evening. The space is packed with industry-types, producers and wine geeks who are on the lookout for the next great Italian wines. The top producers honored at......

It's that time of the year again: When Hollywood honors its moviemaking the way it knows (and not always in equitable ways, given that Alfred Hitchcock nor Robert Altman, to name a few, have never won Directing Oscars) and America gets to watch hours of pre-show hosted by idiots. Giving commentary for Gothamist this year, Karen Wilson, Margaret Harper, and Jen Chung. 7:06PM First thoughts: Gael Garcia Bernal is so cute. Ryan Seacrest is an......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A pedestrian struck at 12th Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan, a homicide in Brooklyn, and a water rescue in Forest Park in Queens Mathieu Eugene showed NY1 his new apartment and says that he was sleeping there before the election; if that's really true, why didn't he say so earlier and why won't he show NY1 the lease? In order to avoid any parking ticket squabbles, the city......

A look at some noteworthy televison shows this week: Live From the Red Carpet: The 2007 Academy Awards (Sunday, 6:00 p.m. E!) The traditionally absurd Oscar pregame of celebrities arriving at the Oscars. 2007 Joan & Melissa at the Academy Awards (Sunday, 6:00 p.m. TV Guide Channel) Joan Rivers and daughter Melissa do their yearly schtick during the Oscar arrivals. An Evening at the Academy Awards: The Arrivals (Sunday, 6:30 p.m. WABC 7) Channel 7......

EVENT: The Academy presents Meet the Oscars. On top of learning fun facts about Oscar, you'll get to see the little gold guy (and tons of tourists) up close and personal, as the statuettes are on display in Times Square. We suggest you bring a fake acceptance speech with you. 11am through 7pm // Times Square Studios [1500 Broadway] // Free THEATER: Kathleen Chalfant (Wit, Angels in America), Marian Seldes (A Delicate Balance, Three Tall......

If things have seemed quiet at the usual New York haunts of movie folks like Film Forum or Grey Dog Coffee this last week, it's because practically the whole community is in Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. The annual launching pad of many subsequently huge independent features (see this year's Best Picture Oscar nom and last year's festival break out, Little Miss Sunshine), Sundance is a crazy week. Parties, swag, deal-making and......

There is tons of speculation all over the Internet about the Oscar nominations for films released in 2006. As an Oscars fiend, we're not going to digress about the calculus of vote-splitting. Instead, we'll point out a couple things we noticed: - Best surprise nomination: Ryan Gosling's Best Actor nomination for Half Nelson; Gosling plays a drug-addicted teacher in Brooklyn trying to help one of his students...it'll be on DVD in three weeks - see......

Yes, yes, last night was the Golden Globes. And boy, that Warren Beatty NEVER SHUTS UP. People looked pretty (but Jennifer Love Hewitt, what the hell were you wearing?), and it was nice to see Helen Mirren rack up the awards, even though it got a little boring and we think more people saw Prime Suspect than Elizabeth I. Sure, Dreamgirls won big (Jennifer Hudson is a star - here's more and more confirmation......

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association voting pool for the Golden Globes only consists of 83 members, but every year their mainstream tastes become one of the potential early prognosticators for the Emmys and the Oscars. Over in Beverly Hills today, the stylists are putting the finishing touches on the stars' couture, that long red carpet is being laid and some assistant is double checking the seals on the envelopes. Here in New York of course,......

You know it's the beginning of January when the gyms are filled with New Years resolution exercisers and the movie theaters are filled with post-New Years dreck. Frankly, it's best to focus on getting caught up on last year's best (see our Top 10 and the subsequent comments for suggestions) and leave this week's releases for suckers with movie money to burn. Hilary Swank often stars in Oscar-lauded movies but her newest about an inner-city......

New York mid-December always smells vaguely of pine and peppermint, despite our recent springtime temperatures. Bring that cozy holiday feeling with you into the cineplex for a couple of new feel-good holiday movies. Will Smith will tug at your heart strings big time as the struggling dad trying to become a stockbroker in The Pursuit of Happyness. Set in the '70s in San Francisco, Smith plays Chris Gardner, a door to door medical equipment salesman......

It's December today and you know what that means...let the rampant awards season speculation commence! As the year comes to a close, it's that magical time when all of the movie studios begin unloading their most precious commodities into our theaters, making sure things come out in New York (and LA) before Dec. 31 so they'll be eligible for this year's Academy Awards. But of course, we're still weeks away from any nomination announcements for......

Robert Altman, maverick film director, died on Monday night in Los Angeles. He was 81 years old. Altman had recently been promoting the DVD release of A Praire Home Companion, a film in which the movie studio hired Paul Thomas Anderson to be an assistant director in case, as Altman put it, he kicked the bucket. He had been nominated five times for best director at the Academy Awards, but never won one (a......