Next week some of the best films from this year's Sundance Festival will unspool at BAM during their third annual Sundance Institute takeover. The ten day mini-fest features 10 dramatic features, 12 documentaries and 36 shorts. Most of these selections screen just once or twice, and not all of them have distribution, so you've got to stay on your toes if there's something you want to see. The screenings kick off May 29th with the......

The construction worker who killed Adrienne Shelly in her West Village office pleaded guilty to manslaughter - and gave new details about why he killed the actress-director. Diego Pillco will receive 25 years in prison; as an illegal immigrant from Ecuador, the Post says his sentence will be "almost certainly followed by deportation." Originally, Pillco had told the police he killed Shelly in November of 2006, he was in a "bad mood" and picked a......

Director of the legendary hip-hop documentary Style Wars, Tony Silver, died last weekend after battling an irreversible brain condition for several years. Shot in New York City in the early '80s and originally airing on PBS in 1983, his documentary is considered to be the first film about hip-hop culture. While the 70 minutes covers rap and breakdancing, its main focus is on graffiti, which at the time was viewed by some as a groundbreaking......

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on Gothamist. Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, with its new season starting Monday at 10 PM on the Travel Channel. The Sundance Film Festival, where you can experience the 2008 festival, which ends this Sunday. New York Dish, offering a chance to win $400 and a seat at Babbo for writing a creative ode. Busted Tees, where they're in the middle of their winter......

Actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his downtown Manhattan apartment by the police. Some reports say he died from an overdose. UPDATE 5:00PM :According to the NYPD spokesman, Ledger, who was living in an apartment at Broome street, "had an appointment for a massage...The housekeeper who went to let Ledger know the masseuse was there, and found him dead at 3:26 p.m" with "pills strewn all around him." The housekeeper and masseuse tried......

Photograph "Emerging from Penn Station" by boogaloo66 on Flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery at West 56th St. and Broadway in Manhattan, a pedestrian struck at Marathon Parkway and Northern Blvd. in Queens, and a shooting on Gleason Ave. and White Plains Rd. in the the Bronx. If you live in NJ and recently obtained a machine gun from local cops, they need it back. A court ruling made the market......

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on Gothamist. Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, with its new season starting Monday at 10 PM on the Travel Channel. The Sundance Film Festival, where you can experience the 2008 festival online. New York Dish, offering a chance to win $400 and a seat at ‘Cesca for writing about your favorite Italian dish. Busted Tees, where they're offering free shipping with the purchase of......

At just 24, Noah Baumbach made his mark on the indie film world with Kicking and Screaming, his hilarious and finely observed study of post-collegiate ennui. His Mr. Jealousy followed but the picture’s lukewarm response meant a long five years before he obtained funding for The Squid and the Whale. Happily for Baumbach, the superb film was a major critical and commercial success. Two years later, he’s back with Margot at the Wedding, another character-driven......

The Invasion (directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel) Stylish, political, visually arresting and darn right freaky, The Invasion is a horror movie that taps into what really horrifies us today—namely that the people in our lives could turn into personality-less automatons influenced by some evil alien virus. It may sound like a totally fantastical premise, but in the context of the movie it really works. Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig star in this remake of Invasion of......

Rocket Science (directed by Jeffrey Blitz) You know what they say about master debaters—they really know their way around an argument. A hit at this year's Sundance Film Festival, Rocket Science is a Rushmore-esque comedy about a New Jersey high school debate team and their secret weapon, stuttering Hal (Reece Thompson). The film's director knows his way around a quirky suburban overachiever, Blitz previously directed the very charming documentary about the National Spelling Bee competition,......

Since the only truly green event is the one that doesn't happen, Live Earth is certainly being met with some criticism - but either way it's going to cast some green over the world tomorrow. If you aren't heading over to the "New York" event yourself, NBC Universal will be bringing the concert to the world with a three-hour primetime special Saturday night on NBC, 18 hours of live coverage on Bravo, seven hours on......

When the son of famed televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jay Bakker, made the decision to be a “gay affirming” pastor, his life was almost ruined for the second time. Financial backers dropped him, he had to let go of some of his staff, and churches he was scheduled to speak at pulled out. Now Jay speaks at a different set of churches. Last Saturday we saw him at the Middle Collegiate Church,......

The Sundance Institute at BAM Brooklyn Academy of Music For the second year in a row, BAM has teamed up with the Sundance Institute in Park City, Utah to bring a selection of innovative film, theater and music programming to Brooklyn audiences. Last night the series kicked off with a screening of the adorable Son of Rambow, an audience favorite from the '07 festival in January about two English school boys in the '80s creating......

The Hawk Is Dying (directed by Julian Goldberger) Paul Giamatti may not look like a movie star but he uses his Ordinary Dude looks to inhabit some pretty compelling shlubs, and his role in the buzzed about flick from the '06 Sundance Film Festival, The Hawk Is Dying, is perhaps his saddest sack to date. Florida auto upholsterer George Gattling's obsessive hobby is to trap and then train red-tail hawks in an attempt to mimic......

Once (directed by John Carney) Have you ever had a certain beloved record so often on repeat that you start to think of it as the soundtrack to your life? That magical connection between music, emotion and experience is at the heart of the new musical Once and it makes for a truly unique movie. A vacuum cleaner repairman by day and a Dublin street busker by night, "The Guy" (Glen Hansard) is obviously nursing......

Yankees fans can now rejoice, because Roger Clemens is returning to the New York Yankees. The 44-year old right-hander, who last pitched for the Houston Astros last season, announced his plans to the crowd during the 7th inning stretch of today's Yankees-Mariners game (audio from WCBS), "Well, they came and got me out of Texas. I can tell you, it's a privilege to be back. I'll be talking to y'all soon." How surprising was the......

Paris Je T'Aime (directed by various filmmakers including Olivier Assayas, Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuarón, Chistopher Doyle and Nobuhiro Suwa): There have been nearly as many cinematic love letters written to Paris as there have been to New York, but that doesn't mean that moviemakers aren't still falling hard for the city of lights. 21 directors made 18 short films for the new omnibus movie Paris Je T'Aime which comes to New York theaters this Friday.......

If you've ever ended up on that particular stretch of east midtown searching for some spicy tofu or kim chee, you know that Korea Town on West 32nd between Broadway and Fifth Avenue is a fascinating yet often overlooked pocket of the city. However, once Michael Kang's cool thriller West 32nd hits major movie theaters, it'll sure to be mobbed with tourists. Playing at this year's Tribeca Film Festival (with a screening today at 3:30......

Adrienne Shelly, who was murdered in her New York apartment last year, will have the film she directed, wrote and co-starred in out in theaters soon (the official release date is tomorrow). The film, Waitress, made its Sundance appearance earlier this year. NYMag recently reviewed the film, saying: "More than anything, I wish I could write about the boisterous romantic comedy Waitress without reference to the tragic murder of its writer, director, and co-star Adrienne......

Are Robert DeNiro and David Bowie battling it out in a sort of festival turf war? Though both turned up at the Vanity Fair party thrown in honor of New York's Tribeca Film Festival - it seems there's some animosity in the air...or at least in the press. Bowie's High Line Festival begins on May 9th, just three days after DeNiro's Tribeca Film Festival ends. NY Mag describes the difference between the two: "The former......

"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers - goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I......

This Sunday, the Mayor will formally unveil more PlaNYC details (though the website has been up for a while now). He'll give the speech at the American Museum of Natural History, to which New York Mag says, "while we're excited to see the plan, we confess the museum's symbolism is making us nervous: dinosaurs … carcasses … oy." MUSIC: Celebrate the earth with some tunes this weekend at the Green Apple Music Festival. Musicians will......

THEATER: The Jaded Assassin, an original “fightsical” which prompted the Times to gush, “Take that, ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’!”, was a hit at last year’s Ice Factory Festival with its daring mix of martial arts and visceral storytelling. “In a mythical world, in brutal times, a curse has plagued the land ever since the chosen ones infuriated the gods. It is up to one non-pureblood to end the curse and end the misery that has......

As the world holds it's breath, teetering precariously on the cusp of the Superbowl (well, at least in America), the wheels of the -ists keep on turning. Austinist was in a musical frame of mind as they listened to the new Shins album, updated the SXSW band listings and got called "punk rock" for their efforts by MTV. And an ice storm swept through the area. Bostonist said goodbye to John Kerry's plans for......

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......

Photo via nafees Flickr Portland, Oregon resident M. Ward (or "Matt", as his friends call him) is an enigmatic good 'ol fashioned singer/songwriter. Appearing detached and independent from the world he connects to through music, he seems to come to us from another time and place. Without pretense he delivers songs with a voice that hangs in the air, enchanting an audience of listeners who are always left wanting more. An old soul with......

At the Sundance Film Festival, the film Waitress will premiere this afternoon. Written and directed by Adrienne Shelly. Last November, Shelly had been waiting to hear whether her film was going to be accepted by the Sundance Film Festival when she was found dead in a the Greenwich Village apartment building she had an office in. Initially, police suspected Shelly killed herself, since her body was found hanging from shower rod, but her family......

It's finally cold outside (sort of), so warm up this weekend at the movies. The new "in danger in the jungle" horror film Primeval has a vaguely ominous trailer, but only because it never tells the audience what exactly is hiding out there in the grass. Okay, it's not human but then what? Anaconda already did the giant snake and The Ghost and the Darkness dispatched a massive lion, what else could be out there......

Diego Pillco, the 19 year old construction worker whose fight with actress Adrienne Shelly over construction noise turned fatal, pleaded not guilty during his indictment yesterday. Pillco had confessed to striking Shelly unconscious and, thinking she was dead, staging her body to look like she hanged herself in a suicide because in order to cover it up. The prosecutors entered Pillco's confession, which had many details about the confrontation. According to the Post, Pillco had......

Premiering tonight on the Sundance Channel is a six part reality series about a tattooed, pierced alterna-preacher Jay Bakker, called One Punk Under God. As the only son of TV evangelical preachers Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jay had a pretty troubled childhood what with the scandals over Jim's illicit affair and accounting fraud, the Bakkers subsequent divorce and Jay's descent into substance abuse. However, now Jay has his life more on track with a......