Something tells us that most people who end up in the audience for Space Chimps this weekend will be people who either lost a bet or bought tickets in a failed attempt to sneak into The Dark Knight. And to hear the Times’s Neil Genzlinger tell it, there are worse fates: “Journalism is all about having the courage to write the truth even if it will get you mocked by your relatives and co-workers,......

Today the little movie that could, The Dark Knight, opens on the wings of a cosmic hype that could make it the third biggest box office earner this year. The first screenings began at midnight, continuing through the night, and many moviegoers were declaring it the best movie ever while still waiting on line to get in. The Observer talked to some fanboys (and girls) waiting for the IMAX screening at Lincoln Center last night;......

At a press/industry screening of The Dark Knight at the Lincoln Square IMAX last night, the line was already halfway down 68th Street an hour before showtime – and these are the overprivileged industry slobs. It’s going to be pandemonium Friday once the rabid fanboys take over. But you already knew that; the question of the hour is, “Does it live up to the hype?” Well, considering that the anticipation level rivals that of......

The black carpet was rolled out at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square cinemas for the feverishly-anticipated premiere of The Dark Knight. The film's cast and crew appeared at the premiere, but most talk, as it has been for the past since months, was about missing cast member Heath Ledger, whose sudden death in January shocked Hollywood and the public. The film's star, Christian Bale, said Ledger "steals the movie, I'm quite happy to say that......

Director David Gordon Green, called "one of the most interesting and idiosyncratic independent filmmakers of the last decade" by The Believer, will be sharing his lyrical take on southern culture with Brooklyn moviegoers starting Thursday, when BAMcinematek kicks off All the Real Americans: The World of David Gordon Green. What's interesting about the week-long, early-career retrospective is that Green has paired each of his four feature films with six movies from the '70s and '80s......

Jill Priluck It's really finally happening, isn't it? First the Bat Signal hyped up the Woolworth Building, now the Batmobile is in town for the The Dark Knight world premiere tonight. The full-size toy was spotted outside the AMC Loews Lincoln Square theater – the one with the IMAX – earlier today. Our correspondent tells us that "handlers were in the process of covering it because people taking pictures wouldn't stop photographing it. When people......

In May, Serious Eats alerted to the closing of a pet food store on Prospect Park West in Brooklyn, as the storefront was stripped down to its original "beautiful stained glass sign from an old, possibly 1930s-era sweets shop." Soon enough a tapas restaurant popped up, called Get on Tapas (get it?), and locals were checking out the menu for the new neighborhood spot...only to discover they were fooled by Hollywood. Turns out the movie......

We ran into Passing Strange co-creator Heidi Rodewald at Two Boots in the West Village over the weekend, and she confirmed news that Spike Lee will be directing a film version of the critically acclaimed but box office-challenged rock musical. Lee will film the show three times this month for cable TV; twice with audiences and once without. At Two Boots, Rodewald summed up Passing Strange’s difficulty selling tickets on Broadway by paraphrasing an old......

Just as Sex and the City fades to black on the silver screen, another New York-based show steps in to fill the void. MailOnline reports that a Friends movie has gotten the greenlight, and word is that all former Friends are on board (the oldest of which, Lisa Kudrow, is now 45 years old). Sources say that within the next 18 months Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer......

This year’s Fourth of July blockbuster, Hancock, opens today. The quasi-comedy stars Will Smith as an angry homeless man with superhuman powers who causes massive property damage whenever he clumsily tries to save the day. The media has it in for him, but after he (tragically) rescues a publicist from an oncoming train, the grateful flack (Jason Batemen) helps him with an image makeover. The Times’s Manohla Dargis, of all people, calls it an......

Looks like Pixar’s hit another home run with Wall•E, a movie about robot love on post-Apocalyptic earth. Jeffrey Wells calls it “a masterpiece of its type” but can’t stand the way director Andrew Stanton has been downplaying the movie’s ecological context in interviews. Wells writes, “It's a lie, of course – dis-informing of pig-trough moviegoers who might think twice about going to a ‘green’ movie that satirizes their lie-around, fat-ass lifestyle.” For those who......

Judging from Get Smart’s first remarkably unfunny trailer, you might assume this $80 million remake of the late-‘60s sitcom, starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway and Alan Arkin, would be a guaranteed flop, but it’s actually getting some decent reviews. (It’s a mixed bag, of course.) The Village Voice’s avant garde film buff J. Hoberman, of all people, deems it a “pleasant surprise… an all-purpose (and often quite funny) goofball action comedy.” Or maybe critics......

Ever wonder what that mysterious delay on your subway line was caused by? It could have been MTA worker Michael Martin sneaking away from his duties to write down the latest line in his screenplay (or for the latest screenplay he was hired to write, New Jack City 2). NY1 reports on Martin's rise from the underground to the mainstream.Martin was a subway conductor, and after totaling his car in an accident, entered a screen-writing......

Last week the NY Times' House & Garden section took a look at the mysteries planted by an architect in a ritzy Fifth Avenue apartment. This week, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety report that Paramount has purchased the rights to the article for a feature to be produced by J.J. Abrams. Writers Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky have already been hired to adapt the piece into a film. Times reporter Penelope Green told the story......

Hoping to reverse the curse of Ang Lee’s The Hulk, director Louis Leterrier and Edward Norton have teamed up to unleash The Incredible Hulk upon the masses. Their take on the franchise keeps the origin story brief and cuts to the chase, as the Army tries to neutralize their experiment run amok. A.O. Scott at the Times writes, “Let’s not get carried away: The Adequate Hulk would have been a more suitable title... If......

In You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Adam Sandler affects an Israeli accent to play a Mossad commando turned sex-crazed NYC hairdresser. The script, co-written by Judd Apatow, Robert Smigel and Sandler, works hard to coax laughs out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, throwing in plenty of gross-out humor and comic stylings from Rob Schneider, who plays a dumb Palestinian. Need further discouragement? Variety’s Brian Lowry calls it Schneider’s “most relentlessly unfunny appearance under heavy......

When we took note of the Health Department’s crackdown on chain restaurants that refuse to display their calorie information, some commenters wondered how movie theaters would be affected. Since the rule applies to any New York City food server with at least 15 locations nationwide, are chains like Regal Cinemas now required to confront moviegoers with the bad news about their concession products (which are, technically, food)? The Life Vicarious did a little digging......

We knew it would one day come to this, it’s fallen upon us at last, there is no escape. Reviews for Sex and the City have been generally derisive, ranging from Rolling Stone: “Some dudes say they'd rather light their dicks on fire than endure this movie version of the ultimate in TV chickcoms. Snap out of it, guys, you just might learn something.” To the Daily Mail: “In years to come, I suspect......

Just how much are Sex and the City fans willing to pay for The Ultimate movie-going experience? The NY Post reports that one woman laid down $19,000 for a seat at tonight's premiere, only to find out she'd been scammed. Ella Sherman, who flew in from Singapore for the big night, will still get a seat at the premiere thanks to New Line Cinemas, but, you see, "It was the after-party that was the big......

With the Sex and the City movie just 10 days away from release, the film is finally getting some press. While early reviews are panning Parker & Co's big screen effort, there's still, apparently, a lot of interest and a lot to talk about. The NY Times likens the fandom of the stiletto set to that of the light sabers crowd. Advanced tickets are being bought in bulk for opening night, flights are being booked......

After years of hemorrhaging film production business to cheaper locations like Canada, New York City is seeing a spike in movie shoots, back up to the pre-9/11 level. Bloomberg reports that the city saw a 36% rise in production last year, with over 245 movies and television shows shot citywide in 2007. A consulting group hired by the mayor’s office determined that the industry pumps $5 billion a year into the economy and employs some......

The imposing shadow of Indiana Jones looms, but this weekend belongs to Narnia, when C.S. Lewis’s second book in the series – Prince Caspian – finally gets the Hollywood treatment to accompany that epic Phish song. This installment has a lot more combat than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, as well as the super-brilliant Peter Dinklage. The Voice’s Ella Taylor says it’s fun, you know, for kids, though adults may decide that,......

Speed Racer, from the mysterious sibling filmmakers behind the Matrix trilogy, is opening to well-deserved critical derision. It’s a 135-minute insipid, soulless commodity that lifts some of the Japanese original’s storyline but absolutely none of the charm. The movie opens with a 34% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes; perhaps J. Hoberman’s pan gets it best: “Ideologically anti-corporate, previous Wachowski productions aspired to be something more than mind-less sensation; Speed Racer is thrilled to be......

Coan Nichols (aka "Buddy") and Rick Charnoski have been making movies together on 8mm film since the late 90s; their main focus being skateboarding. At some point they abandoned their New York City stomping grounds for the warmer weather of the West Coast, but the city is still the inspiration for their latest release. Deathbowl to Downtown chronicles the origin of skating in NYC and is "the first to explore skateboarding’s urban history in-depth." (View......

Aspiring actors, look now further than the Morgan L stop in Williamsburg for your big break! This flier advertises casting for a little film called: "Niki Gets Lost In BushDick." The plot is pretty simple: Niki stumbles upon a band whilst wandering around "BushDick" and (to put it mildly) ends up "sleeping with" them, all, at once. Copyranter guesses that the band must be indie rock; perhaps some real life Brooklyn band porn names......

Deathbowl to Downtown – The Evolution of Skateboarding in New York City will be seeping into theaters starting this summer (with a national release this fall); the film is the first to explore skateboarding’s urban history in Manhattan. Tracing "skating's epochal shift from the parks and pools of the 70's, to ramp skating in the 80's, to the street ascendancy of the 1990's as seen from a New York-centric perspective," it includes footage and interviews......

In 2006, Lou Reed revived his album Berlin by performing it in its entirety with a small orchestra for five sold-out shows at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. The 1973 album, which riffs on themes of drugs, love and suicide, was a commercial failure when it came out; Lester Bangs described it as “the bastard progeny of a drunken flaccid tumble between Tennessee Williams and Hubert (Last Exit From Brooklyn) Selby, Jr.” But in......

Consider it official, it's Sex and the City month; be prepared to read about the movie up until, and past, its May 30th big screen debut. The ink's been bought by the barrell to promote this release, and even columnist Carrie Bradshaw herself never penned this many words about s-e-x during her career. NYMag starts things off chatting with the star, Sarah Jessica Parker, in what translates into a seven-page piece. For those who blame......

A brand new full-length trailer for The Dark Knight hit the web today; the last one circulated in December -- just one month before one of the film's stars, Heath Ledger, was found dead. This trailer was originally screened at NYC's Comic-Con late last month, and gave viewers the first glimpse of Aaron Eckhart's Two-Face character. Watch the larger version here. In March, Queens Councilman Hiram Monserrate started pushing New York to lay claim on......

Robert Downey Jr. finally gets his big paycheck job with Iron Man, adapted from Marvel’s comic book series. Hollywood-Elsewhere’s Jeffery Wells calls it underwhelming: “I was never twitching in agony, but the advance word had suggested it might lift me out of my chair. Forget it.” He’s also troubled by “the jingoistic get-the-dumb-terrorists plot that John McCain or Dick Cheney will be totally delighted by if and when they see it. That's supposed to......