Filmmaker Ethan Coen has left his big brother behind and written three short plays all by himself. Called Almost an Evening, the triptych will be produced by the Atlantic Theater Company with a terrific cast that includes Elizabeth Marvel, who was riveting in Ivo van Hove’s unforgettable revival of Hedda Gabler, and Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham. The plays “unsuccessfully tackle important questions. In Waiting, someone waits somewhere for quite some time. In Four......

The holiday-time movie releases are starting to pile up with their usual feverish frequency. Some have Christmas themes, like the widely reviled Vince Vaughn vehicle Fred Claus that’s already roadkill on the lost highway of cinema history; others, like Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, are timed to make an impression as close to Academy Award-voting season as possible. Here are some of the biggest gorillas set to dominate New York’s screens in the next six......

Long before Big Bird and Fraggle Rock, Jim Henson was dabbling in avant-garde cinema. Check out a young Henson appearing in his own far-out short, called Time Piece, which owes no small debt to John Cage. "Dislocation in time, time signatures, time as a philosophical concept, and slavery to time are some of the themes touched upon in this nine-minute, experimental film, which was written, directed, and produced by Jim Henson – and starred Jim......

On Wednesday night Tim Burton gave the Film Society of Lincoln Center a 17-minute taste of Sweeney Todd, his film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s macabre musical. The 1979 Broadway hit was inspired by Victorian folklore about a crazed London barber who slits his customers’ throats and, in some versions of the story, colludes with his lover to bake the corpses into meat pies – which become wildly successful! (Ah, the culinary possibilities before rogue......

Black Snake Moan (directed by Craig Brewer) Your movie contains the song "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp," and wins an Academy Award for it. How do you follow up the crowning achievement of writing and directing Hustle and Flow, a movie about the mid-life crisis of a Memphis pimp? If you're Craig Brewer, the obvious answer is to write and direct Black Snake Moan, a movie about a drugged-out nymphomaniac (Christina Ricci) who......

It took a jury four hours to convict Khemwhatie Bedessie of raping a 4-year-old child under her care at a Queens day care center in 2006. Bedessie's lawyer Stephen Turano had argued she had been coerced into falsely confessing, after a detective said she would released if she confessed. On Monday, Bedessie testified, "I tell [the detective], yes, I will do anything he want so he will send me home. He promised that I'm going......

This is sure: Jennifer Connelly is breathtakingly beautiful and her husband, Paul Bettany, is no slouch himself. And from all gossip, they seem very cute when they are living their lives in Brooklyn with their kids. That said, we were amused to read in the Post that Bettany freaked out at the Waverly Inn when another patron made some comments about Connelly. Various witnesses tell the Post that some dude as making "lewd comments" or......

Baby, it's cold outside—go see a movie, why dontcha? Werewolves, comic books and hot girls who prowl the streets of Bucharest in high heel boots should be the stuff of great geek cinema. Unfortunately, Blood and Chocolate, a new movie starring Agnes Bruckner as a werewolf girl trying to get along with the pack is utterly laughable. And not even in a good, kitchy, throw popcorn at the screen and giggle with your friends sort......

Many things happened last Tuesday night at a CUNY Graduate Center auditorium lobby reception. Kim Peek, the 55 year-old savant who inspired Rain Man, walked through the crowd to answer strangers' questions about forgotten rural highways, old telephone directories, and birthdays. His father Fran talked about Kim’s abilities and home life in Utah, and passed the nine-pound Academy Award given to him by Rain Man’s screenwriter to anyone who wanted to hold it. Elsewhere......

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......

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......

This week, Sarah Michelle Gellar is back for more creepy girls hiding in her hair in the new sequel, The Grudge 2. Amber Tamblyn plays her sister, who also travels to Tokyo and is also infected by the grudge inducing curse. While both American versions of the Grudge movies were directed by their Japanese creator Takashi Shimizu, it would seem that the better material would be in the originals, so we suggest renting those instead.......

This week at the movies, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that the new releases are seriously scrapping the bottom of the quality bucket. How many weeks now has it been that we've had this complaint? The good news is that, as per usual, there's load of other fascinating movie related events In New York to sink your teeth into with relish. Someday soon someone should tally up the release record......

It had been awhile since Gothamist was at Second Stage, so we were glad to find it in the excellent form we remembered with its latest show, a revival of Charles Fuller’s A Soldier’s Play. Fuller won the 1982 Pulitzer in drama for it, and was nominated for an Academy Award when it was turned into a movie (A Soldier’s Story), so we went in with high expectations, and fortunately those didn’t jinx anything.......

Some may think Paul Giamatti the most maligned Sideways cast member from his lack of Academy Award accolades this year, but really the continually overlooked one is Sandra Oh. A mainstay in Canadian cinema and a familiar face from various supporting roles on television and in movies, Oh has been on our radar from long before she married director Alexander Payne. Although as far as Hollywood couples go, they make for a pretty cute pair.......

When silent film really succeeds, the fact that there's no dialogue track, completely fades away. Only a musical score and perhaps a few intertitles can allow the images standing alone to be all the more expressive. At least that's the case with F.W. Murnau's Sunrise (1927), which is playing this weekend at Film Forum to begin their Murnau retropective. One of the great evocations of that movieland type "the vamp," Sunrise tells the story of......

We were stoked to read in Playbill that Academy Award-winning actress Holly Hunter (Thirteen, The Piano, Broadcast News) is playing first lady Laura Bush opposite Cynthia Nixon and Lisa Kron in a staged reading this week of Tony Kushner's Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy at the New York Theater Workshop, on a double bill with an encore presentation of Mark Crispin Miller’s Patriot Act: a Public Meditation . Co-starring with Hunter......

"Oh, I'm such an unholy mess of a girl." - Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord in "The Philadelphia Story" Katharine Hepburn, the epitome of nervy, stubborn, strong-willed women for decades (and forever) in film, died at age 96. Gothamist admired her and is glad for her work, especially Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, and Adam's Rib, movies we can over and over again without boring of them. Caryn James' obituary of Katharine Hepburn......

Gregory Peck died at age 87 last night. He will always be the dashing writer, Joe Bradley, or the father we all wished we had, Atticus Finch, in Gothamist's heart. Coverage from Yahoo! News and Variety's obituary: Gregory Peck dies at 87 Thesp won best actor award for 'To Kill a Mockingbird' By Richard Natale If Hollywood needed to cast a hero, it often didn't look any further than Academy Award-winning actor Gregory Peck, one......

The Daily News profiles actual Segway owners in New York City. As for using it in the city, the News reports: Building security can get downright ornery when a Segway rolls into their lobby. Naysayers are concerned about clogged streets and clogged arteries. By Segway's count, 34 states permit Segways on sidewalks. In New York, there are no rules governing Segway. But the state Senate is considering a bill that would permit them on......

The thought of another snowstorm just makes me want to go home and watch My Neighbor Totoro. It's about these two sisters who move to the countryside. They suddenly realize that there are these "totoros" who live amongst them. What is a totoro you ask? Nausicaa.Net has the best FAQ about the film and has this answer: "He has been called many things from "a giant furry thing" to "a rabbit-like spirit". Basically, he......