This year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to bump up the number of films eligible for Best Picture nomination from five to ten. The nominations were announced before dawn on the west coast this morning by Anne Hathaway and Academy President Tom Sherak. Some, like Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere, had threatened "a tsumani of shame" if the Coen brothers' superb film A Serious Man was left out of the newly-expanded Best Picture category. But Old Testament wrath was mercifully averted, and the film was nominated for Best Picture and Best Screenplay. Now it better win, lest Hollywood feel our hurricane of hate. more ›

Songwriter and film director Joseph Brooks was charged with a 91-count indictment yesterday for using his status as a onetime-Oscar winner to lure women with dreams of stardom into his apartment so that he could allegedly rape and sexually assault them. Brooks, 71, primarily used craigslist to advertise parts in "his next movie" that led to sexual assaults on at least 11 women at his apartment on East 63rd Street, mostly over the last two years. An investigator told reporters, “The Oscar was used as a prop. This could be you, this could be you holding this Oscar. If you do what I say.” more ›

Hey, cheer up bankrupt, war-weary America! The nominees for the 81st Academy Awards were announced this very morning in Beverly Hills at 5:30 in the freaking morning—of course, everyone over there is always up at dawn doing yoga and colonics anyway. And it's a big day for local Off Broadway star and Red Hook denizen Michael Shannon, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Revolutionary Road. He'll no doubt lose to Heath "Know How I Got These Oscars?" Ledger, and rightfully so, but it's nice to see a local boy (yes, via Chicago) make good. (We most recently caught Shannon in Lady.) more ›

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... more ›

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... more ›

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... more ›

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... more ›

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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 to go home and see my mommy and her never let me go." more ›

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 comments that weren't insulting but more "objectifying."

Bettany - who was about 10 feet from Connelly, his Academy Award-winning co-star in "A Beautiful Mind" - heard what was going on and "completely lost his temper" with the man who approached her, the witnesses said. more ›

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, strives to spoof every bloated popular movie that's come out lately. Of course punch line bombshell Carmen Electra is in it, but so is Kal Penn, Jennifer Coolidge and Crispin Glover of all people, so it could be fun for some chuckles. more ›

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 at the reception, the inventor Nate True chatted about his Time Fountain, a breadbox-sized contraption pumping with highlighter dyed water and ringed by ultraviolet strobes. When everything works right, it appears to the observer that time is slowing down, stopping, and even reversing for the fountain's falling droplets. Standing near to the cheese plate and chicken finger buffet was Joe Kittinger, who in 1960 jumped off a rickety Air Force gondola hitched to a big weather balloon, and free fell 102,800 feet back to earth, breaking the sound barrier in the process. Yes, this was all part of the inaugural meeting for the Athanasius Kircher Society, a mysterious group of people devoted to understanding the curious, obscure, and spectacular. The group is named for a 17th century German Jesuit scholar, an early adopter of Egyptology, volcanology, and a pioneer of germ theory. more ›

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. more ›

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. more ›

Robert Altman, maverick film director, died on Monday night in Los Angeles. He was 81 years old. more ›

This week, Sarah Michelle Gellar is back for more creepy girls hiding in her hair in the new sequel, out this weekend in the hopes that it will bolster rumors of a Stewart/Colbert ticket in '08. more ›

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. more ›

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. We can’t claim to be able to compare this production with the original, but taking the current one on its own terms, we thought the cast top-notch and the staging well-paced and just spare enough to ensure that the events at hand are clearly situated but not overwhelmed with extras. Those events, though technically in 1944 and being viewed from Fuller’s early 1980s vantage point, make the play’s central subject one that will, sadly, probably never cease to be current and pressing – racial divisions. The setting of Louisiana, so recently the real-life stage where the differences between African American and white people in this country played out, only heightens the awareness you have throughout that A Soldier’s Play is still painfully relevant on that level, but it’s also, and maybe above all, a highly effective dramatization of the struggle within the black community to determine which values are going to dominate and act as a cohesive force – something that is just as ongoing but not usually as high-profile, so Fuller’s addition to the conversation, and this strong revival of it, are all the more welcome. more ›

cast member from his lack of Academy Award accolades this year, but really the continually overlooked one is Sandra Oh. more ›

(1927), which is playing this weekend at Film Forum to begin their Murnau retropective. more ›

We were stoked to read in Playbill that Academy Award-winning actress Holly Hunter (. more ›

- Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord in "The Philadelphia Story" more ›

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. more ›

The Daily News profiles actual Segway owners in New York City. As for using it in the city, the News reports: more ›

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: more ›