Last year two biopics about John Lennon's assassination made the festival rounds, and are now poised to hit theaters in 2008. One, titled Chapter 27, stars Jared Leto as Mark David Chapman and an actor named Mark Lindsay Chapman portraying John Lennon. While it may be an accurate casting to have Leto playing someone who kills music, his involvement in the film will likely have us choosing the second biopic, The Killing of John Lennon......

No news is bad news when it comes to the long-delayed opening of Radegast Hall & Biergarten, the new 2,000 square foot Williamsburg bar owned by the savvy Czechs who run Astoria’s Bohemian Hall. The establishment, designed to feel like a turn-of-the-century Austro-Hungarian beer hall, has been physically ready for business since Oktoberfest, but owners have been hung up on various permits and paperwork. The last hurdle was supposedly the certificate of occupancy, which......

Bad Idea Jeans Examples, #50824K: A man had packed a toy grenade into his carry-on luggage, which JFK Airport security screeners noticed, and then caused Terminal 6 to be evacuated. Yes, this was a Jet Blue passenger. The police bomb squad had to be called in, and they determined that it was not a live bomb but a toy, so the other passengers were only put out for 45 minutes. While it's unclear whether or......

Gothamist had a blast at the two shows we checked out at the New York Musical Theatre Festival. First up was Top Gun The Musical, which sent up the crass commercial tactic of taking really dumb movies and turning them into musicals. Authors Denis McGrath and Scott White were inspired by a party game where a group of friends were trying to come up with the worst possible movie musical adaptation idea possible. Apocalypse Now......

As a movie lover, I love movies about making films, like Robert Altman's The Player and Tom DiCillo's Living in Oblivion, but it only can get better when it's a documentary of the making of a film, like Hearts of Darkness: The Filming of Apocalypse Now, which uses Eleanor Coppola's footage of the making of her husband's film, and American Movie, a somewhat exploitative but hilarious look that tells of the passion with which......