A rabbi known as the "Brooklyn Bundler" for his ability to raise campaign money for (mostly) Republican candidates was charged on Thursday with trying to extort $4 million from a Connecticut hedge fund. Rabbi Milton Balkany, who serves as the dean of the Bais Yaakov day school in Borough Park, allegedly dreamed up the scheme after becoming a "spiritual adviser" to a federal inmate who told him about a Connecticut hedge fund that had used inside information in stock trades. Prosecutors say Balkany told lawyers at the hedge fund that unless they handed over $4 million ($2 million of which would go to Bais Yaakov), he'd instruct the inmate to rat them out. But Balkany insists he's just being punished for doing a mitzvah! more ›

If you've seen the Coen brothers film A Serious Man—and if you haven't, you really should; it's arguably the best American film of 2009—you know that it wasn't just star Michael Stuhlbarg who got robbed at The Golden Globe awards this week. (Robert Downey Jr. for Sherlock Holmes? Really?) One of the funniest performances in a movie full of them was delivered by actor Fed Melamed, a New York native who plays insufferably sanctimonious wife-stealer Sy Ableman to perfection. (Check out a clip below.) more ›

Click on the film stills above for more on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which also include The Invention of Lying, Whip It, Zombieland, After the Storm, Afterschool, An American Journey: Revisiting Robert Frank’s "The Americans", Chelsea on the Rocks, More Than a Game, Where is Where?, The Wiz, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. more ›