A look at some of this week's noteworthy television: Elmo’s Christmas Countdown (Sunday, 7:00 p.m., WABC 7) It is a brand new Sesame Street Christmas special complete with an all star guest list providing music and voices like ABC News anchor Charles Gibson voicing a news reading reindeer and Ben Stiller voicing an elf. From the sound of it doesn’t seem like it will wind up being an enduring classic like A Charlie Brown Christmas.......

My Kid Could Paint That (directed by Amir Bar-Levi) Documentarian Amir Bar-Levi spent a year following the Olmstead family as their daughter Marla became a darling of the contemporary art world. The only odd thing about Marla meteoric rise to fame? Her age. She was 4 years old at the time and painting elaborate abstract canvases selling for thousands of dollars each. Following a large profile of Marla on 60 Minutes that brought into doubt......

Al Franken: God Spoke (directed by Nick Doob and Chris Hegedus): In terms of liberal armchair quarterbacking, it doesn't get more intriguing and cringe-inducing than unpacking the 2004 Presidential election. Watching the documentary Al Franken: God Spoke, you can't help but be fascinated and yet saddened by the look of idealism in comedian-turned-political pundit Al Franken's eyes. He's so sure he can make a difference, it's heart-breaking. Compounding that "we know how the Titanic sank"......

It's Oscar Night and Gothamist is here. Tonight, it'll be a joint effort, from our resident film guru Karen Wilson and our resident Oscar freak Jen Chung. We hope you weigh in with what you think! KW: I have my popcorn, my diet coke -- I am ready for the spectacle and the excess. JC: ALL RIGHT! I just took extra Vitamin C - I'm waiting for some food delivery. 6:36PM Isaac Mizrahi has NOT......

While Gothamist first had Ethiopian food several years ago at Meskerem, our most vivid memory of Ethiopian has to be Ben Stiller eating it in Along Came Polly (yeah, we rent every new release on Netflix no matter how bad). Over the weekend, we went to Ghenet with a bunch of other people, which is perfect if you're eating Ethiopian. We ordered plenty of food, which came with a couple of plates of injera.......

Hollywood has repeatedly opted to film blatantly New York movies in other locales and specifically Canada (such as Rent, Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story, Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx etc), and now they've even relocated our city's great Museum of Natural History. According to the Vancouver Sun, Ben Stiller is set to star in Stephen Sommers' A Night at the Museum, a family comedy, loosely based on the children's book by Milan Trenc,......

This month InFocus has a good interview with Harold Ramis, the polymath actor/writer/comedian behind Caddyshack, Stripes, and our favorite NYC movie of all time, Ghostbusters, this side of anything involving the subway. Ramis discussed ideas for Ghostbusters 3, the sequel that never got made, where Peter, Ray and Egon would go to hell.He does tend to think big [referring to Dan Ackroyd's idea that hell would extremely special effect driven] when he’s writing these, doesn’t......

Call us dorks, but Gothamist is totally excited for the upcoming exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries. The exhibit doesn't open until May 15, but the NY Times had a feature about putting the exhibit together. Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries will give dinosaur freaks an update of the latest thinking in paleontology, which means more fossils, cool models of dinosaurs, and new dioramas. When we were reading......

Holy majoly. Today, the world - well, really everyone who believed in celebrity fairy tale endings - reeled with news that very blond and pretty Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston have officially separated. In fact, this news was so big, E! had a newscrawl at the bottom of their screen. Brad and Jen issued a statement through People magazine: We would like to announce that after seven years together we have decided to formally separate.......

Gothamist is excited about the Tribeca Theater Festival, which is running now through the 31st. Yes, this is being put on by the same folks who bring us the Tribeca Film Festival. Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff are presenting, in association with the acclaimed Tribeca-based Off-Broadway theater company, Drama Dept. The two-week Festival will present a breadth of entertainment downtown, including a short play series, Stage On Screen programs, and theater panel......

- Darius McCollum and his unstoppable love of trains - Newspapers send writers for sleepover at JFK - NYC's economy is getting better, but not the best - Astor Place Haircuts moves everything to the basement - Unlikely allies wants pot legalized in NY - Beastie Boys and Ben Stiller invade midtown...but not for long - Beer and food pairings that can outdo wine and good pairings - Some new photoblogs of note -......

So, yesterday's news that the Beastie Boys would be performing on 53rd Street and Broadway for the Late Show was anti-climactic according to commenters: "What we got was an hour and a half standing in the heat for 15 seconds of the Beastie Boys rapping a capella to inaudible backing tracks as they raced down the sidewalk before heading back inside." Another said "that was the weakest sh*t." Yes, it was all set-up for......

USA Today has a look at Meet the Fockers, the sequel to Meet the Parents, which feature not only Robert DeNiro, Ben Stiller, Teri Polo, and Blythe Danner returning, but Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand as the parents of the situation-challenged male nurse groom played by Stiller (honestly, he may get paid a lot, but Ben Stiller is caught in the ghetto of playing characters who horrible things happen to). It seems that Streisand's character......

The big movie opening this weekend is the movie version of Starsky and Hutch starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, and Gothamist has to say, if you love Ben and Owen's chemistry (think Meet the Parents... Zoolander...), go see it (or just go because Snoop Dogg steals the film). E! Online has a great question and answer with the pair in their feature, "Guffaw and Order"; E! asked Wilson about singing the David Soul......

• New SARS cases are called milder, and not (Bette) Midler (damn our dyslexia) • Alessandra Stanley says, "Except for the politics and soft-core pornography, "The L Word," Showtime's new series about lesbians that starts on Sunday, is old-fashioned fun." Hey now! • Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston will give moviegoers heat rash; decorating tips for "surly" 6 year-olds abound in Torque. • People are shelling out cash money to have boot camp vacations (you're......

Gothamist has been eagerly awaiting the opening of the Ben Stiller-Drew Barrymore "comedy" Duplex not because we really want to see it, but because we wanted to read A.O. Scott's review. And how did we know A.O. Scott would review it? Just a hunch, as he's a Park Slope resident, the film was filmed in Park Slope...we may not be able to spell, but we can add. Here are two quotes we like from Scott's......

I'm pretty much over Jimmy Fallon, like many others. He's funny, but not funnier than, say, Rachel Dratch. He's been riding the cute coattails a little too long in my book. Anyway, it doesn't mean I didn't know he was dating Tara Subkoff, sometime actress, designer of Imitation of Christ which is "Original of Crap" in my book. So I was intrigued when the Observer implied she's dating Wes Anderson(second item) and dissing Jimmy. Then......

The article in the Times today about weight training versus cardio made me think of the part in "There's Something About Mary" where Ben Stiller's character picks up a crazy hitchhiker who has a great idea of introducing a "7 Minute Abs" workout to combat the existing "8 Minute Abs." The other hot diets out there now. More "There's Something About Mary" quotes, plus the official site. Some information on Jonathan Richman, the troubador in......