Angelina Jolie gave birth to twins yesterday in France. Her doctor confirmed the births of baby boy Knox Leon (5.03 pounds) and baby girl Vivienne Marcheline (5 pounds), saying, "The babies are doing well" and that the Cesarean section "went just perfectly...The mother and father are very, very happy." The paparazzi have been camped outside the Lenval Hospital, and one celebrity photo agency owner told the AP photos of the fifth and sixth Jolie-Pitt children......

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 center of the paparazzi universe might be the Waldorf Towers at 100 East 50th Street. That's because Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and their brood of children are renting a $100,000/month apartment at the hotel. The Post reports that the Jolie-Pitts "began recently living in a newly renovated, roughly 6,000-square-foot apartment" that has "five bedrooms plus a library that they have converted into a sixth, up to six baths and a huge gourmet kitchen."......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a burn victim on East 3rd St. and Beverly Rd. in Brooklyn, a shooting on Francis Lewis Blvd. in Queens, and a burn victim on 103rd St. and Park Ave. in Manhattan. Reps for the New York Philharmonic are investigating a planned appearance of the symphony in North Korea. Those excited by news of a George Clooney sighting in Brooklyn Heights yesterday can just go ahead and get giddy......

Into the Wild (directed by Sean Penn) Chris McCandless wanted to utterly divorce himself from civilization. He gave away all of his money, abandoned his car, changed his name and cut off all ties with his family. Adventure journalist Jon Krakauer wrote a very moving account of the young man's experiences tramping around the United States for two years and then spending four months living in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilds before dying......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

A Mighty Heart (directed by Michael Winterbottom) If you ever turn on the TV, your computer or glance at a newspaper, you're probably aware that mother/humanitarian/human clothes hanger Angelina Jolie has a new movie coming out this weekend. You've also probably gathered that it's produced by her hunky paramour and co-parent Brad Pitt and that it highlights Angie's "good person-ness" by having her depict the tragic life of journalist Mariane Pearl shortly after the kidnapping......

Forbes has put out their list of the Top 100 Most Powerful Celebrities, something to bicker about at the water cooler, no doubt. Here are some of the top-ranked New Yorker's and their earnings: Jay-Z at #9 with $83M David Letterman at #17 with $40M Donald Trump at #19 with $32M Sean Combs at #43 with $23M Derek Jeter at #50 with $28M Bill Clinton at #55 with $7M Regis Philbin at #64 with $21M......

Internationally beloved Angelina Jolie and her less philanthropic beau, Brad Pitt, are in town. They're making headlines, too, with things like wearing inexpensive clothes and going to the doctor. Fine, we'll bite... Last night at the premiere of A Mighty Heart, Jolie wore a, gasp, $26 crushed velvet dress from a thrift shop! Of course, she then paired it with crystal-heeled Christian Louboutin shoes. As for what Angelina accessorizes with her brain, earlier in the......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: falling debris this afternoon on West 46th St. and 8th Ave. in Manhattan, an unstable building on Troutman St. in Brooklyn, and a dead body in the water off Manhattan's Battery. Reasoning it's not far and not hard to reach by water, Mayor Bloomberg thinks commuters will be happy to hitch a ride to Rockaway Beach on a ferry service from downtown Manhattan. A report from the Times Square......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a 10-75 on Chambers and West Street, a pedestrian struck on East 18th and Park, and a burn victim at JFK. Talk about a hard luck case: "A homeless man who threatened a tenant in a Brooklyn apartment building where he was smoking crack had his leg amputated after the resident attacked him with a machete, cops said yesterday." The Brooklyn Papers changed their name (to The Brooklyn Paper--......

With Halloween coming next week and the fall chill in the air, this is the perfect weekend to curl up with a good scary movie. The Shining or The Nightmare on Elm Street make for good rentals but if you must see a new release, the third installment in the psycho serial trickster movies, Saw III is out. This time ailing Jigsaw kidnaps a doctor and forces her to tend to him while also trying......

When the world's most photogenic celebrity family heads to India, you can be sure even a rickshaw ride will be documented. Now we know that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have deemed that Maddox is old enough to enjoy rickshaw rides in the Indian town of Pune, while Zahara and Shiloh are perhaps too young. The jetsetting actors are in India to film A Mighty Heart, a film based on the memoir by Mariane......

Ah, there's nothing like coming on a Saturday night and to be treated to a CNN Breaking News alert that Angelina Jolie had given birth to her child with Brad Pitt. (We'll wonder why no one called or text messaged us later.) Baby daughter Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt was born in Namibia, and already, there's speculation about what Shiloh means ("personal appellation for Christ", "his gift" or "he who was sent", the Civil War town). Whatever......

Gothamist was a bit underwhelmed by this year's Golden Globe nominees, and we were thinking of not liveblogging. But, gosh darn it as we watched the E! preshow and saw the starlets sparkle their way down the red carpet, we realize it was hopeless, so here we are. Let it be known that: - Keira Knightley looks gorgeous in her white Valentino - and there's something surprisingly youthful about the dress, even though there's that......

Bob Tuschman,
Food Network...

Besides the Calvin Klein live perfume ad, there's some interesting action in Times Square today: FDNY firefighters will be at Duffy Square (the TKTS island) between 11AM-3PM autographing copies of the new 2006 Calendar of Heroes! There are apparently some firefighter models in their 40s in the calendar (hey, George Clooney, Johnny Depp, and Brad Pitt are all in their 40s) for the calendar to have a broader appeal. Sigh, we guess we'll get......

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.......

With the astounding success of last year's remake of the Japanese hit Ringu made in America with Naomi Watts and called The Ring, you can almost hear Hollywood shouting for joy at their windfall. Take a tried and true foreign project, add pretty white stars, shake gently and voila! Box office gold. Which is why the rule of thumb going forward should always be, seek out the foreign original and leave the remakes to the......

Liz Penn, Writer/TV Critic...

Blah blah blah, Shrek 2 made over $100 million over a five day period, which is a record for any film except Spiderman 2 and a record for an animated film with the voices of a Canadian, former model, one of the greatest comics, a Spaniard who stars in some great Almodovar films, a member of Monty Python, and Mary Poppins (while Shrek 2's record breaking is legit, if we had a buck for everytime......

Gothamist wants to be one of the first to say what everyone will be uttering tomorrow with more frequency than usual: Why does Melissa Rivers persist? Joan, we understand, because she can be funny, though lately it's been more outrageous than incisive. And we understand nepotism and accept Tori Spelling's wooden acting...but Melissa...she must be stopped. And when she tears into some poor, celebrity with a bad stylist, no stylist at all, or her/his own......

TMFTML...

It looks like Martin Scorsese will be trying his hand at the double cross of Hong Kong's hit film, Infernal Affairs: Variety reports that Scorsese is in negotiations to direct the remake. Brad Pitt, who bought the remake rights with his Plan B production company (with co-partners Jennifer Aniston and Brad Grey), is discussing taking a starring role in this tale of a corrupt cop and a cop undercover in the mob who cross paths.......

This is the worse first date Gothamist has heard about in a while: The Post's Bridget Harrison, while trying to have one new date a week until Christmas, goes out with a guy ("cute, 37 years old, with a Brad Pitt look") she met through a friend. An hour into conversation, he tells her, "I broke up with my girlfriend a month ago, she's pregnant and doesn't know whether to keep the baby." Oh, and......

Rage -- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles. -- The Iliad, as translated by......

Bad boy turned current critical and audience darling for his turn in Pirates of the Caribbean Johnny Depp may play Willy Wonka for Tim Burton's adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Michael Fleming writes in Variety that "Depp and Burton...came away from their meeting sparked to make the film and negotiations are expected to begin shortly." Additionally, the film would be produced by Brad Grey, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston (via their production company......

The best cop movie Gothamist has seen this year, Infernal Affairs, has been chosen as Hong Kong's official selection for Best Foreign Film consideration for the 2003 Academy Awards (meaning, the Academy Awards that will honor films from 2003, but will be broadcast in 2004). The premise is simple and complicated, as the plot description from IMDB indicates: A story between a mole in the police department and an undercover cop. Their objectives are......

He may have won an Oscar for it, but Sean Connery's performance as Jim Malone in The Untouchables has been called the worst movie accent of all time by Empire magazine. Awww, maybe, but it's got one of the best explanations of how to fight your enemies ever, when Malone tells Elliot Ness how to get Al Capone: You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun.......

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's Warner Bros.-based production company, Plan B, just bought the rights (Variety.com - registration required) to James Frey's memoir, A Million Little Pieces. Michael Fleming writes, "The memoir opens as Frey finds himself aboard a Chicago-bound plane, missing four teeth and with a hole in his face, unable to remember how he got that way. Strung out on booze and crack at age 23, and wanted by authorities in three states,......