We already know that kids are serious about their dinosaurs—our favorite MoMA critic reminded us of that fact last year. So it doesn't come as that big a surprise kids would know more about Triceratops' and Styracosaurus' than toy makers would—but who knew they could give such brutal critiques! The little girl in the video below finds multiple mistakes with a 3D dinosaur toy, and tears apart the product with the ferocity of an adorable mini-Robert Christgau. "But they got the beak right," she mercifully decrees about the pitiful toy. more ›

Yesterday the NY Post's Michael Riedel reported that Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark director Julie Taymor would be forced to share the shuddering wheel of the $65 million musical. Sources told Riedel that Julie Taymor is "exhausted" with the production, and producers are looking to bring on a co-director. But the report was quickly quashed by a spokesperson for the musical, who told Playbill, "The production has not brought anyone on and the original creative team remains firmly in place, with Julie Taymor at the helm." Note that the statement did not say anything about future plans, so stay tuned. In the meantime, there's another fun negative review from a major critic! more ›

When about a dozen critics simultaneously published their generally negative reviews of the Broadway mega-musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark last week, we wondered if their opinions would make a difference to the production's target demographic: people who just want to see flying shit. And so far, it looks like audiences just don't care what fancy Ben Brantley and the rest of the theater snobs think. According to Playbill, attendance actually rose slightly after the reviews dropped, from almost 90% capacity to 92% capacity last week. And despite the critical drubbing, producers have found a way to turn the lemons into lemonade, with their old friend Mr. Pullquote! more ›

The latest critic to break the traditional embargo and review Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark before opening night isn't actually a theater critic, but more of a critic of rational thought and intellectual integrity. On Saturday, right wing demagogue du jour Glenn Beck saw the big-budget, high-tech rock musical—which we delicately likened to watching a spandex clad fat man with a flesh-hook suspension fetish masturbate onto a giant pile of money, while singing Muzak versions of all your least favorite U2 songs—and LOVED it. Here's his rave review, which he shared with his millions of radio listeners today: more ›

Ciano, the East 22nd Street Italian restaurant helmed by chef Shea Gallante (Cru) gets an enthusiastic two star review from Sam Sifton in the Times this week. Sifton says Gallante's food "is ambitious, beautiful and flavor packed, a kind of Italian home cooking made grand and attractive, rich as Berlusconi, not as oily. It is less precious, less purposefully fancy, less aggressively upscale than what he was putting forth at Cru, where he cooked until 2009 and which closed last year...He isn’t trying so hard. And Ciano is exciting for that." Sifton also notes that the restaurant's policy of selling half bottles of wine "offers exciting possibilities. It is a tricky business, though, like getting a deal on a car. It does not favor the amateur or the neophyte. Those half bottles sold, after all, lead to half bottles that need to be sold." more ›

This week Sam Sifton at the Times drops two out of four stars on Carlton Hotel restaurant Millesime, a fancy seafood restaurant that, to enter, visitors "must first walk down a staircase, then through one or both of these spaces, to find themselves, perhaps confused and hesitant by this point, at the start of another staircase that leads up... But, holy cats, is there a beautiful, even exciting brasserie up there at the end of the journey, a restaurant devoted to the pleasures of the sea that manages to be luxurious and humble, ambitious and rustic, all at once. Eat, Eat!... The restaurant serves as a swell reminder of why this city fell in love with brasseries in the first place, and as a hopeful sign that there could be a resurgence in that affair. See if you can find your way there." more ›

This week the Times's Sam Sifton adores the lovely and delicious Anella in Greenpoint, where "the food is a wonder: a tight and focused menu of simple, seasonally appropriate food from Joseph Ogrodnek, a talented chef who has been in the kitchen for almost a year... Mr. Ogrodnek is a skilled practitioner of the vegetable arts. Like Midas, who turned everything he touched into gold (and like Dave Pasternack at Esca in Midtown, who achieves similar results with fish), he elevates the simplest greens and tubers into realms more celestial than those we are generally used to in wintertime in New York City... This is dirt wizard food of high caliber, cooking that leads people to join community-supported agriculture programs and fill their homes with parsnips and kale. But Mr. Ogrodnek does not ignore the pleasures of the flesh." more ›

This week Sam Sifton at the Times reviews the highly-buzzed about Thai restaurant Kin Shop in Greenwich Village. "But it isn’t a Thai restaurant, really, even if there’s a magical food stand somewhere in Phuket serving squid-ink and hot sesame-oil soup featuring brisket-stuffed squid rings," Sifton explains in his two star rave. "Kin Shop is instead an American restaurant that serves food prepared using Thai flavors, a restaurant that nods at Thailand respectfully and uses its cuisine to fine effect... [Chef/owner] Harold Dieterle is as Thai as John Boehner. But he cooks from the Thai larder as if he had stepped out of a novel by John Burdett, a farang who can see ghosts, who knows that the mind is Buddha’s seat, who bleeds fish sauce." more ›

This week Sam Sifton at the Times shares his disappointment with Lincoln, the ambitious and expensive new restaurant in Lincoln Center from Jonathan Benno (Per Se). In a review headlined "Because the Fat Lady Has to Eat," Sifton awards two stars to a venture that clearly had four star dreams. "That Mr. Benno can cook is hardly in question," Sifton says. "But such success in the kitchen does not mean Lincoln yet works well as a restaurant. On that score, Mr. Benno and the Patina Group still have some distance to go. They have built a restaurant that lacks a center — a restaurant in which it is possible to eat well without really having a good time... A single scallop, perfectly cooked alongside sunchokes and almonds, makes up an appetizer dish that costs $24." more ›

Click on the movie stills for more on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include The Town, Catfish, Easy A, Alpha and Omega, Never Let Me Go, Jack Goes Boating, Picture Me, Freebie, Kings of Pastry, The Girl, The Temptation of St. Tony, On the Bowery, and Gone With the Pope. more ›

This week David Chang's Má Pêche, his first foray out of the East Village, is on the receiving end of three critical appraisals. The most significant is Sam Sifton's two star review in the Times, which deems it "a very good restaurant for a Midtown business lunch, a celebratory steak dinner or a drink and some snacks after work... Má Pêche is the first Momofuku restaurant truly suitable for dining with those the Internet calls the olds. (Though like some of its forebears, it takes no reservations.) Eating there is a little like visiting your formerly bohemian artist friend, whom you haven’t seen since he signed with Deitch and bought a double loft in TriBeCa." more ›

After a string of setbacks—including a kitchen fire that burned down her acclaimed restaurant Annisa last year—chef Anita Lo is back on top, winning raves from critics who've checked out Annisa's reboot. Today the big dog weighs in. "The food Ms. Lo is cooking there is as good as any she has made in her career," writes Sam Sifton for the Times. "Ms. Lo is not by any means a flashy chef. She does not stalk the dining room in gleaming whites, glad-handing patrons and accepting praise. She simply stays in the kitchen and works, cooking as the Puget Sound novelist David Guterson writes: precisely, with earth in closest proximity to sea." And Time Out's Jay Cheshes says Annisa, "as sparely appointed as a Japanese rock garden... isn’t any flashier than it used to be, but the food is more exciting than ever." more ›

Click on the film stills for details and reviews on this week's new releases and repertory screenings, which include The Book of Eli, The Spy Next Door, Fish Tank, Carmel, Our Daily Bread, Hausu,Labyrinth, and Showgirls. more ›

Over at Fork in the Road, journeyman Robert Sietsema has done a bang up job surveying the city’s burgeoning landscape of tip jars, which are no longer only found at cafes with counter service. They’re everywhere, Sietsema reports— from the coffee shop receptacle that implores “Karma is a boomerang,” to the mamma-said “Take a penny, leave a dollar.” It would seem that the current Thunderdome-style match-up of recession vs. New Yorkers has resulted in a new economy of tip jars that simultaneously allow business owners to broadcast their quirks as well as their woes, such as the “Tip $, because $4 a gallon is killing us!” price-of-milk themed message Sietsema found at a bakery. And Frank Bruni of Times puts in his two cents, imploring everyone to tip at restaurants, no matter how bad the service was: “It’s not some bold stand against fat-cat restaurant operators lining their pockets,” he writes, not to tip. more ›

Today the little movie that could, The Dark Knight, opens on the wings of a cosmic hype that could make it the third biggest box office earner this year. more ›

At a press/industry screening of The Dark Knight at the Lincoln Square IMAX last night, the line was already halfway down 68th Street an hour before showtime – and these are the overprivileged industry slobs. It’s going to be pandemonium Friday once the rabid fanboys take over. But you already knew that; the question of the hour is, “Does it live up to the hype?” Well, considering that the anticipation level rivals that of Evangelical zealots craving the second coming, or geeks clamoring for the iPhone 3G, it’s no small achievement that The Dark Knight does – periodically – manage to meet our insane expectations. more ›

Robert Downey Jr. finally gets his big paycheck job with Iron Man, adapted from Marvel’s comic book series. Hollywood-Elsewhere’s Jeffery Wells calls it underwhelming: “I was never twitching in agony, but the advance word had suggested it might lift me out of my chair. Forget it.” He’s also troubled by “the jingoistic get-the-dumb-terrorists plot that John McCain or Dick Cheney will be totally delighted by if and when they see it. That's supposed to be what....cool? We all need to climb into the Bush tank for a couple hours in order to enjoy this thing?” Hooray for everything! more ›

You didn’t forget about New York Magazine’s 40th Anniversary did you? Quick, it’s not too late to make it up to them by buying their hefty, back-slapping issue and acting like you give a shit. Nestled among the ads for shoes, perfume, and luxury handbags you'll find descriptions of the most “unmistakably New Yorky” cultural events since 1968, as determined by the magazine’s critics, who’ve gone so far as to declare this The New York Canon. (Trumpet flourish!) more ›