Photograph of Queens native Amy Ryan, nominated for best supporting actress for her role in Gone, Baby Gone At 8:30PM (following a half-hour red carpet special), the 80th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will begin, finally putting an end to the "There Will Be Oscar" or "Oscar Country for Old Men" type headlines. You can prep yourself with the Oscar nominees list as you watch (or avoid) red carpet coverage. You could read NY Times......

Brian Cox is widely admired for commanding performances in films like The Bourne Identity, Rushmore and the original Hannibal Lecter in Michael Mann’s Manhunter. But like most actors from across the pond, the Scottish Cox originally built his reputation on decades of tireless stage work in theaters around the word. Until the stagehands’ strike shut down Broadway, he could be seen in the role of Max, a diehard British Marxist and Cambridge professor in Tom......

The trial of Peter Braunstein reached another pinnacle of weirdness as some new revelations were made. First, the defense team of the journalist, accused of the sexual assault, kidnapping, burglary and more of a former co-worker at Women's Wear Daily, argued that certain passages from Braunstein's diary - or "personal manifesto," as he called it - shouldn't be read to the jury. The prosecutors, though, wanted to get all the mentions of "serial killer......

There's two majorly horrific films coming out this weekend, though only some of the frights are intentional. Gaspard Ulliel seemed like such a nice boy in A Very Long Engagement, but that was before he decided to take on the psycho killer character Hannibal Lecter in the prequel, Hannibal Rising. Apparently in this installment of the series we'll find out what led the Doctor to become a creepy dilettante with a taste for fava beans,......

SIGNING: Child Magazine honored Julie Andrews with a Lifetime Achievement Award at their 6th Annual Best Children's Book Awards. Today you can meet her and other winning authors at a celebratory book signing. 5 to 6:30pm // Books of Wonder [18 W 18th St] // Free MOVIE: Screening Liberally is showing Hannibal Rising tonight (prior to its release). The movie brings us to Hannibal Lecter's formative years, during World War II at the medieval castle......

Last Thursday, we watched Late Night with Conan O'Brien with Howard Stern as guest. Howard, who you probably remember more when he was on 92.3FM was the guest, was doing his best to pimp Sirius Satellite. And how did he do that? After giving Conan (but not the whole audience) a Sirius Satellite radio, he mentioned that he had Martha Stewart on his show and she revealed she used a vibrator (The Thumper, though she......

Mayor Bloomberg tried out a little Fosse at the NYC press corps dinner over the weekend. The theme was "Queer Eye for the Rich Guy" (Gothamist tip: Stop looking so dour and smile more!) and featured sketches about beer-swilling firefighters and cigarette-smokers. They apparently had fun, but Gothamist can only imagine what would have happened if Upright Citizens Brigade or P.S. 122 were involved. And there's a great New York magazine article by Greg Sargent......

Pico Iyer's essay about how Hollywood has been slowly steering away from Hollywood endings mentions recent films like Cold Mountain, Lost in Translation, House of Sand and Fog, and Mystic River as having darker or less resolved endings. But, as Iyer acknowledges, the tradition can be seen with Gone with the Wind or Casablanca. Which made Gothamist wonder what are the endings that linger more: Seeing Vincent Vega walk end Pulp Fiction alive (versus......

We'd like to put this idea into the Bad Idea Jeans Vault: Producer Dino De Laurentiis is moving forward with a movie about Hannibal Lecter as a young man: Currently being plotted by Lecter's creator Thomas Harris...The Lecter Variation, which is being subtitled The Story Of Young Hannibal Lecter, follows the serial killer from his childhood in Lithuania through a period in Paris in his teens to his arrival in the US. De Laurentiis said......