Results tagged “johnturturro”

Actor/director John Turturro was among the protesters assembled at City Hall today for a rally to save the Carnegie artist studios, which could soon be taken over by Carnegie Hall expansion plans. But the big star of the day was 95-year-old Editta Sherman, the building’s longest living tenant, having resided there since 1949. She’s seen here holding a photograph she took of Leonard Bernstein, a former resident; Sherman’s studio in the building was once a destination for celebrities seeking classy photographic portraiture. Though her future there is now in jeopardy, Sherman, known to friends as the Duchess of Carnegie Hall, sounded resilient: “I’m not thinking about it, I’m not worried about it, because I’m not going anywhere.”

We interviewed hundreds of people this year, from long-time rockers to the designer of New York’s subway map. Here are a few conversations you may have missed:

• On the day Radiohead’s In Rainbows was released exclusively online, musician Jonny Greenwood talked about the “experiment.”
  Continue reading "Gothamist Year In Interviews"

The most exciting story in New York theater this year had nothing to do with the Broadway stagehands' strike, it was the vibrant growth of what used to be called “experimental theater”, a movement that can now really only loosely be defined by what it’s not: non-naturalistic and not made for TV, with an emphasis on bold physicality, collaboration and, sometimes, multimedia.

The Gotham Awards gala run by the Independent Feature Project (IFP) will be held in Brooklyn for the first time tonight, after 17 years spent bouncing around between Roseland, Hammerstein Ballroom and Chelsea Piers. This year the independent film awards will take place on the soundstage of Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Among the thousand-plus guests expected to attend are Javier Bardem, Sean Penn, Laura Linney, Uma Thurman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Brooklyn’s...

At just 24, Noah Baumbach made his mark on the indie film world with Kicking and Screaming, his hilarious and finely observed study of post-collegiate ennui. His Mr. Jealousy followed but the picture’s lukewarm response meant a long five years before he obtained funding for The Squid and the Whale. Happily for Baumbach, the superb film was a major critical and commercial success. Two years later, he’s back with Margot at the Wedding, another character-driven...

We've made it through 10 days of this year's New York Film Festival, and it's been a great run so far. As usual, the selection committee has picked stellar films and we've sat in on some star-studded Q&A sessions at Lincoln Center. Here are a few thoughts at the midpoint.

In time for next week’s Columbus Day festivities, the Post’s Steve Cuozzo lets his Ital flag fly with two gushing columns on Italian cuisine. He points out that Italian restaurants outnumber all other kinds of restaurants in New York by a big margin (and that’s not because of the ever-metastasizing Olive Gardens.) He cites seven “marvelous” eateries – Del Posto, A Voce, Abbocatto, Insieme, Fiamma, L'Impero and Alto – that “establish Italian as the cuisine to beat.” Nobu can sleep with the fishes.

The NY Times is hinting that Brooklyn may be so over, a theory that seems to be based around Heath Ledger leaving the borough.

What if Brooklyn’s recent cachet as the locus for what’s next is little more than a thin and fragile crust of chic, hiding the insecurity of people who constantly measure the social currency of their ZIP code by Manhattan standards? The number of trendy boutiques, bistros and music clubs in Brooklyn may have spiked in the last five years, but its infrastructure of cool still represents only a fraction of that found in Manhattan. Its new identity is moored to a finite number of shops, restaurants, luxury condominiums and, yes, celebrities. If even one leaves, a void is created. Could the borough’s new status vanish as quickly as it ascended?

Hardly content with his career as one of the most fascinating actors in the business today, John Turturro continues to make his mark as director of a growing catalog of boldly independent films. His searing debut, Mac, drew deeply from his experiences in a Brooklyn family cast adrift after their father’s death. Six years later, Turturro reveled in his love for theater with Illuminata, which Salon called “a heartbreakingly beautiful tragicomedy about art, love and artifice, with a script of rare humor and complexity.” Fast forward seven years to 2005, and, like clockwork, Turturro finished his most wildly imaginative project, Romance and Cigarettes, produced by the Coen brothers. Unfortunately, the Hollywood distribution system lacks Turturro’s regularity, and it’s taken another two years for this heartfelt and hilarious picture to appear in America. (A run at Film Forum begins tonight.) Gothamist recently spoke with Turturro about the film, the entertainment industry, and his hope to hatch a Big Lebowski spin-off with the Coens.

Hear about that movie Romance and Cigarettes that premiered last night? You know, the one directed by John Turturro, starring Chris Walken, James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Steve Buscemi, Kate Winslet, Mary Louise-Parker, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Elaine Stritch and Amy Sedaris? Well, don’t feel bad if you didn't – that fact that two years since it wrapped the film’s been released all over the world except the town where it was shot speaks volumes about the Hollywood distribution system.

A look at some noteworthy television this week:

In October 1977, Howard Cosell leaned into his announcer's microphone and intoned to the worldwide audience watching the World Series, "Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning." He was reporting yet another burning building marring the NYC skyline from his vantage point at Yankee Stadium. His line would eventually become the partial title of a superb book written by Jonathan Mahler: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City.

Believe it or not, there have been some truly exciting moments in theater during the past month, albeit unintentionally. Theater blogger What’s Good/What Blows alerted readers to this NY Post interview with two stars of the Broadway hit Spring Awakening. It seems the show’s sizzling sex scene has provoked audiences in more ways than one. Actor Jonathan Groff divulged that "some guy was kicked out of the mezzanine for masturbating.” Since Spring Awakening also seats some audience members up on stage, we think the producers may want to get out ahead of this thing and invest in some Gallagher-esque ponchos for the first few rows. (Read about one theatergoer’s onstage experience here.)

In Yasmina Reza’s A Spanish Play, we watch actors rehearse an unnamed play by a Spanish playwright. Two characters in this play within the play are actors, and one of them repeatedly runs lines for her upcoming role in an unnamed Bulgarian play. So, in what’s intended as a frolicsome demonstration of reality’s manifold layers, we’re sometimes watching a play within a play within a play. That adds up to three plays, which is a bit of a problem since they’re forced to share less than half a story.

If Caroline Kennedy moves to Park Slope, what does that do to the neighborhood? Do you think she'd join the Food Co-Op? Here's the Corcoran guide to Park Slope (a Corcoran broker called "Prospect Park West" Brooklyn's "Central Park West"). NY Magazine's Park Slope profile.

Julie Atlas Muz, Burlesque Star/Mermaid

Here is IMDB's list of shows and films that filmed in New York (note: many of the TV shows might simply be in a studio in NY).

Secret Window opens this Friday.

The new season of Monk begins on January 16 on USA; Turturro's episode will air on January 23. Gothamist also saw Turturro and Shalhoub share the stage in the Classic Stage Company's Waiting for Godot; Turturro's son Amedeo had a bit part in it but is better known as the young Richie Tenebaum in The Royal Tenenbaums.

Franz Lidz looks at the timeless story of the Collyer Brothers for the Times' City section. Two educated brothers, Homer and Langley Collyer, lived in Harlem at the beginning of the 1900s and soon their house would have 180 tons of garbage, much of it newspapers, in it. The main impetus to save was when Homer went blind, and Langley, while taking care of him (like feeding him oranges for his sight), saved newspapers for him, adding to a collection that included 10 pianos, a disassembled car (or two) and a dozen gas chandeliers among other things. Unfortunately Langley died when he sprung on of his homemade burglar traps, becoming buried beneath mounds of newspapers, and Homer died from starvation. Police found Homer's body, but did not find Langley's rat-gnawed body until weeks later within the debris, after searching the city for him.