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......

On Friday Gothamist visited the set of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Undead, a bizarre little indie shooting in the East Village. The movie is a sequel of sorts to Tom Stoppard’s hilarious existential comedy Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, but with “sexy vampires, the Holy Grail and Hamlet.” Jake Hoffman (son of Dustin), who appeared on some Arrested Development episodes, is a broke, frustrated ladies man who jumps at the chance to direct an......

In Ryan Seacrest is Famous, his debut collection of pop-culture enthused short stories, Dave Housley makes you think, makes you laugh, and, if you're a writer, inspires you to run to your computer and get started on that premise you've been putting off. Whether it comes in the form of an alcoholic clown, people obsessed with Fight Club, or a DJ hiring a prostitute in an attempt to win back his old flame, Housley's stories......

Natasha Khan is better known as the singer-songwriter behind Bat for Lashes, a band recently nominated for the Mercury Prize. Khan weaves a world all her own with her music and artwork, and happily invites anyone to come join her there. We wouldn't be surprised if at university she majored in nostalgia, with so much attention drawn back to childhood in her work. Her wide-eyed world of yesteryear is a little bit magical, a little......

-- Late breaking news: Rudy Fleming was convicted of murder in the Nicole DuFresne case-- we'll followup tomorrow. -- If you don't work in the financial service industry, you may have missed out on the Aleksey Vayner meme, in which a kid at Yale sent a hilariously insane application video for a job at an i-bank. All hell broke lose shortly after the video was leaked to the internet. This short video, set to......

Bobby Tisdale, Comedian ...

Bank managers around the city take note, as the manager of a Commerce Bank on the upper East Side used his black belt karate skills to nab a robber. Onlookers say that bank manager Marc Ravage told the robber, Derrick Harper, "I don't want to hurt you. Please, sir, don't run away," attempting the tactic of trying to reason with robbers. Ravage later jumped on Harper and pinned him to the hood of a car,......

Oh, my God, this sounds just like "The Next Karate Kid" - just replacing the karate with boxing and Mr. Miyagi with Dirty Harry, and Oscarizing Hillary Swank. The trades report that Clint Eastwood will direct and star in "Million Dollar Baby," "a tragic and platonic love story involving a fighter turned-trainer and a woman in her early 30s who is determined to begin a boxing career." Okay, so maybe it's a little classier, but......

With last week's release of Seabiscuit, the Palm Beach Post's sports writers come up a list of the best sports movies ever made. Not surprisingly, the list skews towards more recent films, but Gothamist was surprised to see how much we agreed with the selections. We were especially glad that Hoop Dreams, one of the best films ever made, period, made the list, thereby not getting the short shrift for being a documentary. The top......