Residents of Washington Heights and the Lower East Side may be noticing some production crews in their 'nabe this week, as filming begins for the redux of PBS's The Electric Company, which ended its series in 1977. The NY Times reports that the the show will be "refitted for the age of hip-hop and informed by decades of further educational research on reading." In addition, it will reportedly be accompanied by interactive online elements and......

Grand Central Terminal gets the full PBS American Experience treatment with this documentary from filmmaker Michael Epstein (Monday & Thursday, 9:00 p.m., WNET 13). The one hour film traces the history of the terminal, its construction and its impact on New York and the rest of the world. Expect tales of robber barons, dead commuters, and of course fawning over an architectural treasure. Since we' ve seen many local productions about Grand Central, we......

Lust, Caution (directed by Ang Lee) For fans of Hong Kong cinema, it's a bit of a surprise that a wonderfully expressive and nuanced actor like Tony Leung hadn't worked before with the Oscar-winning, Taiwanese turned New Yorker director Ang Lee. But the two artists have been united now in Lee's new thriller set in World War II Shanghai, Lust, Caution which comes out this weekend. An erotically charged film with such explicit scenes that......

Start sharpening your spurs, gays and gals, because Jake Gyllenhaal is coming to Broadway! If director Mike Nichols has his way, you’ll soon have your chance to stalk the sensitive heartthrob as he flees through the stage door of Farragut North, a new play about presidential campaign hardball penned by a former Howard Dean staffer. According to today’s Post, Gyllenhaal (who made his stage debut in a Maggie Gyllenhaal-directed production of Cats in their parents’......

Even though the weather isn't encouraging you to stay inside, there's still a whole host of new flicks to check out at the theaters. Looking for a few cheap laughs while you gear up for the Christmas shopping? Kal Penn stars in National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, a collegiate boobfest about a frat dude teaching some English geeks how to party Yankee style. Beer and cleavage, wahoo! Another movie which looks like......

This week's new film releases are a lovely New York melting pot: ballroom dancing teens, Arab/Israeli anxieties, motor skills-challenged geeks, neurotic female friends, and a thoughtful Polish director thrown in for good measure. Spring may have sprung outside but it's also a great time to be inside at the movie. If you saw last year's documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, you're already familiar with dancing teacher Pierre Dulaine and his work with children around the country.......

Gothamist and Warner Independent Pictures are giving away 5 pairs of tickets to a screening of March of the Penguins, tomorrow, June 22, at 7:00 PM. Each winter, isolated in the rough terrain of Antarctica, thousands of emperor penguins embark on their annual single-file-line pilgrimage, from their ocean home to a blizzard-stricken breeding ground. March of the Penguins documents these penguins’ struggle of exhaustion, mating, and survival, while Morgan Freeman lends his deep voice......

Last night, Gothamist kicked up our feet, found some friends on IM, and watched the Golden Globes. We are suckers for anything that celebrates our two best friends, television and movies, even if it's all glad-handing and self-congratulatory, because the silver lining is that we can make fun of them. Things started immediately, as the Golden Globes are wont to do, with Renee Zellweger, looking skinny, in a brown cocktail dress, coming out to announce......

With all this talk about Fahrenheit 9/11 there is another important film that has gotten pushed to the wayside. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, The Hunting of the President is a documentary on Clinton's battle against a right wing attack lead by Kenneth Starr. Digging deep into the the smear campaign that culminated towards the end of Clintons presidency, Tina Brown (for the Washington Post) calls the film, "more damning than 'Fahrenheit 9/11.'" The official website......

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......

Gothamist can't help it: News that Ken Watanabe is joining the cast of Batman: Intimidation as villain Ra's Al Ghul does make us excited, as does the news of the rest of the cast: Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Michael Caine as butler Alfred, Katie Holmes as childhood friend "Rachel," Liam Neeson as Wayne's mentor Henri Ducard, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, "a former board member and sidelined employee of Wayne Enterprises," Cillian Murphy as......

Trying to inject a little realism into Bruce Almighty, filmmakers used an actual phone number, not a 555 one, for the God character Morgan Freeman plays. People with that number are pretty annoyed. Gothamist would have thought a better idea for Universal would be to actually secure that number, maybe a toll-free one, and have Morgan Freeman on some sort of voicemail system. But that's why we're not controlling Hollywood.......

NBC is airing a three hour TV movie, 1st to Die, which is based on the James Patterson novel. Other James Patterson novels that have turned up onscreen: Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider, whose only reasons for existing must be to remind people that Morgan Freeman (1) rises above everything in whatever he's in and (2) should get better material (maybe he needs to team with an indie director for a one-off).......