Drawing on his roots in the fecund 1970s East Village avant-garde film scene, critic J. Hoberman has spent his three decades at the Village Voice introducing readers to the more adventurous cinematic worlds awaiting beyond the realm of Hollywood. He is the author of nine books, most recently The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties, which was described by Slate as "an extraordinary publishing event." To commemorate his thirty years at......

Yesterday afternoon the world learned of Heath Ledger's untimely death. Both old and new media gossiped, rumor-mongered, and pitched their circus tents outside of his building on Broome Street the moment word spread. Sadly, most of his close friends and relatives, including his parents, heard about the tragedy through the newswire. The young actor was embraced as a fairly new resident of New York (first in Brooklyn, then in Manhattan). The NY Times recalls that......

Due to the Writer's Guild of America strike, Hollywood's party, the Golden Globes Awards were transformed from a boozy, fun dinner party to a press conference where presenters from entertainment programs like Extra! and E! News got to announce the winners. Yes, it was as painful as it sounded (Giuliana Rancic, it's not about you); many said they couldn't believe they were announcing the winners but said they would prefer it with the stars.......

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......

If you've seen I'm Not There and are hankering for some more Bob Dylan (the real McCoy, not the Blanchett/Ledger/et al hybrid)...then head over to Lincoln Center sometime today. The man himself won't be there in person, but he'll be there in celluloid at a screening of The Other Side of the mirror: Bob Dylan Live at Newport Folk (which previously played at the NYFF this year). The documentary covers 1963 to 1965, so you'll......

I'm Not There Nails It We went into seeing I'm Not There yesterday afternoon kind of expecting to hate it, thinking it would be vague and pretentious and a chore to absorb. But boy were we wrong! The movie avoids many annoying biopic clichés, presenting 6 separate, yet surprisingly straightforward stories based on the life of Bob Dylan. While non-linear, the narratives are complete and engrossing. The film is shot beautifully, and needless to say......

The Todd Haynes Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There has gotten so much press for so long we kept forgetting it wasn't actually released until today! The high-concept Oscar contender, for those who haven’t heard a million times already, features six different actors portraying a Dylan-type character at different stages of his career. It opens today at select theaters but film buffs have been cultivating opinions about the polarizing film since it first screened......

The holiday-time movie releases are starting to pile up with their usual feverish frequency. Some have Christmas themes, like the widely reviled Vince Vaughn vehicle Fred Claus that’s already roadkill on the lost highway of cinema history; others, like Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, are timed to make an impression as close to Academy Award-voting season as possible. Here are some of the biggest gorillas set to dominate New York’s screens in the next six......

Last night we sent photographer Raymond Haddad to the I'm Not There concert at Beacon Theater. Calexico, The Roots, My Morning Jacket, J Mascis, Yo La Tengo, Mason Jennings, Joe Henry, Mark Lanegan, Lee Ranaldo & the Million Dollar Bashers and many more were on hand to celebrate the soundtrack, the film and of course Bob Dylan himself (who, in fact, was not there). The soundtrack is a double-discer that's been getting praise from......

Jonathan Lethem Selects BAM Cinématek Starting next Monday and running through the middle of November, Brooklyn author and Friends of BAM chairperson Jonathan Lethem will be programming the cinématek with some of his favorite movies. Fans of his writing know that Lethem loves pop culture but this series doesn't really have more of an over arching theme than that it features some of the author's most beloved films and plain ol' good movies. There are......

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. Local boy Noah Baumbach presented the follow up to his Oscar-nominated and former NYFF favorite The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding at......

Barefoot in the Park Central Park Film Festival Saturday, 8 pm To close out this year's Central Park Film Festival, five nights of free out door movies in the park, the organizers put it to the people to choose the ultimate date night movie featuring our fair city. Out of Hitch, The Way We Were and Barefoot in the Park, Gothamist thinks the city chose wisely and well. If you've never seen the movie version......

The Guardian is reporting that Cate Blanchett is one of the actors playing the role of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes's biopic. This wouldn't, of course, be the first time that a woman has played a man, or vice versa. The Australian actress and the Duluth musician don't have that much physically in common, but that's no matter. There will also be a lot of other actors playing Dylan. The film, I'm Not There,......