• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a slashing on East 156th St. and Union Ave. in the Bronx, a missing patient on East 135th St. and Lenox Ave. in Manhattan, and a person under a subway train at Lenox Ave. and Central Park North in Manhattan.
• Being a Jew-hating Nazi in Brooklyn must be neverending work. One miserable person in Park Slope keeps slogging away though.
• The New York Public Library is opening its first new branch since 1989 and it's in an old candy factory in NoLiTa. We expect Roald Dahl will be forever on reserve.
• State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno is infatuated with the idea of Mayor Bloomberg assuming higher office. This week it's the Governor's office.
• The Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem is celebrating its 200th birthday with a pilgrimage to Ethiopia to commemorate the African seamen who obviated early colonial discrimination by opening their own church.
• This should make alternative-transportation advocates very happy: the city's new transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan commutes to work on a bike (at least for a photo-op this morning). We hope she's not killed in traffic before bike-friendly measures can be enacted.
• There are eight million stories in the naked city. This one's about watching a cop movie classic with the police commissioner.
• Three Staten Island teens attacked a 125-pound cancer survivor as the 56-year-old was walking home from his bus stop Saturday evening. No robbery; just a senseless beating.
• Jerry Falwell, who posited that New Yorkers and America in general brought the 9/11 attacks on themselves by being a bunch of godless sodomite heathens, was called home to Jesus today.

Maybe it's been a while since you sat down with some Law & Order Franchise and you've been missing your facetime with your Dr. George Huang, portrayed by the preternaturally calm B.D. Wong. We know we've been missing him lately, so tonight's the night to head over to Symphony Space (95th and Broadway) to check out Wong and Stephen Lang read stories from Roald Dahl and J. Robert Lennon, as part of the Selected Shorts series. Wong's a frequent reader for them, so if you can't make it tonight at 6:30PM, there's always another time. more ›

The New York Musical Theatre Festival is waltzing into its second week without flagging – there are at least as many intriguing offerings now as when we wrote last week. But first, take note that the festival has clearly learned from the Fringe’s example, at least in some ways, including the idea of scheduling events that aren’t simply staged musicals. For the last week, for example, there were screenings of movie musicals; starting Thursday you can see compilations of classic TV musicals. There are also reading-only events, singing-only events, and various panels and seminars – the full listing is in the program PDF. Or perhaps you do want to see a real show, but not one that’s pulling out all the stops in an effort to land financing for a more permanent run. The NYMF folks don’t seem to be the kind to view that as heresy, nor to take umbrage at having fun poked at them – at least, if they were, they probably wouldn’t have partnered with Dixon Place for the Warning: Not For Broadway series, or taken the improv group The Pearl Brunswick into their fold of performances. The Not for Broadway shows start Thursday at the Marquee; some cleave faithfully to the idea in the series’ title (can you imagine Olsen Terror, which is about an insomniac who realizes he’s turning into…um…the Olsen Twins…on Broadway? Not that it wouldn’t be sweet to see) while at least a couple others really could go big-time (we can’t wait to see how Gary Plotkin has adapted Roald Dahl’s wonderful children’s novel The BFG). Other shows fall in between, such as Tuesday, Brett Macias and Caroline Murphy’s musical about a day in the lives of 7 high school sophomores, and Janine McGuire and Emily Paul’s Wake Her Up, which brings some of the Greek gods into the 21st century club scene (hardly a stretch of the imagination, really). more ›

Wilder’s public disapproval might just be backlash at Burton who told Empire Magazine he found the 1971 version "quite disturbing" and The Chicago Sun Times the film was a bit too “sappy” & failed to incorporate author Roald Dahl’s vision:

"It's sappy when it shouldn't be sappy and it's weird. Let's just say it's not one of my personal favorites. I'd rate 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' much higher… I responded to the children's book because it respected that children can be adults, and I think adults forget that. There can be darkness and sort of foreboding. Very sinister things are very much a part of childhood. I like that sort of humor and emotion put together."

As everyone gets their bracket on and settles in for March Madness, the new Wes Anderson-directed Dasani commercials will start to air. Ernest Lupinacci, a partner in Anomaly, the upstart advertising agency that won the Dasani business from red cell/Berlin Cameron, spoke to the Observer about the ads that feature humans dressed up as animals:

"The idea behind the spots was that if you found someone who only drank water, and if they drank this water, it would be so much better. It dawned on me: My dog only drinks water. Animals are the perfect spokespersons for bottle water. Playfully, it’s like the classic testimonials. We liked the idea of being in your face. Except if we just had a person talking about the product, that would be a drag."

— we did find out a few fun factoids about the stars and their movie. more ›

Bad boy turned current critical and audience darling for his turn in Pirates of the Caribbean Johnny Depp may play Willy Wonka for Tim Burton's adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Michael Fleming writes in Variety that "Depp and Burton...came away from their meeting sparked to make the film and negotiations are expected to begin shortly." Additionally, the film would be produced by Brad Grey, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston (via their production company Plan B...so...many...pretty...people...our...head...hurts) and Michael Siegel who manages Roald Dahl's estate. Gothamist thinks this is brilliant. We never thought of Willy Wonka as being sexy, but okay. more ›

The "dream teams" of noted architects working together for prestigious projects is the subject of a Times architecture article. Though Daniel Libeskind, dream team of one, won the World Trade Center competition, apparently teamwork is the new black of the architecture world, as evinced by all the other teams who entered. The Times brings up a 2001 quote from design world "star," Rem Koolhaas: "If I pride myself on one thing, it is a talent to collaborate." But then Kevin Kernon, one of the architects in the United Architects team, says, "Rem talks a lot about collaboration, but at the end of the day he isn't that interested in actually doing it himself." Meow! more ›