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......

Thanksgiving officially marks the start of the holiday movie season, and this weekend, one film seems poised to make a run for the box office crown. Enchanted, the Disney film that mixes animation and live-action to spoof its classic fairy tales, received some pretty stellar reviews. It's 92% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and most reviews are calling this the star-making performance of Amy Adams, who was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar for Junebug......

If recent viewings of Grizzly Man and Rescue Dawn have you intrigued with Werner Herzog's work, check out his legendary Fitzcarraldo about Klaus Kinski trying to bring opera music to the Peruvian jungle, which is now playing at IFC Center with a new print. If you ever wondered why Herzog referred to himself as the "Conquistador of the Useless," Fitzcarraldo is the project that really encouraged his brilliant madness. It's one of the greatest potential......

The Simpsons Movie (directed by David Silverman) This weekend marks the move of America's favorite dysfunctional family the Simpsons from the suburbs of television to the urban center of the big screen. After all of the viral marketing of Simpson-ified magazine editors, real life Kwik-E-Marts and ticket giveaways, is it too much to hope that there's still fresh material to be mined from the long-running animated sitcom? According to the critics, the movie is just......

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us. Austinist has a chat with the ever-fashionable Golden Girl Rue McClanahan, and managed to catch some local fashionistas making......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a large theft(?) at Waterview Ct. on Saten Island, a capsized boat in Central Park's lake with passengers in the water (around 74th St. and 5th Ave.), and a shooting on Brooklyn's W 31st St. The Red Hook Ikea is topped out and a Gowanus Lounge reader is there to capture the magic of retail superstructures. Eleven soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division stationed at Fort Drum allegedly broke......

When New York Magazine calls your film a "glossy gay remake" of La Dolce Vita, it was probably inevitable that the people who have the rights to La Dolce Vita would sue. Whoever does own the rights to La Dolce Vita (Pathe?) is suing gay porn king Michael Lucas for violating trademark laws and sullying the original Federico Fellini classic's reputation. Here's how New York described the film last year:Lucas has been rather busy......

- Of course one of the passengers on the Fung Wah bus that crashed in Massachusetts would sue - Sad story of the man who bashed in the head of an off-duty police officer last week with a pipe and whose life went from MIT and i-banking to homelessness and hospitals - Sara Ramirez, known as the Lady of the Lake in Spamalot as well as "Callie" on Grey's Anatomy (yes, the weird doctor......

As we sat down to write this week's Best of the -ists post, a car blaring "21 Questions'" passed by our house. And that started us thinking about how some of the best -ist posts out there have at their hearts questions, some of which are answered, and some of which are left open. Check out the Best of the -ists from this week, and see if you agree. Londonist answers the questions "How......

MOVIE: Get a little more in depth on the whole border crossing controversy with Woodstock in the City's screening of Crossing Arizona at +Art%2C+Dance%2C+Music+and+Film888The+Arts+%2D+Events888Makor+%2D +Film888Makor+Film+August888&productid=T%2DMM5FA06">Makor. There's a Q&A with the filmmakers Joseph Mathew and Dan DeVivo and a reception following the screening hosted by Indiepix.net. Roger Ebert said after the film screened at Sundance, “On the last day or two (of Sundance) you hurry between screenings, trying to catch films everybody tells you not to......

- Marc Ecko (right) wins his suit against the city - a judge rules the city violated the First Amendment in revoking the graf party permit! Whodathunkit? But the city is going to appeal, so who knows what'll happen on Wednesday. - The New Yorker looks at how the ghost of Sex and the City lingers on in the West Village... might Jimmy Choo or Manolo Blahnik consider opening up a Bleecker Street store? [via......

The reviews are out, and Chris Rock is getting a mixed bag of feedback for his duties as the MC of the Oscars. The NY Daily News' David Bianculli says he wasn't edgy or funny enough, Variety says his opening monologue was great (subscription required), the Hollywood Reporter says that Rock wasn't on a roll, and the Washington Post's Tom Shales says Rock was strangely lame and mean-spirited. Gothamist wonders if there's a generational divide......

So, there's a third act surprise in Million Dollar Baby that critics have alluded to but haven't mentioned, out of respect for the moviegoing experience or something like that. Well, the NY Times ran a story (if you click on it, even the headline will spoil the movie for you, so you're officially warned - and here's the link) yesterday about some anger about the film. Movie City News hilariously calls the NY Times the......

Sure, there are lots of big movies opening tomorrow - The Aviator (DiCap flies a plane), Spanglish (Adam Sandler plays a Thomas Keller-like chef - ha! - and Tea Leoni hopes this will make her a star), and Lemony Snicket (okay, the baby biting the table is cute) - but Gothamist's pick for a must-see film this weekend is The Sweet Smell of Success. Sweet Smell is playing as part of Film Forum's Essential Noir......

One of Gothamist's favorite movies, Hope and Glory, is playing at BAM tonight. It's part of BAM's retrospective of director John Boorman's work, The Adventures of John Boorman. Boorman's made his name with darker, more violent films like Point Blank and Deliverance, which is why Gothamist loves Hope and Glory so much: It's a hilarious film about a British family surviving World War II, from the middle-aged father who enlists to the young children who......

You can't fool us Gothamist Weather - bad news is just bad news when it comes to heat and humidity! But thank you for trying to make us less hysterical about it. And it really is not that bad. One look at a long, hot summer day in New York: Do the Right Thing - Roger Ebert's Great Movies review and also check out the Criterion DVD of it. And more Gothamist hotness: - Sets......

There are tons of things to do this weekend, but one thing Gothamist is definitely doing is going to see Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Not only is it important to support the Asian peeps, it's necessary to see silly movies that make you laugh - this works well with both movies that are intentionally supposed to be funny, like Harold & Kumar, as well as ones that aren't, like Catwoman, which may......

Sure, Fahrenheit 9/11 and White Chicks are the films industry types believe will light up the box office this weekend, but Gothamist recommends something that might be more satisfying: Seeing the glorious Wim Wenders film, Wings of Desire, at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater this weekend. Part of a tribute to the German actor Bruno Ganz, Wings of Desire is a wondrous meditation of life, love, and belonging in Berlin, complete with angels, circus performers,......

Roger Ebert captured this photograph of New York Times chief film critic A.O. Scott in his Cannes Photo Album. The caption reads: New York Times film critic A.O. Scott awoke to find a thief had filched his money, passport and computer. "The hotel loaned me a laptop," he said, "but it has a French keyboard, with the keys in different places."Poor, poor, Tony. The Encyclopedia Brown/Lennie Briscoe in us suspects not some Riviera thief looking......

The NY magazine piece about Elvis Mitchell's departure from the Times, the one Gawker hinted at last week, is online It's an interesting look at Mitchell's enterprise as film critic, professor, social butterfly, media personality, and black journalist. If you're into film criticism, you'll find it a good read, as it marks a fascinating turn of events from five years ago, when Mitchell and newly promoted chief movie critic, A.O. Scott, were first annointed -......

For the next week, Film Forum is showing a restored print of The Third Man, the great 1949 noir film based on the book by Graham Greene. This is one of Gothamist's favorite movies, not only because it's a wonderfully twisting story set in post WWII Vienna, but because of Joseph Cotten who plays the protagonist, a Westerns writer named Holly Martins. Cotten was friends with Orson Welles (who plays Harry Lime in The......

The big movie opening this weekend is the movie version of Starsky and Hutch starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, and Gothamist has to say, if you love Ben and Owen's chemistry (think Meet the Parents... Zoolander...), go see it (or just go because Snoop Dogg steals the film). E! Online has a great question and answer with the pair in their feature, "Guffaw and Order"; E! asked Wilson about singing the David Soul......

If you're not going to see The Passion of the Christ, at least read Times' A.O. Scott's review of it, because Scott begins by referring to the Simpsons episode with Mel Gibson: There is a prophetic episode of "The Simpsons" in which the celebrity guest star Mel Gibson, directing and starring in a remake of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," enlists the help of Homer Simpson, who represents the public taste (or lack of it).......

Today and tomorrow are your last two days to catch L'Age d'Or and Un Chien Andalou at Film Forum. The Luis Bunuel-Salvador Dali collaborations are groundbreaking, shocking and spooky even today. Roger Ebert calls Un Chien Andalou a Great Movie; Chien has also been referenced in The Simpsons. More about Bunuel and Dali. Destino, a short film co-written by Dali, is also nominated for a best animated short Oscar.......

Roger Ebert answers many interesting movie-related questions every other Sunday as "Movie Answer Man" but this week, his second question-and-answer is particularly revealing: A reader asks if ultra–gory Kill Bill is rated R, why is Lost in Translation R also and why Whale Rider is one level lower than Kill Bill with a PG–13. Ebert starts his explanation with "The MPAA rating system is guided by the greed of the movie industry and its fear......

Yikes, the Grim Reaper takes more this week. Not only pioneering tennis player Althea Gibson died yesterday, but influential and ultimately HUAC name-naming film director Elia Kazan passed away as well. The amazing breadth of his work, contrasted with his unfortunate personal decisions that affected others, makes people wonder what is he to be judged on, his incomparable work alone (like On The Waterfront) or his overall professionalism. (Recently deceased filmmaker of Nazi propaganda......

The past week has had many notable deaths (Edward Said, Robert Palmer, George Plimpton) but Gothamist was most saddened about yesterday's passing of entertainer Donald O'Connor, whose most memorable work is the show-stopping song, "Make 'Em Laugh," in Singin' in the Rain. O'Connor appeared in loads of films, like Anything Goes with Bing Crosby and the Francis the Talking Mule pictures, but his role as Cosmo Brown in Singin' made you wonder why there......

One of the most hilarious scenes in Lost in Translation (Gothamist's favorite movie this year, thus far) is when Bill Murray's character, Bob Harris, gets direction from a Japanese hipster director. The director rattles off instructions in Japanese for a while, only for it to be translated back to Bob as "With more intensity." The Times ends speculation from all non-Japanese-comprehending folks by giving transcription of the exchange; Gothamist loved that the director was saying,......

CNN has a pretty good piece about annoying movie blurbs from unknown critics being used relentlessly by movie studios. There are some mainstream ones as well (Peter Travers, Gothamist is talking about you) and the biggest conundrum of them all, Roger Ebert who is simultaneously smart and stupid. Variety's Timothy Gray tells CNN, ""It's always 'a roller coaster ride' or 'the feel-good movie of the summer.' Sometimes I think, not only have I never heard......

Upon first looking at this list of 50 ways to fix the movies, you might think, anybody could have thought of it. But that's the brilliance - it's what we all think. And leave it to two Canadians to put it to paper in the Toronto Star. Gothamist heartily agrees with many entries, especially these: 9 Roger Ebert and his new sidekick Richard Roeper should be required to wear condoms on their thumbs. They've become......