The Dark Knight has officially opened, and the figures are in: the NY Times reports that the movie took in "$18.5 million in gross revenue at its 12 a.m. opening screenings early Friday morning at 3,040 screens, the most ever for midnight shows." Gawker laments about the movie taking the title from 2005's Star Wars, Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith, which previously held it for racking up $16.9 million at 2,915 screens. Meanwhile,......

Forget The Dark Knight – the hype is already giving way to disappointment. It’s time to start getting really, really excited about Spider-Man the Musical, which will feature a score by U2’s Bono and the Edge and direction from Julie Taymor of Lion King fame. In May, Marvel Executive Peter Cuneo announced that the show could open as soon as next year, with Jim Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood – Taymor’s stars in Across the......

Photograph, top, of Alain Robert climbing the Times building by Carol Quillen; photograph, below, of Renaldo Clarke climbing by Michael Chan After two incidents of X-treme attention whoring Thursday afternoon, cops were stationed around the perimeter of the New York Times building on 41st St. Friday, successfully preventing anyone else from taking a shot at scaling the side of the new skyscraper. Famous urban climber Alain Robert drew quite a crowd as he climbed......

Residents of Washington Heights may be able to sleep a little easier soon. Police are talking to a "person of interest" in a pair of sex assaults where the attacker climbs up fire escapes, enters apartments through unlocked windows, and assaults sleeping women. The suspect is being investigated for incidents (possibly more) on July 19 at 4:45 a.m. and again on July 20 at 5 a.m. Both incidents occurred near West 175th Street and Broadway.......

Spiderman, Mortal Kombat, Sonic Underground. No, it's not FOX's Saturday morning line up, it's Terence Taylor's resume. Before jumping into horror, the Brooklyn born author spent over a decade writing and producing children's programming . From his days as one of the few black students at St. John's University, to his years writing Gulah Gulah's Island and Arthur, Taylor's story reveals the seemingly random events that often lead to a career in television and writing,......

The last free-standing diner in Manhattan is closing tomorrow night after 70 years in business, and like many displaced New Yorkers it will be moving to Pennsylvania. The Moondance Diner in SoHo is shuttering, and next month it will be shipped to PA to become part of a museum. The lot where it currently sits is going to become the site of luxury condos. The New York Sun reported the imminent demise of the Moondance......

A look at some noteworthy programs this week: Mystery: Foyle’s War: Invasion (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., WNET 13, Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., WLIW 21) The fourth series of this great British World War II period mystery drama makes its way to this side of the pond. The first of four episodes has Detective Foyle and his team investigation a murder on an American base. The 4400 (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., USA) This sci-fi series about people who were......

The Sanitation Chronicles, a new play by and about New York’s Strongest, premiered on Wednesday. Actor/playwright Paul Brno, who’s been moonlighting for the Department of Sanitation for the past 17 years, says “every day is still a great day to be on a garbage truck.” The “slice of life” play explores the daily prejudices, anger and violence faced by “Sanmen”, all of which is exacerbated when one of the guys shows up for work dressed......

At the end of this month, your friendly neighborhood Spider Man will be all over New York for...Spider Man week! A five-borough-wide celebration (marketing ploy) featuring a ton of live events, screenings, parties and exhibits. The city has been central to the Marvel Comics legend since Spidey's beginning in 1962, so it only makes sense to launch the latest movie here. "On one hand, New York is a battleground, and on the other, it's a......

We're guessing most of you are hungover from St. Patrick's Day. We are too. But still, we're going to muddle on through our green haze and give you (drum roll please...) this Week In -ists. We start with SFist which broke the -ist record for comments with nearly 500 comments on a post about our Mayor's girlfriend. She responded back on charges that she's not a "girl's girl" and, whoo boy-- the floodgates? They......

While filing out of the Laura Pels Theatre after Patrick Marber’s Howard Katz, a woman of a certain age was heard exclaiming, “A tour de force!” Having brandished that over-ripe phrase myself on probably too many occasions, I was amazed to hear it applied to the play we’d just sat through. Had I been misusing it all this time? Was the expression actually French for “a total waste of time”? According to Dictionary.com, the......

Scoping out movie sets is practically a city-wide past time in New York and today in the New York Times' City Life, Francis X. Cline elaborates on the natives' love/hate relationship with the constant filming on our streets. While it's easy to love catching a few celeb sightings on your lunch break or nab a snack from the unsuspecting Craft Services, it seems complaints about location scouts getting carte blanche on illegal parking led......

New York is literally brimming with Tobey Maguire sightings this week. Apparently Spiderman 3 is shooting around town, and we've been receiving dozens of sightings and reports. Today, Brian Van sent in this shot, along with a report: I'll give you the straight dirt on him: Tiny. Generally nice to fans with one exception: Acts like a big dick to anyone who looks like a paparazzi, including normal citizens with fancy cameras. Somewhat understandable, but......

Roosevelt Island has many advantages - it's cheaper than Manhattan and has some gorgeous skyline views. However, we just heard that a tram has been stuck over water for the past 40 minutes and that emergency services has been requested to help remove passengers. And, thus, we were reminded why we do not live there. And will emergency services use rappling hooks, dust off their jet packs or just call Spiderman? There is, however,......

Today's map comes from Marvel Comics, by way of the Travel Channel's New York City page. Click on the little circles to learn about all the superhero hotspots-- Doctor Strange's mansion in Greenwich Village, Daredevil's apartment in Hell's Kitchen, the spot in Central Park where the Punisher's family was murdered, and of course, Forest Hills, where Spiderman grew up. The map also mentions that the Thing grew up on the Lower East Side. That......

- When Bin Laden speaks, everyone listens...but Mayor B says there's no threat to NYC - The NY Sun's problems with the Governor's budget plan - The city is cleaning up after yesterday's windy mess - a man was killed by a tree that fell in his yard - Bryce Dallas Howard will be Gwen Stacy in the new Spiderman movie, which is interesting to us because Gwen is a blond, so it'll be......

New York City as Ohio? The NY Times says it's so, as film productions take advantage of the city's new tax breaks to encourage production money come to the Big Apple. Freelance location scout Mark Bodnar ran down how the city can be transformed into almost anywhere:For the rural South? "I'd head to Rockaway Beach and all those great abandoned Army barracks there." For farmland? Floyd Bennett Field, in Brooklyn. For the desert? A......

The police are looking for a rapist who has attacked three women in Manhattan this month. In all instances, the attacker, who the local tabloids are calling the Spiderman Rapist, has entered through an open window, so police are asking women to make sure their windows are closed and air-conditioners are secure. The rapist would blindfold the victims with a t-shirt or sheets, so there have been only sketchy descriptions of him. The incidents have......

[Warning: The following contains MTV Movie Award spoilers! If such a thing exists.] "Sweet!" As if conquering the legislature wasn't enough, Napoleon Dynamite won Best Movie and the film's star, Jon Heder, won for both Best Musical Performance and Male Breakthrough Performance (must have been his awesome bo-staff skills....or perhaps, because it was a Paramount/MTV Films movie) at the MTV Movie Awards, scheduled to air Thursday night. Hosted by Jimmy Fallon, the MTV Awards had,......

Andy Friedman, Slideshow Poet, Painter, Artististic Visionary...

Spiderman 3 Director Sam Raimi announced that lanky 70’s Show guy has just joined Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunset in the cast of Spider-Man 3. "Topher Grace is an extraordinarily talented actor," said Raimi, "and will be perfect for the complexities of the role we are developing." Columbia Pictures has not yet confirmed his specific role, but many speculate that in addition to Sideways' Thomas Haden Church as the Sandman, Topher will play a villain.......

With the Mets eliminated from the playoffs, the only role left was that of spoiler. That's exactly what they did this weekend, taking two of three from the Cubs who are trying to win the National League wild card. After losing the first game on Friday, the Mets won the final two games of the series. The first win was an extra inning win on Saturday and Sunday's win gave the Mets the series. On......

Because of yesterday's strange and ultimately hilarious for us - since we're not a recognized government or royal figure in Britain - stunt that involved a man dressed as Batman staging a protest at Buckingham Palace, Gothamist thought it a great opportunity to look at the meaning of Gotham City. Wikipedia's definiton:Gotham City is a fictional city appearing in DC Comics, best known as the home of Batman. At one point, DC placed Gotham......

Buboo Kakati, Filmmaker...

- Fireworks a-poppin' in New York - The make-up of the city's taxi drivers - Oh, NY Post, you're so hilarious - Do not buy Metrocard swips - Picks for Asian BBQ in the city - The social mobility in dating - What to do with the World's Fair site in Queens? - NBC looks to coffee to market the Olympics - What is the best Law & Order cast? - Spiderman rides an El......

Look! Up in the sky! It's Superman, no wait, it's Spiderman, no wait, it's Underdog, no wait, it's a whole lot of dust and aerosols! Led by scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, research has shown that the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface decreased by 1.3% from 1960-1990. The cause of this dimming is the ever increasing amount of made-made aerosol particles in the atmosphere. The aerosols reflect and absorb incoming solar......

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......

Blah blah blah, Shrek 2 made over $100 million over a five day period, which is a record for any film except Spiderman 2 and a record for an animated film with the voices of a Canadian, former model, one of the greatest comics, a Spaniard who stars in some great Almodovar films, a member of Monty Python, and Mary Poppins (while Shrek 2's record breaking is legit, if we had a buck for everytime......

Jina Wye, MBA Student...

In one of the more interesting studio moves, Universal is going to let American Splendor directors-writers Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini to write and direct the remake of the Bride of Frankenstein. According to Variety, the film will be "set in contemporary Gotham, centered on a young woman attending college. After being haunted by someone else's memories, she gradually discovers that she died and was then unnaturally brought back to life." Oscar nominated......