Spike Lee, New York sports fan, premiered his new feature film, Red Hook Summer (his not-a-sequel to Do the Right Thing), at Sundance last night and he was his usual, straight-talking self during a Q&A. So much so that he apologized to the audience, "Sorry for that mother----ing tirade." more ›

While his first re-election TV commercials start airing in key states today, President Obama will be heading to New York City today to raise a little cash. Among the stops are Spike Lee's Upper East Side townhouse (someone is really excited!) and the Apollo Theater. Which means'll be wreaking traffic havoc on the Upper East Side (lots of street closures) and Harlem (as well as the Triborough Bridge and FDR Drive)—here's his agenda: more ›

You know things are bad with the fate of the NBA when Spike Lee is at a Rangers game—as one person observed on Thursday night while the #1 Knicks fan posed for a photo with beloved former Rangers captain Mark Messier, "he must be bored without the Knicks." And now it get worse: The NBA just announced games through November 30 would be cancelled. more ›

Spike Lee has announced on Twitter that he'll be in Brooklyn tomorrow, selling stuff for cold hard cash out of Spike's Joint. His announcement read: "TOMORROW 10/8 come to the Spike's Joint Pop Up Store 75 S. Elliott Pl -Fort Greene from NOON-6P New & vintage gear. CASH ONLY. I'LL BE THERE." The event is going on from noon to 6 p.m., and other than those details, it's a mystery! more ›

Earlier this summer, rumors began flying that Spike Lee's latest project, Red Hook Summer, was a sequel to his 1989 Bed-Stuy-set breakout hit Do The Right Thing. Now, as more details have emerged about Lee's hush-hush project, it looks like that might not be the case...sort of. more ›

Admit it: You got a warm and fuzzy feeling while seeing State Farm's commercial paying tribute to New York City, with 150 children singing "Empire State of Mind" to FDNY firefighters. State Farm spokesman Roszell Gadson said that the Spike Lee-directed spot was a "way to honor and show appreciation for the sacrifices made every day by firefighters and emergency responders" and the company wanted to "find a way to honor these brave men and women as we collectively mark the 9/11 anniversary." State Farm is selling this version of the song on iTunes for 99 cents, with proceeds going to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. One person on iTunes commented, "I can't even lie. I have seen this State Farm commercial like 5 times today and every time it makes me smile and brings me to the verge of tears. I had to find the song and here it is! Great cover!" more ›

There are some movies you expect to get a sequel (Avatar, Thor) and there are some movies whose sequels aren't expected but aren't really that surprising (The Hangover, Babe). And then there are those rare movies that most of us would never think to make a sequel to but get them anyway (Bad Lieutenant, Rocky Horror Picture Show). If you'd asked us yesterday, Spike Lee's 1989 Bed-Stuy classic Do The Right Thing fell firmly into that last group. But that was then. This morning the director tweeted about a new Spike Lee joint, Blackfilm did a little digging and what do you know. Lee's next movie, Red Hook Summer, may well be Keep Doing The Right Thing. more ›

Spike Lee is a difficult guy to like. If he's not whining about Tyler Perry making movies that Lee doesn't approve of, he's preaching the word of Brooklyn while simultaneously screwing the hood. And if he's not doing either of those, he's typically just acting like an all around jerk. So it should come as little surprise that during a discussion with Charlie Rose at a marketing conference, he was as grumpy as ever! more ›

During the fall, diminutive running back Danny Woodhead went from Jets reject to Patriots star RB, climaxing with him going undercover at a Modell's, trying to sell his own jersey to customers. Now, the Knicks' high-achieving rookie Landry Fields has been recruited for the same role: in disguise as "Leeroy Jenkins, employee of the month," he tires to sell customers on #6 Landry Fields jerseys (with little success). You can see the comically inept video below. more ›

Tonight, the Knicks face off against the Miami Heat, led by supreme Decision maker LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, at Madison Square Garden tonight. And, after the home team's hot streak of late (before the heartbreaker against the Celtics, at least), fans are hopeful. Spike Lee, uber-fan (and Google enthusiast and Brooklyn sellout to some), confidently told the Daily News, "We're gonna kick LeBron's ass. We're going to win them all. It's like the old days." more ›

Spike Lee, the effortlessly curmudgeonly director, has taken to hawking vodka... but that's old news. The new news is that teens in Brooklyn are turning on Lee for bringing his Absolut Brooklyn ad campaign to their neighborhood of Bed-Stuy. According to the Daily News, teens in the area recently did a survey of alcohol ads in the area, mapping out promos for the Children's Aid Society—they found that Lee's campaign dominated. more ›

Yesterday, Spike Lee held hosted another birthday party in Prospect Park for the late Michael Jackson, who would have turned 52 years old (here are some shots from last year's celebration). This year Snoop Dogg showed up and performed a few of MJ's hits! more ›

When we interviewed Spike Lee last month, he told us, "we will be having our 2nd annual Michael Jackson birthday Brooklyn extravaganza in Prospect Park on August 29th. It's going to be bigger and better this year. People come the world over." He was less enthusiastic when asked about the film he's working on, which shares a name with the event—Brooklyn Loves Michael Jackson. He said he wasn't allowed to discuss it at the time, so for now, all you get is this video of Lee shouting names of MJ songs in Prospect Park. more ›

Yesterday, it was the moment New York fans had hoped for: LeBron James in in New York City. Except James was only in the Big Apple for the wedding of his friend, Denver Nuggets star Carmelo Anthony, to former MTV personality LaLa Vazquez. The NY Post's headline, "Welcome to NY, Jackass," while the Daily News went with the milder, "LeBronx Cheer." more ›

It's been two years since his last wide release feature film, Miracle at St. Anna, but don't assume Brooklyn-raised film legend Spike Lee has just been sitting on his heels, wiling away the days reeling in NBA super jocks. Mr. Lee has a plethora of projects underway, with a whopping eight listed as "In Developement" on IMDB, and a second post-Katrina documentary, If God Is Willing and the Creek Don't Rise, nearing completion. On top of all that, he even found a moment to come up with a Brooklynized Absolut bottle. Or did he? Last week the director talked to us about the BP oil spill, Fort Greene prior to the Caucasian invasion, and how the stoop on the Absolut bottle isn't the one he wanted. more ›

If Sean Combs-endorsed Ciroc is the vodka of choice in his home borough of Manhattan, then we suppose Brooklyn just adopted Spike Lee and Absolut to represent its buzz. Yep, you can now buy ABSOLUT BROOKLYN for just $24.99 at your local liquor store (the company will be giving $50,000 in sales to Habitat for Humanity for their effort to build affordable and environmentally sustainable housing in Bed-Stuy). more ›

Yesterday, Michael Jackson fans gathered in Prospect Park to celebrate Michael Jackson's 51st birthday, in a celebration thrown by Spike Lee. The party, moved from Fort Greene Park to the much larger Prospect Park, attracted thousands of people who braved the initially dreary weather for a day of music and fun and writer-director Lee told them, "I'm like everybody else - somebody who loved his talent. We're here to celebrate Michael Jackson." more ›

The Michael Jackson birthday celebration in Brooklyn that was accused on the New York Times blogs as being "Spike and Marty’s big ego trip" just got bigger—eighteen times bigger. The event in honor of what would have been the singer's 51st birthday is being thrown next weekend by filmmaker Spike Lee and was originally set to be a block party taking place at Fort Greene Park. But now it has been moved to the much roomier Prospect Park after the city became involved when concerns arose over the celebration's growing publicity. The event that the Post uncomfortably refers to as "JACKOFEST" will now take place next Saturday at noon in Nethermead at the center of Prospect Park, with organizers saying they expect a crowd that could reach over 10,000. A Parks official succinctly told the Brooklyn Paper, “There were concerns about the size of the event.” This month also marks the fifteenth anniversary of the HIStory teaser video being shot in Budapest—maybe it's time for an update to Prospect's James S.T. Stranahan Statue. more ›

Plans for Michael Jackson's burial have finally been set for August 29th, the same day the King of Pop entered the world, and would have been celebrating his 51st birthday. While the private ceremony takes place at 10 a.m. on the West Coast (in the Great Mausoleum at Glendale Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California), the East Coast will be celebrating his life in a different way. more ›

There was a futile rush-ticket line stretching halfway down the block outside the Director's Guild Theatre on 57th Street last night for the New York premiere of Spike Lee's Passing Strange, which documents the critically acclaimed rock musical using a concert-doc aesthetic not unlike Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense. Tickets to the extremely sold-out Tribeca Film Festival screening were exclusively offered to American Express Cardmembers, but Passing Strange fans shut out last night will at least be able to see it on TV; in a post-show discussion last night, Lee revealed that the film will be broadcast on PBS's Great Performances series, and he added that a theatrical distribution may be in the works. (There is also a second and final screening tonight as part of TFF.) more ›

Yesterday afternoon, film director Spike Lee joined the Reverend Al Sharpton and hundreds of others to protest the NY Post's decision to run an editorial cartoon featuring a dead chimp killed by police. Lee said of the paper, "Shut it down... It's not just black folks. It's an insult to everybody." more ›

The Tony, OBIE and Drama Desk-award winning rock musical Passing Strange will close June 20th after a six month run on Broadway, during which time the show failed to translate massive critical acclaim into box office profits. Attendance hovered around 50% capacity for most of the run, and producers’ hopes for a post-Tonys boost were dashed when Latino musical In the Heights dominated the awards. more ›

At 8:30PM (following a half-hour red carpet special), the 80th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will begin, finally putting an end to the "There Will Be Oscar" or "Oscar Country for Old Men" type headlines. more ›

Now we know why there are still people heading to The Garden. There aren't any Knicks’ fans left, they are all paid actors. At least that’s the conclusion one could draw from a story in the New York Press. It turns out that the people in the "fan ads" (like the one pictured above), are mostly paid actors and their stories are made up for the commercials. The surprising thing is that apparently the Knicks didn’t know this. more ›

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama made a campaign swing into our neighborhood yesterday, drawing a crowd of thousands to Yanitelli Center at St. Peter's College, and as well as supporters to a fund-raiser in Midtown last night. At St. Peter's, He told the audience, "I'm not running because of long-held ambitions. I'm running because of what Dr. (Martin Luther) King called the 'fierce urgency of now.'" more ›

In November, Charlie Rose sat down with rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z. The musician is originally from Brooklyn and late in the interview Rose queries about the expected success of the Nets once they move to Kings County. Jay-Z is very enthusiastic about the potential of the team and the virtues of the borough, as he prefaces every statement about Brooklyn with the words "we" and "ours." It is unintentionally comedic then when Rose immediately follows up with the question "And where do you live now?" The answer is a terse "In Manhattan, uh." The exchange begins around 48 minutes and 45 seconds into the interview and a quick transcript is available at the Atlantic Yards Report site here. It reminded us of the first time that we heard that director Spike Lee had moved to the Upper East Side. more ›

November marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the Tawana Brawley affair--an incident that inflamed racial relations in New York and across the country after a teenage girl alleged that she had been sexually assaulted and abused by police. The ensuing media circus thrust Rev. Al Sharpton into the limelight and established his bona fides as a community spokesman. It also tarnished the reputations of the people she accused of raping her and, later... more ›