It's inevitable in a summer season of blockbuster highs and lows that we'd have a weekend filled with new releases none of which look good enough to recommend. Glancing ahead to the rest of the month there's stuff like Ratatouille, Sicko, Evening, A Mighty Heart and Evan Almighty to look forward to seeing. But this week? Nada. Don't believe that could possibly be the case? Check out what other early reviews of this week's releases......

La Vie En Rose (directed by Olivier Dahan and Sebastien Caudron) At the end of her life Edith Piaf sang that she didn't regret anything and after you see her story played out in La Vie En Rose, you realize that's really saying something. An icon of French music whose voice instantly evokes the good life in sun-dappled Parisian street cafes, Piaf came from extreme poverty and with her immense talent became a huge international......

A Bourne, a Cloon and a pirate, oh my...with the Memorial Day holiday this weekend, we're entering the prime summer movie season and it's time to get psyched. Psyched! Here's just some Hollywood flicks we're awaiting between now and Labor Day. With all of these things to see, it's probably time to spring for the econo tub of popcorn and a bucket of soda to get through it all. May The summer gets underway as......

Flags of Our Fathers Letters From Iwo Jima (directed by Clint Eastwood) To tell just one side of an armed conflict isn't telling the whole story, and Clint Eastwood's companion movies released last winter in time for Oscar season expertly uses that idea to illuminate the capture during World War II of the Japanese island Iwo Jima. Even more thrilling than the movies' exploding bombs or CGI parade of tanks is the deft and sensitive......

The sex trial that almost had director Steven Soderbergh as a juror heard testimony from one of the prosecution's star witnesses. The Manhattan DA's office says that former Montessori school principal Lina Sinha had affairs with two very underage male students. One of the victims, now a 24-year-old police officer, testified that Sinha kissed him when he was upset after losing an academic competition in 1995. He was 13 at the time, while Sinha was......

It's really hard to joke about a sex trial where a female Manhattan Montessori school teacher is accused of the statutory rape and sodomy and two teenage boys, but based on the NY Times' article about juror selection, it seems there are moments of levity. Supreme Court Justice Carol Berkman is presiding over the case of Lina Sinha, who allegedly had sex with pupils who were 12 and 13 years old; one of the victims......

You know it's the beginning of January when the gyms are filled with New Years resolution exercisers and the movie theaters are filled with post-New Years dreck. Frankly, it's best to focus on getting caught up on last year's best (see our Top 10 and the subsequent comments for suggestions) and leave this week's releases for suckers with movie money to burn. Hilary Swank often stars in Oscar-lauded movies but her newest about an inner-city......

New York mid-December always smells vaguely of pine and peppermint, despite our recent springtime temperatures. Bring that cozy holiday feeling with you into the cineplex for a couple of new feel-good holiday movies. Will Smith will tug at your heart strings big time as the struggling dad trying to become a stockbroker in The Pursuit of Happyness. Set in the '70s in San Francisco, Smith plays Chris Gardner, a door to door medical equipment salesman......

Murray Hill can make even the most uptight New Yorker at least offer up a chuckle, if not an all-out belly laugh, with his well-honed ladies' man-about-town sthick. With his jocular, wink-wink style, he's never at a loss for words, whether working a raucous, drunken bingo crowd, prepping audiences for bands like Le Tigre, or hosting burlesque pagaents. Known for his anything-might-happen style, Murray can regularly be found emceeing his way across the city's stages,......

There's a full week of screenings ahead at the 43rd New York Film Festival, including three of the most anticipated American films in the entire program. But as we also mentioned in the most recent Weekly Movie Guide, tonight at 7:30 PM is a very special sidebar event at the Walter Reade Theater: "Greeneland: Graham Greene and the Cinema", a presentation/lecture/screening organized by Adrian Wootton, the former Director of the London Film Festival and current......

Today marks the beginning of the 43rd New York Film Festival, and the program looks to be one of the strongest The Film Society of Lincoln Center has put together in years, beginning tonight with Good Night, and Good Luck, a new film directed by George Clooney depicting the battle between legendary CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow and Wisconsin Senator and self-appointed commie-hunter Joseph McCarthy. Gothamist has been attending as many of the press screenings......

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has put up the lineup for the New York Film Festival 2005 and it looks, as usual, to be a fun time. Opening the festival is George Clooney's second try at directing "Good Night, and Good Luck" about news reporting in the 50s and the McCarthy hearings ("Have you no sense of decency sir?"). The centerpiece movie is Neil "The Crying Game" Jordan's "Breakfast on Pluto" starring Cillian......

Gothamist loves movies (especially those by any "Anderson" director). That's why each Friday, we'll highlight the best and worst in both indie and blockbuster movies as well as the latest in trailers (because admit it, they're the best part of the movie-going experience). We will try our hardest to refrain from such overused phrases as "a non-stop laugh riot", "high octane fun" and "so funny I pished myself!" But no promises. Opening this weekend: •Romantic-comedy......

Gothamist took a look at the "controversial" Rheingold beer campaign - the one that challenges Mayor Bloomberg's quality of life initiatives - and we have a mixed reaction. The campaign, "Don't Sleep," has a great style, with shots of the people dancing, walking, sitting, or carrying an ashtray around the city, an MC imploring that New Yorkers "can't sleep till we take it back [from Bloomberg, The Man, whomever is getting in the way......

There was a time when actual music captured America's attention, versus lip-synced chaos, so Gothamist encourages everyone to take advantage of the excitement around the 40th anniversary of the British invasion - when Beatles came to America, landing at JFK. The Daily News has a fabulous guide to Beatles happenings in town this weekend, including: • The Museum of Television & Radio's Beatles exhibit. • Makor will be showing Yellow Submarine tomorrow night. • The......

If it's March, it's the time for the networks to work on pilots for the upcoming season. These are some of today's announcements: - Patrick Dempsey will star in a TV version of "About a Boy," one of my favorite movies from last year - Jennifer Esposito will be joined by Bill Duke in "Karen Sisco" which is about a female U.S. Marshal. For you close readers, yes, it seems like it's based on the......

The new novel Jennifer Government by Max Barry got a rave in the Times book review this past weekend, and I was affected: I just ordered it from Amazon. It also helps when the review is by someone I'm familiar with, in this case, Rob Walker who writes about marketing for Slate.com. A satire about an extreme marketing scheme in a world dominated by corporations, Nike will assasinate kids at shoe stores in order to......

Let the games begin. The Directors' Guild has announced their nominees, and they are Stephen Daldry for "The Hours," Peter Jackson for "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," Rob Marshall for "Chicago," Martin Scorsese for "Gangs of New York," and Roman Polanski for "The Pianist." The most likely nominees for the Academy Awards' Best Picture of the bunch are "The Hours," "Chicago," and "Lord of the Rings." Photos above and an article(registration......