MOVIE: As the Oscars approach, take a look back at one of the past films to be granted a golden statue. Tonight Agatha Christie's classic mystery Murder on the Orient Express leaps from the page to the big screen when the 1974 movie is shown at Film Forum. Starring Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall and Anthony Perkins, the movie will help you hone your crime-solving skills (and possibly make you think twice about taking Amtrak).......

THEATER: The Sisyphean life of an “emerging” playwright is often confined to a seemingly endless series of play readings, half-baked workshop productions, and audience-feedback bull sessions that often culminate not in a real production but more of the same. Tonight a group of theater people get together to bitch have an exchange about this now-entrenched play development process. The symposium is moderated by Time Out NY theater critic David Cote and features Richard Nelson, Playwright......

SIGNING: Just a few days ago LL Cool J was out signing his book (which, is actually a workout book). Tonight 50 Cent will be at Borders Bookstore with two of his writers for the launch of, wait for it...G Unit books! Some titles: Death Before Dishonor, Baby Brother and The Ski Mask Way. Get there early! 6pm // Borders Bookstore [10 Columbus Circle] // Free THEATER: RiddleLikeLove (with a side of ketchup) is based......

Here at Gothamist theater, we tend to let the weather affect our views on shows to see more than is perhaps logical, though when there’s so much to see, at least it gives us some way of deciding. Anyway, this being the case, naturally outdoor shows have a special place in our heart, and this week one of (if not the absolute) the first outdoor shows is on: the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre’s The Bass Saxophone,......

Along with producing shows by up and coming playwrights, one of the things off-off-Broadway does best is to resurrect plays first presented ages ago that have hardly been seen or thought of since. One such is V.R. Lang’s Fire Exit: A Vaudeville For Eurydice, which is nominally a modernization of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth but in actuality, at least in this incarnation, is more an opportunity for some majorly bizarre antics by a brave, eager cast.......

While we wait impatiently for some real improvement in the temperature, theater companies are heating up the late winter with scores of new productions. A warning, though: maybe it’s just the mood we’ve been in, but everything that most appealed to us this week is pretty dark/serious. For that reason, we’ll start off with Ensemble Studio Theatre’s company of emerging playwrights, youngblood, which is having its annual “Asking For Trouble” series this week. Each playwright......

On Saturday Gothamist took last week’s advice and went to Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Marathon 2005. This festival has a long and honorable tradition going back to the 70s, attracting top playwrights and actors, and although not all of the four plays in this first of 3 parts of the marathon were equally enjoyable, the evening altogether showed that EST is still doing a great job of nurturing and producing great performances. The highlight of the......

If you’re like Gothamist and you enjoy new theatre in small venues (with small ticket prices), theater festivals are unbeatable. If you don’t go to shows much but want to get a taste for what’s out there, again, these gatherings of innovative voices and acting talents are the way to go. In the summer months, festivals arrive thick and fast; the first wave begins this week. In Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Marathon 2005, which started Wednesday,......