Actor Roy Scheider died yesterday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, after battling multiple myeloma for several years and suffering complications from a staph infection. He was 75 and had been living in Sag Harbor, New York (after moving out his house in Sagaponack that Billy Joel purchased). Scheider may be best known for his role as Police Chief Martin Brody in Jaws. One of his lines from the movie,......

The French Connection (directed by William Friedkin) Film Forum through September 6th A New York City procedural cop movie classic and the winner of five Academy Awards, a new 35 mm print of The French Connection gets a one-week run at Film Forum starting this weekend. Starring Gene Hackman as the porkpie wearing detective Popeye Doyle in a career defining role, the movie follows the attempt of a French criminal (Fernando Rey) to smuggle heroin......

Last week, retired NYPD detective Robert Volpe died at age 63 in Staten Island. He was not any ordinary detective: Volpe specialized in art thefts and frauds, tracking down paintings by Matisse and Raphael, Greek sculptures, and Tiffany glass, all while continuing to paint, teach and lecture about art. The NY Times had a vivid obituary of Volpe's life - it sounds just like a movie:Mr. Volpe essentially created his detective’s job after computer analyses......

A look at some noteworthy programs this week: Theater Talk: Prime-Time Spectacular (WNET 13, Sunday, 10:30 p.m.) This Broadway interview show celebrates its 10th anniversary with an hour long prime time special. Lincoln Center Tree Lighting 2006 (WABC 7, Monday, 5:00 p.m.) Channel 7 gives over a good chunk of their 5 p.m.newscast to this annual tree lighting. Expect some Disney corporate synergy in any performances. A Charlie Brown Christmas (WABC 7, Tuesday, 8:00 p.m.)......

SummerScreen (you know, like sunscreen) is The L Magazine's addition to the already successful summer of McCarren Park Pool events. The outdoor film series will take place every Tuesday (starting next week) through the end of August. The films start at sundown, and before that...there are bands! Oh, and it's free. Here's the schedule: July 25: Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989) with the Cold Hands Collective August 1: Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson, 1996)......

The National Film Preservation Board run by the LIbrary of Congress, added 25 films to the National Film Registry for 2005. The choices run from 1933's Baby Face to 1995's Toy Story. As the registry's James Billington says, "The films we choose are not necessarily the 'best' American films ever made or the most famous, but they are films that continue to have cultural, historical or aesthetic significance." But some are pretty great - like......

After all the comments on yesterday's post about books set in NYC, we got to thinking, has anyone bothered to come up with a list of all the movies set in the city? The answer, of course, is yes-- at Wikipedia, of course. What an amazing site-- it's like having a genie who's only job is to distract us with useless NYC trivia! They've probably missed a couple of movies here and there, but......

Peter Parker, please. Gothamist can understand artistic license. We can understands leaps of faith necessary to forward a movie plot. But we cannot sit and not comment on the subway problem in Spider-Man 2. Spider-Man 2 is clearly set in New York City: Peter Parker goes to Columbia University, Aunt May lives in Queens... which is why it killed us to see Spider-Man and Doc Ock fight on top of a subway (an R......

There are some fantastic photographs by Allan Tannebaum of New York in the 1970s at Digital Journalist. Coinciding with the release of his book, New York in the 70s, Tannenbaum captured flashpoints of New York city in many areas, including politics, social change, art, and the high life (check out Halston, Roy Cohn, and Steve Rubell or the Studio 54 scene). Some movies that capture New York in the 70s: Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Shaft,......

The best cop movie Gothamist has seen this year, Infernal Affairs, has been chosen as Hong Kong's official selection for Best Foreign Film consideration for the 2003 Academy Awards (meaning, the Academy Awards that will honor films from 2003, but will be broadcast in 2004). The premise is simple and complicated, as the plot description from IMDB indicates: A story between a mole in the police department and an undercover cop. Their objectives are......