The Todd Haynes Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There has gotten so much press for so long we kept forgetting it wasn't actually released until today! The high-concept Oscar contender, for those who haven’t heard a million times already, features six different actors portraying a Dylan-type character at different stages of his career. It opens today at select theaters but film buffs have been cultivating opinions about the polarizing film since it first screened......

The holiday-time movie releases are starting to pile up with their usual feverish frequency. Some have Christmas themes, like the widely reviled Vince Vaughn vehicle Fred Claus that’s already roadkill on the lost highway of cinema history; others, like Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, are timed to make an impression as close to Academy Award-voting season as possible. Here are some of the biggest gorillas set to dominate New York’s screens in the next six......

Last night we sent photographer Raymond Haddad to the I'm Not There concert at Beacon Theater. Calexico, The Roots, My Morning Jacket, J Mascis, Yo La Tengo, Mason Jennings, Joe Henry, Mark Lanegan, Lee Ranaldo & the Million Dollar Bashers and many more were on hand to celebrate the soundtrack, the film and of course Bob Dylan himself (who, in fact, was not there). The soundtrack is a double-discer that's been getting praise from......

Jonathan Lethem Selects BAM Cinématek Starting next Monday and running through the middle of November, Brooklyn author and Friends of BAM chairperson Jonathan Lethem will be programming the cinématek with some of his favorite movies. Fans of his writing know that Lethem loves pop culture but this series doesn't really have more of an over arching theme than that it features some of the author's most beloved films and plain ol' good movies. There are......

We've made it through 10 days of this year's New York Film Festival, and it's been a great run so far. As usual, the selection committee has picked stellar films and we've sat in on some star-studded Q&A sessions at Lincoln Center. Here are a few thoughts at the midpoint. Local boy Noah Baumbach presented the follow up to his Oscar-nominated and former NYFF favorite The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding at......

Ira Glass is the brains, heart and larynx behind the wildly popular program This American Life; each show employs a theatrical, multiple-act structure to carve strange slices of life out of a unique thematic pie. The show began almost 12 years ago as a Chicago public radio program but has since mutated into an Emmy-nominated TV series on Showtime – a leap that prompted Glass and his team to relocate to New York City, bringing......

Barefoot in the Park Central Park Film Festival Saturday, 8 pm To close out this year's Central Park Film Festival, five nights of free out door movies in the park, the organizers put it to the people to choose the ultimate date night movie featuring our fair city. Out of Hitch, The Way We Were and Barefoot in the Park, Gothamist thinks the city chose wisely and well. If you've never seen the movie version......

FILM: A tribute to Jean Genet on film begins tonight at BAM. The focus will be on films inspired by the French writer, as well as Genet's own Un Chant D'Amour. BAM describes the festival further: A writer, criminal, homosexual, activist, and self-styled renegade, Jean Genet creates incendiary work that offers dreamlike evocations of moral ambiguity in a repressed society, and is rife with homosexuality, outlandish fantasies of submission, and acts of violence. This series......

The Guardian is reporting that Cate Blanchett is one of the actors playing the role of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes's biopic. This wouldn't, of course, be the first time that a woman has played a man, or vice versa. The Australian actress and the Duluth musician don't have that much physically in common, but that's no matter. There will also be a lot of other actors playing Dylan. The film, I'm Not There,......

Some people watch the Super Bowl for the game, some people watch it because they know there will be Buffalo wings at the gathering, and some people watch it for the ads. You can thank Ridley Scott, Chiat/Day and Apple for making Super Bowl Commercial Analysis as big as Monday Morning Quarterbacking. There are many places where you can watch last night's ads - Google Video, USA Today, AdAge, the NY Times - but Gothamist......

Carrie McLaren,
Editor, Stay Free!...

This past weekend, Animal Magazine had a show of various artists work at the Chelsea Market. One work, a portrist of President Bush using monkeys, caused the Chelsea Market's manager to freak out and forced the show to close. Of course there is debate about free speech, references to Mayor Giuliani's reaction to Chris Ofili's Virgin Mary embellished (quite beautifully, in Gothamist's opinion) with cow elephant dung at the 1999 BMA Sensation show, etc., but......

There are certain quirky and intriguing people in the media, whose awe-inspiring creative output makes them just the sort of people whom you'd love to be accidentally sitting next to in a coffeehouse, just so you could evesdrop on their conversation. Or better yet, hear them present on their most recent works in an auditorium for a nominal fee. You're in luck if the latter sounds to you like a great Thursday night, as the......

The Guardian gives Harvey Weinstein a chance to pound his chest and show that underneath the bravado, he's a man who likes a good cry in a Weinstein-penned article about Miramax release, Cold Mountain: In the early 1990s, I sat down to watch a movie that my company had just missed out on acquiring. Now, I know what my reputation is - I read the papers. I'm the supposed tough guy of the movie business.......

A Utah artist's right to make naked Barbie photographs (okay, naked Barbie in a blender...naked tortilla wrapped and salsa covered Barbie in a casserole, baking in the oven) was upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The matter was brought to 9th Circuit Court by Mattel after a lower court's decision that satirizing the Barbie was all right. Mattel feels that Tom Forsythe's images of naked Barbies being attacked by kitchen......

If the Oscars do go on tonight, I'll be glad because then everyone can shut up about it. It may seem strange for me to say this, given my love for movies and the Oscars and how I generally live for movies and love the day the Oscar nominations come out...but there's no Best Picture film I'm really behind this year...the only category I'm interested in Original Screenplay, and it's highly doubtful Almodovar or......