Two movies set in New York are coming out today, and both are getting a lot of press, promo and opined upon. American Gangster is set in 1960-70s New York and stars Russell Crowe as a detective working to take down a real-life heroin kingpin, Frank Lucas (played by Denzel Washington). Lucas claimed to gross $1M a day on 116th Street dealing drugs, which he got to the States by smuggling in the coffins of......

Author, critic and journalist Steven Heller started out as someone who, in the words of Paula Scher, "had been more or less oblivious to design," but went on not only to launch the careers of some of our most well-known illustrators, but also to chronicle graphic design in more than 100 books. Heller also has been a contributing editor to Print, Eye, Baseline and I.D., writes obituaries for The New York Times and a column......

EVENT: The New York Book Club at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum presents…"Breaking News: How the Associated Press Has Covered New York City". The panelists include "Hal Buell, longtime AP photo editor who put images of the Vietnam War in newspapers across America; Richard Drew, AP photographer who has covered New York events including 9/11; Edie Lederer, longtime UN correspondent and first woman to be the foreign chief of bureau; and Valerie Komor, corporate......

"To make a long story shot, you can't be a successful writer AND run a business as a hooker at the same time. Something's gotta give." Author Tracy Quan had been a call girl since her early teens and its this first hand experience that provided her with the content for her writing. Starting as a bi-weekly serial on Salon.com, Nancy Chan: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl led to two novels translated into 13......

The prolific journalist and author David Halberstam died yesterday in a car crash outside of San Francisco. Halberstam, a New Yorker, was traveling in a car that was broadsided while trying to make a left turn. Two other cars were involved in the crash, none of the drivers were seriously injured. The NY Times obituary notes that Halberstam "was killed doing what he had done his entire adult life: reporting," as he was on his......

SCIENCE: The UnCoolKids have done it again, scoping out the science events around the city. Tonight is Café Scientifique: ”Café Scientifique is a monthly informal gathering in which scientists discuss ideas over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine with people of all backgrounds and professions. Making science accessible to anyone keen on learning, the cafés provide a unique opportunity for the public to discuss scientific trends and developments affecting and changing our......

ART: Running through March 7th at Gavin Brown's enterprise at Passerby is "Radical Living Papers". Some of the passionate writers of forty years ago will have their words become a part of this exhibit, which serves as a snapshot of the Vietnam War era and a history of counter-culture and alt press. Publications (all from the 60s and 70s) include Rolling Stone, The Black Panther, Freep, The Seed and the Los Angeles Free Press. Friday......

Maybe it was the umpteenth “F Bush” tag that seen in the subway station. Or maybe it was President Bush’s interview on Sixty Minutes last night. But recent news about the war, troop deployments and civil rights has infused us with feeling like we're in the 21st Century version of the Wonder Years. This is not the Sixties, but it seems like today’s commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. has gotten some of us......

The story about Wesley Autrey jumping into the subway tracks yesterday afternoon to save a fellow straphanger at the 137th Street downtown 1 platform gets more amazing. It turns out that Autrey and two other women had helped 20 year old Cameron Hollopeter right before the fall - Hollopeter had a seizure and Autrey used a pen to keep his mouth open. They called for a station agent's help, but Hollopeter got up and......

Jude Narita’s solo show Walk the Mountain, currently running at Theater for the New City, delves into the horrors endured by women who survived the Vietnam War and the Khmer Rouge. The text of the play is inspired by interviews Narita conducted with Vietnamese and Cambodian women; throughout the performance she plays a wide variety of roles to create a detailed portrait of human suffering. The centerpiece of the spare set, designed by Jerry Browning,......

THEATER: Jude Narita's one-woman show, Walk the Mountain, is about the hellish effects of the Vietnam War. In the wrong hands, this might make for an unbearably ponderous evening, but the Times review puts us at ease: “In dramatizing unspeakably horrific events, must an artist end up brutalizing her audience as well? [Jude Narita] reminds us that it's possible for a performer to treat both her material and her audience with respect.” For Walk the......

Ed Bradley, longtime CBS News journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent, died today at age 65. Bradley had been diagnosed with leukemia some years ago, but a recent infection made his condition life-threatening. Bradley, who grew up in Philadelphia, had covered the Vietnam War and was a White House correspondent for CBS in the 1970s. Bradley won 19 Emmy Awards for a range of topics, an interview with Timothy McVeigh, Chinese forced-labor camps and a recent......

Comedian Dane Cook has a massive following, from his huge record sales to his zillions of MySpace friends. This weekend we'll see if he can extend the brand loyalty to the cineplex, as his first starring role in Employee of the Month hits theaters. Cook plays the slacker box boy Zach who's the Parker Lewis of the bulk bargain store, SuperMart. However, Zach decides to buckle down and shape up when he discovers the new......

Almost two years ago, the cornerstone at Ground Zero was placed at the World Trade Center site. But now it's been moved to Hauppague, NY! The NY Times reports that the largely symbolic slab of granite was moved in order to accomodate the new designs for the space, as there's been a new Freedom Tower design in the meantime. Developer Silverstein Properties said the cornerstone "needs to be repositioned to make sense in the new......

Recently, there's been a bit of opposition ot the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's World Trade Center Memorial design, which was selected over two years ago, with the main complaints being that the memorial was partly subterranean. Now the LMDC has issued a letter to the complaining families saying that memorial will be built as planned, as construction will begin next month.. The Post received a letter, which has LMDC president Stefan Pryor explaining that when......

Everyone is talking or writing about Dan Rather and CBS's News' questionable judgement over the National Guard documents, even going so far as to attach "-gate" to "Rather" just in case people out there couldn't figure out this was a bit scandalous. One caption on a Dan Rather photograph from Reuters read:Internet bloggers have drawn blood and American journalism may never be the same. To hear some press experts tell it, CBS's admission on September......

While the purpose of the Times article about selected WTC memorial Reflecting Absence is to explain how landscape architect Peter Walker joined original designer Michael Arad, the real story is about designer and WTC memorial juror Maya Lin. Lin, who designed the Vietnam War Memorial as well as the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, AL, as well as a dreamy Wave Field at University of Michigan, was a supporter of Reflecting Absence. The article......

Gothamist is not the biggest fan of Chris Matthews and Hardball (we may be used to shouting, but Hardball makes our ears bleed), but we do recommend watching it tonight for Matthews's exclusive interview with former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. McNamara, who served under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and was involved with the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam War, is the subject of the new documentary, Fog of War, by Errol Morris. Gothamist saw......

If it's fall, it must be time for the New York Film Festival. This year, the opening night film is Mystic River, the ensemble drama directed by Clint Eastwood. The cast is ridiculously loaded with great actors: Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, Laura Linney, Marcia Gay Harden, and Laurence Fishburne. The story is dark, eliciting comparisons to Eastwood's tour de force western, Unforgiven, but its present day setting makes it more wrenching. Sean......