A Giant hooked up to a shock device, numerous wedding proposals and an American Idol audition all added to the collective fun know as “Media Day” at the Super Bowl. What else can you expect when nearly 5,000 reporters have to shake out stories from 200 or so football players and coaches. Ruben Droughns must be looking for something to do because he agreed to answer questions while holding two electrodes hooked up to......

We know that Giants co-owner and movie producer Steve Tisch has been trying to ramp up the star power for the Giants sidelines. After Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore and Cameron Diaz were seen at a game last fall, Tisch told the NY Times, he brings "the spices, the taste, the flavor" to the Giants (if the Giants experience were a soup; the other co-owners, the Maras, would bring the meat and potatoes). This past......

Did anyone go see destructo-porn blockbuster, I Am Legend, this weekend? Apparently New Yorkers who saw the movie up close and personal when it was being filmed gave it two thumbs down, or rather -- one middle finger up! amNewYork reports on Will Smith's run-ins with disgruntled locals."I would say, percentage-wise, it's the most amount of middle fingers I have received in my career. I'm used to people liking me… [all those] middle fingers, I......

It seems like just yesterday that the Brooklyn Bridge was being blown up by Hollywood. How time flies. I Am Legend, the movie for which this post-apocalyptic craziness occurred, is opening today (get your promotional survivor kit ready!). In the 100 minutes of watching it, you'll meet three main characters: Manhattan, Sam the dog, and Will Smith ("Robert Neville"). The combination is apparently a winning one, as the reviews have been frighteningly positive...it will scare......

We've been monitoring how I am Legend, the big budget post-apocalyptic zombie movie set in New York, will be portraying the Big Apple ever since filming took place on the Brooklyn Bridge (it eventually gets blown up). Now, with reviews starting to pop up, we're hearing mixed things about the movie but raves about how a futuristic people-less New York City looks. The Observer's Sara Vilkomerson was freaked out, noting how the city is......

A lot of the filming for the upcoming Will Smith zombie movie I Am Legend took place in Washington Square Park and at the Brooklyn Bridge, but Union Square gets the star treatment on the I Am Legend website. Well, star treatment if you consider a rather bombed-out looking New York to be glamorous. The website offers a pseudo-360-degree perspective of the popular gathering place. Yes, that's Whole Foods above and here are some......

Earlier this year, I Am Legend, the latest Will Smith extravaganza took over the Brooklyn Bridge. Warner Bros. spent around $5,000,000 for a 6 night shoot in New York, after getting approval from 14 government agencies, with hundreds of extras, including 160 members of the National Guard in full combat gear. The plot: "Robert Neville (Will Smith) is a brilliant scientist, but even he could not contain the terrible virus that was unstoppable, incurable, and......

Charting the New York Times bestseller list for the third consecutive week is a memoir by the 42 year-old Las Vegas chef Jeffrey Henderson. Cooked: From the Streets to the Stove, from Cocaine to Foie Gras, is Henderson’s tale of becoming a teenage drug dealer in South Central Los Angeles, getting caught and going to federal prison, and of how Henderson ultimately flourished in restaurant kitchens as a chef, something that changed his life. When......

Children of Men (directed by Alfonso Cuarón): Seeing movies in the theater is a wonderful viewing experience—big image, big audio, big popcorn—but there's no rewind button. To really enjoy a film like Alfonso Cuarón's futuristic drama Children of Men, the ability to rewind the really masterful sequences for an immediate second or third viewing almost seems necessary. As you watch Clive Owen's Theo makes his way through the chaotic English countryside in 2027 trying to......

It seems like, all across the network, folks were up to no good. Maybe it was all the green beer from last weekend... Gothamist spent the week writing about New Yorkers behaving badly: at the post office, at the Garden, and at the fertility clinic. Calvin Klein may not be misbehaving, but he's just a little dirty, and in a completely different way than some NYC kitchens. SFist had its share of misbehave-rs, too, like......

First the Brooklyn Bridge was shut down for Will Smith's new movie, I Am Legend, and now Matt Damon is causing some traffic by the Lincoln Tunnel. We hear the scene was a big 'ol mess with some pretty impatient travelers and commuters on Friday, and in the midst of the chaos stood Damon. This is for the latest of The Bourne Identity films, The Bourne Ultimatum (the last shot of The Bourne Supremacy......

The end of the world as the producers of I Am Legend know it has arrived. The film started work on an elaborate "escape from New York" scene that involves thousands of extras, as well as tanks and helicopters. Many people went down to check out the scene in the cold, The Black Hawk helicopter was docked near the Brooklyn Bridge and huge klieg lights were shining onto the bridge. And since some bloggers......

Possibly to pre-empt freaked out phone calls to 911, the production folks from the Will Smith film I Am Legend have alerted not only residents and businesses downtown and near the Brooklyn Bridge, but the major papers to to tell everyone not to freak out if they see Black Hawk helicopters, tanks, military activity, hundreds if not thousands of people, and lots of lights near the Brooklyn Bridge. Because it's just filming, not an......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an electric shock at 10 Penn Plaza, a fall victim down a hole at Beaver and William Street, and a person stuck between train cars at 96th Street on the 2/3. A tip from Marianne, via Gothamist Contribute: "The public should not be alarmed by activity beginning tomorrow in the vicinity of the Brooklyn Bridge. Beginning tomorrow at 4:00 PM, Tuesday, January 23, and continuing on weekdays through January,......

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......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: another scaffold collapse, a fatal fire in the Bronx, and an animal rescue uptown. Will Smith's Legend has been driving Washington Square Park area residents insane: "I haven't slept for three weeks." The NTSB is saying that wind was responsible for the Cory Lidle plane crash. The NYPD wants to install video surveillance at all 344 city housing projects to deter crime. The ACLU wants privacy safeguards. Busta Rhymes......

+ An 11 year old in Jersey got busted for "carrying 234 bags of heroin and 111 bags of cocaine with an estimated street value of $3,450." + A man stabbed his ex-girlfriend's grandmother to death, stabbed another woman, and then turn the knife on himself. + A new playground dedicated to late Challenger astronaut and Harlem native Ronald McNair is opened - it has a space theme - "A climbing set is based......

On Friday night, there was a smoke condition at City Hall. Apparently an "electrical panel overheated," filling the basement with smoke around 7:45PM, forcing a building evacuation. According to the NY Times, only a few building workers were in the building (Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn weren't around) and though the fire department brought a hose into the building, no water was sprayed. We're glad that City Hall wasn't damaged, as it's a truly......

If you're going to do an issue about the 100 People Who Shape Our World, you might as well have a big party, right? Time magazine rolled out the red carpet last night for people on its list, their friends, and the press. Gothamist stopped by the party just ahead of Stephen Colbert. We were not wearing a bear costume, so he wasn't that afraid of us. And perennial favorite, Rachael Ray, showed up......

It's Oscar Night and Gothamist is here. Tonight, it'll be a joint effort, from our resident film guru Karen Wilson and our resident Oscar freak Jen Chung. We hope you weigh in with what you think! KW: I have my popcorn, my diet coke -- I am ready for the spectacle and the excess. JC: ALL RIGHT! I just took extra Vitamin C - I'm waiting for some food delivery. 6:36PM Isaac Mizrahi has NOT......

While examining your weekend options, it's worth a mention that Game 2 of the NBA Finals is Sunday night at 9pm. If you haven't been to your local sports bar lately, it's a great excuse to pound some beer and wings with your buddies on a school night. The Spurs and Pistons kicked off The Finals last night, but the ratings for these supposedly "boring" teams were so low that a rerun of CSI actually......

[Warning: The following contains MTV Movie Award spoilers! If such a thing exists.] "Sweet!" As if conquering the legislature wasn't enough, Napoleon Dynamite won Best Movie and the film's star, Jon Heder, won for both Best Musical Performance and Male Breakthrough Performance (must have been his awesome bo-staff skills....or perhaps, because it was a Paramount/MTV Films movie) at the MTV Movie Awards, scheduled to air Thursday night. Hosted by Jimmy Fallon, the MTV Awards had,......

[Gothamist is happy to welcome David Hirschman, who guested as an interviewer last summer, to our family. David will be covering a variety of subjects; today is his first look at how NYC is portrayed in movies.] The way NYC is depicted in the passable Will Smith vehicle Hitch is not unlike how it has been portrayed over the last decade in Sex and the City and Friends; it's that whimsical fantasy world where everyone......

It's a complete cliche but in order for movies like the new romantic comedy opening this weekend with Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney, The Wedding Date, to do well at the box office chicks have to promise the trade-off. Something along the lines of "my movie with the word Wedding in the title" for "your silly game with sweaty men in tight pants on Sunday." Not that Debra and Dermot's movie looks like it will......

Ben Lyons, MTV Co-host...

Gothamist didn't think of it because we were too distracted by "Why would we go see this movie?" type thoughts, but, luckily, both Drew's Script-o-Rama and low culture tackled how the robots in I, Robot, the upcoming Alex Proyas (Dark City) film, look very much like the robot Bjork in her All Is Full Of Love video, directed by Chris Cunningham. Gothamist has seen the trailer for I, Robot a couple of times now, and......