The Fame remake will be hitting big screens in the Fall of 2009, and the cast has just been finalized. Reports are coming in that Megan Mullally, Kelsey Grammer, Charles S. Dutton, Bebe Neuwirth and Debbie Allen have all been enlisted "to fill out the administrative and teaching roles" at New York City High School of Performing Arts. MGM says "This picture is a celebration, a testament to people pursuing their dreams, so we set......

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Gus Van Sant’s new film Milk tells the story of Harvey Milk, who in 1977 became the first openly gay man to be elected to a major public office in the United States, only to be assassinated within his first year of serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. At turns tragic and exhilarating, the film chronicles the last eight years of Milk’s life (played by Sean Penn), when he worked on campaigns for public office and the protection of gay employees....

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Well, this is only a few seasons late, but in case you're just catching Cloverfield for the first time on DVD it may seem relevant! The map above was created to tell people "where things in Cloverfield happen okay." Find out just where the monster punted the Statue of Liberty's head from, and much much more. Warning: the descriptions contain a lot of likes, dudes and oh my gods, okay?......

In Role Models, Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott play bad-boy salesmen who travel to schools pushing an energy drink called Minotaur. When Rudd's character over-imbibes and totals the company truck, they're forced to do court-ordered community service in a mentoring program for troubled youth. Hilarious hi-jinks ensue? Not so much, says Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal: "This furiously raunchy, occasionally bright and eventually benumbing comedy...is a prototypical summer release dropped into......

In conjunction with The Andy Warhol Museum, Plexifilm is set to release the first ever authorized Andy Warhol films on DVD. 13 Most Beautiful...Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests features 13 of Warhol's classic silent film portraits (he filmed nearly 500 in two years). You'll see the familiar faces of: Nico, Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick, Dennis Hopper, and more. Shot between 1964 and 1966 at Warhol's Factory studio in New York City, and on his......

In Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks are platonic pals who find romance through their entrepreneurial porno-making scheme. Robert Wilonsky at the Village Voice says, "There is something decidedly novel (nay, revolutionary!) about this particular Kevin Smith film: It looks professionally made, which counts for something. No longer does a Smith movie play like a vacation slideshow; the camera moves!" But Wilonsky thinks "the storyline's as conventional......

Breakfast at Tiffany's, the novel by Truman Capote, is turning 50 (in just 3 years, the film will do the same). USA Today takes a look at the classic, which The New Yorker called "empty nostalgia" at the time (Capote wrote a letter to the publication saying he was "hurt and dismayed" by the criticism). The story however, whether on paper or celluloid, has stood the test of time and remains a favorite amongst......

Here's a fresh, hip-level view of what it's like to pedal at top speed through New York City traffic with a flagrant disregard for traffic laws, safety and basic common sense. The people behind the video say it's "a teaser for Empire, a film about having fun on your bike in the city." Sure, it's all harmless DIY fun until your fixie's painted white and locked at the corner where you ran your last......

Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut; the ambitious, surreal and expansive Synecdoche, New York, stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as a regional theater director who moves to NYC from Schenectady after his wife Adele (Catherine Keener) leaves him. Using money from a MacArthur fellowship, Caden rents a huge warehouse and spends the next decades directing a never-finished theatrical epic based on his life. Manohla Dargis at the Times loved it (ditto Gothamist): "It’s extravagantly conceptual but also......

Don't feel bad about mangling the pronunciation of Charlie Kaufman's new film, Synecdoche, New York; page three of the press kit is solely dedicated to the title's pronunciation [Sih-NECK-doh-kee] and various meanings, such as "A Part is used for the Whole, as in The Screen for Movies." Though Kaufman wrote such gems as Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, this is his directorial debut, and he certainly picked an ambitious project......

After about a decade of delays, Kaufman Astoria Studios broke ground today on a $22 million expansion. The new building will be located diagonally across the street from Kaufman Astoria’s current building and will house an 18,000-square-foot sound stage, as well as an additional 22,000 square feet of offices, dressing rooms and carpentry shops, Crain's reports. Kaufman Astoria president Hal Rosenbluth had originally announced plans to expand in 1999, but put the project on hold......

Oliver Stone's latest president biopic W. opens today, and stars Josh Brolin as 43, Richard Dreyfuss as Vice and Thandie Newton as Condoleezza. Ornery Armond White at the New York Press calls it "the best example of American filmmaking courage since Munich." Then again, here's a man who thinks that "for the past eight years, the media elite have fought back against Bush." Right! The press sure gave Bush hell when the administration was......

Ridley Scott's Body of Lies stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a high strung CIA operative and Russell Crowe as his duplicitous supervisor who spends his days scheming covert ops from the ironically banal environs of his suburban home. A.O. Scott at the Times wonders: "If terrorism has become boring, does that mean the terrorists have won? Or, conversely, is the grinding tedium of this film good news for our side, evidence of the awesome might......

Every NYC movie/tv show can create a new pop culture landmark and tourist destination. Serious Eats points out that When Harry Met Sally had Katz's and Sex and the City had Magnolia, and now Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist has staked a claim on Veselka. Owner Tom Birchard told SE that they were "slammed all weekend" with folks allegedly wanting to recreate the scene where Michael Cera and Kat Dennings enjoy some pierogies at the......

Jason van Genderen’s Mankind Is No Island is a sweet and sentimental little film that was shot entirely with a cell phone in Sydney and New York. It's not the first example of cell phone movie-making, and certainly not the last (Spike Lee has recently enthused about the possibilities.) But this one has the distinction of winning $20,000 at last week's Tropfest at the World Financial Center Plaza. Not a bad haul considering the......

The trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua was a thing of wonder, with a small army of dogs rapping in a spectacular Mayan Busby Berkeley chorus number. But cuidado: the finished product, which features Cheech Marin and Luis Guzman voicing Latino stereotypes for mucho dinero, has no rapping! The Detroit News says it's "not the apocalypse-signaling, cultural abomination its trailers make it out to be. The bad news: That's pretty much the best thing that......

The film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's satirical novel Choke concerns a sex-addicted med-school drop-out (Sam Rockwell) who works as an Irish indentured servant in a Colonial-era theme park to help pay for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother's (Angelica Huston) stay in an expensive private medical hospital. The movie's creepiness gets under your skin a little bit, but it also has a lot of heart to temper all the black comedy. Rex Reed begs to differ: "I......

File under: should have seen it coming? Variety is reporting that Warner Bros. is gearing up to create a prequel to I Am Legend. "The studio has set D.B. Weiss to write a script that is based on a detailed outline that was hatched over the past few months by Smith," and others, and the film will show a pre-apocalyptic New York City as the final days of humanity are counted down. Since the studio......

A rendering of the lobby of Cassandra Cinema. Except for the avant-garde Ocularis screenings in the old Galapagos, North Brooklyn has been a dead zone for movie theaters for years. Why, just the other day the Greenpointers blogger could be heard begging the world to open up a movie theater near her: "I know it will take you years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I promise you I will go every Sunday......

Righteous Kill—which sounds like the title of the sequel to Death Blow—stars Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino as New York detectives searching for the serial killer who murdered their acting abilities, ha ha. There are critical take-downs galore here, but this one from Rolling Stone tickled us: "Some people think Robert De Niro and Al Pacino would be a kick to watch just reading a phone book. Well, bring on that phone book. Righteous......

Last week rumors started swirling around the making of Ghostbusters III, and now Harold Ramis has confirmed some of them. He says, "Yes, Columbia is developing a script for GB3. Judd Apatow has made several other films for Sony, so of course the studio is hoping to tap into some of the same acting talent. Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman and I are consulting at this point, and according to Dan, Bill Murray is willing to be......

A.O. Scott over at the Times loves A Secret, Claude Miller’s "haunting" new film adaptation of a French novel by Philippe Grimbert. The movie skips through time, covering the pre and post war lives of a fractured Jewish family in France. Scott calls it a story of "confused passion and ethical struggle" that "leaves in place a sense that something horribly and splendidly strange can lie under the surface of ordinary experience.... The film......

This Friday brings good news, as Variety is reporting that the Ghostbusters are making their way back to the big screen. This isn't some thrown together, B-list, straight-to-DVD sequel, either. They say "the studio has set The Office co-exec producers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky to write a script for a film designed to bring back together the original cast of Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson." No word on yet on......

Left to right: Chuck Palahniuk, Clark Gregg, Aaron Gell, Sam Rockwell. Last night Radar Magazine hosted a screening of the film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's satirical novel Choke, about a sex-addicted med-school drop-out (played by Sam Rockwell) who works as an Irish indentured servant in a Colonial-era theme park to keep his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother in an expensive private medical hospital. The movie's creepiness gets under your skin a little bit, but it also has a......

Some anonymous filmmakers have created Save Coney Island: The Movie. From their YouTube page, where they posted a trailer this week, they describe it as follows: "When Thor Equities, an infamous real-estate company, threatens to build condominiums on Coney Island's core amusements, Amos Wengler, the troubadour, must keep the spirit of Coney Island alive with a song before all the memories fade forever. The life, spirit and essence of Coney Island explode on the screen......

Let's face it, New York City is going to have many cinematic love letters written to it, and they're not all going to be Woody Allen's Manhattan. The latest is called, simply, New York, I Love You, and amongst the long list of directors are Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. The cast includes bold-face names as well, like Robin Wright Penn, Ethan Hawke, Blake Lively, Hayden Christiansen, Kevin Bacon, Rachel Bilson, James Caan, Orlando Bloom...the......

You know summer's over when the biggest movie opening is Hamlet 2, a Sundance hit about a high school teacher's struggle to save the school's drama program by writing, directing, producing and starring in a zany time-travel musical. (Okay, there's also Death Race, which the Times calls "a supercharged junkyard apocalypse powered by an unabashed relish for brutal comeuppance and a flair for delirious vehicular mayhem.") British funnyman Steve Coogan – you know, the......