THEATER: We like our comedy like we like our women: black and absurd. So it’s promising that the press release for a new play by Kevin Mandel uses those two irresistible words to describe A New Television Arrives, Finally. The strange story concerns “an American couple visited by a charismatic man presenting himself as a television set. Is the handsome stranger a charlatan or a guru?” Emmy award-winning actor Tom Pelphrey [Guiding Light] leads the......

We've said before that Mayor Bloomberg's girlfriend (or companion, which is what the NY Times refers to her as) Diana Taylor seems like a classy lady, unlike some other mayor's girlfriends. But we don't know much about her, except that she went to Dartmouth (Mayor Bloomberg accompanied her on an alumni weekend there), she worked in senior management at Keyspan, she was the state's superintendent of banking under Pataki, she was shortlisted by President Bush......

Manhattan Film Forum Following the overwhelming success of the Woody Allen series at Film Forum last winter, they've brought back the new 35mm print of the Woodman's classic ode to our great city for a one week run. Sitting back in the air conditioned dark, feeling the George Gershwin soundtrack and the stunning black and white photography wash over you, you'll fall for this metropolis and this movie all over again. As Allen's character Isaac......

Rocktavist Bono is battling a very local, personal cause...over fireplaces in his Manhattan apartment building (the San Remo). Apparently the smoke from other residents' fireplaces is ending up in his penthouse duplex, which he shares with his family (a wife and four children). The NY Times gets some inside info from the building on Central Park West: "Bono was so nice. He said, 'Listen, whatever I can do to get these things working, but it's......

Just a thought as we look ahead to this week's new releases. Someone should really take Diane Keaton aside to tell her that this series of increasingly painful looking romantic comedies where she plays an over-the-top meddling mom aren't good for her cinematic legacy. The newest installment is the Mandy Moore romantic comedy, Because I Said So, where Keaton plays a mother desperate to marry off her headstrong youngest daughter. Please Diane, after loving you......

Earlier this week, we reported on the 92nd Street Y event where New York magazine co-founder Milton Glaser attributed the low number of high-profile female designers to the fact that women who have children and stay at home with them are less visible professionally. First, some clarification (for The NY Times’ Tom Zeller, Jr. ): the comment came during the Q&A session following lectures by Glaser, Chip Kidd and Dave Eggers. An audience member asked......

Just what the world was waiting for! The NY Times reports that Arianna Huffington is starting a celebrity group blog with people like "Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon E. Jordan Jr., Maggie Gyllenhaal, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Diane Keaton, Norman Mailer and Mortimer B. Zuckerman." Huh. Did Huffington read the Businessweek article about blogs changing business and decide, "It's on"? It'll be called Huffington Post, the NY Times article......

Geoff Wolinetz, Freelance Satirist...

Will Leitch, Writer...

Gothamist wants to be one of the first to say what everyone will be uttering tomorrow with more frequency than usual: Why does Melissa Rivers persist? Joan, we understand, because she can be funny, though lately it's been more outrageous than incisive. And we understand nepotism and accept Tori Spelling's wooden acting...but Melissa...she must be stopped. And when she tears into some poor, celebrity with a bad stylist, no stylist at all, or her/his own......

Pico Iyer's essay about how Hollywood has been slowly steering away from Hollywood endings mentions recent films like Cold Mountain, Lost in Translation, House of Sand and Fog, and Mystic River as having darker or less resolved endings. But, as Iyer acknowledges, the tradition can be seen with Gone with the Wind or Casablanca. Which made Gothamist wonder what are the endings that linger more: Seeing Vincent Vega walk end Pulp Fiction alive (versus......

Ah, slow summer days. We leave you with this image of Jack Nicholson, sweating like a hog while filming up the street from our work. (The movie sounds interesting, Jack has a young girlfriend but falls for her more age appropriate mom, played by Diane Keaton, who is being courted by Keanu Reeves. Frances McDormand plays Diane's sister. On the minus side, it's directed by Nancy "What Women Want" Meyers.) The weekend forecast from WNBC.......