Photograph "Emerging from Penn Station" by boogaloo66 on Flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery at West 56th St. and Broadway in Manhattan, a pedestrian struck at Marathon Parkway and Northern Blvd. in Queens, and a shooting on Gleason Ave. and White Plains Rd. in the the Bronx. If you live in NJ and recently obtained a machine gun from local cops, they need it back. A court ruling made the market......

Prestige filmmakers take note: If you want the Times critics to really love you, what you need to do is put the fear in them. At least it worked for Tim Burton; his adaptation of Steven Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd gave reviewer A.O. Scott nightmares. And for that, Scott deems the film “close to a masterpiece, a work of extreme – I am tempted to say evil – genius.” (Current Rotten Tomato rating: 88% fresh.) One......

Filmmaker Ethan Coen has left his big brother behind and written three short plays all by himself. Called Almost an Evening, the triptych will be produced by the Atlantic Theater Company with a terrific cast that includes Elizabeth Marvel, who was riveting in Ivo van Hove’s unforgettable revival of Hedda Gabler, and Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham. The plays “unsuccessfully tackle important questions. In Waiting, someone waits somewhere for quite some time. In Four......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: falling debris on W 47th St. and 8th Ave. in Manhattan, a shooting on Broadway on Staten Island, and a suspicious boat at the Verrazano Bridge near Brooklyn. For a reason unrelated to terrorism, the U.S. Parks Dept. is going to keep the crown of the Statue of Liberty closed because it's a fire death-trap. Iranian President Mahmoud Amahdinejad's wish to visit Ground Zero was blocked due to security......

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......

Unhappy over the Mayor's gun dealer stings last May, one Georgia gun dealer has decided to sue Mayor Mike for $400 million. Adventure Outdoors, a gun dealer in Smyrna, Georgia (best known as Julia Roberts' hometown), claims the mayor's sting was "careless, willful and clearly illegal." Former Georgia congressman Bob Barr filed the suit, which also claims that the Mayor "made defamatory comments about the store and that undercover investigators used false information to buy......

- WABC 7 interviews the man swallowed by his Long Island cesspool! - What acrobatics people will do on subways on Vimeo - Forgotten NY looks at a rally to save St. Savior's in Maspeth - check out the protester with Darth Vader cut-out - Mafia cop Louis Eppolito gets rid of his defense attorney Bruce "John Gotti's Lawyer" Cutler - Gotham Girls Roller Derby is in Brooklyn - for now - People are......

Gothamist doesn't know what makes our head explode more, but we do know that we have New York magazine to blame/credit. The city's sewer system might poo up city beaches! Is Daily Candy worth hundreds of millions of dollars? Brooklyn (as in, the hip parts of Brooklyn) merits a big section about lifestyle stuff, including where to buy your very own $5000 duct taped chair, since it's gauche to take the one in Gramps' garage......

Ooh, AM New York confirms what we suspected: The NY Times website was down for 4 hours last night. We were blaming it on our Verizon DSL as we tried to desperately read Ben Brantley's review of Julia Roberts in "Three Days of Rain" (aka, "Blame it on the Rain") but gave up after a while - and then the local news distracted us. No word on what happened to the site, but have you......

Hmm, Gothamist is familiar with wacky antics from fellow moviegoers, but we haven't had to deal with a Broadway play audience that actually yells at the actors. The Daily News listed some recent examples of bad behavior, including one audience member dousing another with water and someone yelling to actor Larry Bryggman during a performance of Festen, saying that he couldn't hear Bryggman during a speech. Oy - we think we remember hearing that some......

It’s almost April, do you know where your Broadway mega-shows are? Cate Blanchett and Hedda Gabler got things off to a smash start, and the rest of the big guns are revving up: Tarzan, Lestat , Julia Roberts in Three Days of Rain, Ali MacGraw and Julianna Margulies in Festen…and more. We’ll spare you (and ourselves) the wallet strain and the eye-rolling – there are plenty of worthy littler shows crying out to be seen.......

We noted in yesterday’s roundup of theatre in 2005 that at least in our optimistic eyes, last year had plenty of great shows. If anywhere like the same number of impressive plays and musicals appear in ‘06, it’d be hard to complain. But nonetheless, we do have a small wish list. -- For more affordable tickets. Even if it’s just making a certain number available for a low price at each performance, or making......

Earlier this week, the Daily News ran a story about people looking to lose their New York accents. Sam Chwat, who founded New York Speech Improvement Services - and has worked with Julia Roberts and Andie MacDowell, and is even working with the cast of Glengarry Glen Ross for their Chicago accents - says many of his clients are trying to rid themselves of the "streetwise image of fast-talking New Yorkers." "If you spend......

In a city full of struggling artists, the last thing we need to hear is Julia Roberts doing an AOL voiceover that could have paid for our dinner. It just isn't fair when too much is never enough for some people. The ubiquitous celebrity author would be another example of this phenomena. Why, WHY?! Fortunately the Lit Lite Lousy Literature Reading Series exists. The series continues its celebration of the worst books ever written this......

The BBC reports that Warburtons graciously asked 2,000 filmgoers what the cheesiest movie lines were, and their answers are this: 1. "I'm the king of the world!" - Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) in Titanic 2. "Nobody puts Baby in the corner" - Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) in Dirty Dancing 3. "Is it still raining? I hadn't noticed." - Carrie (Andie MacDowell) while standing in a downpour in Four Weddings in a Funeral 4. "Ditto" -......

In a subject close to Gothamist's heart (the subject of trying to see a movie), yesterday the NY Times profiled the New York Region > The City > East Village: The Customer Was Always Right? Not at Kim's Video on Avenue A" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/nyregion/thecity/17kims.html">bittersweet closing of Kim's Video on Avenue A, where employees terrorized customers into video selections more associated with Cineaste, versus Entertainment Weekly. The article provides the history of Kim's (a drycleaning establishment turned......

Is there a dress code for the matinee vs night for men. For example if we are going to museums all morning and then taking kids to a matinee, can men wear casual shorts and a polo shirt? Thanks, Sheila As is the way of things, standards have slid, and there isn't really a strict dress code for Broadway anymore. The short answer is that, if a guy were to show up for a matinee......

No one will ever be able to truly replace Jerry Orbach on Law & Order, but the casting folks are definitely working in the right vein to maintain the aura of wise-cracking, seen-it-all detective if early reports are true. Apparently, Dennis Farina is in talks to join Law & Order. This is fabulous, as Dennis Farina is one of the greatest character actors around. Disregarding the stupid NBC sitcom and work-for-hire roles, his bread and......

The Post takes a look at the so–called blog of a prostitute, belledejour-uk.blogspot.com. The blogger, who calls herself Belle de Jour, an homage to the Luis Bunuel film with Catherine Deneuve as a mild housewife turned daytime prostitute, think that of celebrities, Elizabeth Hurley could be a good prostitute while Julia Roberts and Elisabeth Shue should not have played them ("Julia 'Sexless' Roberts"), while other bloggers suspect she's a fraud. The Post also notes that......

As the marketing machine steps into high gear to push the new Julia Roberts movie, Mona Lisa Smile, Gothamist can't help but think it's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie lite, complete with a cheery Cranberries song in the trailer and TV commercials. A one-liner for the movie is "This is the story of a free-spirited Berkeley graduate in 1953 who takes a position as a teacher at the women's college, Wellesley." Add Julia Roberts'......

He may have won an Oscar for it, but Sean Connery's performance as Jim Malone in The Untouchables has been called the worst movie accent of all time by Empire magazine. Awww, maybe, but it's got one of the best explanations of how to fight your enemies ever, when Malone tells Elliot Ness how to get Al Capone: You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun.......

Oscar Commentary
Oscar is celebrating its 75th anniversary, I'm celebrating my 25th anniversary of watching Oscar....

I understand that the economics of Hollywood is different from any reality or parallel universe. Julia Roberts $25 MIllion a pop, Mel Gibson, another $25 Million a pop, plus there are perks (assistants, stylists, etc). But Brittany Murphy getting $4 million for her next film? All I have to say is that she has a fucking awesome agent to sell that bag of goods. Plus Hollywood producers are fucking stupid. Some more Hollywood salaries. NY......