Hear about that movie Romance and Cigarettes that premiered last night? You know, the one directed by John Turturro, starring Chris Walken, James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Steve Buscemi, Kate Winslet, Mary Louise-Parker, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Elaine Stritch and Amy Sedaris? Well, don’t feel bad if you didn't – that fact that two years since it wrapped the film’s been released all over the world except the town where it was shot speaks volumes......

Matthew Barney: No Restraint (directed by Alison Chernick) Love him or hate him, Matthew Barney's artwork is always provocative. Dressing in elaborate costumes and makeup, constructing baroque tableaux and often involving petroleum jelly, Barney's moving and still film works are less like a conventional movie and more like sculpture. If you attended any of the massively popular exhibitions of either his Cremaster series at the Guggenheim museum or a marathon screenings of his films, surely......

It's that time of the year again: When Hollywood honors its moviemaking the way it knows (and not always in equitable ways, given that Alfred Hitchcock nor Robert Altman, to name a few, have never won Directing Oscars) and America gets to watch hours of pre-show hosted by idiots. Giving commentary for Gothamist this year, Karen Wilson, Margaret Harper, and Jen Chung. 7:06PM First thoughts: Gael Garcia Bernal is so cute. Ryan Seacrest is an......

There is tons of speculation all over the Internet about the Oscar nominations for films released in 2006. As an Oscars fiend, we're not going to digress about the calculus of vote-splitting. Instead, we'll point out a couple things we noticed: - Best surprise nomination: Ryan Gosling's Best Actor nomination for Half Nelson; Gosling plays a drug-addicted teacher in Brooklyn trying to help one of his students...it'll be on DVD in three weeks - see......

Two quite controversial and buzzed about movies hit New York theaters this weekend. So far the critical opinion of raving lunatic Mel Gibson's new foreign language feature, Apocalypto, seems to be pretty favorable. The movie about a Mayan family man and the invading nearby tribe, sounds like it is painstakingly composed but has quite a bit of gratuitous, sadistic violence. Lisa Schwartzbaum in EW even calls it "the weirdest, most violent movie of the year,"......

If you've been living under a pop culture free rock, you may not be aware that Sacha Baron Cohen's new movie about his Kazakhstan journalist character, Borat is out this weekend. Sadly, Gothamist wasn't able to make it to an advance screening of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan but a very reliable source on comedy assures us that "it's the funniest movie ever." While the officials from Kazakhstan......

Yesterday, we were walking by the Loews Lincoln Square theater and noticed a huge inflatable toilet with slide on West 68th. Seriously - it was for the afternoon premiere of Flushed Away, the animated film about mice and toads and slugs and more in the London sewers. Children who were attending the premiere got to climb up and slide down the front. No one yelled "Turd!" or "Courtesy flush!" to them and they seemed thrilled.......

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......

You know it's the Oscars when P. Diddy busts out the velvet suit! Gothamist loves the Oscars, and we're going to attempt to do a little liveblogging. We might need to order a vat of caffeine and an EMT team at the ready; not because Chris Rock will be boring, but because we think that Gil Cates might kill us with his newfangled ideas and because we're meh about this year's nominees in the big......

Man, it had been so long since America had a good lip-syncing controversy to talk about, so thanks Lorne Michaels, Marci Klein and Joe Simpson! Everyone is buzzing about Ashlee Simpson, the "punkier" (but only in that pre-fab, third generation Avril Lavigne, Urban Outfitters way) sister of Jessica Simpson. Ashlee was either punk'd or revealed on Saturday Night Live when, during her second song, someone played the wrong vocal track (what played was Pieces......

Julie Atlas Muz, Burlesque Star/Mermaid...

Even the most jaded New Yorker can be thrilled by the sight of a movie being filmed on our streets, because, even the crappiest of movies with New York scenes can still be amazing if there's that one stunning vista of the city or you can say, "Yeah, that street really is that dirty." This picture of Steve Buscemi and some off-duty firefighters (playing firefighters, natch) gathering around the craft service table was taken......

So far, the work of Charlie Kaufman has only been adapted by two directors: Spike Jonze, with Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, and Michel Gondry, whose Human Nature was tepidly received but has directed the eagerly awaited 2004 release, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Eternal Sunshine stars Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Tom Wilkinson, Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood, and Mark Ruffalo, with Carrey as a man trying to erase memories of ex-girlfriend Winslet from his......

USA Today looks at the new Peter Pan movie from P.J. Hogan that is due this fall, which has Jason Isaacs as both Mr. Darling and Captain Hook, who says "Wendy is very attracted to Captain Hook. He's very cool and sexy. I said, 'Let's have open shirts, sort of Julio Iglesias-style.'" Gothamist saw the trailer a while ago and we were struck at how the Coldplay song, Clocks (video), was used in it. The......

My love for Owen Wilson continues with the opening of Shanghai Knights(check out the cool interactive kung fu) this weekend. It's directed by David Dobkin, not David Dorkin. Buy Shanghai Noon, but it's not critical to have seen Shanghai Noon in order to see Shanghai Knights; however, Noon is pretty damn funny. Read the lovefest of reviews for Knights by Elvis Mitchell, Charles Taylor, Jack Matthews and Roger Ebert. The latest film from Olivier Assayas......