MOVIE: If you've never seen anything from Matthew Barney's Cremaster series, then cancel all plans tonight because you've got new ones. Barney's Cremaster 2 is screening tonight (no need to see these films in order), and you will be visually dazzled. While it's not plot-heavy, the Guggenheim describes it as "a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system." 8pm // Austrian Cultural Forum [11 East 52nd St] // Free THEATER: Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935......

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......

If like Gothamist you were thrilled by Matthew Barney's Cremaster film cycle and its subsequent exhibition of stills, sculpture and clips at the Guggenheim, your wait for more of Barney's weird brilliance is over. For his newest project, Drawing Constraint 9, set aboard the whaling ship Nisshin Maru in Japan's Nagasaki Bay, he's paired up with the musician Björk who composed the score and also appears in the film with Barney. Barney's major theme in......

Gothamist doesn't find much opportunity to listen to Car Talk as we don't have a car and the only kind of driving we do, much to our shame, is the backseat kind ("No, we're sure there's an exit to Murray Street past Chambers!"). But we found a recent discussion about car clutches interesting:Question: I have a 1988 Honda Civic with a five-speed manual transmission. The mileage on the car is 75,000 -- all short trips......

The Skyscraper Museum asked one hundred architects, brokers, builders, critics, developers, engineers, historians, lawyers, officials, owners, planners and scholars what their ten favorite NYC skyscrapers were from a list of buildings (which did not include the World Trade Center). The NY Times looks at the results, which are a great shorthand of the must-sees in the city. The top ten are Chrysler Building (with the most votes), Seagram, Flatiron, Woolworth, Empire State, Lever House, RCA,......

In honor of the Chrysler Building's 75th birthday this spring, the NY Times ran this awesome Op-Art piece by James Stevenson that explained some of the building's beginnings. Stevenson did this an illustration of Brooklyn-born, Pratt-educated Chrysler Building architect William Van Alen wearing a Chrysler Building costume, noting that he looked "uncomfortable and forlorn," "more Pagliacci than skyscraper," and Gothamist decided to hunt down the actual photograph. And, in fact, Van Alen, who was never......

Bjork's new look: Do we attribute it to her usual lovable nuttiness or can we say it's Matthew Barney? A close-up black and white shot of Bjork's new bowl cut, which Kelefa Sanneh called "fetching." Gothamist thinks she looks like some 70s androgynous male singer in that drapey, Halstony top, but it's escaping us. Who does she look like? We need your help. Hilton, are you there? More Bjork fashion: - At the Oscars in......

Matthew Barney's crazy contribution to art and film, The Cremaster Cycle, premieres in Los Angeles this week. The L.A. Times interviews him and points out: Film Forum, the Greenwich Village independent movie house that is currently showing the entire "Cremaster" cycle, reported 11,000 tickets sold over the April 25 to 27 weekend. "We just can't believe that 11,000 people went to see those films" in a weekend, says longtime Barney collaborator and "Cremaster 3" associate......

The Matthew Barney show. At the Guggenheim. Go. Michael Kimmelman loves it but that shouldn't stop you. Neither should claims that Barney is the most important artist of our time. You can buy a Cremaster poster from Film Forum. And what does cremaster mean? Support his equally praised and possibly equally wacky paramour, Bjork.......