MOVIE: After Marion Cotillard took home the gold for best actress in La Vie en Rose last Sunday, French cinema is sure to be all the rage. Today the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2008 series kicks off with a screening of Roman de gare (pictured). Buy tickets and get the schedule here. Friday// 6:30 and 9pm // Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts [70 Lincoln Center Plaza] // $12 (stand......

Buildings, clockwise from upper left corner: Prada Store Soho, American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center, Hearst Building, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Morgan Library expansion, Apple Store Soho, Conde Nast Building, and Seagram Building; in the center, Grand Central Terminal interior and the Chrysler Building The Chrysler Building. The Seagram Building. The Apple Store Soho? The Center for Architecture's executive director Rick Bell made a list of 10 great buildings to see in New......

Kanye Crashes a Museum Party Well this was unexpected! Not afraid to wear a fur coat to the Natural History Museum, Kanye West made a surprise appearance at last Friday's Cool Kids/Kid Sister party. As Kid Sister was finishing up her set, Kanye jumped up on stage to throw in his part of their duet. He then stayed up there to play a short set of all his current hits. DJ A-Trak claimed it to......

Above, photograph of Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson and Scaled Composites' Burt Rutan in front of a model; below thumbnail is a rendering of the WhiteKnight At the American Museum of Natural History yesterday, British entrepreneur Richard Branson unveiled the aircraft for his Virgin Galactic space travel venture and promised, "2008 is really going to be the year of the spaceship." Scaled Composites (which designed the spaceplane, SpaceShipOne, that had a human-piloted space flight a......

Last night, Savoy chef and local foods champion Peter Hoffman gave a presentation at the Museum of Natural History on the role of water in sustainable farming, in conjunction with the ongoing Water: H2O = Life exhibit (now through May 25). We missed it too, but found some similar upcoming events. Call it the Mr. Wizard meets Escoffier edition- these food happenings deal with the intersections of ingredients, science, and art. Experimental Cuisine Collective While......

Gothamist reader luzer took some arresting, very "Wild Kingdom"-like photographs of a hawk snacking on a squirrel in Central Park, near the American Museum of Natural History. luzer posted photographs on Flickr and writes that some of the humans who gathered to watch the spectacle "guessed it was Pale Male. I am not convinced (we saw another one later in the park)." While New York is very urban, there are still many places where......

NYPD Transportation Chief Michael Scagnelli likes to bring a little nature into his city office, in the form of big stuffed game he's hunted around the world. The Daily News reports on his collection of animal trophies, and police commissioner Raymond Kelly's order to remove them from headquarters."Going to his office was like going to the Museum of Natural History. And it wasn't just his private office, it was in the outer office, too, where......

ArtCal calls him, "the most controversial and downright interesting graffiti artist at large in the UK today" and whether or not you agree -- Banksy is decorating our streets, galleries...and even Brangelina's household walls. In New York he has pranked his way into the Met, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History. Recently it was announced that his images would be used to sell luxury condos in Williamsburg...and just yesterday......

Have you re-read the classic coming-of-age JD Salinger novel, Catcher in the Rye, lately? amNewYork takes a trip down memory lane, and 5th Ave, with a pair of Holden Caulfield-tinted glasses. Apparently people like the Central Park Conservancy historian get a ton of inquiries about the New York references in the novel. The most popular question, "Where do the ducks go in the winter?" Referring to the ducks in the Central Park pond that our......

Tomorrow is one of our favorite days of the year: The annual Thanksgiving Eve inflation of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons! This year, there are twelve giant balloons: Dora the Explorer, Kermit the Frog, Healthy Mr. Potato Head (he's wearing a jogging suit), Scooby Doo, Ronald McDonald, Pikachu w/Poke-Ball, Energizer Bunny, Flying Ace Snoopy, and JoJo's Circus will be joined by new balloons Abby Cadabby, Shrek, and Super Cute Hello Kitty! As if Hello......

Every year the American Museum of Natural History unveils their unique take on holiday decor and their answer to the Rockefeller Center tree...the origami tree! Last year the tree had a safari theme, and this year it reflects the museum's current Mythic Creatures exhibit. This year there's also a three-headed dragon wrapped around it, like garland, which was made of 10,000 Interlocking pieces of paper! 16,000 members of OrigamiUSA made all of this happen, and......

FAIR: Attention vinyl junkies! WFMU is hosting their Record Fair starting this eve and running throughout the weekend. "Hundreds of dealers specializing in the out sounds that WFMU is adored for delivering year round will gather for three days of merciless hawking o' the wax, and thousands of area music geeks are already trembling with nervous anticipation!" There will also be live performances this year, check out more details here. Friday, 7pm to 10pm and......

The Willamette Meteorite, originally from Oregon but residing at the American Museum of Natural History since 1908, was sent to auction Sunday (well, 30 lbs of its 15.5 tons was). How much did it, and another famous meteorite (the Brenham Main Mass), get when they took their place on the auction block? Zero, zilch...nada. Though WCBS reports that "an ordinary metal mailbox zapped by a falling space rock in 1984 was sold for the unearthly......

FILM: Ease in to Halloween with classic horror flick The Innocents, based on Henry James' novella The Turn Of The Screw. Evil and innocence, the strange and the everday, will mingle as you...enjoy complimentary vodka an tapas! 6pm // Mantra Lounge [986 2nd Ave] // Free, RSVP here EVENT: Neurologist Oliver Sacks explores "the complexities of human response to music and its powerful ability to move us physically and emotionally" tonight as he shares experiences......

When most people think of ethnic cuisine in Queens the first thing that pops to mind is not Polish food. It’s more likely Korean, Indian, or Thai. Nevertheless there exists a pocket of Polish restaurants and groceries in the decidedly old school neighborhood of Maspeth. One of the best places to sample hearty stick-to-your ribs fare as well as lighter Polish dishes is Krolewskie Jadlo, or “King’s Feast.” With all the pictures of Polish royalty......

The Willamette Meteorite may have landed in Oregon in 1902, but the 15.5-ton rock has resided in NYC for the past 101 years. The American Museum of Natural History acquired it in 1906 and it's been on display there ever since. Now a 28-lb chunk of that meteorite is about to be on the auction block, with an expected price tag of $1.3 million (the entire thing was originally purchased for $26,000 prior to being......

BEER: This one is pretty simple...there will be lots (58!) of New York beers, and a few bands to soundtrack your drinking them, at the Seaport tonight. Go, imbibe, enjoy! Friday // 5 to 10pm // South Street Seaport // $55 THEATER: Paso Doble was a sold-out hit at the 60th anniversary Festival d’Avignon last summer; for one weekend only sculptor Miquel Barceló and dancer Josef Nadj have brought their messy spectacle to St. Ann’s......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: Airmail in Brooklyn, truck vs train overpass in 31st St & 20th Ave in Queens, an amputation at Grant St & St Pauls Ave in Staten Island and a bomb scare at Broadway and Mercer (NYU) in Manhattan. A former deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani is now an "ambassador" for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. But it's not that shocking, since Fran Reiter had lead the Liberal Party before joining......

Photographs of animals taking a stroll make Gothamist happy, so we must share this great photo from WhatISee, who noticed some African spurred tortoises at the American Museum of Natural History. Mud and Hermes live at the museum and venture in their Upper West Side neighborhood to nosh on some leaves. There are some cool photos here of their shells and people's reactions, but we love that they know to go home.......

The Nanny Diaries (directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini) For a while there it seemed like the book-reading public couldn't get enough of those thinly veiled New York-centric roman à clefs. There weren't very well-written but hoo boy were they juicy. Fortunately as these fluffy chick novels and insider smack downs like The Devil Wears Prada and now The Nanny Diaries have begun to make their way to the silver screen, they've proven......

This week in the Times, Bruni goes to Suba, awards the restaurant two stars. “While it has definite shortcomings and at least a third of the dishes don’t measure up to the others, the best of the food here is distinctive and exciting. In a few instances it’s even dazzling,” he says. And in $25 and Under, Peter Meehan visits to the new Shopsins, located in the Essex Market. Says the new place still reflects......

Police are handling the death of a young woman, found in her mother's apartment at NYU-owned 4 Washington Square Village, as a possible homicide. The woman, Boitumelo McCallum, last seen either on Wednesday night or Thursday morning, was found on Sunday, after subletters smelled a foul odor coming from the locked room and called the super. The Daily News reports that the police discovered McCallum's decomposed body "wrapped tightly in a bedsheet and wedged between......

THEATER: HERE Artistic Director Kristin Marting concludes the OBIE-winning art center’s season by directing performer/dancer Alexandra Beller in us, “a highly athletic, sensual and dynamic blend of movement with song, text and a layered soundscape. Beller created this deeply personal commentary on the state of the union from the perspective of a woman who is at a crisis point in a love relationship.” As we haven’t seen it, we’ll defer to The New Yorker on......

A look at some noteworthy programs this week: Mystery: Foyle’s War: Invasion (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., WNET 13, Tuesday, 9:00 p.m., WLIW 21) The fourth series of this great British World War II period mystery drama makes its way to this side of the pond. The first of four episodes has Detective Foyle and his team investigation a murder on an American base. The 4400 (Sunday, 9:00 p.m., USA) This sci-fi series about people who were......

Was this baby lamb a little too eager for the city's Farm Aid concert? Because she was found wandering around the Bronx yesterday morning. Julio Rivera, who saw her near his car, chased her in order to get a hold of her, but then the lamb chased him back! Newsday reported, "The spectacle lasted half an hour until Rivera got the upper hand and corraled Lucky Lady in a parking lot. Responding police officers......

THEATER: Breedingground Theater Company continues their three week Spring Fever Festival of work by self-producing artists. (We suggest perusing the full lineup on the company’s website, though we caution that it's quite an eyesore.) Nevertheless, one that happily caught our eye is Chess’d, about a ninja and a man in a white tux playing a game of life-sized chess. The game escalates into a no-holds-barred life-or-death struggle, which reviewer Daniel Kelly declares “hilarious from start......

May 12: Brooklyn Pigfest It's the 7th year for this pork-filled event, which also serves as a fundraiser for the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy. Swine and birds will be tenderly slow-cooked by Waterfront Ale House's own Sam Barbieri and his champion BBQ team, and there will be plenty of cold beer and live music to go around. Tobacco Warehouse at Brooklyn Bridge Park, 1 - 6 p.m., tickets $75, available online in advance and at......

The parents of Destiny Mesa claim they only decided to sue the city after the teacher who lost track of their kingergartener daughter in a crowded Manhattan museum wasn't disciplined. The suit alleges that the school did not have enough chaperones for a field trip from Staten Island to the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side. The New York Post reports, however, that the teacher assigned to look after Destiny Mesa......

Time announced its second Time 100 list of influential people. (For whatever reason, Time doesn't provide a full list with separate links to all the influentials, so here's a list from FishbowlNY.) Based on our reading, the New Yorkers (and we're including some people who live in Westchester, but work in the city) who made the list include 30 Rock's Tina Fey, subway superhero Wesley Autrey, Senator Hillary Clinton, banker Stephen Schwartzman, director Martin Scorsese,......

Spider-Man Week is coming to an end. What happened out there while we weren't looking? In one of the more interesting spider events this week, Tobey Maguire got a big creature placed on his arm at AMNH by entymologist and curator Norm Platnick: Through Sunday you can check out that very same spider at AMNH, as part of their Spiders Alive! exhibit. Did you see any signs of Spider-Man this week? Here he is in......