Ever wonder what that mysterious delay on your subway line was caused by? It could have been MTA worker Michael Martin sneaking away from his duties to write down the latest line in his screenplay (or for the latest screenplay he was hired to write, New Jack City 2). NY1 reports on Martin's rise from the underground to the mainstream.Martin was a subway conductor, and after totaling his car in an accident, entered a screen-writing......

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama made a campaign swing into our neighborhood yesterday, drawing a crowd of thousands to Yanitelli Center at St. Peter's College, and as well as supporters to a fund-raiser in Midtown last night. At St. Peter's, He told the audience, "I'm not running because of long-held ambitions. I'm running because of what Dr. (Martin Luther) King called the 'fierce urgency of now.'" Obama also complained about his opponents trying to......

The Todd Haynes Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There has gotten so much press for so long we kept forgetting it wasn't actually released until today! The high-concept Oscar contender, for those who haven’t heard a million times already, features six different actors portraying a Dylan-type character at different stages of his career. It opens today at select theaters but film buffs have been cultivating opinions about the polarizing film since it first screened......

A Mighty Heart (directed by Michael Winterbottom) Being a journalist doesn't sound like a very dangerous profession, but for Daniel Pearl, his investigations while reporting on the situation in Karachi for the Wall Street Journal lead to his untimely end. Michael Winterbottom's most recent film starring Angelina Jolie offers a brief snapshot of Pearl, as played by Dan Futterman, and his stoic widow Mariane who used her own investigating skills to try to track down......

I Want Someone To Eat Cheese With (directed by Jeff Garlin) While there's quite a few new releases coming out that are worth checking out this weekend (like the western and the spacemen documentary), we wanted to reserve our pick for a charming little movie you might have otherwise ignored. Written, directed and starring comedian Jeff Garlin (who we interviewed earlier this week), it's the kind of modest, looking-for-love-in-all-the-wrong-places story you don't often see these......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a large theft(?) at Waterview Ct. on Saten Island, a capsized boat in Central Park's lake with passengers in the water (around 74th St. and 5th Ave.), and a shooting on Brooklyn's W 31st St. The Red Hook Ikea is topped out and a Gowanus Lounge reader is there to capture the magic of retail superstructures. Eleven soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division stationed at Fort Drum allegedly broke......

Grindhouse (directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino): Directors and friends Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez really love old movies, particularly the exploitation B movies of '70s with their silly fake violence and boobs galore. They've crafted a three hour, double feature homage to their favorite genre called Grindhouse, which starts with Rodriguez's chemical weapon zombies on Planet Terror, takes a brief intermission with some fake "prevue" shorts and ends with Tarantino's car chase/girl's revenge......

The Guardian is reporting that Cate Blanchett is one of the actors playing the role of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes's biopic. This wouldn't, of course, be the first time that a woman has played a man, or vice versa. The Australian actress and the Duluth musician don't have that much physically in common, but that's no matter. There will also be a lot of other actors playing Dylan. The film, I'm Not There,......

The two NY Daily News sponsored NYC spelling bee contestants didn't advance in yesterday's fourth round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Alexander Martin, a Dwight School eighth-grader, misspelled "dissilient" (it means "springing apart, specifically bursting open"; Martin spelled it "desilient") and seventh grader Rajdeep Chahal at MS 137 was stumped with "feuilleton" ("the part of a European newspaper devoted to light fiction, reviews, and articles of general entertainment"; Chahal spelled it "fuolyurtone"). Even though......

Holy majoly. Today, the world - well, really everyone who believed in celebrity fairy tale endings - reeled with news that very blond and pretty Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston have officially separated. In fact, this news was so big, E! had a newscrawl at the bottom of their screen. Brad and Jen issued a statement through People magazine: We would like to announce that after seven years together we have decided to formally separate.......

News that Jennifer Aniston has picked a post-Friends project is less interesting than the actual conceit of the project, which is written and will be directed by Ted Griffin (who wrote the remake of Ocean's Eleven and Matchstick Men). According to the Hollywood Reporter: Griffin's project will find Aniston starring as a young woman who discovers that her family's darkest secret was the inspiration for the book and the movie "The Graduate" and that she......

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