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- Audra McDonald and “Original Nepo Baby” Gwyneth Paltrow: Honorees at the NYWFT Muse Awards 23 March 2026
- Zach Bryan Buys the On the Road Scroll/ Happy Birthday, Jack Kerouac!
- William S. Burroughs/ Nova ’78 at MoMA/ Remembering James Grauerholz
- Jacob Elordi in Wuthering Heights: Monster Mash
- Wagner Moura in The Secret Agent: A Cool Brazilian Gets an Oscar Nod
Category: Film
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Volcanic ash from Iceland may have paralyzed air traffic in Europe preventing honoree John Landis from reaching the west coast of Florida for his tribute, but at the Sarasota Film Festival, the show must go on. “What should we do?” asked the affable Mark Famiglio, festival president who playfully is listed as “Head Poobah,” half…
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The mood was exultant at Veranda where a party for the movie Breaking Upwards was underway after last week's IFC premiere. “I can't believe what's happening here,” I heard celebrants say, even if one was the director/ writer/ star Daryl Wein's mother. But then again, mothers are big part of this startlingly fresh take on…
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On Wednesday, a posh crowd filed into MoMA for the opening night of the 39th New Directors/New Films series, a collaboration of the museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. As he would for any such opening, the New York Times society and style photographer Bill Cunningham in blue jacket snapped away, capturing the…
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The films of Canadian Atom Egoyan can be political and intellectual, especially when his attention is on the Armenian genocide, but in his new movie Chloe, opening this week, he returns to the themes of an early work, Exotica (1994), in a Freudian teaming of mind and sex. Viewers may want to see Chloe for…
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As the key players were introduced at the premiere screening of “The Runaways” on Wednesday night at the Sunshine Theater, my heart leapt up: wow! Look at that girl power: Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, the young actors who portray them onscreen Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, and Floria Sigismondi, the writer/director, a young woman with…
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Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall was packed for the opening night of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema; in 2008, you may recall, the opening night featured Marion Cotillard's Oscar winning turn as Edith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose.” This year's opener, a Cold War espionage thriller, Christian Carion's “Farewell” stars the actor/ directors Emir…
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As it prepares its ninth season, it is noteworthy that several movies opening theatrically in the next few weeks premiered at last year's Tribeca Film Festival, among them Conor McPherson's “The Eclipse' and Bette Gordon's “Handsome Harry.” Another is a sweet-hearted gem named for its primary location, City Island. “City Island” is set in the…
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Actor, writer, director Bob Balaban paced about the cavernous Cipriani 42nd Street, a wad of papers clenched in his hands, as only an accomplished professional with a speech to make could. One of the artists to receive Guild Hall's annual award for Lifetime Achievement, the bespectacled Balaban, who as a teen appeared in the classic…
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Awards fatigue was almost forgotten at the splendid Oscar festivities at Gilt at the Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue. Members of the American Academy of Motion Pictures who were not walking the red carpet at the Kodak Theater partied perfectly at home in New York, begowned and bejeweled, and if not surprised by the unfolding…
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“No one expects you to perform miracles,” says the head of the Perkins Institute for the Blind sending his prized pupil Anne Sullivan south from Boston to Tuscumbia, Alabama, to a family where she is to become governess to an unruly blind and deaf girl named Helen Keller. The line gets a big laugh at the…
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Non-fiction features, however entertaining, are traditionally not high on viewers’ radar, certainly not the most controversially debated at Oscar time as say “Avatar” vs. “The Hurt Locker,” even though what makes them strong may be controversial. This year “Food, Inc.” and “The Cove,” both Academy Award nominated, drove a heated debate on the ethics of…
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The oxymoron of “Happy Tears,” a title from a signature Roy Lichtenstein painting, can refer to the comfort of living with the dysfunction one has known all one's life. In Mitchell Lichtenstein's funny and weird fictional tale of two sisters, an LA socialite Jayne (Parker Posey) and her hippyish sister Laura (Demi Moore), coping with…
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You will scream, “Highway robbery!” as it hits you that the villains in the provocative documentary, The Art of the Steal, to open this week–about the untoward fate of a very special painting and sculpture collection–are some of the most respected arts institutions in America. Albert C. Barnes' rise from the poorest slums of Philadelphia…
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Members of the Motion Picture Academy assure me, financial success, even the overwhelming Avatar billions, is no criteria for Best Picture Oscar. We have seen the Avatar story in many incarnations in various genres, and The Hurt Locker has a fresh narrative strategy. Awesome as Avatar is, I don't see it as Best Picture over…
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You may have seen the billboards over the Long Island Expressway: Claire Danes as you've never seen her, in a juvenile retro curls with eyes staring out as wide as saucers. In the role of the autistic, gruff voiced writer, educator, scientist, inventor, and consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior Temple Grandin, she…
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Woody Harrelson was right. Christoph Waltz did in fact win the Best Supporting Actor Globe, and sat exultant at the Weinstein Company's afterparty at the Beverly Hilton Hotel's Bar 210 and Blush Ultra Lounge (formerly Trader Vic's) with his wife Judith and friends. Close by Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban occupied a banquette. Also present:…
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By the time Woody Harrelson arrived at the Chateau Marmont penthouse, the party hosted by The New York Times Style Magazine-with editors Gerald Marzorati and Stefano Tonchi, writer Lynn Hirschberg, hotelier Anton Balazs–was well underway. A Peggy Siegal event in the tradition of her most astounding soirees, this one featured a famed terrace chockablock with…
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1. Critics Matter. Accepting the award for Best Actor for his roles in Up in the Air and Fantastic Mr. Fox, George Clooney shouted out to Rex Reed who always expresses reservations about Clooney's performances, “I will not sleep-at my villa in Italy -in Lake Como-until you are happy.” 2. No liquids. Christine Lahti acknowledged…
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Of all the movies at holiday time, Up in the Air, seems poised for the most lofty awards as well as commercial success. A luncheon at 21 was planned for the movie prior to the announcement of its Golden Globes nominations. Before, we were talking about an exceptionally sophisticated indie film with a big star, George Clooney,…
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If The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is the new Wizard of Oz, as one fan enthused at the Closing Night screening at this year's Hampton's International Film Festival in October, then filmmaker Terry Gilliam is indeed the man behind the curtain. “To make a film,” he said looking wizard-like in a loosely fit colorful coat…
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En route to the premiere afterparty in a cab, we were debating: which production number in Nine was best. Kate Hudson in white fringe doing go go (this is the '60's), a boa clad Judi Dench reminiscing about the Follies Bergere, kittenish Penelope Cruz making love to hot pink satin crooning “My Darling, whose afraid…
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If you missed Paul Shrader's last film Adam Resurrected, you can find it at the 24th Israel Film Festival, now playing at the SVA Theatre on 23 Street through next weekend. An examination of the period after The Holocaust based upon Yoram Kaniuk's 1971 novel, “Adam Resurrected” with its disturbing depiction of a comic who…
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