Hillary Frey

If you’re looking to save money during this recession, you may have considered quitting those date night cocktails-that-turn-into-meals at Craftbar ($100-plus) or those Saturday meat-extravaganzas with pals at Employees Only ($200-plus) or the special occasion (I didn’t get laid off!) tasting menu events at WD-50 (with drinks, $300-plus). (All numbers cited here, by the way, are based on personal experience.) And you might think, “Hey, I can always have people to my house, right?” Well, yes, you can. But be warned: You might think you’ll save a bundle by throwing your own dinner party, but most of the time it would be cheaper just to go out.  read more »

Lives of the Artists
By Calvin Tomkins
Henry Holt and Company,
272 pages, $26

Calvin Tomkins’ new book, Lives of the Artists, is pure entertainment. Never mind the bland and even ugly jacket (a shame, since the Oxford edition of Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, from which this book takes its name, features Vasari’s own Saint Luke Painting the Madonna, a lush and relevant choice of illustration)—Mr. Tomkins’ essays, all profiles from The New Yorker, are across the board engaging and smooth and welcoming in the magazine’s signature style. Although one could go down a very long and winding path with the sexual significance of Jeff Koons’ gigantic stainless steel casts of balloon animals, or into the psychology of Cindy Sherman’s decades of playing dress up, Mr.  read more »

Monday: Inside the Actor's Studio

Like most everyone else, we're iffy on James Lipton, who hosts Inside the Actor's Studio. Or maybe we're just jealous, because he has the best job in the world. Either way, we'll be recording tonight when he talks to comedian Dave Chappelle for the show's 200th episode.  Or rather, Mr. Chappelle talks to Mr. Lipton. In celebration of the big anniversary, the tables will turn for the night, with hosted being hosted. Count on loads of best off clips, and copious cackles from our favorite comedian. [Bravo, 8 p.m.]

Tuesday: Opening Night

Two years ago, we caught a screening of Opening Night at BAM that also featured a short talk with Gena Rowlands, who stars in the film and was married to its director, John Cassavetes.  read more »

When I heard this afternoon that the great culture critic John Leonard had passed away at the age of 69, I was reminded again of some small but significant exchanges I had with him seven years ago, when I was the assistant literary editor of The Nation.

I was 26, had barely published anything, let alone a piece of criticism that could be considered "serious." I was a somewhat newly affirmed, politicized feminist, and deep in a phase of reading every book by Kate Millett I could get my hands on in preparation for reviewing her book Mother Millett, about caring for her aged mother.  read more »

The funny thing about designer Nathan McCarthy is that he doesn’t care how you wear his clothes. The flowing silk charmeuse dress with the kimono sleeves? You decide which is the front or the back. The drapey cashmere crisscross sweater with the sheer trim? Hey, make it a dress! And when you get sick of it, cut off the sleeves, or chop it in half. Why not?

“My whole thing is that I’m not into imposing styles on what I do, so it’s like, if you want to belt it, belt it. If you don’t want to, you want to wear it like a big T-shirt, I don’t care.  read more »

Monday: Roman Holiday
Ok, we know: you've probably seen Roman Holiday before. It's one of those classics that hasn't totally slipped through the cracks; it's easy to find on DVD, and it gets semi-frequent play on cable. But since we only saw this film for the first time recently, we wanted to urge all of you who have not seen the Gregory Peck/Audrey Hepburn Italian romp to do so, immediately. Hepburn-in her debut, Oscar-winning role--is the princess who just wants to be normal. Peck is the American journalist she falls for. Among the many highlights: gorgeous shots of Rome, Hepburn's short haircut, and a long tracking shot that captures the sadness of the inevitable moment of their separation.  read more »

To Love What Is
By Alix Kates Shulman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 180 pages, $22

The most remarkable and memorable part of the story Alix Kates Shulman tells in her latest memoir, To Love What Is, comes early on, before the main event. The book is mostly about what happened after Ms. Shulman’s 75-year-old husband had a terrible fall from a sleeping loft in her rural Maine retreat: He suffered significant and lasting brain damage, and she refused to institutionalize him, even though he must be supervised every waking hour. To Love What Is is a chronicle of the organization and sacrifice involved in keeping her husband at home with her in New York City—a maze of traps and dangers to a disoriented, brain-injured person.  read more »

Hey, here’s a good way to spend $2. Starting tomorrow, and showing through the weekend, Open House Gallery on Mulberry Street will display a collection of John Lennon’s artworks in honor of the Beatle’s would-have-been 68th birthday. “Imagine Peace: A Look Into John Lennon’s Life Through His Artwork,” according to the press release, “features Lennon’s characteristic drawings in hand-signed pieces and limited edition prints, as well as serigraphs, lithographs, copper etchings and aqua tints; all are available for sale. Several never before seen pieces will be on display.”

And what about that $2, you ask? All proceeds go to benefit City Meals-on-Wheels, so you can give peace a chance and help people out in one fell swoop.

We were surprised recently when on vacation in South Carolina we met a guy who, during a brief conversation about television, asked if we watched the FX drama Sons of Anarchy-surprised, because we worried that we might be the only ones who did! Well, not so, and we're happy to hear that the cable network just picked up a second season of the show about a motorcycle gang in a small California town.  read more »

Tonight, in honor of Paul Newman, Broadway will dim its lights for one minute at 8pm. While best known for his many Hollywood star turns, Newman was also an accomplished stage actor. He made his Broadway debut in 1953 in the original New York production of William Inge's "Picnic," in which he met and fell in love with his future wife, Joanne Woodward, the Broadway League tells Reuters. In 2003 he was nominated for a Tony award for his role in the Broadway production of "Our Town."

We'd be surprised if this news truly genuinely delights any of our readers, but we do like to keep you in the know around here, and give you a little laugh occasionally, so, here goes! After four years of separation, Phish, that 90s jam band as beloved by some as it was reviled by others--like us, who never made the leap over from the Grateful Dead (who we saw 13 times)--will reunite. But only for three dates. In Virginia. Random, right?  read more »

For all you fans of giant green ogres out there, some news today about Shrek The Musical, which is gearing up for its November 8 Broadway previews. The show, which has been having a trail run in Seattle, will get a new donkey for its New York run. The Associated Press reports (via the NYT) that Tony nominee Daniel Breaker, who dazzled last season in Passing Strange, will be taking over the role from Chester Gregory. But that's not it: the voice of the Dragon, is actually going to be that of eight women, instead of one performer with a chorus. The play opens officially on December 14 and features Brian d'Arcy James as the title character; Sutton Foster as Princess Fiona; Christopher Sieber as the evil Lord Farquaad; and John Tartaglia as Pinocchio. Tickets are on sale now at www.shrekthemusical.com.

Hey, good news for HBO's True Blood! After just two episodes-and a 24% spike in viewership with the second installment-Alan Ball's vampire drama has been renewed for a second season. We're thrilled.

The Forever War
By Dexter Filkins
Alfred A. Knopf, 368 pages, $25

Dexter Filkins is a runner. During his three and a half years in Iraq, he’d regularly lace up his shoes, don his short shorts and stride along the Tigris River even in unbearable, 100-degree-plus heat. At first it was a simple, there-and-back, five-mile course, past waving children and friendly folks, past a field of green the Americans had laid by the riverbank as part of a park project. Then his path was truncated by a checkpoint, then by another, until finally his run was a short sprint distance that he’d repeat enough times to make his mileage.  read more »

Playwright Tony Kushner has a big reason to smile this morning, as he's been named the first recipient of the ‘Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award,' aka the Mimi, which carries with it a $200K prize. The award, which was established earlier this year by The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, and which honors and promotes artistic achievement in the theater, will be presented at a ceremony on Tuesday, October 21, at 620 Loft & Garden at Rockefeller Center. Mr. Kushner will also then get his ‘The Mimi,' a statue designed by Tony Award-nominated scenic designer and architect David Rockwell.

More from the press release after the jump:  read more »

MTV announced yesterday that its afternoon video countdown show, Total Request Live, will be going off air in November after ten years on the air. The AP, via the NYT, reports that the show "will conclude in a two-hour special on a Saturday afternoon in November." Dave Sirulnick, executive producer of TRL, also "stressed that the show wasn't ending for good, but [MTV] felt now was the right time to give it a break after an unprecedented run on the cable music channel."

The finale could be a sort of greatest hits special. Mr. Sirulnick is hoping that some of TRL's faves-Justin Timberlake and N'Sync, the Backstreet Boys, Brit Brit or Eminem-might return to relive some memories.  read more »

On a recent day off, we decided (against all sane advice) to watch the indie movie Savage Grace. It stars Julianne Moore as Barbara Baekeland, the wealthy wife of the Bakelite plastics heir and demented mother of Tony Baekeland (Eddie Redmayne), who later murdered her because she was constantly trying to turn him straight. Got all that? No, seriously, this movie is twisted (and also kind of long and boring, even though the acting was pretty good! Stephen Dillane: we love you!)

Anyway, among the most disturbing scenes in the movie (and there are a few!) is one where Ms. Baekleand and her son are both in bed with a man named Sam Green (played by Hugh Dancy), who has a reputation for romancing older ladies. It doesn't get too graphic, but it's clear what's going on. And there's a high ick factor, given the mother/son thing, even though everyone is very attractive and not related in real life.

But the person most grossed out by the scene is the real-life Sam Green, who is now 77. Mr. Green admits that he did have a brief affair with Ms. Baekeland, but never with her son. And The New York Post reports that the art dealer is now suing the film's producers, Rainbow Media Holdings and IFC, saying that the film has exposed him "to disgrace, hatred, ridicule and contempt," and "induced an evil opinion of him in the minds of right-thinking persons, and deprived him of friendly intercourse in society."  read more »

Monday: Lost
It's a tradition for Lost fans to re-watch the previous season before a new season airs. But it's probably been a while since any of us have revisited the two-part pilot that sent us all down the rabbit hole of the Dharma Initiative, the black smoke monster, Ben Linus, Jack/Kate/Sawyer and everything else. (Similarly, if you never gave the show a chance, try it now! Please!) The Sci-Fi channel will air both parts tonight. Watch for Matthew Fox's signature move: the half-cry. No one's eyes can well up with water, but never tear, quite like his. [Sci Fi, 7 p.m.]

Tuesday: Gavin & Stacey
American television sorely lacks genuinely funny—and non-stereotyping—relationship sitcoms (  read more »

Ok, so we loved The Dark Knight like everyone else. We saw it at the IMAX at an ungodly hour and all that. And we agree with all the early Oscar blather for Heath Ledger as the Joker, etc. But, just in case anyone missed it, or if certain people might forget it, Warner Bros. will be re-releasing Christopher Nolan's second Batman feature in January, at prime Oscar voting season, Reuters reports (via the NYT).

It's unclear if the release will be nationwide, or just in theaters sure to draw Oscar voters, who may need a reminder of Ledger's tragic, creepy weirdo. The run could also help boost the movie's gross over the $1 billion mark. Currently, it's raked in about $952 million, domestic and worldwide. More after the jump:  read more »

The 18th annual Gotham Awards, to be held December 2nd at downtown Cipriani, will honor Gus Van Sant with a tribute, Variety reports. The director's forthcoming film Milk (which we're mildly obsessed with) opens November 26th. Spanish stunner Penelope Cruz will also be feted. More details after the jump:  read more »

More evidence that this fall season of TV is weak: no one is watching anything!

Despite our tremendous affection for HBO's vampire drama True Blood, it tanked in the ratings. We suggested it might be Alan Ball's own personal John From Cincinnati, but it may even be worse: True Blood had fewer than half of John's viewers watch its premiere, or 1.4 million total. Fingers crossed that rebroadcasts and On Demand viewings give it a boost.

How about Fringe? Eh. It did all right, and won its timeslot last night, capturing 9 million viewers on average over its two hour debut.  read more »

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced yesterday that Thomas P. Campbell would be successor to Met director and chief executive Philippe de Montebello, ending a search that lasted eight months. Mr. Campbell is a 46-year old, English-born tapestries curator, who has been at the Met since 1995. More after the jump from the New York Times:  read more »

We're feeling a little ‘duh' this afternoon after reading news that a lawsuit has been brought against Stephen Spielberg, DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures claiming that their film Disturbia (the surprise 2007 hit starring Shia LaBoeuf as a teen voyeur) ripped off the Hitchcock masterpiece Rear Window. The L.A. Times (via the AP) reports that "The copyright infringement lawsuit, filed Monday in Manhattan, says "Disturbia" copied a short story Cornell Woolrich wrote in 1942 and the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock movie that starred James Stewart and Grace Kelly and was based on the story."

Was it only a matter of time until this happened?  read more »

The Booker Prize shortlist was announced this afternoon, and, no surprise, people are already pissed about it. Industry newsletter Publisher's Lunch (sub. required) noted: "What a 'shock.' As usual, manufactured 'surprise' is the fuel of the Booker publicity machine, as the 'longlist' turns out to be a head fake for the real shortlist."

The New York Times, though in a thinly veiled way, seems to be upset too, pointing out that "this year, as sometimes happens, the shortlist attracted more attention for who was not on it," and going on to highlight the omission of American favorite Joseph O'Neill's Netherland before even naming who actually appeared on the list.  read more »

When it comes to casting leading women, J. J. Abrams may be the smartest person working in television. For his first show, Felicity, he plucked an unknown Keri Russell from the land of extras and made her an instant star, with her signature mass of kinky hair and antique visage. For Alias, he cast a barely known Jennifer Garner—she’d appeared on Felicity, and had also briefly played second-string to Jennifer Love Hewitt on a Party of Five spinoff—and launched the career of a major Hollywood actress. And where to begin with Lost? Evangeline Lilly, the earthy Canadian who’d barely done more than a commercial; Yunjin Kim, a Korean starlet little seen in America; Elizabeth Mitchell, blond and blue-eyed, faintly recognizable but never before terribly memorable … they’re just a handful of the irreplaceable women on Mr.  read more »

Monday: 13 Going on 30
Though we try to recommend a classic straightaway, this week we're going with a bubblegum hit. A 13-year-old girl, Jenna, makes a wish on her birthday to bypass adolescence and just be 30, which of course happens. (It's Big, gone girly!) She wakes up to discover that she's got an incredible body, a fab job as a magazine editor, a hot boyfriend, and a wardrobe to die for—but she's also a total bitch. Jennifer Garner manages to be completely charming as a teen soul trapped in—or blessed with—a body toned by years on Alias. (The always yummy Mark Ruffalo co-stars.  read more »

When we occasionally have downtime at work, there are a few activities that we enjoy engaging in, with a little help from the old Internet. Like everyone else, we can kill hours on Facebook, looking at friends' friends, then friends' friends' friends. We Google our lost friends, or that sophomore we once drove to a Grateful Dead concert. But we also enjoy more innocent activities, like looking up those lost crushes from our youth that we met not through school or church group, but through our other old friend, the television. Today, this exact impulse hit us and, pow, there we were, on the You Can't Do That On Television homepage (which is sort of terrifying).  read more »

Ann Temkin, a member of the curatorial team in painting and sculpture at MoMA, has been named the new head curator of that institution after a six month search. The post is considered the most prestigious gig in contemporary art, and Ms. Temkin has already announced some of her big plans for the museum, which is expanding its galleries into the tower that stands next door to the museum. “I plan to take a broader, more international view than we did in the past,” Ms. Temkin, 48, told the New York Times. More after the jump:  read more »

Given the continuing dearth of primetime options, we're pretty excited for Entourage to come back on the air this Sunday. So we couldn't help take a sneak peak at some of this season's guest stars, courtesy show creator Doug Ellin. In a chat with Broadcasting and Cable, Ellin notes that Mark Wahlberg (aka Entourage inspiration) will be back, and also that Tony Bennett and Phil Mickelson will make appearances. However, we're probably most looking forward to Giovanni Ribisi showing up in a non-cameo role. More about season 5 after the jump:  read more »

When people talk about HBO’s new drama True Blood (airing Sunday, Sept. 7, at 9 p.m.), they’ll inevitably refer to it as “Alan Ball’s vampire show.” That’s accurate, of course. Mr. Ball, creator of the late, lamented funeral-parlor drama Six Feet Under, has indeed made his new series, based on a series of novels by Charlaine Harris, about vampires: living among us like refugees, trying to fit in. There’s blood and fangs and graves and everything that comes with the undead; there are people in their thrall and others—many, many others—who would prefer they climb back into their coffins. But to boil True Blood down to that single element is to miss the best thing about the show: It’s a love story, and a Shakespearean one at that.  read more »

Monday: Beverly Hills, 90210 Marathon
We regularly tune in to SoapNet—yes, if you didn't know, there is a cable channel devoted to soaps—on weekend mornings for reruns of Beverly Hills, 90210, that life-lesson-teaching teen drama that accompanied us through high school and college. This has us uniquely prepared for the CW remake (see Tuesday), which will pick up the story lines of at least a few of the original cast members. If you need a refresher course, today is your lucky day: SoapNet's got a 24-hour-marathon going on. Try to tune in for the one when Brandon gets drunk and totals his car.  read more »

We’ve never seen an opera at the Met. It’s one of those things that has been discussed as a sort of thing-to-do-while-you- live-in-New-York, but since we’ve been here for eleven years, and aren’t going anywhere, what’s the rush? But we’ll admit that we would have been intrigued by the thought of seeing an opera by pop diva Rufus Wainwright, especially since it’s about a “day in the life of an aging soprano in 1970s Paris,” as the New York Times puts it. Sadly, however, plans to bring Mr. Wainwright’s work to the Met have fallen apart, because of his insistence that the work be presented in French.  read more »

OMG could George Clooney and Brad Pitt please stop being so charming/funny/arch whatever they are? At a Venice Film Festival press conference today promoting the new Coen brothers movie Burn After Reading, the irrepressible duo found themselves answering the same questions we swear they did last year, or at some other press thing.

Reporter to Brad Pitt: Will Clooney ever settle down?

Clooney to reporter: ''I am so surprised to hear that question. That is honestly the first time I have been asked that...I am getting married and having a child today.''

Pitt then told Clooney that he could share his own six-child brood, since he'd "have two more by next year.  read more »

We've long had a theory-and not a very sophisticated one-about why weight loss shows are so popular (even if no one will admit to watching them). It's this: watching other people diet and exercise means you don't have to! Somehow, simply witnessing the miracle (or torture) of other people getting in shape and eating right, cheering them on, makes viewers feel a little better about themselves, too. (This may be because, compared to a morbidly obese person, our post-college 20 pound gain doesn't seem so bad.) Anyway, maybe Alessandra Stanley's piece over the weekend made ABC realize that they, too, should get in on the game that NBC (and the Discovery Channel , and the N network for teens, and even VH1) has profited by with The Biggest Loser, I Can Make You Thin, The N's Student Body and Celebrity Fit Club.  read more »

There are so many baffling, distracting details in Steven Bochco’s new legal procedural Raising the Bar—star Mark-Paul Gosselaar’s inexplicable hairstyle, the bare-bones set, the never-fashionable sateen blouses, the retrograde sexual politics—that it is hard to stifle one’s cackles and take a deeper look to see if something’s there. Hard, but not impossible.

The problem isn’t the form. The very word “procedural” might inspire a moan, but judging from the endurance of three versions of Law & Order on constant rotation; season after season of cop shows like the screwball, high-tech Bones and the domestic-paranormal Medium (yes, it is a cop show, at its heart); and House, which manages to obscure its rote medical formula with Hugh Laurie’s alluring theatrics, we clearly haven’t tired of the problem-process-solution kind of entertainment.  read more »

We aren’t exactly shocked to hear that Denise Richards’ reality show, It’s Complicated, has been canceled given that we must have been part of the cause. A source told The Insider (reported via the New York Post): "The numbers started out pretty good--just over 1.5 million tuned in for the premiere episode…But the audience has dropped off.” We’re ashamed to admit it, but that audience included us. We stopped watching after we realized that a central plot point of the show involved Ms. Richards cleaning up her pets' poop, outside and inside her house.

In case you haven't noticed, the Culture Czar is obsessed with Doctor Who. So much so that she's going to mention the show every chance she gets, with hopes of subliminally inspiring all readers of this blog into setting their DVRs to record every last re-broadcast of the show on BBC America and the Sci Fi channel. And today, there's news! Showrunner Steven Moffat (the genius behind the British sitcom Coupling, who has also written some of our most favorite episodes of Doctor Who) said over the weekend that he'd be cool with seeing the show adapted to the big screen, "so long as it never gets in the way of the TV show.  read more »

Monday: Notorious
Some say Rear Window. Others, Vertigo. We say Notorious when asked to name our favorite Hitchcock film. Ingrid Bergman plays a boozy, sad beauty who must redeem herself—and her family name—by turning spy for government agent Cary Grant. The action takes place in 40s Rio de Janiero, where Bergman must marry a suspicious German in order to turn up secrets for Grant, who is both in love with her, and repulsed by her unladylike behaviors (which we found, for the record, totally awesome). [TCM, 8 p.m.]  read more »

In case you’re confused about what, exactly, is going on with the fall television schedule—what’s coming back, what’s not, what’s brand new and what’s in a new time slot—the folks at TV Week have created a handy, easy to read, color coded PDF that you can print out and put on your fridge. We hadn’t totally accepted that NBC had really, actually remade Knight Rider, but there it is, coded in green as a new show on Wednesday nights at 9. We’ll refrain on commenting more on the lineups, and let you decide: maybe Wife Swap is your thing, after all. And who are we to judge? Mostly, we just watch reruns of the revamped Doctor Who.

We're a little late getting to this, but earlier in the week, Pitchfork ran this terrific interview with the elusive and reclusive David Berman, lead singer of the Silver Jews and current Nashville resident. As Mr. Berman is hardly your typical rock god (and a god he is, to some of us), the interview is hardly typical either, ranging the topics of home ownership, relationships, health insurance, songwriting and, well, American history. We're glad for the reminder of his awesomeness; it's spurred us on to pick up the Silver Jews latest record, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea, recently released on Drag City.

Calling fans of Hard Candy (the pedophile movie starring Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson, not the makeup): Variety reports today that David Harrower will be adapting his harrowing play Blackbird, which was put on by the Manhattan Theater Club last year with Jeff Daniels and Alison Pill, for the big screen. The story features only two characters—a middle-aged man and a young woman—who are reunited when the young woman hunts down the man to confront him about the affair they had when she was a girl. Don’t worry: There won’t be any castrating going on here (remember what happened to Mr. Wilson?). But that didn’t make the play any less affecting. Fingers crossed for a re-casting of Ms. Pill and Mr. Daniels, who shocked us with their terrifying and riveting stage performances.

Monday: 40 Hottest Hotties of the 90s
Ok, we know it's a lowbrow suggestion, but over the weekend we caught an hour of Vh1's 100 Best Songs of the '90s and remembered the pleasures of the countdown program, and the end of the millennium. Plaid shirts, Baywatch, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Marky Mark: they'll all be here for you to gawk at and snicker over. Save this for a rainy day or a hangover; there's no expiration date. [Vh1, 3:30 p.m.]

Tuesday: The Battle of Algiers
If you've managed to avoid one of the many revivals of Gillo Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers at Film Forum, you owe it to yourself to catch it on television.  read more »

Bad news for Harry Potter fans: due to a lackluster schedule for next summer, Warner Bros. has decided to move the next Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, from this November to about a year from now, July 17, 2009. You can blame the writers' strike, which left the studio without much to develop for the crucial summer slate, says Variety. It's especially bad timing, as Daniel Radcliffe, soon to be seen al fresco on Broadway in Equus, graces the Fall Movie Preview cover of Entertainment Weekly, out this week.

Audrina Patridge--best known as the brunette among blondes on MTV's bafflingly popular show The Hills--just scored her first real TV acting part, on the new Jerry O'Connell show Do Not Disturb. E Online reports that Ms. Patridge will play herself, but as a guest checking into the posh hotel where Mr. O'Connell is the manager. The show will air on Fox.

More from E:  read more »

Comedy Central has greenlit a new show, Michael and Michael Have Issues, starring pals and vets of The State and Stella, Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black, reports the Hollywood Reporter. It will be a kind of sketch show within a show, focusing on the two Michaels, their problems with the world, themselves and each other. Josh Pais, soon to be seen in Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York will also star.

Just as his fab comic turn in Tropic Thunder has critics going nuts, the star is making other headlines. First, the good news: his film Valkyrie, which was moved from this year to next (never a good sign) has now been moved back again, snagging a December 26 opening. This either means that the movie is awesome--Christmas is traditionally for award-nominee sure things like There Will Be Blood--or that producers want to hide it among the biggies. (Execs say it's a purely commercial decision, made after a screening went well.) We've got our fingers crossed: at the moment, Mr. Cruise is on our good side.  read more »

The Observer is starting to get a little weary of all these comic book movies --do we really need when we've got franchises for Batman and Superman? -- but when we caught The Dark Knight opening weekend at the IMAX near Lincoln Square, we couldn't help but get pretty psyched about Zack Snyder's adaptation of Watchmen, the graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons about a group of ex-superheroes fighting to save themselves (and humanity, of course), due in 2009. And apparently we're not alone: The New York Times reports this morning that the trailer seems to have spurred a run on the Watchmen book. DC Comics has printed an extra 900,