Results tagged “newyorkers”

• A posthumous tribute wall dedicated to singer/songwriter Elliot Smith sat defaced by graffiti for months on end -- LAist said enough, so did the fans and city council.
• SFist was surprised to learn that chronic presidential candidate Ralph Nader picked former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez as his running mate.
• Phillyist explored the possibilities of green cleaning.

So, what is Cloverfield? Probably if you've watched the ads, you've thought of Godzilla, and although it certainly has a lot in common with that series, it also has elements of The Blair Witch Project. It's a monster movie, but told in a hyper-realistic way, from the point of view of the people on the streets who are running between the toes of the monster. Critics (well, the cut-rate ones, anyway) will often compare films to roller coasters in their reviews, but Cloverfield is one of the few movies I've seen that actually delivers a roller coaster-like experience. There were moments during the first half of this film when I was literally gasping for breath and clutching at my seat as I tried not to have a heart attack. It is intense, and the pseudo-first-person perspective only makes it more so.

Sorry there was no Eagles Diary last week. I turned on the channel the game was supposed to be on, saw a team in a blue-and-yellow get up that a Division Nine college football team wouldn’t wear and assumed that the game got canceled. But anyway, I was wrong. The game took place and the Eagles actually scored 56 points and obliterated the Detroit Lions. So I had high hopes for the Eagles latest square-off against the hated New York Giants. And I was not disappointed. Because the Eagles gave me plenty to rag on. So back by popular demand (or at least by demand of my editors), here is the minute-by-minute account of last night’s Eagles flop.

All across the Ist-A-Verse (or at least the American parts thereof), writers and editors are in the midst of enjoying their three-day weekend. But after the week we've all had, we feel like the break is not only needed, but deserved. Just look at everything we've been doing!

It seems like, all across the network, folks were up to no good. Maybe it was all the green beer from last weekend...

It's official. New York stinks. While New Yorkers and North Jersey folks woke up to the smell of a gas-like odor (read: rotten eggs tag teamed by the worst. fart. imaginable) we here in Philly woke up to the smell of victory. Between last night's Eagles win and making it through weekend-long Mummers parties with only the slightest of hangovers, Philadelphia's slogan for this week should be "It's good to be the king."

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to.

Hockey was gone for a year and a half, but you wouldn't know it judging from the first half of last night's opening game between the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Rangers. Sure, a lot of the names and numbers were different, but the standard that we had gotten used to in Philadelphia over the pst 4 or 5 years pretty much held true: the Flyers were very good and the Rangers weren't (in other words, they sucked).

Last night, FX premiered its new comedy line-up: Starved, followed by It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Starved highlights four neurotic New Yorkers-- kind of like Seinfeld, except darker, raunchier, and filmed like an indie movie. Starved is different from your average sitcom not only in the way it is filmed, but also in its level of crassness. It's not for the faint of heart: this episode included frank sexual scenes, obscured nudity, and not-at-all obscured vomiting. Although some critics found Starved to be too crude, we thought it was actually kind of funny. Starved has also been accused of not being politically correct. While that may be true, this show does not come off as making fun of eating disorders; in fact, it often evokes sympathy for the main characters. And we have to give Starved props for addressing what it's like to live in a body-image obsessed country. Of course, we can relate: we watched it with a stack of Double-Stuf Oreos and a tall glass of whole milk.

With an endless sea of summer reruns and reality drivel, there's only one night to be watching TV this week. FX is once again trying its hand at comedy with two new series: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Starved (pictured at left). While Starved looks mildly interesting, how could we possibly resist It's Always Sunny when (a) It's got Philadelphia right in the title and b) It looks like it might actually be funny?

The latest New York magazine has a feature on cheap eats in the Big Apple... with a special article about Philly cheesesteaks. That's right - New Yorkers are hungry for cheesesteaks, and several sandwich places have popped up in New York claiming to offer the real thing.

“This is Shakespeare, not the Sopranos.” So says Diana (Glenn Close), at the beginning of Heights, critiquing a pair of Macbeth-modernizing acting students for replacing the traditional dagger with a revolver. The Scottish Play provides a leitmotif for the film, filled as it is with secret plots and pacts entered into by New Yorkers seeking power, opportunity, or pleasure. And while the story that follows features neither stabbing nor shooting, it is amply stocked with the emotional bloodlettings of three couples practicing or contemplating infidelity. Broadway diva Diana and her husband seethe under the restraints of their own “open relationship,” he seducing a new understudy while she appraises everyone who crosses her path with a predatory leer. Isabel (Elizabeth Banks) is approached by ex-boyfriends and new career opportunities while her jealous fiancée (James Marsden) worries that a new photography exhibition will dredge up his own past. The photographer (unseen, but looming spectrally over all the proceedings) has meanwhile sadistically deployed his current and choleric journalist boyfriend (John Light) to write a Vanity Fair profile about him by interviewing all his ex-boyfriends.

As each pursues one thread of the story, their paths jaggedly converge on the night of Diana’s birthday party. And while some of the secrets and lies are predictable, they are delivered with an excruciating malice that lends resonance to the film’s sour take on relationships. Others pass through their lives, mostly the collateral damage of the principals’ failed romances. While the primary mood is grim and elegiac, director Chris Terrio and writer Amy Fox have leavened the script with a sly wit, particularly from George Segal as the Rabbi counseling the interfaith couple of Isabel and Jonathan. Aside from a few trite observations about the passionate artistic temperament, embodied by a Welsh conceptual artist (Andrew Howard), Heights is a movie of many virtues. It is cleanly constructed, well acted and subtly evokes themes of voyeurism and violence of all kinds: emotional, physical and political. It also features the most elegant tribute to the post-9/11 New York skyline I have yet seen on film, during a quiet conversation on a lower Manhattan rooftop. Directed by Chris Terrio and produced by the late Ismail Merchant (of Merchant-Ivory fame), Heights is a thoughtful and occasionally wrenching essay on modern relationships. No, it isn’t The Sopranos and it isn’t Shakespeare either, but it’s well worth seeing for anyone who enjoys their summer movie violence delivered verbally, as well as by Batarang and Martian disintegrator ray. Heights is playing at the Ritz at the Bourse (400 Ranstead Street). This week's showtimes: 12:45 pm, 3:00 pm, 5:30 pm, 7:40 pm, 9:55 pm.