The Museum of the City Of New York just put out a compendium of the 400 most essential people in NYC's 400 year...

Thanksgiving brought me to one of my favorite dysfunctional romances and one memorable social occasion. 

Good, better, best, bested. Many of us can understand this.

Back when I was a...

To give us some perspective on this day: Beethoven in 1825, very late in his life, wrote the third movement, molto adagio, of his string quartet opus 132, offering thanks for being alive, despite having gone completely deaf, the worst possible fate for a composer and musician.

Music lovers around...

Let's be honest: it's tough for all of you musicians out there to get any attention these days. There's no room for you on MTV. There's no room for you on the radio. There's room on YouTube, but there's room for everybody on YouTube. It's thankless work for an audience...

Okay, let's talk a minute about my idea of this season's best and the worst television series: Glee. All right, I don't actually think Glee is the absolute best. At the moment the honor goes to Curb Your Enthusiasm. Nor do I think Glee is the worst. Too many others...

As the Beatles progressed through their personal artistic journeys, they took us along for the consciousness raising ride. The Rolling Stones were raunchier, with "Lets Spend the Night Together", a shocking subject for a single in those days. Nirvana indoctrinated us to the world of dark grunge with their shadowy,...

 We all know it, and consciously or unconsciously, we prepare for it: Thanksgiving is not, after all, just a holiday, but the starting line for a five and a half week social immersion involving family, colleagues and friends that leaves us all stunned and spent (if not worse) on New...

This weekend, take a break from your own family (dys)function to check out Katie Holmes in Pieces of April. It's a Thanksgiving classic, now available for free on Hulu.

Pieces of April

dir. Peter Hedges (2003)

Remember when Katie Holmes was a winning young actress-to-watch? Ah,...

It's a crisp fall day in Manhattan and Pedro Almodovar is explaining why his hotel room is all wrong for a movie scene, in terms of its color scheme.

"I'd never have such a unicolor setting," he says, gesturing to couch, carpet and walls - all in related shades of...

Making The Road has been a unique and incredible experience for me. The film opens on Wednesday and so I have been reading some advanced reviews despite myself. I'm both relieved and pleased to read Mr. Reed's beautiful words and the many other critics struck by the movie's emotion and...

The Road, a sobering film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy, author of No Country for Old Men and All The Pretty Horses, is a national Thanksgiving holiday theatrical release, opening today. Unlike other recent doomsday movies that build toward a cataclysmic event marking the end of...

Disney has always set the standard for animation - so The Princess and the Frog arrives not just as a new animated feature, but as part of a lengthy heritage that goes all the way back to Snow White.

Still, this is Disney's first hand-drawn musical in five years,...

Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is like a sigh of relief from a writer-director whose work has been sensitive/gloomy until now.

The film is also the first role that Robin Wright has had in ages that shows her considerable range as an actress. In particular, it allows...

Why is Thanksgiving on Thursdays? Aren't we supposed to "Thank God It's Friday"? Are we supposed to thank God twice in the same week? I think that's a little overboard, don't you?

It's a little tricky for me to give thanks on Thanksgiving anyway. Oh I'm flooded with gratitude, especially...

It must be November sweeps because this week Melrose Place saw more action than ever. Either that, or every tenant was simultaneously in heat.

Amanda Woodward Returns to (sort of) Screw Up Everyone's Life
Amanda, the New York based president of WPK shows up unexpectedly, determines...

Herbie Hancock remembers Pannonica, the Rothschild heir who so loved American jazz that she abandoned an aristocratic European life of castles where royalty dined, to live in New York, surrounded by cats (felines and players), and make her rounds from club to club in pursuit of the music. Driving her...