If there is one dish I consider a quintessentially summer food, it would be the lobster roll. Maybe that's because one long summer ago, I was first introduced to them on an excursion to Sag Harbor. My friend and I hit an outdoor cafe -- one that specialized in seafood...

A little over a year ago, I responded to the announcement of YouTube's global film experiment, to be called Life In A Day -- shepherded by producers Tony and Ridley Scott's Scott Free UK and director Kevin Macdonald -- by writing about it in a Huffington Post post.

I...

At the time Before the Devil Knows You're Dead was released, it first premiered in the U.S. at the 2007 New York Film Festival. Its director, Sidney Lumet, had long been regarded as an internationally respected auteur who had made several benchmark films such as The Pawnbroker, Prince of the...

With its unusual premise and star Brit Marling's striking yet unvarnished good looks, the sci-fi-oriented Another Earth ended up on the indie hot lists early on after its award-winning Sundance Film Festival debut this January. Now that the film is about to be released in theaters, it is getting further...

When word had it that veteran director John Carpenter, one of the greats of horror and sci-fi filmmaking, was returning to feature films with the release of his latest, The Ward, I jumped at the chance to talk with him. Made in 2009, the sneaky shocker premiered at the Toronto...

It seems like whenever Friends alum Jennifer Aniston does anything -- however ordinary -- it merits a gossip item or at least a picture and caption. But when she does something as bold and broad as playing Dr. Julia Harris, D.D.S. -- one of the three Horrible Bosses featured in...

Legendary horse whisperer Dan M. "Buck" Brannaman considers himself lucky despite the hard life he endured as a kid. He found a calling that some might call mumbo jumbo, but to a vast number of horse owners, trainers and grooms, he expresses an uncanny skill at natural horsemanship.

Though it didn't win any skirmishes with the critics when it first hit theaters, Battle: Los Angeles places the fight squarely where it belongs -- on our home turf.

Of course since the invaders are extraterrestrials, the battlefield scenarios here aren't just stretching across the Middle East, they're global....

Though now a Brooklynite, Boston-born-and-bred playwright/screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire stays close to his working-class roots, not only with his latest Tony-nominated play, Good People, but throughout the broad swath of his career. From musicals such as High Fidelity to the Pulizter Award-winning Rabbit Hole he captures real people in tangled situations,...

Summer is almost upon us, and so is lawn tending, weeding, planting -- all the gardening tasks shift from background to foreground. And garden gnomes, those funny little stone or cement guardians of gardening, stand watch over all this leisure activity. So what a perfect time to release Gnomeo and...

A couple of weeks ago, after the Drama Desk Awards ceremony wrapped and the hall was virtually deserted, nominee Lily Rabe and dad David -- the playwright/novelist -- were gabbing with fellow actor (and award winner) Bobby Canavale and a couple of other people. Present in support of his daughter,...

On the surface, The First Grader tells a basic heartfelt story about an older man, the 84-year-old Kimani N'gan'ga Maruge, finally fulfilling a long-unresolved dream -- to learn to read. Against much prejudice and bureaucratic nonsense, he enrolls in a primary school out in the countryside with first graders to...

Sometimes the visual dynamic of New York, and Manhattan in particular, can be too much -- too much a jumble, or a clash of priorities and styles -- a cavalcade of dissonance. But sometimes, something comes into view that re-orders the environment so much so that it both jars the...

Actor Liev Schreiber commands his fair share of big-budget dramas such as The Manchurian Candidate, but it is starring in personal films like Walk On The Moon, off-Broadway shows, or even directing others like in the emotionally invested Everything is Illuminated that stimulates his urge to be in this risky...

Culminating in last night's screening of the Marvel Comics based Thor -- which has its roots in the Norwegian legends of the Norse Gods and their fabled home of Asgard -- films inspired by or created in the very chilly Scandinavian country of Norway have been in the NYC spotlight...

It's been quite a week for British born actor Orlando Bloom. With two films -- Sympathy For Delicious and The Good Doctor playing before audiences (the former opening in theaters; the latter debuting at Tribeca Film Festival 2011) -- the 34 year-old actor has been seen in a different light...

With last night's opening premiere of The Union, director Cameron Crowe's doc about Elton John and Leon Russell, the 10th Tribeca Film Festival kicks off. Though this 12-day event has enjoyed mixed reviews after its noble start as a response to the 9/11 World Trade Center attack's devastating effects on...

Just before St. Patrick's Day, Dance Lord Michael Ryan Flatley held court at the Regency Hotel with a small set of select journalists and waxed on about his career of breaking boundaries and a few bones. The boisterous 52-year-old became internationally known for creating and performing in the Irish dance-based...

When it debuted at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival, Monogamy seemed more like a fiction film done documentary style than a highly stylized indie feature. No wonder, for director Dana Adam Shapiro had done a highly stylized doc, Murderball, as a sports action feature. And it snagged an Oscar nom...

The Oscar weekend was a salute to both youth and tradition. The 2011 Academy Awards broadcast put the young James Franco and Anne Hathaway on the world's glitziest dais where they exemplified modern culture (witness the texting references) while The King's Speech -- a British paean to traditional storytelling --...