Lincoln Center
Dark Night: Fans Await Midnight Show of Raved-About Batman Movie
Two things were noticeable about the line of people awaiting the 12:01 a.m. Lincoln Square cinema premiere of the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight.
First, the affinity most of the waiting masses appeared to feel with the Caped One; second, the bizarre impression many of the waiting seemed to have that they had seen the movie already.
Brandeis University student Andrew Litwin called The Dark Knight "probably one of the most amazing movies I've ever seen."
"I'm not, like, at all obsessed," he said. "I mean I haven't read all the comics and all that … because I haven't had enough money to buy all the comics. read more »
Lincoln Center Gives New Directors and Writers a Stage
In the battle to infiltrate graying theater audiences with some fresh faces, the Lincoln Center Theater has a new strategy. They're launching LCT3, a major new initiative to cultivate new audiences and to produce work by emerging playwrights, directors, and designers. Called LCT3, the program will begin in 2008–09 with two productions at the Duke Theater. Special bonus: all tickets will be $20, according to the New York Sun. The first production, Clay, a one-man hip-hop musical written and performed by a 23-year-old actor, Matt Sax, and directed by Eric Rosen, will have a five-week run in October. The second production will be announced "as soon as we've decided what it is," Lincoln Center reps said. read more »
City Opera Will Go Dark Next Year
The New York State Theater will go dark during New York City Opera’s 2008-9 season so that it can be renovated. Susan L. Baker, chairwoman of the company, said that opera officials did not resent having to lose the company’s home for 2008-9, even though the New York City Ballet is not making similar sacrifices. (They share the same Lincoln Center stage). Changing the State Theater was largely City Opera’s idea, she said; the company has long been unhappy with the stage, which was designed to muffle footfalls. read more »
City Opera May Go Dark Next Season
We told you last month that the New York City Opera and the New York City Ballet company finally came to an agreement about renovations to their shared Lincoln Center theater. But those renovations might cause the Opera to cancel its 2008-09 season at the theater, or maybe relocate performances to other venues, according to the Associated Press. read more »
City Ballet, Opera Come to Terms on Stage Changes
The New York City Opera and New York City Ballet have finally retracted their claws and come to agreements about renovations to the New York State Theater they share at Lincoln Center. The two tenants, who alternate seasons at the center, have been bickering over issues like whether to create a center aisle (the opera was strongly in favor; the ballet, adamantly opposed) and how to adjust the acoustics (the opera believes they are in dire need of redress; the ballet thinks they’re fine) for several years. Now, the City Ballet has given up on finding a new home and a modular acoustical system that can be moved in for the opera and out for the ballet will be installed. read more »
David Fincher at Lincoln Center Tonight
The Film Society of Lincoln Center will screen the director’s cut of David Fincher's Zodiac (settle in for the long haul) tonight at the Walter Reade Theater. The director himself will then make a rare public appearance, joining Kent Jones, associate director of programming at the Film Society and editor-at-large of Film Comment magazine, for a discussion about Zodiac and his career. read more »
Bill Bragin Departs Joe's Pub for Lincoln Center
Bill Bragin will leave his post as director of Joe's Pub at the end of the year to become the director of public programming at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, according to BroadwayWorld.com
The new Acting Director will be Shanta Thake, previously the Associate Director of Joe's Pub and part of the venue's team for the past five years.
Meryl Streep to Be Honored at Lincoln Center
The Film Society of Lincoln Center will salute Meryl Streep at its 35th annual gala tribute on April 14, according to Variety.
Each year since 1972, when the Film Society organized the inaugural edition of the event with a hat-tip to Charlie Chaplin it has feted a major film-industry figure with a distinguished body of work.
Held each spring at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, the black-tie bash features tributes from actors, directors and other notables, a program of career highlights and a few words from the honoree.
Go, Shorty! It's Your Earth Day
You know the drill: The Prospect Park Audubon Center offers the kids some “interactive exhibits” (let’s hope that doesn’t include that baboon family) with music, crafts and general whoop-de-do. read more »
East Harlem Building Collapses (and A Fire Injures Two Near Lincoln Center)
Two adjoining buildings were evacuated. WCBS reports that the city's Department of Finance owns the building, but PropertyShark.com lists developer Vincent Garrow as the owner.
There are several train disruptions due to the collapse, including no 6 train service between the Third Avenue-138th Street Station and the 86th Street Station, and no 4 train service between the 125th Street Station and the Borough Hall Station.
UPDATE: The violent day uptown continues. An apartment building near Lincoln Center, at 42 West 65th Street, suffered a three-alarm fire. - John Koblin2,800 New Yorkers Pay $30 Each To Hear About New Development
The forum's panel included heavies like Robert "Irrational Exhuberance" Shiller of Yale, City Planning Director Amanda Burden, Stephen Ross of the Related Companies (and chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York), downtown landlord Kent Swig, and Jonathan "Matrix" Miller, appraiser. (Full disclosure: This reporter used to work at The Real Deal.)
The Real Estate did make the forum's after-party, in a 10th-floor space at 165 West 65th Street, with a wonderful view of midtown as it slid into early spring slumber. We ran into Steve Cuozzo of the New York Post, who moderated the forum's panel, as he left. We also had a long talk with Braden Keil of the Post, and learned insights about the real-estate beat in New York we had thought were mere urban legend.
And finally, as we schmoozed about a party that felt like a prom for real estate (minus the bad clothes, but with the angst cranked to 11), we discovered the event served as a barometer for how addictive real-estate remains as a topic in this city.
"It says a lot for the real-estate market when you have nearly 3,000 people paying $30 to attend a forum to hear a panel on new development," said Amir Korangy, publisher of The Real Deal. "People are still very interested."
- Tom AcitelliPatrick Marber’s Midlife Monster’s Meltdown; On Watching Utopia From a Very Distant Coast
City Opera’s Bad Boy
Star Chefs, Standout Steaks: Last Year’s Finest Restaurants
Handsome, Athletic Tenor, Hungry for Superstardom
Sidewalk Scuffle Could Scuttle New P.J. Clarke's
Necessary enclosure? Or foot-traffic tie-up?
Among other benefits of expanding the 122-year-old P.J.'s brand across town, the proposed West 63rd Street location would provide its proprietor with a shorter commute to work. "It would make me feel so good to have P.J. Clarke's, you know, a few blocks from my house," said the West 69th Street resident.
Yet Mr. Scotti's stated $5 million effort to bring the business to his own backyard could be quashed, he said, if the city doesn't sign off on his controversial sidewalk-seating plan. The Department of Consumer Affairs has scheduled a hearing on the issue for Oct. 30.
Mr. Scotti intends to operate an enclosed 22-table, 46-seat sidewalk café at his annointed "P.J. Clarke's at Lincoln Center," which would become the third such raw bar and burger joint in Manhattan to don the historic P.J.'s moniker.
Offering pseudo-alfresco service certainly isn't unusual for the area. In fact, the proposed P.J.'s site, which formerly housed Iridium Jazz Club, used to have an enclosed sidewalk café of the exact same size. Mr. Scotti contends that the former cafe's footprint remains exempt from current sidewalk-seating restrictions, even though this "grandfathered" section of public space hasn't actually had table service for at least six years.
Not everyone agrees. read more »
Madama for the Masses; Ponchielli for Night Owls
Butterfly, Barber, and The Cave; Plus, Here’s the Messiah to Beat!
Friday: The Mayor Woos Dems to NY, Ben Bradlee Woos Ghosts to the Hamptons
The Grey Hamptons
- The Times' profile of Lincoln Center's rejuvenation hits upon the alluringly wider sidewalks, the historic significance, Eero Saarinen, and the conflict between the "tall fescue" grasses and "mid-Atlantic blue." As it happens, nothing is mentioned on the crack-selling Bloods Gang infiltration around the corner. (NY Times)
- Get excited for more Manhattan conventioneering! Mayor Bloomberg has schlepped all the way to Chicago to lure the 2008 Democratic National Convention to New York. (Apparently he's also been boozing up some powerful liberals.) After the Illinois trip, fittingly, he'll be sweet-talking the Republicans into coming back for a second grand ol' party. If he succeeds, the two conventions would bring in half a billion dollars. (NY Sun)
- Why stop at getting Yale kids to redesign Red Hook? The Cooper-Hewitt's City of Neighborhoods program stirs up the people's thoughts on city spaces like the Fulton Street Mall. Some popular suggestions for Fulton: skywalks, rooftop movie screenings and dance parties. (Metropolis)
- Big and Little Edie Bouvier Beale (above) are long gone from their 28-room Hamptons estate. Yet their spirits live on in Ben Bradlee and wife Sally Quinn, who have nightly ghoulish visitations at Grey Gardens. More glamorous are the "late afternoon" beach strolls, followed by "rosé for Sally, gin and tonic for Ben." God Bless the Hamptons. (NY Post)
- Things have gotten so bad that straight-faced news articles now pin the phrase "previous hot spot" onto the entire states of Florida, California, and New York. But is the onus on real estate, or on the real estate media? Probably the latter, at least when The Sun screams: "Some economists already believe that... the chances of a recession are growing." (NY Sun) - Max Abelson read more »
Accidentally Edwardian, A Melodrama Rambles On
The Times Is Mean to David Blaine
MoMA, Guggenheim Sunk in Hong Kong
The Foster design.
The decision is a setback for several major museums. The Georges Pompidou Center in Paris and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art in New York had been vying for the right to run museums at the cultural center, which was to be several times the size of Lincoln Center.The proximate cause was the pull-out of local real-estate interests from the project, which is why officials are saying the project just needs to be tweaked out a bit to get back on track. But the Times cites longstanding objections to the project by Hong Kong artists, who felt too much control was being ceded to foreign arts institutions, and the public, which saw the project as a developers' boondoggle.
Tom Krens, whom we like to think of as a sort-of 21st Century Fitzcarraldo, had called the project "the most exciting opportunity in the world because of the scale and the location."
Sorry, guys.
Meanwhile, the Asia Society's frontman, former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, is having more luck: tomorrow, Robin Pogrebin reports, he'll announce plans to build a $52 million satellite in Hong Kong, at a Waldorf gala for the society. The designers are Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. read more »
- Tom McGeveranVocal Heroics From Two Stars: Heppner and Voigt in Top Form
The Dark Side of Night— A Grim Gotham Nocturne
In Cold Capote
Three Museums Score Security, Enraging Rest
Three Museums Score Security, Enraging Rest
In Today's Observer
Anna Schneider-Mayerson chats with the liberal Democrat who is Karl Rove's lawyer.
Matt Schuerman profiles Bertha Lewis, noting that Acorn's chief has gone from being Bruce Ratner's adversary to being his best friend, and in return won a chance to bring affordable housing to Brooklyn -- and a little help balancing her organization's books.
Jason Horowitz evaluates how two world-class architects, Renzo Piano and Frank Gehry, have developed very different niches in New York. read more »
And do not miss Jessica Bruder's adventures in the suburban wilderness of her native New Jersey, where she found Ryan Mauro, 19, the self-styled Youngest Hired Geopolitical Analyst in North America. As it turns out, tracking terror is no easy feat. Particularly when you live with your parents.
