Movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn once famously said of preachy movies, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union.". Well, Western Union is now out of the telegram business, so the Celtics had to send a message to Detroit some other way, playing stifling defense, fundamental offense, and grinding out a win that - well, that sends the message - that they just might actually be the best team in the East. Everybody chipped......

Books --Charles Bock's Beautiful Children isn't as delicate as it sounds. A couple reels after their child vanishes in the Las Vegas desert--only it's so, so much more than that, and it's received a flood of attention. The Globe thought Bock threw too much into his debut, but everyone seems to agree that he's ambitious. Brookline Booksmith, 7:00 pm, free. Speaking of free, he's letting you download the book without dropping a single dime.......

Sci-fi flick Jumper was number-one at the box office this weekend, but the real story was the disappointing turnout for Definitely, Maybe, which was supposed to be a romantic comedy. Was it the annoying title? Maybe they should have referred to an old '80s TV show and called it My Three Moms instead. Maybe moviegoers aren't feeling Ryan Reynolds. Ty Burr blew kisses at Maybe co-star Isla Fisher, but he blew a raspberry at Reynolds:......

In the Mood For Love (花样年华) Tonight at 7:30 7:00 (oops) Harvard Film Archive (Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge) Free admission! For anyone looking to launch a pre-Valentine's Day attack, Bostonist recommends tonight's free screening of Wong Kar-Wai's In The Mood For Love. This is a cheap date that says, I am sensitive (but not in an Eat, Pray, Love way). I am stylish (but not in a leggings-and-Uggs way). I can put up......

Meet the Spartans, which is now at 3% on Rotten Tomatoes after starting off in the negative, is enjoying the number-one position at the box office this week. Meanwhile, Sylvester Stallone's comeback vehicle of-sorts, Rambo, wound up in second place. Seriously, Diedrich Bader is cool, but you're way better off watching him as a "Dog the Bounty Hunter" rip-off during this season's "Reno 911." At least Mark Feeney at the Globe found something to like......

Police commissioner Ed Davis has a lot to handle now that an internal audit shows drug evidence has either gone missing or has been tampered with in almost 1,000 cases. WBZ serves up some scary details about events at the BPD warehouse in Hyde Park. Whoever's been messing with the drugs worked hard to cover it up: "In 90 cases involving evidence like pills or tablets, someone removed the drugs and replaced them with aspirin......

Halloween Horror Movie Marathon Midnight, Saturday October 27-noon, Sunday, October 28 Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, $20 Bostonist has never understood how The Monster Squad (1987) gained its cult following, but we know better than to argue with its partisans, who will likely be out in force Saturday night. The film kicks off The Coolidge Corner Theatre's 5th Annual 12 Hour Halloween Movie Marathon, which begins at midnight, Saturday and lasts until noon, Sunday. The Monster......

A Conversation with Michael Haneke Friday, October 19, 7:30pm, Harvard Film Archive Michael Haneke: A Cinema of Provocation Ongoing, Harvard Film Archive and Museum of Fine Arts Austrian director Michael Haneke, best known for his spare and chilling 2001 adaptation of The Piano Teacher, will discuss his thirty year career in television and the movies tomorrow at Harvard Film Archive. The talk will be followed by a screening of Haneke's latest: his shot-by-shot U.S. remake......

Zombie Movie Marathon Somerville Theatre 55 Davis Square Saturday, October 6, 7:00 pm to 7:00 am Sunday $24 in advance/$30 day of show BostonSci-Fi.com, the same folks who brought you the SciFi Film Festival, is offering a little taste, so to speak, of what's to come with night full of brain-starved zombies. Garen Daly, local sci-fi master, has listed a few of the movies of the evening on the Boston Sci-Fi.com website. The Somerville Theatre......

You may not have noticed since they've been largely under the radar, but the Boston Film Festival starts this weekend at the AMC Loews Boston Common, and they have some good movies. The Boston Film Festival website has the full schedule, and Bostonist has pulled out some highlights: Lars and the Real Girl, Saturday, September 15, 7:30-9:30 Have you ever wondered what might happen if a fella bought a blow-up doll and actually fell in......

--Jimbo was excited to hear about Bachelor No. 2 shooting at East Boston High. But anybody who resembled a rabbi was probably even more excited - Bachelor No. 2 desperately needed rabbis or rabbilike individuals for a wedding scene. New Hampshire actor Don Bagley was picked out after going through an audition and spending time with a man named Ramses at a sashimi bar. --A reader informed us that singer/actress/tween icon Hilary Duff, who was......

If the Tampa Bay Devil Rays were smart (and we're not for a moment suggesting that's the case), they'd look seriously into Tim Wakefield's "rolling" contract extension with the Red Sox, and try to figure out how much money it would take to lure Wake down to St. Petersburg full-time. Because it's possible that Tim's 19-2 lifetime record against the Devil Rays, and 9-0 lifetime record at Tropicana Field, are solely a result of the......

It was a virtual tie trying to pick which movie we were going to use today to compare the Red Sox to. All About Eve, with its famous line, "Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy night", got the nod over Deep Impact, which we considered because of all those scenes where President Morgan Freeman has to address the nation and tell everyone that the nukes and the missiles have failed, and the......

Elvis Presley died this week, 30 years ago, on August 16, 1977. Boston is making like Memphis by holding various tributes to the King. First on the list is Mayor Menino's Movie Night on the Common. Tonight, the city will show Jailhouse Rock for free. The festivities will include a costume contest, and we're dying to find out if Menino will step into a sequined jumpsuit and throw on a pompadour wig. That we would......

Home Movie Day will be at the Harvard Film Archive, Carpenter Center, Room B04 tomorrow, from noon to 3:00 pm. You can drop off 8mm, Super 8, or 16mm film starting at 11:00 am. For more information, go to the official Home Movie Day website. Movies need a few scratches and grit. The new technologies of the day make movies seem almost too smooth and clean, but imperfect conditions make a movie more like a......

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness - we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bostonist did some research and found that Massachusetts bridges......

Ordinary folks out for a stroll this past Saturday night in Harvard Square must have been wondering what the fuss was about at the Brattle. A crowd of people gathered on the stairs and around the main entrance of the movie theater while the staff valiantly tried to corral overeager fankids into a line. Stern-looking people with professional lighting and video cameras were shooting the action and talking to men who were being treated like......

Just to make things clear, right out of the gate: you're not voting for which Springfield is the Simpson's Springfield, just who gets to host the "hometown premiere" of The Simpsons Movie. Fifteen out of the couple dozen Springfields around the country are hoping to play host to the premiere and have created videos to help convince voters to check their box. Springfield, the fictional town, has been home to the Simpsons and overseen......

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network. It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by......

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on. In Gothamist's neck of the woods, they found out that many things are possible: A man caught a 40+ pound fish off the Rockaways and took it home on the subway. Graffiti......

Okay, everyone, today's the day when we find out if all the ruckus caused by the Aqua Teen Hunger Force lite brites was worth it. Will the "guerrilla marketing" campaign devised by Interference Inc. and the media's subsequent coverage of the bag of fries, shake, and "meat wad" actually bring people to theaters? We'll see. If the critics' reaction is any judge, don't bet on it. We haven't seen it yet, although we are......

John Waters will speak at BU's Tsai Performance Center on Tuesday, April 10, at 7:00 pm. Tickets are free, but you have to get them from the Barnes & Noble at Kendall Kenmore Square. John Waters used to provoke fear and terror in the plain-vanilla types. The mere mention of his name would have people thinking of transvestites, poop-eating, poop-mailing, cha-cha heels, and Tab Hunter. Now, Waters is almost cuddly, if a guy who wears......

The Hoax could have been a terrific movie. Whether or not you know anything about Howard "The Aviator" Hughes or Clifford Irving, the man who tried to pass off a fake autobiography of Hughes, the plot is riveting and familiar. In the light of recent publishing and journalism faux-pas, ranging from Jayson Blair to the sudden squelching of OJ Simpson's "confession," Clifford Irving's desperate drive for fame makes sense. Richard Gere stars as Clifford Irving,......

The press release really told us all we needed to know: "When an immortal piece of exercise equipment threatens the balance of galactic peace, it is up to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force to run away from it. Peril escalates when the Plutonians team up with the Cybernetic ghost of Christmas Past to strive for ultimate control of the deadly device." The movie promotional people are in full thrust for Aqua Teen Hunger Force......

We recently received e-mails proudly announcing the impending arrival of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters on April 13. Even if you didn't notice the - ahem - little problem promotions for the ATHF movie caused in Boston, and even if you've never heard of ATHF, the movie sounds like fun, and the full-length cartoon features the voices of Bruce Campbell and Neil Peart of Rush. But, in our rush to......

The Brattle will kick off the "Hot Fuzztival" today, Friday, March 16. To get a pass to the screening of Hot Fuzz on Sunday, March 25, you'll need to see one of the "fuzztastic" movies picked by the Hot Fuzz filmmakers. It can't be that hard, can it? First of all, not matter how much Hot Fuzz sounds like a porno flick, it's not what you think. The team behind Shaun of the Dead has......

Just wondering. Someone had to fall on the sword, and Mayor Tom Menino sure did seem happy when the head of Cartoon Network, Jim Samples, took the plunge and resigned from his post after the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Incident. Mayor Menino told the Globe, "Somebody had to pay…. He's the one who made all the decisions, and he didn't do anything to react to the concerns. The resignation should really serve as a message......

A truck crashed through the storefront of the Ultra Beauty Shop in Jamaica Plain yesterday afternoon. A Cobra Central Systems truck plowed so deep into the shop that it struck a support post. Six people were hurt, and the neighborhing Milky Way Lounge & Lanes had to shut down for the night because of the damage. However, Bostonist called, and they will be open tonight. Another truck incident had a tragic ending in New York......

Urban Spoon just opened up their Boston edition on their corner of the internets this week. The site pulls reviews from the Globe, Phoenix, Boston Magazine, City Pages, along with user comments for what they report as all 5054 of Boston's restaurants. What you see above is their "Boston Restaurants at Night" mash-up which plots a little point of light for every restaurant - mouse over the neighborhood names at the bottom of the......

Attorney General Martha Coakley announced today that the Boston area cut a deal with Turner Broadcasting and Interference, Inc., the brains behind the marketing campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theatres that made life in Boston a little nutty last week. Boston will receive $2 million dollars for its trouble. In return, Turner Broadcasting and Interference won't face charges. Here's the basic breakdown - $1 million goes to reimbursing state and......