It looks like the Manny Ramirez trade is dead. The latest news has the deal stalled over the Pirates' concerns that they were the pegboy of the Pittsburgh Three-Way. And Bostonist can't help but agree with them. The deal has the Pirates trading away an All-Star caliber left fielder with a monster on base percentage for a bag of magic beans. Insiders also claim that some in the Red Sox front office weren't really down......

Let's give a hand, ladies and gentlemen, and perhaps even raise our Saturday morning coffee cups in a toast. To the new Celtics and basketball's new Big Three! Before we dive into Friday night's Celts season opener, we should take a quick trip back to May 22, when Boston gasped in horror over the hand fate had dealt. Fifth pick for what was then a terrible, wretched team. We were screwed. Ready to jump. Inconsolable.......

"Traditional," "evolving," "models," and "criticism" are all words that might have turned most people off already, but bear with us here: today's 2.5-hour (longer than most movies!) panel discussion on the nature of film criticism at the Coolidge Corner Theater was actually at least as enlightening as annoying, if not more so. Moderators Cynthia Lucia and Richard Porton led panelists Phillip Lopate, Scott Foundas, Glenn Kenny, David Sterritt, Owen Gleiberman, and Ty Burr in......

Swashbuckler will be screening at the Brattle Theatre tonight, Wednesday, September 19, at 9:30 pm. The Brattle Theatre is celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day, and they've made an interesting choice. Instead of going with the obvious, as in an earlier Pirates of the Caribbean, they went with the 1976 adventure Swashbuckler. The Brattle's release calls Swashbuckler "little-known." No kidding, but James Earl Jones, the master of gravitas (sorry, Stone Phillips), the voice of God,......

Sometimes, we in Boston take our Sox for granted forget how good we've got it. That's why every so often, the Bostonist Sports Department likes to hit the road and investigate the conditions at other ballparks around the land. So we found ourselves in Pittsburgh this weekend, watching the woeful Pirates play the hapless Reds at the sublime PNC Park. We forget just how lucky we are, when we hear mutterings from a Pittsburgh......

All right, it wasn't exactly "Our hallowed snake-skull-cracking day", but there aren't too many opportunities to play the Diamondbacks and break out all the old snake jokes. What it was, was a tough game against a young pitcher pitching way above his head, and the Red Sox were fortunate to get out of it with a 10-inning, 4-3 win. Julian Tavarez pitched well, with a couple of mistakes, including giving Arizona's Stephen Drew a chance......

Remember J.D. Drew? David Jonathan "J.D." Drew, 31 years old, plays right field, graduated from Florida State? J.D. Drew hasn't generated much favorable buzz these days. The only things we've heard about him for the past month and a half has consisted of justifiable griping from fans and predictions from Theo Epstein that The Slump is only temporary. But Drew made his presence known on Friday night during interleague play in Arizona. Continuing his widely-known......

We were asking if Doc Rivers needed his head checked after letting the Celtics bench finish out the game against the Charlotte Bobcats. The Celtics were winning, but Paul Pierce got hit in the eye. Doc took him out, and then he let Big Al Jefferson rest a while. He says he wasn't trying to throw the game. If Doc were impersonating Kevin Nealon's "Subliminal Man" character on Saturday Night Live, he could have grunted......

God, we're so sick of Snakes on a Plane that we want to kill anyone and everyone that makes a "something on a something" joke. But then we realized that there was no way we could ever win this fight, and, hell, if you can't beat them, we might as well join them. And with that, you have the theme of this weeks' Gothamist network post. Austinist makes it easy for us, with Candidate on......

In a world where there's nothing to do but watch movies. In a city full of theaters, museums, and libraries. One moviegoer who can be in three places at once. Opening Friday 7/7 A Scanner Darkly Waking Life Bostonist is crossing her fingers that Richard Linklater's well-cast and lovingly-animated Philip K. Dick adaptation will strike the right tone of near-future uneasiness (like Bladerunner did) and eschew chase scenes and tacked-on Hollywood endings (like Total Recall......

While waiting in the bathroom line at the Diesel, Bostonist caught zombie overlord Alli Auldridge putting up a poster for Zombie March 2006. When cornered, Ms. Auldridge revealed her plans: on Saturday, April 29th, the local undead will walk from Davis Square to Harvard Square in search of a decent brain to eat. How long do you expect Zombie March 2006 to last? Are we talking about traditional, slowly-lurching Dawn of the Dead zombies,......

Tonight in the Ghettolands (uhhh, Meadowlands), Boston College plays Seton Hall (10-8, 2-5), and Big East history is on the line. By beating Providence by 12 on Tuesday, BC equaled its 1968-69 squad's school record for consecutive wins and the Big East record for best overall start, shared by Syracuse (1999-2000) and Connecticut (1998-99). Never before has a Big East team gone 20-0. The odds makers think BC will have their hands full, making......