By Margaret Nickens 6/29/12 11:51am

Q&A

Brent Barbour. (Photo by flickr.com/imonfort)

The NYC Bicycle Film Festival Starts Tonight, And We Spoke (Sorry) with its Founder Brendt Barbur

Twelve years ago, Brendt Barbur was happily riding his bicycle through the streets of New York City when one oblivious driver doored the hapless biker, throwing him into the path of an oncoming bus. “I saw the light,” Mr. Barbur said, quickly adding, “just kidding.” While he was able to walk away from the accident with limbs in tact, it inspired him to found the Bicycle Film Festival (adorably acronymed BFF) to “do something positive for bikes,” he said. Since its 2001 founding, the festival has traveled to over 30 cities around the world, including Moscow, Sydney, Paris, San Francisco and, of course, New York. This weekend BFF is back for the 12th annual Bicycle Film Festival NYC, and before the credits roll tonight at Anthology Film Archives, Mr. Barbur sat down with The Observer to talk about snooty bikers, lemonade massages and Meryl Streep’s secret biking fetish. Read More

By Daniel D'Addario 8:00am

the eight-day week

Meryl Streep (Getty Images)

To Do Thursday: Red, Red Wine

After last night’s display of Judd Apatow’s newfound ability to cast roles for the ladies, we’re feeling enlightened, empowered, ready to take up arms against the so-called war on women! Where better to start than at Equality Now’s 20th-anniversary benefit dinner, raising money to fight ills from genital mutilation to sex trafficking? Meryl Streep, recently Read More

By Daniel D'Addario 3/26/12 1:10pm

Film Festivals

Meryl Streep. (Getty Images)

Streep, De Niro, Sarandon to Attend Tribeca Special Events

This year’s Tribeca Film Festival has announced its special events for this year’s program. The events New Yorkers can catch are to include an April 22 interview between movie-industry stalwarts and prominent political commentators Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon–warning, first three rows may get politically awakened!

Jim Sheridan, director of In the Name of the Father and My Left Foot is to be interviewed by his screenwriter daughter Naomi Sheridan on April 28. As for special talks, classic thriller WarGames is to come with a post-show discussion with actress Ally Sheedy, director John Badham, and officials from BitCoin and the U.S. Air Force on April 28; the documentary Let Fury Have the Hour comes with a post-screening talk with artist Shepard Fairey and Eve Ensler among others on April 23. Read More

By Ben Weitzenkorn 3/22/12 2:45pm

Party Report

NY Special Screening of BULLY

Meryl Streep Hosted an Advanced Screening of Bully

On Tuesday night Meryl Streep hosted an advanced screening of Lee Hirsch’s new documentary, Bully, at the Paley Center for Media. Bully is a film that follows the lives of six families and children for whom taunting, teasing and violence has been an unlivable problem. Celebrity anti-bullying advocates sounded off on the MPAA’s controversial R rating for the film, how the film resonated with their own experiences and how Dhuran Ravi’s conviction of a hate crime, in the death of Tyler Clementi, is raising questions about the line between youthful pranks and serious criminal acts

“I was really upset when I saw it,” Ms. Streep said of Bully. “When I watched it, it brought me back to New Jersey in ninteen fifty. . .—a long time ago. I was eight years old and up a tree and a group of kids was below me and my nemisis, this one bully, was hitting my legs with a stick until they bled,” she said. “It was very lord of the flies—a very nice Republican community.”

We’re not touching that last one. Read More