Features:

Movies

Nichols gets Closer . . . Giamatti goes Sideways . . . Topher Grace loses his innocence to Dylan Kidd . . . Sarsgaard’s kinky Kinsey role . . . The biopic boom . . . Renée Zellweger’s Bridget, take two

Theater

Mary-Louise Parker and Craig Lucas together again . . . Two playwrights wrestle with God . . . Sam Shepard, reticent interviewee . . . Phylicia Rashad does August Wilson . . . Neil LaBute defends a bully . . . Peter Dinklage as Richard III . . . Edie Falco’s dark side . . . Matthew Broderick gets his post-Producers theater fix

Art

Artists at the airport . . . MoMA remade . . . Benjamin Edwards off the grid . . . Gilbert Stuart paints America’s dad . . . Isamu Noguchi’s centenary . . . Chicks with cameras . . . Old iconography in hip-hop regalia

Books

Cynthia Ozick revisits the Bronx . . . Saving chick-lit from itself . . . August Kleinzahler’s Old Jersey . . . Political novels: left, right, and center . . . Philip Roth gets counterfactual . . . Jonathan Lethem and Craig Thompson picture fiction’s future

Television

Drea de Matteo forsakes Christopher for Joey . . . Felicity Huffman, Desperate Housewife . . . J. J. Abrams deserts his cast . . . Law & Order and CSI shoot it out

Music

Nas gets in touch with his roots . . . Rupee, crown prince of soca . . . The Clash, a quarter-century later . . . Le Tigre scratches at the mainstream . . . Johnny Cash’s last stand at Sotheby’s . . . Pop gets grown-up

Classical Music

Julie Taymor remakes The Magic Flute . . . Salman Rushdie gets operatic . . . Kronos plays music from outer space . . . World Music Institute at twenty

Restaurants

Gray Kunz gets a kitchen of his own . . . Jacques Torres builds a Wonkaland . . . BLT Steak’s fishy brother . . . Three new pizzerias are anything but cheesy

Shopping

Pucci paints Fifth Avenue red (and orange, and purple) . . . Peter Elliot works blue . . . Alessandro Dell’Acqua sets Madison Avenue a-shimmer . . . Jewelers a-poppin’

Our Complete Guide For Fall 2004

Departments

Letters to the Editor

Readers sound off on Adam Bellow's politics, Fall Fashion, Fur, Brooke Shields, and more.

Smart City

Our Mutual Friend

Stealing friends is another one of those junior-high habits that you never quite outgrow

Best Bets

Tumi’s new sports-bag line; paint-by-numbers wallpaper

Shop Talk

Desiron’s new furniture collection promises, and delivers, within days.

Sales & Bargains

Express furniture from Desiron

Plus: sales at Paragon, Property, Showroom Seven, Crouch & Fitzgerald, Nancy Geist, Bark, Omnia, and Nancy Cohen.

Intelligencer

Intelligencer Gossip

Bill Gilroy raids Keith McNally's restaurants...Courtney Love to unload apartment...Ian Schrager searches for designer.

The Accidental Historian

Artist Wolfgang Staehle inadvertently recorded the 9/11 attacks during his last show. His new exhibit: mostly landscapes.

Animal Liberation

A new exhibit of Winogrand’s sixties photos—and a look at how zoos have changed since.

Dinner in Bed

A Miami fad comes to Manhattan.

Brand History
How a line lost its cool

First Look
Bartlett's back. Imitation's uptown. A Fashion Week preview.

One to Watch
This season the newcomer with breakout potential is hardly new to the scene.

Runway Music
What will models march to this year?

Their 9/11 and Ours

New Yorkers, mere extras in the GOP’s passion play.

RNC Souvenirs

What was the best—and worst—part of your week in New York?

Columnists

The Bottom Line

How to pick the presidential candidate who will best serve your portfolio.

The National Interest

While all those moderates on the RNC stage pacify reluctant Democrats and give them a reason to stay away from the polls, conservative strategists are busy inciting a culture war in the heartland.

Naked City

More men seem to be asking: Why have a breakup talk when you can just fade away?

Critics

Movies

Criminal, a stylishly low-budget bit of film noir with a terrific cast, collides the disparate worlds of Beverly Hills and the L.A. barrio

Theater

Despite the best efforts of twelve actors, Guantánamo might play better in a lecture hall than on a stage; Susannah York’s awkward solo show

Art

The city is full of protest signs and Bush-inspired art exhibits that simply don’t compare with the anger-fed ingenuity that came out of Vietnam. What happened to political art? Television.

Television

NYU filmmaker wannabes in a baby Project Greenlight.

The Week

New on DVD

New on DVD: The Ladykillers, Topdog Diaries, Jersey Girl, Alfred Hitchcock Collection, American Film Archives.

Restaurant Openings & Buzz

Opening this week: Coast, Angon On The Sixth, The Blue Mill, Freeman's, and Frankies 457 Court Street Spuntino. Plus, Gael Greene joins the Kitchen Club and Israeli imports come to the East Village.

Top Five Smaller Film Festivals

The New York Film Festival’s less than two months away—so warm up with these little series first.