As fans of the Crosby Street Hotel’s Sunday Night Film Club (a club in name only) we perked up when we

Crosby Street screening room.

learned the hotel’s stylish basement screening room – orange leather chairs, state of the art equipment – had launched a new series.  Planned for four Mondays sprinkled throughout 2011, “Under the Influence: Writers on Film” pairs celluloid with lit, featuring a movie chosen by a prominent writer followed by a discussion with said writer and screenwriter Michael Maren.  A reception with wine and nibbles wraps things up.

It’s a 92^nd Street Y, Film Forum, private screening mash-up, in other words. And it’s yours for $35 (they also toss in popcorn and Voss water). (more…)

The Surrey.

It was just a matter of time. The Surrey, a small 1920s hotel, occupies a prime spot steps from Madison Avenue’s high-end boutiques, art galleries and the Whitney Museum of Art. For years it was a dependable if frowsy place where East Siders put up visiting relatives or moved in after a divorce if the nearby Carlyle proved too pricey.

But let’s face it, it was too well located to continue on that path.

And it didn’t. The hotel closed for renovations as a shabby dowager and reopened in 2009 — as what?  We recently checked in for a night to find out.

The lobby, an elegant mix of black, white and gray with an exquisite mosaic tile floor, all but screams that the Surrey is dowager no more. It’s a beauty, a mix of Art Deco, Woman of the Year glamour and East Side chic. Irving Penn could have posed his glamorous subjects here, sprawled on the small velvet sofa next to the fresh white roses. (more…)

Another day, another top 25 hotel list. This one comes from the readers of Travel & Leisure. And though no New York hotels made the list, nine New York properties are among the 218 US hotels included in the magazine’s top 500 hotels in the world.

Like yesterday’s Trip Advisor listing, Travel & Leisure’s picks come from readers rather than editors.  (more…)

We love best hotel lists, so when Trip Advisor’s Travelers’ Choice awards for the top hotels of 2011 landed in our e-mail box today, we clicked on as fast as we could. Hmmm. Did you know the top hotel in the world is . . . the Golden Well (U Zlate Studne) in Prague, Czech Republic?

We’d never heard of the place so eagerly scoured Trip Advisor’s write-up and visitor photos. (more…)

Erin Markey and Adam Couperthwaite in Green Eyes.

It’s not news when a hotel room serves as a backdrop for a movie or photo shoot. But a play?

Welcome to Room 620 at the Hudson hotel. As noted previously here,  Green Eyes, a rarely seen one-act by Tennessee Williams, written in 1970 and published in 2008, is performed in this snug little suite through January 23.  Fortunately for claustrophobic types, the play is short – just 35 minutes – with just two characters, a warring pair of newlyweds honeymooning in a seedy New Orleans hotel room. (more…)

Hudson lobby.

It’s not exactly the comfort of strangers.

Green Eyes, a rarely seen one-act play by Tennessee Williams, dramatizes the nightmarish encounter of the Dunphys, a couple honeymooning in a New Orleans hotel room. Written in 1970 at the height of the Vietnam War – and unpublished until 2008 – the couple’s brutal assignation (he is an impotent vet traumatized by war, she is a ravenous, Williams harridan) translates the horrors of war into a violently deranged lovers quarrel. (more…)