Why is Smash, the hit NBC series about the creation of a Broadway musical, our favorite television show this season? We can’t recall a TV show or movie with scenes shot at more New York City hotels. (more…)
When Hollywood’s luckiest lookers thank their lawyers, agents, stylists and Mom for their screen success this Sunday, where do you want to be? Sure, you can stay home with your TV and Twitter feed, but watching the festivities on a big screen at a hotel can be so much more fun.
We found three hotels in different parts of town that go all out for Oscar night. The envelope, please! (more…)
In case you missed the Trump International New York Hotel & Tower’s starring role in the action comedy Tower Heist (and regret it), you’ve got another chance. The caper movie Rotten Tomatoes called “fun fluff” goes on sale on Blu-Ray and DVD on February 21st.
Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, Tea Leoni, Casey Affleck and Alan Alda co-star with the hotel,which is cast as a super-luxe condo packed with wealthy New Yorkers. Not much of an acting stretch for the Trump, in other words, but the hotel plays its part convincingly, even if all that’s seen is the gleaming black and gold exterior as well as the loading dock, garage and residential lobby at 1 Central Park West. (Sorry, no guest rooms.) (more…)
The Standard.
Ever since the Standard opened in 2009, looming high over the High Line and West Side Highway with its floor to ceiling windows, it’s been waiting for its close-up. At last, the sleekly sexy hotel — and its windows — figure prominently in a new movie, and wouldn’t you know, it’s rated NC-17?
Shame, the unsparing film with Michael Fassbender as a sex addled bachelor prowling Manhattan, features a prominent scene in a corner room at the Standard. For anyone who ever wanted a peek behind a door, the chicly contemporary Roman & Williams décor (and lots more) is on view – the clean lines, white walls, wood paneling and quiet luxury, with a large flatpanel TV in front of a window. (more…)
"Glee" on screen at CaVa.
Talk about savvy product placement. One of the first sights on screen during the much balleyhooed season finale of “Glee” this week was the lobby of the Intercontinental New York Times Square, the 36-story glass skyscraper that opened last July. A polished hotel staffer, uniformed in a navy blue blazer, smiles as Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison), the Lima, Ohio high school glee club advisor, checks in and says, “Welcome to the Intercontinental New York Times Square,” just in case viewers don’t recognize the hotel on their screen.
And just like that, one of New York’s newest hotels moves a step closer to hospitality’s big guys for whom on-screen appearances are like breathing, an august group that includes the Waldorf=Astoria, The Plaza and The Roosevelt. (more…)
The Waldorf's Hall of Mirrors
It isn’t easy to steal a scene from Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. But the Waldorf=Astoria in all its Art Deco glory does precisely that during the early scenes of The Adjustment Bureau, the new sci-fi-tinged thriller that opened this weekend. After all, there’s not a lot, living or inanimate, that can compete with the Waldorf’s vaunted Hall of Mirrors, patterned after the original in Versailles, in terms of jaw-drop wonder.
It gives away none of the twisty-turny plot to tell you the early scenes are set at the hotel – its elevator bank, carpeted staircases on the Lexington Avenue side, ballroom and, of course, the Hall of Mirrors. (more…)
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 92nd 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 theater with 100 orange leather seats.
Almost as many New York City hotels have screening rooms as spas. But it’s a lot easier to visit a hotel spa than to settle in with a bag of popcorn for a movie in a hotel screening room. Though chic abodes like the Bryant Park Hotel and the Tribeca Grand have suitably eye-catching movie theaters, as rental spaces they’re the domain of invited guests.
Which is why the Crosby Street Hotel’s 100-seat movie theater is so cool. Every week, the Crosby Sunday Night Film Club screens a movie and a short feature at 8 pm. Admission to the “club” requires neither dues nor hazing: you either book the three-course movie dinner ($50) or the movie bar plate for two ($25 a person). (more…)