Start at the George Washington Bridge, 6:30am-5:30pm, $280 per person including registration insurance. 

CANNES, France -- Who needs movies? Within a 24-hour period, street gunfire and a hotel heist have kept the masses entertained here in Cannes. In the early hours of Friday morning, $1.4 million in Chopard jewelry was stolen from a Suite Novotel when company reps from the U.S. had their room safe ripped out of the wall and swiftly spirited away. And Friday afternoon, at a live beachside taping of French entertainment show Le Grand Journal guest-starring Tarantino muse (and double Oscar-winner) Christoph Waltz, a lunatic shot off two loud blanks and caused a panicked audience to stampede off the stage before the 42-year-old perp was wrestled to the ground by local police. (The French newspaper Nice-Matin later reported that the man was carrying a starter’s pistol, a switchblade and a plastic grenade.)

Bling Ring star Emma Watson denied involvement in the jewel heist. (Getty Images)

Luxury robberies are nothing new to the Côte d’Azur. Hitchcock immortalized the act in 1955’s To Catch a Thief; and as recently as 2009, crooks absconded with more than $21 million in jewels from the Cartier store here in town. Cannes has always been a magnet for petty crimes, too, with humble festivalgoers occasionally getting mugged or having their accommodations raided. A few years ago, a group of Danish reporters had their computers taken; and even the late great Roger Ebert got his laptop swiped one year. The timing for the Chopard incident couldn’t have been more uncanny, though, since the world premiere of Sofia Coppola’s luxe robber flick The Bling Ring happened just hours before the crime. “I’m innocent! I promise I had nothing to do with it!” laughed Emma Watson, the film’s star, when on Saturday the Hollywood Reporter cheekily asked if she was wearing some of the stolen rocks.

Violence is no stranger to Cannes, either. One angry attendee set off a bomb in the Palais in the 1970s; and ever since 9/11, the festival has enforced a strict code of examining bags and using metal-detector wands on every person entering the main venue, an enormous concrete convention center (affectionately known as “the Bunker”) which hosts scores of daily screenings scattered throughout dozens of theaters large and small. One vigilant bag-checker was so lugubriously thorough at the first 8:30 a.m. screening on the very first day that it caused a backlog of hundreds of audience members—and eventually forced the guards to throw up their arms and let in the uninspected crowd en masse.

Bulgari better watch their back: on Tuesday night, they are joining Twentieth Century Fox in presenting a 50^th anniversary screening of the Elizabeth Taylor blockbuster Cleopatra, with Jessica Chastain reportedly hosting the evening and wearing four different choice pieces from the storied jeweler. The reception that follows at the Bulgari rooftop will feature some of Taylor’s original jewels, as well. Let’s hope the film’s 192-minute running time will keep any sticky-fingered party crashers at bay.

Chef Marc Murphy of Landmarc.

Tribeca is known for big-bucks lofts, celebrity residents and fancy food. The Taste of Tribeca, started in 1994, is a great way to pig out on glamorous grub from eateries like Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Grill, Bouley, Landmarc, City Hall and many others. The family-friendly event benefits the neighborhood’s public elementary schools P.S. 234 and P.S. 150, and thus features a play-all-day Kids Zone. And for the parents: a New York State wine tasting.

Hudson Street, 11:30am-3pm, tickets from $45. 

Oh, One57! Don't just lie around moping.

Poor, lonely, luxury condo tower! Unlike the co-ops lining Central Park to the East and the West, whose residents really love them, it seems like One57's new residents are only interested in it for its money. Or, more precisely, how their money might become even more money if they buy apartments there.

As the condo's top-floor units go into contract, New Yorker's real estate community has been speculating on who the super-secretive billionaires buying there are. Tantalizingly, Extell confirmed two contracts for more than $90 million, but for months and months and months, there's been no indication of who the buyers might be. So imagine the collective glee when The Wall Street Journal revealed that one of the buyers was billionaire hedge funder William Ackman. Sort of.

Mr. Ackman, leading a group of investors, is buying the 14,000 square foot duplex on the 75th and 76th floor, not for personal use, but as an investment, much like his Pershing Square Capital Management bets on J.C. Penney. Every property is an investment, of course (words that all real estate brokers murmur in their sleep), but this one is nothing but an investment. Mr. Ackman doesn't plan to live there, according to sources. He didn't study the renderings, look at the glittering glass walls and the high-end appliances and think the happy life they would lead together. He did not, in other words, fall in love—what every home, even luxury condo towers dream of.

Nor, apparently, have many (any?) of the other suitors studying the mock-ups and One57's pinstriped under-construction exterior. Nick Candy's overtures were reportedly rejected by Gary Barnett because Mr. Candy wanted to flip his unit before the building was even completed. Michael Holtz, the owner of the SmartFlyer Travel Agency, is one of the few other buyers who have been identified, but it's unclear if Mr. Holtz plans to live there either—he never moved into the apartment he bought at 15 CPW. And then there's the Chinese couple who bought a condo for their 2-year-old—to live in when he's a college sophomore, which they optimistically assume will be at either Columbia or NYU.

Of course, high-end luxury condos are often bought as investments, infrequently visited pied-a-terres. One broker estimated that only 10 percent of Plaza residents lived there full-time and 15 CPW's $88 million penthouse may have fetched more money than any other residence in the city, but as far as anyone knows, it's still sitting empty.

Still, One57 has been having a tough time of it recently—rendered a laughingstock by Hurricane Sandy, hated by its neighbors and not even the tallest residential building in the city (an honor claimed by 432 Park). All it really has is the promise of the highest closing prices in New York City history. But money can't buy happiness, and there's no sadness like having the finest things in the world and no one to share them with.

The device’s functionality is fairly limited: you can take a picture, record video and get directions to and from places. It also has the added benefit of making you look like a complete dork while somehow also attracting swaths of attractive ladies to get up real close to your face.
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The New York Times Book Review

"The e-book list has migrated online, the digital world being its natural habitat," the Times announced. "Given the fluid variety of pricing in today’s marketplace, we have also stopped including cover prices on the lists. The third change is the one you’re reading right now."

The third change is a more bloggy look. There will be a new column, called "Open Book," devoted to readings and panels (there are, after all, many a literary event on any given night), as well as an outlet for archival looks back in time. In the debut column, for example, there is a blurb with choice quotes from a 1925 review of The Great Gatsby (amazingly, people were writing about it even before Baz Luhrmann). "Open Book" will replace "Up Front," the front of book (front of review?) page.

Although nobody, least of all Times Book Review readers, likes change, this one seems relatively benign.

The cheapo hot dog eatery not only plans to promote Mr. McMillan and his mutton chops in its stores, but has invited him to treat its new location on St. Mark’s Place–which will be celebrating its grand opening tomorrow–as an “unofficial” campaign headquarters. It’s also planning to  introduce a new specialty hot dog, “The Jimmy McMillan,” in his honor.
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In one of the few instances of the Justice Department strong-arming journalists since the Nixon Administration, U.S. attorneys in Miami have convened a Federal grand jury to discover the identities of two reporters’ sources. In the process, Federal Government lawyers on the case have dragged The New York Times, Spin magazine and big-time First Amendment lawyer Victor Kovner into a possible freedom-of-speech imbroglio.

The reporters are Murray Waas, a former Village Voice writer now freelancing for Spin, and Douglas Frantz, an investigative reporter for The New York Times. The story they have worked on involves the U.S. Government; a major defense contractor called Teledyne Inc.; the sale of 130 tons of an explosive chemical compound called zirconium; an allegedly shifty Chilean arms maker named Carlos Cardoen; cluster bombs; and, in the role of the heavies, the Iraqis.

Mr. Waas first delved into what became known as “Iraqgate” when his story, “Gulfgate: How the U.S. Secretly Armed Iraq,” ran in the Dec. 18, 1990 issue of The Voice. In 1992, he and Mr. Franz teamed up for the Los Angeles Times to write more than 100 stories on U.S.-Iraqi skullduggery; as a result of the series, both were named finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting that year. Mr. Waas followed up the series with a piece in the Nov. 2 1992 issue of The New Yorker, which he co-wrote with Craig Unger. (Mr. Unger, a former deputy editor of The Observer, is not editor in chief of Boston magazine.)

Since 1992, Messrs. Waas and Frantz have continued to follow their own respective leads on the U.S.-arms-sales-to-Iraq track. Trudging down this path once more for Spin this past spring, Mr. Waas stumbled upon something new: A Federal grand jury, he found, was trying to root out his and Mr. Frantz’s respective sources.

The Federal grad jury investigation came as a result of Mr. Waas’ research into the case Edward Johnson, a former Teledyne salesman who was convited on April 4, 1995, of selling 130 tons of zirconium to Mr. Cardoen, the Chilean arms dealer who turned around and sold it to Iraq in the form of cluster bombs. In his research, Mr. Waas got hold of a transcript of some testimony from a Federal grand jury investigation. When Frank Tamen—the assistant U.S. attorney who had the case against Teledyne and Mr. Johnson in Federal court in Miami—found out about Mr. Waas’ having gotten his hands on the testimony, he was reportedly not pleased. And now the search is on, at the Federal level, to find the leaker who gave Mr. Waas the goods.

According to a source close to the case, Mr. Tamen has concluded that the defense attorneys—William Linklater and Mark Oates represnting Teledyne, and Gerald J. Houlihan representing Edward Johnson—are the men who may have done the leaking. In a move that would seem designed to kill the same bird with two stones, Mr. Tamen has asked a judge to charge all three defense attorneys with criminal contempt of court for allegedly passing the grand jury material to Mr. Waas. In addition, he has convened a separate Federal grand jury investigation essentially to do the same thing—find the source who leaked the grand jury minutes to Mr. Waas. While they’re at it, the grand jury has been charged with the task of ferreting out the source of a classified C.I.A. report leaked to Mr. Frantz, parts of which were quoted in an article he wrote about the Teledyne case on May 17, 1994 in The New York Times. Mr. Frantz had no comment on the matter.

According to sources, Mr. Tame claims he has no evidence to show that the Teledyne defense attorneys and Mr. Johnson’s defense attorney leaked the grand jury minutes to Mr. Waas. A hearing has been tentatively scheduled for Dec. 14 in Federal District Court in Miami and a Federal magistrate has been designated by the judge to preside over the matter to determine if the three defense attorneys should be held in criminal contempt. Mr. Waas has been subpoenaed by the defense counsel to testify.

Mr. Waas has not, however, been called in front of the grand jury convened expressly to root out his and Mr. Frantz’s respective sources. But he said he had received a call from Mr. Tamen.

“The prosecutor called me up—and this is pretty mind-boggling—the prosecutor called me up and asked me if I would tell him who the source was and testify, which was quite bizarre,” said Mr. Waas. “It was amazing. I mean, have we got the Justice Department or the Keystone Kops here? That’s just unbelievable that he would have the audacity to call me up and ask me to identify the source and then testify against the source.”

According to Mr. Waas, the central issue in the whole story is whether the Government “knew about, authorized, approved of or acquiesced” in the sale of cluster bombs to Iraq and whether it had a convert policy to help Iraq. The Government denies it.

Mr. Waas seemed concerned that he could go to jail for refusing to reveal his sources. But Mr. Kovner, who will represent Spin’s reporter in the criminal contempt-of-court hearing, was confident that Mr. Waas would not be put away. (Mr. Kovner is also representing Business Week in its efforts to overturn an injunction prohibiting the magazine from publishing information it obtained from sealed court documents while researching a story on a lawsuit involving Procter & Gamble and Bankers Trust.)

“There is an applicable shield statute in Florida which protects a journalist from compelled disclosure of a confidential source,” said Mr. Kovner. “Murray will not reveal any source to whom he has given a commitment of confidentiality. If anybody seeks to do that, that will be an unsuccessful behavior.”

Who will follow in Amanda Burden's (very stylish) footsteps?

With the New York City mayor's race not even past the Democratic primary, it's a bit early to be handicapping the city's next chief city planner, but where's the fun in being coy?

Crain's has taken a look at who might fill the post, which it calls "perhaps more important than any deputy mayor position at City Hall," arriving at a short list that includes names ranging from Vishaan Chakrabarti, a consummate real estate industry insider and former director of the Manhattan office of the Department of City Planning, to the more community-minded Anna Levin, a member of the City Planning Commission and the chair of Manhattan Community Board 4's Land Use Commission during most of the 2000s.

But when we spoke to Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation's Andrew Berman about who might be the city's next chief city planner, he threw cold water on the speculation.

"I think that the choice of who the chair will be, while it certainly tells you something, who the mayor is tells you more," Mr. Berman said.

He cited the evolution of Amanda Burden, widely heralded as driving the relatively radical rezonings—radical, at least, for the staid post-war planning years; there hasn't been a major revision to the city's code since the 1961 overhaul—of the Bloomberg years. Under Burden, development rules for a third of the city's land were changed in one way or another.

"Amanda was a very, very different member of the City Planning Commission when she was Mark Green's commissioner"—Mr. Green appointed Ms. Burden to the commission as the city's first public advocate—"than when she was Mike Bloomberg's."

"Some would argue," Mr. Berman continued, "that the Amanda Burden who served on the City Planning Commission [under Mark Green] wouldn't even recognize [today's] Amanda Burden."

Back before she became the face of Michael Bloomberg's Big Real Estate-friendly rezonings, Ms. Burden was not so well received by the industry. “I think there’s a concern about the prejudices she may bring to the position,” one developer told The Observer back in 2002. “I don’t think she was at the top of [our] list. But I think we feel that we can work with her, since we have no choice.”

Dapper though Mr. Chakrabarti may be, don't expect New York City's next chief planner to make the cover of Women's Wear Daily.

Of the candidates identified by Crain's, Mr. Chakrabarti and Ms. Levin sit on opposite sides of the pro- and anti-development spectrum.

"Folks from the real estate industry feel that they are entitled to more or less choose who the next chair is," Mr. Berman told The Observer. He wouldn't single out any candidate, but we can't help but think he was referring to Mr. Chakrabarti, who has been an unfailing advocate for density around New York's many transit hubs.

"Mr. Chakrabarti's group at Columbia University," wrote Crain's, "is expected to release a report soon showing that the city does not have the zoning capacity for the 1 million new New Yorkers expected by 2030 and is short about 300,000 residential units. As commissioner, Mr. Chakrabarti would likely support the upzoning of neighborhoods like Long Island City and the South Bronx that are one or two subway stops away from midtown."

Mr. Levin, on the other hand, has shown herself to be much more interested in affordable housing, and less interested in increasing the size of the city's overall housing stock, often expressing that distinctly West Side antipathy towards density.

She was, for example, the lone vote against Extell's Riverside Center project, saying the project was "too big."

And Ms. Levin and Mr. Chakrabarti stood on opposite sides of an early debate over the future of Hudson Yards back in 2003.

"We feel that the amount of growth planned for the area is essential to the long-term growth needs of the City of New York," Mr. Chakrabarti, then with the Department of City Planning, told The Observer.

Ms. Levin felt differently. "The city wants to create five World Trade Centers’ worth of new development. We feel that this is just too much," she said at the time, arguing that "the city must proceed without crushing the existing neighborhood."

CANNES, France -- Gloomy skies may be hanging over the south of France, but psychedelic philosophizing is lighting up the screens indoors. Ari Folman’s The Congress opened up the Director’s Fortnight section of Cannes last night with a loopy dose of future shock featuring Robin Wright as a washed-up variation of herself who sells her scanned body, plus a gallery of emotional expressions and all performance rights, to Tinseltown composite Miramount Studios. No need to suffer the scandal-prone peccadillos, erratic temperaments or drug-fueled habits of stars; after turning them into digital avatars, the studio can dictate movie roles, shape career decisions and exploit promotional duties without any pushback. The forever-young and totally automated celebrity will do its duty impeccably and in perpetuity. (TMZ should fear for its life.)

Director Ari Folman, second from left, poses with the cast of The Congress. (Getty Images)

The digital Faustian bargain (pitched by Ms. Wright’s aging agent, touchingly played by Harvey Keitel) becomes midnight-movie manna when, 20 years later, Ms. Wright goes to a studio-run resort where people snort a gas that turns everything they perceive into a drug-fueled, candy-coated Looney Tunes cartoon populated by famous figures from pop history. In the future, humans are simply hallucinating shape-shifters who idolize past icons and morph seamlessly from Michael Jackson to Frank Sinatra to Grace Jones. But the next logical step is even more morbid: the studio, which has now merged with a Big Pharma company, wants Ms. Wright to sell her chemical essence so that they can let the public literally digest her.

The stoner-quality pontificating, which gets more baroquely animated and increasingly paranoid as it goes along, offers up dystopic visions that deliver kaleidoscopic science fiction at its most extreme—imagine Betty Boop crossed with The Matrix. The film is loosely adapted from Stanislaw Lem’s communist-era satire The Futurological Congress and its vision of a world dictated by illusions that pacify the public, and its update to 21^st century anxiety about virtual reality is admirable. But there’s a thematic sprawl to the film that finally ends in emotional overreach and narrative obfuscation. You might need to be tripping balls to really feel like the ending has any sort of a satisfying climax.

Celebrated Chinese auteur Jia Zhengke is only slightly more down-to-earth in his ripped-from-the-headlines tabloid omnibus A Touch of Sin, a quartet of lurid stories taken from recent news events in China. A darkly poetic slant on everything from a recent high-speed train crash to the suicides at a Foxconn factory, with a few disgruntled employees that go postal thrown in for good measure, Mr. Jia’s latest takes the usually austere director into unfamiliar pulp territory that includes a shotgun rampage and a defiant pedicurist who gets deadly with a fruit knife after being bitch-slapped with a fistful of renminbi. The overt themes of economic oppression come through loud and clear, although the audience will probably feel pummeled rather than persuaded.

Asghar Farhadi, right, director of The Past. (Getty Images)

Sober-minded literalists who prefer their plots unsullied by sensationalistic extremes will look favorably on divorce drama The Past, from poet of martial discord Asghar Farhadi (whose Oscar-winning film A Separation was a devastating look at an Iranian couple at the end their marriage).  As with his previous film, this delicately calibrated story of husbands, wives and children all shell-shocked by emotional upheaval makes for a compelling study that slowly (if tauntingly) parcels out its plot revelations like grenades that cause irreparable collateral damage. The setting is now France, and the cast includes Oscar nominee Bérénice Bejo (The Artist), but the concerns and emotional conflicts are clearly universal. It’s good to know filmmakers here can show devastated lives without always causing literal devastation.