On an impulse, I stopped by the Hotel Chelsea the week before it closed two years ago for what was supposed to be a one-year renovation. As it turned out, this was the Chelsea’s last hurrah as the much-loved, occasionally reviled free spirit of the New York hotel scene. Read more
Leonardo and Carrie and Tiffany bling.
If you spent a late summer night in a New York City hotel room, chances are you escaped the heat and humidity by watching Carrie and Leonardo toy with Tiffany cuff links and pearls in The Great Gatsby, old sport. Elsewhere across the US and in Canada, hotel-goers clicked onto the antics of a very different duo, FBI agents Sandra and Melissa in The Heat (New York audiences liked that one, too.) But the big winner in August was the magician’s caper, Now You See Me. Read more
Red Scary Guy, 2013.
Every summer for the past three years a new work of art has appeared on the front plaza at The Standard High Line NYC. Each has been eye-catching and thought provoking. Read more
“42,” the Jackie Robinson story.
It’s summer, so we’re not surprised that the season’s big baseball movie was a hit in hotel rooms for the second month in a row. 42, the saga of the sport’s game changer Jackie Robinson, stars Chadwich Boseman and Harrison Ford and batted fifth in New York City hotel rooms and sixth in hotels throughout the U.S. and Canada. Read more
Yes, it was, and what a plum, if fleeting, cameo Tribeca’s chic brick, pie-slice-shaped hotel landed in Woody Allen’s latest movie.
Without giving too much away, a lead character – Alec Baldwin as a huckster bazillionaire named Hal – is spotted canoodling a glamorous brunette by his wife’s sister as the pair exit the hotel. After registering the look of shock on the sister’s face, the camera lingers for a few seconds on the hotel and its iconic clock with Roman numerals atop a sculpted wrought iron stand, a Tribeca landmark since the hotel opened in 2000. Read more
Tom Cruise in “Oblivion.”
Maybe we should rephrase the question and ask which actor got the most screen time on hotel room flatscreens last month. Read more
We’ve been Passing the Popcorn for well over a year, and the latest results gave us our first movie flip. Identity Thief, April’s second most popular hotel room movie in both the US and Canada and in New York City, came in first in both categories in May. And April’s Number 1, Jack Reacher, landed in second in both the US and Canada and NYC this time around. Read more
I’ll take a wild guess and assume that George Frederich Handel never dreamed his opera Rodrigo, written in 1707 when he was 22 years old, would have its North American premiere nearly three hundred years later in a hotel lobby.
But on May 21, 23 and 25, Handel’s fifth opera will be performed in the lobby of the Gershwin Hotel, a move that trumps the Met and every other opera house in the hemisphere. Read more
The Plaza.
As The Great Gatsby, the most hyped movie since, well, Iron Man 3, steamrolls into theaters, two hotels are proudly trumpeting their Gatsby connections.
Most obvious is The Plaza. When Daisy suggests Gatsby, Tom, Jordan and Nick drive to Manhattan, they beeline for the Plaza, a favorite of F. Scott Fitzgerald and wife Zelda. Read more
Jack Reacher, based on the best-selling book One Shot by Lee Childs, took in around $80 million at US box offices – not great for a $60 million movie with Tom Cruise in the leading role. (Translation: don’t expect a sequel.) But it was a big hit in hotel rooms last month, coming in first with pay-to-view hotel audiences in the US and Canada as well as New York City. Read more