Tom Hanks

It's 2 AM and you awake with a jerk, alone in your fully-lit apartment and still on the couch. On TV, the credits of some movie you've already seen a billion times are scrolling by. It feels like rock bottom. And we know, because we're just like you: single.

Need a movie to keep you company until you literally can't keep your eyes open? Join us tonight when we pass out to That Thing You Do! [starting @ 12 a.m. on Fox Movie Channel]

Why we'll try to stay up and watch it: Released twelve years ago to the day, That Thing You Do! is a movie beyond criticism. It's so darn charming and likeable that even the most cold-hearted and cynical person would have to stop and smile at its brightly colored goodness as they flipped through the channels.  read more »

Colin Hanks, son of Tinseltown bigwig Tom, moved here from L.A. last year. In Sunday’s Page Six Magazine, the 30-year-old actor answers a few New York-centric questions, shedding light on a few of his favorite things.

Mr. Hanks, who lives in a “small but quaint” West Village apartment, has to endure lots of late-night noise from the bar downstairs. Sleeping through the drunken din is apparently no Biggie for the Orange County actor, but snoozing with the smell of bacon wafting in from a neighboring deli is another story.  read more »

Ed Koch just sent out his review of Charlie Wilson’s War, the new film featuring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. Koch, served in congress with Wilson before being elected mayor, offers this interesting anecdote that, unfortunately, is not in the film:

We were on a junket in Israel where he was inspecting the Israeli Navy. He became involved with a female Israeli Naval officer assigned to our party. The Israeli Navy did not approve and reassigned her. Charlie was beside himself with anger. I went to a government official and said, "You are dealing with Israel’s most important non-Jewish friend in the Congress. If you make him angry, that could change. I urge you to return that naval officer to our party." And they did.  read more »

This weekend, across the country, discerning film-going audiences were able to choose between two types of history: the real kind and the fake. Guess which one won?! National Treasure: Book of Secrets (no. 3), which follows the Indiana Jones-like Ben Gates as he tries to clear his family’s name in connection to the Lincoln assassination, raked in over $45 million and easily earned the top spot in the country. But here in the city, it lost out to Mike Nichols’ Charlie Wilson’s War (no. 2), about an obscure congressman and his even more obscure fight to help the Afghans defeat the Soviets during the Cold War, which outearned the Nicholas Cage actioner by $5,000, while playing on one less screen. Cue Cindy Adams: Only in New York, kids!  read more »

Because cases of mistaken celebrity identity can be really annoying, here follows a list of some stars—most of whom are out-of-towners—in New York over the next seven days. So if you happen to find yourself at, say, Da Silvano on Wednesday night and could swear that Tom Hanks is sitting at the next table over, you’ll know that it’s probably him. (Mr. Hanks comes to town today to promote his new film, Charlie Wilson’s War.)

After the jump, some other stars in town to push a little flesh this week.  read more »

Ron Howard's Da Vinci Code sequel, Angels & Demons, and Oliver Stone's Pinkville were shelved during the weekend because scribes can't finish writing the scripts during the strike, according to Variety.  read more »

Not complaining—they can be quite charming! But it doesn’t seem quite fair that offspring of the rich and famous are sucking up all the glam media jobs.  read more »

Good-sport superstar Tom Hanks has done his best to detoxify the religious controversies swirling ar  read more »

What’s wrong with The Da Vinci Code can be summed up in one word: everything!Catholics scream “H  read more »

What’s wrong with The Da Vinci Code can be summed up in one word: everything!  read more »

I saw The DaVinci Code last night with a friend, a lapsed Catholic, after two other friends, also lapsed Catholics, raved about it. Even a lapsed Jew like me knows that this movie will be poison at the confession box. It's like the idea I discovered in college, that I didn't have to marry a Jew—an idea that did a number on my natal faith.

Again, I'd quarrel with anyone who says this film is antireligious. It's pro-religious. Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou (What's that on her neck?) both seek spiritual knowledge. They want to know who and where the Holy Grail is, and they find out in the transcendent ending. Hanks is a lapsed Catholic but he believes in God. So does Audrey Tautou. It's just that their God is the one that Joan Osborne sang about in the anti-Catholic hit of 8 years back or so: "What if God was one of us?" God is in all of us, we just have to figure out where he/she/it is. The movie's over when Hanks understands that his belief is in This-thing-that-is-larger-than-him-but-also-in-him that he prayed to when he was trying to survive as a little boy in the well, and when Audrey Tautou accepts the blasphemous idea that she's a descendant of Jesus.  read more »

I won't say Tom Hanks can do no wrong, but for a man who lives and works in Hollywood, his track rec  read more »

Ferzan Ozpetek's Facing Windows ( La Finestra di Fronte ), from a screenplay by Gianni Romoli and Mr  read more »

Intelligence, craft and poignancy are in such short supply at the movies that it's a real thrill to  read more »

Most women I know think Johnny Depp has about as much sex appeal as a China doll or a Siamese cat-to  read more »

Steven Soderbergh's Traffic , from a screenplay by Stephen Gaghan, was inspired by a British Channel  read more »

Steven Soderbergh's Traffic , from a screenplay by Stephen Gaghan, was inspired by a British Channel  read more »

Cast Away for Christmas! Ready or not, here they come: The Christmas movies are upon  read more »

The Saint of Death RowThe movies take another bite out of Stephen King (or is it the other way aroun  read more »

The ActressForget satire. The erotic monologue is what closes on Saturday night.  read more »

Sixteenth century: Copernicus formulates the solar system; 17th century: Sir Isaac Newton formulates  read more »

Prodigiously produced and researched, ambitiously acted, and grandiloquently scored by the eternal J  read more »

With the year 2000 fast approaching, it is the season of millennial lists.  read more »