Probably owing to The Wire’s having proven America’s appetite for urban grit and squalor on the small screen, Showtime is currently developing a dramatic series that will chronicle the yeasty days of New York’s Alphabet City during the 80’s. According to The Hollywood Reporter, native Gotham-ites Spike Lee and Robert DeNiro are on board to direct and produce respectively, with John Ridley (of Undercover Brother fame!?) penning the series. The title: Alphaville. Somewhere in the world Jean-Luc Godard is throwing up right now.

It wouldn't be hyperbole to say that Passing Strange might be one of the best movies of the year, if not easily the best documentary of it. And it's even stranger that it exists. Stew and Heidi Rodewald of The Negro Problem played in a band for years before putting together their rock musical opus Passing Strange. The show, a coming-of-age story about a black, middle class teenager leaving South Central to pursue his rockstar dreams of a "real" existence in Amsterdam and Berlin stars Stew, Heidi, their band, and a collective of some of Broadway's best stage talent. It's a rock show, it's a play, it's a musical, it's an experience. And it went from Berkeley, to downtown New York, to Broadway, taking their rock band on the most unlikely of paths, which got even stranger when it won a Tony, and then when legendary director Spike Lee decided to step in and permanently document the show on film before it closed. After taking awards home from Sundance, the rock doc's now being shown on IFC On Demand, at the IFC Center in New York, around the country, and soon, will be broadcast on PBS. We sat down with Lee, Stew (né Mark Stewart), and his co-writer/bassist Heidi Rodewald to wax poetic on the process of Strange.

Tuesday marked the 20th anniversary of the theatrical release of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. In competition at the 89’ Cannes, it lost the Palm d’Or to Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape, owing at least in part to jury president Wim Wenders’ now famous opinion that the film’s hero, Mookie, was insufficiently heroic. Lee was incensed enough to suggest that Wenders “had better watch out 'cause I'm waiting for his ass!" He even claimed to have a baseball bat with the director’s name on it.