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With experimental documentaries like "Chain" and  "Instrument," Jem Cohen has made intimate non-fiction diary films rooted in an attentiveness to atmosphere and riddled with small observations rendered in profound terms. "Museum Hours,"which opens today in select theaters, is technically his first narrative effort, with a pair of amateur performances and the backbone of a fictional story. But its constant introspection and remarkable sense of place provide a fluid connection to the earlier work. On the one hand a sad, poignant character study, "Museum Hours" is also a treatise on art history and a love letter to architectural wonder. Predominantly set in Vienna's grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum, the trim story involves middle-aged museum guard Johann (Robert Sommer, making a gently affecting onscreen debut), whose quiet gig has allowed him to fade into his surroundings and observe the visitors in much the same way they peer at the artwork. It's here.

-- Consider Madison Square Garden on watch.

Luring the Nets from New Jersey was only Step 1 in Brooklyn's metamorphosis into an entertainment hot spot. Next up for the borough, a ruthless bid in stealing the spotlight and the stars from Msg, New Jersey's Prudential Center, and any other venue that books boldface names in music and sports.

There's a new kid in town, folks, a state-of-the-art arena in Brooklyn that is gobbling up acts at an alarming rate.

Jay-z, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Andrea Bocelli are just a few of the marquee attractions coming to the new Barclays Center, a facility that will house the NBA's Brooklyn Nets and so much more.

College basketball is on the way, as are the Harlem Globetrotters and World Wrestling Entertainment, and before the lockout was announced, an NHL preseason game was even on tap. Indeed, it appears Barclays has balance and boom in its acts,...

Dear Danny,

And so our Tiff dialogue comes to a close. A jet-lagged, discombobulated close, filed rather late and written largely in the limbo of airport terminals, suffused with that distinctly Portuguese melancholia known as “saudades.”

Indeed, the word turns up in Lines of Wellington, defined onscreen by that grand old satyr Michel Piccoli as the yearning for “what could have been, but wasn’t.” Fittingly, this historical epic—set in 1810 and detailing the clash between Anglo-Portuguese and Napoleonic troops as viewed by an ensemble of military and civilian figures—was supposed to have been directed by Raúl Ruiz, but after the Chilean master filmmaker passed away those duties fell instead to his widow, Valeria Sarmiento. The concept of Sarmiento, herself a director of nearly 20 films, shooting a panorama “prepared” by Ruiz certainly tantalizes. The stolid cinema de qualité pageant that resulted, however, turned out to be the antithesis of Ruiz’s sublimely slippery camera,...