Are people who FaceTime while walking down the street literally insane?

Filmmaker Spike Lee has teamed up with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, producer Nicholas Ma and NY Liberty owner Clara Wu Tsai to launch “Playback: The Brooklyn Watch Party,” a new two-day festival taking over BAM on November 6 and 7. The inaugural event will feature repertory film screenings, conversations with cultural icons, live performances, pop-up experiences and a free street fair celebrating Brooklyn’s creative spirit.

Friday night will center on music, poetry, film and conversations inside BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House, with a slate of celebrity guest curators. Saturday will feature a series of film screenings with special appearances and a free afternoon block party with live music, local food vendors and community activations. The weekend wraps with a special screening of Crooklyn, featuring appearances by Lee, Alfre Woodard and additional guests.

Ticket pricing ranges depending on the event (the priciest seat for the Crooklyn screening is currently $76, while other films are going for $30), though the Saturday afternoon street fair will be free to attend.

Love show tunes? Well, this special edition of Come & Sing is the event for you. Featuring two iconic Broadway finales, “Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In” from the rock musical Hair, and “Children Will Listen” from Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical Into the Woods, participants will learn the songs alongside fellow musical theater lovers, led by choir director Ben Bram and special guests Brooke Ishibashi and Sasha Allen. The song selections were made as a tribute to late actor and singer Gavin Creel.

The November 8 event is for all ages, and will be held at Lincoln Center Theater (150 West 65th St). While pre-registration is not required, it is free and highly recommended. Signing up ahead of time will get you priority access up until 10 minutes before the metaphorical curtain. But registration does not guarantee entry, as folks will be able to walk in day of on a first-come, first-served basis as space allows.

The New York Comedy Festival is where the best of the best comedians of NYC gather each year, and this year, it’s celebrating its 22st anniversary with more than 200 comedians performing more than 100 shows at venues throughout the five boroughs.

If you've laughed at comedy shows in NYC in the past few years, it probably had something to do with at least one of the comics on the super stacked lineup. This year’s headliners include major genre names like Marc Maron, Ilana Glazer, Ziwe, Ben Bankas, Matt Rogers, Sarah Sherman, Daniel Sloss, Adam Friedland, Mojo Brookzz and more. 

The dates for the New York Comedy Festival are Friday, November 6 through Sunday, November 15, 2026. Get tickets on the NYCF website.

Bid adieu to Halloween with a smashing good time at Hudson River Park's Pumpkin Smash. Bring your own jack-o-lantern or pumpkin, along with some safety goggles, and smush your gourd into compostable bits. 

You’ll get to choose a bat, hammer or shovel, then stick around to learn how composting works. Park staff will convert the gooey bits into nutrient-rich compost to nourish the park's plants. In past years, more than 6,000 pounds of pumpkin scraps were collected and used for compost (and kept out of the landfill!). 

It's all happening at Pier 84 on Saturday, November 7 from 11am to 3pm.

Shop 'til you drop at FAD Market, a curated fashion, art and design pop-up marketplace, which is back for 2026. Expect to see your favorite makers plus brand new creatives, all offering goods to help you live smarter, gift better and support local businesses.

FAD—which stands for Fashion, Art and Design—takes over different venues with a horde of independent vendors and creators. Admission is free and dogs are welcome!

Peruse handmade jewelry, apparel, skincare products, tableware, artisanal packaged food, and more. Whether you're shopping for you or a friend (or even getting an early on that holiday shopping), there are plenty of local gems to pick up. 

Here's the fall schedule: 

• November 7–8: Fall pop-up at Empire Stores in Dumbo
• November 30–December 20: Holiday pop-up at Empire Stores in Dumbo

This annual cans-for-a-cause competition pits architecture teams against each other to create larger-than-life art installations using thousands upon thousands of cans of food, all in the name of ending hunger (every can is donated to City Harvest to help feed those in need).

Head to Brookfield Place in Manhattan (230 Vesey Street) from October 30-November 9 (10am–7pm) to see the unveiling of these engineering spectacles, all built after months of planning. Then check back to see if your favorite takes home any titles in judges’ categories like Best Use of Labels, Best Meal and Structural Ingenuity. You can even vote for your favorite sculpture once they are unveiled. 

Every year, teams go all out with creativity—expect to be wowed. Past sculptures have included a hot air balloon, a bodega cat, baby Yoda, Winnie the Pooh, Mario, Buckingham Palace, a pigeon sipping a coffee and lots more.

Admission is free, but do your part by donating some canned goods to the cause.

Two girls. One cup. What could go wrong? Eliya Smith's potentially shocking two-hander, developed with the Goat Exchange and inspired by the viral scat-porn clip that scandalized and titillated the world in 2007, does not try to dramatize the experience of Karla and Latifa, the stars of the Brazilian fetish film Hungry Bitches. Instead, it is drawn verbatim from conversations with men who have watched their scene—which inspired countless reaction videos online—and explores what they remember about it and how much about their own sexuality they are willing to share. Chloe Claudel and Juliana Sass play all the roles in what sounds like both an exercise in docutheater and a subversion of it; Claudel also co-directs it with Mitchell Polonsky.

The Bank of America Winter Village at Bryant Park is back in NYC with exciting holiday shops, food and activities running from October 28, 2026, through February 28, 2027.

Its 17,000-square-foot ice-skating rink that’s free to use (if you bring your own skates) is always the highlight, but the Winter Village in all its holiday spirit is a close second. This year, more than 180 new and returning kiosks will be there for you to peruse through until January 3—all at one of NYC's best parks for what's become one of the best Christmas markets in the world!

It may be third in the Olympics, but bronze is No. 1 at The Frick Collection. "Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450–1500" brings together roughly 40 works exploring how Sienese sculptors turned the metal into objects of extraordinary beauty and technical sophistication. The exhibition features masters including Donatello, Vecchietta and Francesco di Giorgio, with many works that are rarely seen outside of Tuscany. Beyond the artistry, the show examines the technical hurdles and political complications that shaped bronze production in 15th-century Siena, revealing the ingenuity behind these intricate creations. It’s a chance to see Renaissance sculpture through a fresh lens and appreciate just how much craftsmanship goes into making something look effortless.

Tickets for The Frick Collection run between $17 (student) and $30 (adult) depending on the ticket you qualify for.

Some films are important regardless of their cinematic quality. They have an urgency and a relevance that go beyond aesthetic consideration. This new film from Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the filmmakers behind Palestinian-Israeli Oscar-winner No Other Land, is one of those. And it’s one of the year’s best.

The film consists of the testimony of 24 anonymous ex-members of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). The interviews take place in the dark on rooftops in Tel Aviv, overlooking apartment buildings and streets where the night-time traffic passes. Abraham questions his subjects and listens to what they have to say—they are anonymous shapes in the dark with quiet reasonable voices. 

NAZA puts together a restrained, intelligent, articulate, precise and utterly damning case against Israel’s actions in Gaza and their ongoing actions throughout the region. As a work of cinema, it is exemplary. As a work of journalism, it is inarguable.

Read more of John Bleasdale's review here.

In cinemas worldwide October 15.