Friday:
 • The 43rd New York Film Festival is the biggest thing to hit Lincoln Center since, um, the CMJ Festival last week. Still, go check it out — nothing gets the intellectual masturbation going at a cocktail party faster than a discussion of Mitsuo Yanagimachi's "Who's Camus Anyway?" [flavorpill]
• The New Yorker Festival kicks off today as well, with a series of tandem readings (Michael Chabon and Stephen King! Zadie Smith and Jonathan Franzen! A.M. Homes and Jeffrey Eugenides!), a "High Rollers Steak Dinner" poker game, and a town hall-style meeting on Iraq. Your options are pretty much confined to the latter — everything else is sold out. [NYer]
Saturday:
 • Evidently, one-hit wonders Nada Surf have been playing sold-out shows in Europe ever since they dropped that Popular song here and then sort of fell of the map. They play a free show in Williamsburg tonight to get things swinging stateside. [Paper]
• Speaking of popularity contests, ticket sales for today's lineup at the New Yorker Festival give us a good idea of whose on top of the totem poll: Malcolm Gladwell and Sasha Frere-Jones got it; fashion scribe Judith Thurman and police chief Raymond Kelly don't. Should have bought tickets earlier, culture snob. [NYer]
Sunday:
 • Have you heard of the Shins? Dude, they ll totally change your life. The White Stripes, too. They're gonna be big. [flavorpill]