festival

Alexander Payne's eagerly awaited comedy "The Descendants" will serve as the closing-night attraction at the New York Film Festival, the Film Society of Lincoln Center announced on Wednesday. The film, featuring George Clooney as a father whose life is shaken when his wife is injured in a boating accident, is Payne's first since the Oscar winner "Sideways."

Gowanus Bay Bitters is one of the inventive brews being served at the Beer for Beasts festival on Saturday. But don't worry — if a drink named for a Brooklyn bay doesn't appeal to you, there are plenty of other options.

Last month, we wrote about this year's Le Fooding festival, a star-chef cook-off capitalizing on East Coast/West Coast food rivalries. (Chefs from New York—Chang, Barber—will be pitted against their counterparts in San Francisco—Fox, Jossel—and there will be plenty of overly dramatic lightning bolt posters to boot.)

Youngsters from two Nepalese villages in the south of the Himalayan country had equipped themselves with the juiciest insults for a 10-day annual "cursing festival" that ended Sunday.

RIO DE JANEIRO — Carnival's raucous street parties flooded Rio with drum-beating local revelers and sweaty foreigners escaping snowbound cities.