Hope Davis and Nicolas Cage in The Weather Man, featured at this year's Hamptons Film Festival (Photo: Paramount Pictures)

This week's worthwhile festivalgoing experiences around New York:

--Unlike most New Yorkers, I actually need a pretty good reason to cross the East River for anything but mozzarella at Caputo's or beer at Spuyten Duyvil. And to get me all the way out to the Hamptons? You would have to have a pretty big-time film festival with panels and parties and premieres and all that good stuff I love to crash. As fortune (or fate, depending on your point of view) would have it, this is indeed the weekend the Hamptons Film Festival takes over Long Island. The festival boasts East Coast premieres of hotly anticipated fall films like Bee Season, Why We Fight and The Weather Man, not to mention a selection of nifty shorts by NYC filmmakers such as Jeff and James Israel and Cary Fukunaga. I will report back Monday morning with some weekend goings-on, assuming I can find my way there and back. Or you can meet me out there, and we will get through it together.

--Or if you are a homebody with a taste for blood, head down to Tribeca Cinemas for this year's New York City Horror Film Festival. The event hits its stride tonight and tomorrow with new films by Don Coscarelli and Tom Savini, along with a full-blown, audience-participating midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Also, cult fillmaker Roger Corman will accept the fest's Lifetime Acheivement Award Saturday night at 10 p.m. before a screening of his Masque of the Red Death. This festival thrives on rarely-seen shorts by filmmakers from all over the world, so you do not have to worry too much about not seeing anything original. Moreover, you do not have worry about traveling to the Hamptons. Enough said.

--If you remain geographically conflicted, BAMcinematek is offering up the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. Do not count on any glamorous star sightings, however--the most exotic extravangance you are lkely to discover is live piano accompaniment and commentary by film preservationist Serge Bromberg. Still, with an emphasis on films by British director Anthony Asquith, this is another one of those line-ups you are not likely to have an opportunity to catch again anytime soon. Did I mention travel is a no-brainer?

--One more quick mention for CineKink NYC, which winds down this weekend with a range of alt-sex phenomena, filmmaker appearances and generally crazy, arousing shit. Read more about the festival from The Reeler's coverage earlier this week.