+Looking Around | 1482 days ago

Before the Deluge

By Richard Lacayo

The New York City Waterfalls; Brooklyn Bridge Site (artist’s rendering), Eliasson, 2008 / Images: © OLAFUR ELIASSON, COURTESY PUBLIC ART FUND As you may have heard, this summer and fall New York will be hosting a roughly four-month outdoor art installation by Olafur Eliasson called The New York City Waterfalls. Cascades will pour into the [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+1482 days ago

More On That Controversial Woman in Vanity Fair, and That High-Priced Female Anchor

By James Poniewozik

I am referring, of course to Barbara Walters. The Miley Cyrus issue of Vanity Fair excerpts Walters’ upcoming memoir, Audition, in which—even as Katie Couric runs into more ratings trouble at CBS—she recalls being dismissed as the first female evening news anchor, with a giant-for-the-time salary and a none-too-happy male co-anchor: The press was relentless [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1482 days ago

TV Tonight: Odd Couples

By James Poniewozik

GREG GAYNE/THE CW On The CW, the debut of Farmer Wants a Wife, in which Matt, a 29-year-old Missouri country boy with a promising future as an underwear model, tries to find a match from among ten city women. On Fox News, Hillary Clinton makes her first appearance on The O’Reilly Factor. Expect contrived drama, [...]

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Tuned In+1482 days ago

Upfront, Downscale: Can You Run a Network Without Those Little Chicken Kebabs?

By James Poniewozik

TV’s annual May “upfront” presentations—in which the big broadcast networks announce their fall programming for advertisers—are coming up in two weeks, but word is they’ll be different this year. For starters, there will be less schedule to announce: NBC made its fall presentation early this month, while the writers’ strike aftermath has affected fall development [...]

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Tuned In+1482 days ago

Outsourcing Disney's Teensploitation

By James Poniewozik

I’m on deadline this morning, working on a (thankfully brief) piece about l’affaire Montana for the print Time. In the meantime, and on a related note, you might want to check out this story in Slate. Even as Disney was outraged over Miley Cyrus’ photos on this side of the Pacific, across the waves in [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1482 days ago

The Morning After: Shine On, You Crazy Diamond

By James Poniewozik

Jason Castro performs… from the future! / Frank Micelotta / FOX My reviews of last night’s American Idol, Neil Diamond Night edition, are up at time.com. As you know if you watched, however, all 10 performances were outdone by Paula’s strange episode in the middle of the show, in which she began critiquing Jason Castro’s [...]

+Looking Around | 1483 days ago

Farewell, My Lovely

By Richard Lacayo

Antea, Parmigianino, ca. 1531-34. / Image: SOPRINTENDENZA SPECIALE per il POLO MUSIALE NAPOLETANO It’s been a rainy week of catch-up for me on shows about to leave Manhattan, so I jumped a cab over to the Frick yesterday to take a good long look at their one-painting loan show built around Antea. That’s a portrait [...]

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Tuned In+1483 days ago

TV Tonight: Rich, But Such Small Portions

By James Poniewozik

A quick reminder that tonight is The Riches‘ season finale. Or maybe a better term than “finale” is “the last episode they were able to finish, thanks to the strike.” Like AMC’s Breaking Bad, The Riches had its season order arbitrarily cut, to seven episodes. (This is the one episode of season 2 I haven’t [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1483 days ago

The Jimi Hendrix Sexperience

By James Poniewozik

Is it because I’m too busy digging through a week’s worth of mail, in order to see my office floor again, to write an original post? Is it the irrestistable lure of getting Tuned In to show up on Google searches for “Jimi Hendrix sex tape”? Is it part of my business plan to diversify [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1483 days ago

Is Hillary Right About the Debates?

By James Poniewozik

A week before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, the Hillary Clinton campaign is asking for another debate. But this time a different kind of debate: In the spirit of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, we make this proposal: Senator Clinton and Senator Obama will participate in a 90-minute debate in an open public forum. Just the [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1483 days ago

The Morning After: Get Your Goat

By James Poniewozik

Harris as Founding Bro. Take that, John Adams! / Sonja Flemming/CBS SPOILER ALERT: Be certain to watch last night’s How I Met Your Mother before reading this post, or I’m pretty sure we’ll be at war with Portugal.

+Looking Around | 1484 days ago

Me, Myself and I

By Richard Lacayo

Self-Portrait With Pipe, Courbet, 1849 / Image: MUSEE FABRE, MONTPELLIER The big Courbet show now in its last days at New York’s Metropolitan Museum is a reminder that Cindy Sherman wasn’t the first artist to get hooked on role playing. In a grand display of curatorial borrowing power, the Met show opens with a gallery [...]

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Tuned In+1484 days ago

TV Tonight: The Floating Soap Opera

By James Poniewozik

On duty in the Persian Gulf. / PBS This week, PBS is airing what—if it had run it one hour a week like most networks do—would be called a reality or documentary series, Carrier, about life on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. Instead, airing two hours a night for five nights most places (check local [...]

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Tuned In+1484 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: The Unbearable White-Maleness of News Anchoring

By James Poniewozik

In the current issue of the magazine, my column is about the contrast pointed up by the current election, and by Katie Couric’s reportedly impending departure from CBS News: the presidential field is more diverse than the people—or at least the marquee news anchors and primetime cable hosts—covering it and asking the questions at the [...]

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Tuned In+1484 days ago

Did Hannah Jump or Was She Pushed?

By James Poniewozik

In a move that shocked parents and the Disney corporation’s accountants, teen star Miley Cyrus, a.k.a. Hannah Montana, has posed seminude for Vanity Fair’s June issue. In the photo, by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, Cyrus appears bare-backed, with a blanket clutched to her chest. (No actual Montanas were exposed.) In the article—and in Vanity Fair’s [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1484 days ago

BSG Watch: Nobody's Perfect

By James Poniewozik

SCI FI Channel Photo: Carole Segal SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, gather a group of no more than twelve associates and watch Friday’s Battlestar Galactica. If you assume, and it seems pretty hard not to, that Battlestar Galactica was among other things an echo of America after 9/11, then what’s going on now [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 1484 days ago

The Morning After: We're Back!

By James Poniewozik

Sergei Bachlakov/ The CW I’m back from hiatus, as is much of the primetime TV schedule. Last night I caught my first episode of Aliens in America in several weeks. The show remains my favorite new sitcom of this season, and the episode—in which the Tolchuks befriend a convicted sex offender (so convicted for sleeping [...]

+Looking Around | 1487 days ago

Talking About: Spanish Painting

By Richard Lacayo

Ronni Baer co-curated “El Greco to Velazquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III”, the new show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. A few weeks ago we sat down to talk about what she wanted that show to accomplish. LACAYO: Art historians usually treat the reign of Philip III as a kind of [...]

+Looking Around | 1487 days ago

Thinking About The Gross Clinic

By Richard Lacayo

The Gross Clinic, Eakins, 1875 /Image: THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART They have finally tied up the last of the loose ends in the succession of deaccessions required to keep Thomas Eakins’ mighty canvas The Gross Clinic in Philadelphia. This is a sale that’s been wrapped into the larger uproar over schools like Fisk University [...]

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Tuned In+1487 days ago

Lostwatch: A Game of Risk

By James Poniewozik

Australia’s the key to the whole game. / ABC SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, take the keyed-access elevator to the penthouse and watch Lost.