What’s good, bad and happening, from pop culture to high culture | Page 3

+1368 days ago

Fox: Selling Admen on… Fewer Ads?

Anna Torv (right) investigates strange biology in Fringe. / Mark Ben Holzberg/FOX TV critics tend to focus so much on new programming that you might forget that the upfronts are, foremost, about selling ads. But though Fox had debuts to announce from a pair of big-name TV creators, arguably the biggest news it made had [...]

+Uncategorized | 1368 days ago

The Morning After: Skyrockets in Flight

By James Poniewozik

Out(?) with the old: Lieberstein and Ryan. / NBC Photo: Chris Haston Journey back with me to fall 2007. Miley Cyrus was innocent; Hillary and Rudy were shoo-ins to win their parties’ nominations; and The Office was kicking off its season with several hourlong episodes that were bloated, slack and not up to the show’s [...]

+1368 days ago

Lostwatch: We All Know the Story

By James Poniewozik

The Oceanic Six meet the press. / ABC SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, enter the greenhouse through a hole, find the patch of anthuriums, flip the switch behind them and watch last night’s Lost.

+1369 days ago

Fox's Fanboy Heaven: New Abrams, Whedon

By James Poniewozik

Fox just released its 2008-09 schedule, which has relatively few new shows (two for the fall, a few more in the winter/spring) but includes sci-fi-ish offerings from two producers with a couple of TV’s most feverish fanbases: J. J. Abrams’ Fringe (for fall) and Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse (for midseason). All that, and a Mitch Hurwitz [...]

+Uncategorized | 1369 days ago

O Viewer, Where Art Thou?; or, How Much Time Art Thou Shifting?

By James Poniewozik

Here’s a little work-alternative for you this morning. As we’ve seen this week, two big themes of the upfronts have been (1) primetime network viewers are disappearing and (2) many of them are watching shows recorded on DVRs or online, often skipping ads in the process. So I thought we’d do a little volunteer market-research [...]

+1369 days ago

CBS's Trailers: Back to Basics

By James Poniewozik

Rufus Sewell blinds bad guys with science in Eleventh Hour. / Monty Brinton/CBS At Carnegie Hall yesterday, CBS screened trailers from five new fall shows and one midseason pickup. After a brief period of experimentation (Jericho, Viva Laughlin), the network went back to its tradition of crime procedurals and domestic sitcoms. And I went back [...]

+Uncategorized | 1369 days ago

The Morning After: We've Got a Final!

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for American Idol coming up… after the break!

+1370 days ago

MTV Is Invading My Hood

By James Poniewozik

Still time to stock up before the drunk hipsters attack! / Photo by s o d a p o p reprinted under Creative Commons license. So it turns out that I live in the 21st coolest place in the world. At least by one measure: Season 21[!] of The Real World will be taping this [...]

+Uncategorized | 1370 days ago

Corporate Press Release Theater: Turner to Debut Slew of New Shows, Unless It Doesn't

By James Poniewozik

Turner Entertainment Networks (known to you as TNT, TBS and truTV [formerly known to you as Court TV]) piggybacked on the broadcast upfronts with their own announcement today. I’m only one man, and a lazy one at that, so I didn’t attend, but the networks announced a number of shows. Theoretically. Most of the announcements [...]

+1370 days ago

Over Eggs and Bacon, CBS Serves Up Meat and Potatoes

By James Poniewozik

Leave it to CBS to maintain some sort of tradition in this strike-and-ratings-collapse-disrupted upfront. For years the network has had a ritual of revealing its schedule to reporters over a buffet breakfast at its Midtown headquarters. Even though the Eye is—in this year’s trendy spirit of austerity—canceling its Tavern on the Green after-party, it kept [...]

+Uncategorized | 1370 days ago

The CW, CWickly

By James Poniewozik

The cast of 90210 (sans the “Beverly Hills”). / Frank Ockenfels/ The CW I had to bail on The CW’s schedule presentation after ABC’s last night, but having heard that there were no clips of the 90210 remake—the main thing I would have wanted to see—I don’t feel quite so bad. But here’s the roundup [...]

+Uncategorized | 1370 days ago

The Morning After: Three for Three

By James Poniewozik

David A., Archuletting a Billy Joel tearjerker in the Final Three. / F. Micelotta / Fox / Getty My American Idol reviews are now up at time.com. My prediction this week—Syesha—is not exactly rocket science, but even though I don’t think she deserves to win the thing (she’s looking at a nice Broadway career), I [...]

+1370 days ago

ABC Upfront: TV Defeats Television

By James Poniewozik

ABC’s upfront at Lincoln Center begins with a video, interspersed with scenes from ABC shows, of people riding unicycles with cellphone symbols inscribed on the wheels, riding a surfboard into a computer logo, juggling little black balls with iPods on them. The (apparent) message: television may be fading away, but TV shows are not. This [...]

+Uncategorized | 1371 days ago

Local-News Bloopers Are Always Funny, Cont'd

By James Poniewozik

Via The Huffington Post, anchor Sue Simmons (whom non-NYCers may know from a reference in Fountains of Wayne’s Traffic and Weather) busts out Ron Burgundy-style with a profanity in the middle of a 11 p.m. news tease (NSFW, unless you curse a lot at work): In fairness to Simmons, it is possible that randomly screaming [...]

+1371 days ago

ABC's Schedule: Old Shows, Old School

By James Poniewozik

ABC announced its new fall drama in a Manhattan press conference this morning. That is not a typo: its new fall drama, singular, is a remake of the British show Life on Mars, in which a modern-day cop has a car accident and wakes up in what appears to be 1973. The network’s new reality [...]

+Uncategorized | 1371 days ago

The Morning After: Brit Invasion

By James Poniewozik

HIMYM and Spears continue their marriage of convenience. / Cliff Lipson/CBS In a bit of good upfront-week news, How I Met Your Mother was picked up for another season on CBS. That’s something to keep in mind when sitting through an episode like last night’s, with Britney Spears, who probably had at least a little [...]

+1371 days ago

NBC's Upfront Experience: Death by Media

By James Poniewozik

NBC Universal readies to battle for your advertising dollar. / NBC When you enter the NBC Universal Experience, the first thing you see is a wall of screens, none of them playing anything someone ten years ago would have recognized as TV. There are in-supermarket video/advertising displays and in-taxi displays. NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker [...]

+1372 days ago

Corporate Press Release Theater: Christian Slater, Car Salesman

By James Poniewozik

NBC already announced its fall schedule (or its fall schedule for now) a month ago, so its “upfront” today will consist mainly of—well, I’m not entirely sure, but it seems like it, like the other big-network upfronts, will be focused less on new shows than on new ways for advertisers to make money off shows. [...]

+Uncategorized | 1372 days ago

Upfronts Preview: TV Faces Its Shrinkage

By James Poniewozik

We TV critics like to pretend we’re a heartless, puppy-kicking, candy-from-baby-taking bunch, but we’re as sentimental as anyone else. So don’t be surprised if you read a bit of a melancholy streak in the this week’s coverage of the big-network upfronts, which kick off today. As I’ve mentioned, this week’s presentations will be a diminished [...]

+Uncategorized | 1372 days ago

BSG Watch: Mother's Day

By James Poniewozik

Sharon (Grace Park) gave her selves a good talking-to. / SCI FI Channel Photo: Carole Segal SPOILER ALERT: Considering this episode of Battlestar Galactica aired Friday, you really have no excuse to have waited three days to watch it—um, like I did… Mother’s Day plans, and the Survivor finale, got in the way of my [...]