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

Decaptivating

Yinka Shonibare is the London-based artist of Nigerian descent best known for those headless mannequins dressed in 18th and 19th century costumes made from very neo-colonial cloth. “Neo-colonial” is this instance means that what we tend to think of as “traditional” African textiles turn out to be manufactured by the Dutch, who borrowed them from [...]

+Uncategorized | 1058 days ago

Vacation Robo-Poll: Best Game Show

By James Poniewozik

I rarely write about game shows here at Tuned In, and yet it’s possible that I watched more of them in my childhood than any other kind of TV. Risk-taking, odds-taking, the frequency of consonants in English-language words, the efficacy and morality of bidding exactly one dollar over the previous bidder—I learned all of these [...]

+Uncategorized | 1058 days ago

The Morning After: Robo-Edition

By James Poniewozik

This is Robo-James. While my programmer rests his weak flesh-husk on vacation, you are invited to use this space to discuss the previous evening’s television transmissions.

+Looking Around | 1059 days ago

There’s the Rub

By Richard Lacayo

It’s often the case that when a museum director sees a big expansion to completion he or she steps down within a year or so after the project is completed. That’s what Mimi Gates did at the Seattle Art Museum and Marc Wilson at the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City. But things have happened a little [...]

+Uncategorized | 1059 days ago

Vacation Robo-Poll: Best Character Actor

By James Poniewozik

Last time I went on vacation, I asked for your thoughts as I filled out a Variety poll on the best TV shows, actors and actresses of the last decade. That seemed to go over well, so let’s try something similar this week. This time, though, I’m going to ask your favorites in some less-traditional [...]

+Uncategorized | 1059 days ago

The Morning After: Robo-Edition

By James Poniewozik

This is Robo-James. While my programmer rests his weak flesh-husk on vacation, you are invited to use this space to discuss the previous evening’s television transmissions.

+Uncategorized | 1061 days ago

Programming Note

By James Poniewozik

I’m on vacation for the next week. Robo-James here will be taking things over while I’m gone, with some daily posts and discussion threads. I may or may not post occasionally from the road—depending how much it rains and how pathetic my life is—and if you’re truly dying for more observations from me, check my [...]

+Uncategorized | 1061 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Hung Review

By James Poniewozik

The next print issue of TIME, not yet posted online, includes my Short List blurb-review of HBO’s Hung (about a well-endowed high-school teacher forced by debt to become a gigolo, debuting Sunday), which is by definition short and glib and—because I am not made of stone—full of cheap double-entendres. The conclusion (I’m paraphrasing): “Hung’s dark [...]

+Looking Around | 1062 days ago

Michael Jackson: 1958-2009

By Richard Lacayo

+1062 days ago

Virtuality's Bold, Lonely Mission

By James Poniewozik

Fox’s two-hour space drama Virtuality, airing tonight, is a show about a seemingly doomed mission: an ambitious journey intended to last several years that is in serious danger of being cut disastrously short not long after it launched. It’s also a TV show about an interstellar space mission. But more about that in [...]

+News Media | 1062 days ago

Breaking MJ's Death: Web, TV Divide Labor

By James Poniewozik

You know you’ve beaten people on a story when your direct competition does stories on your having beaten them. The Los Angeles Times has a piece today headlined “TV misses out as gossip website TMZ reports Michael Jackson’s death first”—which is all true, but by posting news of Jackson’s death at 5:20 p.m. E.T., the [...]

+Music | 1062 days ago

Top 10 Michael Jackson Songs

By Josh Tyrangiel

From enlisting Eddie Van Halen for a guitar solo to borrowing the refrain “Mama-se, mama-sa, mama-coo-sa” from a Cameroonian saxophonist, Michael Jackson’s very best songs drew from influences far and wide.

+Uncategorized | 1062 days ago

He Caused a Scene: When MTV Was Michael TV

By James Poniewozik

Michael Jackson, TV star? It’s not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the man, but he spent much of his career on TV. (Some of my earliest memories are of the groovealicious Rankin-Bass Jackson 5ive cartoon series in the ’70s.) But far and away his biggest contribution to TV was [...]

+Looking Around | 1062 days ago

LACMA, Meet Dasha

By Richard Lacayo

Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is well known in the museum world for his fund raising skills. He seems to have scored a coup this week by attracting some very affluent names to the LACMA board of directors. One is Gabriel Brener, CEO of Brener Interenational Group. The other [...]

+1062 days ago

CBS, NBC Announce Fall Skeds

By James Poniewozik

CBS and NBC have become the last broadcast networks to announce their fall premiere dates, which is the earliest I recall the fall slate being settled in some time. Unsurprisingly, CBS is going with tradition, launching almost everything in the usual Premiere Week, a.k.a. the third week of September, while NBC is shaking things up [...]

+Remembrance | 1062 days ago

Farrah Fawcett: Death of an Angel

By James Poniewozik

After a three-year fight with cancer, actress Farrah Fawcett died today at age 62. No one is likely to argue that Charlie’s Angels, the TV series for which she’s best known, was a masterpiece of video storytelling or a landmark for actresses (“There were three little girls…”). But Fawcett herself, as a star during her [...]

+TV Ratings | 1063 days ago

Healthcare Special Ratings Sink: Should Have Brought Bo

By James Poniewozik

The ratings are in for President Obama’s healthcare forum on ABC last night, and as they say on the doctor shows: we’ve checked the charts, and it doesn’t look good. Less than five million people tuned in for the earnest but dull Q&A session on the American health system, compared with the over nine million [...]

+Uncategorized | 1063 days ago

The Morning After: Leftovers Edition

By James Poniewozik

Again missed last night’s Top Chef Masters in order to watch/blog the healthcare forum, but I suspect many of you were more interested in it than in ABC’s health food, so consider this an open thread. Which I will do my best to ignore, since I won’t be watching until tonight, so do your [...]

+1063 days ago

Jimmy Kimmel, Still Pitching

By James Poniewozik

Having sat through the entire ABC/Obama health care town hall last night, I stayed up to catch Jimmy Kimmel for the first time in quite a while. It began, as is typical, with a “live” (to tape) commercial for Jack in the Box’s Mini Buffalo Ranch chicken sandwiches. And it made me think: poor Jimmy [...]

+Uncategorized | 1063 days ago

Obama's Town Hall: Open Up and Say Aaaah

By James Poniewozik

Soon after ABC announced it would devote a day to covering President Obama’s healthcare proposals, including a primetime townhall, Republicans began complaining that the program would be an “infomercial” for the President’s plans. And the event started on an auspicious note for the President’s argument that the healthcare system needed to be overhauled: in a [...]