Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 347 days ago

The Morning After: Pluck You

By James Poniewozik

Cee Lo Green could be a great performer if he would just stop taking himself so damn seriously, couldn’t he? Cee Lo, pictured here, performed with his Glee stand-in, Gwyneth Paltrow, in a Grammy Awards that featured several defining themes: * Songs that have been featured in the past season of Glee * Rihanna duetting [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 347 days ago

Big Love Watch: Only Words?

By James Poniewozik

Before you read this post, run back to the car to get the pliers, then watch last night’s Big Love. “I’m having a hard time reconciling my beliefs with my feelings.” —Ben You and everybody else, Ben. In “The Special Relationship,” various characters in and around the Henrickson family struggled to deal with the dissonance [...]

+Music | 350 days ago

Top 10 Songs for Loners

By Josh Tyrangiel
songs_loners_tout

TIME picks the perfect tunes for those nights of love-induced misery. Wallow away

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 350 days ago

The Morning After: Crazy Little Thing Called Love

By James Poniewozik

I watched the opening arc of this season of Parks and Recreation several weeks ago, so my memory is a bit shaky, but “Ron and Tammy II” was for my taste a little broader and wackier than P&R at its absolute best. (Whereas Ben’s subplot as “Calzone Boy” was an excellent example of how well [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 350 days ago

Community Watch: Pierce's Progress

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s Community follow: Consider this not so much a review of last night’s Community as a decision to defer judgment. As for the chief running storylines, they were… fine. For the first time in a while, Britta carried a strong comic story, with her comedy-of-PC-errors “lesbian” date at the Valentine’s dance. Troy [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 350 days ago

BREAKING: Donald Trump Begins Not Running for President

By James Poniewozik

Donald Trump is perhaps the most successful Presidential noncandidate our political system has ever produced. You may recall when he illustriously didn’t run for President in 1988 after fanning much media speculation that he would. He followed that up by dramatically not running for President with Ross Perot’s Reform Party in 2000. Now a dozen [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 350 days ago

Office Watch: Get a Room!

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s episode of The Office coming up: If you’ve been following The Office this season, the one in which Steve Carell is leaving the show and thus Michael Scott is leaving the Scranton branch, you may have been wondering by now when exactly the show would get around to the business of [...]

+Review Movies | 351 days ago

Gnomeo & Juliet: Garden-Variety Shakespeare

By Richard Corliss
Miramax Film

The derivative, gag-filled take on Romeo and Juliet set among warring gnomes in neighboring backyards fails to bloom

+Review Movies | 351 days ago

Just Go with It? Jennifer Aniston Runs Away with It

By Mary Pols
Tracy Bennett / Columbia Pictures Industries

What could have been another crude Adam Sandler comedy is redeemed by the former Friend’s best work in years

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Tuned In+News Media | 351 days ago

The Craigslist Congressman Story: Whose Hypocrisy?

By James Poniewozik

In many political sex-exposé stories, or follow-up reports on the same, there is often what I think of as the “Why you don’t have to feel guilty about caring about this story” paragraph. This paragraph generally lays out the pol’s public positions and history, which, either directly or by some stretch of logic, make his [...]

+Uncategorized | 351 days ago

The Night Shift – Quick, Who's Funnier: Will Forte's Ted Turner, or Any Current SNL Character?

By Steven James Snyder

I ask the question in all seriousness, as someone who has been left aghast by this truly abysmal season of SNL. As one host after another has been squandered, as one irksome recurring character after another has killed time, Saturday Night Live has grown increasingly lazy and uninspired. I now tune in for Weekend Update [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 351 days ago

Back Down in the Treme, As of April 24

By James Poniewozik

Since HBO scheduled the debut of Game of Thrones for April, I’ve been wondering when Treme—which went back into production recently—would land back on the schedule, especially since HBO has become flush with series. Dave Walker of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the premiere reporter on the Treme beat, has word today the series will return [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 351 days ago

The Morning After: Mostly Cloudy

By James Poniewozik

I try not to bore you with the details of my job as TV critic—but hey, it’s that or bore you with my TV criticism, right? I did not review last night’s debut of Mr. Sunshine in advance. The reason was not its quality, or my laziness, or lack of interest, but the awfulness of [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 352 days ago

Friday Night Lights Watch: Let's Go Home

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for the series finale of Friday Night Lights up next: In my preview column for the finale of Friday Night Lights, I made a comparison—obvious in retrospect, so maybe someone has made it before—between FNL and It’s a Wonderful Life. Both are stories about American towns and the pull (and sometimes the burden) of [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+352 days ago

Olbermann Gets Company at Current: Docs, Nature, Smoke Jumpers

By James Poniewozik

Today, in a presentation conveniently following Keith Olbermann’s decision to join the network, Current TV announced a slate of new programming for the year 2011. It’s not the new, complementary news-and-views programming that (one assumes) new star and news chief Olbermann will recruit to air along with his primetime show. That will presumably come eventually; [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+352 days ago

TV Tonight: Justified

By James Poniewozik

Justified returns tonight on FX. I’ve seen three episodes. I wrote a very brief review in this week’s TIME. I had plans to expand on that later. Best-laid plans, &c. Breaking news. Personal matters. Dog ate it. Volcano eruption. I shall gladly pay you on Tuesday, &c. Anyway, Justified is back tonight. If you liked [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+352 days ago

TV Tonight: Friday Night Lights Out

By James Poniewozik

Tonight, the lights go out in East Dillon, as DirecTV airs the last episode ever of one of the past decade’s greatest TV series, Friday Night Lights. Rather than re-invent the wheel, here’s another link, in case you missed it, to my farewell column last week, in which I wrote about FNL as one of [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 352 days ago

Glee Watch: Your Kiss Is On My List

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s Glee up next: See, now that’s the Glee I would have liked to share with that Super Bowl–sized sample of America Sunday night. I can see why the producers went with the kind of episode they did. The story didn’t require more than the most general knowledge of the series and [...]