+Review Movies | 316 days ago

Win Win: Paul Giamatti Can't Lose

By Mary Pols
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp

In this tale of a suburban schlub in need of redemption, Paul Giamatti and writer/director Thomas McCarthy craft a film that’s warm, edgy and — you guessed it — winning

Tuned In
Tuned In+316 days ago

NBC Renewals: Community (Yay!), Parks and Rec (Yay!), The Office (Duh!)

By James Poniewozik

NBC spared a lot of fans a lot of nailbiting this afternoon and announced that it is bringing back Community, Parks and Recreation and The Office for another season. 30 Rock was already renewed as of last fall. As for the other Thursday comedies: there is a very, very low ratings bar at NBC right [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+316 days ago

TV Tonight: Parks and Rec Is Back!

By James Poniewozik

TV’s reigning best sitcom, Parks and Recreation, returns tonight with the episode the rest of season 3 has been building toward: the Parks department attempts to pull off the Harvest Festival, on which its future depends. I don’t want to spoil much about what is the season’s best episode yet—and I know I just said [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+News Media | 316 days ago

NY Times Ending Free Digital Lunch (Mostly). Will You Pay?

By James Poniewozik

Having given the Internet public 15 years to get good and hooked on reading it free online (excepting the brief TimesSelect foray into partial online subscriptions), the New York Times will start charging for digital access to its news March 28. (Except in Canada, where our lucky northern neighbors get to test out the pay [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 316 days ago

The Morning After: Survivor: Kitchen Island

By James Poniewozik

Last night’s Top Chef All-Stars is still on a low simmer on my DVR, so I thought I’d throw open this morning’s Morning After Post for your comments on it, and the season in general. Was the beach competition worth it, or a stunt too far? (Ditto Padma Lakshmi’s appearance in a bikini.) And as [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 317 days ago

Judging American Idol: The Final 12

By James Poniewozik

This week, American Idol‘s dozen remaining finalists sang songs from the year they were born — some of those dates being in the mid-’90s, making your faithful reviewer feel like Grampa Simpson’s older brother. What’s with these whippersnappers and what they call “music” nowadays? Click the pix to find out: Read Last Week’s Review of [...]

+Music | 317 days ago

Top 10 Songs with Silly Lyrics

By Megan Gibson
songs_silly_lyrics_tout

In March 2011, Rebecca Black’s epically bad song “Friday” went viral. TIME cataloged other tunes with nonsense verses.

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 317 days ago

How a Netflix Original-Series Deal Could Change TV-Making

By James Poniewozik

The entertainment-biz press, led by a report in Deadline.com, has the news this morning that Netflix may be about to acquire a high-profile original drama—political thriller House of Cards from David Fincher and Kevin Spacey—by outbidding the likes of HBO. Does this mean, if the deal pans out, that Netflix wants to become a TV [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 317 days ago

Glee Watch: Origin Story

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s Glee coming up: Whether Glee is in the middle of a strong or shaky set of episodes, powerful or ridiculous storylines (or both at once), it usually manages to get things together for its regional/sectional competition episodes. It’s the opposite of what one might think, because the demands of those episodes—more [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 318 days ago

Gilbert Gottfried and the Rise of Self-Twimmolation

By James Poniewozik

If you take a guy known for making outrageous jokes—like his notorious remarks at the Friars Club three weeks after 9/11—and hire him as the voice of your adorable duck mascot, you’re taking a risk. Particularly if you’re an insurance company, and you do business that may directly involve enormous tragedies. Aflac discovered that this [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 318 days ago

The Morning After: For Love or Money

By James Poniewozik

Quick spoilers for last night’s The Bachelor coming up:

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 318 days ago

Conan O'Brien's TV Show That Became a Stage Show Becomes a Movie

By James Poniewozik

Been watching Conan O’Brien’s new TBS show but long for those early rebel days when he was unemployed? When the beard was new and we were young and his career became an act of improvisation? When he was an outsider and only you and the five jillion people who followed him on Twitter really “got” [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+News Media | 319 days ago

A Disaster We Can't Unsee

By James Poniewozik

It has become a cliché by now to declare that any awful event is “the first YouTube disaster,” “the coming of age of Twitter,” “the desktop-video tragedy,” &c. But clichés are sometimes true, and the endless supply of videos coming from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan have had an overwhelming, end of days feel [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 319 days ago

Big Love Watch: Alby Get Your Gun

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for the penultimate Big Love coming up: “When people join churches, they change. Not the churches.” —Bill Henrickson Is there a puddle in front of my TV? “Exorcism” may well qualify as Big Love‘s cryingest episode of all time; it seemed as if hardly a character managed to get through a scene without red-rimmed [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+News Media | 320 days ago

The Twisty, Bent Truth of the NPR-Sting Video

By James Poniewozik

James O’Keefe, the controversial conservative activist and undercover-video maker, brought down NPR’s CEO this week after releasing a “sting” video of an NPR fundraiser meeting with fake Muslim “donors.” Now a video editor, having reviewed the full, two-hour film that O’Keefe also posted online, has done a close analysis showing that several key scenes were [...]

+Review Movies | 322 days ago

Jane Eyre: Mamma Mia, a Star Is Born!

By Richard Corliss
Laurie Sparham / Universal Studios

This remake of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre hits the jackpot with Mia Wasikowska

+Review Movies | 322 days ago

Battle Los Angeles: A Shaky, Breaky Mess

By Richard Corliss
Sony Pictures

What with the jittering camera aesthetic, clunky script, and creaky clichés, Battle Los Angeles won’t live long in the memory

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 322 days ago

Primetime's Children: Salman Rushdie Writing Drama for Showtime

By James Poniewozik

First we heard that Michael Chabon and wife Ayelet Waldman were developing a magicians-vs.-Nazis drama for HBO; now Showtime has enlisted its own award-winning novelist. Salman Rushdie (author of The Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children, or ex of Padma Lakshmi depending on your frame of reference) is writing Next People, a prospective Showtime drama about [...]