+Review Movies | 288 days ago

Rio: Birds of a Fabulous Feather

By Richard Corliss
Century Fox Film Corp. / Everett Collection

A high-flying romp that’s sunny enough to keep kids enchanted and their parents engrossed

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 288 days ago

No Soap: ABC Cancels One Life to Live, All My Children

By James Poniewozik

Over 80 years of cumultive soap-opera story will be ending on ABC, as the network has announced it will cancel both All My Children and One Life to Live, as of September 2011 and January 2012 respectively. The network announced the axings by way of announcing the shows’ replacements, a food show called The Chew [...]

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Tuned In+288 days ago

TV Tonight: Reiser Falls

By James Poniewozik

Paul Reiser is returning to NBC tonight, and with that I hereby pledge to make this the last time I will use the NBC “Make it 1997 again by science or magic” reference from 30 Rock. Frankly, though, the time period that The Paul Reiser Show made me think of first was not the mid-’90s [...]

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Tuned In+288 days ago

Electoral Sweeps: Trump Said to Plan Announcement of Prez Announcement on Apprentice

By James Poniewozik

According to Newsmax, Donald Trump will announce the next step in his political career on the season finale of his reality show. As did Jefferson and Churchill before him. Reports the conservative website, Trump will use the finale to announce a press conference a few days later, at which he will in turn announce his [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 288 days ago

Modern Family Watch: If This Minivan's A-Rockin'…

By James Poniewozik

Last night’s return of Modern Family was dominated by two gags whose setups you probably saw coming like a… well, like a minivan plastered with an unintentionally inappropriate real-estate ad. (The “I Can’t Be Satisfied” tagline and the knowledge that a big letter F would drop onstage in Cam’s musical were the tip-offs, no?) But [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 288 days ago

Justified Watch: Not Just the Raylan Show Anymore

By James Poniewozik

Quick spoilers for last night’s Justified: FX originally intended to call Justified by the title “Lawman.” Circumstances and Steven Seagal interposed to change that, but a couple of things happened in “Debts and Accounts” that reminded me of it. The first was Art’s comment to Raylan that he’s a lousy marshal but a great lawman, [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 289 days ago

Judging American Idol: The Final 8

By James Poniewozik

It was “Music from the Movies” night on Idol, which, given the abundance of soundtracks, more or less translates to “Any Song Ever Written” night. Did it separate the Avatars from the Ishtars? And did the judges manage to say anything remotely critical of any performance all night? Click the pictures to find out. Read [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 289 days ago

Why Wonder Woman's Costume Really Worries Me

By James Poniewozik

Some projects come to television heralded by all manner of advance coverage and fan buzz, like Sunday’s debut of Game of Thrones, which has been written about—here among other places—when it was only a twinkle in HBO’s eye years ago. And some projects are greeted by intense scrutiny and advance buzz… of a less flattering [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 289 days ago

The Good Wife Watch: Affairs of State

By James Poniewozik

Quick spoilers for last night’s The Good Wife: The courtroom and personal/political stories in The Good Wife sometimes intersect but they don’t always work in concert. Often, a strong case-of-the-week pulls through a slack political story, sometimes vice-versa. In “Foreign Affairs,” it was vice-versa.

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 289 days ago

The Morning After: City of Angelfood

By James Poniewozik

The first season of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution was my favorite new reality show of 2010 (and one of my favorite new series of the year altogether). As the British chef went on a crusade to improve the eating habits of a town and a school in West Virginia—finding resistance not just from the school [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 290 days ago

Shocker! NPR/PBS Funding Threat Fizzles Like All Other NPR/PBS Funding Threats

By James Poniewozik

Remember the controversy over funding public broadcasting? I know, it was an entire month ago, but make an effort. Remember how it was the signal culture-war issue in America? Remember how this was a matter of principle and how we simply could not afford such extras in a time of deep deficits? Remember how it [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 290 days ago

Stephen Colbert Does Not Intend This to Be a Factual Statement

By James Poniewozik

Stephen Colbert, as you probably know, is the guy who invented “truthiness.” So when Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl made the statement that “over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does” is abortions (it’s actually about 3%)—and then his office backtracked by saying that his statement “was not intended to be a factual statement”—well, it was pretty [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 290 days ago

HIMYM Watch: Sub Mission

By James Poniewozik

Quick spoilers for last night’s How I Met Your Mother: To its credit, How I Met Your Mother has pushed its characters this season with some real and challenging developments: Barney’s finding his father, Marshall losing his, Marshall and Lily deciding to have a baby, then apparently deciding not to. But HIMYM has always felt [...]

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Tuned In+291 days ago

Report: Zucker May Reunite Couric, Lauer, Make It 1997 Again Through Science or Magic

By James Poniewozik

As I said through the many “person X may be leaving TV job Y” stories last week, I’ll believe these things when I see them. But I want to point out Bill Carter’s New York Times story that kicks forward the stories that Katie Couric and Matt Lauer may be moving on from the CBS [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 291 days ago

The Killing Watch: This Is What It Feels Like

By James Poniewozik

Spoilers for last night’s The Killing coming up: After the two-part premiere of The Killing last Sunday, AMC’s long-form murder procedural is settling in to investigate its title crime at its own deliberate pace. As to the investigation itself, there are too many questions and I have too few theories to judge that plot so [...]

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 291 days ago

The Morning After: Human, Nature

By James Poniewozik

The secret to the appeal of Discovery’s Human Planet, which debuted last night, is that it is as much about the second half of its title as the first. That’s not to say simply that it replicates much of the how-did-they-do-that camera wizardry of predecessors Planet Earth and Life. It’s also that it focuses on [...]

+Review Movies | 294 days ago

The Conspirator Revisits a Pivotal Chapter of American Law and War

By Richard Corliss
Claudette Barius / The Conspirator

Director Robert Redford delves into the case behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln

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Tuned In+294 days ago

TV Weekend: Back Upstairs Downstairs

By James Poniewozik

Starting Sunday, PBS revisits a piece of its own history, with an update/extension of Upstairs Downstairs on Masterpiece. I’ll admit not being a rabid fan of the original in the first place, but TIME film critic Mary Pols wrote an appreciation of the original on its 40th anniversary, while looking forward to the new edition. [...]