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

The Morning After: Louie and Joan, Sitting in a Tree

As I’ve said, I’m trying to scale back on the weekly episode reviews here at Tuned In, and I’ve said a great deal already about Louis C.K. and this season of Louie. But we’ve come to the last of the four episodes of the show that I saw in advance, so it’s a good time [...]

+Tuned In | 196 days ago

Dead Tree Alert: Breaking Bad Breaks Back

By James Poniewozik

It may be Harry Potter day in the rest of the entertainment world, but here at Tuned In, it’s Breaking Bad weekend. The new issue of TIME carries my feature on the return of the AMC drama, including a set visit I made to Albuquerque last spring. (And no offense to the citizens of ABQ, [...]

+Review Movies | 197 days ago

Life, Above All: A Frank Capra Vision of a Devastating Plight

By Mary Corliss

A wise child in desperate straits is the soul of this affecting South African drama

+Review Movies | 197 days ago

Tabloid: The Honey Blonde and the 'Manacled Mormon'

By Richard Corliss

After Errol Morris’s more sobering films, this larkish documentary about a beauty queen gone bad plays like a vacation at a seedy seaside resort

+Review Review | 197 days ago

The Undefeated: Her Holiness Sarah Palin

By Richard Corliss

Stephen K. Bannon’s The Undefeated is a worshipful, no-warts biopic of Sarah Palin, a former Miss Wasilla who could be the next President of the United States — if she only had the time

+Uncategorized | 197 days ago

Graduation Date: Several Big Stars to Leave Glee

By James Poniewozik

I’ve had my issues with Glee this past season, and written about them here, but one thing I have to give it credit for. The producers said from early on that they planned to have the high schoolers graduate on time—real time, not TV-teen-show-time—and it looks like they’re sticking by it, popularity or no. Producer [...]

+Uncategorized | 197 days ago

Emmy Nominations 2011: The Good, the Bad and the Surprises

By James Poniewozik

The Emmy Awards are a big ocean liner that turns very slowly, and this year’s nominations, announced this morning, were no exception: a lot of familiar faces and a few new (or old but underrecognized) entries. So there were a slew of nominations for Mad Men, Modern Family and [Insert Name of HBO's Big Movie/Miniseries [...]

+Review Movies | 198 days ago

Winnie the Pooh: A Sublimely Silly Old Bear

By Mary Pols

Disney aims for a new classic and succeeds

+Tuned In | 198 days ago

TV Tonight 2: One Last Alarm Sounds for Rescue Me

By James Poniewozik

Together with Damages, one more landmark cable drama returns this evening: Rescue Me, in which Denis Leary and Peter Tolan have confronted the aftermath of 9/11 with black comedy and/or comedic drama since 2004. I have mixed feelings about the series: for a couple of seasons it was a searing, fearless examination of loss and [...]

+Uncategorized | 198 days ago

TV Tonight: Damages Comes Back, While Ted Danson Moves on to CSI

By James Poniewozik

Damages returns for a fourth season on DirecTV last night tonight. I’ve previewed some of the new season, guest-starring John Goodman as a defense contractor embroiled in scandal, but the show has become a little like legal 24 for me: lots of talent and strong performances, but it has increasingly seemed to strain to up [...]

+Uncategorized | 198 days ago

The X Factor Previews, Promises to Keep It Real

By James Poniewozik

During last night’s All-Star game—I believe the baseball team won—Fox ran its latest preview of fall singing contest The X Factor, which made a couple of things clear. First, from the amount of on-screen placement, it seems more as if this show should be called The X Pepsi Chevrolet Factor. Second, the series looks like [...]

+Tuned In | 198 days ago

Netflixed Off: Will You Pay Netflix's New Price Hike?

By James Poniewozik

You may have heard a sound yesterday, as if millions of voices cried out at once and examined their entertainment budgets. Netflix yesterday announced that it was splitting its base plan—$9.99 a month for unlimited streaming plus one DVD rental at a time—in two: $7.99 for one or the other, effectively hiking the price nearly [...]

+Remembrance | 199 days ago

Sherwood Schwartz Dies at 94

By James Poniewozik

At the height of his TV-writing career, Sherwood Schwartz probably did not particularly anticipate being eulogized by TV critics. Schwartz, who died today at age 94, was the creator of Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, two sitcoms that were practically critical shorthand for ridiculous and/or lightweight comedy. Therefore, naturally, those were also two of [...]

+News Media | 199 days ago

The Hacking Scandal and the Two Faces of Murdoch

By James Poniewozik

The News of the World phone-hacking scandal in Great Britain is getting juicier and more astonishing. The long-runner paper was summarily killed by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. in an apparent damage-control attempt; the legal investigation is widening; and the list of the paper’s purported snooping targets has widened to include crime victims, politicians and possibly [...]

+Uncategorized | 199 days ago

The Problems of Power: George R.R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons

By James Poniewozik

Note: George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons, the fifth book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series on which HBO’s Game of Thrones is based, is out in stores today. I received a review copy several weeks ago. TIME’s book critic Lev Grossman has already reviewed it. But since I’ve been covering the [...]

+Uncategorized | 200 days ago

May the Minifigures Be With You

By James Poniewozik

I’ve been busy today closing a feature on Breaking Bad (which will be in TIME Friday) and writing a review of George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons (which will post here tomorrow morning). So I have been a bad, bad blogger today. You deserve better than that, so here are some pictures of Lego [...]

+Tuned In | 200 days ago

TNT Is Remaking Dallas. Why Are You Remaking Dallas, TNT?

By James Poniewozik

TNT has ordered ten episodes of a remake of Dallas, to start airing next year. Why? I should issue the standard disclaimers. It’s all in the execution; I loved the Battlestar Galactica reboot; I hope to eat my words, &c. But Dallas seems to be less in need of remaking than even the usual unnecessary [...]

+Review Movies | 201 days ago