+Review Movies | 149 days ago

Midnight in Paris. And 2 a.m. And 4 a.m.

By Mary Pols
Focus Features / Everett

Serge Gainsbourg comes back to life in a dreamy biopic

+Review Movies | 149 days ago

A Good Old Fashioned Orgy Is a Better Idea than You’d Think

By Mary Pols
Samuel Goldwyn Films

It’s kind of like ‘The Big Chill’, without the funeral, clothes or ethical restraint

Tuned In
Tuned In+Tuned In | 149 days ago

The Blu-Ray Menace; or, Who Really Owns Star Wars?

By James Poniewozik
donotwant

You may recently have noticed a disturbance in the Force, as if billions of voices suddenly got royally pissed off and cried out in Internet discussion threads. The impetus: a report, later confirmed by the New York Times’ Dave Itzkoff among others, that George Lucas is once again fiddling with the original Star Wars trilogy [...]

+Review Movies | 149 days ago

Detective Dee: A Masterpiece from a Hong Kong Cinema Swami

By Richard Corliss
Indomina Releasing

Tsui Hark’s latest is an action spectacle, a tender-tragic love story and has enough deadly political scheming to fill a Gaddafi playbook

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 149 days ago

Summer School Report Card: What's Been the Show of the Season?

By James Poniewozik

It’s probably going to be a slow couple of weeks for coverage of current TV here because (1) it’s fall-screener season, which means I’m spending much of my time watching shows that won’t air for weeks or longer; and (2) it’s late August, so whaddyagonnado? So this is as good a morning as any, before [...]

+Books | 150 days ago

All-TIME 100 Nonfiction Books

By TIME Staff
nonfictionbooks_tout

Politics and war, science and sports, memoir and biography — there’s a great big world of nonfiction books out there just waiting to be read. We picked the 100 best and most influential written in English since 1923, the beginning of TIME … magazine

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 150 days ago

While I Was Out: Let Slip the Ducks of War

By James Poniewozik

My first day back at work, I’ve been catching up on some screeners and episodes I missed while I was away, which is another way of saying that I have no real problems. One of those was “Duckling,” the hourlong episode of Louie set in Afghanistan, and while it’s too late and time too short [...]

+Review Movies | 150 days ago

The Debt: The Spy and the Gynecologist

By Richard Corliss
Laurie Sparham / Focus Features

This bracing political thriller is a welcome tonic for the end of a sluggish summer at the movies

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Tuned In+News Media | 150 days ago

The Freakout Before the Storm

By James Poniewozik

After a welcome vacation and a less-welcome hurricane-related flight cancellation (which, luckily, set us back only a day), I’m back. Kind of! Like the New York metropolitan transportation grid, Tuned In is gradually and fitfully restoring its regular schedule. Expect delays, scattered outages and surly, grudging customer service in the interim. Hurricane Irene was the [...]

+TV Recap Breaking Bad: Season 4, Episode 7 | 151 days ago

Breaking Bad Watch: Doing Stuff and Nothing Happens

By Jessica Winter
AMC

SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, smoke that lucky cigarette, set your car on fire and watch the latest episode of Breaking Bad. Greetings to the Tuned In faithful! While James Poniewozik is away establishing Time’s Costa Rica bureau, I’ll be recapping Breaking Bad from my battened hatch in Brooklyn’s Zone C, my observations [...]

Tuned In
Tuned In+Uncategorized | 154 days ago

Robo-James' Time Machine: Nostalgia for the Young People!

By James Poniewozik

Robo-James’ Time Machine has been indulging in my nostalgia all this week, but the delightful thing about America is that nostalgia is no longer merely for the old. In July, Nickelodeon began running a block of ’90s kids’ shows in late night, for not-that-alter-kockers (call them alternakockers?) who want to remember the hits of their [...]

+Review Movies | 155 days ago

Higher Ground: When God Doesn't Talk Back

By Richard Corliss
Molly Hawkey / Sony Pictures Classics

Vera Farmiga goes looking for heaven in her directorial debut

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Tuned In+Advertising | 155 days ago

Robo-James' Time Machine: They Were Still the One

By James Poniewozik

It’s almost fall, which means that promos for new fall shows are starting to reach a crescendo. But one thing that we’ve lost amid all the multimedia advertising is what used to be a network staple: the fall-season promo reel. Above, see an example from the ABC “Still the One” campaign in 1977. What’s most [...]

+Remembrance | 156 days ago

Remembering Jerry Leiber, the ‘Hound Dog’ Poet of Rock ‘n’ Roll

By Richard Corliss
George Rose / Getty Images

With his partner, Mike Stoller, the lyricist created many of rock’s lushest, most foundational, most irresistible hits

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 156 days ago

Robo-James' Time Machine: Angels in America

By James Poniewozik

When you remake a TV show that used to be a pop-cultural phenomenon, you’re remaking the idea of it as much as you are the show itself. That is, when ABC airs its reboot of Charlie’s Angels (or in this case should we call it a re-booty?), only part of the intended audience will be [...]

+Review Movies | 157 days ago

Our Idiot Brother: Paul Rudd on a Couch-Crash Course

By Mary Pols
Nicole Rivelli / The Weinstein Company

Finally, an offbeat summer comedy that’s more amiable than outrageous

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Tuned In+Uncategorized | 157 days ago

Robo-James' Time Machine: Terra Nova 1.0

By James Poniewozik

It’s fair to say that Terra Nova is the most anticipated new fall show, or close to it, if only because of all it’s trying to pull off—a TV show made on a blockbuster movie scale, with a massive budget, extensive CGI, location shooting in Australia, and a plot that incorporates dinosaurs, conspiracy and time [...]

+Remembrance | 158 days ago

Raul Ruiz, 1941–2011: Death of a Little-Known Movie Master

By Richard Corliss
RAFA RIVAS / AFP / Getty Images

The Chilean filmmaker produced a body of work so inventive, demanding and rewarding that he deserves to be in the company of giants such as Bergman, Godard, and Fellini