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Braver souls than I are in San Diego now, surfing the massive throngs of fandom and covering the panels at Comic-Con. A few reports from the first day’s sessions:
* Entertainment Weekly asked Con-sters what they thought of a screening of J. J. Abrams’ Alcatraz. (The implicit question seems to …
My column in the print edition of TIME this week is about this week’s travails of News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch, and how his empire has been rattled by the very forces with which he built it: tabloid gossip, political access and the sharp-elbowed pursuit of both. It includes a disclosure statement so long I decided to make it the lede …
For a while now, people have batted around the idea of whether and when TV would give us a Muslim Cosby Show: that is, a TV series that would take a mass audience inside the family life of this cultural group for the first time, the way that the Huxtables were the first black family that millions of white viewers tuned to on a regular …
Test Pilot is a semiregular feature sharing my first impressions of the pilots for next season’s shows. These aren’t reviews, since these pilots can be rewritten, recast and retooled before airing, and the shows that eventually get on the air can prove much better or worse. But premature opinions are why God invented the Internet, so …
San Diego Comic Con 2011 is starting. I’m not there. No offense to the Con, but my Cad Bane costume still needs stitching, and I don’t believe in doing these things halfway.
There should as usual be a fair amount of TV news and previews, though, along with the other entertainment wares presenters will be peddling, and I’ll be keeping …
The most recent midseason finale of South Park, “You’re Getting Old,” generated a lot of talk among fans about whether it suggested that Trey and Matt were tired of doing the show and were about to call it quits. (The episode, surprisingly poignant for one largely involving poop jokes, focused on Stan’s growing cynicism and his …
Last night, Showtime debuted Lisa Kudrow’s Web Therapy, or rather imported it. Kudrow’s bite-sized comedy, about Fiona Wallace, a former financial professional who restyles herself as a therapist—dispensing counsel in three-minute video-chat sessions—began online three years ago. The TV version expands the story and fleshes the …
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“This is the most humble day of my life,” declared Rupert Murdoch to a parliamentary committee today, and I can see why he would want to say that. They say you should always begin with a joke.
You can say what you want about the embattled CEO of News Corp.* and his performance, his …
Because my TiVo apparently decided that I was too happy, it decided yesterday evening on its own to switch the channel and start recording Hoarders on A&E. I always find the show fascinating and depressing, and fascinating in how depressing it is. The stories of the junk fiends, burying themselves in stuff usually as a reaction to deep …
When Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp. acquired the Wall Street Journal in 2007, a big question was how editorially independent the newspaper would be able to remain. If nothing else, the Murdochalypse (not my coinage) precipitated by the British phone-hacking scandal has provided a test. First, Murdoch favored his national American newspaper …
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, put on your Kenny Rogers T-shirt and finish up researching collectible minerals on the Internet; you’ll need your full attention to watch last night’s season premiere of Breaking …
Last night, one of TV’s greatest drama about family, community, faith–and, incidentally, football–Friday Night Lights, came to an end on NBC. When this excellent, moving finale aired in February on DirecTV, I reviewed it here. For those of you who have been watching on NBC, I reprint it below. Spoilers, obviously:
In my preview …
In the crisis-public-relations business, they often say you dump bad news to the media on a Friday afternoon. This apparently is also the case if the crisis is in the media, as some high-level executives have exited News Corporation in the continuing phone-hacking scandal. First, Rebekah Brooks, erstwhile editor of News of the World, …
