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‘Polka King’ Eddie Blazonczyk Dies

By CARYN ROUSSEAU / Associated Press

(CHICAGO) — Grammy Award-winning polka great Eddie Blazonczyk, who began playing the lively music in the 1950s and went on to earn the nickname “Polka King” after starting his own band and label, has died. He was 70.

+Television | 5 days ago

Community Without Dan Harmon? Suits Axe Auteur, and Fans Lose

By James Poniewozik
Image: Dan Harmon attends the 2012 PaleyFest presentation of "Community" at Saban Theatre on March 3, 2012 in Beverly Hills, California.

Harmon was one of a small but growing number of TV creators who are inseparable from their shows. He was also, admittedly, a royal headache of an employee. But by making the show without him, the studio and NBC may be punishing the audience most.

+Review | 30 days ago

Girls Watch: The Group

By James Poniewozik
Jojo Whilden / HBO

After the comedy’s pilot, “Vagina Panic” was a funnier, more structured episode, about sex and the idea that none of us is as special as we’d like to think we are.

+TV Recap Game of Thrones: Season 2, Episode 3 | 38 days ago

Game of Thrones Watch: A Trick, A Shadow on a Wall

By James Poniewozik
HBO

Game of Thrones has always been a series about power and the way it operates, but this episode–and it seems season 2–is especially concerned with the difference between power and mere strength.

+Review | 49 days ago

TV Tonight: Scandal

By James Poniewozik
ABC

Sleek, savvy and very, very talky, Scandal is, if not an absorbing political thriller, at least smart escapism. But like many politicians, it doesn’t trust its audience to deal with much subtlety.

+Music | 58 days ago

“I’d love to show @TimTebow around town…we have so much in common. He’s ‘like a virgin’ and so am I ;)”

Madonna, on Twitter, who joined for one day to promote the release of her new album, MDNA.

+Review Music | 59 days ago

Madonna's MDNA: The Queen of Pop Wants You to Dance, Not Think

By Michael Roffman
Madonna MDNA Album Review

Madge stays at the club for her 12th album, but the bad girl struggles to sound fresh.

+Review | 92 days ago

Glee Watch: The Bully Becomes the Bullied

By James Poniewozik
FOX

On the plus side, the beginning of last night’s Glee was a very effective 15 minutes or so of television. The bad thing: it was very effective television—for about 15 minutes or so.

+Review | 100 days ago

TV Tonight: The Loving Story

By James Poniewozik
HBO

For Richard and Mildred Loving, their marriage was a pretty simple matter. They grew up in a small Virginia town where everyone pretty much knew everyone, fell in love (not without some obstacles; she found him “arrogant” at first) and got hitched. For the enforcers of Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws, their marriage was also a simple [...]

+News Media | 212 days ago

Campaign Video: Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em for Herman Cain

By James Poniewozik

Can this insane campaign ad help keep Herman Cain from inadvertently getting himself nominated?

+231 days ago

The Morning After: The Fast Food and the Furious

By James Poniewozik

Quick spoilers for last night’s return of South Park below: Some last-minute deadlines prevent me from giving the longer writeup I was hoping to “Ass Burgers,” which resolved the sort-of-cliffhanger from the midseason finale. I found a lot to like in the episode, like the topical spoof of vaccine paranoia. (Even the semi-insensitive representation of [...]

+231 days ago

Women Watch TV Like This, But Men Watch TV Like This

By James Poniewozik

Over at ThinkProgress, critic Alyssa Rosenberg (whom you should be reading if you aren’t already), has a thought-provoking post on all the new fall shows with female stars, and whether or not  those shows are actually speaking to a female audience. “This was supposed to be a great fall for women on television, but several [...]

+231 days ago

RIP Steve Jobs: He Let Us Inside the Media

By James Poniewozik

I spend most of any waking weekday inside Steve Jobs’ idea. I wake up to an alarm clock set by my iPhone, which is docked to it. I get up and go for a run, listening to my iPod Nano on shuffle. Back home I get dressed, listening to NPR (iPhone app). Breakfast time and [...]

+232 days ago

TV Tonight: George Harrison: Living in the Material World

By James Poniewozik

Elsewhere at time.com, TIME film critic Richard Corliss reviews Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, which airs in two parts on HBO tonight and tomorrow: The “quiet Beatle” — the one who told an interviewer, “I’m even more normal than normal people” — was also the nicest Beatle: the [...]

+232 days ago

It's All About the D'Oh: Is This the Way The Simpsons Should End?

By James Poniewozik

The TV news-o-sphere has been buzzing for the last day or so about reports that Fox has threatened to stop producing new episodes of The Simpsons if its voice actors do not accept a substantial—as in, nearly by half—pay cut. Considering that the show has been one of TV’s biggest successes since it began life [...]

+232 days ago

A.C. Nielsen, Godfather of TV Ratings, Dead at 92

By James Poniewozik

Some might say that TV is too much a business of bean counters, but Arthur C. Nielsen, Jr., who died Monday, was perhaps the most culturally influential bean counter of them all. Because, after all, the beans whose counting he revolutionized were all of us. TV is a commercial business, and shows (excepting public TV) [...]

+232 days ago

Glee Watch: Gotta Dance!

By James Poniewozik

In my review that posted earlier this morning, I neglected to mention one of the biggest reasons to root for the success of American Horror Story. It could give Ryan Murphy a full-time distraction, so that the new team of writers can get Glee under control, free from the need to throw in more and [...]

+232 days ago

TV Tonight: American Horror Story

By James Poniewozik

Friends, I am not here today to argue that American Horror Story is, if I may use a critical-theory term, “good.” At least if one judges it by such factors as coherence, consistency or plausibility of characters’ motivations. The new series (FX, Wednesdays) comes from producers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. Like their current show, [...]

+233 days ago

The Rabbit Done Died: NBC Kills Playboy Club, Adds Brian Williams

By James Poniewozik

As the 2011-12 TV season begins its third week, it has claimed its first victim: NBC’s The Playboy Club, whose ratings plunged as low as its necklines, has been cancelled. Playboy was one of the most hyped new fall shows this year, though the attention was hardly all positive; Gloria Steinem, some local affiliates and [...]

+233 days ago

Elsewhere on Time.com: Dancing Every Week

By James Poniewozik

As I like to say, there’s one thing you have to give TV credit for: there’s a lot of TV on it. Too much for me to review, or even acknowledge, as one man with one blog. But if you have not noticed, my colleagues at Time.com’s NewsFeed have been beefing up their weekly TV [...]