Spoilers for the season finale of Breaking Bad coming up after the jump:
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Will This Mies be Missed Much?
One last post growing out of that Chicago trip. While I was there I spent the better part of an afternoon at the Illinois Institute of Technology, the school Mies van der Rohe took charge of in 1938, not long after he quit Germany for good. Part of what drew him there was an offer to design much of the campus the school now occupies. …
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The Morning After: Britain Failed to Get the Memo
SPOILER ALERT: In the dramatic finale of America’s favorite TV show that does not actually air in America, Britain’s Got Talent, Susan Boyle was upset by Diversity, a dance group. Afterward, according to reports in the British press, Boyle was admitted to a London clinic, for “exhaustion” or an emotional breakdown, depending on the …
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Leno to America: Goodbye! I'm Not Going Anywhere!
“We’re not really leaving,” Jay Leno told the studio audience on his last Tonight Show. And he was right. So how do you throw yourself a goodbye when you’re not going anywhere? TV has a history of lugubrious farewells for longtime personalities, and while Jay Leno may not have stuck around as long as Johnny Carson, at 17 years, he’s …
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Will Ferrell Promotes Movie, Fails to Die of Frostbite
For obvious reasons, I usually pass up the chance to promote special guest appearances by people flogging their new movies, albums or other projects. But this is just too weird. Will Ferrell is promoting the upcoming Land of the Lost movie by doing an upcoming Very Special Episode of… Man vs. Wild: …
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TV Tonight: See You Later, Jay. Or Actually, Sooner
Tonight, Jay Leno hosts his last Tonight Show. Last night, Prince and Billy Crystal saluted Jay, while he remembered some of his classic comedy bits. Question: does he really want to remind us of The Dancing Itos? In fact, watching the retrospective, I couldn’t help but think that a lot of that comedy would look awfully corny in the …
The Culture Crunch
The Great Recession may be slowly, slowly lifting — we hope — but most museums still find themselves in a serious pinch, and some of them in something worse. Las Vegas Art Museum: R.I.P.
If anything the hard times have been even harder in the performing arts, the theaters, orchestras, dance companies and so on that depend more …
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The Morning After: I'll Be Laodicean You
Last night, ABC aired the finals of the Scripps national spelling bee, in which—spoiler alert—13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar won the title by spelling “Laodicean,” meaning, so Webster tells me, “lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics.” As someone with the surname “Poniewozik,” I can only guess that a young life of spelling …
Top 10 Jay Leno Moments
Never fear — Jay Leno isn’t going anywhere. But as he leaves The Tonight Show to start in a new, earlier slot, here’s a look back at 10 of the most memorable moments from his show.
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Is Kids' TV Sexist?
Is iCarly a good role model for girls? Is JONAS a weapon of male oppression? Will Handy Manny ever learn that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house?
These questions and more are addressed by the organization TrueChild, which has posted a set of report cards analyzing how the two genders are represented in TV …
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American Idol's Voting Scandal (Or Not)
If you’re like me, you stopped caring about the results of American Idol about 24 hours or so after they were announced. But a fair amount of fans are abuzz over a report that AT&T let Kris Allen fans at a viewing party use free demo phones, thus possibly upping his vote total.
Did AT&T give Allen the Idol title? Probably not. For one …
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The Morning After: Goode or Badde?
Though I was disappointed with The Goode Family from the episodes I’d previewed, there was enough in it that I liked that I set up a season pass for it anyway. I ended up watching the pilot again last night, and I have to say: it still made me laugh. All the flaws were still there: the too-obvious P.C. jokes, the heavyhanded …
The Voices of Pixar
Pixar’s Toy Story 3 hits theaters June 18, the latest project from the studio to arrive stocked with unusual vocal talent. TIME surveys Pixar’s 11 feature films, and the peculiar voices that have helped these unforgettable …