Brief spoilers for the Survivor finale coming up after the jump:
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Oscars: Huge Ackman? Or Huge Mistake?
So I go away for a couple days and you people go and make Hugh Jackman Oscar host on me? Really? Good call. He did singlehandedly save Viva Laughlin, after all.
I kid Wolverine, but the fact is he was actually the best thing about Viva. Does this translate into being a smart Oscar choice? I can’t honestly know, because it seems that …
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What I Did This Weekend: Made Another List
This weekend I served, for the second time, on the American Film Institute’s panel to pick the top 10 TV shows of 2008. (The AFI releases its 10 best films list, to greater attention, at the same time.) The list differs from my own top 10 list in that (1) I didn’t make it alone, (2) only scripted shows are eligible and (3) it is not …
The New Lincoln Center, Act I
In New York earlier this week I got a preview of the nearly complete renovation of Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, which re-opens in February. My guides were Liz Diller and Charles Renfro, two thirds of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the architects remaking large parts of Lincoln Center, the Manhattan performing arts complex that’s …
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Programming Note
On the road today. Back Monday. Talk amongst yourselves.
About this, for instance: I just received a screener for The Electric Company, the ’70s kids’ show whose PBS remake debuts in January. Can any new version possibly improve on this?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSN7CTZ9oSc]
1950s Sci-Fi Movies
Cold War fears made the 1950s a golden era for paranoid science-fiction flicks. TIME looks back at the decade’s best outer-space and nuclear-monster movies.
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The Morning After: Merry Christmesses
Brief spoilers for The Office and 30 Rock after the jump:
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TV Tonight: Grissom Bugs Out
I like to kid CBS and its half-million crime procedurals, but tonight CSI turns in a strong installment as William Petersen hands off the reins to Laurence Fishburne and Grissom departs to pursue his love of entomology elsewhere. The episode, in which the two pair up against a serial killer preying on couples, is more acting-intense than …
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The Best Medicine
All ten episodes of Rob Corddry’s web series Children’s Hospital are now online at TheWB.com. Other than a lack of songs by The Weepies on the soundtrack, it’s an even better parody of Grey’s Anatomy than Grey’s Anatomy is these days, right down to the soulful monologues over montages of beautifully heartbroken doctors. (“What is love? …
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Now Housewivier, More Desperate
In shows-I-basically-stopped-following-long-ago news, creator Marc Cherry of Desperate Housewives has announced plans to extend the show’s run to nine years from a planned seven. He and ABC chief Steve McPherson argue that its leap forward in time has reinvigorated interest in the show. It didn’t reinvigorate mine (and I have to wonder …
The Big Ten
It’s the end of the year. Time for ten best-ness, meaning Time‘s great end of the year tradition — I think this is the second year I’ve done it — of naming the ten best American museum shows of 2008.
But first some explanation about how I arrived at the Big Ten. The most obvious rule — it had to be a show I actually saw. If …
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Will the Last Person to Watch a Broadcast Network Please Turn Off the Set?
Why, you wonder, is NBC turning over a third of its weeknight programming to Jay Leno? There are specific reasons having to do with the in-the-toiletness of NBC at present, but there are also, as they say, systemic causes. Namely, no one is watching broadcast-network TV.
Well, not no one. But a new study has found viewership sharply …
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Golden Globe Noms: The World Is Watching
The TV Golden Globe nominations came out this morning. They’re never quite the high stakes game the movie Globes are, because they’re not a harbinger of the Emmys the way the movie Globes can be for the Oscars. Unlike the Emmys, they cover the calendar year, not the TV season, and the distinguishing thing about TV in 2008 was how little …