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[Here is where there would be a really pretty picture from Bionic Woman if Moveable Type were presently allowing me to upload photos.]
Test Pilot is Tuned In’s semiregular summer preview of the pilots for new fall series. These aren’t reviews, because the pilots can be recast, reshot and improved (or ruined) before air. But premature …
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I’m out of the print TIME magazine for a couple of weeks, owing to a long-term project, but even if I were in it, anything I could muster would be dwarfed by Eric Pooley’s massive profile of Rupert Murdoch, so I thought I’d link to it in case anyone wants to comment.
The profile obviously focuses on News Corp.’s attempt to buy the Wall …
The New York Times has taken note today of the arrest last Thursday of a guy who may turn out to be “the Splasher”, or one of them, the mysterious character (or characters) who have been defacing street art around New York by splashing it with paint. And yes, I’m aware that street art, since it consists of posters and paintings on …
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As much time as I spend on this blog ranting about government regulation of TV content, I haven’t given much publicity to TV Watch, a group advocating for parents who want themselves, not the government, to decide what’s appropriate for their kids to watch. [Update: The group is supported by television networks, who make up some of the …
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It’s about time that someone took on the much-repeated charge that Lost is the TV show that “never answers any questions.” Last season, during the hiatus after the six-season episode fall run, IDG IGN wrote up a great, exhaustive list of 50 Lost Loose Ends, questions that had been raised but not answered by the show to that point. …
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They say when you reach a crossroad or turning point in life it doesn’t really matter how we got there, but what we do next after we get there. We usually arrive there by adversity. And it is then, only then, that we find out who we truly are and what we are truly made of. It’s a process, a gift and a journey.
—Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on …
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Shaq’s Big Challenge. ABC photo: ANGELO CAVALLI
I just got a press release from an activist group I haven’t heard of, about a TV-discrimination issue that I’ve never heard voiced. Nation of Size, a group representing “persons of size,” has issued its first report card evaluating the representation of large people in prime time TV. It …
Today’s recommended reading — a shrewd and funny takedown of the whole dreary notion of artworld biennials by New York magazine critic Jerry Saltz.
Having spent a week blogging from Venice, I know where he’s coming from, especially when he talks about the frenzy of press preview days, with long lines to enter the most anticipated …
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Often lost in the excitement over Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to buy Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal is the possibility that the deal may not mainly be about a newspaper at all but about TV. CNN Money takes a look at the potential for the deal to provide instant brand recognition for Murdoch’s forthcoming business-news channel by …
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I’ve been watching a lot of old DVDs and TV shows lately, and one thing that always does my heart good is hearing old theme songs. Not because they’re better or worse necessarily than today’s, but because they’re so long. This is the thing about TV that most tells you how the world has changed since then–not the lack of cursing or sex …
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Senate hearings in support of TV-violence legislation began in Washington today, as the Parents Television Council aired a greatest-hits reel of TV gore to bolster the call of Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) for government regulation of violence. The hearings also featured testimony from Peter Liguori, entertainment president of Fox, …
My trip to Philip Johnson’s Glass House last week sent me back to Franz Schulze’s indispensable 1994 biography, Philip Johnson: Life and Work, where I was interested to find that as early as 1941/42, Johnson, then still the arch Modernist, the chief American disciple of Mies van der Rohe, had written an essay in which he had nothing but …
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Thomas is watching you. / Photo: HIT Entertainment
In the New York Times, reporter David Barboza writes about his experiences as a prisoner of Thomas the Tank Engine, or more accurately, of the Chinese factory he was investigating after reports emerged of lead paint in Chinese-made Thomas toys. It’s not a TV story, exactly, but I had …
