Tuned InTelevision
There may be nothing more gratifying and unifying for people than coming together in disdain for a past idea, now universally agreed on to be stupid. One of the greatest of these in American history is alcohol prohibition, not merely the impetus for the criminal events of Boardwalk Empire, but the case study for the idea that the best …
Tuned InNews Media
Don’t you hate when a fixture of the past several decades of your life comes to an end, reminding you of your own inexorable process of aging? That will happen this Sunday, when 60 Minutes’ Andy Rooney, the proud original H8R, will announce that he is ending his regular commentaries at the end of 60 Minutes.
Rooney, who began doing “A …
Tuned InTuned In
Among the things I didn’t get around to blogging about yesterday: Before the season premiere of Boardwalk Empire, HBO screened a trailer for horseracing drama Luck, which debuts in January. (They also aired an even briefer tease for season 2 of Game of Thrones, with no footage, just a recitation of the Red Priests’ line “The night is …
Tuned InTuned In
Amid the crush of new fall-TV reviews, the premieres of returning shows tend to get shortchanged, and here at Tuned In I’m no exception, so I’ll give you this Morning After post to talk about what you thought of, for instance, last night’s double shot debut of Modern Family. (I will say this: if the premiere of Revenge that followed it …
Tuned InTuned In
Word of warning: for the next day or two, those of us who attended college in the ’80s and ’90s are going to be insufferable. The news has come out that R.E.M., after a three-decade run, are breaking up. Get ready for the reminiscences: this is an unprovable thesis, but R.E.M.’s music was especially intimate and inward-looking for a …
Tuned InTuned In
The 2011 Emmy Awards are this Sunday night; I’ll be live-tweeting them as usual, and I’ll have some sort of writeup on the awards the next morning. There are several very competitive categories this year, with, for instance, the ineligibility of Breaking Bad opening space in the drama categories.
Who will win? Who should? After the …
Tuned InTuned In
I know it’s not really critically responsible to simply link to someone else’s review of a show and say, “What he said,” but I’m going to do that with Daniel Fienberg’s review of The CW’s H8R, starting tonight, because (1) I’m not doing a full-length review of every new show debuting over the next few weeks and (2) it’s just that damn …
Tuned InNews Media
Last night, the Republican field met for another debate, this one organized by CNN and a Tea Party group, and held in Florida. Michael Scherer at Swampland has a play-by-play, but in short we learned that (1) the GOP contenders want to make sure that Rick Perry does not pull away from the field; (2) CNN would really like the Tea Party not …
Tuned InTuned In
I don’t have a piece in this week’s TIME magazine, but this issue, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, is a sweeping enough undertaking that I wanted to point it out. Rather than fill out the issue with stories and essays by bloviators like me, the issue focuses on the first-person stories of people who were in the …
Tuned InNews Media
The positioning of the candidates at last night’s NBC News / Politico debate at the Reagan library told you all you needed to know: squarely in the center were Mitt Romney, the longtime varsity letterman in the GOP primary race, and Rick Perry, the hotshot new quarterback just transferred to the school who suddenly has his pick of …
Tuned InUncategorized
In one of the most stunning news flashes since the shooting of Buckwheat, Eddie Murphy has been announced as the host of the next Academy Awards broadcast, next Feb. 26 on ABC.
Murphy was apparently recruited as Oscar host by awards co-producer Brett Ratner, who directed him in the forthcoming movie Tower Heist. Murphy will join past …
Tuned InAdvertising
Fox is deeply convinced that you will love Zooey Deschanel this fall in its comedy New Girl. But if you are not thus persuaded yet, then by God, Fox is going to help you learn to love her by any means necessary. To that end, Variety reports, the network today will begin previewing the show’s pilot in various forums online, two weeks …
Tuned InTuned In
One of the most popular kids’ shows in this country today begins by giving its audience a cruel musical taunt. “There’s 104 days of summer vacation,” opens the lyric of Phineas and Ferb, Disney’s cartoon about the outlandish adventures of two stepbrothers, their family, their friends and their platypus, Perry, who unbeknownst to them is …
