The countdown ticks toward Sunday’s Palme d’Or ceremony. With two days left, only two of the 20 film in competition are left to see. In a Festival that began with big names and high hopes, a gentle malaise has settled upon the
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Upfronts 2011: What We Learned
The major broadcast schedule presentations, or “upfronts,” ended yesterday. I’ve given some impressions of the 2011–12 shows we saw previewed this week, but it’s worth repeating that those are nothing more than impressions, based on trailers, which can give nothing more than a thumbnail idea of a show and often a misleading one. Over …
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Office Watch: You're Not the Boss of Me
Spoilers for last night’s season finale of The Office below:
There are three ways to look at “Search Committee”: (1) as an episode in itself, (2) as a way of judging the overall success of season seven of The Office and (3) as a table-setter for the extended life of Dunder-Mifflin without Michael Scott. I want to have something more …
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Parks and Recreation Watch: A Little Horse With Grief
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Spoilers for the season finale of Parks and Recreation, below:
Earlier this season, Parks and Recreation followed up the splendid “Harvest Festival” episode with “Camping,” in which Leslie Knope dealt with an unexpected complication of the festival’s success: what was she going to do for a …
The Skin I Live In: Almodovar’s Surgical Thriller
The noted plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) believes that his radical experimentation in “transgenesis” could cure diseases and correct deformities. But what the doctor really wants to do is direct — to …
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Upfronts 2011: Sarah Michelle Gellar Is Back, and Other Familiar Sights from The CW
The CW is TV’s newest major (if you want to call it that) broadcast network, even if you count the predecessors it was formed from—The WB and UPN—which date back to the mid-’90s. But it’s old enough by now to have a history, and the new shows it announced today, rounding out the broadcast upfronts for the year, recall that history …
Cannes Bans Lars von Trier for Nazi Remarks
How far is too far? For the gentlefolk who run the Cannes Film Festival, too far is when a crazy-great director like Lars von Trier uses Europe’s version of the N word: Nazi.
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Modern Family Watch: The Graduate
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Spoilers for last night’s Modern Family below:
Little time for a big writeup because of (1) upfronts and (2) everything else upfronts have kept me from doing. But let’s take a moment to give credit to a nicely themed and executed Modern Family, which embodied some of the series’ best …
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Upfronts 2011: CBS Unveils New Shows, Erases Sheen and Couric
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The TV upfronts are a big fast car with no rear-view mirror. The shining vista of the future is extolled. The good times of the present are celebrated. And the flaming car wrecks of the past, littering the highway behind? Never happened! Moving forward!
CBS, to be fair, is doing well …
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Judging American Idol: The Final 3
It was final three night on American Idol, which meant that the show packed a whole nine songs into a mere two hours. In their penultimate performance, the trio were mentored by Beyonce. Who was irreplaceable? Who proved not to be ready for this jelly? Click the pix for my reviews:
Melancholia: Lars von Trier’s Tree of Death
Wagner’s Overture for Tristan und Isolde thunders its ominous beauty on the soundtrack, and a blond woman (Kirsten Dunst) in a bridal gown watches anxiously as birds fall dead from the sky. In a farther region of the sky, one …
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The Good Wife Watch: If the Glove Fits…
Spoilers for the season finale of The Good Wife coming up:
In a couple of recent Good Wife reviews, I expressed some misgivings over the show’s introducing Peter’s affair with Kalinda as a storyline. It’s not that it’s implausible, but the show has become much stronger and more complex than its original concept—i.e., political wife …
Lars von Trier: “O.K., I’m a Nazi”
Within the hour, Richard Corliss will be posting his review of Lars von Trier’s (in my view, excellent) new film Melancholia, which had its world premiere this morning. But von Trier, the wildly talented, supremely maddening Danish director of such Cannes favorites as Europa/Zentropa, Breaking the Waves and Antichrist, topped himself for …