I usually don’t bother reporting casting news on this blog, because I’d end up doing little else, but yesterday came reports that NBC had found actresses to re-create two iconic, if very different, classic-TV roles. In its remake of Prime Suspect, Maria Bello (A History of Violence) will reportedly take on the role of a tough, …
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Watson vs. the Humans, Night Three: GUI Defeats Human!
Spoilers for last night’s finale of the Jeopardy IBM Challenge coming up:
Well, Homo sapiens, it was a great run. Two hundred thousand years! Yes, there was a war here and there and we caused a few extinctions and whatnot. But we developed language and mathematics, left crap on the ground that can be seen from space, and kicked the …
Arthur Goes to Washington: The War Over Public Broadcasting Begins, Again
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guX2i4WIvhs]
As the debate over the federal budget intensifies in Washington, Republican lawmakers have targeted—again—funding for public broadcasting. Those who want to make the cuts would like the public to see them as taking on a group of privileged elitist liberals, who do not deserve …
The Lara Logan Opportunists: Crimes After the Fact
You would think, after a report came out of a horrific public assault against a journalist by a mob, people might be able to set aside their personal and political hobbyhorses for a few hours and not exploit the situation.
You would be wrong. Shortly after the news that Lara Logan was beaten and sexually assaulted in Cairo, Nir Rosen, a …
The Morning After: The Good Wife's Status Update
Last night, The Good Wife aired its much publicized episode based on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and the controversies around the accuracy of The Social Network. (Emphasis on based on! I noted how conspicuously Diane referred to the plaintiff in the defamation suit as “a Mark Zuckerberg in the making,” so as to make crystal-clear that …
Glee Watch: Sue-nami Alert
Spoilers for last night’s Glee follow:
After Josh Levin’s essay in Slate, there’s been a lot of discussion this week about the effect that weekly online reviews of shows have on TV criticism. (Here’s my response to Levin’s piece; see also Myles McNutt’s and Alan Sepinwall’s responses if you’re curious, and Levin’s response to the …
Watson vs. the Humans, Night Two
Spoilers for last night’s Jeopardy IBM Challenge coming up:
We can console ourselves with this: when our new computer masters take over, apparently very soon now, we can be assured that they will comprehend our pathetic natural-language pleas for mercy with a certainty of upward of 90%.
Monday night, Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy-playing …
The Morning After: Not So Mad About You
When networks program new shows, they often take into consideration “flow”—how well viewers will transition from one show into the new, hopefully compatible show. But there’s flow, and then there’s imitation so distractingly total that, in the case of CBS’s new Mad Love, the show might as well be called How I Met the Timeslot …
HIMYM Watch: We Are Marshall
Quick spoilers for last nights How I Met Your Mother coming up:
After Marshall’s father died, he returned home to Minnesota, as he described it, to help his mother out. As last night’s episode, “Desperation Day,” showed, there was much more to it than that: he was really going back home, in the end, to help himself out. His mother, …
Watson vs. the Humans, Night One
Jeopardy spoilers—and boy, is that one phrase I never thought I’d type here—coming up next:
The IBM computer Watson began its brave effort to supersede humanity and thus elevate the level of sentience on Earth last night,* taking on Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in the first night of a three-night Jeopardy competition. And I have to …
WARNING: TV Critic Discussing TV Critics Discussing TV Criticism
Over at Slate, Josh Levin writes a piece (in which I’m quoted) about HitFix’s Alan Sepinwall, and how his style of TV blogging—reviewing weekly episodes of dozens of shows—has changed TV criticism, and readers’ expectations of it:
At its best, new-school TV writing is brainy and inquisitive, thoughtful commentary borne out of a
…
The Morning After: Pluck You
Cee Lo Green could be a great performer if he would just stop taking himself so damn seriously, couldn’t he? Cee Lo, pictured here, performed with his Glee stand-in, Gwyneth Paltrow, in a Grammy Awards that featured several defining themes:
* Songs that have been featured in the past season of Glee
* Rihanna duetting with someone
* …
Big Love Watch: Only Words?
Before you read this post, run back to the car to get the pliers, then watch last night’s Big Love.
“I’m having a hard time reconciling my beliefs with my feelings.” —Ben
You and everybody else, Ben. In “The Special Relationship,” various characters in and around the Henrickson family struggled to deal with the dissonance between …