German-American director Till Schauder spent five years following Kevin Sheppard, 33, a former American college basketball player who went to Iran to play as a journeyman athlete. The result, the documentary The Iran Job, is …
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Ben Affleck’s Argo: Can a Fake Movie Save Real Lives?
This fact-inspired story of an audacious caper during the Iran hostage crisis has all the makings of an Oscar winner, but that doesn’t mean it’s a great film
Homeland Watch: The Inside Man
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, turn on your classified satellite-video link and watch last night’s Homeland.
“It fucked me up, Saul. Being wrong about Brody… It makes me not trust my own thoughts. Every time I …
A Second Look At: Revolution
The lights will be staying on at the set of Revolution for at least a full year. Yesterday, NBC announced it was picking up a full season of the postapocalyptic drama, which has been getting strong (or at least NBC-strong) …
You Got Served: A Waiter’s-Eye View of Mitt Romney
There are plenty of people out there–too many, maybe–analyzing what Mitt Romney said in the secretly taped fundraiser video posted in full at the Mother Jones website: what his comments about “the 47%” say about his campaign, about his character, about his attitude toward the working class, about his base of voters and Barack Obama’s. …
Return to the Scene of the Crime: FNL Season 2, Reconsidered
SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t yet watched Friday Night Lights and don’t want to learn any plot points, don’t read this post. Also, for the love of God, watch Friday Night Lights already.
TCA Roundup: Aaron Sorkin Meets the Press
The Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles continued its second week, as a chorus line of cable networks presented new and continuing shows to close out the tour. Highlights from yesterday’s sessions, which were …
TCA 2012: FX Will Give You More Louie, and (Probably) a Lot More Charlie Sheen
Get used to seeing more of Charlie Sheen on your television. A lot more. Or, at least, get used to other people having a lot more opportunities to see Charlie Sheen on their televisions.
Breaking Bad Watch: Mag-neato
The first time we saw Walter White, he was turning fifty, having breakfast with his family, “50” spelled out in veggie bacon. (“This smells like Band-Aids” –Walter Jr.) The first time we see Walter White in Breaking Bad‘s final …
Jimmy Fallon, Number-One Musical Late-Night Host
A confession: unless I’m specifically watching a late-night show to review it, it’s been ages since I’ve sat down and watched an episode of one, live, from beginning to end, and as long as I have a DVR, I’m not sure I ever will. (Exception: sometimes, The Daily Show and Colbert.)
So I usually don’t have a “favorite” late-night show so …
The SCOTUS-Reporting Screwup, Second By Second
A lot happened in the media while I was away the last week and a half: Anderson Cooper came out, Ann Curry went out and, when the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act was released, a couple of news organizations flamed out. Fox News and—longer and more spectacularly—CNN made the hurried mistake of reporting, on an …
Test Pilot: Vegas
Test Pilot is a semiregular feature sharing my first impressions of the pilots for next season’s shows. These aren’t reviews, since these pilots can be rewritten, recast and retooled before airing, and the shows that …
The Morning After: The Newsroom’s First Draft of History
My review of The Newsroom is in this week’s TIME (here’s my blog post elaborating on it), and it was not a positive one. But there’s been so much ink and bandwidth used up on the show in advance that I’m more interested now in …