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Spoilers for last night’s Top Chef DC coming up:
Here are some words I like to hear on Top Chef: galantine, mirepoix, bacon. Here are some words I have no interest in hearing on Top Chef: strategy, alliance, tactics. Don’t get me wrong, I like the game of Survivor. When it is played on the television show Survivor. But I watch Top …
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The latest trial balloon launched in the replace-Simon-Cowell sweepstakes: singer-songwriter Chris Isaak. The obvious pluses: Isaak has plenty of recording experience (“Wicked Game,” “Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing”) and experience in front of the camera (his charming Showtime comedy of …
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Variety is reporting that The Office has signed B.J. Novak, who writes for and plays Ryan on the series, to a new two-year deal, which will elevate him to executive producer. For those of you who have wondered if NBC will perpetuate the series after the departure of Steve Carell, who leaves after this season—well, you can do the …
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Test Pilot is a semiregular feature sharing my first impressions of the pilots for next fall’s shows. These aren’t reviews, since these pilots can be rewritten, recast and retooled before airing, and the shows that eventually get on the air can prove much better or worse. But premature opinions …
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I could tell it was summer yesterday. Not because of the soup-like atmosphere that greets me on opening the door in the morning, or the sweet garbagey fragrance of New York in July, but because the political media was busily living every week like it was Shark Week. The latest example …
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I will be the first to admit that my enjoyment of Bored to Death is at least partly based in personal bias. I live in Brooklyn, and while HBO is heavy on shows that love my borough (In Treatment, Boardwalk Empire and Flight of the Conchords all shot there, at least in part), Bored to …
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Louis C.K.’s new FX comedy, Louie, debuted while I was on vacation at the end of the June, so I wrote about it in a pre-holiday blog post the week before. If it got lost in the shuffle, let me remedy that by saying: Louie continues to be one of the best new series of the year, and if you haven’t been watching, I urge you to catch …
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I believe we can start thinking of satellite provider DirecTV as the Lourdes of television, the last hope for praised but low-rated TV shows and their fans. A couple years ago, it rescued Friday Night Lights by working out a cost-sharing deal with NBC in exchange for first-run rights. Now it’s adopting the award-winning legal thriller …
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Or: An Explanation, and Example, of the Very Phenomenon The Author Is Discussing:
Today the Washington Post published a sprawling, two-year investigation into America’s huge, complex and hard-to-fathom system of national security and intelligence. What, as of this afternoon, was the most-read article at the Post’s website? “Palin …
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It’s an Arrested Development reunion! According to The Hollywood Reporter, David Cross (formerly Dr. Tobias Fünke on AD) has been signed as a regular on the new Fox sitcom Running Wilde, starring his old castmate Will Arnett and produced by AD creator Mitch Hurwitz. Let’s just rename it “Running Bluth” and call it a day.
Critic Jace …
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SPOILER ALERT: This post totally spoils the TV series Lost and the movie Inception. If you haven’t watched either and don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading. I said stop!
Over the weekend, Lost producer Damon Lindelof tweeted his admiration for Christopher Nolan’s new movie: “I wish that someone would break into my dreams and give …
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I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to post any more Dead Tree Alerts here. Recently, TIME stopped posting full articles from its print edition online, requiring people to buy the print or iPad editions of the magazine to read the pieces. There is—as of now—no option to buy articles or issues of the magazine through the Web, so …
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Good news: my DSL pipeline has been restored, so I’m back in blogging business. Bad news: between at set visit today (to the downtown site of AMC’s Rubicon) and general falling behind from my computer problems, I don’t have time for a full blog review of Friday Night Lights, “Injury List.”
Update: Whoops! And fortunately, I don’t …
