Too many movies make it a point to explain every single plot point. But there’s a certain pleasure to be found in confusion. TIME looks at the best cinematic mind benders.
Tuned In
Back to (Old) School for Fall Schedules
Most of the big-network fall schedules are out, and the big news is what’s old about them. I’m referring not to the shows themselves but to the schedules.
Over the last decade or so, the networks have tried to become more creative with their fall schedule launches, moving away from the old “premiere week” strategy in which most …
Tuned InUncategorized
Which Would You Give Up: TV or the Internet?
So a bit more background on my temporary kind-of radio silence: I’m working from home, where, thanks to a vaguely explained snafu on the part of our good friends at Verizon, I have been without DSL since yesterday morning. So I’ve moved “home,” for the moment, to a cafe with wi-fi. (Which, this being Park Slope, Brooklyn, is currently …
Tuned InUncategorized
Programming Note
I’m on deadline Thursday and on a set visit Friday, and largely without Internet access both days. (I’m typing this post from my iPhone. It is not easy.) So expect posting to be sporadic. Feel free to use this space to talk among yourselves in the meantime.
Tuned InNews Media
Piers Morgan May Have Talent, But Is He Right for CNN?
Reports are busily popping about that CNN is on the verge of hiring Piers Morgan as the next host of its 9 p.m. primetime show, replacing Larry King, who is stepping down in the fall. We Yanks may be most familiar with Morgan as a judge on NBC’s America’s Got Talent (the network apparently cleared him to do the CNN deal, but he’d stay on …
Tuned InUncategorized
HBO Places Its Bet on Milch and Mann's Luck
And they’re off! HBO, which has been beefing up its regular-series roster heavily in the past year, has ordered to series Luck, a drama set in the horse-racing world, created by David Milch, starring Dustin Hoffman, and its pilot directed by Michael Mann.
Given the roster of names in that previous sentence, I would have been stunned …
Tuned InUncategorized
Court to FCC: Clean Up Your Act on Dirty-Word Rules
A federal appeals court yesterday struck down FCC regulations over “fleeting expletives” on the airwaves, ruling that the commission’s definition of “indecency” was so vague as to create an unconstitutional “chilling effect” on speech. But the ruling is subject to appeal to the Supreme Court, meaning that the victory for the networks may …
Tuned InUncategorized
The Guild Casts Its Spell Again
[vodpod id=Video.4012388&w=425&h=350&fv=player.v%3D9c194351-975c-4b54-9462-e85b3e87af8e%26amp%3BconfigName%3Dsyndicationplayer%26amp%3BconfigCsid%3Dmsnvideo%26amp%3Bmkt%3Den-us%26amp%3Bfg%3DshareEmbed]
Those of you who, like me, don’t have an Xbox can now watch season 4 of Felicia Day’s online comedy, The Guild, at MSN, where its first …
Tuned InUncategorized
Should Bret Michaels Take Over for Simon Cowell?
[vodpod id=Video.4014760&w=425&h=350&fv=]
Of course not. Would he like to? Evidently. Will he? Not if American Idol‘s producers have any sense.
But Joy Behar knows that asking the question will get people to watch her talk show, and I know that embedding the video will get people to visit this post from search engines, and so here it …
Tuned InUncategorized
The Morning After: Standard Operating Procedurals
I feel like I should just get a time-saving review template to use over the summer. “Hey, everybody! A basic-cable network is premiering a light, escapist procedural about cops and/or spies with personality quirks and gritty, but not alienatingly challenging, cases! It’s not Mad Men, but what the hey, who wants to think about stuff in …
Tuned InUncategorized
Air-Kissing The Hills Goodbye
[vodpod id=Video.4014460&w=425&h=350&fv=configParams%3Did%253D1643391%2526uri%253Dmgid%253Auma%253Avideolist%253Amtv.com%253A1643391]
People have mocked me for liking The Hills—behind my back! You think I can’t hear you but I totally hear you!—but I’m OK with that. Really. To be honest, I’ve drifted away from the show—which airs …
Tuned InRemembrance
Harvey Pekar, RIP
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0akXKxbflM]
Another loss for Cleveland: Harvey Pekar, the storyteller and jazz critic whose rants and tales of daily life were realized in the American Splendor series of comic books, has died at age 70. TV fans of a certain age—and maybe even under a certain age—will remember him as one of …
Tuned InUncategorized
Ah-ooooooo! Werewolves of Louisiana
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SUbWz5IfZc]
As I mentioned before, I’m not enough of a True Blood cultist to do a weekly review, but one thing I have enjoyed about season 3 so far is the show’s depiction of werewolves and werewolf culture: namely, how it’s depicted this breed of shape-shifter as lustily and unapologetically …