The state of California may be going bust, but things are looking up for two big museums there. In Los Angeles, the beleaguered Museum of Contemporary Art, which seemed on the verge of collapse last year, has picked itself up off the floor, and faster than anyone would have predicted. And further north, the San Francisco Museum of …
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Glenn Beck Gets His SNL Closeup
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If you haven’t yet seen it, Glenn Beck received a tribute greater than the cover of TIME magazine last night: a Saturday Night Live (in this case Weekend Update Thursday) parody. I have to think there is far more you could do with a Beck opening monologue than this snippet. (Think Ben …
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The Morning After: Time to Give Up on Survivor?
Thursday night is becoming a high-class problem for TV viewers: on one night, we’ve got NBC’s comedy block (its two-hour comedy block, Mr. Leno), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Fringe, Project Runway, FlashForward and Survivor. (Also Grey’s Anatomy, Vampire Diaries, etc., for those of you who partake–feel free to discuss any of …
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Thursday Comedy Watch: Burned at the Stakeout
Spoilers for Parks & Recreation, The Office and Community coming up after the jump:
There Goes the Magritte
The little René Magritte Museum in the Brussels suburb of Jette was robbed at gunpoint this morning by two men who ran off with Olympia, a 1948 portrait of Magritte’s wife Georgette in the nude with a conch shell on her belly. (It was originally a toad, but Magritte had second thoughts and painted it over.)
According to the British …
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TV Tonight: Can FlashForward Get Lost?
When I pot post my Test Pilot first impressions of new shows over the summer, I make the point of stressing that they’re not reviews, because the pilots can be reworked before they’ve aired. That’s not a lie, but in the case of ABC’s FlashForward, the for-air pilot hasn’t changed from what I saw in June enough to change my initial …
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The Morning After: Lord, Have Mercy
Fall-TV triage continues: I didn’t have time to do a full review yesterday of NBC’s painful nurse drama Mercy, and though I could have whipped up a quick pan for critical-jollies reasons, it seemed like the show had been thoroughly enough beaten up by other critics that you’d likely been warned. (I am a little surprised that the pilot, …
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Glee Watch: A Big Gay Team of Dancing Gays
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, take a moment to consider the social benefits of caning, and watch last night’s Glee.
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No Abortion? No Accident
As I mentioned Monday, the new CBS comedy Accidentally on Purpose is based on a memoir by time.com film critic Mary Pols. Pols, like her alter ego played by Jenna Elfman, in real life got pregnant accidentally by a much younger man. Unlike Elfman’s character, but like many other women with unplanned pregnancies, Pols had considered …
The Rose Report: The Big Sidestep
Okay, I’m back. While I was on the road there was a new development in the ongoing struggle over the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University. To recap: earlier this year, in the depths of the Wall Street meltdown, Brandeis announced that to help cover a huge shortfall in the school’s budget it planned to shut down its art museum and …
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TV Tonight: Cougar Town
Tonight ABC debuts Cougar Town, a comedy based on the media trend of older women hooking up with younger men. Building a show around the concept of “cougars” is a bold, farsighted move that guarantees the show will remain timely and relevant for years. I hereby predict that Cougar Town will have the staying power of such …
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The Morning After: Mama Said Lock You Up
There’s a lot of triage involved in the fall debut season for me; some shows that are notably good, or bad, or just interesting, I’ll review at length. Others get a warning to stay away, while some seem so review-proof that adding my two cents seems redundant. Last night’s The Forgotten and L.L. Cool J’s NCIS: Los Angeles (pictured) …
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TV Tonight: The Good Wife
The first scene of The Good Wife (debuts tonight, CBS, 10 p.m. E.T.) is something you’ve seen before: Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) stands stock-still next to her husband Peter (Chris Noth) as he’s resigning the office of state’s attorney in a sex and influence-peddling scandal.
The next scene includes something you haven’t …