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I watched the entire series of Swingtown. No, I’m serious. Beginning to end. Didn’t miss a single one. Kept watching even after I realized the show was never going to live up to its potential, that rather than being Big Love with bellbottoms, it ended up being a case study in eBay fiction, more interesting for its curated details of …
In Boston last week I sat down for a conversation with Rachel Whiteread, the most prominent British sculptor of her generation. She’s the subject right now of a small, somewhat fitful show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It centers …
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SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, down a shot of wheatgrass juice and watch last night’s How I Met Your Mother.
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A few ratings/deals items I haven’t gotten around to posting:
Renewed: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (to my surprise), for the rest of the season; Mad Men (not to my surprise), for a third. (Creator Matthew Weiner reportedly has not yet signed a deal, news that I’m not much worried about for now on the theory that none of the …
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How circumspect is NBC anchor Brian Williams about his political leanings? According to a piece in the Yale Daily News (via Romenesko), Williams says that he doesn’t even tell his wife or daughter whom he votes for:
“I’ve trained myself in twenty-six years in this business to not have [opinions],” Williams said in an interview
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The only poll that matters may be on Election Day, but the only numbers that matter on TV are ratings, and when it comes to them, Sarah Palin is an unquestionable asset. Her appearance on SNL gave the show its highest ratings in 14 years. John McCain, meanwhile boosted David Letterman’s ratings to their best since 2005.
If the …
TIME’s look at the ten worst video game to screen adaptations is like shooting fish in a barrel with a plasma cannon.
While I was traveling last week there was a further blip in the ongoing struggle over the plan to uproot the Barnes Foundation from its home in Merion, Pa. and truck its art collection over to Philadelphia. On the arts blog of the Los Angeles Times, Christopher Knight, the Times art critic, burrowed into remarks that Pennsylvania Gov. …
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SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, throw your dinner off the balcony and watch last night’s Mad Men.
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Friday night saw the debuts of Starz’s Crash and NBC’s Crusoe, which I didn’t get around to reviewing, and to any of you who thus spent time on them over the weekend, I apologize. Crash, Starz’s entry into the original-drama sweepstakes, managed to re-create the strained, self-consciously shocking and implausible …
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Like most political-celebrity appearances on Saturday Night Live, Sarah Palin’s didn’t really live up to the original skits, nor could you expect it to. The thing with cameos like this is that the main payoff is the announcement that the candidate is doing the show. The actual performance is more a formality: the politician gets to be a …
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…when she gets angry, she grows as big as a house! From which you can see Russia!
Politico’s Jonathan Martin hears from Sarah Palin‘s aides that the VP candidate will appear on Saturday Night Live this weekend.
On a related note, I was struck last night to notice that NBC is using Tina Fey’s Palin imitation in commercials for …
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My piece in this week’s TIME looks at Fringe, several episodes into its run. It’s not so much a review—I’ve been back and forth on that here on the blog—as it is about how its brand of science fiction, like sci-fi of the past, speaks to today’s particular fears:
Show me a human fear, and i’ll show you a monster. Our ancestors
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