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My earlier Emmy roundup focused on the award winners and what they say about the TV business. But the Emmy show is receiving a flat-out horsewhipping from critics everywhere. (Check out the roundup on tvtattle.) Tim Goodman at the San Francisco Chronicle writes about them as if they were a travesty, an abortion, a war crime. “Take out …
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…such as it is. While a number of shows are returning tonight, there’s only one new show, par for the course in this strike-deprived fall: CBS’s sitcom Worst Week. Based on a British comedy, it’s the type of show that’s virtually unreviewable on the basis of one pilot episode. In a nutshell, it’s about Sam (Kyle …
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Once upon a time, Howie Mandel reminded us at the Emmys last night, he was on St. Elsewhere, a groundbreaking NBC medical drama. Today, he introduces babes with briefcases and relays messages from the banker on NBC’s Deal or No Deal.
Ladies and gentlemen, Howie …
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Politico reports that Al Franken—whom you may know as Stuart Smalley, or as the Democratic nominee for Senate from Minnesota—had a hand in this weekend’s Saturday Night Live spoof of negative ads from John McCain:
Should SNL have accepted input from a Democratic Senate candidate? Dollars to doughnuts this will become a cause …
Back from London, but right out the door again. I’ll be up and running on Tuesday from wherever.
Meanwhile, let me leave you with this bit of dialogue from The Hustler, the great Paul Newman movie from 1961 about pool sharks, which was running through my head all week in London after the Damien Hirst auction, and not just because of …
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7:24 p.m.: Big LIVEBLOGGING THE EMMYS notice on time.com homepage piques my interest. Oh, wait—I’m supposed to be doing it? Had better get started.
7:25 p.m.: I’m not sure Jimmy Kimmel is interviewing Tracy Morgan ironically or earnestly. Works out equally boring either way. Switching to E!
Liveblog continues after the jump.
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While I was away earlier this week, I asked you which actors or series you dreamed of winning each category, which ones you’d settle for, and which ones you actually expect to win.
Well, fair’s fair. My own Dream, Settle, Expect list (it’s like Marry, Boff, or Kill for TV nerds!) follows the jump. (And remember to watch this space for …
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Hurling your own snide, dyspeptic, mildly drunken comments at the TV screen is such a lot of trouble. Allow me to do it for you! Sunday evening, I’ll be at this URL, liveblogging the 2008 Emmy Awards.
And if nobody drops by to read it, I won’t blame myself, but rather Emmy’s decision to nominate low-rated shows like Mad Men, which, …
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The first Presidential debate airs a week from tonight. Are you excited? Woo-hoo!
Actually, I bet you are excited, because the debates promise to be the biggest remaining events—barring October Surprises—in a close and closely followed election.
But do you expect to learn much from the debates? I doubt it, because the debates as …
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* HBO signs up for a second season of True Blood. It’s not so much a sign of overwhelming ratings success (though the numbers for the second episode went up, to 1.8 million), as it is an example of HBO’s willingness to commit early to shows it believes in. (Also, very likely, it’s a sign that it’s ever harder to quantify a pay-cable …
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One of many weird things about this fall is that the traditional “premiere week” begins next Monday, and yet you could argue that the biggest new fall debuts have already happened: 90210, Fringe, True Blood. What we have left is a few very minor pleasures (like CBS sitcom Worst Week), some …
I’ve been making repeat visits to the phenomenal Francis Bacon retrospective at Tate Britain. To get right to the point, it’s one of the most powerful shows I’ve seen in more than 40 years of museum going. This is Bacon’s fifth retrospective, and no show can hope to make his work new. His …
TIME looks back at almost three decades worth of Tom Cruise performances.
