Tuned InMovies
This weekend I watched the DVD of last year’s documentary Helvetica, which is, yes, about the typeface, and which is—really, I’m serious—absolutely fascinating. The movie directly relates to Mrs. Tuned In’s job, which involves graphic design, but if you ever have the chance to watch it, it has lessons for Tuned Inland too: namely, …
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One of the most important and least-remarked-on transitions in life is the death of a parent. While it doesn’t get noted the way other developmental milestones do—puberty, graduation, parenthood, etc.—losing a parent is recognizing that you are ultimately responsible for yourself, and as much or more as those other landmarks, …
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…at least when it comes to cable reality TV. Sunday, National Geographic channel debuts L.A. Hard Hats, a show about Golden State high-rise construction workers that promises to be like Deadliest Catch, except warmer, higher above sea level, and not Deadliest Catch.
L.A. Hard Hats also joins the vaunted category of series titles that …
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In lieu of actual pilot screeners this summer, I’ve been getting e-mails from network publicity departments. Hey, we’ve got new publicity photos for 90210 available for the press! Check it out—we posted trailers for new NBC shows at our website!
And I’m all, yeah, dude! I’d love to download and reproduce your publicity stills and …
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In this week’s issue of Time, I have written the only column of mine that Tuned In Jr. and Tuned In Jr. Jr. will probably ever want to read, because it has an illustration of Po from Kung Fu Panda on it. The paradox of the title? With the Olympic a week away, Hollywood is fascinated …
Tuned In
We may be in the summer doldrums, but Comic-Con came along last week to give us a few more nuggets to chew on before LDG takes a well-earned fall vacation. I’ll start with the video screened at the Lost panel, since I haven’t linked it here yet:
The most important bit of information is, of course, that Marvin Candle / Pierre Chang …
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Further to that Obama-is-a-celebrity ad, a “prominent Republican strategist” e-mails the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder with a thought that I wish had occurred to me: watch the spot with the sound off, and it’s basically a pro-Obama ad.
“Hell, I can’t stand Obama at this point and I find those images uplifting,” he writes. “Yet McCain uses …
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Spoilers for the latest Project Runway coming up after the jump:
Tuned InAdvertising
I haven’t been spending much time picking apart campaign ads in this election, because I know enough about what I don’t know about that I don’t want to pretend to be factcheck.org. But in his newest ad, John McCain has come into Tuned In’s house, as the kids say, attacking Barack Obama on pop culture.
Again, I’ll leave the analysis of …
Tuned In
If you watched the season 2 premiere of Mad Men, you saw televisions in every room tuned to First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s tour of the White House. Now you can watch TV just like Betty Draper and Salvatore! AMC is streaming the entire original CBS/NBC News special from Valentine’s Day 1962. Adjust the rabbit ears on your laptop and …
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2008, it is starting to seem, is the Year of the Commenter. New York Magazine did an entire cover story about The What, an aggressive pseudonymous commenter on Brooklyn real-estate blog Brownstoner. Gawker–basically the Olympics of snarky commenters–did a piece on the backlash against snarky commenters. Nerd World’s Lev Grossman wrote …
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You may think that the recent Gallup/USA Today poll—which was the first in a long stretch of national polls to show McCain with a lead, among likely voters—is right on. You may think it’s bogus. You may think it’s the first to accurately detect a backlash against Obama. You may think it’s an anomalous outlier with a suspect method of …
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So at this point we’ve all accepted that the History Channel has a rather, shall we say, broad definition of its mission. Basically, if it happened, it’s history. Or if it might happen. Or if it’s happening now.
Or, in the case of last night’s debut, Jurassic Fight Club, if it may or may not have happened 70 million years ago, but we …
