Nicholas Penny, the new director of the National Gallery in London, is getting awfully fastidious. In January he let it be known that he really doesn’t think his museum should be doing big blockbuster loan shows when it’s more important to focus on scholarly exhibitions that draw attention to neglected corners of art history. Now he’s …
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TV Tonight: Closing Sessions
10.0s across the board: Wasikowska as gymnast Sophie finishes up Treatment. / HBO: Claudette Barius
The last (abbreviated) week of HBO’s In Treatment begins tonight. As much as I’ve knocked HBO around for its programming screwiness lately, this series (much like Tell Me You Love Me) was a prime example of why I’m glad the network …
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Unwanted Programming Advice: Making Up History
This is the first, and possibly last, installment of Unwanted Programming Advice, in which Tuned In attempts to tell TV networks what they should be putting on the air.
This morning, in reviewing the series finale of Jericho, I joked that the show should be revived on the History Channel. But was it a joke, really? Practically …
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Jericho Watch: A Little Bang, A Little Whimper
So long, and thanks for all the peanuts. / Michael Desmond/CBS
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, rush home in a stolen ambulance and watch the series finale of Jericho.
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The Morning After: You Say It's Your Birth Year
Brooke White takes a Breath. / F Micelotta / American Idol 2008 / Getty Images for Fox
My reviews of American Idol‘s Songs from the Year You Were Born week are up now at time.com.
Mrs. Tuned In made a good point during last night’s show that didn’t fit into my capsule writeups: why does David Archuleta seem to avoid singing any songs …
Gehry Keeps Going
Serpentine Pavilion, Frank Gehry, 2008 /Photo: GEHRY PARTNERS LLP
Every year London’s Serpentine Gallery sponsors a temporary summer pavilion designed by a major artist or architect. It frequently turns out to be an experimental space that gives clues as to where that designer is really going. When Toyo Ito, the Japanese architect I …
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American Alterna-Idol
American Idol airs tonight, but it’s a little known fact that, contrary to popular belief, you are not required by Federal law to watch it.
Supposing you don’t actually find David Archuleta cuter than Hello Kitty in a field of unicorns. Supposing you’re tired of listening to the hypertrophied lungs of professional amateurs try to …
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Maureen Ryan Works So I Don't Have To
The Chicago Tribune’s TV critic has put together this very useful list of when network TV series are returning post-strike.
Here’s a fun game to play! Look down the list and see how many of them you’re actually anxious to see again! Me, I have April 10 circled on my calendar, and… and… still looking…
Why do I have a feeling that …
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Pay-Cable Whore-Off!
Well, I’ve been waiting my entire career to be able to use that headline, so I guess I can retire now. It’s been great knowing you.
So: This summer Showtime is debuting Secret Diary of a Call Girl, a British production based on a memoir, which promises to be like Sex and the City, except more overcast and with the whole relationship …
Ito Gets to Go to Berkeley
Rendering of Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Toyo Ito, 2008 / Image: UC BERKELEY
I sat down last week with Julia White, senior curator for Asian art at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. We talked about a few things, including Berkeley’s upcoming show called Mahjong, a selection of contemporary Chinese art from …
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Star Wars According to a Three Year Old
The title pretty much says it all. If you’ve already seen it, move along. If it sounds a little too cute for you, move along. But Star Wars—as interpreted and reimagined by two children who know the story only from a Lego videogame—has been such a part of the Tuned In household in recent months that I had to share:
Fairy tales …
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The Morning After: How I Met the Mother of Your Much Older Half-Sister?
Ted and Stella get intimate. / MONTY BRINTON/CBS
We’ve already established that all it takes to make me go gaga is to put a Big Star song on the soundtrack of your TV show. But I’m pretty sure that even if the beautiful “Thirteen” had not been playing over Ted and Stella’s two-minute date, the end of How I Met Your Mother would still …
The Barnes Battle Rumbles On
Lawyers for both sides were back in court today in the fight to keep the Barnes Foundation from moving to Philadelphia from its home in Merion, Pa. Opponents of the move are hoping to persuade Judge Stanley Ott, who ruled four years ago to allow the move, that new developments justify new hearings on the matter.
The argument for moving …