What’s coming out of the idiot box.
Although you wouldn’t know it from reading this blog, I don’t really pay that much attention to Stephen King anymore. He’s far past the stage where he’s ever going to write anything interesting again (I’d say he has been for at least 20 years), and even when he does something …
I am, to put it mildly, extremely distrustful of reality shows, especially of the competitive variety. Leaving aside the fact that, due to behind-the-scenes staging and manipulation, they rarely qualify as either ‘reality’ or ‘competition’, they also tend to have the nastiest hallmarks of unscripted television: pandering to the lowest …
When it comes to the choice between bread and circuses, anyone who has seen me knows that I’ll pick bread every time. Bread is honest. Bread isn’t trying to convince you that it’s anything other than bread. Bread has no agenda. Reality shows, on the other hand, have an agenda, …
The film critic Gene Siskel once famously remarked that it’s a pity how many movies are less interesting than sitting around having a conversation of the same length with the people who made it. This was, of course, meant to be a comment on the irony of the way an …
Anyone who knows me, has read my writing, or has spent agonizing minutes in my company hearing me gas on and on about television knows that I think Mr. Show with Bob and David represents one of the high points in the history of TV comedy. It was, and still is, …
Let’s get one thing out of the way: Jessica Jones, the new Netflix series based on the troubled but fascinating Marvel Comics heroine, isn’t noir. That word has gotten tossed around endlessly by just about every critic that’s written about it, but it’s so far from accurate that it’s not …
Just when we thought we’d seen the one billionth iteration of the auteur argument in cinema, now we have to deal with it on television. Look, I get it! Television is hard. It takes a lot of people to put out that 22-44 minutes of televised entertainment. Even in the …
The genius of Stan Lee — and he was a man possessed of genius, despite the bad press he’s generated in recent years since translating that genius into a fortune that was denied to many of his employees — is that he was able to see the way the wind …
There is much talk these days of the embarrassment of riches to be found on television these days; TV is the new cinema, as we are told by an endless succession of thinkpieces by TV critics eager to defend the importance of their jobs. This both is and is not …
It happened while my partner was watching Keith Richards: Under the Influence. “This isn’t bad,” she said, “but it seems so much like an advertisement for his book.” I couldn’t help but agree; taken all in all, Under the Influence, Life, and Crosseyed Heart seem less like disparate threads in one man’s artistic …
Fargo was such a singular movie, such a unique and multilayered take on the typical heist-gone-wrong film, that it was almost unthinkable that it could be remade, rebooted, adapted or made sequel in anything like a satisfying manner. That someone actually managed to do so almost twenty years later — …
The problem with the comedy of humiliation… No, no, let’s start again. That seems dated. Ever since Seinfeld creator Larry David unleashed his… No, that’s predictable. Everybody’s gone there already. Might as well be doing riffs on the American Office. Let’s try one more time. When you’re making a comedy about extremely …
For many first-time visitors to the United States, an understanding of its culture can be hard to come by. Despite the American entertainment industry’s never-flagging efforts to export the nation’s finest bullet- and fart-joke-imbued movies and television programs to far-flung parts of the globe, many foreign tourists have been insufficiently …
The life of a critic is hard. The pay is low, the pressure to produce is high, you get called an elitist and a snob, you have to take in a lot of worthless crap, and occasionally you make a stupid decision that ends your career. Well, maybe that last …
Season 2 of True Detective wrapped up this weekend, and internet law dictates we must form an opinion about it as soon as possible, without any pesky reflection or context. It was, to be honest, a bit of a mess; then again, internet law also dictates that we must either scoff …
