Domestic Pleasures: Don't feel like leaving the house? January Jones is one good reason to stay in and wallow in a Mad Men marathon.
AMC

 

Labor Day weekend is for picnics and pencil-sharpening; grilling and gas-guzzling; lemonade and lying around soaking up the last days of summer. But if that's not enough leisure activity to drop your heart rate to a nice mellow hum, it's also a weekend of many, many TV marathons, in which episodes of shows good and bad air back-to-back (and then some) while you sip a root beer.

The Interesting Pile blog has rounded up a list of 2008 Labor Day marathons, and there's something for (almost) every fan.

The details, after the jump ...

Continue reading "Marathon Weekend" >

Bob's problem: Chief exec Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) talks trash in The American President.
Castle Rock

Poke! Twelve hours before last night's confetti- and columns-filled coronation of Barack Obama at Denver's Invesco Field, the big Aaron Sorkin news was that the creator of The West Wing and A Few Good Men had been tapped by bullying but brilliant stage and film producer Scott Rudin to pen a movie about the social-networking phenomenon Facebook.

Status update! By midnight last night, the name of the man who created West Wing and A Few Good Men was suddenly on the furiously flapping lips of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, for a new reason. The two newsmen, along with NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, were practically back-patting themselves with pleasure for catching supposed echoes in Obama's speech with the Sorkin script for the 1995 film The American President.

"It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it," the candidate said last night, in one of his many crisply delivered zingers at the presumptive Republican nominee.

Compare that to Sorkin's version, with which Michael Douglas -- as fictional President Andrew Shepherd -- towel-whips Senator Robert Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss): "Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it."

What 'West Wing' character was based on Obama? After the jump ...

Continue reading "Obama & Aaron Sorkin, Together Again For the Very First Time" >

Who's That Diva? You've heard her biggest hits. But there's at least one you should really listen to.

In today's Song of the Day, my office-mate Stephen Thompson celebrates a wistful little Laura Gibson tune, not least for what the Portland Cello Project does by adding its "army of cellos" to what had been a bare-bones original.

"There's something about the instrument's soft, rich tone that supplies a sort of intravenous warmth, adding shading and texture without overwhelming the arrangement," Stephen writes.

Which made me think: Best chart-topping string arrangement ever?

My answer, plus where to submit yours, after the jump...

Continue reading "Notes On the Cello (Or: Great Moments in Pop-Soul Strings)" >

Disaster Movie: One sign of slow times at the multiplex, if not necessarily of the Apocalypse.
Lionsgate

So which new movie are you most overwhelmingly excited to see this week: Disaster Movie, Babylon A.D., College, or Ballet Shoes?

Yes, these are the thin days. The days when the late-summer movies have all opened and the fall movies haven't started.

There's activity off at film festivals (where no one can agree on the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading), but there's not much here at home.

One bright spot is Traitor, an FBI thriller starring Don Cheadle and Guy Pearce, which has a perfectly respectable pedigree; it comes from the writer of 2004's The Day After Tomorrow.

But after that, it gets very thin very quickly. How thin? How quickly? We investigate, after the jump.

Continue reading "Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: The Tumbleweeds of August" >

You should never believe everything you read, but I choose to believe the report from London's Telegraph that if the upcoming Muppet reunion movie is a success, it could bring the Muppets back to television.

Not sure why that's such a good idea? Enjoy this clip of the fabulous Rita Moreno singing "Fever" while Animal — he's the drummer, and he has the best eyebrows in the history of technically inanimate objects — expresses his passion for the material.

-- Linda Holmes

Howard Hughes: Don't worry; it's really him.
Hulton Archive, Getty Images

Courtesy of the Paper Cuts blog at The New York Times, I wound up at the Bookfinder.com list of the most searched-for out-of-print books.

While Paper Cuts not-unreasonably refers to the list as something of a "carnival of obscurity," some of the books are out of print because they were controversial or, in the case of The Autobiography Of Howard Hughes, because they were total frauds. Oops.

What else is on the list? We explore, after the jump...

Continue reading "Books That Are Out Of Print, But Not Out Of Mind" >

Broody heroes? We've been down this road before, and the scenery ain't always pretty.
DC Comics

So Warner Brothers has decided it needs to clean the slate and reboot the Superman film franchise.

Okay, I get that. Sorta.

I mean, yes, sure, Superman Returns got too mired in sticky-sweet nostalgia for the '70s Richard Donner film.

But it banked over $200 million in U.S. theaters, and that's not counting sales of DVDs and Superman Returns Limited Edition Four Cheese Pasta Roni. This is a flop?

Here's the bit I really don't get, though: Now that The Dark Knight has become the highest-grossing film of the year, Warner Pictures President Jeff Robinov says he wants his next pack of superhero movies to be bathed in the same brooding tone. He sees exploring the evil side to characters as the key to unlocking some of Warner Bros.' DC properties.

"We're going to try to go dark to the extent that the characters allow it," Robinov says. That goes for the company's Superman franchise as well.

Hoo boy. Hey, moviegoing public? We comic book geeks have something to tell you, because we've been down this road before.

It was called the '90s. And, trust us, it doesn't end well.

Why you should fear the super-mullet, after the jump.

Continue reading "In Which Superman Returns, Looking Kinda Mopey" >

Rainn Wilson: Sadly, a bigger hit as a bobblehead than in The Rocker.
NBC Universal

Fans of Rainn Wilson's outstanding work on NBC's The Office did not turn out in droves this weekend to see his first effort as the lead in a big movie: The Rocker made a painfully small $2.8 million in its opening weekend. And as a big fan of his work, I was relieved.

The natural instinct is to hope for success for creative people you admire, and to do otherwise feels less than generous. But ... I've seen this movie. It is not good. It is not what he should be doing. It is a waste of his considerable talent. It's all overcranked and hyper, and it doesn't take advantage of any of his skill at modulating his performance; it's like playing a well-tuned piano with a rubber mallet.

Continue reading "Rainn Wilson and the Strange Case of the Encouraging Flop" >

Cher: Clearly too understated to play Catwoman.
Bertrand Guay, AFP/Getty Images

• Cinematical and Vulture have both expressed skepticism about rumors that Cher is going to play Catwoman in Christopher Nolan's next Batman movie. I, for one, would enjoy seeing Catwoman wearing duct tape and a sailor hat. It wouldn't really be any sillier than what Batman wears.

Censorship debates, unexpected convention blogs, and potentially scandalous fall television, after the jump...

Continue reading "Censorship, 'Gossip Girl' And Other Points Of Interest" >

Not only is it not particularly big for a dumb show, it's not particularly dumb for a big show. Fox

 

Forget the hype. Ratings-wise, American Idol is a jugger-not.

Here's why I say that: With reports now pouring in from the latest round of Idol auditions around the country, it's only a matter of time before media critics head back to their thesauruses to find words to express just how culturally dominant this show really is.

The problem: It isn't, really.

American Idol, at its most popular, was watched by roughly the same percentage of television households as were watching Scarecrow & Mrs. King in 1986.

Hard to believe? The proof, after the jump.

Continue reading "'American Idol': The 'Scarecrow & Mrs. King' of Our Time?" >

Why "Monkey See"?

Monkeys: You can study them to learn about human behavior, or you can dress them up in funny outfits and have them deliver telegrams. Which is to say, they lie exactly at the intersection of anthropology and comedy. (See Figure A.)

Figure A: Monkeys: Bringing research and humor together.

 

That spot — the intersection of high and low — is the territory this blog stakes out. You can, after all, learn a lot about people from what they choose to watch, listen to and read. You can also have a lot of fun viewing YouTube videos of local news anchors sneezing in the middle of a broadcast.

Of course, the name also plays off the famous three monkeys — the ones who see, hear and speak no evil. Because to us, despite a whiff at times of guilty pleasure, there's not much in the pop universe that feels "evil."

Continue reading "A Word About Our Name" >

Only one of these candies can be the greatest of them all.
iStockphoto.com

Well, it's not about movies, exactly, but it is from Roger Ebert. The letters section on Ebert's blog includes a gem from a gentleman named R. Crutch, who explains that he is investigating candy with an evolutionary perspective:

Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.

Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them breaks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.

I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior... .

Believe me, there's more where that came from. Read the whole thing.

-- Linda Holmes

Question: Only four primetime shows have ever won five consecutive Emmy Awards for best show in the program class (that is: the award for Outstanding [Whatever Kind Of Show]).

One was Frasier, named Outstanding Comedy Series every year from 1994 to 1998. Two are The Late Show With David Letterman and The Daily Show, each of which was the Outstanding Variety, Music, Or Comedy Series five years in a row. Letterman won from 1998 through 2002, and The Daily Show has won every year since 2003, and will go for the six-peat on September 21.

What is the other? The answer, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Return of the Amazing Award-Winning Traveling Show" >

I love a cute kid, and a happy kid, and a talented kid, and a kid with a feel for music, and here, you have all those things in one ten-year-old, performing the opening number of the Tony-Award-winning In The Heights.

(Be sure to check out the comment from Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the show. Sure, it could be a fake, but anybody who went to the trouble to fake that comment would do something a little more attention-seeking -- that low-key high-five has the ring of truth to me.)

-- Linda Holmes

If Bob Mondello's story on election movies made you want to actually watch them, be advised that several of the films mentioned in the piece and in the accompanying Watch List are available on cable in the next week or two. (Depending, of course, on which movie channels you receive.) Specifically:

Primary Colors is on HBOS (that's HBO Signature) on August 21, at 1:00 PM or August 25 at 6:30 PM.
The Best Man is on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) on August 25 at 12:00 AM.
The Manchurian Candidate is on Encore 2, Wednesday, August 27 at 12:00 AM or Sunday, August 31 at 4:40 AM.
All The President's Men is on 5Star Max (that's a Cinemax channel), Thursday, August 28, 6:35 PM.
The Lives Of Others is running regularly at the moment on both Encore and Starz.
Duck Soup is on HBOC (that's HBO Comedy), September 1 at 8:35 AM.

If you have a DVR and can search listings, these should be easy to spot. Otherwise, try the online listings at TVGuide.com.

Finally, if you're a Netflix person, The Candidate is available through their Watch Instantly program, and you can call it up on your computer whenever you'd like.

Did they miss any of your political favorites? Feel free to chime in with comments.

-- Linda Holmes

Hey, it's a dog wearing a wig!

iStockphoto.com

It is one of my theories of the Internet that all blogs must carefully limit posts that fall into a category I call "Dogs In Wigs."

This is a post that consists, essentially, of a statement akin to "Here is a picture of a dog in a wig." And you click on it, and indeed, it is a picture of a dog in a wig.

"Ho-ho," you say, "that is certainly a dog, and it is certainly wearing a wig." And then you go back to whatever you were previously doing, resisting (or choosing not to resist) the urge to send someone you know a message with the subject line, "FW: Dog in wig!"

Examples of "Dogs in Wigs" would include the famous Peanut Butter Jelly Time video, the wonderful Cats In Sinks, and the astonishing Dance Party Friday, wherein the early-morning traffic reporters at one Cincinnati TV station bust an end-of-the-week move if, as often happens, there's no traffic to report on when their first segment airs at 5:45 a.m.

Don't get me wrong: the Internet would not be what it is without dogs in wigs. You just have to be careful with them, because there are only so many of them that one can tolerate before a limit is reached — sometimes abruptly — and you begin to feel that you are under siege by a flood of e-mails sent by your least amusing relative.

With that said, let me introduce you to The Quest For Every Beard Type, in which a gentleman attempts to grow (and photograph) each documented variety of facial hair in turn.

-- Linda Holmes

What is Monkey See?

Monkey See is a blog about popular culture — the good and the bad; the high and the low. We aspire to be a haven for the geek and a translator for the confused, and to carve out a space where both longtime residents and curious visitors can comfortably roam the pop-culture landscape.

Why is it called 'Monkey See'?

For several reasons, not the least of which is: Monkeys are fun. So is pop culture.

And because I used to explain my interest in pop-culture writing by saying that if you were interested in monkeys, you'd naturally be interested in what monkeys should eat. But you'd also be interested in what monkeys actually do eat, which may not be the same thing.

I'm interested in people, so I'm always interested in what they're watching and reading and listening to, both good and bad.

(Want a more detailed take? Read on ...)

Who are you calling a monkey?

Well ... myself. And you. And that guy over there. We're all monkeys, in my book.

What do you talk about here?

Pretty much anything you're talking about: Television, movies, books, the vast and terrifying Internet, video games, magazines, a touch of music. (Though NPR's music team does plenty of heavy lifting there.) Also miscellany like fashion, etiquette, trends of various kinds, and whatever else is out there in the ether.

We're intrigued when something from whatever realm pops — when it goes from niche phenomenon to full-on pop-cultural meme. This is where we'll talk about why.

Who are you?

I'm Linda Holmes, and I've been a pop-culture writer for more than 10 years.

I had a little movie-review site at one time; I've written about movies, books and television at MSNBC.com; and I was a longtime writer and editor at Television Without Pity. I once interviewed Donald Trump for TV Guide, and I intend to be buried with my minicassette of him asking, "Hello, Linda, how-a you?"

I also co-wrote a book about dating, which is something everyone should try once, if only so that you can be interviewed on television about whether you advocate loose morals. (Tip: Say no.)

I also used to be a lawyer, but that didn't allow me to interview Donald Trump or moon over Gene Kelly, so I had to quit.

What if I don't like pop culture?

It's not about being a fan; it's just about having a good discussion -- oftentimes about what inspires fandom in others. So if your co-worker's devotion to Dancing With the Stars makes no sense to you, we may be able to shed some light.

Does "pop culture" mean I have to care about celebrity gossip?

There are places where "pop culture" means "gruesome divorces and mug shots," but that's not really our style. (Exception: Nick Nolte's mug shot, which is a classic.)

How often do you post?

Every weekday, at least once. I will be joined from time to time by various other folks, from NPR and elsewhere, and we hope to cover a lot of territory.

Can I comment?

We're counting on it. Please follow the comment guidelines, which mostly come down to (1) "Make sure your comment relates to the topic at hand"; and (2) "Maintain a level of civility adequate to advance the discussion and not cause it to degenerate." That last is also known as "If it's not the way you talk to people in person, it shouldn't be the way you talk to people online." Keep in mind that fans and non-fans of, for instance, Batman are not actual enemies; they are eating out of the same figurative bowl of popcorn, and should treat each other accordingly.

Can I e-mail you?

Most definitely. Comments, questions, blog ideas? Write us.

Every blog has its rules, and these are ours. If you break them, don't be surprised if we block your comments.

First things first: If you can't be polite, don't say it. We don't want to stifle discussion, and we're not always going to agree with each other. And of course the whole point of this blog is that people care deeply about, and can have spirited discussions about, popular culture. Still, please try to disagree without being disagreeable. Focus your remarks on positions, not personalities. No name-calling, slander, comments about someone's mother, comparisons to notorious dictators — you get the idea. And under no circumstances should you post anything that could be taken as threatening, harassing, sexist or racist.

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