Wolverine: He may be powerful, but he is not the man for every job. Twentieth Century Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

1. Balloon-animal artist

2. High-voltage electrician

3. Prop comic/juggler

4. Obstetrician

5. Deep-tissue masseur

6. Dental hygienist

7. Ship-in-a-bottle assembler

8. TSA screener

9. Attendant in library rare-books room

10. Quality assurance inspector, gossamer scarves

Your career-counseling advice for Mr. Personality? Hit the comments ....

by Linda Holmes

What does the Internet love? Baby animals! Please enjoy this baby porcupine eating a banana and getting the hiccups.

Don't say we never did anything to brighten up your afternoon.

Grey's Anatomy: Just one of the ABC shows on its way to Hulu. But does it matter? ABC

 

by Linda Holmes

Today, we learned that ABC shows, as well as some other Disney-controlled content, will be coming to Hulu.com. Until now, ABC shows have been available primarily through the network's own site, ABC.com.

That means that, with NBC and Fox having been the original partners, of the four major broadcast networks, only CBS is staying out of the Hulu deal. (They stream episodes of some shows -- though not as many as other networks -- at both CBS.com and TV.com.)

So: Is this significant?

The interface, the selection, and strength in numbers, after the jump...

Continue reading "Is This Significant?: Disney/ABC Content Is Coming To Hulu" >

by Linda Holmes

As the fifth season of The Office comes to a close (there are three new episodes left, including tonight's "Casual Friday"), it's beginning to look like this is going to be the series' most successful season ever for character-driven stories, if not for hilarious comedy.

If Season 1 (which only had six episodes) was the season where Michael Scott's precise level of social clumsiness was being calibrated, and Season 2 was the season that set up the relationships that would drive the show, and Season 3 was the season that focused most heavily on resolving the Jim/Pam romance, and Season 4 was the season that was impressive just for surviving the writers' strike and the resolution of the show's most prominent sexual-tension storyline, Season 5 has been the one that has most satisfyingly paid off the stories that the writers have been telling all along.

Why this is the best season ever if you like your characters built to last, after the jump...

Continue reading "'The Office': As Season 5 Wraps, It Looks Like Character Counts" >

by Linda Holmes

Disclosures: I was not a fan of Sex And The City when it was on TV. I thought the women were shallow, dumb, and much more similar to each other in temperament and personality than the "She's the craaaazy one! She's the sweet one!" lineup recognized. (Running the gamut from A to B, as to steal from Dorothy Parker.) I did not see anything relatable in any of them, ever, at any time.

Caveats to disclosures: During its TV lifetime, I wasn't a person who cared about clothes, or a person who had ever lived in New York, or a person who would ever kick John Corbett to the curb.

I did eventually watch a good part of the show's run, and I enjoyed it...occasionally, I guess? It was diverting enough, though I still never liked any of the women, and I still didn't care about clothes. Once I had lived in New York, though, I did find rather hilarious the way that in their world, living in the dreaded "Brooklyn" is the rough equivalent of living at the bottom of a vat of industrial waste and everyone in the entire city of New York thinks so.

I saw the movie, and it was...about what I expected. Absurd, breezy, full of women making very bad choices about relationships that are presented as freeing.

Now that casting news is rolling in about the sequel, is it too early to dread it?

Is it too early to dread the endless insistence that it resonated with every woman, that we all sat around for years discussing with our friends whether we were a Charlotte or a Miranda, and that we all rooted for Carrie to get together with the unreliable, emotionally unavailable, infantile Mr. Big? Is it too early to be sick of hearing the words "Mr. Big"?

I always kind of thought the best thing that could happen to Carrie would be the disappearance of that guy into witness protection. But then, I didn't want Ross and Rachel to end up together, either.

Most of all, is it too early to declare my entire brain a Jimmy-Choo-free zone? Because we've got a long way to go yet, and we need to pace ourselves.

by Linda Holmes

If you are a fan of Neil Patrick Harris, you probably know that he's an accomplished magician -- it's just one of the many things about him that can only be described as...awesome.

In this clip, he does a card trick for Jimmy Fallon, and even though you can sort of see the trajectory of it, and in a sense, the surprise at the end of something like this can never be a surprise, it's still utterly delightful. This has been kicking around online for a few days, but it's a rainy day where I am, and nothing solves a rainy day like Neil Patrick Harris doing a card trick.

Hat-tip to Lora.

Hey, folks -- we had a software upgrade on the commenting system today. If you're having trouble seeing comments (check previous posts to see), try clearing the cache of your browser, and they should show up.

Yes, it's a little inconvenient, but we're going to talk about Neil Patrick Harris in a little bit, so that should make up for it.

by Marc Hirsh

If you're of a certain age and musical temperament, this week's DVD release of Dalton Trumbo's 1971 anti-war movie Johnny Got His Gun makes you think of one thing in particular, and that's Metallica's "One."

The film, which stars Timothy Bottoms and Jason Robards, is about a wounded World War I soldier whose mind is alive even as his injuries have turned him into a blind and deaf quadruple amputee with no way of communicating with the outside world.

The song, as metalheads and even the more pedestrian brand of rock nerds know, was inspired by the 1939 novel (also written by Trumbo), so much so that the band included scenes and dialogue from the film in the video.

Maybe "included" isn't the right word there: let's try "supersaturated." Even by the standards of the clip-heavy soundtrack videos of the 1980s (such as the Bangles' "Hazy Shade Of Winter" from Less Than Zero or Roxette's "It Must Have Been Love" from Pretty Woman), "One" was pretty extreme in its disregard for the boundaries between the video and the movie. So much so, in fact, that the casual MTV viewer of the time might have assumed that Johnny Got His Gun was in multiplexes right then.

Then again, of course it was extreme. It was freakin' Metallica. Even with Guns n' Roses having recently left most of the hair-metal pack in its wake the year before, there was nothing on standard-rotation MTV remotely as fast and heavy as this song.

I certainly hadn't heard anything like it before, even though I was familiar with the name Metallica through my metalhead friends. What's funny is that after I bought the cassette single (thus being on both the losing end of technological history and the winning end of musical history, as "One" became, amazingly enough, a top 40 hit), I always liked to pretend that it was the quote-unquote "folk" portions at the beginning of the song (yes, that's actually how I referred to them) that I loved.

But that was a lie.

The bond between movie and band, after the jump...

Continue reading "Jason Robards, James Cagney And Metallica, Together At Last" >

Free Comic Book Day: Just what you've been waiting for all your life, if this is the kind of thing you wait for. iStockphoto.com

 

by Glen Weldon

This Saturday, May 2nd, you can walk into just about any comic shop in the country and get handed a bunch of free comic books.

Now me, I've had dreams like that.

But Free Comic Book Day is not intended for those of my ilk, who've already given ourselves over to the medium.

No, FCBD is the annual rite by which the nation's comics retailers band together to harvest fresh new souls -- people like you, who do not, as a matter of course, set foot inside comic shops.

Understand that you won't be able to just start pawing over the shelves. No, there'll be a passel of books provided by comics publishers, set aside specifically for FCBD giveaways. Some shops will allow you to pick and choose among them; others will simply hand you a pre-selected packet. You can use the FCBD site to locate a participating store near you.

And it will cost you nothing, nada, bupkis, zilch.

You may recognize this as the "your first taste is free" business model, so successfully embraced by the Columbia Record and Tape Club. Also, crack dealers.

Which: yeah, pretty much.

After the jump: A sneak peek at this year's FCBD selections, which do -- I repeat: DO -- include a healthy dose of Shatner.

Continue reading "Free Comic Books: Say it Soft and it's Almost Like Praying" >

by Linda Holmes

Remember the way people talked about Matthew McConaughey when he was in the 1996 film adaptation of John Grisham's legal thriller A Time To Kill? He was good in that movie. He got solid reviews in that movie.

That was the same summer he was in John Sayles' Lone Star. And he'd already been in the much-loved Dazed And Confused. It's not like he was racking up Oscar nominations, but the idea was certainly supposed to be: Handsome Man Who Is Also A Real Actor.

I mean ... he was in Amistad, for crying out loud.

But slowly, something changed. And not only because he unfortunately popped up in an arrest warrant in which he was credited as the "nude, white male dancing and playing bongo drums."

After the bongos, after the jump...

Continue reading "Matthew McConaughey: Shirtless Pop-Culture Punching Bag" >

Don't say it: Watch your mouth, or you might cost a broadcast network a lot of money. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

As you may have already read, the United States Supreme Court has announced, sort of, that it's got the FCC's back as the commission attempts to fine broadcasters for isolated smatterings of profanity.

(OK, technically, SCOTUS reversed a lower court ruling that had put the kibosh on the FCC's plan. And it hasn't really signed off on what the FCC wants to do. But still.)

Believe it or not, this all goes back to Cher and Bono and Nicole Richie swearing on live television, with a cultural (if not legal) assist from Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl.

What's it going to mean for live television? More tape delays, possibly, at least for the moment. But keep in mind that here, they've only rejected the conclusion that the FCC's decision — to start policing fleeting expletives when it hadn't before — was made without enough notice and enough explanation. They haven't yet decided whether it's ultimately unconstitutional to fine broadcasters for fleeting expletives.

The highlight of Justice Scalia's opinion from a lively-writing standpoint comes when he rejects the dissenters' argument that small-town broadcasters could be severely harmed by large fines for isolated incidents where someone swears:

We doubt, to begin with, that small-town broadcasters run a heightened risk of liability for indecent utterances. In programming that they originate, their down-home local guests probably employ vulgarity less than big-city folks; and small-town stations generally cannot afford or cannot attract foul-mouthed glitteratae from Hollywood.

Bet you didn't even know "glitteratae" was a word. Now you do.

So now, there will be more questions about the FCC's authority — and, of course, there's a new administration, which will change the game anyway, since commissioners are appointed by the President. But until this is ironed out, you may see more live awards shows with tape delays — or, perhaps, see them moved to cable.

You may even see changes on other live shows, depending on how skittish broadcasters feel about Jane Fonda letting a shocker slip on The Today Show a while back.

Bonnie Bedelia: She can help you decipher the trickiest movie plots. Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

This entry will spoil the ending of Presumed Innocent, a so-so Harrison Ford movie from 1990, as well as the conclusion of last night's episode of ABC's Castle. (I realize that seems impossible. I assure you, it is not.)

Most Excellent UPDATE (thanks to Kim from NPR): Okay. So I watched that episode and distinctly heard them say both "WD-40" and "motor oil," and I was totally confused, because I didn't think WD-40 was motor oil, but that's what they said, so I went with it. Except they didn't, of course, say that; they said "10W-40." And that IS motor oil. Thank you for your indulgence, those of you who tolerated my bafflement. I apologize profusely. As Kim pointed out, it would have been quite the devoted murderer spraying a little bottle of WD-40 into a bathtub until it was full. Oh, television.

Last night, while enjoying an episode of ABC's banter-heavy crime procedural Castle in the company of my parents, I found myself explaining something called the Bonnie Bedelia Rule.

In this episode, a woman was drowned in a bathtub full of motor oil (I don't think anyone who makes 10W-40 paid for that particular product placement), and one of the witnesses who was interviewed early was played by Susan Ruttan, who once played Roxanne on L.A. Law. Ruttan had about three lines, and then the story moved on.

"Now," I said, "she is going to turn out to be the killer, according to the Bonnie Bedelia Rule."

The rule, after the jump...

Continue reading "Fundamental Plot Truths: Spoilers And The Bonnie Bedelia Rule" >

by Linda Holmes

Everything about this clip of the students of PS 22 singing "Eye Of The Tiger" is utterly delightful, starting with the fact that they think this song is really good, and in the context of this clip, it is really good. I also love to death the teacher's expression at the very end. Much of why people teach is right in that grin.

Not a Survivor fan? How about this, then?

Now, excuse me while I disappear down the rabbit hole of watching PS 22 videos. (Check out their Coldplay! Thrill to their Crowded House!)

Hat-tip to Vulture.

by Linda Holmes

In early April, the UK charity Women's Aid, which battles domestic violence, released this public service announcement, directed by Atonement director Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley. Without showing graphic violence you couldn't see on any crime procedural any night of the week, Wright creates a genuinely disturbing two-minute film that unsettles precisely because it's shot so straightforwardly.

The violence late in the piece isn't carefully choreographed with shifting angles and amped-up music; it's a woman being kicked, and it's far more disturbing for its simplicity.

But now, Clearcast, the body that's responsible for approving ads for British television, has reportedly decided that the PSA is not suitable for television unless they cut the end. You know, the part with the domestic violence in it.

I can't speak to the amount of violence that's been allowed in commercials in the UK in the past, but what makes this ad so disturbing is precisely the fact that it takes violence seriously and presents it as terrifying rather than balletic or devoid of consequences.

I was curious to see whether Clearcast has guidelines that explain why it might be making this decision.

The guidelines, after the jump...

Continue reading "Knightley's Domestic Violence PSA Censored — For Violence" >

The power of Beyoncé: Obsessed made a lot of money this weekend, so if you're following the fortunes of badly-reviewed movies, add it to your list. Sony Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

Remember our chart from last week, showing Rotten Tomatoes scores against box office for the first four months of the year? Technically speaking, there was one weekend left to go at that point, and now that we're through it, we can see that there's going to be one more dot (of the Paul Blart: Mall Cop variety) showing a very low critics' score paired with very strong box office.

The Beyoncé Knowles thriller Obsessed, also starring Idris Elba and Ali Larter, took in about $28.5 million this weekend. Its RT score? A not-so-blistering 30 out of 100.

In second place was the fighting movie Fighting at $11.4 million, and The Soloist, with Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. (RT score: 61) made less than $10 million.

This one weekend doesn't mean the hypothesis is accurate that all the well-reviewed movies are tanking and all the badly-reviewed movies are thriving, but it doesn't hurt.

by Linda Holmes

The death of Bea Arthur on Saturday broke my sitcom-watcher's heart, and also got me thinking about this fact: The Golden Girls ran from 1985 to 1992; Designing Women ran from 1986 to 1993; Murphy Brown ran from 1988 to 1998. That means that from 1988 to 1992, all three of these shows were on at the same time.

Ninety minutes of prime time given over to comedy driven by a total of nine mouthy women (that's a compliment), six of whom were over 40. (All the Girls, Candice Bergen, and Dixie Carter.)

How things have changed, after the jump...

Continue reading "Missing Bea Arthur" >

by Linda Holmes

[This post contains spoilers for last night's episode of Survivor, as well as for past seasons. Do not assume that means a titular moment did or did not take place last night; I could be either noting such a moment or pining for one and lamenting its absence.]

Some people like byzantine plotting, some people like challenges and some people like watching bartenders eat rice. (There's no accounting for taste.)

For me, the No. 1 reason to watch Survivor is comeuppance for bullies, whether in the form of traditional big bully types or teeny, mean women. If you've ever wondered how people can possibly be devoted to this show, which is now in its 18th season, I'm telling you: This is why.

Nowhere on television have so many utter jerks been vanquished, even as -- admittedly -- other jerks escape punishment. It is, at its best, a visceral moment of figurative sucker-punching in a way that bothers the bully but does not harm him or her, so you can enjoy it fully without guilt. As a viewer, you don't actually want any harm to come to anyone, but you don't mind seeing good triumph over evil, just for this brief moment.

Let's get to it.

1. Edgardo, Survivor: Fiji

For my money, this is the best bully-punch of all time. The best. Unfortunately, the clip above does not include the moment, captured on film, when Edgardo -- who was part of an alliance of morons that actually called itself "The Four Horsemen" because it has "four" and "men" in it, not realizing that this meant they should technically be arguing over who was Pestilence -- realized he was going down. His face deflated like a popped balloon and then melted spectacularly in horror.

It only made his exit sweeter that it was preceded by a preposterously convoluted series of movements and counter-movements, roughly comparable to a baseball game in which the third-base coach is also the umpire and is also pitching for the other team while wearing a fake mustache.

More merriment, after the jump...

Continue reading "What Reality Does Best: Great Moments In 'Survivor' Comeuppance" >

by Linda Holmes

If you've seen the trailer for the new movie Obsessed, you know that it seems to show Idris Elba wandering into quite a thicket, because he fails to identify early enough that he has an obsessed coworker. We have concluded that all he needed was this sign.

 

In fact, many movie characters would fare better if they only had access to better caution signs, because movie characters tend to face hazards that are different from the ones the rest of us face. Consider how many fictional lives could be saved by this one:

 

Oh, we've got more.

How to save everyone from the nuclear bunny, after the jump...

Continue reading "Caution Signs Endangered Movie Characters Really Need" >

by Linda Holmes

I'm not going to lie to you: I haven't seen Fighting, which opens tomorrow. But based on the trailer, it's this story about a guy, and he's part of "New York's underground," and what he really likes is fighting.

Frankly, that's a relief. I mean, if I go to a movie called Fighting, I want to see some fighting. Without spoiling anything for you, not much happened in The Happening. And nothing at all changeled in Changeling.

Did you know there wasn't a single shot fired in Bride Wars? Total rip-off. And Iron Man isn't about a guy who makes irons, either, the way it seemed like it was going to be. It's just about a guy who wears an iron suit. He's not an iron man at all! The president of Sunbeam; that's an iron man.

Twilight is equally misleading; that movie is about vampires. Now, if somebody actually makes a movie about the approach of dusk, the perfect title will already be taken. Why didn't they call it Biting? Hey, Biting is a great name for a movie. It's like Fighting, but with teeth.

I, for one, endorse this move toward greater candor. This has been bugging me ever since The Shining.

by Linda Holmes

Jimmy Fallon has been the host of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon for eight weeks now, and since his uneven debut, he's developed his own interviewing style and learned to make the most of the rest of the hour, to the point where the show makes a pretty good companion if you happen to be up at 12:30 in the morning.

In the clip above, Fallon goes out in Times Square and gets people to do their celebrity impressions. Unlike Jay Leno's obnoxious "Jaywalking" segments, where the objective is to get people to be idiots in order to make the audience feel smug, the objective here is actually to find ordinary people walking around Times Square who do amusing impressions. Not all of them are good, but the idea isn't to humiliate. In a lot of ways, this is what Fallon's show has going for it in terms of tone: It's a surprisingly warm, inclusive, everybody-wins kind of comedy.

The best asset it's turned out Fallon has -- other than his band The Roots, on whom he wisely continues to lean heavily -- is that he's relentlessly game. Bad late-night interviews chug along predictably, with the guest telling two or three stories that have obviously been set up in advance, and you get the feeling that you're witnessing a conversation that's fully rehearsed ahead of time.

Fallon and one of his celebrity guests disappear down the rabbit hole, after the jump...

Continue reading "Eight Weeks In, Jimmy Fallon's Show Is... Actually Kind Of Great" >

Adam Lambert: He's currently the hot topic over at All Songs Considered. Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

I wanted to make sure none of you missed the fantastic discussion currently going on in the All Songs Considered blog -- right here! -- regarding American Idol. Normally, I would let the Adam Lambert issue rest after last week, but when I heard a listen to Adam's "If I Can't Have You" hilariously described as "the worst minute and 45 seconds of [Bob Boilen's] life," I knew you had to see it for yourself.

What makes this marvelous is not that Bob hated the performance -- or even that Bob thought Paula Abdul was Adam's mother (as the comments reveal) (okay, it's partly that). What makes it marvelous is simply that people who watch that show regularly can easily start thinking of the contestants in a way that separates them from the context in which they will one day have to compete.

When you hear people referred to enough times as enormously important artists of the future, it's easy to forget that to people who don't watch the show, who are evaluating them as musicians and not Idol contestants, they're often far less than television makes them out to be. (This is, of course, not limited to this guy; that would be true of any of them.) It's all about context, as you will see.

Box-office numbers: Are we really walking away from good movies? We take a look at the evidence. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

The high-profile sputtering of some well-regarded recent movies, including State of Play, Duplicity and Adventureland, has led to some hand-wringing over whether we've all turned our backs on good movies in favor of escapist movies. From that Hollywood Reporter link comes this lament: "Telling stat: The average Rotten Tomatoes score for the top ten earners so far this year is a dismal 42%."

What they didn't mention? According to my calculations, based on information from Box Office Mojo, the average Rotten Tomatoes score for the top ten earners of last year that were released between January and April -- not the time of year when studios traditionally release either their great summer blockbusters or their award bait -- was... 41.5.

So I thought I'd take a look at the top twenty first-quarter earners of 2009 and the top twenty first-quarter earners of 2008 and see where we stand. Let's go to... THE CHARTS!

Deciphering the dots, after the jump...

Continue reading "This Year's Movies And Last Year's Movies: Is Escapism King?" >

by Linda Holmes

NBC is a bit of a punching bag these days, what with the decision to hand five hours of prime-time real estate to Jay Leno and the spectacular failure of most of the shows the network has tried to introduce in the last few seasons.

Just about the only thing the network has done in quite some time that anyone has cheered has been keeping Friday Night Lights alive through a partnership with DirecTV. And now, it finds itself on the receiving end of another insistent campaign to save a very, very good show -- albeit one that's entirely different from Friday Night Lights.

Where FNL is a prestige drama, Chuck -- about an employee of a Best Buy-like electronics store who finds himself carrying classified government secrets in his brain -- is a mischievously funny, sharply written, genre-mashup comedy/drama/spy thriller that has struggled in the ratings ever since it premiered in the fall of 2007.

(Chuck will air its season finale next Monday at 8 p.m. -- yes, that's the death slot opposite ABC's Dancing With the Stars, Fox's House and CBS's How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory.)

It managed a renewal last year at this time, but with five hours being thrown into the gaping maw of Jay Leno (which is nothing against Jay Leno; it's just... a big gaping maw), it's going to be harder for other shows to make it, and the gathered wisdom of industry watchers seems to be that the odds of Chuck surviving are no better than about 50-50.

Enter the cavalry.

The campaign to save Chuck, after the jump...

Continue reading "Jumping On The 'Chuck' Wagon: NBC Versus The Jay Leno Problem" >

Rod Blagojevich: "Second prize is TWO chances to be on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!" Scott Olson/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

The bad news for Rod Blagojevich, in theory, is that he's not being allowed to go to Costa Rica to compete in this summer's reality show, I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!

In a rather remarkable scenario to contemplate, the judge apparently feared that Blagojevich might go to Costa Rica for filming -- the show involves being dropped into the jungle -- and then never return. (Here, experienced reality-show viewers will envision the sequence where other members of the cast express their sadness at his sudden disappearance into the darkness while Green Day's "Good Riddance" plays over a montage of his greatest moments.)

The good news, however, is that the other people who are apparently competing include American Idol also-also-ran Sanjaya Malakar, Geraldo Rivera, and the odious Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt of MTV's The Hills. So, for the duration of the show, Blagojevich has absolutely no chance of running into any of those people.

So he's got that to look forward to.

by Linda Holmes

While I recognize the danger of pronouncing two things a trend, I couldn't help noticing that the "Mommy Files" blog at SFGate.com last week featured the second public fretting I have seen this month (the first was in Slate, here) over whether it's okay to let your kids watch Star Wars.

The "Mommy Files" entry now has 148 comments attached to it. For every point of view, there is a representative: You're crazy if you let your 4-year-old watch Star Wars. You're crazy if you don't let your 4-year-old watch Star Wars. Letting your kid watch Star Wars will warp his brain. Not letting your kid watch Star Wars will make him sheltered. Kids who watch Star Wars are ruining society. Kids whose parents coddle them are ruining society.

The same thing, essentially, happened when Emily Bazelon wrote about Star Wars in Slate. It seems to be an awfully emotional issue for people, this business of little children and Star Wars.

A few relevant dates, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Parental 'Star Wars' Panic" >

17 Again: Maybe it's just us, but that actually doesn't sound that whimsical. Warner Brothers Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

17 Again is the biggest movie in the country right now, thanks to an audience that was -- at least on opening weekend -- reportedly almost half people under 18. In other words, this movie about being 17 years old again is disproportionately appealing to people who are 17 years old right now, or haven't been 17 years old yet.

And it's no wonder, because for many of us, 17 Again is not a title that screams "whimsical fantasy." It is a title that screams...well, a title that screams screaming. Something like: "Seventeen? You mean seventeen years old? Again?"

Because here are ten movies in which I would rather find myself stranded than 17 Again.

1. Once More To The Oral Surgeon

2. It's A Year-Round Mall Of America Christmas

3. Fly-Fishing With Angry Talk-Radio Callers

4. Six Hours On The Tarmac

5. The Cubicle-Mate Of A Thousand Ironic Ringtones

6. The Longest Puppet Show

7. Car Alarm!

8. I Wore New Shoes To A Six-Hour Wedding

9. Phantom Of The Ice Capades

10. Faceful Of Pollen

Feel free to add your own in the comments, because I'm pretty sure there are many more.

by Linda Holmes

As we have discussed before, Justin Vernon is the man behind Bon Iver, the Official Bearded Moody Wisconsin-Based Band of NPR Music. But that doesn't mean he doesn't enjoy a good jam with his high school jazz band.

That's right -- on Sunday night, Vernon headed back to Memorial High School in Eau Claire, Wis., to his one-time home: Jazz Ensemble I. In this all-too-short clip, he and the band perform "Since I Fell for You."

(Hat-tip to Stereogum.)

Being Miss USA: Our newly crowned Miss USA is very excited. Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

You may not even have realized we had a new Miss USA as of Sunday night, but we do. Her name is Kristen Dalton, she hails from North Carolina, and she is very, very excited about being Miss USA.

This may be the happiest expression history has ever seen, as a matter of fact. This is not just happy; this is neck-muscle-strainingly happy. Either that, or the crown kind of pinches.

by Linda Holmes

Remember when Julia Roberts was about to show up in Duplicity? Remember how we discussed the discussion of whether she was "Hollywood ancient," and how she may have lost her ability to open a movie as a result of her extraordinarily advanced age of 41?

Duplicity went on to earn roughly $14 million in its opening weekend. Explanations abounded, as did discussions of whether Roberts should conclude that she is thoroughly washed up, or whether there was any hope that she might recover.

This weekend, the Russell Crowe vehicle State of Play earned roughly $14 million in its opening weekend (even with help from the whew-he's-under-40 Ben Affleck), and was well and thoroughly spanked by 17 Again, a body-swapping comedy starring Zac Efron. This despite, according to Variety, "a hefty payout for Crowe."

This can mean only one thing: At 45, Russell Crowe is too old to make movies. Particularly after the so-so performance of Body of Lies, doesn't this prove that Russell Crowe is "Hollywood ancient"?

The conversations we are surely about to see, after the jump...

Continue reading "Is Russell Crowe So Ancient He Can't Make Movies Anymore?" >

YouTube: They're making a move on video portals much, much smaller than they are. Does it matter? iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

Late last week brought big news for YouTube, currently the online home of the baby panda sneeze and, of course, Susan Boyle, who's at well over 50 million views now, if you combine all the versions of the video.

YouTube (owned by Google) launched new offerings in TV and movies, which it's getting through partnerships with Sony, CBS and others. With this move, YouTube is trying to put the brakes on the growth of sites like Hulu, which have found a lot of success with online offerings of licensed content -- particularly television shows, though they have some movie offerings as well.

So, aside from the fact that the news provides an opportunity to link to the panda-sneezing video: Is this significant?

The meaning of Alf and the final verdict, after the jump...

Continue reading "Is This Significant?: YouTube Unveils Its TV/Film Channel" >

Snake news, from us to you: We have a few concerns about a news story you need to hear before you travel again. iStockphoto.com

 

by Marc Hirsh

Of all the ways that life could imitate art, this is not what any of us had in mind.

Samuel L. Jackson could not be reached for comment, but we're pretty sure we know what he'd have to say. (Clip contains profanity, if you couldn't guess.)

While we are concerned about this development, at least the trees are still on our side. FOR NOW.

Kyle MacLachlan: Seen here in January without his golf umbrella, it turns out he's Just Like Us! Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

It's been a while since I either had my hair cut or flew on a plane, which I can tell from how long it's been since I read airport magazines.

You know airport magazines, right? You'd never read them except at the airport or in a waiting room (but "waiting-room-airport magazines" takes longer to type). But on a recent flight, I picked up three airport magazines: Us, Life & Style, and In Touch. My mission? To find out what precious information might be slipping away from me between haircuts. Here's what I found out.

Celebrities are just like us. I give you my word of honor, the "Celebrities Are Just Like Us" feature in Us says, "They Use Golf Umbrellas!" And there is a picture of Kyle MacLachlan walking down the street. Using a golf umbrella. This is what happens when someone returns to the office saying, "I didn't really get anything today; just a picture of Kyle MacLachlan with a golf umbrella." And someone else says, "Cut! Print!"

I should point out that the analogous feature in In Touch shows Nick Lachey buying compact fluorescent bulbs. ("Celebrities are just like us! They really hope they're going to save money in the long run!")

Dress-shopping, Chia Pets, and remarkable news about Robert Downey, Jr., after the jump...

Continue reading "We Read Wretched Airport Magazines So You Don't Have To" >

by Linda Holmes

While you were (probably) asleep, Ashton Kutcher and CNN were finishing up their contest to see who could be first to get one million followers on Twitter — thus becoming the first ever to reach that point. Each party had agreed to donate 10,000 mosquito nets to battle malaria if they won, and 1,000 nets if they lost.

Oh, and Kutcher vowed to "ding-dong ditch" Ted Turner's house if he won — meaning ring the doorbell and run away. (Even though Ted Turner doesn't own CNN anymore, it's still pretty funny, mostly because the Punk'd co-creator would absolutely do it.)

In the above video, you can watch as Kutcher — who tweets as "@aplusk" — goes over the top before CNN.

Combine this with the fact that Oprah now has 62,000 people following her account despite not having written anything, and we are well through the looking glass here. Kutcher will reportedly appear on Oprah today, along with the founder of Twitter, to (we hope) discuss the fact that this is all really, really weird.

by Linda Holmes

Now that the Susan Boyle-lash is well underway, it's a good time to look back on how we got here and what's likely to come next.

 

In the first stage of a phenomenon based on warmth, public affection begins to grow as people discover something like, say, a surprisingly nice performance of "I Dreamed A Dream."

 

In the second stage, some major party — here, it was Ashton Kutcher on Twitter most of all — publicizes the nascent discovery and creates an enormous and sudden growth of interest.

And that sets up the next phase, where things go differently.

Three more phases and how this all relates to cat calendars, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Backlash Tracker: Build 'Em Up, Knock 'Em Down, NEXT!" >

by Linda Holmes

The best thing about this brief preview of Quentin Tarantino's upcoming film Inglourious Basterds is that it promises the return of Weird Brad Pitt, whose appearance I always welcome after exposure to Very Important Brad Pitt.

Why W. Brad Pitt beats V.I. Brad Pitt, after the jump...

Continue reading "Can Quentin Tarantino Bring Weird Brad Pitt Home Again?" >

by Linda Holmes

Last night at Carnegie Hall, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra debuted under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, who called the project "somewhere between a classical music summit conference, Scout Jamboree, with an element of speed dating."

For more about the development of the project, you can check out this March piece from All Things Considered.

Note that the group got a decent review from the New York Times, which admitted that it was "gimmicky" (file that under "stating the obvious") but also acknowledged that the group played "quite well," particularly given the short rehearsal time. In fact, Anthony Tommasini seemed mostly frustrated at not hearing a more straightforward concert from these talented folks who were rounded up via online auditions.

Creepy bald guy: The Observer, played by Michael Cerveris, is showing up all over Fox. What gives? Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

You may have wondered, while watching American Idol, baseball, or NASCAR — all on Fox — who the odd bald guy is. In this clip, he's hanging out by the racetrack on April 5:

At other times, he's been seen in the Idol audience.

Creepy bald guy is The Observer, a mysterious character on Fox's Fringe and the center of this little scheme.

His appearances aren't subtle; they're using long close-ups, not sneaking him into crowds. You couldn't really miss him on American Idol, unless you suspected that the fan base for the show was really not what you thought:

It probably works to Fox's advantage that the actor they're using here, Michael Cerveris, is a Broadway veteran whose roles have included John Wilkes Booth in the musical Assassins, so ... no stranger to the creepy hovering over major American historical figures. (Like, you know, Ryan
Seacrest.)

My favorite tidbit from this Variety article about the effort?

The fact that Fox employees have reportedly come up with a nickname for the campaign: "Where's Baldo?"

by Linda Holmes

In a roundabout way (by which I mean via Peter Sagal's Twitter feed), I discovered this entirely user-created and absolutely unofficial time-killer in which you discover "Your NPR name." (Hat-tip to Liana and Eric, who seem to have invented the game.)

The rules: Take the first letter of your middle name and insert it anywhere you'd like in your first name. And then your last name is the smallest foreign town you've ever visited. Presto: You too can compete with Korva Coleman, Lakshmi Singh and Mandalit del Barco.

My NPR name? Alinda Castelldefels, which you must admit is awesome. I am absolutely using that next time they let me on the radio.

Hit it, in the comments.

So no, we don't necessarily expect modesty from Marvin Hamlisch. He is, as his Wikipedia entry notes, one of "the only two individuals to have been awarded an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, a Tony, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama."

(Don't you just love Wikipedia entries, and the opportunities they offer for ego-driven factoids?)

Still, the anecdote in the clip above — taken from the documentary Every Little Step, opening Friday — is a real eye-roller.

'Cause what I hear him saying is, "Isn't it droll, the way I left Hollywood glamour behind and took a chance on this odd Broadway project about the little people, which went on to win me a Pulitzer and make me exceedingly rich?"

Check it out, and tell me if I'm wrong here — but for a composer, Maestro Hamlisch strikes me as amusingly tone-deaf.

— Trey Graham

Secret Identity: Turns out the co-creator of Superman was up to some things you might not know about. Abrams ComicArts

 

by Glen Weldon

We've previously noted that the creators of some of America's most noble comic book characters got up to some decidedly ignoble stuff themselves. And yet the artist Joe Shuster, co-creator of Superman, is a special case.

I don't refer here to his 1940 arrest in a Miami hotel lobby for "loitering hatless," although God knows that any man who'd indulge in acts of flagrant public hatlessness merits close watching. There's the children to think of.

No, what makes Shuster's case special — and the subject of a new book by comics historian Craig Yoe — is the newly-discovered fact that 16 years after Superman's first appearance, when faced with dire financial straits, Joe Shuster turned his artistic talents has to, well, smut. Dirty, depraved, utterly hatless smut.

After the jump: "Tales of terror and thrilling spiciness that will leave the reader spellbound!"

Continue reading "Faster Than a Speeding Bullwhip: Superman Creator's Kinktastic Art" >

Adam Lambert: Loud, yes. Cagey and coy about the personal questions? Maybe not. Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

This ABC News piece about current American Idol front-runner Adam Lambert has perhaps the most unintentionally hilarious opener I've seen in the recent entertainment press, all under the headline, "Adam Lambert: America's First Gay 'Idol'?" and the subhead, "'American Idol's' Adam Lambert Leads Competition, Keeps Coy About Sexuality."

There's the eyeliner. There's the YouTube video in which he declares kissing girls is "not necessarily" his preference. There are the Web photos of him making out with guys.

Wait, he...wears eyeliner? Why, that is a powerful clue!

Why "coy" is not the right descriptor for this particular young man, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Idol' Favorite Adam Lambert Called 'Coy,' Universe Guffaws" >

The Michael Jackson auction: So this is where all the cool stuff went. Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

You may have seen the earlier story about Michael Jackson's stuff going up for auction beginning on April 22. But in addition to all of his own costumes and paintings and so forth, he's also holding on to an amazing collection of pop-culture tchotchkes.

This, for instance, is why you can't find a decent giant statue of Superman or a Terminator 2: Judgment Day arcade game. So that's one mystery solved.

Hannah Montana: The Movie: Be yourself! Well, maybe. Or possibly not. Who's to know, when you're Miley Cyrus either way? Walt Disney Pictures

 

by Mark Blankenship

Hello, my name is Mark, and I saw Hannah Montana: The Movie on its opening day. What choice did I have? I crave pop cultural literacy, so I'm practically required to experience this Miley Cyrus-fronted phenomenon that's dominating box office receipts, music charts, and the hearts of children worldwide.

But as a childless adult, Planet Hannah unsettles me. There among the super-cute outfits and fun choreography, I keep noticing shoddy filmmaking and a sinister sociological message, and it's making me paranoid. Am I the only one who sees the wicked signs?

Wicked signs and many spoilers regarding the undoubtedly shocking plot, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Sinister Hidden Messages Of 'Hannah Montana: The Movie'" >

Adventureland: It's a lovely movie, but it follows a most unfortunate trend. Miramax

 

by Linda Holmes

Look, there's no polite way to say this, but it's important.

It used to be that in a movie, if you were sick to your stomach to the point where you needed to empty its contents, you would do so discreetly, which is to say off-screen.

The retching sound was adequate to convey what had occurred. There was no need to actually watch the event in progress. "Cough cough," or sometimes, "Cough cough, flush," and everybody understood.

Oh, how things have changed.

Current examples, blaming Leslie Mann, and a plaintive plea for mercy, after the jump...

Continue reading "Come Back, O Taboo Against The Viewing Of Stomach Contents" >

by Linda Holmes

Now that the Discovery Channel has embedded Shark Week into popular culture so thoroughly that 30 Rock can make a punch line out of "Live every week like it's Shark Week," they're looking to do the same thing for Alaska Week, which is now in full swing.

Tonight's banner event is the 9:00 p.m. fifth-season premiere of Discovery's very popular Deadliest Catch, a documentary series about the dangerous life aboard fishing boats during Alaska's crab season.

But at 10:00 tonight, Discovery is also premiering a rejiggered version of The Alaska Experiment. The show first appeared last year, in a format that sent several teams to different locations to try and survive in the Alaskan wilderness.

This year, retitled Out Of The Wild: The Alaska Experiment, it hews more closely to reality-show conventions: A group of nine people are dropped in the wilderness, with minimal supplies, and tasked with hiking out as a group.

If you're drawn to the parts of Survivor that feature people trying to figure out how to catch fish and build shelter, but you don't like the parts where insurance guys and bartenders fight over who has more "integrity," you might really enjoy this show, where nobody gets voted out and you only leave if you quit.

It's kind of fascinating, in fact, to watch the way people start out thinking they will neatly execute the steps they learned in survival training and will build, say, a clever little rustic contraption to neatly ensnare a tasty dinner they will garnish with herbs of the forest. Because before long, it's more like, "Uh, we're going to try throwing rocks."

In short: Out of the Wild offers some rooting interest, some good old-fashioned schadenfreude, and plenty of opportunities to learn that when experienced people tell you something about how to keep your feet warm, you should believe them.

Harry Kalas: Here, he's soaked with beer after the Phillies' 2007 Eastern Division Championship. They gave him plenty of seasons to be sad about, too. Tom Mihalek/Associated Press

 

by Linda Holmes

I listened to Harry Kalas a lot.

Growing up outside Philadelphia, I was a Phillies fan, and my father taught my sister and me to play softball in part by instructing us to hit the ball like Greg Luzinski.* I didn't think anyone played third base anywhere except for Mike Schmidt, and my first lesson in How Relief Pitchers Behave involved Tug McGraw smacking his glove against his thigh. Which usually meant "I am done with this inning," and also, "...uh, fortunately."

And it wasn't until I was older that I realized that everybody didn't call home runs by saying, "OUTta here, HOME run!" Because that was how Harry Kalas did it.

I wouldn't begin to guess how many Phillies games I watched that were called by Kalas, Richie Ashburn, and Andy Musser, but it was enough that it was actually difficult to get used to other announcers when I started watching other teams. They all sounded stupid to me. They didn't sound like baseball; they didn't sound like home.

This how sportscasters are; you get used to their tics and quirks. And if they're good enough and you know them long enough, you don't even think of them as being studied like the "back back back back back" guy, or the "GOOOOOOAL!" guy; you just think of them as calling games the way they actually happen.

Who wouldn't say "outta here"?

Even in recent years, upon wandering back to Philadelphia, I would catch games on TV and think, "Wow, Harry Kalas is still at it." And if the published reports are correct, he still was, until he collapsed in the booth. And I'm a little sadder, and there's a little less of the baseball of my childhood around. And that's too bad, because it means I'll never hear a game called quite right again.

*And, I should mention, by enthusiastically yelling, "Hit the ball, Drag Harry!" Which I always assumed was my father's use of the rather baffling nickname "Drag Harry," about which I never inquired. I did not learn until many years later, long after my softball years, that this chant was derived from a version of this joke. (This is unrelated to Harry Kalas, of course; it is simply...a very strange story about folklore.)

The Twitter hashtag: See this bullhorn? The hashtag is a little like this. Just ask Amazon. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

It looks like Twitter will only show you the last 100 pages of tweets covered by a search. Right now, that means you can only see the last three hours of tweets submitted under the hashtag "#amazonfail."

A hashtag is basically a little identifier you attach to a post on Twitter to allow people to search for it. It enables wider conversations, because you can follow the discussion about a particular topic by searching for all the tweets -- everyone's, not just the people you know -- for that tag.

In this case, "#amazonfail" was developed to track tweets about the fact that Amazon.com has apparently removed the sales rankings of many books with gay and lesbian themes on the theory that they are "adult." (This is the explanation Amazon gave to author Mark Probst early on.)

Removal of sales rankings has several effects -- it stops your book from appearing in best-seller lists, but more to the point, it interferes with searching, causing the book in some cases not to show up even when you specifically search for it.

Though it was, in early stories, referred to as an issue about "erotica," this does not only apply to fiction. As of this writing, they've also de-ranked this edition of The Mayor Of Castro Street: The Life And Times Of Harvey Milk (though some other editions are available).

Note that the edition of The Mayor Of Castro Street that's de-ranked seemingly includes "Gay & Lesbian Biographies" as one of its assigned categories, while the one that kept its rank only lists "Literature and Fiction: General."

Another edition oddity, and where we're going from here, after the jump...

Continue reading "Amazon Learns A Painful Lesson About The Twitter Hashtag" >

Sing it, sister:Susan Boyle is the latest surprise from Britain's Got Talent

 

[Note: I had embedded the YouTube video for you here, but the embed has been disabled, so you'll have to pop over to YouTube to see it. It's well worth it. See it here. Thanks! -- Linda]

Last night on Britain's Got Talent, a lady named Susan Boyle showed up to sing, and what followed was not exactly what you might expect from her introduction. This is the sort of thing where you instantly fear that later, you will learn that she is not all that she appears to be, that this was a set-up, that...well, watch it first and you'll know.

Every now and then, though, one of these shows feints left and goes right, totally undercutting its own tropes and clichés, and it's always a treat when it does. For now, this clip is fantastic. I've watched it several times.

Spring and summer shows: NBC is hoping you will take the time this summer to enjoy Merlin. Anyone? NBC

 

by Linda Holmes

Fall isn't the only new season these days; since Dollhouse premiered in mid-February, there's been a trickle of new shows coming down the pike, and substantially more are planned over the next few months as we swing into summer.

I'll be on Weekend Edition chatting about this very thing on Sunday; here's a quick rundown of your choices, in descending order of likelihood of success. (For the purposes of this informal survey, we define success as "being worth watching at least a couple of times and remaining on television long enough to make that a plausible proposition.")

Sit Down, Shut Up (Fox, April 19)
Just waiting to break the hearts of everyone who misses Arrested Development is this half-hour animated comedy from AD creator Mitch Hurwitz, starring the voice talents of...Jason Bateman! Will Arnett! Henry Winkler! Cheri Oteri! Will Forte! Tom Kenny (that's Spongebob Squarepants to you)! This promotional video pitting Bateman against Arnett in some kind of unspecified battle of wills has nothing to do with the show itself, but it certainly will make you eager to see them work together again. Likelihood of success: 75%

Nurse Jackie (Showtime, June 8)
Edie Falco, last (of course) seen as Carmela Soprano, comes to Showtime in a half-hour comedy-drama about an emergency-room nurse. Reportedly, she likes Vicodin, just like Fox's Dr. House! Falco is just about always worth watching, so it's hard to imagine this being a total failure, even if the tragically flawed medical professional is not exactly a unique idea. Likelihood of success: 70 percent

The list goes on, and things grow dire, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Spring/Summer Season, And What Your TV Will Be Serving" >

Heroes: It may be 59th in viewers' hearts, but it's much higher than that in the eye of the advertiser. NBC

 

by Linda Holmes

There's a fascinating article in Forbes about what shows make the most money -- which isn't necessarily the same question as which shows get the most viewers.

"It's not necessarily just eyeballs that advertisers are buying here," explains Ed Gentner, senior vice president of video investment activation at MediaVest of advertiser interest. "It's the right eyeballs."

You will not be surprised by some of the most valuable eyeballs if you have ever seen the "Nuts And Gum" sequence on The Simpsons, wherein Homer says, "I'm a white male, age 18 to 49. Everyone listens to me -- no matter how dumb my suggestions are!"

Having the right eyeballs, after the jump...

Continue reading "Do You Have The Right Eyeballs, Or Just The Regular Kind?" >

A pig that flies: At the Sydney Royal Easter Show in Sydney, Australia, this pig got some air. Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

The problem with evaluating unlikely events with a qualifier such as "when pigs fly" is that you never know what the future might bring, so the advent of this flying pig will undoubtedly force the hands of many who have bluffed until now. The lion will lie down with the lamb, we will discover the cure for the common cold, and you will watch Surviving Suburbia. Thanks a lot, pig.

Fast & Furious: They didn't spend too much time coming up with that title, did they? Perhaps it will become a trend. Universal Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

Now that The People have spoken with their enormous wads of cash, it's clear that making a sequel to The Fast And The Furious — and calling it something really inventive, like, um, Fast & Furious — is no barrier to success.

Before this, of course, there had already been two follow-ups to The Fast And The Furious: 2 Fast 2 Furious and The Fast And the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Neither of those is a particularly snappy title, but for sheer lack of effort, they cannot match the approach of, "What if we take out the small words and leave just the important words? That's a different title, right?"

And that got us thinking that in some cases, removing the little words might not only be workable; it might support the development of entirely new sequel concepts.

The Original: The Sting
The Sequel: Sting

In this follow-up to the Newman-Redford Best Picture winner, the popular ex-frontman of The Police conceives a scheme in which it turns out that his new "Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting" beard hides a map to the location of a stash of diamonds.

Classics and a special theatrical bonus, after the jump...

Continue reading "Potential Movie-Sequel Titles As Lazy As 'Fast & Furious' Was" >

by Linda Holmes

I liked last night's premiere of Parks And Recreation, the new comedy from Greg Daniels, the creator of the U.S. The Office, and Michael Schur, an Office writer who also plays Dwight's Cousin Mose. (Schur also was moonlighting under the moniker "Ken Tremendous" for years at a fantastic sports blog called Fire Joe Morgan, which has, very sadly, ceased publication. An extremely interesting guy.)

While it didn't make me laugh hysterically, the Amy Poehler comic timing still works, Aziz Ansari has perfectly captured the character of her associate and chief tormentor, and everything about the idea of transplanting the sensibility of The Office from corporate drudgery to public-sector drudgery makes perfect sense.

The community forum attended by citizens small in number but great in passion that is sometimes completely random ("I have a few things I want to say about Laura Linney!"), the guy who works in government while not believing in government...it all rings quite true, I think, the same way the diversity seminars and lame office parties ring true in Scranton.

The Parks And Recreation pilot isn't packed with back-to-back hilarious jokes, but the ideas are funny, the writing is sharp, and I absolutely already care whether Leslie gets to build her park. And boy, do I love that opening bit attempting to quantify the precise amount of fun the girl is having.

I'm curious to hear what you thought. Are you sold? Unsold? Partially sold? Finding it better than falling backwards into a pit?

Culturetopia: This is how it looks in the land of the new podcast. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

Podcast listeners, unite! NPR has launched a new podcast called Culturetopia, which will be a roundup of the best NPR arts stories of the previous week. Books! Movies! The beauty of the dance! Furthermore, in an effort to practice my inside voice, I'm co-hosting with NPR's own Neda Ulaby.

In the first installment, we've got movies, we've got bizarre death coincidences, and we've got Turkey -- the country, not the food. (Mmm, turkey.)

We may even chat up some blog content in the future, so add it to your iPod or the free-thinking MP3 player of your choice, and enter Culturetopia, where the grass is green, the sun is always shining, and they play really good music in all the restaurants.

The Simpsons: You don't have to be dead if you're a cartoon, it would appear. Associated Press

 

by Linda Holmes

So there you have them: the five first-class stamps featuring the characters from The Simpsons, which will be available May 7.

As The Washington Post notes, it's the first show to ever appear on a stamp while still producing new episodes.

(This, of course, could appear to be a double-edged sword to those who feel that the show has declined in quality: "It's been on so long that it has commemorative stamps. Pull the plug!")

Here's the question: Do you like these? When I first saw them, I thought they seemed a little flat, but the simple facial expressions are growing on me. Will you buy them?

Is Uncle Marty A Pet Or Meat?: He's Uncle Marty, and he's...The Uncle. It's pretty funny, really. CBS

 

by Linda Holmes

As you may have heard, the series finale of ER was last week, meaning that the Thursday night 10 p.m. slot is free at NBC for the first time in 15 years. Not only is NBC putting up a new drama, Southland, in that slot -- temporarily, of course, since it goes to Jay Leno in the fall -- but CBS has a new show, Harper's Island, premiering tonight at the same time.

Southland is a pretty conventional network cop show, created by John Wells -- who created ER but arguably bungled the post-Aaron-Sorkin seasons of The West Wing.

The decision to center the show on Benjamin McKenzie, most famous for The O.C., is a tricky one. In the pilot, he's doing a pretty standard "rookie's first day on the job, deer in the headlights" thing, and the cast is big enough that it's hard to know the characters yet. If you favor prestige network drama, it's certainly worth watching once or twice to see how it develops -- and the premiere is already available in full on Hulu or NBC.com, and has been for a week.

Harper's Island, on the other hand, is much stranger. It's billed as a mystery, and the hook is that it ends after 13 episodes, so you don't have to worry that you will be denied resolution for season after season. There's a murderer knocking people off, one per episode, and at the end of the 13th episode, they'll tell you who it is.

The resurrection of one of my favorite film-watching games, after the jump...

Continue reading "Ten O'Clock Smackdown: 'Harper's Island' And 'Southland'" >

by Linda Holmes

When Funny Or Die posted this video yesterday, after spending a day hyping it, expectations were high. It's an impressively large cast -- Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, Nicole Sullivan, Brody Jenner, Carmen Electra, Queen Latifah, Lance Bass, Nicole Richie...a veritable cavalcade of ninnies, which is apparently supposed to be the joke.

The problem is that...the joke isn't much of a joke. There are a few good line readings from Sullivan, but for the most part, the rest of it is unfunny, wooden people being wooden and unfunny, apparently hoping to get laughs because they are lame and vapid. Brody Jenner saying "Keynesian economist" isn't as funny as it's supposed to be, because Brody Jenner is dumb, but can read scripted lines, so...so what?

There's just no idea here. Rich idiots having a pool party? Even one crashed by a couple of non-rich idiots? Who cares? The thing is five minutes long (and feels much longer) and it doesn't have a center. The Jenner joke seems to be that these people are secretly really smart, which could have been entertaining, but it's not pursued in the other...oh, four minutes and 45 seconds.

It sort of feels like there have been enough things like this -- celebrities doing drop-ins in unexpected places, like Matt Damon did with Sarah Silverman and so forth -- that now, you can't just say, "Hey, these famous people are taking time out to appear in an Internet-only venture!" This is way too on-the-nose, far too clearly begging to be made viral.

The difference between this and James Franco acting out scenes from The Hills is that the Franco bit contains a joke. It's not just, "Lookit! James Franco! Pass it around!"

There's no ironic distance at which Vanessa Hudgens becomes funny. Funny Or Die does some great stuff, but this is a miss.

Doubt: The opportunity to hear the directing choices explained makes the film worth another look. Buena Vista Studios Home Entertainment

 

by Linda Holmes

Doubt was an apparently Oscar-hungry film, as its December 25 release date suggested.

Starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, based on a Pulitzer-Prize-winning play, and dealing with the issue of child abuse in the Catholic church, it was hard to imagine a film more naturally geared to an awards audience.

When it came Oscar time, though, all four major actors in the film -- Hoffman and Streep, along with Amy Adams and Viola Davis -- were nominated for their work, and John Patrick Shanley was nominated for the screenplay he adapted from his own play.

But the movie wasn't nominated for Best Picture. Your four big performances are all nominated, and your script is nominated, and you don't get a Best Picture nomination? That makes suspicion fall on the direction -- which Shanley also handled, and which was indeed one of the more widely criticized aspects of the film. (Bob Mondello, for instance, mentioned Shanley's "fussy directorial notions.")

That's why it's so wonderful that Shanley alone provides the audio commentary on the just-released DVD. You will hear him explain or at least acknowledge some of the very choices that were criticized, including his use of unusual angles, attention-grabbing lighting, and endless weather metaphors.

What John Patrick Shanley has to say in his own defense, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Doubt' And The Appeal Of Questionable Choices Explained" >

Bad idea theater: In Fox's next reality offering, real people will apparently lose their real jobs. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

There's word today that Fox has picked up Someone's Gotta Go, a reality show in which real employees at a real business choose a real co-worker to lay off, who will really lose his or her real job and be really, truly out of work.

...You've got to be kidding me.

Whether Fox reality chief Mike Darnell -- who, yes, is behind American Idol, but who was also the king of the garbage-reality wave that is now entirely out of style for the networks, which brought you Joe Millionaire and My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé -- realizes it or not, people don't watch reality shows to see actually terrible things happen.

The precise appeal of shows like Survivor is that you don't have to feel bad for a guy who's a big jerk just because he doesn't win a million dollars. That's what makes the comeuppance fun. If he were losing his life savings, that would be...sad. See how it works?

I cannot conceive of people wanting to sit down and watch, week after week, as employees struggle with the grim task of selecting an office pariah to put out of work. In fact, it's difficult to imagine anything more unpleasant.

That's not to even mention the question of whether this is even remotely legal. If it's clear that your co-workers disliked you because of your religion, that's going to be a problem. Can your employer turn hiring and firing decisions over to Fox? Who will be liable if the firing turns out to be illegal?

"The tribe has spoken" is supposed to be a faux-serious jibe at self-serious contestants, not a sentence meaning that you will now lose your house.

By Glen Weldon

Need a break?

Lookit: Over at Marvel.com, they've just started streaming episodes of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon. The first episode went up last week, and they'll post a new one every Thursday.

Now granted, the animation itself is pretty slapdash (Spidey spends an awful lot of time web-swinging across town, passing the same six buildings several times along the way), but there's much to recommend.

First, of course, the theme song: When its brassy, six-note opening blast gives way to the syncopated drum lick, try to keep from butt-dancing; try.

Then the lyrics kick in, and start going all Socratic Method on you:

Is he strong? Listen, bud: He's got radioactive blood!

Can he swing? From a thread! Take a look overhead!

Sure, it's no "In her satin tights/fighting for your rights," but it is, I think we can all agree, patently groovy.

Then there's the jazzy, infectious score, complete with surf guitar. Hey, Spider-daddy-O! Hang eight!

Listen -- really listen -- to the sound effect of those wrist web-shooters: so perfect, so difficult to emulate with the human mouth. Millions have tried.

Finally, the voicework. Paul Soles was the very first actor to voice Spider-man (just five years after the character was created), and lent him a sardonic, wisecracking tone that I still hear in my head every time I read a Spidey word balloon. (That's Paul "Hermy the Elf Who Wants to Be a Dentist" Soles, FY proverbial I.)

Still not convinced?

After the jump: Why this show's a cultural touchstone -- to some of us, anyway. Plus the pony thing.

Continue reading "Why a 42-Year-Old Superhero Cartoon is Better Than a Pony" >

Politeness is the real Force: Stormtroopers, Darth Vader, and some Jedi knights wait in line at the ticket office before the opening of Star Wars: A Musical Journey in London. Tim Whitby/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

"[inhale...exhale] Yes, I am the representative of the dark side. [inhale...exhale] Yes, I have destroyed the home planets of others. [inhale...exhale] That doesn't mean I don't respect the queue."

by Linda Holmes

You know by now that Kal Penn is headed to the White House. Great news for him; bad news for everyone hoping for the next Harold And Kumar movie.

Now that we know another sequel is not in the works, it's time to place some of the other fine cast members of the Harold And Kumar movies in government positions. He is doing his part; they should do theirs.

John Cho Noel Vasquez/Getty Images

 

John Cho: Strange Beings Liaison, NASA

Since his days as Harold, Cho has made a number of TV appearances -- including one on House -- and popped up in a few movies. But the biggest things are right around the corner, because he's playing Sulu in the new Star Trek movie that arrives on May 8.

Surely, all that he has learned about talking to the pointy-eared would make him useful to the space program. How different can fictional outer space be than real outer space? Unfortunately, he would spend his first month on the job telling NASA guys they don't need to do the "live long and prosper" thing every time.

Neil Patrick Harris, Rob Corddry, and more, after the jump...

Continue reading "Public-Sector Jobs For More Of The 'Harold And Kumar' Corps" >

America's Next Top Model: The Tyra Banks-hosted show has a book now. And it doesn't just have pictures! Brad Barket/Getty Images

 

by Mark Blankenship

I've watched every season of Project Runway, I know more about RuPaul's Drag Race than anyone in my family, and even though it pains me, I slog through Make Me a Supermodel every week, mostly to see what flimsy premise the producers will devise to make the boys take off their shirts.

Yet despite my taste for fashion reality, I've never seen an episode of America's Next Top Model. That's partly because modeling shows without shirtless guys strike me as wasted opportunities, and it's partly because ANTM started airing when I was in graduate school. I was just too busy reading obscure plays by cloistered nuns to get attached.

Fate's a strange mistress, though, and a few weeks ago, I opened my mail to discover an advance copy of America's Next Top Model: Fierce Guide to Life. Yes, that's right. Even though I never found the show, it finally found me.

And you know what? I decided to read the thing. I mean, I could use more fierceness in my life -- who couldn't? -- and since I'm the opposite of the book's target audience, I figured it could give me a new perspective on how to live like I mean it.

Fierceness, snacking, and much more, after the jump...

Continue reading "'America's Next Top Model': The Book. For Real. A Review." >

by Linda Holmes

IFC has this up-to-date explanation of the overuse of just about every version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" to score everything from The West Wing to Watchmen.

But there are other offenders as well. I recall a moment in the late '90s when it appeared that just about everything was accompanied by Kate Bush singing "This Woman's Work." That whole business started here, in 1988, in a surprisingly sweet montage from the John Hughes film She's Having A Baby, for which the song was apparently written.

What would you nominate for the It's A Pretty Song, But Enough Already Hall Of Fame?

Gilles Marini: For this Dancing With The Stars contender, it's about retaining your dignity and never, ever playing to the lowest common denominator. ABC

 

by Linda Holmes

Today's Entirely Real Photo comes from last night's episode of Dancing With The Stars, where actor Gilles Marini began his paso doble -- that would be the dance of the bullfighter, for those of you who aren't cultured enough to watch celebrity dance competitions -- wearing the best bullfighting costume he could think of. Perhaps the storyline is of a passionate woman who vows to her lover she will wear enough shirt for both of them.

(Because honestly, it is summer where his chest is, but for partner Cheryl Burke, it is winter.)

If you are wondering who Gilles Marini is, he was the sexy neighbor Samantha saw naked in the summer movie version of Sex And The City. Clothing allergy, perhaps? Sensitive to synthetic fibers?

A reissued Beatles catalogue: It's still fun to watch Paul McCartney — seen here at the Grammys in February. But is it worth buying whole new Beatles albums? Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

 

by Marc Hirsh

Just announced: The entire Beatles catalogue is set to be remastered and reissued, with original and new liner notes, plus documentaries about each album, on Sept. 9.

We delve into the question: Is this significant?

How old the current recordings are, the tie to Rock Band, and more, after the jump...

Continue reading "Is This Significant?: The Beatles Catalog Is Being Remastered" >

Mel White: He and his son Mike were one of the most beloved teams in Amazing Race history. CBS

 

by Linda Holmes

Today's Fresh Air features Mel And Mike White, one of the most popular teams in the 14-season history of The Amazing Race.

Sure, Mike is a screenwriter (School Of Rock) and Mel is a gay ex-pastor who's written extensively about all manner of things, but that's not why they were beloved.

They were beloved because they were personable and good to each other, which is always a relief on a show where various teams throughout history have been pelted with tomatoes, declared their mutual hatred, and — in one very special case — broken up minutes after being eliminated from the race.

Mel was good-humored about not being quite as speedy as the younger racers, and when he struggled a lot with a particular task, Mike — like a good son should — worried as much about his father overdoing it as about the time they were losing. They always seemed like guys who could walk right out of your television and right into your living room, and they would seem right at home.

Seth Rogen: Things are looking up, even as he portrays a blue blob. Kristian Dowling/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

There's a lot going on with Seth Rogen right now. His new movie, Observe And Report, starts Friday -- probably at many, many theaters near you packed with many, many members of coveted demographics.

He hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend, where the fact that he's lost a bunch of weight became one of the primary jokes.

While he's enjoying this svelte victory lap, he's also in theaters as one of the voices in Monsters vs. Aliens, in which he expertly portrays a blue gelatinous blob. (That may qualify as irony.)

Rogen has already made a lot of big movies -- The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Pineapple Express, Superbad -- the list is lengthy for a guy who's 26 years old (who, incidentally, was a writer on the celebrated Freaks & Geeks when he was 19).

But we may only now be entering the Rogenaissance.

Slimming down and smartening up, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Seth Rogenaissance" >

The Tauntaun sleeping bag: Sadly, it's only a joke. For now. ThinkGeek.com

 

by Glenn McDonald

Among the avalanche of April Fool's jokes last week was an interesting development from the nerd merchandising supersite ThinkGeek.com. As an April Fool's joke, the site put up for sale the ingenious and rather appealing Tauntaun sleeping bag pictured above.

Star Wars fans will recall the famous scene on remote ice planet Hoth, in which Han Solo slices open a warm Tauntaun carcass and inserts the typically hapless Luke Skywalker to keep the young Jedi from freezing to death.

Thus was born the Tauntaun sleeping bag. From the ThinkGeek product description: "This high-quality sleeping bag looks just like a Tauntaun, complete with saddle, internal intestines and LED Luke Skywalker Lightsaber zipper pull. Use the lightsaber zipper pull on the Tauntaun sleeping bag to illustrate to your wee ones how Han Solo saved Luke Skywalker from certain death in the freezing climate of Hoth by slitting open the Tauntaun belly!"

Genius. Hundreds of eager buyers were prepared to click over $39.95 for the sleeping bag, only to discover it was all a hoax. As the news made its way around the Internets, ThinkGeek quickly realized it had a phenomenon on its hands. The Tauntaun sleeping bag wasn't just a great idea for a fake product -- it was a great idea, period.

What ThinkGeek.com did next, more ideas for great gifts, and an invitation to do your worst, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Wonderful 'Star Wars' Swag That Shouldn't Be A Hoax" >

House: Last night's episode demonstrated that this heart isn't the only thing that's a little disoriented. Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

House is a show with problems, and they are looking increasingly severe.

At its best, it was a funny, addictive, engrossing medical mystery show, modeled on Sherlock Holmes, that combined a great personal story (centered around Hugh Laurie's Dr. House) with stories about baffling patient ailments. But now House is totally adrift, and proved it last night.

Gigantic spoilers for last night's episode, which you should not read if you do not want to know what happened, after the jump ...

Continue reading "Fox's 'House' Demonstrates How Not To Draw Attention To Yourself" >

by Linda Holmes

MTV's The Paper ran for a total of eight episodes last year, and in that time, it demonstrated more about what makes high school so difficult and often painful than any documentary I can remember. It's not an exaggeration to say it wound up being an extraordinary story about being resilient, being a friend, being an individual, being a coward, and wearing purple leggings to school. (It's also hilarious, entertaining, and amazing conversation-bait between friends.)

It's too easy to populate documentaries or reality shows about teenagers with the ones who are vapid, who have nothing in their heads, or who are specifically dedicated to being evil all the time. It's a little harder to talk about how painful things can be even for smart, serious kids -- say, kids who are fully devoted to the operation of an award-winning high-school newspaper.

Happily for all of us, Sling.com now has all the episodes of The Paper available (the first is at the top of the post), and they're conducting a coordinated Rewatch, in which you can follow along with one quick (about 22-minute) episode per weekday and talk about it in the comments.

Honestly, experiencing Amanda Lorber for yourself -- controversial, annoying, heartbreaking, clueless, inspiring, wildly enjoyable Amanda Lorber -- is worth every second you'll spend.

Surviving Suburbia: If the sight of Bob Saget and a child playing his daughter fills your heart with dread, you are on the right track. ABC

 

by Linda Holmes

There are moments when words of actual criticism fail, and the pilot of ABC's new sitcom Surviving Suburbia, starring Bob Saget, has brought me to one of those moments. Essentially, Surviving Suburbia is for the Bob Saget fan who found Full House (1) too funny; (2) too gritty; (3) too plausible; and (4) inadequately stocked with little girls saying ostensibly adorable things.

The good news is that now, you know that those 30 minutes you were undoubtedly planning to devote to watching this pilot -- which airs tonight at 9:30 after Dancing With The Stars -- are available to do other things that will be more enjoyable than watching Surviving Suburbia.

Like what, you ask?

Floss your teeth repeatedly. It's almost tax time -- redo your 1040 from scratch! Peel some potatoes, even if you just throw them away when you're done. Don't you have bathtub grout that needs whitening? Go to the airport and take in the hubbub of baggage claim. Put gum in your child's hair just so you can spend time removing it.

Just a little advice from Monkey See to you.

Strong showing: At Wrestlemania 25 on Sunday night, The Wrestler star Mickey Rourke (right, in the vest) obligingly got into the ring for a little action with the WWE's Chris Jericho. Bill Olive/Getty Images Entertainment

 

by Linda Holmes

"Say, Mickey Rourke -- how are you going to follow up the restoration of your dignity as achieved through your excellent performance in The Wrestler and your Oscar nomination, which many people thought was a distant fantasy?"

"Why, I believe I will go to Wrestlemania 25 and obligingly punch the WWE's Chris Jericho in the belly!"

"That is a good plan, Mickey Rourke. That is a real good plan."

Stephen King: Later this year, he will make a welcome return to writing doorstops set in Maine towns with serious difficulties. Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Stephen King is a writer who's easy to both overestimate and underestimate.

He's easy to overestimate because he's sold something like 300 million books, and because his books regularly become high-profile movies, and because if you ask an American who doesn't really envision himself as a big reader who his favorite novelist is, you have a fairly decent chance of getting the answer, "Stephen King."

He's easy to underestimate because if you remember that he wrote Christine and Cujo and that short story where the guy eats his own foot, you might forget that he also wrote Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption and Misery and a lot of other things that are really...pretty good, and are barely, if at all, "horror" fiction.

(Okay, the one where the guy eats his own foot is also pretty good.)

But if you enjoy King's writing, you eventually have to decide how you feel about the doorstops.

The next doorstop, after the jump...

Continue reading "Thank Goodness Stephen King Is Making Backbreaking, Indulgent Doorstops Again" >

"Nice to meet you, too!": Nelson Mandela met Gordon Ramsay at the opening of a resort in Cape Town, South Africa yesterday. Chris Jackson/Getty Images Entertainment

 

by Linda Holmes

Presumably, Hell's Kitchen star Gordon Ramsay refrained from calling the chefs at this particular event "donkeys," as he frequently does on television.

by Linda Holmes

Hollywood marketers believe in Chick Movies and Dude Movies. The rest of us believe in...well, movies, in the best of all possible worlds. But when you are making a trailer, you are expected to identify Chick Movie elements and Dude Movie elements. Because we all know that Chicks and Dudes are very different.

(They like cars and beer! We like ponies and flowers!)

Thus, any movie -- well, any movie trailer, really -- can be sorted into Chick Movie elements and Dude Movie elements, resulting in a final reading on the Chick/Dude scale. Note that, for a single movie, the scale may change by trailer, depending on whether it is airing before He's Just Not That Into You or Knowing.

Let us take a look at this trailer for Adventureland, which opens today.

How to count Ryan Reynolds and expired food, after the jump...

Continue reading "Chick Movie/Dude Movie: 'Adventureland'" >

Jay Leno: He and Amy Poehler look like they're having a good time here, but the new incarnation of his show has hit a snag. NBC

 

by Linda Holmes

If you've ever had a nightmare where someone was standing over you, threatening your very existence, insisting that you watch Jay Leno or perish, then you know how Boston's NBC affiliate, WHDH, is feeling right about now.

WHDH has announced plans to pass on the entirety of the weeknightly Leno show set to air at 10 p.m. this fall.

Essentially, the station is betting against Leno, believes the show will fail, and believes it can do better for itself with an hour of local news than with Jay Leno, when it comes to setting up its 11 p.m. hour. The Boston Globe reports that the station was willing to air Leno at 11, but was refused.

NBC is insisting in response that as an NBC affiliate, WHDH is contractually required to air the show at 10, and is threatening to revoke the station's NBC affiliation. It's even threatening to start up its own new station if WHDH doesn't comply.

The threat may well work, of course, and Boston may see the show. And judging from the station's comments to the Globe, this seems to reflect almost as much frustration with the network's overall low ratings as it does specific doubts about Leno.

But putting aside the fact that if WHDH is right, NBC could lose the seventh-largest market in the country for five hours a week, this is emphatically not the mood you want surrounding the big new project you think is going to save your 10 p.m. slot. "Oh, sure," says a local affiliate. "We were okay with Knight Rider, but we have to draw the line somewhere."

Even if the network gets its way, it's a miserably inauspicious and embarrassing beginning.

John Stamos: "Hey, baby, do you like a song-and-dance man?" Kevin Winter/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Sure, ER is ending tonight and bringing a close to one surprising chapter in the life of John "Uncle Jesse" Stamos. But he's moving on.

He's coming to the Broadway revival of Bye Bye Birdie set for this fall, where he will play Albert Peterson. If you have frequently had the thought, "Why, that John Stamos, I believe he is the Dick Van Dyke of our time," then this will make perfect sense to you.

And in yet another example of people with outside-Broadway fame coming to Broadway productions, Stamos' Rose Alvarez will be Gina Gershon, whose genuinely eclectic career has included quite the pile of episodic television appearances as well as two entirely different movies about relationships between girls and other girls: Showgirls and Bound. She's also, it's worth noting, been in Cabaret.

At the moment, you may be on the fence. You are wondering whether this revival will be any good or not. Gina Gershon is interesting, and John Stamos is...charismatic, at least, right? And he's been on Broadway before, in Cabaret and How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.

I will now attempt to push you over the fence.

The best news about a Bye Bye Birdie revival...maybe ever, after the jump...

Continue reading "You Just Can't Stop John Stamos" >

Skelebunnies: You only think you know how not-safe-for-work comics get. SLG Publishing

 

by Glen Weldon

Okay: This won't take long.

Because the comic up for discussion today lives or dies by its premise. You dig the premise, or you resolutely do not, and I'm not likely to sway anyone from either position.

Don't believe me?

The Premise: Undead bunnies do beastly, unspeakable things for fun and profit. (Mostly fun.)

Still with me? Huh. Okay, here's The Plot:

* Two cute fluffy bunnies get vomited upon by a demon;

* Acidic demon vomit, natch, strips their flesh;

* Satan recruits them to go and do horrid things to the pure and innocent creatures of the world;

* Which they do, until they chafe under his infernal yoke, and then;

* They take their doing-horrid-things business freelance.

Did I mention they have a flying zombie steed named Pretty Pretty Pony Macabre? Because they have a flying zombie steed named Pretty Pretty Pony Macabre.

The final set of facts if you're still undecided, after the jump ...

Continue reading "Like Beatrix Potter, If Beatrix Potter Made More Jokes About Vomit. And Satan." >

Sully: Normally, I'd never question the judgment of a national hero (seen here at the Super Bowl, appropriately enough), but...TLC? Jamie Squire/Getty Images Sport

 

by Linda Holmes

Look, I like Chesley Sullenberger as much as the next person. If I ever have to experience a water landing, I hope it will be his firm hand on the throttle as I scream uncontrollably. I truly believe him to be the only man in America with a 100 percent approval rating.

But I question the decision to turn over his exclusive documentary rights to cable's TLC. Unless Sully is planning on having quintuplets, having a 400-pound tumor removed, getting a makeover and breaking an addiction to tapered-leg jeans, or remodeling the cockpit on a budget, this seems like a strange fit.

Despite the fact that "TLC" originally stood for The Learning Channel (really!), TLC is now sort of the Perky Do It Yourself Channel, and when it comes to piloting planes, I'm not looking for that kind of self-determination.

Seeing in three dimensions...or not: A major studio and a major theater chain play a game of "I'm not paying for the glasses; I thought you were paying for the glasses." iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

So. Monsters vs. Aliens has a huge opening weekend, Dreamworks is all set to keep rolling with 3D releases, and a few thousand screens have apparently already been converted to show 3D at a reported cost of up to $100,000 per screen.

But what about the plastic glasses? You may have thought that the $5 premium you paid for that 3D ticket was adequate to cover a pair of polarized plastic shades, but don't you believe it -- there's a whole new battle over who's going to pay for the glasses. Specifically, Ice Age 3 looks to be facing some difficulties getting theaters to put it on their new 3D-ready screens if Twentieth Century Fox keeps insisting it's not paying.

This sounds a little like the urban legend that exists at every college about how the library is sinking because the architects didn't account for the weight of the books. Millions of dollars to make the movie, millions of dollars to outfit the theaters, and now we're going to be hung up on the $1 million-per-movie cost of plastic-glasses manufacturing.

Hospital shows: John Stamos and Maura Tierney are only two of the many ER personalities who have tried to keep patients from dying in spectacular ways. NBC

 

by Linda Holmes

Tonight is the end of ER. The end of an era, the end of the machine that made George Clooney famous, and the end of a fifteen-season run that was good for at least seven seasons. The show is presumably dying of pure fatigue, but how do the patients die? Let's take a look at the ways TV-hospital patients die that other people usually don't.

Heroism. Countless television hospital patients die of heroism every year. One minute, they are valiantly trying to save a cat, dog, old person, flower bed, bicycle, or lottery ticket, and the next, they are lying in a hospital bed while the monitors sing their mournful "eeeeeeeep" in the background. Worse yet, heroism often results in a slow expiration one hospital bed over from someone who is unafflicted with heroism -- say, a terrible bigot or someone unattractive -- who is going to live. These deaths are referred to in the literature as deaths by heroism with ironic complications.

Falling helicopters. As far as we know, there has been one death by falling helicopter in the history of hospital shows, and it took place on ER. But it would seem that, relative to the total number of casualties in ER history, even this likely overrepresents the prevalence of being crushed by a falling helicopter as a cause of death. The greater statistical anomaly, however, is that this happened to Dr. "Rocket" Romano, who had lost an arm to a helicopter blade only a season before he died of having an entire helicopter fall directly on him. You know how some people are unlucky at cards? He was unlucky at helicopters.

A terrible secret. Particularly on House, it is common for patients to die of A Terrible Secret. In many cases, the Terrible Secret is not life-threatening in itself, but the efforts to conceal the Terrible Secret cause the patient to die of something innocuous. For instance, if you conceal your penicillin allergy in the course of concealing the details of the way your penicillin allergy was discovered, you risk dying of A Terrible Secret.

Dying of redemption, after the jump...

Continue reading "Ten Surprisingly Common Causes Of Death In TV Hospitals" >

He's game: Seen here playing in 2007, documentary star Steve Wiebe is about to try to get back his Donkey Kong title. Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

We have less of a roundup than usual today, because -- and this is not a joke -- so much oxygen was consumed by mostly-bad April Fool's nonsense at many of our favorite sites that we have spent half the day with a pillow over our ears. Nevertheless!

Read:

• You can find war remnants in the unlikeliest places -- like MTV's The Real World, which told a relatively straightforward story about a kid who'd been to Iraq -- not realizing he'd be called back, and would get the news while they were filming.

Note:

• Fox has a new plan to deny special features to DVD renters, and it bit them immediately when they apparently jumbled beyond hope who was supposed to get the real DVD and who was supposed to get the disappointing one without any of the special features that everyone who gets a DVD believes they're going to see.

• In what's actually big news for fans of the fantastic 2007 documentary The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters, Steve Wiebe is set for a televised attempt to get back his Donkey Kong record from Billy Mitchell. You only think this isn't important if you haven't seen the movie.

Ignore:

• Every time you think you've found the thing in the world about which you care the least, someone comes along and says something about The Real Housewives Of New York City.

by Linda Holmes

Well, thank goodness. Lifetime and NBC Universal have settled their lawsuit over who has the right to air the already-filmed sixth season of Project Runway, and it will air this summer on Lifetime.

That news, my friends, is fierce.

Amanda Palmer: She is either colluding with Pitchfork to pull a magnificent prank, or...she's not. AFP/Getty Images

 

Update: As explained in the comments, longtime readers of Amanda Palmer's blog had actually already heard of this project, so it apparently is real. You must admit, it's still pretty amazing timing. -- Linda Holmes

by Marc Hirsh

In an announcement dated yesterday, indie bellwether Pitchfork reported that Dresden Dolls singer Amanda Palmer will be involved in a high-school production of a play based on In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, the cult-classic Neutral Milk Hotel concept album driven in part by singer Jeff Mangum's fascination with Anne Frank.

(We'll let you digest that.)

Today, of course, is April 1, so it seems from the timing that the whole thing must be a hoax. Lexington High School even seems to have gotten in on it, with a listing on its Fine and Performing Arts Calendar of "Spring Play Performance" on the dates mentioned in the story. It has all the earmarks of a thoroughly planned April Fool's Day joke.

But it may be even better than that.

Tying ourselves into knots, after the jump...

Continue reading "Amanda Palmer And The Complex Psychology Of (What Really Looked Like) The Perfect Prank" >

Wolverine: A version of Hugh Jackman's new film has leaked online; what happens now? Twentieth Century Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

The X-Men follow-up X-Men Origins: Wolverine, one of Twentieth Century Fox's most anticipated movie releases of the summer, leaked on the Internet yesterday.

Well, the movie wasn't leaked, exactly. It's reportedly an unpolished, incomplete version of the movie, and surprisingly, it has no watermark that might help identify the culprit.

Are full-length leaks the wave of the future? We consider the possibility, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Wolverine': Enormous Security Hole Or Big Stroke Of 'Luck'?" >

James Franco: Seen here on MTV's Total Request Live last fall, he's teaming up again with Pineapple Express's Danny McBride. Scott Gries/Getty Images Entertainment

 

by Linda Holmes

Maybe it's just me, but when I read that James Franco and Danny McBride -- who worked together in Pineapple Express -- were teaming up for a new movie called Your Highness, I thought, entirely seriously, "I do not need to see another movie from this same crowd of guys about how hilarious it is to watch them smoke pot for two hours. It wasn't that funny in Knocked Up, it went on too long in Pineapple Express, and I don't understand why they won't just let James Franco make a comedy in which he is not stoned."

It turns out, though, that this is the more time-worn interpretation of the words "Your Highness," and Franco and McBride will play "spoiled and arrogant princes." Or so the story claims. The movie will apparently be directed by David Gordon Green, their Pineapple director. It might actually be a good movie, even with everyone substance-free.

My mistake, guys. Carry on.

Very bad ideas: "Don't you want to eat this cupcake? Don't you? Don't you? Huh? Huh?" iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

There's a new service that will allow bakeries to send you a tweet every time they pull fresh baked goods out of the oven.

What kind of a twisted, bare-knuckled sadist thought this up? Look at this feed from Albion's Oven.

"Bouncy, beautiful cup cakes, nice and iced, plump, and ready for your delight. Come and get 'em."

"Chunky slabs of sticky CHOCOLATE CAKE, munchably moist, freshly baked."

All day long, this will be sent to you. All day long. Eat some warm, pliable cookies! Wouldn't you rather put that salad down and have a delicious, buttery croissant? Who needs adequate blood flow to your extremities when you can have CHOCOLATE CAKE?

What's next? "A frosty margarita is sitting on the bar with a slice of lime on the rim and droplets of sweat beading on the outside of the glass." "Wouldn't dusty lungs full of tobacco smoke feel great today?" "If you fake an attack of tuberculosis right now, you could be at the ball game before they throw out the first pitch!"

Sheesh. The popularity of Ashton Kutcher's Twitter feed doesn't actually mean people are looking to be tortured.

Scott MacIntyre: Good or bad, American Idol isn't going to tell you. Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

Scott MacIntyre isn't a terrible singer. He's an accomplished guy, as a matter of fact. He's not a great singer, or he probably wouldn't have chosen American Idol as his ticket. But he's not a terrible singer.

Not that the show would know how to break it to you if he were.

Patronizing with lavish praise, after the jump...

Continue reading "Soft Bigotry And Scott MacIntyre" >