Susan Boyle: Her fans may not have been prepared, but the way things ended for her was no surprise. Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Shocking! Upset!

Yes, that's right: Susan Boyle, who became instantly beloved, and almost as instantly overexposed, after singing "I Dreamed A Dream" on Britain's Got Talent, didn't win the final, which is being treated as a massive shock in most corners.

It isn't. Remember the backlash tracker? Susan Boyle was always going to lose this show. Always, always, always.

People will tell you that it was the fact that she was supposedly caught swearing this week, or that she lost her fans by getting a makeover, or that there was a bum note in "Memory." It wasn't. She was a story -- not an arts story, but a digital-culture story -- and her story did not include winning.

The predictable workings of the teardown industry and the natural cycle of competition shows, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Britain's Got Talent' Serves Up The Latest 'Upset' That Wasn't" >

by Linda Holmes

Mayim Bialik started out playing an eerily convincing version of a young Bette Midler in Beaches, but it was her role on Blossom that made her a pop-culture icon.

She then became a well-known Surprisingly Normal Person for a former child star -- she retired (mostly) from show business, though she's popped up recently on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Bones, and studied neuroscience, and had kids.

And now, rather amusingly, she's the subject of tonight's season premiere of TLC's What Not To Wear. (See a sneak peek here.) Given that Blossom is one of the show's go-to references for bad '80s fashion, it's a surprisingly witty meta-reference to make Bialik -- now a mom, much like many of the other women who appear -- the next makeover.

Based on a little sneak preview I got of the episode, Bialik looks to be incredibly game, happy to josh about Blossom and her ugly clothes and the way she danced on that show at the drop of a hat. It looks like it might actually be a lot of fun -- perfect for an '80s TV nerd on a lazy Friday night in summer.

by Linda Holmes

Jay Leno's last Tonight Show airs tonight, but you'll notice the hype is nothing like it was when, for instance, Johnny Carson aired his last shows. (Carson's last was a little-recalled retrospective; his second-to-last show was the one with Bette Midler that everyone talks about.)

Of course, it's a very different event for NBC. Carson was retiring; Leno is leaving for his own prime-time show that will air every weeknight at 10 p.m., come fall. In theory, this is a good thing. In theory, Jay Leno is being promoted. What can be bittersweet about being given a third of your network's weeknight real estate? That's just sweet, right?

So while there has been some looking back this week with clips and so forth (and a silly Thursday-night medley from Billy Crystal), Leno will probably not get his "Here's That Rainy Day." Not just because he's emphatically not that guy, but because he's not really in a position to acknowledge that there's a real possibility that he's experiencing a sad ending.

The great uncertainty that is Jay Leno's prime-time project, after the jump ...

Continue reading "Jay Leno: A Low-Key Departure Sets Up A High-Risk Gambit" >

by Linda Holmes

It can be hard to know what you're getting with TV. Maybe all the jokes are in the commercials, maybe the boring lead character is downplayed in favor of a funny neighbor...you know how it can go.

Maybe that's why I have a soft spot for ABC's preposterous Wipeout, the second season of which premiered last night. If you think this promo is funny, you will find an hour of Wipeout absolutely hilarious. (Nobody ever seems to be injured, so as far as I know, you don't have to temper your enthusiasm with guilt.)

If, on the other hand, you think this is the sound you hear right before your civilization collapses and we all experience backwards evolution until we are one-celled bits of goo, there is absolutely no way I would endeavor to change your mind.

For all intents and purposes, this is an hour of people getting pies in the face. It has no redeeming value whatsoever. None at all. But remember: pratfalls have been around for a long time. Human beings have often, perhaps only in the shamed corners of their conscious minds, found other people falling down to be sort of funny.

But the real advantage of Wipeout is simply that you have every shred of information you need about whether you will like it, just based on watching the ads for it. It is, in that sense, unreviewable. Do I like Wipeout? Who cares? I can't review it. I can't sit here and tell you that I have insights into Wipeout. I can't "recommend" Wipeout, like, "Hey, try that Wipeout, you might like it!" And I can't "not recommend" Wipeout, because if you like that commercial, you're going to love it for an hour at a time.

You already know the answer that exists in your own heart. But I won't make you tell anyone.

Finding a restaurant: Sure, you could ask almost anybody, but why not try a genuine Zagat? iStockphoto.com

 

by Rob Sachs

While the recession may be curtailing some consumer spending, it looks like dining habits haven't changed as much as you might think.

More than 40 percent of Americans eat out a couple of of nights a week, and when they do, they're faced with the same agonizing and eternal question: Where should I go?

You could turn to your local newspaper, but then you're beholden to the opinion of just one critic. Of course with the advent of the Internet, there are plenty of sites that are willing to give you advice, like Yelp and Dine.com.

But I've always been a fan of the Zagat's little red books (and now also the Zagat website), because the Zagat approach is to rate restaurants based on the opinions of many, rather than only one.

Zagat's restaurant survey incorporates the opinions of 400,000 people voting on 40,000 restaurants that they evaluate for factors like food, price, decor and service.

According to founder Tim Zagat (that's "Zagat" like The Cat In The Hat, to settle a common point of befuddlement, and if you listen to the podcast at the bottom of this post, you'll hear him tell you so himself), what sets the Zagat survey apart lies in whose opinions are included. Zagat says his reviewers are "people who eat out all the time, people in white-collar jobs, the kinds of people who are members of the different food and wine societies."

With other sites that rely on mass reviewing, there's no way to know it's not the chef's mother giving the joint that five-star rating.

Despite all the opinions at his disposal, Tim Zagat will sometimes throw recommendations to the wind and try out a restaurant on his own. But that doesn't mean he sits down with a set of metrics and spends hours studying before he makes up his mind. He says, in fact, that he usually can get a solid sense of what's good just by standing in the doorway.

And you, too, can learn the art of snap judgment.

Straight from Tim Zagat, how to judge a restaurant in a jiffy, after the jump...

Continue reading "Dilemmas: Zagat-Approved Advice On Choosing A Restaurant" >

by Neda Ulaby

We're very into memoirs in this week's Culturetopia.

Screen legend Sidney Poitier recounts a heartbreaking story about his father's parting gift when Poitier left his family in the Bahamas behind to beat the odds and find success in a pre-civil rights USA.

And the irrepressible essayist Clive James talks about what he describes as "the weaknesses and indeed, the horrors of being a little boy" growing up in the Australian suburbs.

Decide for yourself if the hated elevator entity known as Muzak has indeed evolved into something "almost hip," and feel free to decode the complicated cultural identity of the Hip Hop Hoodios, a duo of Jewish-Latin rappers.

Reporter Elizabeth Blair has the skinny on some of the hilariously uptight brand-control battles that took place behind the scenes of this week's hit movie, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. We also have Bob Mondello's review of Terminator Salvation, the movie that Museum beat at the box office last weekend.

And we'll hear new scholarly speculation about William Shakespeare. His secrets, evidently, are in his sonnets.

Last and probably least, we even give you a glimpse at the ending of America's most ubiquitous pop-culture phenomenon, American Idol.

The National Spelling Bee: Here, Emily Fletcher sweats her way through her turn. Alex Wong/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Tonight, ABC will broadcast the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., giving a bunch of school-age kids a slice of Thursday-night prime time of the type usually reserved for people like Tina Fey.

Spelling bees have made enormous gains in pop-culture significance in the last, say, ten years. Or maybe it's 12 years, because the first big spelling-bee splash of my lifetime came in 1997, when the utterly unique Rebecca Sealfont spelled "euonym" to win the Bee. Everybody was talking about Rebecca, and this was before the Internet was what it is today, and before there was YouTube to show her to you.

Since then, we've had the wonderful documentary Spellbound, the hokey but endearing Akeelah And The Bee, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee on Broadway, and much, much more.

And now, we've reached the point where ESPN will be showing the national semifinals at 10:00 a.m., followed by the prime-time telecast hosted by my hands-down favorite TV host, Tom Bergeron (who usually handles things over at Dancing With The Stars).

And there are good reasons to tune in.

"Very, very bright and unusual," after the jump...

Continue reading "The Oddly Addictive Spectacle Of The National Spelling Bee" >

Michael Cera: He's one of the actual Geeky Dreamboats in a book of the same name. Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

I recently got my first look at Geeky Dreamboats, an oddly adorable little amuse bouche of a photo album showing...well, geeky dreamboats.

Written by Sarah O'Brien and Lacey Soslow (Soslow is, wonderfully, billed as the president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Michael Cera fan club), Geeky Dreamboats is styled to look like an old-school issue of Tiger Beat or Bop, and it comes with a nifty little puffy cover that really does make you feel like you're caressing one of your possessions from junior high. (Which is also how you can tell it's aimed at women who are too old for unironic discussion of dreamboats.)

I have to say, while the book does cover the usual suspects (Cera, Jason Schwartzman, Justin Long), what it really demonstrates is that "geeky dreamboat" now means "regular dreamboat who is not obviously a complete potato-head."

The evidence, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Geeky Dreamboat: Is He Under Siege By Regular Dreamboats?" >

The Goode Family: Mike Judge has made some good satirical projects, but this is not one of them. ABC

 

by Linda Holmes

At my recent college reunion, my friends and I were confronted by water-conserving toilets that invited you to either pull the handle up or push the handle down, which resulted in a stronger or weaker flush in accordance with what the posted signs termed "your needs." I'm no stranger to the fact that there is much amusement to be had at the expense of the most self-consciously noble ideas.

Still, The Goode Family, the new animated comedy from Mike Judge that premieres tonight on ABC, mines surprisingly few laughs from its subject: the environmentally fanatical, hypersensitive vegans of the title. (The marketing makes heavy use of the term "politically correct," which has pretty much lost all meaning at this point due to overuse, but that's the idea.)

Where a good satirist goes wrong, after the jump...

Continue reading "'The Goode Family': Mike Judge's Disappointing New Comedy" >

Joss Whedon: You might think you couldn't remake Buffy without him, but somebody thinks you can. Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

If you've ever thought to yourself, "I would love to hear what Pete Best would have done with the rest of the Beatles catalogue, you'll be thrilled to hear that Fran Rubel Kuzui, the director of the original Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie, is pondering a reboot with no involvement by Joss Whedon, who wrote the movie and.created the long-running TV show.

Okay, the comparison to Pete Best may be unfair. But the idea of a Buffy movie without Whedon but with the director of the 1992 original movie that had nowhere near the cultural impact of the TV show does seem more than a little bizarre.

It's one thing to use a high-powered guy like J.J. Abrams to reboot Star Trek more than 40 years after the original show debuted on television, almost 18 years after Gene Roddenberry's death in 1991.

It's entirely another to try to do a Whedon-less Buffy movie only 17 years after the original Buffy movie and only six years after the end of the beloved TV series, while Whedon is still not only alive, and not only still making wildly popular projects like 2008's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, but still quite possibly the most cultishly revered showrunner in television.

The natural audience for a new Buffy movie is the existing Buffy fandom, which remains wildly loyal to Whedon to the point where its collective reaction to the reboot news this morning seems to revolve around words like "travesty."

Reboots often look unnecessary to begin with, but a reboot by the person who did the less successful version of something in an effort to take advantage of the appeal of the more successful version of it seems even worse.

by Linda Holmes

In honor of today's release of the first season of Designing Women on DVD, it's time to write your own Julia Sugarbaker rant (like the one seen above).

As you know if you ever watched this show, its signature moment was sending Julia (Dixie Carter) on some incredibly indignant rant, at the end of which there would be thunderous applause. Now, in the spirit of Mad Libs, you can write your very own.

The game is simple. Grab something to write with (or, you know, open a blank document) and write a list of the following twenty things, which you will later plug into your rant. After the jump, we'll show you where they go. And if you think your rant is particularly good, don't forget to post your favorite parts in the comments.

(Unfortunately, it's about a paragraph too long to fit the whole thing in a comment -- it wouldn't be a Julia rant if it weren't, so snip judiciously.)

The items:

AN APPETIZER
A FAMOUS CRIMINAL
AN INEXPENSIVE RETAILER
A SMALL AMOUNT OF MONEY
A METAL
A BREAKFAST CEREAL
AN ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM
A POPULAR GADGET
A JUNK FOOD
A REALITY SHOW
A KIND OF CANDY
A SPORTING EVENT
A HISTORICAL FIGURE NAMED "JOHN"
A CELEBRITY NAMED "JOHN"
AN ARTICLE OF CLOTHING
A HOME ELECTRONICS COMPONENT
A CHAIN RESTAURANT
A CITY IN THE SOUTHERN U.S.
A POPULAR TOY
A LITERARY FIGURE

Your results, after the jump...

Continue reading "The 'Designing Women' Game: Write Your Own Julia Rant" >

Kylie Minogue: A huge international star, she gave up on the U.S. a long time ago — until now. Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images

 

by Marc Hirsh

Not long ago, it was announced that Kylie Minogue will be embarking on a North American tour — the Australian pop singer's first in a career that stretches back to 1988, when her remake of "The Loco-Motion" hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In the 21 years since then, she's had a small handful of American hits and become a major gay icon. She'll play the United States and Canada for six scheduled shows starting Sept. 30.

So: Is this significant?

Why it is: Kylie is one of the biggest pop stars in the world. You know the world, right? Big place, located inconveniently outside U.S. borders? Yeah, Kylie's massive there. Like, Madonna huge. (Specifically, Madonna-10-years-ago huge.)

Plus, she more or less gave up on trying to break into the U.S. years ago, so an undertaking on this scale is something of a substantial policy shift for her. Not to mention a gift to Stateside fans who don't wish to shell out a thousand bucks or more to catch one of her legendarily lavish concerts overseas.

Why it isn't: Six dates doesn't sound like much of a tour. It sounds like six dates. And while her bookings at the Hollywood Bowl and Air Canada Centre stand to place her in front of nearly 20,000 fans at each, some of the other venues have a maximum capacity closer to 3,000. It's a safe bet that if Kylie were confident that she could pull it off on our shores, she'd aim for much larger venues all around.

As it is, it hardly looks like she can command the audiences she would if she were a Madonna-sized star in the U.S. Which, it bears repeating, she isn't.

The verdict? After the jump ...

Continue reading "Is This Significant?: Kylie Minogue Changes Her Tune" >

by Linda Holmes

To the degree there's still a regular television season, it's basically over now. And yes, if your favorite shows are ending, you can use that time for gardening or going to the movies or sitting in a hammock with your feet up; seeing the sun is important.

Furthermore, pop-culture-wise, spring belongs to television finales and summer belongs to big movies, and that shift will happen with or without you, or me, or any of us.

But there are also people who use the summer to become viewers of the good things they've been missing, and it's easier than ever. It used to be that you had to hope for well-timed reruns to catch up, but now you can rent or buy DVDs, use Amazon or iTunes, watch online from free network sites, or try a variety of other methods if you want to upgrade the quality of what you watch.

So here, in particular order, are a few things you might try between now and the start of the fall season, during the time when even deciding you don't want to see the sun doesn't mean you should watch I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! just because that's what's on.

The shows, after the jump...

Continue reading "Five Shows To Try This Summer" >

American Idol: Kris Allen, center, is your new champion — but what did he do to earn the title?Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

By now, you have probably heard that Kris Allen won this year's American Idol. You may also have participated in one of the many raging battles about whether his final-round opponent, Adam Lambert, was robbed.

If you haven't, feel free to pop down after the jump, where we'll talk about the fact that there are some very good arguments to support the case that the right guy came out on top.

Five things done right to plant the crown where it wound up, after the jump...

Continue reading "Earning The Victory: Five Things Your 'Idol' Winner Did Right" >

by Neda Ulaby

We take a turn towards the cryptic in Culturetopia this week.

(If you haven't been paying rapt attention, that's the newish podcast featuring NPR's best arts and culture stories that Linda and I host every week.)

If you're not a podcast-subscribing type, you can listen right here.

From the twisty mind of J.J. Abrams springs such tenebrous television as Lost and Fringe, as well as the fabulous new Star Trek movie. You'll hear some cuts from his appearance on Talk Of The Nation about his affection for brainteasers and how consideration of genre plays into his oeuvre.

You'll hear a hilarious review of this week's number one hit film, Angels and Demons, from our critic Bob Mondello. (No, Virginia, there is no such thing as a Harvard symbologist.) You can find the Tom Hanks Daily Show clip we talked about here.

We've got a great piece from San Francisco about the surprisingly robust economics of the used CD trade. I'm just glad those things aren't ending up in landfills.

Finally, you'll meet a little lady who's headless, three inches tall and 35,000 years old. She's the newly discovered First Lady of Found Art -- possibly the oldest representation of a female figure ever found. It's always nice to have a science desk reporter doing a cultural piece, and Chris Joyce -- who not long ago did a bang-up profile of Indiana Jones -- was the perfect person to file this report.

Long-running fictional characters: Sure, there are a lot of candidates, but who takes the prize? iStockphoto.com

 

by Glen Weldon

"Longest running" is open to interpretation, so let's define our terms:

In any medium, what character has been consistently featured in continuous new adventures over the longest stretch of time?

Got that? Just the three criteria, here:

Consistent:

Makes regularly scheduled appearances — no yawning gaps between adventures.

Continuous:

The character's adventures form a central narrative that builds on what has gone before. (Read: Katzenjammer Kids, I know you've been around a long time, but you're a gag strip, not an ongoing narrative. Thanks for playing, we have some lovely parting gifts.)

New:

The constant churning out of fresh content, not simply adaptations, retellings or reprints.

So: Guesses?

After the jump: We review the top contenders, provide The Answer, and explain why The Neverending Story should really have been a horror film.

Continue reading "Question: Who's the Longest-Running Fictional Character Ever?" >

Dancing for recognition: The Dancing With The Stars judges weren't very helpful in crowning the winner, since they gave out so many perfect 10s, but the viewer voting was there to fill in the blanks. ABC

 

by Linda Holmes

Between the network up-fronts and the slew of season finales, it's a TV-heavy time, I understand. But suppose you are trapped Memorial Day weekend in a conversation in which people are discussing their favorite moments of this season of Dancing With The Stars. Don't you want to be able to contribute?

Okay, "contribute" is a strong word. "Comprehend"?

"Feign interest"?

Whatever, whatever. The eighth season of one of the highest-rated shows on television came to an end last night as Shawn Johnson (who is actually sort of famous in that she is an Olympic gymnast), Gilles Marini (who is a tiny bit famous in that he was the naked guy in Sex And The City who barely did anything except shower), and Melissa Rycroft (who is briefly famous for being dumped at the very end of The Bachelor) faced off for the right to claim a very, very ugly trophy.

Seriously, it may be the ugliest award on television. It may be uglier than the award Melissa almost won on The Bachelor, which you will recall was a highly suspect engagement to a sketchy dude who could not shut up about following his heart.

But someone still won it.

Who won, and the dance that took the trophy, after the jump...

Continue reading "One Of The Sort-Of 'Stars' Won That 'Dancing' Show Last Night" >

by Mark Blankenship

As I write this, it's been approximately sixteen seconds since the pilot episode of Glee -- Fox's new comedy about a high school teacher trying to redeem himself and his students by coaching their glee club -- finished airing on the east coast.

Already, the cast rendition of Journey's masterpiece "Don't Stop Believin'" is top five on the iTunes sales chart. Already, I've seen 400 Facebook status updates and 43,000 tweets about the show. What will happen when it airs in California? Will the Lakers spell the word "GLEE" on the basketball court?

Considering the publicity blitzkrieg they've launched for this thing, Fox execs have got to be sobbing for joy. And lord knows, from the moment I heard about this series, created by Nip/Tuck's Ryan Murphy, I wanted it to succeed. Sure, the dorks-make-good premise smacked of Election and Saved! and every other teen narrative, but the commercials suggested Glee could be the Platonic ideal of those familiar parts.

It has some growing to do, but after watching the first episode, I'm delighted to report that overall, Glee lives up to its hype.

Jane Lynch, complex neat freaks, and taking theater very, very seriously, after the jump...

Continue reading "Fox's 'Glee': We Admit, It Makes Us Feel Kind Of...Gleeful" >

The weekend is coming: Is Night At The Museum: Battle For The Smithsonian the movie you'd most carefully avoid, or would you go another way? Twentieth Century Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

I apologize for ending the titular question with a preposition.

But really. The upcoming weekend's wide releases are:

• Terminator Salvation, which I used to think was Terminator: Salvation, but it turns out that it does not contain the colon, meaning that it is about the salvation of terminators or possibly salvation by terminators, as opposed to just being the next movie in the Terminator franchise and also named Salvation. (This may seem like a small point, until you realize that, for instance, Batman Returns would be a very different movie if it were called Batman: Returns, which would almost certainly make it about whether you can write off your cape as a business expense if you are self-employed as a late-night doer of good deeds.)

• Night At The Museum: Battle For The Smithsonian, which boasts a remarkable triumvirate of guys who are sometimes funny but also really annoying: Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, and Hank Azaria. Just the commercials make me tired.

• Dance Flick, the latest parody of other films from the various Wayanses who brought you Scary Movie and its sequels. Based on the ads, a good part of it seems to be taking shots at Save the Last Dance, a reasonably popular, but hardly iconic, movie from eight years ago. (It also takes on the more recent Step Up films.)

Some of you are undoubtedly eager to see at least one of these movies, and I'm not criticizing if that's the case. But of the ones you are not planning to see voluntarily, if you were going to be trapped in one of them, which would you dread the most?

If you didn't come to see Terminator Salvation, that's going to be a lot of explosions. If you didn't come to see Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian, that's going to be a lot of Robin Williams. If you didn't come to see Dance Flick, that's going to be a lot of...that kind of joke.

So I put the question to you: If you could only avoid one, which would you avoid?

Kris Allen: He was understandably shocked that he made it into the final two, and so were a lot of other people. Fox

 

by Marc Hirsh

As we go into the final week of American Idol (the last performance show airs tonight, with the winner announced tomorrow), the hysteria surrounding the show reaches a fever pitch as visions of management contracts, recording careers and bragging rights swirl through everyone's heads.

One thing that can be easily forgotten in all of this is that it's a television show. And that's why Kris Allen should win.

Why the wee Arkansan's victory would make better television, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Surprising Kris Allen: The Little Idol Who Could...And Should" >

Cougar Town: ABC has an idea to bring Courteney Cox back to television. Or...an "idea," anyway. Jason Merritt/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Network upfront week continues today, and the latest network to release its official fall schedule is ABC, which is getting notice primarily for introducing a Wednesday-night sitcom block.

And what do these new comedies have in common? All four of them star the sitcom stars of the '80s and '90s. And all four of them kind of look...terrible. Let's check the list.

Continue reading "'Cougar Town' And Other Depressing 'New' Sitcom Ideas" >

Chuck: Don't look so serious, Zachary Levi. Your show is apparently on the way back.NBC

 

by Linda Holmes

Update: In not at all good news, ABC has apparently scrapped the budget-cutting plan outlined here for Samantha Who?, and has canceled it. Boo.

Networks may be getting almost exclusively bad news about audience erosion and the slow leak of viewers going to cable, but they're managing to hand out some good news to fans.

If you've been following the saga of NBC's Chuck and the endearingly insane fan campaign to get it renewed, you've probably already heard that there have been increasing drumbeats pointing to a renewal. Last night, Entertainment Weekly and some other outlets reported that it's now a done deal.

The order is for 13 episodes rather than what was once the standard 22-episode full season (though more and more shows are on unusual schedules), and the network is cutting the budget (who isn't?). But for people who are attached to this sweet, weird show that is so visibly a labor of love -- if any star has ever done anything any more adorable in support of his show than Zachary Levi leading hundreds of fans to Subway to participate in the Save Chuck campaign, I've never seen it -- it's a lot better than nothing.

And it looks like it might be the beginning of a larger shift, because it's not just Chuck.

Joss Whedon and the possible end of the hit-churning cycle, after the jump...

Continue reading "Does Bringing Back 'Chuck' Mean A New Network Model?" >

by Linda Holmes

There was much to love in last night's 30 Rock season finale, but perhaps nothing was quite as satisfying as the "We Are The World"-style songfest that Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) organized to try to find a kidney for his newly discovered biological father, Milton Greene (Alan Alda). (Find the song at about the 17:40 mark of this clip.)

Yes, that's Sheryl Crow, and Mary J. Blige, and Elvis Costello, and Cyndi Lauper, and Moby, and Rhett Miller, and some other people (not all of whom are mentioned in that link).

For some reason, they left off the name of Clay Aiken, who got probably the best joke of the episode, when it was revealed that he's the Kenneth The Page's cousin. Well, of course he is.

News aggregators: Sure, they can bring you the singular stories, but who can't? iStockphoto.com

 

by Linton Weeks

Okay. Two can play this game. Or two hundred. News aggregators such as Yahoo! News and AOL News are dining out on work done by the main -- and the not-so-main -- stream media.

But we know weird, fascinating, uncommon and outlandish stories when we see them. You do, too. The problem, of course, is finding them in the cacophony of the Web.

Now, in addition to up-to-the-minute news of the universe, analysis of everything from cradles to graves, cultural explorations around the globe and just about anything else you can think of, NPR presents Seven Singular News Stories of the Week.

See you later, aggregator.

1) Former KKK grand wizard and presidential candidate David Duke is now a bird photographer in Austria.

2) For the first time ever, women participate in a truck-tugging competition in Israel. (video)

3) In Saudi Arabia, men and women are not allowed to mingle in public, which can make shopping for lingerie a little strange (audio)

4) Two New York Times journalists investigate pot pies (video)

5) Forget speed dating. Air New Zealand launches an air-dating venture dubbed "love at first flight"

6) A green tree frog receives emergency life-saving surgery

7) The Top 10 Misquoted Movie Lines

Lost: Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), Sawyer (Josh Holloway), and Kate (Evangeline Lily) were only three of the many characters tied up in last night's season finale, which we loved ten times and hated ten times. We can explain. ABC

 

by Glenn McDonald

ABC's Lost wrapped up its fifth season last night in typical fashion, with an ambitiously irritating (or is that irritatingly ambitious?) season finale. My love/hate relationship with the show continues to grow. Nothing else on TV elicits such strong reactions from my spot in the recliner, and I suppose that's what it's finally all about.

Here, I present a mathematical breakdown of last night's top ten and bottom ten moments.

Warning: Lots of insider-y fanspeak, arcane references, and several dozen spoilers dead ahead.

The top ten moments of the finale, and the bottom ten, after the jump...

Continue reading "The 'Lost' Season Finale: Quantifying The Love-Hate Factor" >

by Linda Holmes

While watching the above clip of Tom Hanks on The Daily Show, I was appalled -- appalled -- to hear Hanks admit that there is no such thing as a Harvard professor of symbology, the credential boasted by his character, Robert Langdon, in Angels And Demons.

This was very disillusioning, and forced me to abandon my twenty-year plan to become a Harvard symbologist, which I believed was on track when I correctly figured out that on Survivor, fire represents life.

Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon: Not actually a Harvard symbologist. Sony/Columbia

 

But as I considered the matter further, I realized that giving a character a credential of some kind is a good way to make him believable and worth listening to. Perhaps the problem with some characters who are not taken seriously is that their resumés have not been fleshed out.

I am, as always, here to help. Thus, the following movie characters are hereby granted completely bogus credentials that will make it easier for them to get the respect they deserve.

M'lynn Eatenton (Sally Field), Steel Magnolias: Bh.D (Boo Hoo Doctor)

John McClane (Bruce Willis), Die Hard: International Punch To The Baccalaureate

Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker), Fast & Furious: Bachelor's, vroom-vroom-vroom-a cum laude

Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Scream: Distinguished Lecturer, BOO!logy

Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage), National Treasure: Professor Of Abuse Of Actual Background In Cryptology

Elliott Moore (Mark Wahlberg), The Happening: Susurrarborologist (Tree Whisperer)

Connor Mead (Matthew McConaughey), Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past: [took all classes pass/fail]

Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), Sex And The City: Visiting Professor Of Tutu Thermodynamics

Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), Twilight: Master's Degree, Pale-ontology (alternate title: Pallid-ictorian)

Jack Travin (Keanu Reeves), Speed: Adjunct Professor, Department Of Relief, Division Of There Was No Baby, It Was Full Of Cans

30 Rock: Tina Fey's beloved Emmy-winner is only one of 11 network shows ending seasons tonight. NBC

 

by Linda Holmes

It's hard to identify the end of the regular TV season anymore, what with the proliferation of cable channels and the rise of split seasons, partial seasons, half-year reality shows, and everything else that has unraveled traditional scheduling.

(Fun fact: According to The Futon Critic's wonderful listing system, there have been only three nights so far in all of 2009 that didn't feature either a season/series finale or a season/series premiere somewhere on the dial.)

But if you had to pick one night to represent the end of the 2008-09 season, it would probably be tonight, when eleven network series will depart for the time being.

The roll call: Bones, My Name Is Earl, Parks and Recreation, Smallville, CSI, The Office, 30 Rock, Grey's Anatomy, Hell's Kitchen, Supernatural, and CSI: NY.

What to watch?

We run down some thoughts, after the jump...

Continue reading "Finale-Palooza: On One Crowded Night, Eleven Seasons End" >

by Neda Ulaby

Admit it. You want to know what Monkey See blogger Linda Holmes sounds like.

This is where Culturetopia comes in.

Every week, Linda and I work with NPR arts producers and editors to curate our new-ish podcast. You can subscribe to the podcast, or if you're more of an instant-gratification person, you can listen here.

Culturetopia is a collection of some of our favorite NPR stories about music, movies, art, TV and more. This week, we hear about a potential "sonic musical social castration." That's how one Detroit musician describes the possible closing of one of the oldest continuously operating jazz clubs in the world.

Location scout Kokayi Ampah tells host Michelle Norris about his search for the perfect beach for the movie Flags of Our Fathers and the most poignantly lonely tree in Ohio for The Shawshank Redemption.

And have you ever wondered exactly how to use the expression "Dag?" Novelist Colson Whitehead explains, as he brings us into the world of his latest book, Sag Harbor, about black teenagers summering in the Hamptons.

And we learn another new word: "bookaneers." They were the scurvy book pirates who brawled for the first manuscripts of Charles Dickens' writings when they first arrived from England. Matthew Pearl lightly fictionalized the author's trip to America in 1867 in his new book, The Last Dickens, and he describes Dickens as the era's biggest rock star.

We also return to the post you saw right in this space a week ago to talk about superhero fan films.

Finally, film critic Ken Turan is no different from most other earthlings, in that he adored the new Star Trek movie. You can hear his thoughts about its complicated humanism by beaming Culturetopia into your MP3 player.

by Linda Holmes

Many of us have DVRs these days, so we can pause live television whenever we like, should we suddenly have the urge to fetch some celery sticks or a nonfat yogurt. Or, you know, something less healthy. For those who don't watch their TV that way, there are always commercials, right?

But what if you don't have a DVR and you love commercials? What if you can't tear yourself away from the latest adventures of the Geico gecko but you're craving some Pringles?

This is where you must become your own investigator and locate the hidden snack breaks within your favorite shows.

1. American Idol: When the judges are talking.

As soon as you hear Randy Jackson say "Yo yo yo," leap from your seat and run for the kitchen. Make sure you have a drink in your hand by the time Paula starts talking. (Ironic, I know.) This schedule should land you back in your place on the couch by the time Simon receives a round of lusty booing suitable for a disliked European monarch.

2. House: When someone says it might be an autoimmune disorder.

House almost always features one medical fake-out about halfway through the show, where they think they've figured out what's wrong with the patient (fell and got a bicycle lodged in his esophagus!), and then they later learn that it can't be that (turns out he couldn't ride a bicycle!). Often, this misdirection has something to do with an autoimmune disorder. You can microwave a baked potato while they sort it out.

Three more, and your chance to contribute, after the jump...

Continue reading "Finding The Hidden Snack Breaks In Your Favorite TV Shows" >

Comic books: Or maybe you'd like to see them called something else? Just not "monthlies," please. iStockphoto.com

 

by Glen Weldon

Oh, sure: Those of us who read them just call them "comic books." But those who produce, distribute and sell them tend to call them something else.

The industry needs to distinguish the single issues of ongoing titles that come out every Wednesday (i.e., classic comic books) from their heftier cousins: the graphic novels, anthologies and bound collections of single issues that eventually get published in trade paperback format.

The thing is, they can't agree on what to call those single issues. Currently, different publishers and retailers toss around at least five different terms for the classic, three-staple funnybook.

This will not stand.

The time for humoring such higgledy-piggledy laxity in the nomenclature is over. Let's help the comics industry out.

After the jump: The five most commonly used terms, why none of them are any good, and how you can help.

Continue reading "What To Call the Comic Book?" >

Aziz Ansari: If this man tells you he has 25,000 Twitter followers, you should believe him. Michael Buckner/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Comedian Aziz Ansari (who plays the odious Tom on NBC's Parks And Recreation) went to see Star Trek at an advertised IMAX theater this weekend. When he discovered that it wasn't the giant screen that he (and, I dare say, many people if not most people) associate with the term "IMAX," but merely a regular-sized screen that was "IMAX" only in that it had improved digital sound and picture quality, he got angry.

According to his account of the incident (which is filled with profanity from the title forward, so be warned), Ansari went to customer service after the movie and asked for his five dollars back -- not the entire price of his ticket, but the premium he paid to see it in IMAX, on the basis that he didn't get what he thought he was getting. He was refused.

He says he even warned the manager that he had 25,000 Twitter followers, and that if the theater wasn't willing to refund his five bucks, he'd explain his side of the story to them. Which he did, on Monday evening.

And by late Tuesday, the CEO of IMAX had been prodded to defend the smaller IMAX screens in a statement in which he claimed, in effect, that nobody except Aziz Ansari cares how big an IMAX screen is, and that nobody is paying those five dollars because they necessarily assume that IMAX means a large screen.

If that's the case, it's a bad break for them that the only guy in the country to feel ripped off happens to have an extremely popular Twitter stream.

How not to respond to a social media firestorm, after the jump...

Continue reading "IMAX: You Pay Your Money, But Do You Take Your Chances?" >

Lost: Michael Emerson's Ben Linus is only one of many characters this season forced me to lose track of. ABC

 

by Linda Holmes

Tonight marks the finale of the penultimate season of Lost, ABC's Emmy-winning drama that has, over five seasons, constructed a story so complicated that it makes the black-oil mythology of The X-Files look like an episode of Full House.

Sadly, sometime this season, the show dumped me, because I wouldn't commit.

Let's back up.

Once a hyper-dramatic Gilligan's Island, where the main concerns were survival and ideally escape (at times, all that was missing was the coconut radio), Lost is now a maze of allegories and coincidences and time travel and shadowy villains who may or may not even manifest as human beings.

But while the show's critical acclaim has rebounded after a drop around the beginning of the third season, the ratings have slid from an average of about 16 million viewers in the first season to about 11 million in this one.

And in truth, more than ever, it's designed and built to only lose viewers over time, and to weed out the wimps. The wimps like me.

Changing my mind about an old theory, sort of, and some "spoilers" about what I can decipher of the current season, after the jump...

Continue reading "Why I Admire 'Lost' For Dumping Me Over My Failure To Commit" >

American Gladiators: It's clear that you can't make the movie without the padded jousting weapons, right? NBC

 

by Linda Holmes

Movie adaptations of TV shows aren't notoriously reliable sources of money at the box office. In fact, they're often sources of spectacularly memorable bad ideas. Remember 1994's Car 54, Where Are You?, starring David Johansen, a.k.a. Buster Poindexter, of "Hot Hot Hot" fame?

But then, of course, they occasionally do a little better.

Still, I suspect that even the Brendan Fraser Dudley Do-Right movie may have been a better idea than the just-announced film version of American Gladiators.

In case you are (tragically) not familiar with the Gladiators format, it's basically a game show where the contestants face off against the show's resident "Gladiators," giant in-house bruisers with names like "Nitro."

Less than one minute into this video, which is the first-ever episode of the show in full, you will see two people jousting with what appear to be giant Q-Tips. And then there's some wrestling, and a guy kicking another guy off a pedestal.

Now...what, exactly, is a movie version going to entail? According to Variety, the idea is "an action story that takes place inside the world [show creator Johnny] Ferraro has created."

My guess is that the "world" at issue is the "world" of giant muscular dudes fighting wiry pharmaceutical salespeople, meaning that the movie will go something like this.

The plot, predicted, after the jump...

Continue reading "How Have We Survived Without An 'American Gladiators' Movie?" >

by Linda Holmes

Perhaps you are a little surprised that President Barack Obama made jokes about Dick Cheney's hunting accident and marrying David Axelrod when he stepped up to the microphone at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on Saturday night.

(Interestingly, I thought one of his more successful jokes got one of the more modest laughs: "In the next hundred days, I will strongly consider losing my cool.")

So step up and judge for yourself: was he funny? Part One of his presentation is above, and Part Two is after the jump.

Continue reading "Step Right Up And Judge The Hilarity (?) Of Your President" >

Star Trek beams into theaters!

Or beams itself to top of weekend box office!

Or maybe beams to top of chart!

Or possibly beams up $72.5 million in first weekend!

Sure, the word "galactic" put up a fight, with the Associated Press and New York Daily News on board. (Get it? ON BOARD!)

UPI went with the idea that the movie boldly goes to $76.5 million, which was picked up by AFP, which noted that it boldly goes to number one. MTV went the same way. Hilarious!

(I must give an honorable mention to my favorite Star Trek headline so far, in which the New York Times made clear that grammar is more important than actually making the correct pop-culture reference and called its review "A Franchise Goes Boldly Backward.")

In the end, however, my unofficial tally suggests that the tightly contested weekend race for most widely used Star Trek pun went to "beams up." Congratulations, "beams up"!

by Linda Holmes

For some reason, people really idealize TV moms. "June Cleaver" this and "Clair Huxtable" that, like we'd all be so lucky if we just had the moms people have on TV.

This attitude gravely underestimates the dark side of the TV mom. So in honor of Mother's Day, let's look at ten of the many reasons your real mom is better than a TV mom.

1. Your real mom would never encourage you to grotesquely humiliate yourself in a recording studio.

Look at this. Seriously. Look at it. Carol Brady has absolutely no compunction about standing there, bopping her blonde head, as her children commit to tape a song that will live in infamy, while wearing clothes suitable for some kind of documentary about The Unclaimed Clothing Of The Seventh Circle Of The Thrift Store.

Who bought Peter that shirt? His mom, in all likelihood. His spiteful, unfeeling mom. And what is Cindy? An eight-year-old go-go dancer? Nice boots, "Mom." (For a real-life counterargument, see Thanks, Mom at NPR's Picture Show photoblog.)

This is not to even mention how many times you would have to kill me before I would sing the line "Every boy's a man inside / a girl's a woman, too" in front of my mother. My mother and I keep that sort of thing to ourselves.

Letting the handyman hang out, forgetting about you entirely, and other things your real mom would probably never do, after the jump...

Continue reading "Ten Ways Real Moms Are Much Better Than TV Moms" >

Star Trek: The new J.J. Abrams film is only one of a recent spate of successful origin stories that advance the story by retreating. Paramount Pictures

 

by Mark Blankenship

These days, whether at the movies or on television, you can't swing a cat without hitting an origin story.

The current season of Lost has focused on how the Dharma Initiative and Ben Linus began, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine reveals its point of view right there in the title.

And of course, half the allure of J.J. Abrams' new Star Trek film, opening today, is its promise to show us how Kirk and Spock met, how Uhura got her job, and so forth.

But these are more than just origin stories. All three properties are interrupting the chronology of long-running narratives to tell us how things began. And since none of them started their stories at square one to begin with, many of us are learning the early histories of popular characters for the very first time.

That's especially true for people like me, who rely on movies to get their X-Men information, and who aren't so deep into Star Trek lore that they'll read a novelization about Kirk and Spock's teenage years.

So why is this type of origin tale so satisfying? Why is it interesting to begin a narrative in medias res, then suddenly bounce back to the beginning?

(SPOILERS AHEAD!) (For Lost thus far and for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, that is. We won't spoil Star Trek.)

Why origin stories are so appealing, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Appeal Of Origin Stories: Of Kirk, Locke, And Wolverine" >

by Linda Holmes

One of the interesting entertainment discussion points of the week has been a Slate piece by Jonah Weiner, arguing that 30 Rock has a "weird conservative streak" (to quote the subhead).

Weiner argues that 30 Rock often shows the liberal politics of Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) to be less effective or less realistic than the conservative politics of her boss, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin). He says: "Liz's would-be adolescent paradise--and, with it, her liberal-feminist instincts--is ultimately cast as a neurosis she needs to escape, lest she die alone and unloved in her apartment, choking on a sandwich."

The problem with this thesis is that the show isn't about politics, either liberal or conservative. If it has a theme -- and it's hazardous to insist that a show like this actually does, when its top priority is so clearly to get laughs -- that theme is temptation, and whatever it says about politics circles right back to the things that tempt Liz to do things that, for whatever reason, she knows she shouldn't.

What makes 30 Rock tick and what doesn't, after the jump...

Continue reading "'30 Rock': The Question Is Temptation, Not Partisan Politics" >

Oprah's giveaway: She undoubtedly meant it as a more positive event than it has turned out to be thus far. Katy Winn/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Oprah Winfrey probably thought she would see nothing but an explosion of gratitude when she tried to treat the entire Internet to two pieces of KFC's new Kentucky Grilled Chicken by promoting a downloadable coupon (no longer available) that could be redeemed at "participating restaurants." Little did she realize.

It appears that nobody has learned yet that we love free stuff.

Disaster strikes, after the jump...

Continue reading "Lessons Learned From The Great Free-Chicken Fiasco Of 2009" >

Treme: David Simon's new show will feature Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters, both of whom were on a show called The Wire, which you may have heard of. Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

It's been a little over a year since The Wire ended its five-season run on HBO — with nary an Emmy to its name, and with some critics calling it the best show in the history of television.

And now, much to the delight of everyone who doesn't find watching C.S.I. quite the same, The Wire's creator, David Simon, will bring a new series to HBO this fall.

Treme is a drama following musicians in a post-Katrina New Orleans, and Bunk fans will be happy to know that Wendell Pierce is heading up the show. Clarke Peters, whom you may know as Lester Freamon, will be on hand as well.

(If you don't know what "Treme" means, it's a New Orleans neighborhood.)

The rest of the cast is not a collection of slouches, either: Melissa Leo was Oscar-nominated for Frozen River; Steve Zahn is one of the most oddly energetic actors working; and Khandi Alexander was in Simon's Wire precursor The Corner, but was also hilarious on NewsRadio.

by Linda Holmes

If it's Wednesday, this must be Culturetopia we're in. Yup, it's time for NPR's weekly arts-etcetera podcast, a roundup of our favorite NPR arts and entertainment stories from last week.

In this week's installment, arts reporter (and jazz enthusiast) Felix Contreras and I talked about:

• the Hunt For Gollum fan video released this past weekend;

• Anika Noni Rose's upcoming gig as a Disney princess;

• Terry Gross's Fresh Air interview with Gabriel Byrne of HBO's In Treatment;

• author Colm Toibin's new novel Brooklyn, about a journey from Ireland to ... well, Brooklyn;

• a recent installment of the NPR Music jazz-sampler series Take Five, in which NPR editor Tom Cole talks about the recordings that introduced him to the genre;

• a commemorative ride on New York City's fabled A train, to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the birth of "Take The A Train" composer Duke Ellington; and

• from right here at Monkey See, the amazing kids of the PS 22 chorus, with their performance of "Eye Of The Tiger."

Sound good? Have a listen right here, if you like:

Or if automation is your thing, subscribe to Culturetopia from its podcast home page.

If you have reactions to the new podcast, please let us know below. What works for you, what doesn't?

by Glen Weldon

Last Sunday's launch of an ambitious, technically impressive Tolkien-geek fan film shows how far the medium has come.

Where once uberfans were content to tromp out into the backyard to videotape themselves lightsabering the snot out of one another, new technologies have rendered the days of rough in-camera edits and hand-puppet dianogas obsolete. And even though any Fett with a Flip camera can turn out a respectable product, many fan films represent sizable investments of time, resources and effort.

Take, for example, the genre of comic book fan film.

Batman: Dead End (above) is perhaps the most famous example of the form. The 8-minute film went live on the Web right around Comic-Con 2003, setting off a nerdsplosion of interest in director Sandy Collora, who's gone on to helm an actual, you know, movie.

To my way of thinking, Dead End is notable for two reasons:

Dispelling the Memory of Adam West's Bat-Belly
Dead End proved that simple, true-to-the-comics circus tights can look great — as long as the guy who's sporting them has 4 percent body fat and biceps the size of your head.

Okay, Did NOT See That Coming
Right around the three minute mark — after Batman and one very aggressively eyebrowed Joker trade blows and bon mots, events take a turn. A silly, silly turn.

After the jump: We scour the tubes for the best and the brightest superhero fan films. Also the weirdest.

Continue reading "Tights, Camera, Action: We Note Notable Superhero Fan Films" >

Mindy Kaling: After demonstrating her chops on The Office, she's getting a deal for her own show. Michael Buckner/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Just last week, while writing the post about Bea Arthur and the changes in the landscape for women in comedy, I thought about Mindy Kaling, who plays Kelly Kapoor in NBC's The Office and is also one of the show's writers.

And I thought, "How does Mindy Kaling not have her own show? If Mindy Kaling were an equally talented fellow, I believe she would have her own show."

So: Big points to NBC for wisely signing her to a deal that will allow her to develop her own comedy show while (whew!) she remains on The Office, at least for the moment.

Between its deals with Tina Fey, Amy Poehler (whose Parks and Recreation was recently renewed), and now Kaling, it certainly seems like NBC could wind up as the smart-lady comedy network, and considering how close they have seemed in recent seasons to becoming the Howie Mandel network, that's a step in the right direction.

More generally, there's been a definite drop-off in the number of comedies available on the networks in recent seasons, but if the economy doesn't improve and people increasingly seek out pleasant distractions, that could change. If it did, where would you turn for new material? Who else should get his or her own show?

Madonna: You can't accuse her of playing it safe. Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

In fairness to Madonna, this is her arrival at Sunday night's Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum Of Art (a.k.a. the "Met Ball"), and it tends to be a night of fairly attention-getting clothing. She didn't wear it to the dentist's office or anything.

Nevertheless.

I think I understand the bubble dress, and I think I understand the boots. In theory. Though perhaps not together.

It's the...bunny ears? Antennae? Leafy branches? With the little bun of hair sticking up. I mean, heaven knows, we can't have too many people who like to get out there and do their own thing, but really, when I am imagining you munching on a big cartoon carrot when you're supposed to fit into the theme of "Models as Muses," something has gone wrong.

by Linda Holmes

That, up there, is one Constantine Maroulis, doing one of my least favorite performances in the history of American Idol, back in April 2005.

I found this preposterous slow-jam "My Funny Valentine" so grotesque that I vented about it in an e-mail I have pulled from the dustbin of history (which was addressed to my pal, Stephen Thompson, editor of the Webby-award-winning NPR Music, who had earlier randomly subject-lined an e-mail to me, "Let's Rock This Thing: A Personal Message From Constantine Maroulis"):

Well. What's interesting about that "interesting" arrangement of "My Funny Valentine" is that it reminds me eerily of the way "The Christmas Song" (chestnuts roasting and all that) was performed by Hootie and the Blowfish on "A Very Special Christmas 3." I just can't tolerate his appallingly phony performance style. It's ridiculous to the point of being comical and totally distracting. "Not if you care for me-ah!" Furthermore, it is once again a destruction of a perfectly perfect melody that *does not need help*, thank you very much.

In a development to be filed under "Shows You What I Know," Constantine Maroulis has now been nominated for a Tony for Best Performance By A Leading Actor In A Musical for his work in Rock Of Ages. Let's rock this thing!

You know how you would feel if you woke up tomorrow and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction had been given to, say, the guy who does the Shamwow infomercials? That's how I feel today.

Among the other big winners in the nominee derby: musicals Billy Elliott and Shrek, and the play God Of Carnage and its entire cast, including James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, Marcia Gay Harden and Hope Davis.

But not Ryan Seacrest. Yet.

Jay Leno: Just one of the participants in an unappealing practice the Los Angeles Times wrote about yesterday. NBC Universal

 

by Linda Holmes

When you watch a standard late-night talk show — maybe you like David Letterman, or maybe you're more of a Jay Leno person, or maybe, like me, you're into the new Jimmy Fallon show — and you hear a joke you like, where do you assume it came from?

The obvious answer would be ... the writers, right? The ones who are in the credits, the ones who compete for Emmys every year?

As The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday, the answer might be more like, "Some guy who isn't getting any credit and is being paid $75 for his trouble."

Of course, not giving credit to the freelancers they're using naturally creates the impression that the jokes are being written by the credited writers. What else would you assume, if you didn't know this was standard practice?

One way to look at this is that everybody participates voluntarily. The freelancers the Times spoke to didn't seem to be all that concerned about it; one was convinced it helped him get other jobs, and anyone who's ever done anything she loved for very little money might recognize herself in the story of how he photocopied the first check he ever got for writing for David Letterman.

But the other way of looking at it is that this practice is massively exploitative, that it's essentially taking advantage of people's desire to feel validated and to get attention. As the Daily Show producer quoted in the story speculates — they don't use freelancers on that show, by the way — there's a risk that shows are "stringing them along" with the suggestion that all that work will earn them a staff job, when it won't.

(The piece doesn't mention whether anyone has ever hired a staff writer this way; it would be interesting to know.)

Conan O'Brien, the union angle, and the pride of the comedian, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Unsung, Underpaid, Eternally Hopeful Late-Night Writers" >

Battles Of The Bulge: The curious collision of toys and food. David T. Cole

 

by Linda Holmes

So you've got some little Army men, and you've got some food. What do you do?

If you are my friend and former colleague David Cole, you create a photo series called Battles Of The Bulge, in which you explore such incidents as The Battle of Chili Basin, pictured above.

The Internet: Looking at dinner in ways you never thought of.

by Linda Holmes

NBC gave its "upfront" presentation today...sort of. Normally, this is where you would get the fall schedule, and for those of you who have been following the fate of the ratings-challenged, critically adored, bubble-riding Chuck, this is when the answer should have come.

It didn't. Instead, the network unveiled some new shows, renewed some existing shows (among them the recently launched Parks and Recreation and Southland), and told fans of Chuck and Law & Order that they'd have to wait for final answers.

The new series include medical dramas called Trauma and Mercy (please note that Trauma And Mercy would make a pretty good name for your indie band, if you are looking), but the posted preview that grabs my attention is for a comedy called Community. Because...it actually looks funny.

A curious pedigree and the charmed life of the E! host, after the jump...

Continue reading "A Comedy Preview With Comedy: NBC Unveils 'Community'" >

Do leaks matter?: This weekend's release of Wolverine provides at least one data point. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

This weekend's box office was worth watching for a few reasons.

First, it's the first official weekend of the summer movie season, with X-Men Origins: Wolverine acting as the first big summer release. Second, that very same film suffered a highly publicized leak of an unfinished work print that many feared could spell disaster. Third, it's been a big spring for movies, with box office up substantially over last year, and this might be our first opportunity to see whether that's going to carry over to summer. If all that weren't enough, you might even wonder whether fear of the flu could keep people at home.

So what happened? Wolverine made $87 million, and made it in spite of some truly dismal reviews: a Metacritic score of 44 and a Rotten Tomatoes score of 37.

As HitFix notes here, the movie's opening isn't in line with the bow of Iron Man last year at nearly $100 million, but it's a perfectly respectable superhero kick-off nonetheless.

It's hard to know what the effects of the leaked print were without visiting the hypothetical universe in which it doesn't take place, but when you consider that Watchmen, which was even more relentlessly hyped than Wolverine, made a little less than $56 million in its opening weekend, it's hard to feel persuaded that the unauthorized copy that made its way onto the Internet was particularly devastating.

What happened elsewhere? The only other big release of the weekend was Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past, which made an estimated $15.3 million, which isn't dreadful but did represent, as Box Office Mojo notes, "the least-attended start of all Matthew McConaughey romantic comedies." Ouch.

by Mark Blankenship

If it had aired in the 1980s, then Harper's Island, CBS' murder-mystery series (moving from Thursdays to Saturdays as of this weekend), might have been lambasted for ruining America with its onscreen violence and macabre plot about a mysterious killer who picks off a guest at a fancy resort wedding every week.

On paper, the show certainly sounds shocking. The killer's victims -- who include a host of townie redshirts, as well as one principal character per week -- die in gruesome ways. In the pilot episode, Harry Hamlin, playing the drunkard uncle of a poor-boy groom marrying his wealthy childhood sweetheart, got his entire lower body hacked off. The next week, a priest got beheaded while hanging upside down from a tree.

And yet... the show isn't shocking it's all. It's actually kind of... funny.

Hear us out, after the jump...

Continue reading "On Campy 'Harper's Island,' Weekly Murders Are Hilarious!" >

by Glen Weldon

This Sunday, a fan-made prequel to the Lord of the Rings film trilogy will go live on the web. Two years in the making, The Hunt for Gollum was a labor of profoundly nerdy love for its British creators, who spent a reported $4,500 (£3,000) making the thing — and don't intend to make a single copper piece off of it. (Check Laura Sydell's report on the flick from last night's ATC.)

If the trailer's anything to go by, it'll be, at the very least, pretty to look at. The makeup and costuming seem mightily impressive. (The filmmakers saved on costs by sharing wardrobe with another Tolkien fan film called Born of Hope, which is still in the works).

Fan films, like fan fiction, have been around a long time, and most savvy filmmakers see them for what they are: potent emblems of the devotion their creations have inspired in a passionate few, not to mention a conveniently low-maintenance way to keep those creations alive in the public consciousness.

George Lucas, for example, now encourages fans to come play in his filmic sandbox by sponsoring a yearly fan film award.

But the Tolkien estate — and New Line, the studio behind the Peter Jackson films — have historically been quick on the draw with cease-and-desist letters. And there's a couple of things about this particular fan film that might draw the Eye of Sauron.

After the jump: A tale of two prequels ...

Continue reading "Gollum! We Hates Nasssty Copyright Lawyerss! Gollum!" >