by Linda Holmes

I first came across the site There I Fixed It via Metafilter, and then through the comments there, I found the Home Inspection Nightmares section of the site for This Old House, and then I spent about an hour there, looking at stuff like this home repair, which is -- spoiler -- not an approved use of a two-liter Coke bottle.

Both sites are lovely afternoon-brightening bursts of silliness. They will also make you want to be really careful about any homes you might purchase in the future, because people are not to be trusted.

by Linda Holmes

Tonight marks the return of PBS's Nova scienceNOW (hey, that's how they type it; I don't know), the science magazine show featuring host (and astrophysicist, and Stewart/Colbert favorite) Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The season premiere includes a discussion of synthetic diamonds; a visit with Luis von Ahn, the computer scientist who developed those little pictures of squiggly letters that you have to type in to prove you're not a robot; a look back at the anthrax attacks of several years ago; and -- best of all -- a close-up look at AutoTune, including the AutoTuning of Tyson's own very bad singing. The von Ahn and AutoTune segments are both utterly charming, and Tyson is a marvelous sport.

Check your local PBS listings, but Nova scienceNOW is generally airing alongside the regular Nova season premiere, "Musical Minds," which Oliver Sacks discussed on The Daily Show last night. I haven't seen "Musical Minds" yet, but I have read the Sacks book Musicophilia on which it is based, and The New York Times, while expressing some reservations, calls it "full of fascinating information."

So if you're the kind of person who likes to sit down for a little nerd viewing, this might be your lucky evening.

My Dinner With Andre: Are you finding it a little loud at the multiplex? A good conversation might be just the thing. Courtesy of the Criterion Collection

 

by Glenn McDonald

If the world were at all fair, or even moderately discerning, Michael Bay would not be a movie director at all. Instead, he would be where he belongs, as technical supervisor of an industrial demolitions crew, blowing stuff up for a living. As is stands, however, Mike is still making "movies" such as the new Transformers sequel, which if I have my notes right, is actually titled Transformers: Assaulting Your Senses for 147 Minutes.

Summer action blockbusters, with their aggressive FX and frantic editing, are migraines waiting to happen. If you're looking to go the other way for an evening, may I suggest the new Criterion edition of My Dinner with Andre, director Louis Malle's 1981 indie triumph. Here's a movie that more or less does the impossible: It consists entirely of two friends having a quiet conversation over dinner, and it's riveting.

What the new release can give you, and what's been in the movie all along, after the jump...

Continue reading "'My Dinner with Andre': The Antidote to Summer Movie Overdose" >

The remote DVR: The Supreme Court yesterday cleared the way for a new cable option. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

One of the few drawbacks of watching television on a DVR rather than live is that you have to have a physical device -- either a separate product like a TiVo or a hard drive within your cable box -- that stores the programs you want to watch. Yesterday, that drawback got a step closer to elimination when the Supreme Court declined to consider a legal challenge from content providers to a plan for the "remote DVR."

Cablevision in New York is preparing to launch a program where, instead of a hard drive in your house, your recorded programs would be stored on your cable company's remote servers, so you wouldn't have to have a physical hard drive. Cablevision says it will make DVR use easier and less expensive.

And the network and cable content providers seem to agree, given that they're pursuing a legal challenge, claiming that it's one thing for you to record and save their programs in your house for personal use (not something they always admitted you had any right to do, by the way), but it's another thing for Cablevision to save the programs for you offsite. That, they say, violates their copyright.

(Interestingly, it looks like one of the important features of this program is that Cablevision won't simply store one central copy of something that can be accessed by any of the people who have asked to record it. In order to preserve this idea that it's just off-site storage and not unlicensed on-demand programming, they have to store a separate identical copy of the same show for each subscriber.)

The broadcasters lost the last round of maneuvering and asked the Supreme Court to intervene, which, yesterday, it decided not to do. That means Cablevision gets to roll out the remote-DVR option for its subscribers later this year.

That could mean big changes for the existing viewership model.

The possible effects of remote storage and the hard life of a broadcast (or even cable) network, after the jump...

Continue reading "A Victory For DVRs Means Even More Bad News For Networks" >

by Linda Holmes

Having just seen My Sister's Keeper, I feel I am perfectly situated at the moment to work on the development of a taxonomy of crying in the movies. This movie -- and if this is a spoiler for you, then I cannot help you -- contains a great deal of crying.

My Sister's Keeper: If you want to study movie crying, you could do a lot worse. New Line Cinema

 

Not all crying is the same, of course. Some crying is pitiful, while some crying is angry. Also, some crying is well-acted, while some crying is Luke Skywalker saying, "That's not true...that's impossible!" with all the authentic, raw emotion you would get if you were to cast Ryan Seacrest in a production of King Lear.

So let us review. We will look at examples where available.

The Brave Lip Quiver Of The Apparently Doomed

There's actually a lot of this one in My Sister's Keeper. This is how you cry when you are very sick, but you don't want anyone to worry about you. It involves quite a bit of tearing up and a break in your voice, but no sobbing. For you are brave. Very often, the effect is to make the other person burst into wet, sloppy tears through the sheer force of your noble bravery. At which point: you win.

The Masculine Welling-Up That Doesn't Make You Any Less Of A Dude, Man

Think of John McClane in the bathroom in Die Hard. Sure, he's picking glass out of his feet. But the real reason he's weepy is that he's begun to realize that he truly loves his estranged wife and regrets that he may be massacred at Christmas by a colorful band of international terrorists before he gets a chance to confess that he shouldn't have been such a jerk about her taking a new job. The worst thing about dying at the hands of a colorful band of international terrorists: unfinished conversations.

The Soft Whimper Of True Love

I apologize for reminding you of "You had me at hello," which we are so close to being entirely finished with, now that it has had its full run of regular overexposure followed by its full run of ironic overexposure, but this is the form of crying you get right when Renee Zellweger says, "You had me at hello." Earlier in the movie, she cried the Happy Tears Of Hooray, Hooray, I Am Glad You Proposed, but only true love makes her whimper. (Note: she is responding to a Masculine Welling-Up, see above. You can tell that's what it is because he cries while saying "tough competitors.")

Major breakdowns, Meg Ryan, human biology, and much more, after the jump...

Continue reading "A Taxonomy Of Cinematic Crying, Blubbering, And Weeping" >

by Linda Holmes

I'm not going to beat around the bush: I can't remember the last time I wrote so much about death over a five-day period. But interestingly enough, of all the celebrities who have died recently -- Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson being the most noted ones -- the one I was watching in a current project was Billy Mays.

Mays, who died on Sunday, was one of the two stars of Discovery's Pitchmen, which followed the adventures he had with Anthony "Sully" Sullivan, another ubiquitous infomercial star. Each week, they'd find a new product and try to help develop it for direct-response sale on television (that's pitchman-speak for "infomercial"). Last week, Billy and Sully helped Survivor winner Ethan Zohn develop his idea for a two-chambered cereal bowl that holds the milk separately from the cereal to keep the cereal from getting soggy. Seeing a guy get all excited about how his invention is going to revolutionize cereal eating, only to test-market it and find that everyone says, "Looks like a dog bowl"? It's not meaningful, but it's a little entertaining.

I'm not trying to make Billy Mays more than he was; he made ads for OxiClean and the Awesome Auger, and he yelled, and he was sort of goofy and obnoxious. He was a huckster, but an unapologetic and good-humored huckster. In the above clip from The Tonight Show just last Wednesday night, he has great fun with Sully and Conan O'Brien demonstrating his total faith in the stuff he sells, along with his touchy feelings about the Shamwow.

Not an artist, but a guy I'd grown sort of fond of, and one I'll miss watching.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen: Is there a gap between audiences and critics, or do they just have different jobs? Paramount Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

An AP article argues today that Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen "sets a new standard for the gulf between what reviewers and mass audiences like."

The film is on its way to make insane amounts of money, while critics have mostly hated it. Rob Moore, vice-chairman of Paramount (the movie's distributor), offers the smug claim that audiences "kind of roll their eyes at the critics and say, 'You have no idea what you're talking about.'"

But is that right? That audiences read reviews of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen and think, "You don't know what you're talking about"?

Or do audiences understand what critics mean by "good," and simply think that's not the kind of "good" they're looking for on a Friday night?

Imagine a restaurant review of McDonalds. Now think about how much money McDonalds makes. It seems like a stretch to assume that the disparity means that people who eat at McDonalds are rolling their eyes at restaurant critics and thinking they don't know what they're talking about.

That's because not every purchase is conceived as an attempt to buy quality, either with burgers or with movie tickets. Sometimes you just want what you want.

Moore insists that critics "forget what the goal of the movie was. The goal of the movie is to entertain and have fun." This is a common argument leveled against movie critics — awfully common, for one that's so easy to prove false.

Some counterexamples, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Transformers' Opens Big: Does That Mean Critics Are Clueless?" >

by Marc Hirsh

Unless you're a weird-rock aficionado, it's likely that you've only heard of the Monks (if at all) if you shelled out the big bucks for Rhino Records' Nuggets boxed set from 1998. There, in the midst of all manner of garage bands trying their damnedest to ape the Rolling Stones and Yardbirds, was "Complication," a sonically aggressive, sloganeering, borderline fascistic stomp that sounded like nothing else on the collection's four discs.

It'd be hard to find four discs of anything that sounded like what the Monks were throwing down in 1966. The Monks -- five American servicemen stationed in Germany who helped pioneer the concept band by performing in robes and points-for-commitment tonsures -- couldn't pull it off themselves, folding after a single album.

But Black Monk Time (newly reissued) made the most of the Monks' one shot at glory. The beats anticipated the Stooges in their focused primitivism; Gary Burger's raspy tenor would have sounded amiable if he weren't so unsettlingly weird; the songs were built around bitter satire, cross-linguistic puns and, most disturbing of all, sex; and Dave Day's electric banjo was... wait, what?

Anyway, it was brilliant and fleeting. So what better way to toast the Monks' renewed availability than by celebrating the one-album wonder? Below, we honor those performers who were limited to a lone full-length release and took the opportunity to burn brightly before burning out. Or breaking up. Or vanishing. Or dying.

Note 1: This is not about releasing one good album during the course of the band's lifespan. It's about releasing one album, period. Accompanying the rerelease of Black Monk Time is a collection of unreleased Monks demos. Doesn't count. Nor do compilations of singles, B-sides, live performances or what have you. If it was put together after the fact to capitalize on an act's popularity or importance or continuing contractual obligation, it doesn't count. In terms of going into the studio for the purpose of recording and releasing a record, it starts and ends with one.

Note 2: This is not intended to be any kind of definitive list. It suffers from being limited by my own biases and tastes. So there's no claim that these are the best one-album wonders, only that one-album wonders exist, and these are some of them. I invite you to list your own favorites in the comments.

With that said, let's hear some music, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Monks, And A Sampling Of Other One-Album Wonders" >

by Mark Blankenship

Look, I'll level with you: I enjoyed The Proposal, that Sandra Bullock-starring, Betty-White-and-naked-Ryan-Reynolds-featuring romantic comedy that opened as a box-office winner.

I laughed several times. I got manipulated into tears, thanks partially to Peter Chiarelli's script and partially to the indestructible charms of Bullock herself. In fact, Bullock is the reason I was excited to see the movie. When she opens the refrigerator door to my heart, the light always comes on.

That said, The Proposal troubled me. Underneath all the superficial laughs and charmy-charm-charm reaction shots, the film suggests that a woman will be much happier if she cedes her power to a man.

After the jump, our heroine's journey into total, blissful passivity. There will be many spoilers.

Continue reading "'The Proposal,' The Rom-Com Formula, And Transferring Power" >

The Mentalist: The CBS drama, starring Simon Baker, is only one of several shows to benefit from CBS's "Project LENO." CBS

 

by Linda Holmes

This has really been an oddly bruising week on the pop-culture beat on levels both significant and petty, between exhausting saturation coverage of Jon and Kate, three much-discussed celebrity deaths, the giant box-office haul for the almost universally despised Transformers movie, and general (and repeated) stupidity relating to Perez Hilton, about whom I always prefer to hear (and say) as little as possible.

But eventually, you have to kind of return to normalcy, and today, we find the march toward the fall television season continuing with CBS's announcement of what it's calling "Project LENO" (har har, it stands for Late prime Enhanced News Opportunity," geddit?).

This is its attempt to cooperate with its affiliate stations to promote the 10 p.m. dramas -- The Mentalist, The Good Wife, Numbers, and the C.S.I.s both Miami and N.Y. -- that it will be putting up against Jay Leno.

Expect a lot more of this nonsense as the fall draws closer. Dear CBS: If you're going to be cute and come up with fake acronyms, you can do better than that. "Late prime Enhanced News Opportunity"? That is Large Annoyance Made Easy.

Michael Jackson: In May of 1983, the world saw him become a superstar. Paul Drinkwater/NBCU Photo Bank

 

by Linda Holmes

I don't think there's ever been anyone harder to write about than Michael Jackson. On the one hand, he was brilliantly talented. On the other hand, he gave every appearance of having destroyed himself.

On the one hand, there were allegations about him that were horrifying. On the other hand, he did nonsense things that were hard not to find amusingly bizarre. (The chimp, and so forth.)

I'm not sure this is one where, in remembering his life, there's such a thing as "putting aside what he did offstage" — simply because his offstage life has so thoroughly dominated his performing career for so many years, in such powerful ways.

So for me, there is just this.

Jackson's performance of "Billie Jean" on Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, the 1983 television special, caught him precisely at the moment when he was at his most amazing, his most otherworldly in a good way, his most lithe and eye-popping and wonderfully alien. Still recognizably the kid who sang "The Love You Save," but recognizably something entirely new as well. It was six months after the release of Thriller.

For many, many people, this was the first opportunity they had to see this incarnation of him. This is where everyone I knew first saw the moonwalk, and if you weren't there or didn't watch it or maybe weren't a kid at the time, you cannot imagine what a big deal it was. I was in middle school, and I think we all tried it. You can hear the crowd scream when he does it here — it's not a scream of recognition, like it would be when he did it later. It's a scream of shock.

Before YouTube allowed people to actually relive a performance like this at will and en masse, this was the sort of thing that spread as legend more than as reality. Watch this, though, and you can see that it was entirely real:

Michael Jackson has occupied a unique space in American popular culture, which has deteriorated from the perfect, infectious pop the Jackson 5 made when he was a child, to the increasingly strange, seemingly miserable images of him that emerged in the last years of his life.

To a lot of people, he was everything terrible about celebrity, but to a lot of other people — or perhaps to many of the same people — he was everything good about the summer of 1983.

If it's ever not made sense to you what the big deal was, this is what the big deal was. This performance, in May 1983, was, in its time, probably almost as significant as the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

A lot of this stuff — all this regrettable, awful stuff with him over the last 20 years or so, and the continuing fascination with it, has roots in this moment.

Farrah Fawcett: In 1977, her hair was iconic. But she did some real acting as well. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

I kind of loved Farrah Fawcett, even though the entire first phase of her career -- the one where she became a giant superstar -- missed me, for the most part. I didn't watch Charlie's Angels, so most of my exposure to her came from the uphill battle for respectability she fought once she had left behind what had been gleefully and obnoxiously called "jiggle TV."

On television, this really started with The Burning Bed in 1984, a harrowing, multiple-Emmy-nominated TV movie about an abused woman that was made at a time when the TV movie was a much more common format than it is now. She was nominated for her work in it, though by then, she had also been on stage in Extremities, an entirely different harrowing story about an abused woman. She went on to a well-received performance in the TV version of that, as well.

But I won't lie: the thing from this era that I remember best is Small Sacrifices, the TV adaptation of Ann Rule's true-crime book about Diane Downs, a woman who shot her kids and claimed to have been attacked by a stranger. It shows up now and then on cable -- I assume it will again soon -- and Fawcett is thoroughly creepy and unsettling in it. It took her a long way away from the victim roles in Extremities and The Burning Bed.

She kept on acting and working -- like in The Apostle with Robert Duvall, for which she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, and in a short run on Spin City -- but she also suffered some indignities, like a famously odd interview with David Letterman in 1997. Ultimately, she became a bit of a well-known oddball, which tends to endear people to me.

What's particularly sad about Farrah Fawcett is that she might have been a great candidate to have her own cable drama if that option had been there for her in, say, the early 1990s, the way it has become such a great option for Glenn Close, Kyra Sedgwick, and Holly Hunter. She was a good, often really interesting actress, and a powerfully popular television presence. I think she would have made a go of it. In a lot of ways, those dramas are the TV movies of this decade, but they offer non-ingenue actresses a lot more choices.

At the time Farrah Fawcett became a poster girl -- literally -- and at the time her hair became a lot more famous than "the Rachel" ever was, she didn't seem a likely candidate to ever act with Robert Duvall or be nominated for a decent haul of awards. As hard a pop-culture box as "TV sex symbol" can be to bust out of now, it was even harder when Farrah Fawcett did it.

Cameron Diaz: It's been a long road, and now it runs through mom roles. Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Cameron Diaz first showed up in the movies in 1994, in The Mask, with Jim Carrey. At the time, her reviews came in somewhere around "surprisingly good, for a model."

She went on to appear in a series of hits -- My Best Friend's Wedding, There's Something About Mary, Charlie's Angels, and Shrek, to name four -- as well as the usual allotment of bombs. Most recently, she had another hit last summer with What Happens In Vegas.

But this weekend, she shows up in My Sister's Keeper, a tear-jerking drama about a child with cancer (one that's so enamored of its cancer-centered imagery that its trailer alone features more lingering shots of bald heads than you will find in publicity packages for the NBA). Diaz has tried her share of Real Acting; she was in Gangs Of New York and Vanilla Sky, and very early on, she was in the very small independent film The Last Supper.

But, as is being exhaustively noted, this is her Mom Leap.

What the Leap does and doesn't mean, after the jump...

Continue reading "Cameron Diaz Makes The Leap" >

by Neda Ulaby

How can you enjoy Culturetopia, NPR's weekly roundup of our best in movies, music, books, television, and the occasional cultural oddity? You can listen right here, or if you are the kind of person who might enjoy having hand-picked radio stories delivered directly to you, you can subscribe to the podcast here.

This week, we look at what's sure to be one of the most talked-about movies of the summer. Sacha Baron Cohen has made a career trampling on delicate sensibilities, and we attempted to put together an exhaustive list of the groups of people who might possibly be offended by his new movie, Bruno.

(And if you missed the annotated trailer when we posted it here last week, be sure to check it out.) (Preview: We think he will offend both cows and Satan. The range is wide.)

Elsewhere in the podcast, you'll learn why the new Woody Allen movie stinks, and hear Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. contemplate manhood, through a father's lens.

If the fate of the Elgin Marbles was left to Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens, he'd repatriate them from the British Museum back to Greece. Here, he explains why.

The first White House jazz concert took place in 1962 under Jacqueline Kennedy's auspices; we hear how the current First Lady is encouraging jazz education under the presidential roof. And we've got a review of a breakthrough album by the smart young Brooklyn rock band Dirty Projectors. (A preview: our critic finds it a bit like "Destiny's Child teaming up with the Talking Heads.")

The Oscars: If the ceremony isn't long enough for you, it's about to get a little longer. David Livingston/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Great news for people who want to stay up even later on Oscar night: this year, there will be ten nominees for Best Picture instead of five.

It's hard to figure out what this is supposed to accomplish, other than perpetuating the "more of everything" attitude that seems to be prevalent nearly everywhere. To some people, it's going to devalue being nominated -- which is kind of silly, unless you presume there to be something magical about five movies rather than ten.

The most obvious beneficiary is Up. Animated movies are historically the subjects of much speculation about their nomination-worthiness anyway. And while it might have been plausible to find five movies better than Up, but they're going to have a tough time finding ten.

It will also be interesting to see whether this allows one or two giant crowd-pleasers that got great reviews but would normally never make it to an awards ceremony -- maybe even something like The Hangover, for instance -- to get nominations they could never have gotten in the past. (It seems like it would almost certainly have had this effect for The Dark Knight last year.)

What it will do for sure is inflate the hoopla surrounding the Best Picture race, and unless they're going to ignore some of the nominees, it's going to make the show even more endless than it already is.

And what of the annual events where they show all the nominees in one day? What about the people who try to see every Best Picture nominee, but may give up if the list doubles in length? How, precisely, this will play out remains to be seen, but the rationale for it is not immediately obvious.

by Linda Holmes

If we assume the existence of Johnny Depp, we can assume that there will be a resulting desire to locate a next Johnny Depp.

This is partly because Johnny Depp doesn't do just any old thing. On his resumé, alongside the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise and Edward Scissorhands and so forth, you will find the odd Secret Window and other flukey bad ideas.

But it would certainly be nice if there were, say, two of him, which is part of the reason there has long been a booming industry in anointing The Next Johnny Depp. So far, it is an industry with a zero percent record of success.

Steven Lovekin/Getty Images

 

Joe Jonas
Who said it: People
Accuracy: People kind of makes it sound like Joe Jonas (one of the Brothers) considers himself the next Johnny Depp, but in fact, all he says in the piece is that he likes Depp's work. Considering that his first big "acting" project was The Disney Channel's Camp Rock, and that he's following it up with Camp Rock 2, it's safe to say he has a way to go.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

 

Megan Fox
Who said it: USAWeekend.com
Accuracy: This really happened. As I understand it, the suggestion is that because Megan Fox has only been in silly movies and is mostly talked about in terms of being hot, she is just like Johnny Depp was when he was on 21 Jump Street. I have absolutely no idea how, under the formulation used here, every good-looking actor from bad movies is not "the next Johnny Depp."

More non-contenders, after the jump...

Continue reading "Six Tragically Misguided Attempts To Name The Next Johnny Depp" >

by Linda Holmes

There is "network television is on the decline," and then there is "networks had their worst week among viewers 18-49 that they have ever had, ever."

Last week, it was the latter.

Before you get too excited about the notion that maybe we are throwing away our televisions entirely, keep in mind that cable isn't sharing in the networks' misery. USA is humming along with Burn Notice and Royal Pains, TNT is getting good numbers for things like The Closer, and you've probably heard that HBO got its best ratings since The Sopranos when it brought back True Blood for a second season.

And of course, this week, there's been you-know-who and you-know-who plus you-know-what, but as we've discussed in the past, that tends to be a fairly transitory thing.

But for the networks, this week has to have been downright alarming.

Bad strategy and simple freedom of choice, after the jump...

Continue reading "Viewers Dump Summer Network Television: It's Not Us, It's You" >

George Sprott:Seriously, it's really big. Glen Weldon

 

by Glen Weldon

... Once you're done reading it, that is.

And you really should read it; it's pretty great. Mononimal cartoonist Seth delivers an intriguing, multifaceted meditation on the life and death of a fictional small-time television personality.

It's a thoughtful, quietly compelling read: His omniscient narrator keeps apologizing to us for getting the details wrong, while a parade of Sprott's colleagues and family members offer up eulogies that intersect in oblique, surprising ways.

George Sprott was originally serialized in the New York Times Magazine, but now that it's been bound in a handsome single volume, you can pick up on the momentum of the thing, the intricacy of its structure and the melancholic grace of the writing.

Seth mixes in flashbacks from Sprott's life as an Arctic explorer -- we turn a page, and a coldly beautiful blue-white landscape stretches before our eyes. Turn the page again, and we're back in the sepia-toned routine of television's golden age.

And then there's the sheer size of this great honking slab of a book. At 12 inches wide and 14 inches long, George Sprott is only the latest in a slew of graphic novels that seem to have been proportioned for natives of Brobdingnag. Last year's mammoth comic anthology, Kramer's Ergot 7, clocks in at a massive 16 inches by 21 inches. Seaweed, Ben Balisteri's loopy all-ages seafaring adventure, measures 12 inches by 15 inches; even DC and Marvel's regularly published Absolute and Masterworks collected editions are super-sized.

Titantic tomes repurposed, after the jump.

Continue reading "8 Practical Uses For The Giant Graphic Novel 'George Sprott, 1894-1975'" >

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen: See how mad this guy looks? He's not going to get any happier when he sees what Roger Ebert said about his movie. Paramount Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

What's a good way to start the day? With a joyfully terrible review from Roger Ebert, who is an absolute champ when it comes to annihilating a movie without seeming nasty so much as happily provoked by the challenge of trying to quantify its awfulness.

This time, what's ricocheting around the Internet is his takedown of Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen. Here's how it starts:

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments.

Aside from the fact that A Horrible Experience Of Unbearable Length should absolutely, positively be the title of Dave Eggers' next book, it's an admirably meaty, straightforward, and yet scrupulously fair opening.

He goes on to say, among other things:

There are many great-looking babes in the film, who are made up to a flawless perfection and look just like real women, if you are a junior fanboy whose experience of the gender is limited to lad magazines.

It's all just genius. There's a good reason this is the guy who has, probably more than anyone, popularized thoughtful, reliably accessible, condescension-free film criticism -- and, I think you can argue, the entire idea that even if your interests run largely to popular entertainment, you can and should read criticism and think about what you're watching.

(And when you're done, be sure to compare it to Nathan Lee's review here at NPR.org, which notes, "Never have such quantities of money, hardware, technology and fathomlessly complicated logistics been marshaled to produce and experience so fleeting and ephemeral." Hmm, I don't think he liked it either.)

Confessions Of A Shopaholic: What Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher) does doesn't really make any sense, but she looks like a million bucks doing it. Touchstone Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

It's Tuesday, and that makes it New On DVD Day, and the most interesting thing I've caught this week is Confessions Of A Shopaholic, which I completely ignored in theaters but is out today on DVD and Blu-ray.

Based on Sophie Kinsella's very successful series of books, Shopaholic stars Isla Fisher (she's the one who looks like Amy Adams, but isn't Amy Adams) as Rebecca Bloomwood, indebted spendthrift and all-around flibbertygibbet.

Because it's the sort of movie it is, she stumbles into a job, she stumbles upon a guy played by the very pretty Hugh Dancy, and then there is a lot of preposterous nonsense, and then there is kissing, The End. (Sorry. Spoiler? I think not.)

The only surprise is that, especially with the benefit of HDTV, it's a very pretty movie. As a story, it's a wreck, but visually, it's gorgeous. The frothy costumes were done by Patricia Field (of Sex And The City fame), and the entire film is full of bright colors and neat, geometric patterns, to the point where even a bunch of sweaters folded on a table become a still-life.

It's disconcerting to find the storytelling atrocious but the look impeccable. I can't possibly recommend the movie, because it's too ridiculous, but I'll give them this: it's stunning. And if you spend most of your time perusing the extras where the aesthetics are examined in great detail, you may well forget the story. Which would be just as well.

Also new this week:

• Waltz With Bashir, the Israeli documentary that most of NPR's critics included among their favorite films of 2008;

• Inkheart, starring Brendan Fraser and Paul Bettany, which Bob Mondello found "frenetically uninvolving";

• Pink Panther 2, which sports a truly impressive -- or, "impressive" -- 13% score at Rotten Tomatoes.

by Linda Holmes

I have fond memories of the old ABC Superstars shows, which would gather athletes from different sports and have them compete against each other in events like swimming and, most famously, an obstacle course. In the above clip, Joe Frazier swims against, among others, Jean-Claude Killy. It's kind of great. (Though not for Frazier, who unfortunately can't swim.)

I didn't even know until I was reading up on the show that it ran long enough for more recent editions to be won by Jason Sehorn. But now, ABC brings Superstars back tonight, with a twist. Of course.

And what kind of twist? A twist involving random B-list famous people. Of course.

How they messed it up, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Superstars': ABC Ruins A Perfectly Good Old Weird TV Show" >

A reminder about network television: NBC won an important demographic on Friday night...sort of. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

If you consult the very useful web site TV By The Numbers, you'll see that the Friday night ratings race among the 18-49 demographic was won by NBC, with its Chopping Block (is that still on?) and two hours of Dateline NBC.

But it's not quite that simple. If you use the numbers from the Cynopsis newsletter, also a very helpful daily bulletin about ratings as well as lots of other things, you'll see a different result.

Who won, after the jump...

Continue reading "Can You Guess What Network Had A Win On Friday Night?" >

by Linda Holmes

There is no explaining the greatness that is "Auto-Tune The News." You just kind of have to see it. See other installments here, here, and here.

I have to say, Katie Couric is my favorite newscaster, based on what they sound like auto-tuned.

(Hat-tip to Mark Blankenship at The Critical Condition.)

Mr. Potato Head: It's about time he had his own movie, isn't it? Lawrence Lucier/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

This weekend, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen makes its way to theaters, and once again, it raises the question, Where are the other action movies based on the potential menace presented by famous toys? The tagline for this one is "Revenge is coming," so it's not like a particularly high bar of creativity has been set.

Once again, this is a "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself" situation. And so we humbly offer the following:

The movie: Baby Alive
The tagline: She eats, she drinks...she kills.

The movie: Spirograph
The tagline: What goes around comes around.

The movie: Dream House
The tagline: When your knees don't bend, there's nowhere to run.

The list continues, after the jump...

Continue reading "Dear Hollywood: We Demand More Movies About Renegade Toys" >

The Avett Brothers: This is what they looked like at Coachella in 2007; they were a little cozier in the NPR offices. Karl Walter/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

I'm never sure whether to assume those of you who make it here are also keeping up with the goings-on at NPR Music, but if you're not tuning in to the Tiny Desk Concert series, I feel compelled to make sure you don't miss it.

The way Tiny Desk Concerts work is that a band comes in to the NPR offices and plays at the desk of All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen. That's it -- a band and Bob's desk and a few songs. (It's maybe the single most profoundly NPR-ian thing that has ever been invented.)

They've recently posted a performance by The Avett Brothers, which I happened to be in the office to see live -- from my prime spot about three feet from the cellist's elbow.

I can honestly tell you that it was one of the greatest things I've ever seen live. It's hard to explain the visceral effect of a fantastic band that is not separated from you by amplifiers. And it made me think of the other performance I usually describe this way, which was a December 2007 show from The Swell Season, fresh off the success of Once, at the Beacon Theater in New York.

Guitars with holes, and a question for you, after the jump...

Continue reading "Your Best Live Experience: Of Tiny Desks And Fine Evenings" >

Sandra Bullock: Or is that Betty White? No, whew! that's Sandra Bullock. Kerry Hayes/Touchstone Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

A while back, we had some fun (and created some massive confusion) over the fact that Julia Roberts, at 41, put out her first big movie in a while (the middling performer Duplicity) and found herself accused of being "Hollywood ancient" -- possibly too old to open a movie anymore.

Well, back it up, old-lady-haters, because Sandra Bullock just had the most successful opening of her entire career as her romantic comedy, The Proposal, roared to a $34 million weekend. She's almost 45 years old! She's even older than Julia Roberts!

That thoroughly thumped the very, very bad Year One, which did all right with about $20 million, but came in fourth behind The Proposal, the long legs of Up and the continuing strength of The Hangover.

One noteworthy fact? The Proposal drew an audience that was 63 percent women and 86 percent (!) 18 and over. What might make that noteworthy? It sometimes seems to be a forgotten reality that it's really okay to make movies that have no appeal to teenage boys. They can still make money. In fact, they might even beat out movies that are most cynically targeted to teenage boys.

Of course, it might just prove, once again, that every movie should have Betty White in it.

Robert Pattinson: He knows they're taking this picture, which is what makes it less creepy. Jason Merritt/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

It was more than a little unsettling to read the reports last week about Twilight star Robert Pattinson being clipped by a taxi in New York in an incident that at least some reports attributed to a throng of fans that had tracked him to the filming location of his new movie, Remember Me. (The studio denied it was the fans, but frankly, they would.)

Even if it wasn't the fans who caused Pattinson to be running across the street, it certainly could have been. It's a hallmark of modern fandom to share information about filming locations, and that means people show up. In fact, Alan Ball, who's done several shows and currently works on HBO's True Blood, discussed the problem in the same clip we linked to last week in the context of spoilers.

This behavior is, to say the least, gross. And it's not that hard to be an ethical fan. A few humble suggestions follow.

1. No stalking. Don't assume this applies only to people who like Twilight and the Jonas Brothers. The first expression of concern I remember hearing from someone who was concerned that her fellow fans were going too far in their pursuit of personal contact with actors had to do with The West Wing. You take regular fandom and combine it with high-functioning nerds, and that's a potent combination.

If you know you're not welcome and you show up anyway, and your reason is to try to make personal contact with someone against his or her will -- be it Robert Pattinson or Martin Sheen -- you are being creepy. Don't be creepy. Don't bring cupcakes, don't bring their needlepoint likenesses, don't bring your exposed bosom and a Sharpie. It's creepy.

Photos of the hunted and the proper selection of mortal enemies, after the jump...

Continue reading "Five Humble Suggestions That Will Make You A More Ethical Fan" >

Year One: How do you put Jack Black and a bunch of other reasonably funny people together and wind up with...this? Sony/Columbia Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

I almost walked out of Year One about five minutes into it. Five minutes, no kidding. It wasn't something I had to see, and its lifelessness was so aggressive that it was very hard to believe it was going to get better.

It didn't. And it raises a question, which we'll come back to.

Later, walking out at the actual end of the movie, these are the two comments I overheard: (1) "Those were the longest 97 minutes of my life." (2) "I would have been so much madder if I had paid to see that." (It was a preview audience.) Note that these are not your average "That stunk" comments.

You can tell a lot from its very few "positive" reviews. Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, who made this a "Critic's Pick," quotes two lines from the movie: "Everything is weird" and "You want some of that?" ...Hilarious? She spends significantly more time quoting Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks.

(Incidentally, Dargis' use of the word "highbrow" to describe a movie that relies this heavily upon poop jokes and unceasing gay-panic humor is an instant classic.)

Or here, David Hiltbrand of the Philadelphia Inquirer describes a representative scene:

The itinerants are constantly being forced into bondage. At one point Zed, explaining his reluctance to trust Cain, says to him, "You did sell us into bondage." "Hold a grudge much?" responds the king of fratricide. "That was like a fortnight ago."

Yes. Yes, that is exactly what the movie is like. The movie is like that, for an hour and a half. You see, David Cross is playing Cain, who's from Biblical times, but he says stuff like "Hold a grudge much?" This is where you're supposed to laugh hysterically.

Wondering why, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Year One': A Movie That Makes You Wonder What Happened" >

by Trey Graham

We're just a couple of weeks away from the big-screen debut of Bruno, the outré Austrian fashion reporter who sprang, swishing, from the mind of satirist Sacha Baron Cohen.

And like his similarly fictional Kazakh cousin Borat, Bruno can pretty much be counted on to annoy, offend, and otherwise outrage any number of constituencies — starting of course with The Gays, one group of whom have already taken the studio to task.

Meeow: Bruno (Sacha Baron Cohen) has catlike instincts ... for saying (and wearing) the wrong things. Universal Pictures

But just what percentage of the planet's inhabitants might reasonably take umbrage once the movie, like Bruno, finally comes out? Neda Ulaby and Linda Holmes had a look at the trailer to see if they could come up with a solid guess.

You're cordially invited to click the Play button and count along — hat-tip to multimedia intern Caryn Grant for getting those annotations onscreen — as we I.D. the soon-to-be-steam-eared populations. (Be sure to click the player's full-screen button, lower right.) And then, of course, we'd love to hear your suggestions in the comments.

by Marc Hirsh

Behold, the video for "Weird Al" Yankovic's latest single "Craigslist," which hit the Internet in the past week. It's already inspired Michael Ian Black (of The State, Stella and Pets.com fame) to write an eloquent and dead-on post about how and why Yankovic has endured for three decades now. (Short version: he was never cool, which insulated him from the ravages of time and shifting trends.)

Yankovic, of course, is best known for song parodies like "Eat It," "Smells Like Nirvana," "Like A Surgeon" and "White And Nerdy." It's his m.o. of rewriting the lyrics to popular songs into paeans to junk culture (and junk food) that once caused rock critic Robert Christgau to refer to him as Mad Magazine for the ears.

"Craigslist," on the other hand, is the type of song he typically gets less credit for, where he takes on not a specific song but an artist's style (in case you missed it, it's the Doors). And it marks the latest appearance of a fellow I like to call Weird Al, Stealth Pop Musicologist.

More from Weird Al, SPM, after the jump...

Continue reading "Meet 'Weird Al' Yankovic, Stealth Pop Musicologist" >

Jon & Kate Plus 8: What does it all mean? Maybe not as much as you think. Discovery Health Channel

 

by Linda Holmes

It took exactly one highly rated episode of Jon & Kate Plus Eight for the conclusion to be reached that they were the new king and queen of TLC, and possibly monarchs of all TV. When the news broke that almost 10 million people watched the season premiere, we were off to the races.

Could TLC use its new hit show to reinvent itself? Did it mean we were all mad? Why are we unable to stop ourselves from watching? Why couldn't we turn away?

And then a funny thing happened: We turned away.

The end of the phenomenon, the "spectacular" failure of another show that 40 million people once watched, and more, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Cringe Flame Burns Briefly: A Summer Ratings Lesson" >

by Neda Ulaby

Our latest culture podcast has arrived, and it's a jolly good one, particularly if you happen to enjoy jazz and blues.

This week, the legendary Lonnie Brooks chats and performs with his son before an engaged Tell Me More audience.

If your tastes run to the piano or to unusual meter, we've got Dave Brubeck looking back over a life in jazz. That made our Dave Brubeck-loving producer, Michael Katzif, very, very happy. I bet you'll like it too.

(And if you are a Brubeck enthusiast, don't miss the bonus material, as they say, available at NPR's new-ish jazz blog, A Blog Supreme.)

Regular readers of this blog may know about my unabashed adoration of director Guillermo Del Toro, who's just co-written a horror novel about vampires. (I even wrote about the book as I read it.) So if you detect a faint squee or two during his interview, it wasn't WATC host Guy Raz. It was probably me.

On the podcast, we'll also play a sweet piece out of New York inspired by the new movie The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. It's about the city's subways and how they've changed since the original Pelham came out over three decades ago. And don't miss the accompanying slideshow from NPR's Picture Show blog.

Also from the world of the movies, the makers Food Inc. discuss their new documentary -- which, I hear, promises to do for the supermarket what Jaws did for the beach.

You can listen to this week's Culturetopia right here, or you can subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss a Brubeck-loving, subway-exploring moment.

by Linda Holmes

I really wasn't sure where to put this video in which several test subjects voluntarily play the new Grey's Anatomy game for the Wii. Television? Games? Unrelenting horror?

Just...I'm going to let them explain it as they go, because if I told you how weird it is, you wouldn't believe me anyway. Take it away, College Humor.

(Hat-tip to Best Week Ever.)

Wedded bliss: The Hangover concerns a bachelor party gone awry. But what does it ultimately say about tying the knot? iStockphoto.com

 

by Marc Hirsh

As mentioned the other day, The Hangover is still going strong after two weekends in theaters.

After the ostentatious expressions of surprise that a movie without any "stars" could make so much money so quickly, it seems that the main topic of conversation is the closing credit sequence. (Caution: discussion of content that is seriously not suitable for mixed company.)

What's interesting is how little people are talking about the other noteworthy way that the movie ends, and how it fits snugly into a trend that seems to have gone unnoticed over the past few years. And on the whole, it may say more about The Hangover's sensibilities than whether that was really a you-know-what being what'd-you-say?ed.

What's so interesting about the ending of The Hangover...so obviously don't proceed if you aren't okay with knowing the basics of the ending of The Hangover, after the jump...

Continue reading "'The Hangover': The Curious Case Of The Domesticated Raunchfest" >

Captain America: Death be not proud...nor necessarily permanent. Marvel Entertainment

 

by Glen Weldon

For most of us, Death is the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.

For superheroes, Death is more like Tijuana, and they've got round-trip tickets on the Baja Shuttle.

You may have heard that Captain America is coming back from the dead next month. (Technically true, but for completeness' sake we'll note that the story of his return actually begins in a special issue, Captain America #600, in comic shops now.)

Yep, the cycle of death and rebirth is as much a part of superhero comics as Superman's kicky blue highlights. Often the Death of a Hero is little more than a stunt, but it can be a well-intentioned one -- a chance to let an overused character go fallow for a year or twenty, so that readers' hearts might be made to grow fonder.

Cap, who was struck down by an assassin's bullet just over two years ago now, is only the freshest example in the venerable tradition of spandexhumation.

After the jump: Many other heroes have shuffled off this mortal coil only to shuffle right back. How does Cap's return compare? We rank the dynamic dirtnaps.

Continue reading "The Cap Came Back. Well, That Was Quick." >

Royal Ascot 2009: Isabella Christensen brought her most dignified attire. Chris Jackson/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

It's time for Royal Ascot 2009, and you know what that means: fanciful hats! In this case, a fanciful hat incorporating not just fruit, but a bowl of fruit with a spoon.

Of course, this event might also look familiar to you on account of this, if you know your musicals.

The Shelf Of Constant Reproach: Somehow, it's never quite the right time... iStockphoto.com

 

by Lynn Neary

I'm on vacation this week. Of course, I took a pile of books with me to our cottage on a pristine lake. I have to read one of those books before the week is out. Another, I should read. I might be able to squeeze in a third, but the rest? Well, they're likely to land on what my colleague Luis Clemens calls his "Shelf Of Constant Reproach."

Surely some of you know what we're talking about: that shelf filled with books you meant to read or, more likely, fully intend to read some day. When Luis introduced that phrase at a meeting last week, we all admitted to some revered works of literature on our shelves. "Anything by Proust!" some of us shouted out. Then we wondered what titles our book-loving listeners might have on their shelves of shame?

So to get things going, I sheepishly offer this short list of the books I know I should have read...but haven't.

Get Lynn's list of guilt-inducing masterpieces, after the jump.

Continue reading "'The Shelf Of Constant Reproach': Best Books You Never Read" >

Lost: What it's worth to you in Blu-ray depends on how much you're all about looks. Buena Vista Home Entertainment

 

by Linda Holmes

The minute you acquire a Blu-ray player, the jokes begin: "It's a good thing I can watch Dude, Where's My Car? on Blu-ray! How else would I appreciate the glorious visuals?" "How will I ever appreciate the cinematography of Miss Congeniality 2: Armed And Fabulous while I can only see it in standard definition?"

Not everything benefits from being seen in beautiful HD, but if there's one TV show that really is different with a high-quality picture, it's probably Lost.

What the Blu-ray release has to offer, including saving your place, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Lost' Fans Rejoice: It's The Smoke Monster In Glorious Hi-Def" >

Betty White: Seen here in a much-previewed scene with Sandra Bullock in The Proposal, she hasn't slowed down a bit, and it's a very good thing. Kerry Hayes/Touchstone Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

While watching The Proposal, I thought to myself, "It's nice that we seem to be having a little Betty White moment." She's been doing a lot of press for the movie, including this lovely clip from the folks at Hitfix:

It wasn't until I looked up her credits that I realized the degree to which the lady (now 87) has not slowed down.

A long and glorious career full of dirty jokes directed at Gene Rayburn, and what she's signed on for next, after the jump...

Continue reading "Betty White: What Movie Doesn't Need A Hilarious Grandma?" >

The Hangover: We could make a horrible joke about how it's hanging over at the box office, but we won't. At all. Really! Warner Brothers Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

So the way the summer box office is supposed to work is that each weekend, new great big movies take over from the previous great big movies.

This weekend, specifically, The Taking Of Pelham 123 was supposed to take over the adults, and Imagine That was supposed to take over the children. (It's a slight oversimplification, but...just slight.)

Didn't so much turn out that way.

What happened, who had a good weekend, who had a bad weekend, and what to do with your long-term investments in Eddie Murphy, after the jump...

Continue reading "Weekend Box Office: Poor Eddie Murphy, Happy 'Hangover'" >

by Linda Holmes

As part of the run-up to the Emmy nominations, The Hollywood Reporter's web site has been running a series of videos in which various showrunners -- including Mad Men's Matthew Weiner, True Blood's Alan Ball, and Grey's Anatomy's Shonda Rhimes chitchat about various aspects of production, from network standards to product placement.

In the clip above, they express frustration about the proliferation of spoilers -- leaked information about what's going to happen on episodes that haven't aired yet. (This is indeed the traditional definition of a spoiler; it is only much more recently that the term has, for some, taken on the new meaning of "information about a show that you personally haven't chosen to watch yet and perhaps never will, but it would be great if nobody would say anything about it in case you eventually do.")

Their varied reactions are fascinating. Ball (along with The Office creator Greg Daniels) is annoyed by the effect of spoiler-hunters on the logistics of filming, Weiner seems affronted by the disruption of his creative process when people don't digest the show at the pace he intends, and Shonda Rhimes -- Shonda Rhimes, of all people -- professes to just not understand, as she puts it, "why spoilers make people happy."

Weiner goes on to insist that people don't actually enjoy reading spoilers; they are only fun for the people who are doing the revealing, who are in fact making everyone else miserable. That's true in the case of people being involuntarily spoiled (a major problem for, in particular, all online communities where serial shows are discussed).

But there is also a massive, thriving community of people desperate to be voluntarily spoiled, and it's fruitless to pretend that part of the challenge isn't that you're trying to defeat simple curiosity -- the fact that people are impatient and don't like waiting.

Furthermore, if you were looking for a defender of spoiler-free living, you would not logically go to Shonda Rhimes.

The tease and the long history of string-pulling, after the jump...

Continue reading "Spoilerphilia and Spoilerphobia: Showrunners Talk Surprises" >

by Linda Holmes

AMC has been rolling out news about the third season of Mad Men, and the details include a season premiere on August 16, preceded by a Season 2 marathon all day on August 10.

But if you've never seen this much-discussed, Emmy-winning show, you can get a taste of the pilot online -- that's it, at the top of the post. All of Season 1 is currently available On Demand (depending on your provider and so forth), and Season 2 will be available On Demand later in the summer. You can bet your smoke-filled conference room that Mad Men will grab another stack of Emmy nominations when they come out on July 16, so if you want to judge for yourself whether it deserves all the hype, this is the time.

Josh Holloway If you were watching him on Lost right now, you'd be distracted by trying to count individual beard hairs. Trust me. ABC

 

by Linda Holmes

So today is digital switchover day, when local stations will shut off their analog signals, leaving those who get over-the-air broadcasts either (1) in really bad shape, if they don't have digital receivers; (2) in intermediate shape, if they have digital receivers and so-so signals in their area; or (3) much better off, if they get good reception of digital signals and will now get cable-quality reception through their rabbit ears.

But in addition to the end of analog, this transition could potentially mean a lot more people watching in high-definition, because some of those new digital broadcast signals are in HD. As someone who only relatively recently got a decent-sized HDTV, I look forward to seeing some other (relative) newbies experiencing The Summer Of Stubble.

Once you start looking at high-definition television (and you know this if you're used to it), you realize that people on screen have been, relatively speaking, vague blobs of flesh-colored light until now. I've been watching the first season of Lost on BluRay (more on this next week), and I'm here to tell you, I have seen some stubble. Some close-up, jump-off-the-screen, highly attenuated stubble.

It's no wonder that there is now special "HDTV makeup" for people who are going to be seen on high-definition television, because it is no joke that it is unbelievably unforgiving. It is spurned-lover unforgiving. It is embittered-relative unforgiving.

Eyebrow hairs, facial injuries, and more things that look crazy terrifying in HD, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Road To Digital HDTV Signals Is Paved With Discrete Stubble" >

Mythical species: If seeing what's attractive about Adam Lambert is what it takes to be a cougar, then cougars don't exist. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

It was this Newsweek piece, entitled "Why Cougars Crave 'Idol' Runner-Up Adam Lambert," that finally broke me.

It is time for the word "cougar" to go, preferably instantly.

The Newsweek writer, Joan Raymond, spends paragraph upon paragraph explaining why she and her "cougar court" spent an American Idol season sweating over the heavily hyped, extremely popular, out-without-having-ever-been-in Lambert. How could this be? How could it possibly be that they, as non-teenagers, could be interested in an American Idol who, at 27 years old, was young enough to be ... their nephew, if they had a significantly older sister?

When I first heard it, "cougar" was a crude slam; I think I first noticed it on the "Aldrin Justice" episode of How I Met Your Mother, which aired in October 2006, though this ABC story was chatting it up in 2005, and it surely is much older than that.

But interestingly, as the ABC story notes, it began as a putdown — a term of ridicule for older women who went home from bars with "whoever was left."

We could go through the sexual politics, the cultural baggage that comes with older men and younger women vs. younger men and older women. We could explain why seeing women gleefully referring to themselves the same way Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris) did on How I Met Your Mother is kind of disheartening.

But really, it's not necessary. The term "cougar" can be easily retired, simply on the grounds that it's so stupid.

Crazy fans, too many sex therapists, and never calling yourself "punk rock," after the jump...

Continue reading "Let Us Allow The Word 'Cougar' To Die Instantly And Painfully" >

Fashion!: Luis Lopez-Smith designed this for the Royal College Of Art Summer Fashion Show in London. Claire R. Greenway/Getty Images

 

It's been a while since we did a round of Entirely Real Photos, but how could we resist? Luis Lopez-Smith, we salute you. Caterpillars? Video game monsters? Is this the return of Mr. Yuck?

But that's nothing. You haven't seen the back.

The back, after the jump...

Continue reading "Entirely Real Photos: Fashion Show! Fashion Show!" >

by Linda Holmes

Update: I originally blamed Disney for this movie; my mind was completely playing tricks on me based on a trailer I had just watched, and it's actually Paramount. Apologies.

I am not here to tell you that Imagine That is bad, because I haven't seen it. But whoever is promoting it isn't doing it any favors. It has a serious case of Trailer Unwatchability.

It appears that the premise is that Eddie Murphy is a boring dad who works as some kind of insignificant cog in a giant corporate machine, and he discovers that his daughter's imagination can make him better at his job, because his daughter's imaginary companions are passing on information about upcoming mergers.

Okay. Let us pause for a moment.

Pardon the overused construction, but: Worst imaginary companions ever. Princesses and fairies are there to make your life more fun, not facilitate insider trading. What kind of an imaginary princess suckers a kid into passing along subliminal messages through her drawings in order to further her father's career?

I hope these imaginary companions have malpractice insurance. I would happily watch a movie called I Sued My Imaginary Friend For Breach Of Fiduciary Duty. That would be a movie, people.

But no. This just looks so...terrible, from top to bottom.

Continue reading "Can 'Imagine That' Hit Every Sweet Spot Of Unwatchability?" >

It's Wednesday, which means it's again time for Culturetopia, NPR's podcast highlighting some of our favorite stories in books, movies, music and all things arts and culture.

Remember, to hear it, you can subscribe to the podcast here or simply hit the the "play" button below to listen.

This week's roundup begins with an interview from Tell Me More with Bartlett Sher and Roger Robinson. Robinson won a Tony Award for featured actor earlier this week for his role in August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come And Gone.

Then, NPR contributor Anthea Raymond takes a look at the world of Hollywood extras. The economy being what it is, more and more people are trying to get a foot in the door of this little-noticed line of work.

On the music front, we get a sneak first listen to one of the most anticipated and sought-after of archival releases: The Neil Young Archive, a ten-disc box set that documents Young's musical career from 1963-1972. Will Hermes says it was worth the wait.

Then, we'll hear a bit of a conversation with a guy who took his fandom to an extreme: he liked a poet's work so much, he created his own retrospective -- sort of. Author and critic Daniel Mendelson spoke with NPR's Jackie Lyden about his work translating every known work of Greek poet Constantine Cavafy.

And last, but not least, we have an interview with Carmela -- er, Edie Falco, star of Showtime's new show, Nurse Jackie.

The Taking Of Pelham 123: Can you pick out the bad guy in this picture? Yeah, we thought so. Sony Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

If you watch the original 1974 film, The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (and you can, and you should), one of the things you'll notice is how Robert Shaw, as the train-hijacking villain, plays everything with the energy down, not up and out. In his general persona, he's not cackling like a loon, and he's not shrieking like a bully.

He is just explaining the situation and what's going to happen. He is telling you about your possible death dispassionately.

This was very much the era of Evil Wears A Fedora And Thick-Framed Glasses; it came out the same year as The Conversation, with Gene Hackman. That movie also features lots of terrifying guys who look like bureaucrats. For the most part, they speak softly and carry big, big evil.

What evil unfortunately looks like now, after the jump...

Continue reading "'The Taking Of Pelham 123' And The Lamentably Noisy Bad Guy" >

Rex Libris: Just another heroic librarian. You probably know many. SLG Publishing

 

by Glen Weldon

Rex Libris, titular hero of James Turner's smart, stylish and breathlessly paced comic series, is a custodian of great and terrible secrets who must perforce do endless battle 'gainst those who would seek to corrupt, destroy or abscond with the collected lore of the ages.

Which is to say: He's a public librarian.

Rex Libris: Book of Monsters, the second volume chronicling his feats of derring-do among the Dewey decimals, is in stores now.

Why you should check it out (heh) after the jump. (Because..."check it out" ... library .... )

Continue reading "Defending the Universe, With Guns, Grit and Really Steep Fines" >

by Linda Holmes

It's very, very rare for rumors about the resurrection of old shows to come true, but here's one that did: Comedy Central has ordered 26 new episodes of Futurama — last canceled all the way back in 2003 — for a whole new season.

The show's delightfully wackadoo sense of humor — you can sample it in the clip above, which cobbles together all the opening-title screens, with their little notes like "Featuring Gratuitous Alien Nudity" — will undoubtedly return with creator Matt Groening.

But that's not all: According to The Hollywood Reporter, Groening is bringing the entire voice cast and the bulk of the writers back with him.

Futurama's die-hard fans have hung in a long time; it's a big payoff for them. Chalk up another victory for unconventional scheduling/viewing arrangements, because you can bet that without DVDs, the proliferation of cable channels, and the Internet (to keep the fans talking to each other), this resurrection probably wouldn't be happening.

That's real dancing: Choreographer Jean Marc Genereux, a professional ballroom dancer and choreographer, teaches a routine with his wife and partner, Frances Mousseau. Kelsey McNeal/Fox

 

by Joe Reid

Chances are, if your circle of friends contains even a few avid summer-TV watchers, you've been encouraged to watch So You Think You Can Dance. The American Idol-style dance competition has been steadily growing in popularity over the last four summers -- so much so that it's making a leap to Fox's fall schedule in September -- and its fans tend to be proselytizers.

Whoops, looks like you've got one right here.

The easiest way to win a Dance convert (says the zealot) is to describe it as "'American Idol, but better." Lots of people watch Idol but do so while holding their noses: it's cheesy, it's corporate, it's soulless, it's amateur hour, and the judges have no earthly idea what they're talking about.

And that's coming from yours truly, who actually likes the show.

A Dance fan will offer no such caveats; ask them why they watch the show, and even the most hardened, cynical ironists will end up using words like "beauty," "technique," and "artistic" within three sentences.

So with the fifth season about to kick into high gear with tonight's first competition episode, you may be asking what is it about this glitzy, commercial show that gets TV fans discussing "artistry" in the middle of June? Count off with me while I offer eight reasons:

1. The threshold of success is much lower. That doesn't mean expectations aren't high -- quite the opposite, particularly if contemporary choreographer/frequent judge Mia Michaels has any say about it. But the winner of So You Think You Can Dance receives the title of America's Favorite Dancer, a cash prize, and...not much else.

No contract with 19 Entertainment. No Kelly Clarkson-sized profitability expectations. America isn't really in the business of crowning superstar dancers. They might actually become very successful -- a role in Step Up 3D, a Christina Aguilera music video, a Broadway show -- but because that success comes without a media spotlight, the judgery gets to be less preoccupied with marketability and focus on the dancing.

The rest of the list and some illustrative clips, after the jump...

Continue reading "5, 6, 7, 8 Ways 'So You Think You Can Dance' Is All About Art, Man" >

by Linda Holmes

Okay, so Bradley Cooper (fresh off The Hangover and right on the edge of becoming a giant movie star) is maybe going to take the Dirk Benedict part in the upcoming The A-Team movie. And Liam Neeson is in talks to replace George Peppard.

And then the Variety piece throws in the fact that, you know, they haven't quite figured out who's going to replace Mr. T as B.A. Baracus.

Now, it occurs to me that this is a fairly serious problem. In a baby-name book I saw once, it was argued that you can't give your baby certain names if they are overly strongly associated with one famous person. The chapter was called, "There's Only One Arsenio."

They could very easily have called it "There's Only One Mr. T." (Well, they could have if there were more of a threat of anyone, ever, actually naming a baby "Mr. T.")

So where do you begin looking for Mr. T replacements? Nobody is kind of like Mr. T. Nobody is the new Mr. T. Nobody captures the spirit of Mr. T. It becomes increasingly apparent that Mr. T is Mr. T, and he's the only Mr. T there's ever going to be.

Nevertheless, I am prepared to step forward with several ideas. You are welcome, Hollywood.

1. Mickey Rourke.

Based on that clip, you can see that B.A. is physically powerful, he dresses badly, and he doesn't make any sense. It's a perfect fit. Mickey Rourke is vaguely nutsy, he's aggressively unique, and he certainly has the requisite experience with bombs. (Hotcha!)

More ideas I am generously prepared to share, after the jump...

Continue reading "Five Excellent Ideas For Replacing Mr. T In The 'A-Team' Movie" >

Will Ferrell: Don't start writing his career obituary just yet. Jason Merritt/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

As you may have heard, the Will Ferrell vehicle Land Of The Lost got spanked at the box office this weekend by both the second weekend of Up and the opening weekend of The Hangover.

Reporting in with $18.8 million for its first weekend, the movie has already become the inspiration for the new Will Ferrell's career bereavement industry.

Putting aside the fact that the typical "Here's why it was always obvious that this movie would never do well" piece would be more convincing if it came out before, rather than after, the opening weekend, it seems a little early for all this.

Down, but not out, after the jump...

Continue reading "It's Probably A Little Early For The Will Ferrell Eulogy Parade" >

The Strain: Can one arts reporter devour it in one day? We're pretty confident.

 

by Neda Ulaby

[Ed. Note: Arts reporter Neda Ulaby took today to read The Strain and write about it as she went. At the bottom of the post — which is where we started with Chapter 1, so if you're just joining us you should start there too — you'll find some background on the book. She's now finished with the book. Obviously, massive spoilers follow.]

Where We Stand: The End

Chapter 15: The Clan...And Epilogue

I'm combining these two because they're both really, really short. It becomes clear that Eph will never get back together with his ex-wife, mostly because he's not into her new squidlike tongue and desire to gnaw upon their son's tender neck.

We meet a bunch of other aged vampires, who've retired to a Pennsylvania asbestos mine. Their Zen-like centeredness comes as a huge relief after all the shrieks of "Nooo!" fading from Manhattan. As befits the first part of a trilogy, the plotline simply goes slack.

Thanks for joining me in this liveblogging experiment. I hope you read The Strain, not in an office chair, under florescent lights, but on a beach or a porch, uninterrupted, reading until the sky darkens and the air chills. Enjoy.

Chapter 14: Lair

The Master has kidnapped Eph's ex-wife, making not a speck of sense. Why would an ancient supernatural entity need to borrow tactics from a drug cartel?

Finally, we get a good gander at the Master, and guess what--he looks a bit like a beast from Pan's Labyrinth, with a hairless, colorless head and worn, washed out apertures. Maybe for the screen version, GDT plans on throwing some work towards Doug Jones, whom he's used in several of his films.

Society is totally disintegrating, by the way, with most everyone in New York undead, and vampire gangs hunting each other by the light of burning buildings. It's a bit silly.

Our heroes' plans for mass immolation of the vampires is thwarted because Eph is so eager to rescue his ex-wife, even though her kidnapping makes no sense. Even more irritatingly, his rush to storm the Master's penthouse means they have to pass up a chance to destroy the Master's coffin. Which makes no sense. No sense. Hundreds of souls.

I'm a little disappointed. What started off as a tight, smart scary book has devolved, in my view, into high camp, with language along the lines of "You will taste my silver, strigoi!" and repetitive vampire/human evisceration. It's fine and even admirable to evoke the flavor of B movies but this tips over into the realm of straight-to-DVD.

More of the liveblog, after the jump...

Continue reading "'The Strain' Liveblog: Gulping Down All The Horror In A Day" >

by Linda Holmes

You know, there are sayings in the theater. The show must go on, and so forth.

Another one of them emerged from last night's Tony Awards, and it's this: Whenever it takes five minutes to sort out a tech issue at the beginning of, say, a live-blog, you can guarantee that those will be the five minutes during which Bret Michaels, lead singer of Poison, will be standing his ground instead of retreating and will get conked on the head by a descending stage segment.

You can sort of see the other guys run back behind what turns out to be the problematic piece of scenery the minute the music stops, because they clearly remember from rehearsal that it's time to hustle and get out of the way. Michaels, however, was enjoying his moment (probably unlikely to appear on the Tonys too many times in the future, even before this happened), and he forgot to dash behind the backdrop. Gotta wave to the fans! Give 'em a wave! Love you!

[BONK.]

(His publicist seems to be suggesting he's okay and even hoped to "hit some after-parties," and he didn't break his nose, don't worry.)

The other notable thing, I think, is that while she clearly didn't have any idea what was happening, Stockard Channing managed to launch into "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" in a manner that unavoidably comes off like she's giving you her best exasperated "Aaaanyway..."

Best headline goes to the Times-Picayune, for this: "Opening the Tony Awards, Bret Michaels of Poison chews scenery on Broadway."

Stephen Colbert: His USO tour is certainly not all talk, as you can see from what's about to happen to him here. USO

 

by Linda Holmes

Stephen Colbert will be broadcasting The Colbert Report from Iraq all this week while on a tour with the USO, and he's not wasting any time getting down to business.

As you can see, Colbert has gotten a military haircut in solidarity with the troops he's visiting. (He really did go through with it, too -- he is not, in this photo, about to leap from the chair and yell, "Psych!") The show, which, as you can see, features Colbert in a camouflage business suit, will air tonight on Comedy Central at 11:30 p.m.

And we're live!

This is where, tonight at 8:00 p.m., we will be running our very special Tony Awards liveblog event. What of the battle between Liza Minnelli and Will Ferrell? Will American Idol yield a Tony winner? And what will be the pinnacle of Neil Patrick Harris' hosting greatness? (Or what we're assuming will be his hosting greatness.)

Join us, share your thoughts in the comments, and enjoy the one awards show of the year that usually contains actual meritorious entertainment content right there on the stage!

On commenting: Rather than use the liveblog box to take your comments, which can cause things to turn into a chaotic mess with everyone talking at once, we'll be taking your comments on the ceremony in the regular comments section for this post. When everybody talks at the same time, it becomes really hard to follow anything that's being said by anybody, and it's extremely confusing (at least for me). So comment early and often, in the regular comments section.

Defiance: It's just one example of a movie that's richer when accompanied by a documentary you can also find on DVD. Paramount Vantage

 

by Glenn McDonald

Difficult as it is to admit, I've long passed through the demographic windows of MTV, VH1, or even Comedy Central. I'm an old man now, and as such, I probably spend more time watching the History Channel than anything else.

I'm a sucker for this kind of pop scholarship. Many are the midnight hours I've whiled away, learning about the Hoover Dam, or Jack the Ripper, or ancient Cairo, or what have you.

Recently, the History Channel has been getting into an interesting sideline gig -- reissuing shows on home video to coincide with related big-ticket DVD releases. So, for instance, the same week the teenage vampire soap opera Twilight came to DVD, The History Channel put out the documentary Vampire Secrets, chronicling vampire lore throughout various eras and cultures. I got a lot more out of the documentary than I did the movie. Then again, I'm not a 17-year-old goth girl. (Except in chat rooms and certain specialty nightclubs.)

This week marked the debuts of two DVDs that make for a powerful one-two punch: the Daniel Craig film Defiance along with the History Channel's documentary about the remarkable story that inspired the film.

The lowdown on adding a little documentary seasoning to your movie viewing, after the jump...

Continue reading "Double Features: Get Some History With Your Pop Culture" >

The Tony Awards: This handsome fellow is your host, Neil Patrick Harris. CBS

 

by Linda Holmes

You probably know that Neil Patrick Harris is one of the Official Favorite People Of Monkey See, and we're just terribly excited that he's hosting The Tony Awards on Sunday night.

So I will be joined by regular Monkey See contributor Marc Hirsh for Sunday night's telecast. We are both, shall we say, theater enjoyers but not necessarily theater nerds, so we hope you'll come and appreciate it as a singing, dancing barrel of fun, which is what we're hoping for.

Check out the list of people who are scheduled to appear: Dolly Parton, Elton John, Liza Minnelli, and Poison. COME ON, people. That's entertainment.

If nothing else, you'll want to be here in case former American Idol contestant Constantine Maroulis wins a Tony for his performance in Rock Of Ages, because my head will truly explode.

Sunday night, 8:00 p.m., be there or be...watching reruns, and nobody wants that.

Marriage television: Fox apparently forgot what happened the last time they tried a show about arranging marriages. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

I realize that practically nobody watched the disastrous 2003 Fox show about arranged marriages, Married By America, and for good reason. It was atrocious, stupid, boring, and completely anticlimactic, since in the end, nobody got married. I would never have watched it myself except that I was being paid to write about it at the time.

But now, Fox is back at it, developing a show called I Married A Stranger, which is essentially the same show, but worse. Worse! Last time, your family and friends just picked the fiancé, and you had to go off and live together. It was at least up to you whether to get married.

This time, the family and friends pick the person, and you don't meet him until you're standing at the altar, where you're expected to go through with it right then.

Let's get this out of the way: it's an odious, offensive, revolting, entirely meritless idea from any point of view that respects marriage, men, women, or relationships. This, we know. This debate does not need having.

What's insane is that back in 2003, it also turned out to be bad television. I don't expect Fox to refrain from making it because it's so tacky. But you'd think they might remember that it was unbelievably dull. This was not a guilty pleasure; this was a non-pleasure.

I guess there really is no well so laden with frogs and muck that you can't go back for another sip.

by Marc Hirsh

If you're like me (okay, at least in this regard), you may have managed to make it through your entire childhood without ever seeing an episode of Rhoda.

For reasons unknown, Rhoda, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show were distinctly absent from the batch of sitcoms that I watched every day after school, unlike Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, The Jeffersons and Taxi.

Lord, how I watched me some Taxi growing up.

Rhoda, on the other hand, has been akin to a myth seen only in fleeting, multicolor-headscarfed glimpses, which means that I approached the recent DVD release of Rhoda Season One with a completely fresh perspective.

Fashion aside -- also a theme song that manages to incorporate both tuba and wah-wah guitar, which, seriously: very impressive -- there's not a lot to date the show 35 years after the fact.

It's very well-made. It's still funny. And certain things that were probably meant to be borderline-shocking at the time -- such as the fact that Joe, Rhoda's soon-to-be-husband, was a divorced father -- were presented and dealt with in such a way that a modern viewer wouldn't even know they were once issues.

There are, however, two things that date the show, both of which are inadvertently showcased in "I'll Be Loving You, Sometimes," the third episode of the show's five-year run. And it all starts with the clip up at the top.

In this scene, Joe, who started dating Rhoda not long after she returned to New York from Minneapolis in the first episode, tells Rhoda that he loves her. And what's the response from the live studio audience?

Nothing. No "ooooh!"s. No gasps. Not a "Wooo!" to be heard. Nothing. The audience simply let the scene play out and laughed at the jokes.

Compare that scene to this one 20 years later on Friends, in which the audience is a little more, I don't know, vocal.

Let's go to the video, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Rhoda': What It Says About Wooing. And About 'WOO!'-ing" >

by Linda Holmes

With a grateful hat-tip to Metafilter, here is the totally literal version of "Total Eclipse Of The Heart," in the great tradition of the similar rendition of "Take On Me."

The literal nature of this is very funny, but honestly, it's all there in the raw material. Dear People Born Relatively Recently: Yes, entirely serious videos used to look like this.

Has there ever been a weirder, goofier video that was meant to be serious? I'm sure there has been, and I'm sure you'll tell me.

Burn Notice: If you're all ready for tonight's third-season premiere, you're well ahead of me. USA Network

 

by Linda Holmes

Tonight is the third-season premiere of USA's Burn Notice, a critically acclaimed show that has been crucial in the growth of the network's reputation as a genuine source of original scripted programs.

Please don't tell me what happens. Or what has happened since the pilot.

Because, in keeping with the great migration toward unconventional viewing habits, I've just started watching it. (I bought it online myself; you can also get it on DVD, if you are so inclined. And there have been marathons on USA the last two days, but it's already too late to get in on that action in a useful way.)

If you're not familiar with the premise, Jeffrey Donovan plays Michael Westen, a spy who wakes up one day to find that he's been basically banished -- not just fired as a spy, but wiped off the map of creditworthiness and so forth -- for reasons unknown. ("Burned," you see.)

So now he has all his spy skills, a beautiful associate (Gabrielle Anwar), and his old friend Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell). But no money and no job and no way to survive except -- you guessed it -- by his wits. The result, which makes him basically a very driven, very overqualified private investigator in Miami, is utterly delightful (so far), with exactly the kind of wry, self-aware narration that I very nearly demand in a show of this kind.

At least that's how things are as of the early part of the first season; if he's been abducted by aliens since then, or he's become a time-traveling space soldier, you couldn't prove it by me. I'd be sad, I admit.

It used to be that the third season of a well-respected show with a lot of rich back story was just too late to jump in. It's always been one of the big frustrations with good dramas -- by the time they get going and the buzz gets to the point where you hear about it, you've missed too much. This is especially challenging now that there are far too many shows for even a devoted good-television aficionado to possibly keep track of.

But at the same time, that same irritatingly fractured landscape is supported by a variety of increasingly easy ways to bring yourself up to speed.

So I don't just suggest you keep an open mind about shows you've been ignoring and use the much-improved late-adopter options to improve the overall quality of what you're watching; I do it myself. Judging by my speedy catching-up habits with past shows, it shouldn't take me long to get to the new season. Until then, I'm keeping my eyes closed.

The piano: You know, they use it in music, which is good for times when your favorite shows are in reruns. (Just kidding!) iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

As NPR's collection of culture-related blogs continues to grow, I wanted to make sure you had all had a chance to see A Blog Supreme, the new project from NPR Jazz.

"Jazz? But...but I like television! They won't like me or want to be my friends!"

No, seriously. It's not that kind of jazz blog, I promise.

They're trying, in part, to do some of the same stuff we're doing here, which is to find ways to harness the power of the enthusiast without the occasional insularity that fans can demonstrate. Furthermore, if you liked talking about Pixar and girls, you'll love talking about women and jazz.

(And do not miss the awesome post about naming the blog, which I love dearly, because oh goodness, oh gracious, have I ever been there.)

If you're wondering whether you're going to encounter a solid wall of...I don't know, snapping hipsters or whatever the least pleasant and most silly stereotype of inhospitable jazz fans might look like, consider this passage from blog big cheese Patrick Jarenwattananon:

Educate as we might, jazz audiences will never be comprised of only highly-trained musician-types. So much of the barrier to entry of jazz is a perception that it requires a foundation of history and music theory to appreciate at any level -- a perception no doubt bolstered by the behaviors of typical jazz nerds (who have historically been male). Teaching more and more people jazz literacy will help, but more importantly, jazz needs to find a public tone of voice which informs but doesn't intimidate its potential new audiences (female or otherwise). [Meta-Editorial: I'd like to think that's what we're trying to do here, albeit in too many words.]

In other words, they'd still like you to listen to some great music, even if you don't have the time (or perhaps even the inclination) to become a full-time student.

I feel exactly the same way about getting people to watch Wipeout. (Not really. I'm only kidding. Don't e-mail me!)

More importantly, it's well-written and interesting, and you have to admire any project that involves regular conversations where a guy educates his own boss. (I don't know why I haven't forced Trey to sit through some episodes of Dancing With The Stars. Next season!)

So check it out, and listen to good music, and don't forget me when you become a sophisticated snapping hipster.

Nurse Jackie: Showtime's new offering brings Edie Falco back to pay cable and is only the tip of a much larger nursing iceberg coming to series television. Showtime

 

by Mark Blankenship

You may have noticed that for the next few months, scripted television will be a nurse-a-palooza. On June 8, Edie Falco dons white rubber shoes for Showtime's dark sitcom Nurse Jackie (you can see an edited version of the pilot here), and eight days later, Jada Pinkett Smith debuts on TNT's HawthoRNe, the press materials for which really do capitalize the "RN" in the title.

And you're probably thinking, "That's great, but I need more Trachtenberg." Fortunately for you, the fall will bring NBC's Mercy, starring Michelle Trachtenberg as part of a trio of hardworking nurses.

But what's causing this sudden influx of nursing series?

Cynical media hounds will tell you they aren't surprised. They'll say the country's inexhaustible appetite for medical dramas was bound to produce a nursing spike, because TV execs would rather convince us an old formula is new than try something that hasn't been tested.

You can imagine the pitch meeting, right? "Yes, Jackie Hawthorne's Mercy will be America's 450th hospital show, but this time, the doctors are supporting characters and the nurses are the leads! It's totally original!"

Meanwhile, sensitive social analysts will declare that these nursing shows demonstrate television's ever-growing stature as a great place for female narratives. Hawthorne joins Saving Grace and The Closer in TNT's slate of femme-friendly dramas, while Nurse Jackie shares a network with Weeds and The United States of Tara.

Throw in shows like True Blood, Damages, and Big Love, and you can see that for every movie with a poorly developed girlfriend character, there are three series with complex female leads. Television honors a woman's worth.

And yeah ... maybe. But I think we know the real reason these shows are springing up.

The sins of the TV-nursing past, after the jump...

Continue reading "Edie Falco's 'Nurse Jackie' Kicks Off A Prime-Time Nurseapalooza" >

by Neda Ulaby

It is once again Wednesday, and that means it is once again time for Culturetopia, NPR's podcast highlighting some of our favorite stories in books, movies, music, and the rest of the culturetopian landscape we hope you're all enjoying.

How can you join us and devour a hand-picked selection of some of NPR's finest arts and culture stories? Certainly, you can subscribe to the podcast. But if you just can't bear having any more buttons to push, we'll narrow it down to just one: the "play" button right here.

This week's round-the-world roundup kicks off with a truly incredible Susan Stamberg piece about Broadway orchestrators. (It's the sort of piece that NPR staffers were forwarding to each other all last week with subject lines ordering, "You've got to hear this.")

On the books beat, we have a moving interview with Luis Alberto Urea. A product of Tijuana and San Diego who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2005, Urrea has a new novel out called Into The Beautiful North. The story considers what happens in those little Mexican villages where everyone's moved to the U.S. Urrea brings a devastatingly observant eye to his post-NAFTA epics, as he does to his interview with Tell Me More. (Happily, you can find the first chapter of Into The Beautiful North at that link as well.)

Bob Dylan! A Japanese movie! Linda's Pixar letter in her very own voice! And, believe it or not, even more, after the jump...

Continue reading "Culturetopia: Must-Listen Arts & Entertainment (Global Edition)" >

iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

From sharp-eyed tipster who is totally not Mike Pesca comes this gem, spotted among the items for sale at CharityBuzz:

Lunch with part of the cast of Too Close For Comfort is not a hot auction item.

Too Close For Comfort, you may or may not recall, was a sitcom that aired from 1980 to 1986 (which is much longer than I thought it was on), starring the late Ted Knight.

Ted Knight is not coming to lunch, obviously, no matter how much you pay. But the bidding currently stands at $150, and you have to pay for everyone's lunch. Compare this to better-faring items like Daytona with Patrick Dempsey, currently at $4250 as of this writing, or watching the U.S. Open with Andre Agassi, currently at a cool $8000 with three weeks of bidding to go.

Poor Too Close For Comfort.

Are you a sharp-eyed tipster? Because we love hilarious tips, and are perfectly happy to credit you as "sharp-eyed tipster who is totally not [your name here]" or "sharp-eyed tipster who is totally [your name here]." Or even "Sharp-eyed tipster who is totally [what you always wished was your name here]." We're flexible. Send your gems to monkeysee (at) npr.org.

Who is this guy?: We're willing to bet a lot of you will get it wrong. DC Comics

 

by Glen Weldon

See that smiley red goober over there on the right? For almost a decade, his was the best-selling comic book in the country. During World War II, this guy was outselling Superman back when that really meant something: Millions of Americans thrilled to his monthly adventures.

He's starred in his own movie serial, his own cheesy Saturday morning kids' show, and he helped usher in the modern era of corporations suing one another silly over copyright infringement.

Pop quiz: What's his name?

A. The Flash
B. Shazam
C. Lightning Man
D. Captain Marvel
E. Marvelman

Hint: The rookie mistake is to confuse the guy's name with his catchphrase. Don't worry, though. Lots of folk do that, and it's understandable. I mean, Lord knows I never referred to the "Git R'Done" guy as anything but Git R'Done Guy. Not that it came up much.

But there's a reason this hero's name doesn't spring to mind as easily as that of Superman, Spider-Man and Batman, even though it really should.

After the jump: His real name, his troubled past and why it's taken until now for modern comic book creators to figure out what to do with him.

Continue reading "So Why Isn't This Once-Mighty Super-Guy More Famous?" >

CATAPULT!: This is something more shows should consider. ABC

 

by Linda Holmes

The lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer often lead to flights of fancy. This one has to do with the giant catapult that flings people through the air (and into the water) on ABC's strangely addictive Wipeout.

I know, I know.

But hear me out.

It's not Wipeout that appeals. IT'S THE CATAPULT. (See it in action a few seconds into this promo.)

And a whimsical discussion taking place here at NPR has led to the development of a list of other shows that would also benefit from a giant catapult. Here they are, complete with simulations of what they would sound like if they did have catapults.

1. The Bachelorette. "Jillian, I really want you to know I'm here for the right reasons. I feel a connection between us, and I think as we get to know each other, you'll find out that AAAIIIIEEEEEEEE!"

2. American Idol. "Those judges don't even know good singing. This unsuccessful audition in which I wore a clown suit and sang 'Don't Rain On My Parade' will not be the last you'll hear of me, because I will be back, and I will AAAIIIIEEEEEEEE!"

3. House. "The patient doesn't have piccolocystic fluteopathy, or the whistling coming from his teeth would be much more high-pitched. Did you see the way his shoelaces were tied? Clearly, this man is suffering from AAAIIIIEEEEEEEE!"

The rest of the list, after the jump...

Continue reading "Other Shows That Could Use A Giant 'Wipeout'-Style Catapult" >

by Linda Holmes

When NPR's own Trey Graham directed me to this fantastic and quite well-known clip of Leslie Uggams doing her best to perform "June Is Bustin' Out All Over," in spite of forgetting the words or not having the teleprompter or entering a fugue state or whatever happened to her, it seemed kind of mean.

And then it started to seem heroic.

(And in fairness to Leslie Uggams, her words aren't that much more ridiculous than the real words. And she's kind of close...up to a point.)

This is the kind of disaster that only a true professional can withstand without simply running off the stage. Think of Mike Myers trying to figure out what to do after Kanye West came up with "George Bush doesn't care about black people." (Not because of the politics, but because it clearly was not what Mike Myers thought was going to happen.)

It takes me back to "Fiasco!", my favorite-ever episode of This American Life, which I have listened to at least ten times, linked to repeatedly and played for almost everyone I know, because if you can get through the first twenty minutes of that show and not collapse into giggles over the stories of the disastrous performance of Peter Pan, you are a much stronger person than I am.

(I just stopped to listen to it again. I love it that much.)

So I present it as an open question: Who are your favorite mishap survivors? I'm not talking about real trainwrecks where something honestly terrible happens; I'm talking about the people who soldier on no matter what. They fall off the stage; they get back on.

Because they are professionals, people.

by Linda Holmes

Let's start the day with a quick note. Of shock.

If you heard Alex Cohen's Morning Edition piece yesterday about the new Land Of The Lost movie that comes out this weekend, you heard her talk about the fake waterfall in the opening sequence of the old TV show.

It's a good thing you can now find episodes of Land Of The Lost online, because you really have to see it for yourself. If you've never seen the show or any significant time has passed since you saw it, nothing anyone can tell you could possibly prepare you for this.

by Linda Holmes

One of the things I don't have to do in this job is subject myself to the entire MTV Movie Awards, partly because anything that's worth seeing will show up online the next day anyway.

To wit: This digital short featuring Andy Samberg, Will Ferrell, and...well, J.J. Abrams in an awfully unexpected context. The language is only intermittently salty, and the subject is: "Cool Guys Don't Look At Explosions." It's rather wonderful.

by Linda Holmes

Watchers of the late-night scene know very well the tale of a then-unknown Conan O'Brien taking over what used to be David Letterman's show back in 1993, having worked primarily as a writer (most notably for The Simpsons) before that time. He overcame early bad reviews to become quite beloved at 12:30 a.m., and now he's got the big desk at The Tonight Show, starting tonight.

Guests for the first week will include Will Ferrell, Tom Hanks, and Ryan Seacrest, as well as musical guests Pearl Jam, Green Day, and The John Mayer Trio.

The pressure is on, but one of the things Conan has going for him is that he's done this before; he's been patient. If he isn't an instant hit at 11:30, he's conditioned not to wilt.

A plea to Pixar: Up is so good; can you turn your attention to a different kind of hero? Walt Disney Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

Dear Pixar,

This is not an angry letter. It is especially not an angry letter about Up, which I adored. I could have sat in the theater and watched it two more times in a row. I cried, but I also laughed so hard in places that it wore me out.

So I'm not complaining; I'm asking. I'm asking because I think so highly of you.

Please make a movie about a girl who is not a princess.

I'm counting on you, after the jump...

Continue reading "Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees" >

Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag: If everyone on I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! were thrown into landfill, which is not a bad idea, they would go first and second. NBC

 

by Linda Holmes

I regret to inform you that tonight is the premiere of NBC's summer series, I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!.

Of course, the trick to this show is that the title suggests that people are there involuntarily -- perhaps they're on probation, or they're genuinely lost, or their relatives are being held for ransom, and only you can help them. Get them out of here!

The problem is that these people want on this kind of show fairly desperately. Patti Blagojevich doesn't actually want to be rescued. If she didn't want to be there, perhaps when her husband was told that he was legally prohibited from participating, she might have seen it as a sign and said, "Whew! Well, honey, at least that's over." Rather than, you know, rolling up her sleeping bag and packing her hair dryer.

But as happy as they all are to be here, this is a particularly distasteful group. Even to me, with my relatively high tolerance for nonsense, this is some high-octane nonsense.

Now, I never actually wish anyone harm, but as I came to grips with the fact that the arrival of this show was inevitable -- it will air Monday through Thursday nights throughout the entire month of June -- I began to entertain a purely frivolous fantasy in which all of these people were dropped headfirst into a large landfill. (And unharmed! Just smelly.) Almost involuntarily, I began to play a mental game called, "In What Order?"

So here's the order in which I decided I would drop them into the landfill.

1. Spencer Pratt. Spencer made his unwelcome invasion of popular culture by being the boyfriend of Heidi Montag, the official Useless Los Angeles Person of MTV's The Hills. It has become a cliché to complain about people who are famous for being famous; Spencer has pioneered a whole new kind of meta-complaining, in which we lament people who are famous just for the fact that we all hate the fact that they're famous. It's quite a logical thicket -- leave a breadcrumb trail so you can get home.

In any event, both a coward and a bully, Spencer is probably the single person on the planet Earth I would most like to see under a pile of leftover lasagna and old shoes. I decided he would go into the landfill first, not only because he will be gone immediately, but because it means everyone else will land on top of him, hopefully at awkward angles.

2. Heidi Montag.. Heidi will not see much reason to go on once we're rid of Spencer. In fact, she probably won't know what to do. Five minutes after he's gone, she'll be trying to recapture their old routine by hugging a tree and pretending to be reading about herself and the tree in Us magazine while an imaginary cameraman from Us magazine takes a picture of her with the tree that will later be captioned, "Celebrities And Trees Are Just Like Us...They Read About Themselves!"

The rest of the cast, including a ubiquitous Baldwin, after the jump...

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