by Neda Ulaby

Your weekly serving of culture-love from NPR includes an interview with Aziz Ansari, whose portrayal of a hilariously sleazy public servant in the new NBC comedy Parks and Recreation is one of the cool highlights of this fall TV season.

Another man we love, Forest Whitaker, talks about his decision to produce a five-part HBO documentary about Newark's city government. (Brick City focuses on its magnetic young mayor, Cory Booker, who could probably make that fictional parks department run more efficiently.)

We've also got immigrant TV talk show host Craig Ferguson chatting about his decision to become an American, and we'll learn how author Orson Scott Card really feels about the transformation of two of his science fiction classics into graphic novels.

Actor Juliette Binoche explains a few of her other gentle talents -- like dancing, painting and drawing -- and author James Ellroy shares his thoughts on rhythm. Finally, film critic Kenneth Turan questions the use value of Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story.

This is the real Darkseid. A fake Darkseid appears on Twitter as a hobo. Let us explain. (DC Comics)

by Glen Weldon

Before we get to the who, let's start with the what: @HOBODARKSEID is the magic that happens when three discrete branches of geekery come together. He exists at the happy confluence of comic book nerddom, comedy nerddom ... and Twitter.

For the six of you still reading, some background: Darkseid (pronounced DARK-side, as in "___of the Moon," "Tales from the__" and, yes, "Turn to the___, Luke") is the Big Bad of the DC Universe. Or he was until very recently, when Superman killed him or something, through, as near as I can make out, karaoke. Not kidding; wish I were.

But never mind that. Comic books are lousy with evil, world-conquering cosmic villains of the "Die, puny humans!" variety, but Darkseid's special. He was created, along with a slew of fellow, equally trippy superhumans, by legendary artist Jack Kirby when Kirby left Marvel at the start of the '70s and went to work for DC.

Darkseid's schtick: The tyrant ruler of the planet Apokolips, he scours the universe for the secret of the Anti-Life Equation, which will subjugate all life to his terrible will. And he certainly cuts a dashing figure, with his gray, rock-like skin, blue helmet, tunic and, um, thigh boots. Has eye-beams that can either kill, or seriously bum out, his victims.

Likes: Evil schemes, standing with his arms behind his back, making pronouncements like, "Darkseid is," "Die for Darkseid" and "Submit."

Dislikes: Hope, free will, rude people.

@HOBODARKSEID, on the other hand, is a fake Twitter celebrity. He's the mighty ruler of Apokolips fallen on hard times, and into a comedy meme popularized by John Hodgman's 2005 book, The Areas of my Expertise.

That's right: hobo jokes.

The alchemical mixture of cosmic villainy and bindle gags, and why it's the best thing on Twitter right now -- oh, and who's behind it all -- after the jump.

Continue reading "Who is HOBODARKSEID? And Why Should You Care?" >

Kelsey Grammer's new sitcom, Hank, is an ill-conceived recession tale. (Bob D'Amico / ABC)

by Linda Holmes

Last week's strong premieres of the excellent Modern Family and the pretty decent Cougar Town provided hope that ABC's new Wednesday night comedy experiment might be not only good, but also popular -- a potent possibility.

Tonight, however, with the premiere of Kelsey Grammer's absolutely terrible Hank, it becomes clear that while the entire block may be popular, the entire block will not be good, or even watchable.

A series of painful miscalculations, after the jump.

Continue reading "If You're Enjoying ABC's New Comedy Block, You Still Should Not Watch 'Hank'" >

Judy Garland looks extra-spiffy in the restored The Wizard Of Oz, which has been released in a new box set with some extra add-ons. (MGM Studios/Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

by Linda Holmes

One important thing to understand about the fancy new box set of The Wizard Of Oz celebrating its 70th anniversary is not a new restoration of the film. The big restoration came in 2005 for the "Collector's Edition" -- this is the "Ultimate Collector's Edition," and it's the first release of the film on Blu-ray, which is how I saw it.

What makes The Wizard Of Oz such an interesting candidate for a loving and meticulous restoration -- especially on Blu-ray -- is that the more closely you look at the film, the less realistic it appears, and the more the matte paintings look like matte paintings, and the more conspicuous it becomes that the entire thing is shot inside on soundstages, and not in fields or forests or on the Kansas prairie.

When you look at a modern film that benefits from high-definition, like, say, The Dark Knight, the high quality feeds the vivid realism. But with Oz, those same things feed the vivid unrealism -- rather than intensifying the film as a true-to-life, you-are-there, through-the-screen immersion, it works as an ever more beautifully produced storybook.

What's included and whether it's worth it, after the jump ...

Continue reading "The Luscious New 'Wizard Of Oz' Box: Come For The Watch, Stay For The Movie" >

Roman Polanski, seen here in 1980, has made films that many now find difficult to watch. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

by Marc Hirsh

If this summer's seemingly endless parade of beloved public figures bound for the great beyond earned it the blunt but evocative nickname the Summer Of Death, recent weeks have underlined another pop-culture trend that's far less bittersweet -- but that might help define 2009 nonetheless. Call it the Year Of The Fan's Discomfort.

The latest example, of course, is Sunday's arrest of Roman Polanski, which once again puts the director's past front and center in the public imagination. Before that, former teen star Mackenzie Phillips went on Oprah and told the world that her father, Mamas and the Papas leader John Phillips, had sex with her when she was 19. Earlier in the summer, meanwhile, iconic record producer Phil Spector earned a sentence of 19 years to life -- for murder.

And in each instance, there's a thorny question lurking behind the news reports: "How can I listen to his music, or watch his movies, in light of this?"

Difficult questions, after the jump.

Continue reading "Roman Polanski At The Uncomfortable Intersection Of Art And Life" >

by Linda Holmes

After writing about the 40th anniversary of The Brady Bunch the other day, it occurred to me that I had mentioned their variety show followed by the notation "HA HA HA!", and I now realize that those of you who were mercifully not alive at the time may have thus assumed I was kidding.

In case there was any confusion, I have included a clip above from The Brady Bunch Hour in which the Brady clan performs a disco medley, with appearances by Rip Taylor, the cast of What's Happening!, and Fake Jan, who took the place of the prescient Eve Plumb, who apparently fled this project leaving an Eve-Plumb-shaped hole in the wall -- and good for her.

If you've ever had a dream where Alice danced and sang with Rip Taylor while both were dressed like ducks, be advised: that was no dream. That was a distant memory.

Hugh Jackman, seen here at an event earlier this month, did not respond well when a cell phone went off during a Broadway performance. (Emmanuel Dunand / Getty Images)

by Linda Holmes

People, please. If you are going to go to a Broadway show, turn off your cell phone. Not only is it incredibly rude to your fellow theatergoers not to, but you run the risk of an actor turning all the force of his performance to a simple attempt to shame you mercilessly until you break down.

That's what happened when Hugh Jackman was interrupted during a performance (with Daniel Craig) of "A Steady Rain." Rather than express himself to the offender explicitly (like Patti LuPone), Jackman simply asked the person to please answer the phone.

But he or she did not comply. Apparently so horrified at the idea of being identified that it was preferable to simply let the ringing continue, the offender let the phone go, and that was what became appalling. "Don't be embarrassed," he finally said sarcastically, "Just grab the phone."

Perhaps you'd like to see it for yourself.

The video, after the jump...

Continue reading "Hugh Jackman Is Very Disappointed In You For Leaving Your Cell Phone On" >

LL Cool J stars in NCIS LA, one of the strongest performing new shows of the season. (Cliff Lipson / CBS)

by Linda Holmes

It's not often you see the broadcast networks with anything to smile about these days, but this is the exception: so far, the new shows they're rolling out are doing well, especially considering how weakly new shows have performed overall in recent years. The Hollywood Reporter blog The Live Feed offers this chart, by way of comparison.

A closer look at those numbers, after the jump...

Continue reading "In A Rare Bit Of Good News, Networks See Strength In Their New Shows" >

If you can manage a large group of ducks, you might be good for a reality show like The Amazing Race. But don't get too excited just yet, even if they cast you. (Monty Brinton / CBS)

by Linda Holmes

Last night's two-hour opener of The Amazing Race hit the most important benchmark for any Race episode by including the coaxing of noisy and unruly animals (see above). In the past, llamas, camels, goats, oxen, sheep, horses, and other creatures have helped out; last night, it was ducks. Any episode with this much quacking and waddling has to be counted as good.

But wow, they came up with a very cruel twist.

Everybody who's going to be on this season, take one step forward! Not so fast, after the jump. (Spoilers, obviously.)

Continue reading "'The Amazing Race' Tells One Team It Didn't Really Need To Bother Packing" >

My solved cube. You guys will be my witnesses,right? (Linda Holmes / NPR)

by Linda Holmes

The Rubik's Cube dates to my childhood, when it was for leaving on a desk to be fiddled with -- or, for a select few strange birds, for actually solving, sometimes very quickly. At that time, knowing how to do it was a brand of useless but very cool knowledge that seemed like it could only have come from someone else who knew the trick: if there had been an entire society of eleven-year-olds who stayed that way forever, knowing how to solve the Rubik's Cube would have been an essential element of its oral tradition.

Since most of my game-playing time these days is devoted to keeping Super Mario from getting squashed by giant bugs, I hadn't much thought about the Rubik's Cube in quite a while. Then I learned that there's a new push for it as an educational prop, and the entire point is that they tell you, right out, how to do it.

Solving cubes and settling old scores, after the jump...

Continue reading "Rubik's Cube Is Back To Teach Math And Taunt Your Inner Ten-Year-Old" >

Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco are seen here in last week's season premiere of The Big Bang Theory. If you haven't seen it, don't feel bad: they're keeping it under wraps. (Sonja Flemming / CBS)

by Linda Holmes

When I saw the pilot of The Big Bang Theory in the fall of 2007, it struck me as irritating and corny, and I threw it on the pile with all the other CBS sitcoms I don't watch. (Which is all of them, except How I Met Your Mother.)

But as it stretched into a second season, I kept hearing people I normally agreed with saying that they liked it, and I was eventually able to catch a couple of episodes. And, wonder of wonders, it had improved a lot (particularly in the writing), and it was pretty good.

Normally, the sequence here would be that over the summer, I would catch up with the first two seasons so I could start watching it in the fall. But then I realized that the first season was available on iTunes, but not the second, and the second wouldn't be out on DVD until September 15, about a week before the third-season premiere, and you couldn't (at that time) buy it as a download on Amazon or anywhere else. I'm not much for illegally downloading TV shows for a variety of reasons, so this was the part where I said to myself, "Never mind."

You can now purchase Season 2 as a download on Amazon, just as you can buy it on DVD, but since the current episodes aren't streamed, then unless I record and save those, then by the time I watch the second season, I'll be behind on the third season, and I won't be able to get that one until a year from now.

Given how hard networks are trying right now to retain audiences, and given that The Big Bang Theory has probably seen as much improvement in the quality of its buzz over its first two seasons (culminating in Jim Parsons' Emmy nomination) as any comedy in memory, it boggles the mind that they seem to be going to such lengths to make it difficult to become a fan.

The plaintive cry of the frustrated consumer, after the jump...

Continue reading "To Stream Or Not To Stream: The Frustrating Case Of 'The Big Bang Theory'" >

Megan Fox proved ill-suited for her hosting duties on the poorly executed, accidentally profanity-laced season premiere of Saturday Night Live. (Dana Edelson / NBC)

by Linda Holmes

Unevenness is such a staple of Saturday Night Live -- and, in fact, always has been, even during the good years -- that it can't possibly be considered news that last night's season premiere had long stretches where the material was painfully unfunny.

But on last night's show, hosted by actress Megan Fox, there was hardly anything that was funny, and what was unfunny was extra-unfunny.

And as if that weren't enough, one of the new cast members accidentally dropped one of George Carlin's seven dirty words.

Anatomy of a disaster, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Saturday Night Live' Tops Off A Dismal Season Premiere With A Little Swearing" >

Mike, Carol, and all the kids looked mighty young in the pilot episode of The Brady Bunch, which aired 40 years ago today. (Paramount Pictures/Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

by Linda Holmes

As an inexplicable flood of Brady Bunch episodes seemed to be washing over all of television this weekend, I found myself wondering: why the onslaught?

The answer, I eventually discovered: It's 40 years old.

That's right: the premiere episode, in which Mike and Carol's wedding is interrupted by the dog, the cat, and Mike falling into the cake, aired 40 years ago today: September 26, 1969.

The show's run was relatively short by today's family-sitcom standards: at five seasons, it comes in three seasons short of Home Improvement and four seasons short of Everybody Loves Raymond. Of course, if you count the movies (honestly, if you have never seen A Very Brady Christmas, I assure you it is a masterpiece of camp), the hour-long comedy-drama (Marcia is an alcoholic!), the variety show (HA HA HA!), and everything else, its influence becomes easier to understand.

But what has lasted, for me, are the things that have never made sense, ever, about this family in which everything could allegedly be resolved in 30 minutes. I will now catalog for you a few of what I consider the more perplexing mysteries.

1. Why doesn't Alice know anyone other than her boyfriend and the people she works for? Was she hatched from a giant egg?

2. Why did they bring the cat and the dog to the wedding in the first place? Fluffy The Cat was never even seen again, so she can't have been that critical to the proceedings. (I am not including "What happened to Fluffy?", lest the answer be unpleasant.)

3. How many kids were in Cindy's class, and how small was the auditorium, if they were all in the play but could only bring one parent each? That makes the audience exactly as large as the cast. I understand "you can't bring your mom, dad, five siblings, and housekeeper," but how big was this cast? Is this the elementary-school staging of Hair? (If so, I have additional questions.)

4. I would understand if Marcia were horrified that someone would find out she had a crush on a boy she actually knew, but her falling to pieces over the possibility that her crush on Desi Arnaz, Jr. would be uncovered seems like an overreaction. Doesn't she have his picture up everywhere anyway? Did she learn nothing from my affair with Andy Gibb? (DON'T TELL ANYONE!)

5. How big of a dweeb do you have to be to get hold of a movie camera and decide to enlist your family in a dramatization of the first Thanksgiving? And Greg was the cool one?

6. If Jan were absolutely determined to get a brunette wig, isn't it likely that she could come up with one that didn't look like it was forcibly removed from the head of a Muppet?

7. If you were Bobby, and you felt like a loser because you never won a trophy, would you really be soothed by a trophy from your brothers and sisters for trying? (A trophy, mind you, that they apparently managed to acquire and have engraved with a lengthy message while you were on the way home from the ice-cream-eating contest that, once again, you lost.)

8. Were there still crazy prospectors wandering around ghost towns in 1971?

9. When going on television to attempt to win money to pay for your parents' anniversary present, which is being held hostage, why would you prepare one song for the actual broadcast but use a different song for your audition? That's just extra time locked in the garage with Greg's "music."

10. How old were you before you had any idea that the "pork chops and apple-shawss" thing was supposed to be Peter's impression of Humphrey Bogart? I think I respected him more when I thought he was just being strange.

Ten more, plus the bonus round, after the jump...

Continue reading "Twenty Eternal Questions As 'The Brady Bunch' Turns 40 (Also: We're Old)" >

In Surrogates, Bruce Willis lets his robot self run free. (Touchstone Pictures)

by Linda Holmes

It seems like a good way to get a movie going: "It's the future, and what's happened is ... "

That's how the new Bruce Willis film Surrogates works. In the film, it's the future, and everyone has decided to lie in chairs while neurally controlling robots who represent them in the outside world. As I understand the premise, you would stay at home and think about Starbucks, and your robot self would go to Starbucks. Where a robot barista would make your robot self a robot latte, while you and the barista stayed at home.

According to the press materials, the filmmakers see this as a natural outgrowth of cell phones and the Internet, as well as multi-player games. If you enjoy your cell phone, and you enjoy using a character to play a complicated online role-playing game, you would logically enjoy lying in a chair for the rest of your life while a robot does your job for you, goes to parties for you, and so forth.

Welcome to our goofy dystopian future. We've been here before.

More silly visions of the terrible things that await, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Surrogates' Adds To A Great Movie Tradition: The Goofy Dystopian Future" >

Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, seen here at a news conference in January 2009, dropped by The Daily Show last night. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)

by Linda Holmes

On last night's The Daily Show, Rod Blagojevich sat down to talk to Jon Stewart about the charges against him, the incriminating tapes made of his conversations, and more. Blagojevich's basic argument is that he did attempt to trade President Barack Obama's Senate seat for something, but he was trying to trade it for public policy victories for the people of his state. Stewart had a little bit of trouble with this claim.

After the jump: the video.

Continue reading "Rod Blagojevich Visits Jon Stewart" >

Kurt (Chris Colfer) taught the football team a few new tricks on last night's Glee. (Carin Baer / Fox)

by Linda Holmes

On last night's episode, Glee gave the best example it's offered so far of exactly what it's about, how it's going to work, and how fantasy and realism will be balanced.

In the episode, called "Preggers," the glee club's Kurt stumbled into telling his father he was on the football team, and through a strange series of events, he wound up teaching the team to dance. The undercurrent of all of this is that Kurt recently came out to one of his friends and has been trying to figure out how to come out to his dad, so all of this football/dancing business had a lot of powerful subtext for him.

But in the end, the football team mostly cared about winning, and because it's Glee, a plan was hatched to create a play in which the other team would be distracted by the team's rendition of a particularly famous dance -- some might argue it was one of the most famous dances "OF ALL TIME."

See how it played out, after the jump.

Continue reading "'Glee' Leaves Everything On The Field" >

Barbie was on display at her 50th birthday party in March, and now she's getting her own movie. (Shea Walsh / Associated Press)

by Linda Holmes

Well, it was probably inevitable.

The Transformers have their own movie franchise, and so does G.I. Joe, and they're working on View-Master. It's surprising Barbie hasn't been lined up for a live-action movie before now. Thank goodness that's about to be rectified.

The styling-head horror film and more, after the jump.

Continue reading "Barbie Gets Her Own Movie, Utilizes Elbow Joints For A High-Five" >

by Neda Ulaby

In NPR's weekly podcast of our best arts and culture stories, we've got ... well, we've got an awful lot of boys this week. Matt Damon and Steven Soderbergh chat about their new dark comedy The Informant! And Neil Patrick Harris discusses the terrors and pleasures of hosting the Emmys and his not-so-Horrible career.

Ever wonder how exactly to push the edges of stereotypical humor? Comic Joey Medina explains how he draws on his Latino heritage for material on Talk Of The Nation. Then, an interview with publishing's eight-zillion-pound gorilla -- Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code. He chats about his new book, The Lost Symbol, with All Things Considered host Robert Siegel. Brown says he's come to consider Freemasonry "a perfect blueprint for universal spirituality." Wonder if he's a member.

As you can see, the issues of Wednesday Comics dwarf some of their regular-sized friends. (Glen Weldon / NPR)

By Glen Weldon

One of the year's most interesting comic book experiments comes to an end today. Turns out? It wasn't particularly experimental.

Flatly awesome and happy-making, yes. But a brave leap forward that stared the uncertain future -- with its looming spectre of digital distribution -- squarely in its downloadable face-app? No.

In fact, it was downright retro, an exercise in nostalgia suffused with a specific yearning for the bygone days of Dick Tracy, Prince Valiant and Terry And The Pirates, a time when tales of two-fisted, four-color adventure smelled like newsprint and came with ink that rubbed off on your fingers.

Over the course of its brief life, each new issue of this particular title got you a seat on the express train to the Sunday mornings of your childhood, when you used to read the funnies by spreading them across the floor of the living room like a gleefully garish throw rug.

That was DC's Wednesday Comics, a 12-issue weekly anthology. Each issue featured 15 different serialized, single-page comic chapters of tales revolving around classic DC characters - some (Superman! Batman! Wonder Woman!) who've achieved international renown, and others (The Metal Men! Adam Strange! Deadman!) who, though beloved by fans, have achieved only "Yyyyeah, who, now?" status in the popular imagination.

The twist - and it's a big one - was the format.

After the jump: Extry! Extry! Read All About It! Alien Invasions, Dirty Nazis and Mutant Apes With Bazookas!

Continue reading "Comic Books Take A Bold Leap Backward And Nail The Dismount" >

by Linda Holmes

I don't even know what to say about this video of Ari Shapiro singing at the Hollywood Bowl with Pink Martini, except that it is awesome. Putting aside the audience-shot quality of the video, and not to be all root-for-the-home-team, it is delightful and grand, and clearly, sharing was necessary.

ABC's Modern Family continues a mini-trend this fall of new, surprisingly good network comedies. (Bob D'Amico / ABC)

by Linda Holmes

When you're one of a lot of critics recommending a new show, there's a lot of pressure to say something everyone else isn't already saying. Lots of other people are also telling you today that ABC's Modern Family is a startlingly good pilot for a network comedy, and most of what I have to offer, I have to admit, is enthusiastic agreement.

Ed O'Neill, good jokes, and let's go to the video, after the jump.

Continue reading "ABC's 'Modern Family'; There's Hope For The Half-Hour Network Comedy" >

Jennifer Garner joined Jay Leno on his show on Monday night, but not too many people tuned in. (Justin Lubin / NBC)

by Linda Holmes

We knew that the story of The Jay Leno Show would take a while to play out, and we only have the early data, but so far, it's gone just about as expected -- complete with the fact that how the show is doing is a highly subjective question.

The first night's ratings were, to put it plainly, huge -- more than 18 million people is a lot in the current broadcast environment. NBC could hardly have hoped for a more successful kickoff.

But there were two big asterisks next to that number. One was that the show featured Kanye West, then at the center of a an explosive but ephemeral controversy involving his behavior at the Video Music Awards. The other was that the regular season hadn't started yet, and the competition that Leno would eventually face at 10:00 p.m. on weeknights was lying dormant, waiting to see just how deep it could sink its fangs into him once the time came to wake up.

The giant awakens, after the jump.

Continue reading "Jay Leno Update: How's It Going So Far?" >

President Obama went to visit David Letterman last night, and the Top Ten List knows why. (John Paul Filo / CBS)

by Linda Holmes

When David Letterman hosted President Obama last night, they apparently had so much to talk about that the Top Ten List wound up getting snipped. That would be the list of "Top Ten Reasons President Obama Agreed To Appear On The Show." Fortunately, CBS has restored the clip online, and you can watch it after the jump.

Continue reading "Letterman, Obama And The Top Ten List" >

Tom DeLay started with the cha-cha last night on Dancing With The Stars. Admittedly, this move is not directly cha-cha-related. (Adam Larkey / ABC)

by Linda Holmes

UPDATED: With video!

If you weren't watching the CBS comedies premiering last night, and you weren't watching Heroes, and you weren't watching House, maybe you were watching as Dancing With The Stars returned for another season.

There's only so much to say about this kind of thing, especially when you can just look at the picture to the left and see what Tom DeLay looks like when doing the cha-cha to "Wild Thing." Unfortunately, ABC did not offer photos of either the opening move in which DeLay wiggled his behind at the camera or the moment when he fell to his knees and lip-synced part of the song.

Completely serious here.

In the end, though, DeLay kept himself in the competition. With a total of 16 points from three judges, he tied UFC champion Chuck Liddell and came out ahead of the NFL's Michael Irvin and the aggressively dull Ashley Hamilton. He seriously could have been worse, and Hamilton is so obscure and was so bad that Tom DeLay will almost surely not be the first man kicked off on Wednesday night. Still, he was no Donny Osmond.

Now that the video is up, you can see for yourself, after the jump.

Continue reading "Tom DeLay And Ultimate Fighter Chuck Liddell Schooled By Donny Osmond" >

Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard star in An Education, one of the films to keep an eye out for from the Toronto International Film Festival. (Kerry Brown / Sony Pictures Classics)

by Ann Marie Baldonado

The Toronto International Film wrapped up this weekend, with the Lee Daniels film Precious winning the Audience Award (it is now the first film to win the Audience Awards at both the Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals). In addition to the films I've already highlighted, here are a few more to watch out for. Most are already scheduled to appear in an art house theater near you.

City Of Life And Death (Nanjing Nanjing) (Early 2010)

By Chinese director Lu Chuan, this beautifully shot black and white film chronicles the 1937 Battle of Nanjing and the subsequent Japanese occupation of the city, often referred to as "The Rape of Nanking." We follow the stories of both the Japanese soldiers and the Chinese soldiers and civilians left behind. This sad, brutal story is at times extremely difficult to watch, but the tight, lingering shots of the faces from both sides will likely stay with you for days.

An Education (October 9)

In this British coming-of-age film set in the early 1960s and directed by Lone Scherfig from a screenplay by Nick Hornby, Carey Mulligan plays Jenny, a seriously studious girl, obsessed with Paris, dreaming of Oxford. She begins second-guessing her priorities when she meets the older, handsome, wealthy and cultured David, played by Peter Saarsgard. What will win out: her traditional, A-Level education, or her new exciting life of eating at fancy restaurants, bidding at expensive art actions, and dancing all night at smoke-filled jazz clubs? The captivating Mulligan is being praised for this breakout performance.

Heath Ledger's last film, Nicolas Cage goes for laughs (we hope), and more, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Toronto Film Festival: A Few More Films To Watch Out For" >

Andre Braugher will join Hugh Laurie on tonight's season premiere of House, and that can mean only good things. (Michael Yarish / Fox)

by Linda Holmes

Hugh Laurie lost the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama last night for the fourth time (this time to Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston). He may make it look a little too easy, playing the sour and emotion-burying Dr. Gregory House -- there are few histrionics and there's little overt drama. House often seems to be orbiting around whatever the week's medical mystery may be, and rarely is his personal life the central thrust of the story.

But tonight, he's carrying the two-hour season premiere on his shoulders, with some high-octane help.

Borrowing some great actors, after the jump...

Continue reading "Tonight In Quality Drama: 'House' Unites Hugh Laurie And Andre Braugher" >

Neil Patrick Harris is hosting this year's Emmys, and we'll be watching live. (Cliff Lipson / CBS)

by Linda Holmes

You can relive last night's Emmy liveblog right there in that box above. Find out whether Mad Men repeats as Outstanding Drama, whether Tina Fey keeps raking in the Emmys, and whether anyone has been taken in by a rogue stylist telling her, "It's going to look great. In Paris, everyone goes to formal events dressed as giant chickens, believe me."

If you have comments, leave them in the comments to the post below. You can also check out your fellow Monkey-Seers responses to our poll questions, including whether it was time to get over Jon Cryer's victory, already.

Ellen Page, seen here in Whip It, is one of four Juno alums with films at the Toronto International Film Festival. (Darren Michaels / Fox Searchlight Pictures)

by Ann Marie Baldonado

Jason Reitman's Up in the Air, the biggest hit of this year's Toronto Film Festival, is his follow-up to Juno, the 2007 Toronto favorite about a verbally dexterous pregnant teen looking for a home for her unborn baby and a happy ending for herself. Up in the Air is closer to Reitman's first feature, Thank You For Smoking, a stylishly tight film about a tobacco industry lobbyist having second thoughts on his life's work.

Three other films in Toronto are much more Juno-esque than Up in the Air, and they are the vehicles of three Juno alumni: Diablo Cody, who won an Oscar for Juno's screenplay; Ellen Page, who got an Oscar nomination for her portrayal as Juno herself; and Michael Cera, who may not have gotten an Oscar nomination, but won a lot of hearts for his turn as Juno's love interest, Paulie Bleeker.

Three films, three relationships to Juno, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Toronto Film Festival: 'Juno' Alums Move On In 'Jennifer's Body,' 'Whip It,' 'Youth In Revolt'" >

Matt Damon's Mustache is one of the stars of Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!. (Warner Brothers Pictures)

by Linda Holmes

Dear Matt Damon's Mustache From The Informant!,

I am concerned that you may be feeling neglected. In the run-up to The Informant! (a different movie from The Informant? and The Informant ... and especially The Informant;), there has been a lot of talk about Matt Damon gaining weight in order to play the role of informant! Mark Whitacre, but much less talk about you.

Without you, Whitacre would just be out of shape. With you, he is out of shape and clearly an idiot. Matt Damon plus thirty pounds would just be ... Matt Damon. Matt Damon hitting the craft services table. He's gotten alarmingly skinny before for Courage Under Fire; he still looked like himself. This would not have been different.

It is you, Matt Damon's Mustache, visually transforming Matt Damon into a buffoon. In the trailer, it is you doing the heavy lifting so that his divinely clueless line readings don't simply seem like he's playing it cool, like in Ocean's Eleven. No, with you, we know that he is not someone who should wear a wire, even though he is someone who very badly wants to wear a wire.

I know I should have some defense mechanism against character-building facial hair. I should be able to say, "You must build personalities based on behavior; you cannot cheat!" But you are such an utterly perfect mustache on the face of Matt Damon that my objections collapse.

I think it is your stubbornly unstylish appearance. Not for you the goatee's effort to look cool, nor the mutton chops' calculated irony. Not for you the soul patch's superfluousness or the stubble's implied suggestion that it could win in a fight.

No, you are simply yourself. You are a simple mustache for a simple man. A shade darker, and you would be distracting. A shade lighter, and you would go unnoticed. But you merely pose a question: This guy is going to do something stupid within the next five minutes, right? Even though he is probably a fundamentally nice guy?

My hat is off to you, Matt Damon's Mustache. Surely if they can find ten movies to nominate for Best Picture, they can find a category for you. If I had a write-in ballot, I would write in your name, even though I haven't seen your movie yet. Bravo, sir. (I assume you are a "sir.")

Write back!

Sincerely,
Your Biggest Fan

Elisabeth Moss, who plays Peggy Olson on Mad Men, is just one of our predicted winners who probably won't pan out. (AMC)

by Linda Holmes

As you know, the Emmys will be here on Sunday night, and I'll be covering them live with the help of Joe Reid (who has written for Monkey See, works at SOAPnet, and was my dear pal and colleague at Television Without Pity) and Marc Hirsh (who writes in a couple of capacities here at NPR and writes regularly at The Boston Globe). We are all very opinionated. It should be fun. We'll be getting underway at 7:30 p.m., ahead of the ceremony at 8:00.

But if you can't wait that long and you want to know what will happen, I will do my best to tell you, with the understanding that my prognosticating abilities are notoriously sketchy, as are everyone else's. That's why you should add your own predictions in the comments; it's possible that we can reach some kind of consensus that will approach reality. (Dare to dream, and so forth.) Follow along with the nominations here, using the handy dropdown menus.

Outstanding Drama Series: I see Mad Men repeating here. I think the most likely upset is Breaking Bad (AMC's other prestige show), which could sneak past exactly the same way Bryan Cranston grabbed last year's Outstanding Actor In A Drama trophy that I think 99 percent of pundits thought Jon Hamm was a cinch to take home. Dark horse: Big Love, which has been gaining in critical appreciation and has what is, by all accounts, an outstanding and huge cast.

Lots more, after the jump...

Continue reading "Fearless Emmy Predictions That Are Probably Wrong! Add Your Own!" >

by Linda Holmes

I had a brief talk today on Twitter with two of my very favorite TV writers, Alan Sepinwall of the Star-Ledger and Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune, which started because Mo was talking about tonight's season premiere of Bones, a show that has done a will-they-or-won't-they dance between Bones (Emily Deschanel) and Booth (David Boreanaz) for several seasons. Essentially, she was saying she was giving up on the show out of frustration.

(To get in on these gabs, of course, as well as to hear random observations that don't make it to the blog, follow us.) (She wound up writing more about it, by the way, here.)

She went on to point out that too many TV writers make use of what they think of as either the the Moonlighting rule (some also think it's the Cheers rule), which says that if you put two characters together, the show instantly dies. As she put it, "Do I think all couples with tension should get together? No. But it's lazy or fear-based thinking to constantly avoid putting [the] couple together." And we agreed -- me, and Maureen, and Alan -- it's a dumb rule that isn't even real, and it should be retired immediately.

The myth and the facts, after the jump...

Continue reading "What Really Happened To 'Moonlighting'?" >

Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston star in Love Happens, which actually doesn't make love sound very good. (Universal Pictures)

by Linda Holmes

The new Jennifer Aniston/Aaron Eckhart romance opening tomorrow is called ... Love Happens. Which would seem to be based on ... you know, the common phrase? "[Blank] Happens"? I'm not saying they're directly attempting to link love and [blank], but it sort of feels that way, doesn't it? Maybe the movie is darker than the trailer makes it appear. If that is indeed the intention, we may be opening up an entire new world of depressing movie titles based on the world's most downbeat platitudes.

She Can't Tell Her Heart From A Hole In The Ground

If It's Not One Thing, It's A Lover

Into Every Life, That Guy Must Fall Headfirst While Wearing An Unlaundered Football Jersey

Sometimes You're The Windshield, Sometimes You're The Hug

Love Hits The Fan

Going To The Olive Garden In A Handbasket

SNAF-OOh, You Look Good, Baby

What Goes Out Must Come Down

It's No Use Crying Over Spilled Tears Of Heart-Crushing Sadness

Pick Yourself Up, Dust Yourself Off, Buy Some New Shoes, Get Your Hair Cut, Punch Up Your Online Dating Profile, Practice Your Small Talk .. Actually, Just Forget The Whole Thing, It's Totally Not Worth It

by Linda Holmes

Look, I like this clip as much as anyone, where the dad catches the foul ball, and then ... well, you should just watch it. It's absolutely adorable.

But what I find far funnier is the remainder of this news report, which treats this sweet, loving dad as some kind of model of class because he didn't become wildly angry at his three-year-old and leave her behind at the ballpark. I was half-expecting to hear, "Believe it or not, he has not cut her out of the will -- MAN OF THE YEAR, am I right?"

Come on, local news. Dads actually give a lot of hugs.

Jeff Probst of Survivor looks like he's having a thought. Maybe it's about spiritual death, which he believes everyone on Survivor experiences. (Monty Brinton / CBS)

by Linda Holmes

If you listened to the piece on Morning Edition today about the building of the Survivor sets, one thing you learned is that host Jeff Probst takes Survivor very seriously.

He tries to act like he doesn't -- he sees himself as a jokester of sorts, and he's wildly attached to his notion of himself as a cool guy. Still, when he talks about the show, he can't not say things like, "Instantly, you have adversaries, and you have something to fight for!"

Listen to the way he actually trash-talks other reality shows for having cheap-looking challenges that he claims are "literally with tin cans and some string." I have never seen tin cans and string on any show I have ever watched, but even if I had, when you are bragging about how beautifully your obstacle courses are painted, you are taking yourself awfully seriously for a guy who snuffs torches for a living.

The Emmys, Elisabeth Hasselbeck's hair, and more, after the jump...

Continue reading "Is Jeff Probst The Last Of The Painfully Self-Serious Reality-Show Hosts?" >

George Clooney was one of the big stars of Toronto, here at the premiere of The Men Who Stare At Goats. (Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images)

by Ann Marie Baldonado

At last year's Toronto Film Festival, the big stories were Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler. Slumdog garnered an audience award and much praise from critics, and a few months later it won the Oscar for Best Picture. The Wrestler, which arrived in Toronto without a distributor, caused a bidding war that was eventually won by Fox Searchlight. Although neither film boasted marquee stars (the former featured actors unknown in the U.S. and the latter staked everything on the then reputation-challenged Mickey Rourke), it was clear from the festival buzz that these two under-the-radar movies were destined to be hits. This year is a little different.

Clooney! Oprah! Sad stories of being fired! All this, after the jump...

Continue reading "The Toronto Film Festival: Attention, George Clooney Is A Huge Movie Star!" >

Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) looks a little nervous. Is it because The Office may be bringing on a baby? (NBC)

by Linda Holmes

Unless we are being treated to a massive dose of misdirection, which signs suggest that we are not, the sixth season of The Office will address, among other things, the fact that Pam is pregnant.

This could be very good news, or it could be very bad news.

The ups and downs of adding an infant, after the jump...

Continue reading "'The Office' Takes On The Question Of Whether Babies Destroy Comedy" >

by Neda Ulaby

We've got pieces on the dorkily delightful Fox musical comedy series Glee and Jay-Z's 11th solo album on our weekly roundup of NPR's very best arts pieces.

(By the way, Broadway star Matthew Morrison -- who's the lead actor in Glee -- gives an interview that may be the most adorable thing heard on NPR in recent memory.)

But tell more, you may be saying, about the odd pairings manifesting on the podcast this week:

How about a reflection upon Walt Disney's semi-surreptitious partnership with the U.S. State Department during World War II? Or an interview with a pro baller who happens to be a devout poetry geek? Fernando Perez, of the Tampa Bay Rays, discusses his recent essay in Poetry magazine.

Finally, a sister and an only child chew over the complicated -- and occasionally unholy --relationships between sisters. One is best-selling author Deborah Tannen. The other is NPR's original radio mama bear, Susan Stamberg. I'll let you figure out who's the sibling.

You can subscribe to the podcast here, or listen below.

Marvel's Divas are up to something interesting. (Marvel Comics)

by Glen Weldon

In This Corner:
Gotham City Sirens #2

Publisher:
DC Comics

Written By:
Paul Dini, writer/producer behind several animated series starring DC characters.

Premise:
Three of Gotham's baddest bad girls -- Poison Ivy (plant-controlling seductress), Harley Quinn (ex-Joker moll), and Catwoman (reformed feline felon) -- move in together, proceed to arch their backs a lot.

Plot:
Ivy and Harley, suspecting Catwoman is setting them up, drug her with truth serum, tie her to a chair, and attempt to get her to reveal Batman's secret identity.

Number of Butt Shots:
They are as grains of sand on the beach. Be more specific.

Number of Patently Gratuitous, You-Gotta-Be-Kidding-Me-Here-With-This, Butt Shots:
Ah, okay. Five. Plus all kinds of ...

Boob Shots:
Yes, a bunch. Plus lots of Harley midriff. And thigh.

Percentage Decrease, Compared to Last Issue, in Scenes Depicting Busty Women in Hot Tubs Forcibly Restrained by Creeper Vines:
100.

Percentage Increase, Compared to Last Issue, in Scenes Depicting Busty Women in Leather Catsuits Tied to Chairs:
100.

So, Um, in Other Words:
Pretty much par for the comic book course, yeah.

After the jump: The Divas, and their very different (read: FABulous) Carrie Bradshaw Meets Dorothy Zbornak Meets She-Hulk vibe.

Continue reading "Sirens Vs. Divas: Who Will Win The Great Comic Book Cheesecake-Off?" >

Susan Boyle was up so high and then down so low that she can easily pop right back up. Sound complicated? It is. (Associated Press)

by Linda Holmes

Remember when Susan Boyle and her famous performance seemed like a nice but doomed story, to the point where the first post about it in this space was called "Something To Watch Now, Before Someone Ruins It For All Of Us"?

And remember how she got so popular so quickly that it required a backlash tracker to keep track?

Well, I am now prepared to admit that the backlash tracker was missing one optional element: the triumphant comeback. Once the entire cycle has been completed, there are times when it can start all over again, because the running of the original cycle through to its logical conclusion has allowed underdog status to be reclaimed.

Once Boyle didn't win Britain's Got Talent, suffered a few public-relations setbacks, and seemed to be taking her instant fame rather hard, she became ripe for another round, and indeed, her album was #1 on Amazon.com and getting massive attention almost three months before it was released.

Tonight on the season finale of NBC's America's Got Talent (which seriously could be subtitled "But Not As Much As Most Other Countries, Based On This Format"), Boyle will perform for a live American audience for the first time. It would be awfully nice to see this go well for her, but it would be even nicer to see her looking happy again.

Neil Patrick Harris is hosting this year's Emmys, which might be surprisingly interesting. (Cliff Lipson / CBS)

by Linda Holmes

Now that Tina Fey already has an Emmy and Mad Men has already lost a couple of them, it may seem like the suspense of the Emmys is over -- but it's not. On Sunday night, in fact, it could be a far happier occasion than it's been at times.

Emmy night has an annoying tendency to get into ruts in which it does the same dances over and over: it does the West Wing Shuffle, the Boston Legal Mambo, the Frasier Cha-Cha, and Jeremy Piven's Cool Dude Club Moves. And it does them over and over, year after year, until you think, "I want to see something else."

Some of that will undoubtedly continue this year. Some winners will be of the "Ugh, that guy, again" variety, but it looks like most of them won't. Piven didn't get his usual nomination. Neither did James Spader for the last season of Boston Legal.

In fact, in the major categories, there are very few nominations that hang over the ceremony with the Emmys' characteristic note of dull inevitability. Short of Entourage winning Outstanding Comedy -- and I've never been able to tolerate that show long enough to develop a strong critical opinion of it, just a gut reaction that it's unspeakably obnoxious -- there's very little in the big categories that would make me wildly frustrated if it happened. The closest would be Kevin Dillon or Jon Cryer beating out Neil Patrick Harris, Rainn Wilson, Tracy Morgan, and Jack McBrayer for Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Comedy, and even those guys aren't repeat-winning award hogs.

It might be one of the better sets of winners, actually, providing that you put aside the heartbreak of who was nominated in the first place. The big snubs already happened -- Battlestar Galactica isn't going to win anything on Sunday, but you can prepare for that now and get your crippling grief and/or frothing-mouthed anger out of the way.

And if you do, you will be rewarded with several hours of Neil Patrick Harris, who was an underused but perfectly fine host at the Tony Awards earlier this year, and who is not only hosting the ceremony but might even finally win this year for his role on How I Met Your Mother.

If you'll be watching -- or perhaps even if you won't -- please join us here, where we'll be live-blogging the ceremony, beginning at 7:30 p.m. I'll be joined by Monkey See contributors Marc Hirsh and Joe Reid, both of whom, I will tell you, have some strong feelings about television. It should be a good time, and it's less likely than usual to be an intensely frustrating experience, and what more, really, can you ask from an awards show?

Jay Leno got very lucky having an interview with controversy-attracting Kanye West, because otherwise, the opener of his new show was extremely slow. (NBC)

by Linda Holmes

As you've been hearing for months, Jay Leno has a new show, and last night, it finally showed up. So how was the debut of The Jay Leno Show?

It was about like his years on The Tonight Show, only much more unevenly paced, because they've changed the proportions and don't have the flow right yet, and he brought on guests who didn't have anything to say -- with one exception.

The jokes (such as they were), the interviews and the big headliner, after the jump...

Continue reading "So How Was Jay Leno's First Show?" >

by Linda Holmes

I was sixteen when Dirty Dancing came out. I had just started driving -- to the point where, the first time I went to see it with my friend Erin, we didn't get to see it because I locked my keys in the car at the theater with the car running. I was young; I was the target demographic. Somebody was always trying to put me in a corner. Sixteen feels like that.

So it may be an accident of timing that I was disproportionately attached to Patrick Swayze, whose death, while not at all unexpected, hits surprisingly hard. I could say I admired the way he kept working even after he was diagnosed with cancer, which is true. Or that I admired the fact that unlike a lot of famous actors, he stayed married to the same lady from 1975 until today, which is also true. Or that I admired the sense of humor about himself that he demonstrated in a famous sketch on Saturday Night Live where he and Chris Farley played aspiring Chippendales dancers -- that's true, too.

But while those things are true, much of it is the amiable and easy familiarity of a good movie star. Between Ghost and Dirty Dancing, the guy made films I have seen a preposterous number of times. Not usually giving my full attention, never studying them like I would with really serious movies. But with a cup of tea on the first really cold day in November, with a plaid wool blanket? Or late at night when something worrisome is happening and sleep is oddly elusive? You should be so lucky as to find Dirty Dancing on television.

Ghost, simple pleasures, and keeping company, after the jump...

Continue reading "Patrick Swayze And Pangs Of Familiarity" >

by Linda Holmes

If you saw Twilight, you know that we learned that vampires are (1) sparkly, (2) pouty, and (3) very good at baseball. Now, the trailer for New Moon, the sequel out November 20, we learn that they (4) make rash decisions, (5) are under the control of a mysterious robed monarchy of sorts; (6) appreciate that red is eye-catching on camera, and (7) appreciate a decorative fountain, just like anyone.

by Linda Holmes

Anyone who seeks advice on how to behave from the MTV Video Music Awards will wind up deranged, baffled, socially isolated, and probably arrested. But last night, Kanye West still managed to make everyone else there look like a collection of Noel Coward characters, so ridiculous was his outraged outburst when Taylor Swift won the award for Best Female Video.

As you can see in the video above, when Swift was in the middle of her acceptance speech, West leaped onto the stage and grabbed her microphone. "Yo Taylor, I'm really happy for you, I'm gonna let you finish," he said. "But Beyonce had one of the best videos of ALL TIME!" And then he climbed down, and the crowd booed, and Swift stood there like she'd gotten the end-of-Carrie treatment until they played her off the stage.

Later in the show, Beyonce Knowles won Video Of The Year (for "Single Ladies," the same video Kanye West was so angry didn't beat Taylor Swift), and she handed the microphone off to Swift to make her belated acceptance speech.

Kanye West's unplanned trip to the stage was ridiculous, even for a ridiculous event. (Christopher Polk / Getty Images)

It's important not to make buffoonery into outrage -- the VMAs are famous for being the national meeting of the Glorious Unified Council Of Acting A Fool. It's not the Oscars, and it's not meant to be, and as tempting as it may be to compare it to recent decorum-related dust-ups taking place in Congress and at the U.S. Open, the fact remains that ... it is the VMAs. When The New York Times states that the awards were "marred" by West's behavior, it raises the question of whether it's really possible to mar a show that tries so hard to mar itself with outsized ... nitwittery, if you'll pardon the expression.

Why anybody cared, and the surprising winner of this battle, after the jump...

Continue reading "Kanye West Makes Everyone Else At The MTV Video Music Awards Feel Classy" >

Jay Leno needs some advice, and fortunately, we have some. (NBC)

by Linda Holmes

As we've previously noted, The Jay Leno Show, which premieres tonight, is going to be on for a good long while, whether it's good or bad. Whether the public loves it, hates it, or is utterly indifferent to it, it's going to be filling five hours of prime time every week, so it might as well be watchable. And since everyone knows that the best solution to any problem is to solicit free advice from the Internet, we offer the following suggestions to Leno.

1. Stop complaining about NBC. On Sunday night, Leno appeared at halftime of the NBC broadcast of Sunday Night Football to promote his show in a chat with Bob Costas. During a rather agonizing two-and-a-half-minute piece, Leno managed to mention his disdain for NBC three times: once yukking it up that football fans would enjoy his show, which was NBC's "huge Hail Mary pass," once commenting that he'd made NBC promise to stop showing promos, and once "joshing" that he's featuring new young comics because NBC is already looking to replace him, har har. Three times in less than three minutes -- and he's been doing the same thing in interviews.

Everyone understands that Leno is put out that he was removed from The Tonight Show. Everyone understands that he's probably feeling pretty smug right now over the fact that NBC is now losing the 11:30 slot to David Letterman, while they were winning it with him. Everyone understands the urge to gloat, to mock, and to keep reminding people that he was done wrong. It's how we'd all feel.

But he's got to stop mentioning it. It's ungracious, it's now very tired, and most importantly, it's not nearly as funny or edgy as he thinks. The "Hail Mary pass" joke came off as painfully weak, and the bit about the network already looking to replace him isn't a joke at all so much as it is the kind of passive-aggressive thing angry spouses say at Thanksgiving right before they get divorced. When approached for this job, he would have been within his rights to tell NBC to stick its offer up the nose of its decorative peacock, but he didn't. He took the job, and he's being paid a lot of money, and a lot of people's jobs depend on him, and it's time to stop tweaking the network and get on with it.

Four more pieces of advice, after the jump...

Continue reading "Five Pieces Of Completely Free Advice For Jay Leno On The New Show" >

This Tina Fey performance (that's Amy Poehler next to her, of course) won an Emmy at tonight's Creative Arts Awards. (NBC)

by Linda Holmes

The standard prime-time Emmy telecast isn't until next weekend, but tonight they handed out the Creative Arts Awards, which cover everything they choose not to include in the big show. That includes lots of very important but little-recognized production categories as well as guest actors, reality programs (not reality-competition, mind you, which are separate), children's programming, and more.

The most famous winners of the night are undoubtedly Tina Fey and Justin Timberlake, who took home Outstanding Guest Actor and Outstanding Guest Actress In A Comedy, both for their performances in last season's Saturday Night Live. (She did an impression you might have heard a little bit about; he continued his well-regarded record of hosting.)

Ellen Burstyn won Outstanding Guest Actress In A Drama for her work on Law & Order: SVU, while Michael J. Fox was Outstanding Guest Actor In A Drama for his appearances on Rescue Me. (That's Fox's fifth win in eleven nominations over almost 25 years.)

But some of the other interesting news was a little lower in profile.

Victories for an already-canceled show, after the jump...

Continue reading "Fey, Fox, Timberlake, 'Pushing Daisies,' And 'Dr. Horrible' Win Early Emmys" >

IKEA Heights from DaveAOK on Vimeo.

by Laura Sydell

Two years ago when writer/director Dave Seger was walking through the Ikea store in Burbank, California it struck him how much the faux bedrooms, kitchens and dens looked like "pre-lit sets." He thought it would be a great place to shoot and direct. Being a relatively unknown talent, he didn't think it was likely that Ikea officials would give him permission. Earlier this year, when Canon came out with a still camera that also had HD video, Seger realized he could shoot scenes while looking like a tourist with a penchant for big furniture stores.

Ikea Heights is part soap opera, part noir murder mystery and all camp. The first episode opens with a shot of James and Candice Melville (played by Randall Park and Whitney Avalon) waking up (fully clothed of course) in their "bedroom," complete with price tags. As James says goodbye to his wife and heads to work we know by the look on his face and the way she avoids his kiss that that something is rotten in, well... Sweden.

The "sets" of Ikea do work perfectly and the looks on the faces of the shoppers are priceless as they try and hide their curiosity behind a mask of nonchalance. After all, this is Burbank, and the folks here are used to a movie shoot or two. It's fun to watch how Seger takes comic advantage of the fact that this is not an actual set with working props. In one scene, when harried wife Vivianne Jespens (Jess Lane) tries to turn on the faucet, no water comes out. Her husband Thomas (Tom Kauffman) is forced to admit that he lost his job and hasn't been paying the bills.

The Internet is clearly becoming a great place for unknown creative types to cut their teeth, and this is one of the more silly yet inventive short drama series I've seen online. Seger, at 26, is part of a group of aspiring television and film artists called Channel 101 who get together monthly and screen short comic series they've made. Everyone votes on the best shows and the winners get the privilege of making yet another episode. So far, Seger has made four five-minute episodes of Ikea Heights. He plans to make another episode this month.

It's not clear what Ikea is going to do about this. They didn't return my call in time for this post, so I don't know how much they actually know about Seger's furtive plans. But, then again, this is Ikea Heights; you never know what might happen next.

M*A*S*H, starring (among many others over the years) Loretta Swit, Wayne Rogers, McLean Stevenson, and Alan Alda, was an often rule-breaking comedy from head writer Larry Gelbart, who has passed away at 81. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

by Linda Holmes

The Los Angeles Times reports that Larry Gelbart died today at 81, and if you watch M*A*S*H reruns -- which a lot of you do, have, and will -- you've seen his name countless times. He wrote lots of other things -- wrote for Sid Caesar, co-wrote Tootsie, co-wrote the book for A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum -- but what he'll likely be most strongly associated with is M*A*S*H, for which he was the head writer during its first four years, which a lot of fans of the show will argue are the best ones. It's a good opportunity to take a look at this show and why it still airs multiple times a day on The Hallmark Channel and TV Land.

When the show started in the fall of 1972, All In The Family was already on the air, so it wasn't as if comedy until then had all been frothy yuks and sketch shows. (Though Gelbart wrote for Sid Caesar, so he knew plenty about that, too.) But M*A*S*H has remained more popular than All In The Family or most of the politically conscious comedies of the time -- it stays and stays, sad and funny, and as long as there are wars, it will always have a certain immediacy. (When I was young and hadn't seen the show much, I clarified with my mother that it was the Korean War and not the Vietnam War. My mother said, "It's the Korean War, but ... the mentality is very much Vietnam.")

M*A*S*H was a workplace show, a war show, a buddy show, and a romantic comedy. It was screwball, it was slapstick, it was wordplay, it was character comedy, it was banter, and it was, of course, often angry satire. It was genre-bending and rule-breaking, and it was a half-hour television comedy squarely aimed at smart and thoughtful people.

On rule-breaking, war talk, and how you do and do not lose a character, after the jump...

Continue reading "Larry Gelbart, Rule-Busting Comedy Giant: Why 'M*A*S*H' Mattered" >

Here, a crowd waits at the premiere of Creation, a film about Charles Darwin starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, at the Toronto International Film Festival. (Jason Merritt / Getty Images)

by Ann Marie Baldonado

The Toronto Film Festival has a reputation for viewer-friendliness.It's not as splashy as Cannes (although every year, Toronto has its George Clooneys, Pedro Almodovars, and Penelope Cruzes) and it's not as "indie" and insider-y as Sundance (although there are plenty of movies still looking for distribution). But while it may be accessible to the ordinary moviegoer, the entertainment industry sees Toronto as the official start of the Oscar season.

It's also one of the places where Fresh Air looks for films to feature. As a Fresh Air producer, for a few years now, I've made the pilgrimage to Toronto to preview many of the films that will make it to theaters around the country in the next few months, looking for what might interest Terry Gross, our listeners, or both. With any luck, quite a few of the films this year will be good and interesting, and will eventually become the basis for equally good and interesting interviews you will hear on Fresh Air. And I'll be talking here at Monkey See about what I've been watching.

More than 300 movies will screen here in the next 10 days, and many of the films that the studios hope will garner Oscar buzz are premiered here. Doing well at the festival can provide films with a major push. For example, last year, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire got applause at the official press and industry screening (and the crowds at these screenings are pretty tough) and received the audience award. Of course, it then went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

This year, Toronto may be even more important than usual: even though the Oscars are now going to a new ten-nominee format for Best Picture, the studios are releasing fewer films. So a film that gets great buzz here may have an even better chance to do well come Oscar time.

My goal is to get to as many pictures as I can, which can sometimes mean up to four or five a day. And that makes me a lightweight -- a lot of the film critics see that many films on all ten days of the schedule. On my list, among others, are the new Pedro Almodovar film Broken Embraces, starring Penelope Cruz; Up In the Air, Jason Reitman's new film starring George Clooney and based on a Walter Kirn book; and A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers new film.

Some of these filmmakers already have strong histories at Toronto: Reitman's Juno and Thank You For Smoking did well here, and this is the Coens third film here in as many years, after Burn After Reading and No Country For Old Men.

I'll be checking in periodically during the next few days, letting you know about good films I see and interesting trends that emerge. I just hope I can stay awake through film number five.

(iStockphoto.com)

by Linda Holmes

Eight years ago this morning, my friend (and Monkey See contributor) Sarah Bunting was speaking on a panel about online content valuation that took place a few blocks from the World Trade Center.

Every year, I reread the essay she wrote about her experiences, not to relive the very frightening things she saw, but because the story includes moments of grace realized -- the lady who sells her (gives her, really) a pair of shoes to change into, the Chinese restaurant that lets her in to clean up in their restroom, where she notes that she has ashes in her hair -- that provide, as she often says, the very very tiny rays of hope to be taken from it.

But her greatest help that day came from Don, the "disaster buddy" she stayed with on the walk from the Bank Of New York, where they -- along with a lot of other people -- had taken shelter, to the point where he got on a ferry to go home to Jersey City.

Today, among other things, is Don's birthday, and every year, Sarah puts out a call to see if she can find him, just so she can say thank you. This year, her story was featured on WNYC's The Takeaway.

(Stacking the karmic deck in her favor, just a tad: Sarah is a major doer of Internet good deeds: her blog, Tomato Nation, holds annual fundraisers for Donors Choose, an organization that raises money for classroom projects, and each of the last two years, she has raised more than $100,000. She has shaved her head for charity, and she has dressed as a tomato and danced in the middle of Rockefeller Center.)

So if you are looking for something positive to focus on, read a little about Don and see if you might know him. You have to admit, it would be pretty cool to be the person who solved the mystery.

Catwoman is only one of many DC characters who have maybe not been used to their full potential. Could that change? (Courtesy DC Comics)

By Glen Weldon

Well. At this rate, the nation's business desk editors are gonna deplete their vast, underground stockpiles of hacky Pow! Zap! headlines.

Fast on the heels of Disney buying Marvel, another fat-cat megalocorporation (Warner Bros Picture Group, this time) announced yesterday that its lidless Sauron-eye has alighted upon another major comic book company (DC Comics, this time -- publishers of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman). The difference, and it's a big one, is that Warner didn't need to shell out $4 billion to buy DC - it's owned the company for years now.

And unlike Disney, which went out of its way to reassure Marvel management, shareholders and creators that it had no intention of interfering with (read: didn't particularly care about) the comics, the kind of attention Warner is now suddenly lavishing on DC has taken the form of a top-down corporate restructuring.

After the jump: Who's in, who's out, and how Halle Berry figures in all of this.

Continue reading "DC Comics Becomes DC Entertainment. Yeah, I Don't Know What it Means, Either." >

by Marc Hirsh

After months of drooling anticipation (even by folks like me who don't even own a game system), The Beatles: Rock Band is finally here. Much of the excitement surrounding the game involves its potential to do a great many things: remind a new generation of exactly why the greatest band in rock and roll history is the greatest band in rock and roll history (something EMI's been careful to do every seven years or so since John Lennon's death), slake the thirst of gamers who've already burned through two Rock Bands and countless Guitar Heroes, provide a wish-fulfillment fantasy of a nearly pornographic nature to Beatlemaniacs, and cause players to contemplate on the simple, iconic beauty of a Rickenbacker guitar and a Hofner bass.

Maybe the most important, though, is the potential the game has, more even than the remastered versions of the Beatles albums that were also released yesterday, to foster a new appreciation for Ringo Starr.

Taking a second look at the drummer, after the jump...

Continue reading "'Rock Band': Ringo Reappraised?" >

Ellen DeGeneres, seen here in January, has a new job. (Michael Buckner / Getty Images)

by Linda Holmes

I immediately suspected someone was punking the entire world of television journalism when the news first broke, but Fox has in fact confirmed that the new American Idol judge is Ellen DeGeneres.

Not as a guest, and not as a special appearance: She is a permanent judge; she is the new Paula Abdul. DeGeneres says of the move, "I've watched since the beginning, and I've always been a huge fan. So getting this job is a dream come true, and think of all the money I'll save from not having to text in my vote."

Initial thoughts? Well, they didn't replace Paula with anyone who's performed as a musician, and that's unfortunate. It means people who are auditioning as pop stars are working in front of a panel that includes no one who was even momentarily a pop star. On the other hand, Ellen DeGeneres is still a performer, and there are a lot of principles of performance that translate across disciplines. She's also worked extensively with other performers on her own show, and she does have a sense of what resonates with audiences. I far prefer this to either a singer with no personality or, heaven forbid, another producer type like Randy Jackson and Kara DioGuardi.

Honestly, from a viewing perspective, my only concern about Ellen is that she will be trying too hard to do comedy all the time. She has been a guest judge on So You Think You Can Dance, and while she was fun to watch, she had a lot of trouble getting away from doing funny lines that sounded like part of her comedy act and giving actual feedback. As much as Idol judges are always showing off, it works better when they are also giving an opinion -- maybe a dumb opinion, but an opinion nonetheless -- of the performance. Paula Abdul was unintentionally funny; I don't know how it affects the chemistry to add a comedian to that panel. Say what you like about Paula Abdul; she gave feedback.

In the end, the hope is obviously that this brand of lightness -- and Ellen is, absolutely, a champ at a certain kind of breezy and comfortable good humor -- will provide a balance for the more acidic stuff that tends to come from the rest of the folks on the panel. She might provide a more coherent brand of leavening, and if that happens, it will be all to the good.

One more thing: It was eleven years ago that a lot of people thought Ellen DeGeneres had utterly imploded her career after Ellen went off the air, just one season after its famous coming-out episode. But she hung around, and she was great hosting the Emmys, and she managed to stand out in a sea of talk shows, and here she is, getting what might be the most high-profile job of the new season on one of the most culturally conservative, studiously mainstream shows on television. Oh, television. You are so nutsy.

by Neda Ulaby

Our esteemed film critic Bob Mondello joins the podcast this week for our weekly roundup for the very best arts stories on NPR.

We've got a look at the new dolphin doc, The Cove -- you can hear Bob explain why he picked this film to champion -- and a charming interview with musician Imogen Heap, who explains how Twitter helped inspire her new album.

A piece lifted from the science desk features music composed for monkeys, and we consider whether the word "retarded" should be retired. Finally, a look at the Los Angeles comedy scene of the 1970s and a kids' book about reality shows of the future devolved to a hideously violent extreme.

As always, you can subscribe to the podcast here, or listen to it right where you're sitting.

All of these aspiring models are 5'7" or shorter. This is one show's definition of diversity. (The CW)

by Linda Holmes

The number of times I would encourage you to pay attention to America's Next Top Model in any average year can usually, by my estimation, be counted on the fingers of one hand that only has one finger on it.

But tonight's two-hour season premiere -- which will be going up against So You Think You Can Dance and Glee on Fox for the froth-seeking eyeballs, and will be going up against (for its first hour) the president's health-care address for the politically oriented eyeballs -- is going where no season has gone before by admitting right out that most of the contestants are not genetically destined for traditional success in modeling.

And what's the breathlessly awaited twist? This year, all the girls are 5'7" or shorter. That's right -- 5'7"! Tiny! Wee! Miniatures! Practically able to live under a mushroom!

It has always been the case that the Top Model candidates are too short for traditional runway modeling -- third-season winner Eva Pigford (who now goes by Eva Marcille; I can't imagine why) was in the 5'6"-5'7" range. While researching a piece about the show at that time, I remember talking to a couple of modeling agents whose position on the future prospects of several of the models that season was very simple, and it amounted to this: "Pretty. But generally too short."

Well, no more. Tyra Banks is determined to lift one pocket-sized model to stardom. The CW press release claims that this season, "fourteen hopefuls prove that beauty comes in all shapes, sizes and heights." As you can see from the photo above, the season's prospects indeed range from "very thin" to "very slightly less thin," and they do indeed come in all heights across a range of at least two inches.

Brava, Tyra Banks. You are the wind beneath the wings of those with average-length wings.

What kind of high school did they attend on Freaks And Geeks? The terrifying kind. (Getty Images)

by Marc Hirsh

September is upon us, and with it comes the return of both school and the new television season. Coincidence? Maybe not! Perhaps the long-established schedules of the two connect back to our agricultural roots. I envision a world in which, having attended to the harvest in the crucial summer months, the children return to the withering glare of their teachers while the adults return to the withering glare of their television screens.

Or maybe it's just a big fat coincidence. I admit I was not raised on a farm. Still, with both venerated institutions chugging back up to full speed -- and with Glee, perhaps the most buzzed-about high-school show in some time, returning tonight -- what better time to look at the ways that television has portrayed everyone's favorite time of life? And so I share with you a (highly selective) taxonomy of television high schools.

Freaks And Geeks: High school as every worst nightmare you've ever had, ever. Judd Apatow's cultishly adored series focused on the outcasts that were usually relegated to the margins of other shows (or worse, turned into stereotypes and/or shoehorned into the type of cross-clique group of a type that never, ever exists in real life). There are times when watching it is accompanied by the uneasy sensation that you're about to wake up in a cold sweat. Let's see... Finding yourself naked in front of everyone you know? Your mother breaking up with your boyfriend for you by accident? Being put on the spot for a big test for which you haven't studied (which is essentially what happened when Nick auditioned for local band Dimension)? Discovering that your mom is dating your gym teacher?

Yep, that oughtta do it.

The noir high school, the cartoonish high school, and more, after the jump...

Continue reading "Cartoons And Noir Underbellies: A Taxonomy Of Television High Schools" >

Here, Michaela Watkins appears as Today's Hoda Kotb with Kristen Wiig as Kathie Lee Gifford. If only she'd been less classically pretty. (NBC)

by Linda Holmes

News broke that Saturday Night Live had added two women -- Jenny Slate and Nasim Pedrad -- before it was as widely known that they had ditched Casey Wilson and Michaela Watkins. So it seemed for a brief moment like the show might be trying to increase its complement of women, which would be wise, given the departures in recent years of high-profile women including Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. That's not to mention the rise of Kristen Wiig, who now has the kind of movie career (Extract, Knocked Up, Adventureland, the upcoming Whip It) that makes you start to wonder just how long she's likely to be around.

But no -- there's no building of the female side of the cast. With the booting of Wilson and Watkins, the show will start the season with all of one woman in the nine-member full cast (Wiig), and three women making up four of the "featured" performers -- Slate, Pedrad, and Abby Elliott.

Nobody I know was particularly surprised about the dropping of Casey Wilson, who had a bumpy tenure and didn't make a particularly strong impression. Michaela Watkins, however, had a strong first season and has been the subject of much more angry chatter -- including that of Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello, who has been filling his Twitter feed and column with his strong opinions about how foolish it was to give up a performer of her talents.

But I was particularly interested in this gem from Tom Shales of The Washington Post, who says this as part of a piece about how the show is still wonderful and important, no matter what anyone says:

Two new women who will have the status of featured players -- Jenny Slate and Iranian-born Nasim Pedrad -- will join the cast, not as replacements for anybody, Michaels says, although cute Casey Wilson and glamorous Michaela Watkins have concurrently left. Watkins may have been just too classically pretty to be hilarious. Anyway, the absences of Fey and Poehler will be felt.

Let's think this through, after the jump...

Continue reading "SNL's Michaela Watkins 'Just Too Classically Pretty To Be Hilarious'?" >

Assorted pretty people star in the CW's new look at Melrose Place: Katie Cassidy, Shaun Sipos, Stephanie Jacobsen, Colin Egglesfield, Ashlee Simpson-Wentz, Michael Rady and Jessica Lucas. But will there be a pyramid scheme? (The CW)

by Linda Holmes

So, yes. The CW is bringing back Melrose Place, kind of, and it premieres tonight. The prevailing wisdom about the '90s-era original is that it was dully stupid until Heather Locklear arrived, at which point it became aggressively crazy, what with people ripping off wigs and blowing up buildings and hitting their heads and dying in the pool.

There is some truth behind this theory, yes. No one can deny the greatness of the Locklear addition. No one can ignore how utterly, magnificently, operatically crazy that show became, particularly in the hands of scenery-chompers like Marcia Cross and Thomas Calabro -- the latter of whom was hired to play Michael Mancini as a good husband and only later turned out to be a wonderful faithless and sociopathic nutbar (with extra nuts).

But recently, after being mercilessly seduced (hey, it's a theme!) by a deep discount at Target, I have been indulging in the old original Melrose Place -- the part of Season 1 before Locklear -- and breathlessly noting some of its unique pleasures, which deserve to be remembered. (Kind of.) The CW reboot is clearly going for late-stage Melrose, with the super-soaped-up sleaze factor, but here, I raise my glass to early-stage Melrose, complete with people who were gone really, really quickly.

1. Amy Locane's original accent. Poor Amy Locane. Cast to play Sandy, the beautiful blonde actress and Southern belle, she was the first to get the boot as the show was retooled. Who would have thought the hot blonde would be thrown out the door? And replaced with Daphne Zuniga? It's a world gone mad.

According to her Wikipedia page and her Internet Movie Database entry, Locane was born in Trenton, New Jersey, which makes perfect sense, because her southern accent was hilarious. If you could convince Scarlett O'Hara and Foghorn Leghorn to get married, this was the baby they would have had. Over the course of her 12 episodes (before she got the boot), she gradually dialed it back, which was for the best, but a little sad.

Four more, after the jump...

Continue reading "Five Gloriously, Inimitably Stupid Things About The Original 'Melrose Place'" >

Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs was only one of the 3D movies that made a splash this summer. (Twentieth Century Fox)

by Linda Holmes

Now that we're through the Labor Day weekend and the cinematic summer is truly over, the numbers are being crunched on just how good of a summer it was.

Analysis of the summertime data takes place in the context of the very strong first quarter of 2009, which broke some records and made it look like movies might be the recipients of all the recession-fueled escapism money many people believed would wind up going somewhere.

How did the summer go?

What 3D has meant to summer box office, after the jump...

Continue reading "Plastic 3D Glasses Are Helping Keep Movie Revenues Up; Can It Last?" >

In Extract, Jason Bateman plays a factory owner. But he's played some far sketchier characters in his day. (Miramax)

by Linda Holmes

Jason Bateman, as an actor, possesses great warmth and humor, but he also plays a great con artist. In the new comedy Extract, he plays a factory owner who does a bit of scheming of his own, and if you look back over the guy's career, it really isn't a surprise.

So we wondered: Of all the slicksters and semi-slicksters he has played, who is the slickest?

Michael Bluth, Arrested Development
Risk level: Low

Yes, Michael was capable of the odd caper now and then, mostly when the rest of his family forced him into it. And yes, he had questionable judgment with regard to girlfriends. But there's no malice in Michael; certainly nothing that would lead you to believe he was after your possessions.

James Cooper Ingalls, Little House On The Prairie
Risk level: Very low

After the death of his biological parents, James was raised by Pa and Ma. (Bateman joined the show late in the run, as the original children aged and it became clear that you could not make an entire show about Laura and Almanzo fighting over tarragon.) If the child had ever in his life been destined for a life of crime, Pa and Ma would surely have put a stop to it.

Corrupting Ricky Schroder, Very Special Episodes, and much more, after the jump...

Continue reading "Which Jason Bateman Character Is Most Likely To Steal Your Wallet?" >

Yes, this is a real bookshelf from my real living room. No, there is no organizational structure. (Linda Holmes / NPR)

by Linda Holmes

While looking at this amazing entry about author Neil Gaiman's bookshelves (with a hat-tip to Boing Boing), it occurred to me that my collection of physically owned books is much smaller than it used to be. In my case, this is partly because I lived for a time in a tiny apartment in which ownership of a large quantity of books was simply not possible, but I'm curious about how many feet of books most people own, in shelf space. (And, of course, in boxes.)

So here's the question: What's your rough estimate of how many feet of books you personally own and keep at home? (A four-shelf bookcase that's two feet wide would hold eight feet, in this entirely unscientific estimating process.) Do you have cartons of them in closets? What makes up the bulk of your collection? Do you hoard your college textbooks? Are you unable to resist books about French cooking? Let's talk collections.

On the set of Sex And The City 2 on Tuesday, Sarah Jessica Parker wore ... this. (Charles Sykes / Associated Press)

by Linda Holmes

Normally, we would leave the fashion to the Fug Girls, who actually covered this outfit yesterday. They're certainly up to it.

But an infinite number of monkey-themed pop-culture blogs at an infinite number of typewriters will eventually write one entry that says, essentially, "Get a load of what Sarah Jessica Parker is wearing." And we have reached that moment.

Let us somewhat regretfully discuss, after the jump...

Continue reading "Entirely Real Photos: Yes, Let's Discuss Sarah Jessica Parker's Outfit" >

One linguist has questions about the way those Mad Men types, like Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), talk to each other. (AMC)

by Linda Holmes

That's right. Summer doldrums killed it, but the fall surge is bringing back Read/Note/Ignore to send you down further delicious rabbit holes both substantive and ... not so much.

Read:

• Linguist John McWhorter argues that people in 1963 didn't really speak the way they do on Mad Men. Do not take this as a judgment upon the intense realism of the cocktails, however.

How to keep your record store alive, Spider-Man, the voices of children, and celebrity booze-purchasing, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: 'Mad Men' Linguistics, A Lost Trumpet, And Justin Timberlake" >

Can the Internet survive a day without cats? We hope to help find out. (iStockphoto.com)

by Linda Holmes

And now, a brief public service announcement.

We love cats. We love a LOLcat, we love a keyboard cat, and we especially love the amazing Simon's Cat.

Nonetheless, we will be joining the Day Without Cats On The Internet, organized by Urlesque.

This means that on September 9, we at Monkey See will not discuss cats, cat videos, adorable cats, or talented cats of any kind. (Note: This may affect coverage of Cat Stevens, Cat Deeley, Tiger Woods, the new ABC show Cougar Town, and sales trends in Hello Kitty merchandise.)

The folks at Urlesque have opened a poll allowing users to select another animal that will be written about instead on that day, but unfortunately, since that poll does not include monkeys, we cannot endorse it or agree to abide by its results. Call it a Day Without A Day Without Cats Without Monkeys.

Fortunately, until then, cats are fair game, so please enjoy perhaps the greatest Internet cat video of them all, "Big Box And Maru."

by Neda Ulaby

We've got a piping-hot new Culturetopia podcast, a collection of NPR's best arts stories of the week. (You can subscribe here.)

NPR Music producer Frannie Kelley joins me to talk about songwriter and producer Ellie Greenwich, who's one of those secret-history-of-rock types. Until her death last week, few people had heard of Greenwich, even though she helped create countless wonderful 1960s pop classics -- from "Be My Baby" to "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy" to "Leader of the Pack." Her career started during her high school cheerleading days in on Long Island

The book Jaws is set on Amity Island (based on Montauk) and features a foul-mouthed Long Islander hunting his own, rather toothier, version of Moby Dick. We've got a great audio essay by writer Lizzie Skurnick about why it's her favorite literary guilty pleasure.

We also take a jaunt to Tijuana to hear the sounds of the Nortec Collective, learn how South Africans feel about the none-too-subtle political subtexts of the terrific new science fiction film District 9, and bid a fond farewell to the long-running PBS kids' show Reading Rainbow.

Finally, we've got an interview with the director behind a fascinating documentary about Vogue's chief editrix Anna Wintour, and its leviathan of a September Issue.

Tom DeLay and his partner Cheryl Burke practice for the upcoming season of Dancing With The Stars. (ABC)

by Linda Holmes

Ever since Tom DeLay signed on for this season of Dancing With The Stars, many have wondered what his foray into fancy footwork might actually look like. And so we present: the rehearsal photo.

The thing he is strapped into in this photo, by the way, is a device that the pro teachers often use to get people to stand up straight and keep their shoulders back.

It is on a day like this that a pop-culture follower wishes that someone had offered long odds a year ago that "Tom DeLay's Dancing With The Stars Rehearsal Photo" would eventually be a real thing. I am beginning to think I should look for someone who will give me hundred-to-one odds for on the equally likely "Jack Nicholson Signs On To Play Gym Teacher In High School Musical 5" for next year.

Marvel is the golden egg, and Disney is the cake company, and if you keep reading, it will all make sense, really. (Marvel Comics, iStockphoto.com)

By Glen Weldon

On Monday, the news came down. The analyses began. Jokes were joked. Freakouts were well and truly freaked.

The news: Disney acquired Marvel Comics for $4 billion. ("Acquired," which makes it sound like Marvel's a tube of Pink Glitter lip gloss that somehow ended up in Disney's purse as it sauntered out of Hot Topic. "How'd THAT get there?")

If you need a taste of what folks in the comics industry are saying about it, you can't beat The Beat,
or Journalista! The transcript of the Disney/Marvel call to investors is worth checking out, if only to remind yourself that there are people in the world who actually say things like "vertical integration," "the wheelhouse of this distribution channel" and who - willfully! repeatedly! - use "impact" as a verb.

Meanwhile, over at the Comichron, as their name suggests, they're taking the long historical view.

Conventional wisdom soon congealed along these lines: Good for Disney, because Marvel's stable of heroes can help them reach boys age 8-18, a demographic that has thus far proven stoically resistant to the charms of Hannah Montana and High School Musical -- with, um, some exceptions (Hi, Jason! Stay fabulous, kiddo!). Good for Marvel, because Disney's got more distribution channels in their wheelhouse (sigh) than Cruella's got Dalmatian handmuffs.

After the jump: It's not about the comics. And yes, the Tastykake Analogy.

Continue reading "Why Disney's Delicious Snack Cakes Don't Threaten Marvel's Golden Eggs" >

All About Steve is being marketed in such a way that even if you might be inclined to like it, you may get the sinking feeling that you won't. (Twentieth Century Fox)

by Linda Holmes

I want to stress that I have not seen All About Steve, do not know whether All About Steve is worthwhile, and generally am in no position to pass judgment on whether All About Steve is going to ultimately be worth seeing or not. I am always happy to be surprised -- I was oddly charmed by Sandra Bullock's other summer offering, The Proposal.

But I will tell you this: Rarely has a movie managed to take so many elements of which I am generally in favor and combine them in such a way that my initial reaction is that I would rather be shot out of a cannon than see this movie. In fact, if you told me I had to be shot out of a cannon, my only request would be that you aim me away from this movie.

Stalker hilarity, love among the grotesques, and what's going on with Bradley Cooper, after the jump...

Continue reading "Selling 'Steve': How To Make Cinematic Candy Smell Like 100 Dirty Gym Shoes" >

Everybody wants the statuette, and they're making the process for getting it trickier and trickier. (Jason Merritt / Getty Images)

by Linda Holmes

You probably remember that this year's Best Picture race at the Oscars will involve 10 nominees, not five. But now, we learn that there are more changes on the way, and specifically that voters will be asked to rank all 10 nominees in order of preference.

Could this punish polarizing films? And how do you rank a movie you've never seen? We consider these questions, after the jump ...

Continue reading "Oscar Voting: The Best-Picture Ballot Just Got Substantially More Complicated" >