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.

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• 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" >

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

 

by Linda Holmes

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

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

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

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

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

by Linda Holmes

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• This Salon piece about teen idols trying to transition to adulthood is well-written and well-reasoned, even if it's maybe a little early to suggest that Miley Cyrus is past her teen phase.

Rufus Wainwright, Ozzy Osbourne, and scandalous trips to the bakery, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: Awkward Phases, Double Features, And An Unlikely Horror Movie " >

Stephen Colbert: NASA, it seems, still isn't sure exactly what to do with him. Comedy Central

 

by Linda Holmes

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• The New York Times has a look at the current state of online television and the looming prospect of limiting online viewing to cable subscribers, as elsewhere, Disney/ABC considers making a deal with Hulu.

• NASA continues to scramble to figure out what to do about Stephen Colbert, and now a member of Congress is involved.

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• The news that whether video games are good or bad for you depends on the content shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but it probably will. Now go and play a nice round of Super Mario Puppy-Hugging Sugar-Coated Rainbow Junction.

Zac Efron, opera, House, and the Hokey-Pokey, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: Colbert, A Writing Controversy, And Ignoring Celebrity Babies" >

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• Ricky Gervais' star continues to rise, and while it appears he won't be starring in the film Men From The Pru, it sounds like an intriguing project, and it would be awfully encouraging to see him become a guy who can get a movie made, even if he's not going to be the star.

• If you haven't checked out what David Simon is planning to do now that he's done with The Wire, PopWatch has been tracking the development of his new show, Treme.

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: Ricky Gervais, David Simon, and Selling the Dharma Initiative" >

Diablo Cody: The Juno screenwriter, seen here at the Vanity Fair Oscar party, is only one of the women who make up the -- gulp -- "Fempire." Michael Buckner/Getty Images Entertainment

 

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• The Cinematical discussion of this New York Times piece about female screenwriters is much more interesting than the piece itself. Two points: (1) The word "Fempire" is nauseating; and (2) Cinematical's best point is its simplest: why, again, is this in Fashion & Style?

• The future of celebrity gossip magazines is looking bleak. Public fatigue? Too many cheap alternatives? Or is there just nothing more to say once we've all seen saturation coverage of Britney Spears shaving her head and bashing an SUV with an umbrella?

After the jump: Spike Jonze, Kenny Rogers, and woop-woop-woop...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: Screenwriting Women, The Three Stooges, And The Benefits Of Kenny Rogers" >

by Linda Holmes

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• Worth reading even if it's probably not true: Jacob Weisberg's Slate essay arguing that his experience with Amazon's Kindle 2 is evidence that "printed books, the most important artifacts of human civilization, are going to join newspapers and magazines on the road to obsolescence." Weisberg deserves special "wow" points for saying, apparently without irony, that an entire new publishing model could be oriented around "clever kids working from coffee shops in Brooklyn." He has not spent enough time in coffee shops in Brooklyn, let me humbly suggest.

• The New York Times has gathered a few writers to talk about why Sylvia Plath's story still resonates. While their thoughts are enlightening, they primarily focus on Plath's work, sort of missing the point that she is well known as a writer who committed suicide, even among people who couldn't tell you anything about her work at all. She has an almost folklore-tinged legacy as well as an actual literary one; it would have been interesting to hear an exploration of that.

The Colbert Nation scores another victory, Michael Sheen plays Tony Blair again, and the Woz rolls on, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: A Eulogy For Books, A Victory For Colbert, And A Dismissed Bond Girl" >

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• It's not often I say, "This is legitimately appalling." But the changes to the subtitles of the film Let The Right One In between theatrical release and DVD, which seem designed to make the movie stupider and less subtle, are legitimately appalling. (Hat-tip to Slashfilm.)

Anne Hathaway's new challenge, NBC's new comedy, and the early favorite for the most Ignore-able story of the year, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: 'Parks And Recreation,' Anne Hathaway, and Subtitles For Dummies" >

Sports fans: If you spent this weekend cheering for the team of your choosing, you may be in for a rude awakening. iStockphoto.com

 

by Linda Holmes

• While I share the sense that standing ovations have lost all meaning, I cannot sign on to the idea of the Silent Boo.

• One of the kinds of writing I trust the least is screed in which a person who hates something explains in detail why other people like it. (It can be done well, but is actually done well only a small percentage of the time.) I give you: this explanation of why anyone watches sports. (Warning: According to the article, if you watch sports, you are probably too stupid to understand.)

Unaired episodes of canceled shows come back to life, a classic book has a birthday, and more, and an unsettling media frenzy finally comes to an end, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: Sports Fandom, New Lives For Old Shows, And Why Amazon Reviews Matter " >

It's tournament time: UCLA almost -- but not quite -- blew yesterday's opening-round game against Virginia Commonwealth, ultimately winning by one point. But what's one point, really? Jim McIsaac/Getty Images Sport

 

by Linda Holmes

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• Tonight is the Battlestar Galactica series finale, so it's a good time to look back -- as with Alan Sepinwall's list of the show's best episodes. (Spoilers, obviously. But you knew that, right?)

• If you're among the many people currently glued to NCAA basketball, check out the intensive nerd explosion going on at the Freakonomics blog, where they're discussing research that seems to show that teams behind by one point at halftime win slightly more often than teams ahead by one point at halftime. (Note to #16 seeds: This does not apply to being, say, 25 points behind at halftime.)

James Franco against the world and putting your temper on a five-second delay, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: 'Battlestar,' Basketball, and Biathlons" >

by Linda Holmes

Hey, folks: sorry for the sporadic posting over the last 24 hours or so -- administrative stuff has had me pinned, but we should be back on track from here on out. Thanks for your patience.

• What does digital culture mean to you? In part, the need to act as your own editor and gatekeeper -- a role a lot of us are not as used to as we might think. This thought-provoking piece applies the principle to news, but it applies to other things as well. Increasingly, you are your own programmer.

• Remember that Idris Elba is coming to The Office? Sure you do. Well, that starts tonight.

Rolling Stone brings you up to date on the Ticketmaster/Live Nation controversies and VH1 brings back a semi-classic, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: Curating For Yourself, Ticketmaster, And The Rise And Fall Of The Hair Band" >

by Linda Holmes

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• At South By Southwest, a panel on publishing and new media seems to have gone rather spectacularly awry when it turned out that the publishers on the panel about new ideas forgot to bring their new ideas. (Hat-tip to Galleycat.)

• An interesting update on the state of things at SnagFilms, an online destination offering free ad-supported documentary films, reports that while they haven't figured out how to make money yet, they've got an audience. Unfortunately, that's sort of the story of the entire Internet up to this point, but as the piece points out, many still believe a business model is possible, even if they haven't found it yet.

Sci-fi deals and David Chase's new project, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: SnagFilms, David Chase, and Brody Jenner" >

by Linda Holmes

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• I don't know how Marie Claire rounded up such an amazing lineup of interviewees -- from Phyllis Diller to Margaret Cho -- for this oral history of women in comedy, but the result is fantastic. (From Lisa Kudrow: "I've heard guy writers say, 'I don't think women are funny.' But if the only funny thing they get to do is knock over a glass of water, then, yeah, women aren't as funny as men.")

• Steve Martin is offering to fund an off-campus production of his play Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which was set for performance at Oregon's LaGrande High School until a parent objecting to what she considered "adult content" collected signatures from other parents and got it cancelled. In his letter making the offer, Martin presents the offer as a way for the play to be seen by those who wish to see it without offending those who think it's inappropriate for students.

A drop-off, a stampede, and MacGyver news, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: Women In Comedy, Steve Martin, and 'MacGyver'" >

by Linda Holmes

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• This piece about the state of affairs at the Columbia Journalism School certainly stakes out a position about old media and new, but it's the comment thread where you'll really find the clash taking place. If you want to see "blog" and "Twitter" used as if they are swear words, look no further.

Mickey Rourke, the latest in Heathers happenings, and Heidi Klum needs a little perspective, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: New Media, Mickey Rourke, and the Bravo/Lifetime Smackdown" >

by Linda Holmes

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• I will say this for the unusually dressed Arlo Weiner, whose father Matt is the creator of Mad Men: he is unusual. I know the right thing to do is to admire his stylish individuality, but to me, this says, "I live in all the most annoying neighborhoods in Brooklyn at the same time." (via Tara Ariano)

Games with movie posters, SAG drama, and how HBO landed in hot water, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: Foppish Children, HBO, and A 'Real Housewife'" >

by Linda Holmes

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• To the list of things someone is very upset about somewhere in the world, you may add people taking pictures of the Mona Lisa. Take a moment to enjoy the comments, which are deliciously spiked with every brand of cultural elitism -- "I hate riffraff tourists who attempt to visit museums!" "The Mona Lisa is sooooo obvious" -- to the point where it becomes a little funny.

• Courtesy of the Freakonomics blog: a piece in The Economist about how the recession has stoked interest in Atlas Shrugged.

More about the Watchmen opening, West Side Story, and a nerd collaboration that will warm, melt, or possible blow up your heart, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: 'Dancing,' Ayn Rand, and Tom Green" >

by Linda Holmes

There are days when all the oxygen seems to have been devoured by things about which there is little left to say -- in this case, Watchmen, which reviews suggest you will either find kind of fantastic or find yourself nearly unable to endure, depending.

When I saw a computer monitor serving as an ad hoc screen to show Watchmen propaganda between the registers at the bookstore this weekend, I hit my limit.

A different sort of roundup and the bottom line on the Watchmen box-office breakdown, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: When The Crickets Descend" >

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: The Friday adventure show starring Lena Headey is only one of many currently waiting to hear final verdicts on another season. Fox

 

by Linda Holmes

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• Variety has a good rundown of where we stand as far as bubble shows and their chances for renewal, especially at NBC, which will lose five hours of prime-time to Jay Leno this fall.

• Hey, are you a writer and not independently wealthy? Don't read this. Or at least don't read it on an empty stomach. (Thanks, Bookninja, for the complex!)

• Perhaps one of the greatest blurb-abusing advertisements in movie history -- okay, the greatest -- showed up yesterday in Torontoist. It must be seen to be believed. (Hat-tip to Tara Ariano.)

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: Shows on the Bubble, Comics Go Mainstream, and Unlikely Professional Wrestler News" >

by Linda Holmes

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• Things look very grim for the employment of artists, says the NEA -- even more so than for everyone else. The peculiar risk of that, it seems to me, is that artists who become unemployed will leave artistic fields entirely and return to something more stable, and they may or may not return.

• Courtesy of Best Week Ever, The 25 Stupidest Outfits You Will Ever See. I'm not sure they are the stupidest, but they are undoubtedly in the running.

• Concerned about your burgeoning number of Facebook friends and curious about how many friends you can actually have? Hey, there's research on that! (Hat-tip to Lifehacker.)

Snuggies and Jeremy Piven, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: Stupid Outfits, Snuggies, And Surreptitious Tuna Consumption" >

Zac Efron: Wildly ill-advised hat aside, can High School Musical 4 survive without this mug? Kevin Winter/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

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• I'm not sure I'll read David Plotz's entire book about reading the Bible, in part because I can't help thinking it will repeat things I learned in A.J. Jacobs' terrific The Year Of Living Biblically, but the essay in Slate about what he learned is well worth a read.

• Also in Slate, how can we not mention this piece on the 10 most effective strategies for public radio pledge drives?

• Agatha Christie continues to be an enormously popular writer, in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- widely acknowledged shortcomings in the actual quality of her writing, from a literary perspective. Here's an interesting look at why that is. (Hat-tip to Bookninja.)

Plenty for noting and ignoring, including Disney's new project, library prospects, and the dumping that would not die, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: Agatha Christie, 'High School Musical 4,' That Show About That Guy" >

Above: The Spinal Tap boys are on the road again. Read more below.

by Linda Holmes

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• My nephews are bullish on Guitar Hero; The Atlantic wonders what it means for the future of music. (Judging by my nephews? Adolescents with a highly refined understanding of '80s hair bands.)

Much worth noting and ignoring, including Jimmy Fallon's debut, a Broadway/film collision, and -- yes -- Spinal Tap news, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: Guitar Hero, Spinal Tap, Lauren Conrad's Novel" >

The Jonas Brothers: Here, they pop in on a screening of their film on Saturday in West Nyack, New York. So that's three tickets, anyway. Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images Entertainment

 

by Linda Holmes

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• I absolutely cannot stand it when perfectly good writing is made into a needless, pointless, slow-loading nightmare of bad presentation, as it is in the Los Angeles Times feature asking people what they'd do if they ran the National Endowment for the Arts. Nevertheless, some of the responses are interesting, like Noah Wyle's. And, I happily point out, Neil Patrick Harris throws some love to NPR.

• One of the more disingenuous things I've read recently is this farewell post as Defamer closes down and is folded into Gawker. The "I never thought about the fact that I was so negative" argument rings slightly hollow when you work for a site that is called Defamer. I'm just saying. It takes a lot of effort to lose my sympathy when your outfit is folding, but...come on.

Broadcast television sputters and Bono has a few things to say about Coldplay, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: The Definition Of Defamation, The Jonas Brothers, Bono Hates Chris Martin" >

Above: You know Jar Jar Binks makes you angry, but why?

by Linda Holmes

At last, we have been cured of our Oscar hangover! Fortunately, there really are other things going on in the world, and one day, no one will even care about Marisa Tomei's origami dress. And that day is "Tuesday." On with the show.

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• If you're wondering why old songs make you feel good and terrible sequels make you angry, enjoy this article, which explores how your brain rebels when it gets angry at George Lucas. (Hat-tip to io9.)

• Variety offers some details about how the economy is affecting the production of pilots, with the most interesting tidbit being the fact that multicamera comedies -- which were in the process of becoming extinct in favor of single-camera, un-laugh-tracked fare -- are cheaper, and thus may be back.

What to Note and Ignore, including Oscar ratings and two unnecessary remakes, after the jump...

Continue reading "Read/Note/Ignore: Nostalgia, Broadway Drama, And A Really Bad Thing Happens To 'Jai Ho'" >

(Above: The Village People sing "In The Navy." And that's a classic, you know.)

by Linda Holmes

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• Lost watchers might get at least a little clarity from this explanation of the way time travel on the show seems to work.

• Have a look at Roger Ebert's Oscar predictions, and enter the contest to outguess him. Frankly, I think his predictions are spot-on, even though this year is isn't a hard one to predict in most of the major categories.

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• As The New York Times reports, the new Village People are being sued by the cop from the original Village People. Beware the long, leather-clad arm of the law, is what I'm saying.

• Who says older beauties have to be put out to pasture? Not Stump, the oldest winner of Best In Show in the history of the Westminster Kennel Club.

• I'd like to be able to tell you to ignore something as obviously idiotic as the Forbes list of Star Currency Rankings, but it's weirdly mesmerizing, as is the Defamer take on the people ranked at the bottom. Poor Jensen Ackles!

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• In the continuing saga of what has to be the most famously unhappy set in television, Grey's Anatomy stars Katherine Heigl and T.R. Knight are reportedly getting their wishes to leave the show. It really does seem at times as if nobody on that set is having a good time. Which puts them in sync with the audience, but...still.

(Above: Cher overuses the Auto-Tune, more than a little.)

by Linda Holmes

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• If you watched The Grammys last night, you saw many, many people who have benefited from the technology known as Auto-Tune. If it's not familiar to you, Time has a good introduction. Interestingly, two different friends of mine who know a lot about music commented, independently of each other, that an auditioner on this year's American Idol sounded like Auto-Tune and its close cousin ProTools (also mentioned in the article) had influenced her singing style, leaving her live voice flat and affectless. Truly, it's everywhere.

• Back in my Minnesota homeland, an interesting battle has been joined over theater criticism. First, a representative of the well-regarded Guthrie Theater wrote this attack on the newspaper coverage theater receives in the Twin Cities. Very soon, one of the papers fired back. It makes for an interesting back-and-forth, with my favorite part being the Guthrie rep's feeling that it's really sad that gossip about actors and their huge egos doesn't get more play in the paper. Seems like perhaps she lost her train of thought.

• Has the film and television business learned anything from the music business's experience with piracy? The New York Times thinks the growth of legitimate, ad-supported video sites may mean it has.

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• Plenty of people saw He's Just Not That Into You this weekend -- enough to bring the movie $27.5 million. That's $27.5 million you ladies can't spend on your elaborate hats and your lipsticks and your pink cell phones, you know.

• Science-fiction blog io9 brings you this list of the Ten Most Expensive Comic Books At New York Comic-Con.

• It sounds like panic is setting in regarding the anticipated ratings for this year's Oscar telecast. Smaller ratings for most everything, little-seen movies competing for top prizes, snubs of performers who might have brought their own crowds...clearly, the only recourse is to refuse to say anything about what's going to be included and hope that people will tune in out of sheer bafflement! This is a great idea!

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• When you say, in the body of your story, "Most people aren't funny, they aren't insightful, and they share way too much," it's time to realize that Facebook might not be for you, so your thoughts on how much you hate entirely voluntary Facebook games might not be the most instructive. For an opposing view of "25 Things," please see Salon.

Etta James: Call us crazy, but at the November premiere of Cadillac Records, she already looked a little skeptical about Beyonce. Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

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• I got a kick out of Variety's review of the new film He's Just Not That Into You, which seems to say, in its brutal Variety way, "This is a very bad movie. It should do well."

• And while you're at it, check out this Times U.K. piece on the evolution of the "chick flick" (boy, do I hate that term) and where it may go from here.

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• Etta James has given a pretty watery "I was kidding" in the wake of recent on-stage comments in which she ridiculed Beyonce. When you start chalking things up to your "comedian kind of attitude," nobody is going to believe you actually had one.

• The U.K. nonprofit Kids In Museums has a new "manifesto" laying out 20 ways for museums to be more "family-friendly." If you like your museums loud and your artwork displayed at knee-level, you're going to love the family-friendly museum.

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• It's like the answer to a riddle: What is less significant than Sex And The City? Well, that would be Sex And The City 2.

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• Jan Swafford at Slate shows off some great examples of critical invective against music in a piece that's a lot of fun until right at the end, when it becomes another baffling example of Nothing's Any Good Anymore journalism.

• When Stereogum refers to musician/writer/crazy-dancer Andrew W.K. as an "outlandishly infectious personality," they're not kidding. And they have a report from the shooting of his new pilot. As a big fan of his 2003 MTV special Crashing With Andrew W.K., which you can read more about here, I am definitely looking forward to his collaboration with Adult Swim.

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• In a surprising reversal of the trend where television audiences for everything are dwindling madly, Sunday's Super Bowl turns out to have been the most-watched Super Bowl of all time, and -- get this -- the second-most-watched telecast of anything in history, behind only the finale of M*A*S*H.

• My guess is that one of the better bangs for the buck to come from a Sunday Super Bowl ad went to Denny's, which saw long lines yesterday for the free Grand Slam breakfast it advertised.

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• I love Cinematical, but that doesn't mean I sign off on their ideas to make the Academy Awards more like the Super Bowl. I am a much bigger fan of their hearty defense of the SXSW film festival.

• So far, reports that new mom of octuplets Nadya Suleman has aspirations to fame seem based entirely on her hiring of a publicist to handle the oodles of requests she's received, so until we hear more, you can hope that perhaps there won't be yet another person-with-oodles-of-children show coming your way on cable.

Buddy Holly's historical marker in Lubbock, Texas is only part of the culture surrounding his death; did the music die or not? Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

by Linda Holmes

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• John Updike's longtime New Yorker editor, Roger Angell, offers reflections on the experience. If nothing else, you will come across the lovely word "pertinaciously."

• Whether you are a New Yorker or not, do not miss this beautiful, warm, witty tribute to New York life done with Legos, by artist Christoph Niemann. And not giant, elaborate Lego sculptures, either: What makes this project so lovely and clever is how much it expresses without using much of anything at all. (Hat-tip to Metafilter.)

• It seems we never run out of the wish to analyze "The Day The Music Died,", even though it's fairly clear at this point that those words shouldn't be taken literally. On this, the anniversary of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and others, one writer bravely argues that music is not dead.

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• The unending SAG wars continue as president Alan Rosenberg asks a court to undo the recent ousting of executive director Doug Allen.

• I have no idea in what sense an Oscar Mayer microwaveable sandwich can be blogworthy. Wait! I just ruined it!

• I missed Steve Martin on Letterman, but fortunately, Gawker has the highlights. He really is a remarkable guy.

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• A lot of really unpleasant rehashing of five-year-old dating advice is going to surround the premiere of He's Just Not That Into You, the (ugh) movie, this week. It has begun. Resist.

Mad Men and Twitter: Hey, Don Draper -- you look glum. Why not tweet about your troubles? AMC

 

by Linda Holmes

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• A while back, there was a huge dust-up over people who set up Twitter accounts where they played the roles of Mad Men characters. AMC had the accounts frozen, and then unfrozen, and now, one of the guys providing the show-inspired tweets has a full report on the way the whole thing progressed and where it stands now. Unfortunately, it's a PDF you'll need to download, but it's an interesting take on the question of fan co-ownership; whether, essentially, fans have some vested right to take part in the storytelling. (Hat-tip to Vulture.)

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• HBO is developing a half-hour series with Ellen Barkin, who has been good in many things. But from description, it seems to be heavily influenced by the current cultural phenomenon I deeply despise and won't name, except to say it has four legs and rhymes with "flougar."

• Not so fast, people who love their rabbit ears: the House rejected the bill delaying the mandatory transition to all-digital TV broadcasts. The New York Times has a nice piece today explaining why this is important.

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• This year has brought some kind of Super Bowl ad sales nail-biting, where it's regularly reported how much space NBC has left to sell. Don't care.

• Mickey Rourke was maybe in, but is now apparently out, of Wrestlemania. Finally, something less significant than endless reports on the status of the Green Hornet movie.

Idris Elba: He's bringing his loveliness to The Office this spring. C.J. LaFrance/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

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• If there's a Super Bowl party in your future, you might enjoy this story of one man's effort to use football on television to get his friends to come over for dinner.

• Ben Brantley's latest piece in the New York Times, which asks whether it's too late to thank Jeremy Piven for leaving David Mamet's Speed-The-Plow with a claim of mercury poisoning, isn't going where you might think it's going.

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• Fans of The Office will want to check out the scoop on its upcoming post-Super-Bowl episode. If nothing else, you'll find out exactly what Idris Elba -- yes, that's right, The Wire's Stringer Bell -- will be doing on the show this spring.

• Perhaps news that I.Q. tests don't measure whether you have a lick of sense will get people on reality shows to stop citing their scores.

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• Hey, Lisa Rinna? You have extended your appearance on Dancing With The Stars into more of a current career than many of us thought you would have at this point, so stop begging to be put on a hypothetical new version of Melrose Place.

Chamber music in the cold: Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, and Anthony McGill couldn't provide a live performance given the weather. What kind of conditions would have been best? Win McNamee/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

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• Were you curious about the decision not to play real instruments during the chamber-music performance at President Obama's inauguration? Slate explains what conditions are good and bad for musical instruments, and provides some insight as to why.

• Salon's Mike Madden sums up how hard it is for a bunch of plugged-in people to discover that the White House is, at least right now, surprisingly unfriendly to most communication technologies more recent than what you can get from the Beeper King.

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• Following the goings-on at the Screen Actors Guild? Big news yesterday. The short version is that a majority of the SAG board, frustrated by a filibuster that prevented a vote at a previous meeting, submitted a "written assent" that authorized the dismissal of SAG executive director Doug Allen. The more "moderate" faction of the union, which seems more likely to reach agreement with the studios and avoid a strike, scored a victory over the faction that had been in charge, which has been more willing to authorize a strike, particularly to secure a better contract where internet residuals and other new media issues are concerned. It's probably a development that makes a SAG strike much less likely, but beyond that, whether it's good news depends entirely on whom you ask.

• The 'Senate signed off on bumping the mandatory move to digital-only TV broadcasts, previously scheduled for February, was to June 12. The House seems likely to do the same.

• If all the Thriller-dance wedding videos aren't enough for you, you'll be glad to know that there's going to be a musical.

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• "Worst [Blank] Ever" is a wildly overused construction these days, but when the next words you read are "Hilary Duff To Star In Bonnie And Clyde Remake," it does make you think..."Well, maybe."

• Donny Osmond is apparently the latest entrant on Dancing With The Stars. Since when do gigantic Broadway stars qualify to share the stage with hapless doofuses and graceless athletes? I call foul.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop: You may not like it, but you're going to live with it. Sony Pictures

 

by Linda Holmes

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• I must admit that I wasn't terribly familiar with the existence of an enormous Nigerian moviemaking industry until I read this CBC piece on the movie Nollywood Babylon, which showed up last week at the Sundance Film Festival.

• Speaking of Sundance, last week's Manohla Dargis piece in the New York Times was only the beginning of the dissection of this year's quieter festival and sluggish market for films. The next Times piece puts it pretty bluntly: "Buyers proved fussy."

• Interesting Wall Street Journal discussion of why movies shouldn't necessarily get star ratings or letter grades. This piece also bleeds over into the "Are review aggregators killing criticism?" question, which is one to which I hope we'll be returning in the next couple of weeks.

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• Doubt Kevin James at your peril. The former King Of Queens star's film Paul Blart: Mall Cop has spent its second week as America's favorite movie. The other big winner this weekend? Slumdog Millionaire. I must say, when I imagine the American moviegoing public as a person, I see us as quite an unpredictable little minx.

• While the on-stage presentations at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night carefully sidestepped the ongoing tension among various factions and union leaders, actors' red-carpet and backstage comments...didn't. Want the dirt? Variety has it, naturally.

• Bravo to Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch for calling out this ridiculous red-carpet interview of James Franco by former N'Sync member Joey Fatone as the insulting, hopelessly dated mess it was. I was about to say "James Franco deserves better," but the fact is, we all do. Every now and then, using a celebrity instead of a journalist to do your interviewing creates problems even in situations as apparently substance-free as "So you're nominated for this movie; whose suit are you wearing?"

Ignore:

• My guess is that if you have $2.85 million to spare these days, you have something better to do with it than purchasing Benjamin Button's house.

• Don't get me wrong; I'm crazy about James Earl Jones. But when he says he used to try to convince people it was the Un-Cola guy and not him as Darth Vader's voice? Well, you've got to look back long enough to ignore that.

Aretha Franklin's Inauguration Hat: Can almost 12,000 Facebook fans be wrong? Alex Wong/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Read:

• I was wondering just the other day what were the Eight Best Non-Human Tool Users. Thanks, Internet!

• We talked in some of the Oscar coverage yesterday about the box-office relevance of the nominations, particularly for Best Picture. Interesting analysis at the New York Times, with my only two quibbles being that the benefit to Slumdog Millionaire didn't get a mention, and that I respectfully submit that there is, in fact, no such thing as a "gay movie."

Also along Oscar-analysis lines, Mark Blankenship wonders not only whether the animated-feature category will continue to lock animation out of Best Picture (also a point Bob Mondello made yesterday), but whether dividing actors by gender really makes a whole lot of sense.

Note:

• In the last few days, 11,269 people have become official Facebook fans of Aretha Franklin's Inauguration Hat. That has to be the most popular hat on Facebook.

• Let us all begin whatever chanting and praying might be required to bring the stupendous Amy Ryan back to The Office after her much-too-short visit. Even the fact that Ryan's return is being seriously contemplated, given the fact that she was nominated for an Oscar last year (for Gone Baby Gone) and still has a very active career, speaks powerfully to the collapse of the assumption that going on television is a low-class thing for a respected actor to do. And on a comedy, no less.

Ignore:

• Less important than Cindy McCain possibly appearing on Dancing With The Stars? Cindy McCain definitely not appearing on Dancing With The Stars.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt: Doesn't this picture, taken at the German premiere of The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, kinda make you want to ignore them? Good news, then. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

 

Read:

• Well, our live chat with Bob Mondello, of course. We talked about everything from Angelina Jolie's lips to the lack of nominees of color to whether Heath Ledger will really win that award. (You may be surprised by Bob's response.)

• A good roundup of general Oscar thoughts is up at Slashfilm. Their readers can be counted on to hash out the major ongoing debates without (usually) falling into total chaos.

• It's always worth reading what Ebert has to say at a time like this.

Note:

• Interested in the public statements from nominees? E! has a good roundup.

• I wasn't terribly surprised by this discussion of people not wild about the word "slumdog," until I discovered it was a word that screenwriter Simon Beaufoy made up. Which somehow makes me more uncomfortable with it.

Ignore:

• Let's just go with: All of today's uses of the word "Brangelina."

Read:

• Tad Friend in The New Yorker has an exhaustive look at movie marketing. In a sense, you know all this -- the online marketing, trailers, leaks -- but it's still interesting to see it laid out with a current film, the romantic comedy New In Town, as one of the reference points.

• Definitely worth catching for those of you with musical theater in your blood: notes from a lengthy discussion with Stephen Sondheim, including discussions of Ethel Merman swearing, homosexuality in Oklahoma! (or not), and more about the part-Spanish-language production of West Side Story.

• The minute I saw Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Anthony McGill, and Gabriele Montero perform a John Williams piece at yesterday's inauguration, I started counting down to the inevitable backlash against it as a pop-ified version of chamber music. Ma, after all, has been on both The Colbert Report and The West Wing, while John Williams is widely known as the composer of crowd-friendly film scores to movies like Star Wars and Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

Lovely as I thought the piece was, I am utterly unsurprised (and more than a little amused) by, for instance, this comment thread at the New York Times, and how much it has in common with the hundreds of self-congratulatory discussions of hating Coldplay that the internet has produced in the last five or six years.

Note:

• Girl-detective series Veronica Mars, which ran for three seasons on what's now the CW, was one of those shows whose fans make up in enthusiasm what they lack in numerosity. And now, they've been thrown into a whole new tizzy with showrunner Rob Thomas making noises about a movie to continue the story.

• Remember the discussion we had a while ago about how to behave at the theater? Patti LuPone would appreciate it if you would not take her picture during a performance of Gypsy, and if you don't believe me, check out the clip at the top of this post, in which an unfortunately disobedient audience member gets what-for from Mama Rose.

Ignore:

• Absent some compelling reason, you probably don't need to worry too much about the new Obama musical.

• Were you dying to know what former O.C. star Mischa Barton had to say about the inauguration? I didn't think so.

Maksim Chmerkovskiy: He's not a star, but he dances with them. Michael Buckner/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

Read:

• Authors may come to dread electronic reading methods like Amazon's Kindle, if only because it makes locating overused phrases so much easier. Exhibit A: A gentleman who found, in a single Ken Follett novel, 13 instances of the phrase "his heart in his mouth." (via Bookninja.)
• I've been utterly fascinated by The Dark Knight as a phenomenon of interactivity with critics (or perhaps "haranguing of dissenters"), and if you can take a little more of that discussion, Jim Emerson's post at Roger Ebert's blog, in which he talks about "liking" and "disliking," is a knockout.

Note:

• To the surprise of no one, Fox and Warner Brothers have reached a settlement to allow the release of the breathlessly anticipated Watchmen. Entertainment Weekly's take avoids seeing much cause for celebration, essentially tagging everyone involved as a cynical, publicity-seeking whiner.
• NBC has some wackadoodle ideas about how to run a network these days, but here's a move that makes creative sense: they've given early renewals for next season to both The Office and 30 Rock.

Ignore:

• Something-something Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Karina Smirnoff engagement blah blah blah. E! presents details about the proposal issued by one of the non-stars on Dancing With The Stars to one of the other non-stars on Dancing With The Stars. This proposal included candles and rose petals. Celebrities really are just like us!
• USA Today has the scoop on what the inauguration means to some actors. Short version: The ones who are coming to town, they're pretty into it. Admittedly, this piece is almost worth reading just for the quote (about President-elect Barack Obama), "I find him very soulful in private."

Gwyneth Paltrow: She wants to pump you up, but fortunately, you don't need to care. Francois Durand/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

I've been trying to think of good ways to sort through the piles and piles of entertainment news that hits my radar every day, and it ultimately occurred to me that what we need is a sorting mechanism. Some things you should actually read, some you should make note of, and some (let's be honest: most) you can safely ignore. Let me help.

Read:

• The Cinematical roundup Sundance '09: Our 12 Most Anticipated Films. You will hear about many of these quite a bit more in the coming year; it's good to start becoming familiar with them.
• The New York Times explanation of the significance of Beethoven in Peanuts. Lovely.

Note:

• Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher on The Sopranos, thinks he knows what happened in the finale.
• Leonard Cohen, whose career has (it cannot be denied) benefited in part from the "Hallelujah" revival that has been (I'm sorry; I know it's not fair) partially nudged along by American Idol and similar shows, is on tour and coming to New York.
• Speaking of which, Idol alum and Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson will perform the national anthem at the Super Bowl. After squeamishly turning away from saturation coverage of recent tragedies in her personal life, I'm pleased to see her in the news as a talented performer again.
• If you have listened to the audio commentaries on the Moonlighting DVDs -- and I have -- you won't be surprised that there is (admittedly very early) chatter about a reunion movie. Love-hate relationships between co-stars, remember, are 50 percent love.

Ignore:

• Katie Holmes and Victoria Beckham both have their pictures taken looking like zombies. This, fortunately, does not affect you.
• Paris Hilton cuts her hair. I wish Paris Hilton would move to New Zealand.
• Non-noted fitness non-expert Gwyneth Paltrow is opening a gym. You will almost surely not join this gym.