Weighed down by a depressing premise made all too apparent by the theatrical trailer and advance publicity which made the film’s title too obviously sarcastic, Jud Apatow’s Funny People opened relatively poorly at the U.S. box office, taking in only
The Philanthropist (NBC, Wednesdays, 10 p.m. EDT) is a bad idea for a television series, but in the execution it manages to be even worse. In fact, in making extravagant claims about the value of philanthropy, the show actually undermines
This year marks the 70th anniversary of Hollywood’s greatest year, 1939. Accordingly, Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the anniversary this month by showing 39 films released in ’39, starting with The Wizard of Oz. Throughout the month, TCM will also
Actor Karl Malden, who died at age 97, was a fine performer who stood for good principles and conveyed a sense of moral responsibility in his performances. Malden was instrumental in pushing the Motion Picture Academy to give a lifetime
The new film Year One is definitely taking a beating from the critics, especially conservative ones. Two reviews by my colleagues at Big Hollywood exemplify the complaints. Comedienne Victoria Jackson expresses immense disappointment with the film’s high proportion of obscenity
It will be a good thing if the Sandra Bullock romantic comedy The Proposal continues its box-office success—if Hollywood draws the right conclusions about why it did well. The film had a rather surprisingly strong opening weekend at the U.S.
The death of television personality Ed McMahon at the age of 86 marks the passing of a true original. McMahon was one of the very first Americans to enjoy the postmodern status of being a celebrity solely by virtue of
The centenary of John Wayne’s birth passed in 2007 with hardly any attention from the U.S. media, which shows both how out of touch the critical community is and how much more astute audiences are than the great majority of
The new Will Ferrell comedy, Land of the Lost, based on an astoundingly bad mid-1970s children’s show produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, is typical of Farrell’s films–it’s funny, imaginative, action-filled, nonsensical, and essentially well-meaning. Unlike most of his comedies,
Prolific actor David Carradine, best known for the Kung Fu TV series, the Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill, and a series of ads for telephone directories, has been found dead in the closet of his hotel room in Thailand, where
Conan O’Brien played it safe in his debut as host of NBC’s Tonight Show last night. That’s a good choice, actually. The big question is: Will it last? As I noted in an article reporting on NBC’s choice of personable
The “Terminator” films are about the takeover of the world by machines, and unfortunately the series has itself manifested that phenomenon, being increasingly taken over by special effects and action sequences at the expense of identifiable human concerns. Terminator Salvation,
On the heels of a public-relations juggernaut with the inspiring (and arguably false) message that it’s “not as anti-Catholic as The Da Vinci Code!”,the cinematic conspiracy thriller Angels and Demons finished first at the U.S. box office during the past
Despite early polling data showing a distinct lack of enthusiasm toward the Star Trek movie reboot by J. J. Abrams (Lost, Alias, Cloverfield, Fringe, Felicity), the film had an excellent opening weekend at the U.S. movie box office. The film
Conservative critics of U.S. television programming are correct to observe that TV drama and comedy fiction series have seldom had clergy as positive characters during the past couple of decades. However, that does not mean that network series television has
Like the best works of popular culture, the ABC mystery-crime series Castle is both entertaining and edifying. It exemplifies an increasingly strong trend in the American culture: the use of grim, sensual, bizarre, disturbed, or perverse imagery and subject matter
As is sadly the case for all good things, the video website Hulu.com may well come under attack by the government, specifically in the form of antitrust action by the Obama administration. Socialism’s great horde of media apologists has begun
Yes, vampires are still a hot media commodity, but zombies are vying to knock them off the cultural pedestal, with the rise of zombie movies as a cultural force and numerous books about zombies hitting the stores, capped by the
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the FCC’s authority to impose fines on broadcasters for allowing obscene language on the air. By a 5-4 majority the Court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission did not violate the federal Administrative Procedure
Escape has been the theme for U.S. moviegoers in recent months, but audiences aren’t avoiding attending good, serious films; Hollywood is avoiding making them. The newly released, highly derivative thriller Obsessed finished first at the U.S. office this past weekend,
Last week’s episode of the Fox Network medical-mystery series House included a Big Event meant to shock the show’s viewers and send the story line in an interesting new direction, as one of the main characters of the series was
As noted in my previous articles on the CBS TV mystery-drama series Eleventh Hour (here, here and here), the show consistently presents interesting, intelligent, and fair-minded discussions of science issues in a dramatic (if often far-fetched) context. In addition, the
A good many people will watch the final episode of NBC’s long-running drama series ER tonight, given the show’s popularity over the years. I, however, will be watching something else: the season-ending episode of the CBS-TV mystery-drama series Eleventh Hour.
The latest PBS adaptation of Charles Dickens’s classic novel Oliver Twist demonstrates the urgent need for reform of the taxpayer-supported broadcasting service–or an end to taxpayer funding for it. The temptation to “improve” on classic works of culture seems all
