On Tuesday, I saw The Omen, which I’m ready to declare the comedy of the summer. I didn’t see it because I thought it would be good—a friend greeted me at the theater by enthusiastically asking, “Are you ready to be disappointed?”—but rather, out of some
Last week’s American Idol finale has left a lot of TiVos with nothing to do. Fox has responded with a second season of So You Think You Can Dance, produced by AI’s Simon Fuller, a near-mimicry of the Idol formula. In case you’ve missed it, here’
This week, an early film from Tim Burton called Vincent has been making the rounds. A charmingly dark animated short from 1982 about a little suburban boy who just wants to be Vincent Price, it’s probably the closest thing to memoir Burton can muster. It’s also narrated by
I grew up in the ‘80s without MTV, which felt a bit like growing up without oxygen. I compiled my own music video collection by taping a network show called Friday Night Videos, but my library was nothing compared to Milinkito’s ginormous compendium of ‘80s videos, including such little-
I’m lost when it comes to Lost. I don’t know who’s on the island, what’s in the jungle, or why Michelle Rodriguez keeps getting busted for DUIs. I’m sure it’s a good show, but it demands so much… attention. Most of the time, I
Last year, director Paul Weitz found himself torn between two dramas: the Iraq war and American Idol. It’s a disconnect familiar to many of us with a conscience and a television set—thousands of soldiers have died, but holy crap, Mandisa should not have been voted off!—and it
Teenagers are all talk. That’s why the best high school movies are so quotable—The Breakfast Club, Heathers, Clueless, Donnie Darko. Though Brick isn’t as good as those films, it is chock-a-block with one-liners, all delivered with the calculated clip of an old Bogart movie.
The View has always been fascinating for the wrong reasons: the egregious lack of insight among its female hosts; the infomercial leading up to Star Jones’s wedding; Jones’s stunning weight loss, which somehow left her looking just as dysmorphic as she did at 300 pounds. I skipped most
Smoking ain’t the popular kid it used to be. Even rebellious kids are shunning cancer sticks these days, no matter how many Parliaments Lindsay Lohan sucks down while table-dancing. Two weeks ago, a report from the association of state attorneys general reported smoking is at its lowest rate
Big Love, a new HBO drama about polygamists in Utah, arrives at the right cultural moment. The topic of gay marriage has kept the American family—and what defines it—firmly on people’s agenda; the rise in open marriage, as reported by a thousand trend stories, has offered yet
