DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
2017
Aug
11
 
 
SPECIAL: In the mid-1970s, David Berkowitz terrorized New York City with a series of random shootings. He remains in prison – and on the 40th anniversary of his capture, the self-described “Son of Sam” killer is interviewed by Maurice DuBois.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
11
 
 
Quite a lineup tonight: Bill Maher’s scheduled guests include Richard Dawkins, Jim Parsons, Jon Meacham, and Fareed Zakaria.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
11
 
 
Today is Ginger Rogers day on TCM – and included in the movies showcasing her is the ultimate movie musical pairing her with Fred Astaire, 1935’s Top Hat. It’s a black-and-white study in sheer opulence and grace and class, and not only when Rogers and Astaire are on the dance floor. Top Hat has some great Irving Berlin songs, including the title number and “Cheek to Cheek,” as well as some fairly sophisticated and sexy comedy, particularly for the era. And TV fans g
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
11
 
 
In case you missed it, this week marked the 24th anniversary of the season finale of ABC’s odd-couple sitcom Perfect Strangers... The Leftovers had a brief joke in Season One which started out as a writer’s room gag – the 2% of the world’s population gone in the rapture-like disappearance of the Sudden Departure also included the cast of Perfect Strangers...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
10
 
 
Professional golf has a long history and a long memory. Today marks the start of the 99th PGA Championship, held this year at the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, NC.  It’s one of the four major championship events in pro golf – and over the many decades, only five players have managed to complete a grand slam by winning all four events. That fabled quintet is Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods. And over the next four days, Jordan Spieth, at age
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
10
 
 
A dozen Sidney Poitier movies are being shown by TCM today and tonight, including such crucially important Poitier films as 1958’s The Defiant Ones (at 10 p.m. ET) and 1967’s In the Heat of the Night (midnight ET). But to me – and apparently to TCM, which reserves the lead-off prime-time slot for another movie Poitier made in that busy year of 1967 – the highlight is To Sir, with Love, in which he stars as a substitute teacher challenged by a class of rowdy high-school st
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
10
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: Colin Jost and Michael Che host this summer edition of “Weekend Update,” a welcome, and extremely well-timed, August diversion from NBC and SNL. Nestled between Wednesday’s Full Frontal with Samantha Bee on TBS and Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, it’s the Thursday go-to TV show for stand-alone political humor.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
10
 
 
This 1980 film is a very underrated Woody Allen movie. Largely, its cool reception may have been a matter of timing. Allen, after a strong of brilliantly breezy early comedies, had begun to deepen both his focus and his tone, and write and direct one ambitiously different movie after another, on a literally annual basis. Annie Hall, his masterpiece, came in 1977. Interiors, his Bergmanesque drama, followed in 1978. Manhattan, his black-and-white salute to New York, arrived in 1979. And then came
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
10
 
 
If you watched last week’s two-part debut of Greg Garcia’s The Guest Book, you already get this show’s imaginatively unusual premise. It’s an anthology series with stand-alone stories and guest stars and a continuing series with regular characters and an ongoing narrative. It’s a floor wax and a dessert topping! And it works. Tonight’s third episode has, in its guest cabin, a couple sharing space with the husband’s boss and his much younger companion &nd
 
 
 
  
 
 
2017
Aug
10
 
 
Tonight’s scheduled guests on The Tonight Show are comic Anthony Anderson, singer Kesha – and my boss, Terry Gross, leaving the radio booth at NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross to sit opposite Jimmy Fallon tonight on Tonight. Sing along with me, to the tune from West Side Story: “Tonight, Tonight won’t be just any night…”