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

 
 
2020
May
19
 
 
Filmmaker Sasha Achilli got rare access to the spreading pandemic crisis by getting permission to embed at an Italian hospital and follow an emergency room doctor, Francesca Mangiatordi, who is shown both at work and at home, where her family is understandably very worried about her. Check local listings. For a full review, see Alex Strachan's TV That Matters. 
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
May
19
 
 
I have a friend, Joe, who argued years ago that the most important character on television for a kid growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s was...Eddie Haskell from Leave It To Beaver...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
May
18
 
 
For a while, this has become a weekly thing – something on which parents can depend, in which former First Lady Michelle Obama invites special guests to join her in reading children’s books to young viewers. This week, in a program also shown online on the Facebook and YouTube Mondays with Michelle Obama pages or channels, the books featured are Giraffe Problems (choosing the right necklace, perhaps?) and The Bear Ate My Sandwich. (My advice, in response
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
May
18
 
 
SEASON FINALE: This is not a recommendation. Tonight and tomorrow, The Voice presents its finale. But scaled down because of social distancing, and with virtually no live audience (or just a virtual one), how exciting can this year’s finale be? If you’re still involved enough to watch, you tell me…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
May
18
 
 
This 1963 Alfred Hitchcock movie is a classic, and he managed, without any CGI, to present many unforgettable images of birds congregating on phone wires and playground structures. Remember that a gathering of one particular type of blackbirds is referred to as “a murder of crows.” In The Birds, Hitch takes that literally…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
May
18
 
 
This 2001 French film stars Audrey Tautou as a young woman confined as a young child, experiencing very little social interaction or outdoor travel, who grows up to become a waitress in Paris, driven to bring joy into the lives of anyone she encounters. Amélie was a delightful, beautifully photographed fable already – but now, in these times, its buoyancy is even more inspirational, and even more welcome.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
May
18
 
 
Last week’s premiere of this new cooking series actually presented a few recipes I was happy to mark for future testing: Amy Schumer’s cocktail recipe for an old fashioned (she used to bartend in New York), and her husband Chris Fischer’s recipe for baked chicken wings, which combined a teriyaki marinade with a yogurt and herb wash. Seemingly, there’s no take two on this show, but that’s part of its casual, super informal energy. And the primary camera is handh
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
May
18
 
 
As possibly the most humorless man on television, Brock Blennerhasset (Michael Smiley) has found the perfect job. He takes formal portraits of the dead...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
May
18
 
 
This day in 2006 marked the final telecast of NBC's Will & Grace, the late-nineties equivalent of The Odd Couple...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
May
17
 
 
Beverly Hills, 90210 ended its ten-year run on this day in 2000...