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
Sep
8
 
 
DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE: It was August 1, 1981, when a new cable channel called MTV launched – and took the “launch” designation seriously, by building its opening campaign around images related to a manned space launch to the moon. The MTV flag was “planted” on the moon with colorfully animated variations, and to this day, the MTV Video Music Awards handed out are in the shape of flag-wielding “moon men.” I was a TV critic in Akron, Ohio, then, watching an
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Sep
8
 
 
SEASON FINALE: With the potential start of the potentially infected 2020 NFL pro football season just around the corner, HBO presents the season finale of its annual preseason sports documentary, Hard Knocks. It’s a season unlike any other, with the two Los Angeles teams, the Rams and the Chargers, struggling to cope with preparing for play while playing it safe from transmitting COVID-19. And last week, even those concerns were dwarfed by something else very significant that was
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Sep
8
 
 
You wouldn't think prequels would be an automatic winner in the treacherous television programming game...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Sep
8
 
 
This day in 1966 marked the debut of Star Trek — later known as Star Trek: The Original Series to differentiate the show from its many TV and film spinoffs — on NBC...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Sep
7
 
 
On this day in 1967, ABC introduced The Flying Nun, starring Sally Field...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Sep
7
 
 
TCM’s “End of Summer Tour,” which started showing concert and musical movies and documentaries last Friday, concludes tonight with one last festive and/or festival night of programming. And what a night. The 1968 documentary Monterey Pop, about the 1967 music festival that changed the Sixties, starts things off at 8 p.m. ET. Whose careers were pushed into high gear by that astounding gathering of musical stylists? Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix (pictured). The Who. Ravi S
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Sep
7
 
 
Elizabeth Barret and photographer Wendy Ewald collaborated on this new edition of P.O.V., which tells her story of getting others to tell their stories – and what a story it is. In the 1970s, she taught elementary school at three schools in Letcher County, Kentucky, and armed her young students with cameras, dispatching them with orders to photograph themselves and their rural and mostly poor Appalachian homes, communities and lifestyles. A decade later, Ewald published
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Sep
7
 
 
On the face of it, National Geographic's annual Big Cat Week...sounds as if it was designed to cash in on the success of rival Discovery's better-known, long-running Shark Week. It's an easy assumption to make, but it would be wrong...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Sep
7
 
 
I just remembered why I love movies – the big, sweeping kind that fills the screen and fill your eyes and ears and thoughts. I also found that I miss seeing them in their natural habitat...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Sep
6
 
 
The second day of Decades’ weekend Get Smart marathon continues, with another 3,000 episodes from the classic 1965-70 spy spoof created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. Would you believe the final 1,234 episodes?  How about… a couple dozen?