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

 
 
2015
Aug
23
 
 
SEASON FINALE: Tonight’s installment is episode ten, the season finale. It’s called “Will There Be Consequences?” – and there will, because this show already has been renewed for a Season 2. So while, once again, Tim Robbins, Jack Black, and company seem to be on the edge of global disaster here, expect them to pull it back in a bit, so they can act crazy again in 2016.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Aug
23
 
 
Once in a while there’s just a plain, documentary shot that’s mesmerizing. This silent clip is one of Dutch artist Theo Jansen’s visionary and eerie wind-blown walking sculptures, which make a marriage of art and technology...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Aug
22
 
 
Marlene Dietrich is today’s featured actress on TCM – and while some of her most audacious and entertaining films are missing here (what, no Scarlett Empress?), the day and night are loaded with films that showcase Dietrich at various stages of her lengthy and showy career. Start at 9:15 a.m. ET with the 1930 film that made her a star, The Blue Angel (and also gave Madonna and others some iconic music video inspirations). Jump to 2:45 p.m. ET, where director Alfred Hitchcock showcase
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Aug
22
 
 
The salute to some of the most pivotal modern Doctor Who episodes continues with a repeat, accompanied by fun facts and other features, of “The End of Time,” the two-parter that featured the return of The Master (John Simm, pictured) and the end of the line for the Tenth Doctor, played so exuberantly by David Tennant. Tennant is the star here – but because of the Master’s sinister plot, he gets almost as much screen time – and many, many more roles to play.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Aug
22
 
 
This isn’t a recommendation – just a notation that, if you enjoyed the first Dumb and Dumber movie more than I did, tonight HBO presents its many-years-later sequel. Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels star.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Aug
22
 
 
Last week’s episode of Hannibal featured hardly any Hannibal. But with the series just about to end, expect that to change tonight and next week, as one killer helps stop another, in the familiar Silence of the Lambs plot – and the even more familiar “It takes one to know one” adage.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Aug
22
 
 
Tig Notaro received a giant career boost in 2012 after a series of personal setbacks and tragedies that included the death of her mother, the onset of a rare intestinal disease, and a diagnosis of breast cancer. She went on stage, at the Largo nightclub in Los Angeles, and performed a brutally honest, bravely uncomfortable comedy standup set that began with her telling the crowd, “I have cancer.” Louis C.K., who watched the set, released audio of it on his website, which became a No.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Aug
22
 
 
At a comedy club, it’d probably be daunting to follow Tig Notaro, especially if you were another female comic looking to establish herself as a comedian with edge. But this Natasha Leggero Comedy Central special, which only by coincidence follows HBO’s Notaro special by premiering on the same night an hour later, starts strongly, with a music-video opening that, by the end, had me both marveling at Leggero’s bravery and her audacity. Yikes. And her standup set hadn’t even
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Aug
22
 
 
Public television's Rick Sebak generates as much excitement among many PBS followers as J.K. Rowling or Steve Jobs ever did on the mass-market field...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2015
Aug
21
 
 
Contrary to his atomic-fireball TV persona, the Morton Downey Jr. I knew was a pussycat. A pussycat o’nine tails sometimes, but a pussycat all the same...