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
Jul
30
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: Oprah Winfrey isn’t letting the pandemic hold her back – at least not from producing and launching a new talk series. The Oprah Conversation, her newest program for Apple TV+, is a weekly series she hosts remotely, but with a way to include what the streaming service calls “audience engagement.” The aim is to spend time with “thought leaders” (another term from the Apple TV+ press release) around the world, and today’s opening
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jul
30
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: Well, once again, it’s a premiere in the U.S. (as long as the pandemic keeps going, expect American programmers to reach more deeply, and gratefully, into foreign TV pantries for available inventory). This series, which is quite funny, is a sort of variation on Schitt’s Creek, with a well-to-do woman losing her fortune, and relocating to a strange place as a literal last resort. Except, in Frayed, the strange place is Australia, which is where pam
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jul
30
 
 
It was inevitable, perhaps, that the ghost of House would come up...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jul
30
 
 
The age of the plucky female antihero continues to unfold with Frayed, an Australian production that premieres in America on Thursday over HBO Max...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jul
30
 
 
As the year began, PBS launched a sort of national diary. People could simply send in their stories via video (usually), photos, prose, or, well, whatever...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jul
30
 
 
This day in 1989 marked the last telecast of The Jim Henson Hour on NBC...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jul
29
 
 
On this day in 1983, NBC attempted to capitalize on the growing popularity of music videos with the introduction of the late-night show, Friday Night Videos...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jul
29
 
 
If you want to get lost in the world of Michael Corleone, and the evocative 1970s films directed so moodily and mightily by Francis Ford Coppola, IFC is presenting those two genre classics back to back. Al Pacino plays the young man reluctantly gravitating towards the family business… and away from his eventual wife, played by Diane Keaton.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jul
29
 
 
This 2009 Pixar animated film is a great movie, with one of the funniest cartoon dogs ever. But what killed me the first time I saw this movie, and continues to devastate me (in a good way) every time since, is the opening. I won’t say more, if this is your first time with Up. But watch it, and be prepared for a deeper emotional experience than you get with most live-action films. Ed Asner provides the voice of the elderly, cranky man who finds himself on an unexpected voyage wit
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jul
29
 
 
Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympics athlete in history, narrates this one-hour documentary, and is one of its executive producers. It’s about the costs, emotional even more than physical, of athletes training to compete as the best in the world in their respective sports. Phelps and other Olympic athletes, including Apolo Anton Ono, Sean White and Sasha Cohen, are interviewed – some who stood atop the podium, some who fell short. And rather than being inspirationally upbeat,&