Vision

Viva BBC America

I caught the first episode of Viva Blackpool last night on BBC America, a six-episode mini-series that features the most wonderfully vile lead character since The Sopranos. The show's a funny drama about Ripley Holden, an Elvis-loving Brit trying to bring Vegas-style excess to Blackpool, England, in the form of the Yankee Dollar Casino. When a dead body turns up one morning, a Scottish detective shows up poking around Ripley's business (and his wife). The comparisons to Tony Soprano are ... (read more)

2005/10/30

A story on the 10th anniversary of the O.J. Simpson verdict notes his recent plans: Last year, on the 10th anniversary of the murders, he told Fox News that he was about to re-enter public life with a TV show in which he would pull practical jokes on unsuspecting victims. On a scale of one to 10, "it's 7 or 8 that it's gonna happen," he said. It never happened. I haven't seen much reality TV since Married by America perfected the form, but I'd watch an alleged double murderer being sprung on ... (read more)

2005/10/03

Casting a Dark Horse as the Sixth 007

James Bond producers are searching for a new actor to play the role after dumping Pierce Brosnan this week. Media favorites for the next 007 include Hugh Jackman, Heath Ledger, Jude Law, and Clive Owen. I imagine they'll pick someone from this demographic: Top-of-the-marquee actors under 40 from the U.K. or Australia who can handle a black-tie dress code. British bookmakers have Owen as a 4/5 favorite, but some of their other choices are so odd you have to wonder at the collective intelligence ... (read more)

2005/08/21

Katherine Harris Sways Florida Voters

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris announced her Florida Senate bid on Hannity & Colmes last week in one of the most bizarre interviews I've ever seen a politician give on television. She's sitting awkwardly in three-quarters profile, sways back and forth, and keeps moving her facial muscles around as if she's forgotten how to keep them still. Harris spokesman Adam Goodman has attempted to explain her conduct as fatigue from a long first day of campaigning. "She was just a little tired," he told a ... (read more)

2005/08/17

It seems a little dumb to care about such things, but I'd like to see Elizabeth Vargas or another talented female newscaster replace Peter Jennings on World News Tonight. We've ventured far enough into the 21st century to retire the idea that the voice of authority in this country comes in only one octave. ... (read more)

2005/08/09

Robert Wilonsky: Fully Loaded

Dallas Observer film critic Robert Wilonsky: To damn Herbie: Fully Loaded as soporific crap, as lazy profiteering, as yet another needless and cynical remake in a season populated by such con artists, would be as pointless as the movie itself. If you had any hope for it, you're either a Walt Disney executive or Gordon Buford, author of the story "Car-Boy-Girl" that birthed five prior features, including 1969's The Love Bug and the 1997 made-for-TV redo with Bruce Campbell in the Dean Jones ... (read more)

2005/07/15

I Heart Alan Colmes

I've been exchanging e-mail lately with Alan Colmes (namedrop!), the cohost of Hannity & Colmes and his own nightly radio show. This isn't payola; I'm doing this as an expression of love. As a huge fan of talk radio I've wanted to adopt a liberal show on the Drudge Retort, inspired by Matt Drudge's relentless self-promotion of his Sunday night show. Every night as Colmes airs, the Retort will post live links to upcoming guests and a place to talk about them. I don't know how this experiment ... (read more)

2005/06/16

When Reporters Attack

Washington Post reporter Mark Leibovich covers a raucous press conference with Sens. Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, and DNC Chair Howard Dean: The press chorus then devolved into a cacophony of competing screams. (And Dean knows screams!) After several seconds, a booming voice cut through the noise. It belonged to Brian Wilson, a Fox News correspondent who was standing in the middle of the crowd. He asked Dean "if people are focused on the other things that you've said about hating Republicans, about ... (read more)

2005/06/10

David Asman is Damn Right

Media Matters and a few liberal bloggers are spreading a gotcha moment for Fox News anchor David Asman, who accidentally revealed his we-ness while interviewing Sen. Trent Lott about the filibuster deal: So, Senator, if we should have done it and if we had the votes to do it in the Senate -- if you guys in the Republican Party did -- then why did you need a compromise? It's funny to see the guy talking like a Republican homer, but anyone who knows Asman's biography doesn't need to be told where ... (read more)

2005/05/26

Dismembering the Eighties

SoapNet airs reruns of the cancelled soap Another World, digging 16-year-old episodes out of the Procter & Gamble archives. They've reached June 1989, and every time I hit this show during a channel surf I can't find my way back out -- it's a hypnotic time capsule of excruciatingly bad '80s fashion. Movies that mock the decade, such as The Wedding Singer and 200 Cigarettes, don't come close to how ridiculous we looked. There may be no more unseemly spectacle than men in feathered mullets, ... (read more)

2005/05/18

Read More Entries