Today, HBO announced that Girls has been picked up for a third season, bragging in its press release that the premiere of the second season “already exceeds a gross audience of 3.8 million viewers with only partial data available.”
Good news for Lena Dunham and her crew, right? Well, not exactly, as calling this information “news” is itself a misnomer.
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Today is the street date of the most anticipated Vanity Fair cover since Jennifer Aniston announced that, yes, she did want kids. Judd Apatow has guest-edited the glossy rag (it’s sort of like when Roseanne guest-edited The New Yorker, but five times as long and far more self-serious), presumably commissioning photo spreads of his coterie Read More
Call it the Tri-Be-Can’t effect: As New Yorkers, we loathe letting go of our venerable institutions. It’s hard to even admit that they’ve changed enough to warrant a new name. The Lincoln Center is referred to as “the tents” during Fashion Week, as if anyone is still fooled into thinking the shows take place in Bryant Park. The most recent egregious case of celebratory misnomers has to be the Tribeca Film Festival, which was founded in 2002 by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff. The purpose of hosting the event in Tribeca was to show the world that the neighborhood devastated by the attacks of Sept. 11 still had enough spirit to be snooty about its cinema. With its Cannes-do attitude, the festival premiered international indies in an attempt to show that New Yorkers were still as culturally polyamorous as their European brethren.
But for its 10th-year anniversary, something feels a little … different. Read More
Are you very excited for HBO’s April premiere of Girls, written and directed by New York indie film darling Lena Dunham and produced by Judd Apatow? Because it has a trailer now!
Hard to believe, but a lot of people outside of New York and Los Angeles still don’t know who the 25-year-old is, or why she will be appearing on their television sets. If they have heard of her, it’s because of her SXSW hit, Tiny Furniture, or the multiple profile pieces it spawned. (Not to mention the news that Mr. Apatow had taken Ms. Dunham under her wing, not just for Girls but as a leading lady in his Knocked Up spin-off, This is 40.) Read More
There was a hopeful moment early late last spring—back when Amy Winehouse was alive and Casey Anthony had not yet been tried. Even if summer had to end eventually, at least it would mean the beginning of one of the best fall seasons ever for young women on TV, a laugh-track filled rejoinder to Christopher Hitchens assertion that women weren’t funny.
As if to reward us for buying tickets to Bridesmaids, the networks were suddenly bullish on “girl”-centric comedies—ABC snagged New Girl, CBS bought 2 Broke Girls, NBC bought Whitney, named for and written by the girl who created 2 Broke Girls, and HBO green-lit Girls, which was not only on-trend title-wise, but also came with Bridesmaids producer Judd Apatow’s imprimatur. Read More
So, who’s bringing the coolest celebs to this weekend’s WHCD?
The Wall Street Journal‘s table sounds like a hoot, for example, with Securities and Exchange Commission chairwoman Mary Schapiro, RNC chairman Michael Steele et al. And look at Newsweek (Chevy Chase) and The New Yorker (Tracy Morgan, Judd Apatow).
But Politico’s table might win for sheer Read More
It turns out that people in the flyover states like movies, too! At least that’ll be the meme running through the blogosphere today as G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra exploded into the No. 1 slot this weekend, grossing an estimated $56.2 million to pace the field. Landing in second was Read More
We found ourselves plenty surprised by Judd Apatow’s Funny People. Apologies to our own Rex Reed—whose vitriol over the film was epic in its proportions—but it wasn’t nearly as bad as we had anticipated. Quite the opposite, in fact: We sneaky loved it! Funny People was vicious, biting, messy and altogether human. Read More
Perhaps Judd Apatow is smirking all the way to the bank. Funny People, the hirsute director’s third film, opened in the No. 1 position at the box office this weekend, scoring an estimated $23.4 million in ticket sales. Unfortunately, that makes Funny People the lowest-grossing film to reach No. 1 this summer, Read More
We weren’t planning on becoming a big Katherine Heigl defender. After all, our hatred for her character Izzie Stevens on Grey’s Anatomy reaches such apoplectic proportions that we’re surprised we haven’t thrown a glass through our television screen by now. (Oh the horror of seeing Heigl-as-Izzie in cancer patient makeup and a bald cap Read More
