By Drew Grant 2/27 5:33pm

Double Threats

Video

Alison Brie and the Girls (YouTube)

Community’s Alison Brie’s Band Covers White Stripes, With Draco Malfoy on Guitar [Video]

We imagine that anyone who attended The Girls show in L.A. earlier this week was reminded of that Kurt Vonnegut quote from Slaughterhouse-Five: “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt, and there was no soft-shoeing from Daniel Radcliffe, thank God.” Community and Mad Men star Alison Brie–also known as being the most perfect actress and real-life crush in the entire world–told Jon Stewart recently that her cover band’s sound is “classic rock and some country. We do a little Hall & Oates, a little Springsteen, some Dolly Parton …”

And some White Stripes, apparently. Though Alison Brie and the Girls is formally comprised of all women (d’uh), Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) joined the ladies on stage to perform “We’re Going to Be Friends,” a single from White Blood Cells. Read More

By Drew Grant 11/27/12 6:59pm

television

Mariska Hargitay as Det. Olivia Benson on Law & Order: SVU (NBC)

The Sickos on the Sofa: Law & Order: SVU’s 13 Years of Bringing Sex Crimes to Prime Time

“I just saw Annie, and I didn’t look at Daddy Warbucks the way I would have 20 years ago,” Warren Leight told The New York Observer over the phone last week. “The show has really warped the way we look at the world, at least those of us writing it.”

The showrunner for Dick Wolf’s last standing Law & Order program, Special Victims Unit, was struggling to understand how people watch “marathon” sessions of the show he manages. “The children episodes are disturbing, even to us,” said Mr. Leight.

He singled out one such episode, entitled “Friending Emily,” in which detectives go to an FBI office to view images of abused children. Mr. Leight sounded shocked, tired and a little bit horrified over a detail that he and his writers chose to put in the episode. He sounded a lot, in fact, like SVU’s former protagonist, Elliot Stabler.

“There is a kid in diapers whose photo we show,” said Mr. Leight. “We found it on an Internet pornography site. It had 37,000 hits in the last four days.” (Which, it turns out, is the exact line that a government official says during the episode.) Read More

By Foster Kamer 7/27/12 3:18pm

TIMES OF THE TIMES

CARR SCOTT GUILTY PLEASURES

Andrew Ross Sorkin Loves Him Some Bethenny Frankel, and Other ‘Guilty Pleasures’ of the New York Times

New York Times mediacreature David Carr and Toby Turtle doppelganger A.O. Scott recently taped another video in a series not titled “Old Timesmen Telling Jokes,” which is not set to premiere off-Broadway this fall. Previously, these two geriatric culture anthropologists discovered Brooklyn, The Brand, the phenomenon of dead pop stars, and pissed off celebrities on Twitter. Now, they delve into the “guilty pleasures” of the New York Times. Read More

By Drew Grant 7/09/12 8:30am

auctions

chewbacca2

Dreier Collection Asks ‘How Much Would You Pay For Chewbacca’s Head?’

Do you love movies? Like love-love them? Would you call yourself a movie “fanatic” or “buff”? Do you have $100,000 or so in liquid assets lying around the house?

Then get ready to put your money where your mouth is, because for the entire month of July, geeks everywhere will be bidding on movie artifacts from The Dreier Collection. And yes, there is definitely a tie-in to San Diego’s Comic-Con. Read More

By Foster Kamer 7/15/11 4:35pm

Texas Forever

friday_night_lights_tv_show

The Friday Night Lights Series Finale Reading List

After five seasons, NBC’s critically adored and ever-embattled drama Friday Night Lights is coming to an end. The show has endured despite impressively low ratings due in no small part to obsessive (and media-driven) fandom. There’s a certain irony in this: a show ostensibly about high school football in Texas—flyover country doing flyover country things—ended up capturing the hearts and minds of coastal elites (and landlocked coastal elites). And nobody else. Read More