Good ladies of RHONY, we knew thee well. According to several outlets, the stars of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York City have refused to ink contracts on the sixth season of the stalwart show, with all six main cast members holding out for a better deal. Read More
In January, I was on the Bowery with Richard Hell, who invented punk rock. We went into an art bookstore on Bond Street and he found a collection of pictures by Richard Prince. After a minute, he jabbed me on the shoulder.
“Check this out!” he rasped, surprised, pointing at the book. It was a Read More
Al Jazeera, the Arab news network, is reportedly nearing a deal to take over Current TV, the struggling cable network co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore in 2005. According to the New York Times’ Brian Stelter, who was first to report on the potential deal, acquiring Current would give the Middle Eastern news channel access to 60 million of the 100 million American homes that get cable or satellite TV.
Update (8:44 p.m.): Current TV founder co-founder Joel Hyatt confirmed Al Jazeera will purchase the network in an email to staff this evening. Read More
Have you noticed that in the last several years, most of the “brilliant” TV shows on AMC, Showtime and HBO star these dangerous, psychopathic anti-heroes? From Dexter to Don Draper, Nick Brody to Rick Grimes, Walter White to the ultimate don, Tony Soprano, one gets the sense that while the rest of American culture is taking one step forward on progressive women’s rights issues, our beloved TV shows are moving us two steps back.
And what’s weird is how we love these horrible men. “I’m such a Carrie” no longer refers to the ultimate Bradshaw, but the bipolar Claire Danes on Homeland … the kind of gal who falls in love with a terrorist, despite the fact that he ends up subjecting her to electro-shock therapy treatments after they have sex. And they are still in love, or something! How sexy is that, ladies?
But wait, it gets worse… Read More
“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
We’re not sure how many of you out there actually saw Catfish, the pseudo/documentary directed by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost of Paranormal Activity 3 and 4 fame. It was a very hyped film in 2010, especially after it received a Sundance buzz-bump that led to Brett Ratner’s company Rogue Pictures acquiring the distribution rights and creating a marketing campaign in the style of The Blair Witch Project, which played up the film’s ambiguous placement on the reality spectrum.
Ostensibly, the film began as a chronicle of “Rel’s little brother Yaniv (‘Nev’), and his relationship with Megan, a girl he met online.” It soon devolves into one of those “too unbelievable to be true” (except they say it is) narratives about the perils of trusting the identity of anyone you meet on the internet. Read More
They both talked a great game during this election cycle, but forget Ann Romney and Michelle Obama. Anyone looking for a woman who understands the struggle to make ends meet, an aspirational figure to identify with in stressful times, look no further than Mama June, the mother of pageant queen aspirant Alana Thompson, a k a TLC Network star Honey Boo Boo. Read More
The Hollywood Reporter notes that the once-foundering Anderson Cooper daytime talk show, now known as Anderson Live, has seen the largest weekly increase in national ratings among all talk shows. The show has seen a 67 percent increase in key demographic women week-to-week with well-known guests like Queen Latifah and Stephen Colbert, and a 100 Read More
CBS has made the first of what will surely be many painful cuts among the major networks–setting free the creative powers, such as they are, behind law procedural Made in Jersey. The legal drama about a sassy Garden State barrister trying to make her way in the big city aired–until now–on Friday nights. Kyle Read More
After a pilot period this summer, erstwhile Real Housewife of New York Bethenny Frankel is to get a daily talk show, Bethenny, in 2013. Read More
