POSTED // Dec 10,2008 - nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnThe Sarah Silverman Program Thursday, Dec. 11 (Comedy Central)nReal Season Finale: Remember a couple of weeks ago when The Only TV Column That Matters™ declared the season finale of The Sarah Silverman Program? No? Cool. Anyway, tonight is the real season finale for America’s Sweetheart, wherein Sarah bravely marries (and beds) her dog Doug just to pr...

POSTED // Dec 3,2008 - Here’s what I’ve been wrestling with ever since seeing Milk: How do you deal with the fact that it probably works better today, right now, than it would have six months ago, or than it probably will a year from now? nIt’s pointless to speculate about a world in which we react to movies in a historical and temporal vacuum. Thirty years ago, The China Syndrome dealt with a hypothet...

POSTED // Dec 3,2008 - The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice Sunday, Dec. 7 (TNT)nThe first installment of TNT’s Librarian trilogy in 2004, Quest for the Spear (a two-hour search for the ultimate pickle, I believe), was an entertaining bit of adventure fluff, due almost entirely to the chemistry between leads Noah Wyle (ER) and Sonya Walger (Penny from Lost, most recently). Walger was replaced in 2006’s ...

POSTED // Nov 26,2008 - Because he’s working as an artist in the 21st century, Baz Luhrmann makes movies. But let there be no doubt: If not for this fluke of history, he’d be creating operas. nOr maybe it’s more accurate to say that creating operas is what he does anyway—he just happens to be recording them on film. In William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!, Luhrmann employed...

POSTED // Nov 26,2008 - Monk, Psych Friday, Nov. 28 (USA)nChristmas Episodes: Oh, quit rolling your eyes; at least USA waited until the day after Thanksgiving to run these—and Monk and Psych are bumping off The Starter Wife tonight, which should be considered the greatest gift of all. On Monk, longtime peripheral character Capt. Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine, aka Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs—I know!) fin...

POSTED // Nov 19,2008 - Rex Reed of The New York Observer has already proclaimed it the worst movie ever made. Roger Ebert has embraced it as a masterpiece. This is why critics yearn for a subject like writer/director Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York. And, if we are honest with ourselves, it’s why we probably also dread it. nFor a professional critic, polarizing cinema—the stuff of David Lynch, Qu...

POSTED // Nov 19,2008 - It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Thursday, Nov. 20 (FX)nSeason Finale: It’s gone completely over the top and damned near off the rails lately, but Season 4 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has also produced some of the series’ funniest moments: Charlie’s “Wildcard,” Mac’s Project Badass, Dee’s Sex and the City jag, Dennis’ erotic mem...

POSTED // Nov 12,2008 - Once upon a time, in the 20th century, James Bond was a superhero. He went into space; he drove cars that turned into submarines; he fought villains who used lasers and who had henchmen with metal teeth or razor-rimmed bowler hats. In the era of the Cold War, we knew who the bad guys were, and we were content with the fantasy that Bond—between martinis and casual sex partners—was on th...

POSTED // Nov 12,2008 - The following are the current Top 8 TV series most downloaded (pirated, whatever) from BitTorrent sites, as reported by TorrentFreak.com. Only two are ranked in the Nielsen Top 10 for oh-so-passé “live” television viewing, which is topped off with CSI (and all of its procedural clones) and Dancing With the Stars (really?). Therefore, it must be concluded that downloaders are sma...

POSTED // Nov 5,2008 - Haven’t we, as a nation, progressed to the point where it would be OK for our animated films simply to abandon the pretense of a plot? nThere’s nothing wrong with meticulously plotted animated fare, of course; something as sublime as WALL-E, for example, should always be embraced. But we should also acknowledge that, sometimes, episodic silliness can be more entertaining when the creat...