POSTED // Nov 5,2008 - 50 Cent: The Money & the PowernThursday, Nov. 6 (MTV)nSeries Debut: Thought the Rich Douchebag Hires a Dozen Delusional Idiots reality-TV show had run its course? Ha! Says MTV, rapper/entrepreneur/bullet-hole spokesmodel 50 Cent “will share the lessons he learned as a street hustler and how those lessons allowed him to become the massive success he is today.” You know, through cha...

POSTED // Oct 29,2008 - There’s a bitter irony to the title of Rachel Getting Married, the beautifully painful family drama from director Jonathan Demme and screenwriter Jenny Lumet. Yes, the weekend that the film captures should belong to Rachel Buckman (Rosemarie DeWitt) and her wedding to fiancé Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe) at the family home in suburban Connecticut. But because Rachel’s sister Kym (Anne...

POSTED // Oct 29,2008 - 30 Rock Thursday, Oct. 30 (NBC)nSeason Premiere: It’s too late to cash in on the Tina Fey/Sarah Palin publicity, and even later for the Emmys’ buzz—but NBC must have a master plan, right? Yeah, anyway: 30 Rock is finally back, and since no one remembers the cliffhangers from last season: Liz (Fey) had contracted Baby Fever, Jack (Alec Baldwin) had abandoned his GE CEOship for a ...

POSTED // Oct 22,2008 - Some documentaries change how you see the world. Some change how you see yourself. Trouble the Water—Grand Jury winner for Best Documentary at Sundance in 2008—astonishingly, does both, and does both better the more you suspect yourself in no need of any eye-opening. nIf you consider yourself an enlightened, civilized person, as I consider myself to be, then you have no need to have it...

POSTED // Oct 22,2008 - Kath & Kim Thursdays (NBC)nA couple of weeks ago, The Only TV Column That Matters™ suggested you watch NBC’s version of the Australian comedy Kath & Kim, complete with a green “play” button (to further save you the trouble of reading, not that anyone’s noticed those convenient cheat symbols). That was then; I was too brain-blinded by Selma Blair’s camelt...

POSTED // Dec 26,2007 - The edgy-hip-cool hype machine has kicked into overdrive for Juno—but don’t believe it. Pre-release publicity has played up the Next Bitchin’ Thing status of stripper-turned-screenwriter Diablo Cody and how director Jason Reitman translated...

POSTED // Dec 26,2007 - The holiday season is almost over, which means I won’t have to talk/drink through any more awkward exchanges at parties I was accidentally invited to, conversations that usually go like this: Random partygoer: “So, you cover television—what’s...

POSTED // Dec 12,2007 - I understand—intellectually—that I was supposed to fall rapturously in love with Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel Atonement. After all, I had read and been impressed by several of McEwan’s other works, and this one had been anointed by...

POSTED // Dec 12,2007 - Showdown at Area 51 Saturday, Dec. 15 (Sci-Fi) The tale of two alien armies ravaging the Earth in search of something called the Omega Seed (eeewww) while the few remaining humans race against time to deactivate a hovering obelisk that’s threatening...

POSTED // Dec 5,2007 - If you regularly pay attention either to entertainment headlines or to Who’s Outraged Today news, you’re probably aware that some religious groups have worked themselves into a lather over The Golden Compass. Armed with the knowledge that...