(Lev Grossman writes about books here on Wednesdays. Subscribe to his RSS feed.) This post is by way of a reply to Arthur Krystal’s “Easy Writers,” a thoroughly thought-provoking piece about the relationship between genre fiction and literary fiction that ran in the New Yorker this week. I was happy to see the New Yorker weighing [...]
(CHICAGO) — Grammy Award-winning polka great Eddie Blazonczyk, who began playing the lively music in the 1950s and went on to earn the nickname “Polka King” after starting his own band and label, has died. He was 70. His record label, Bel-Aire Recordings, and his son, Eddie Blazonczyk Jr., said Tuesday that Blazonczyk died of [...]
Joaquin Phoenix is a damaged WWII vet who struggles to remember his most recent misdeed in the ominous trailer for Paul Thomas Anderson's latest. No sign of Philip Seymour Hoffman or any Scientology references.
Hannah comes home to East Lansing and visits the netherland between college and full-fledged, independent adulthood, in an outstanding episode co-written by Judd Apatow.
The movie’s poster says it all: a pair of shades reflecting the American flag, and a gun where the nose and mouth would be. In Killing Them Softly, playing today at the Cannes Film Festival and opening in the U.S. September 21, screenwriter-director Andrew Dominik wants you to know that the underworld is our world, with [...]
Going into tonight’s finale of Dancing with the Stars, either by chance or design, it is anyone’s game. To make it to the finish line the finalists — Superbowl champion Donald Driver with his partner Peta Murgatroyd, telenovela star William Levy and Cheryl Burke, and classical singer Katherine Jenkins and Mark Ballas — will have to [...]
Welcome back to The Bachelorette. It’s still early enough in the competition that we don’t know anything about this Whitman’s Sampler of chuckleheads, yokels and gel-bots, except for the fact that they have all made some questionable life choices. What wonders lie beneath this vast sea of look-alike man meat? Will there be hearts of [...]
Walter White will be the one who knocks on your TV screen July 15, when Breaking Bad returns for its fifth and final season on AMC July 15. But you won’t have to say goodbye too soon, because the show will re-return for the same final season next summer: confirming what has been an open [...]
In the first scene of Amour, firemen break down the front door of a Paris apartment and find a bedroom door sealed to discourage entry. Inside is the corpse of an elderly woman, her hands folded, flower petals wreathing her head. The Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke might have been chosen to be the chief prosecutor [...]
A setting-things-up episode involved a lot of storylines about children and parents, the complicated ways in which characters hurt the ones they love and how the ones you love can be used to hurt you.
The last photographs of Robin Gibb, who died in London on May 20 at the age of 62 from cancer and intestinal problems, show a man almost too frail to support the weight of his trademark blue-tinted glasses. Yet throughout his long illness, and even after he slipped into a coma earlier this year, friends [...]
Harmon was one of a small but growing number of TV creators who are inseparable from their shows. He was also, admittedly, a royal headache of an employee. But by making the show without him, the studio and NBC may be punishing the audience most.
Forrest Bondurant (Tom Hardy), leader of the most powerful moonshining family in Franklin County, Virginia, wears the indestructible armor of legend. His parents died in the 1919 flu epidemic; he survived. He took a few bullets in the course of his rough business and kept going. One night some thugs slit his throat and, folks [...]
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