DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
2020
Jun
6
 
 
Last month, the major broadcast networks and a few other entities combined forces to present Graduate Together: America Honors the High School Class of 2020, a virtual national graduation ceremony – the highlight of which was a commencement speech by former President Barack Obama. This new virtual graduation celebration is a streaming event offered by and on YouTube, and begins at 3 p.m. ET today. Once again, Barack Obama is scheduled to be featured, as are Michelle Oba
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
6
 
 
This is not a recommendation. But sometimes, the randomly matched word titles for Lifetime’s telemovies are so flat-out weird, they fascinate me. It’s as though the programmers at Lifetime have twin dartboards on their wall, with words on them instead of numbers, and just shoot randomly to generate new titles. On one dartboard, the descriptors: “Teenage,” “Killer,” “Deadly.” On the other, the subjects: “Escort,” “Mistress,&rd
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
6
 
 
Tommy Lee Jones and Brad Pitt star as father and son in this 2019 movie about space exploration, unresolved family issues, and the fate of the universe. Not necessarily in that order…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
6
 
 
The Ed Sullivan Show ended its 23-year run on this day in 1971...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
5
 
 
On this day in 1965, ABC presented its first broadcast of the Indianapolis 500...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
5
 
 
Cinemax tosses another shovelful of red meat to action-TV fans with Trackers, a South African series that launches Friday...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
5
 
 
MOVIE PREMIERE: Almost every film that takes a hypothetical look into the future, whether near or far, imagines a dystopian world. This fact-based extrapolation, which is titled 2040 after the future it envisions 20 years from now, zags where everyone else has zigged. It asks, basically, these questions: What if, from this moment on, we as a society made all the right moves? What would it look like, two decades from now, if we strove diligently and intelligently to protect the environm
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
5
 
 
This Movie On Demand premiere is a restored version of the only movie directed by actor Peter Sellers. Also known as I Like Money, this 1961 comedy stars Sellers as a schoolteacher who refuses to inflate the failing grade of a privileged student. It’s noteworthy not only because Sellers does double duty as director, but because one of his co-stars in Herbert Lom. Three years later, Lom would reunite with Sellers, playing the twitchy boss of Sellers’ bumbling Inspector Clous
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
5
 
 
MOVIE PREMIERE: What kind of woman writes The Lottery, that familiar story assigned in almost every high school English class? Or The Haunting of Hill House, an early genre thriller adapted into both movies and TV series? Shirley Jackson, that’s who. And, in this new film biography exploring her inner as well as literary demons, she’s played by the always riveting Elisabeth Moss.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Jun
5
 
 
SPECIAL: SpongeBob SquarePants is a cultural icon. I know this mostly because I teach college, and my college students, though they rarely have a shared viewing experience of anything, are invariably, enthusiastically, 100 percent familiar with that animated Nickelodeon children’s show. SpongeBob premiered in 1999, and my students have watched it, and loved it, all their lives. And they’re not alone: For the past 17 years, SpongeBob SquarePants has been