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
Mar
7
 
 
It turns out that serving as the broker between Mexican drug cartels and mob-run drug distributors is about what you'd expect. Lucrative but risky...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
7
 
 
Forty-plus years of covering television have yielded countless close encounters with stars of the first magnitude. Many are now deceased, but their bodies of work still breathe...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
7
 
 
If you’ve been following my advice for the past seven weeks, this is a redundant recommendation, brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department (thanks, Mad magazine, for making that memorable joke all those decades ago). But if you haven’t been watching and recording Sir David Attenborough and his weekly Seven Worlds, One Planet episodes, with one installment devoted to each continent, then you’ve missed one of the best nature documentary series
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
7
 
 
Richard Curtis and Jack Barth came up with the idea, and Curtis wrote the screenplay, for this imaginative 2019 movie, which Danny Boyle directed with flair. The premise is as simple as it is original: What if a man awoke one day to discover he was the only person alive with memories of The Beatles and their music? Himesh Patel plays the lucky musician, who gets to pass off the music as his own, and Lily James plays the woman who understandably is drawn to him, and his songs. It’s a movie
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
7
 
 
I showed this 1974 movie to my daughter, Kristin, just before she went away to attend law school. She’s never forgotten it, and maybe only recently forgiven me for it – but she told me, years later, it was the best preparation she could have had for taking law school seriously from the start. Timothy Bottoms stars as a first-year Harvard Law School student, Lindsay Wagner plays a local distraction for his attentions, and John Houseman, who won an Oscar for his role, plays Professor K
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
7
 
 
SERIES FINALE: I’ve got a secret: Ever since I saw the premiere of Nova back in the 1970s, I’ve been a sucker for making-of documentaries about nature films. And since some of the most astounding nature photography I’ve ever seen has appeared in Seven Worlds, One Planet, this post-series special providing the tricks of the producers’ trade is the perfect dessert, complementing the perfect meal. And it’s amazing in itself. Some of the shots I was
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
7
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: This is the Season 3 premiere of LeBron James’ exceptional HBO talk show, which basically appears whenever he feels like it. He and Maverick Carter appear in almost every episode, guiding a refreshingly freewheeling and honest talk that always touches on sports, pop culture, money, and music. It takes place in a barbershop, a setting as casual as the conversation, and in this season premiere episode includes such guests as Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes (pictured), Bl
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
7
 
 
SERIES REPEAT: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour is one of my all-time favorite TV shows – and, in terms of comedy/variety television, one of the most important. If not for what Tom and Dick Smothers and company (and what a company, including Mason Williams and Pat Paulsen!) did in their 1966-69 CBS series, such spiritual successors as Saturday Night Live may never have existed. The last time any episodes of Comedy Hour were televised, anywhere, was almost 30
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
7
 
 
This week’s new episode features Daniel Craig as guest host, even though he was booked to promote No Time to Die, the new James Bond international blockbuster – which its studio, MGM, two days ago delayed from release until November. Why? Because of fears about movie attendance dropping because of the spreading coronavirus. It could have been worse: The film in question could have been a remake of Live and Let Die. Regardless, the news of the delay of No Time
 
 
 
  
 
 
2020
Mar
6
 
 
Looking back at a busy life and a lost election, Hillary Clinton summed things up. "I have been often – in my view, obviously – mischaracterized, misperceived," she said. "And I have to bear a lot of the responsibility for it."...