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

 
 
2018
Oct
14
 
 
The Boston Red Sox won 108 games during the regular season, and the Houston Astros won 103. Given that impressively high level of efficiency, you’d expect their postseason play to be crisp. Instead, in yesterday’s opener for the American League pennant, the only crisp thing was the weather. The Astros won 7-2, but play was sloppy on both sides – especially the Red Sox. Today is Game 2, with plenty of room for improvement.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Oct
14
 
 
I briefly, and erroneously, had this listed under yesterday’s Best Bets – but as several of you noted, and took time to help me see the error of my ways, this second episode of the new Doctor Who season airs Sunday, tonight. (Thanks for everyone who wrote in. Good to know you’re still out there, and paying such close attention.) So what I wrote yesterday now, finally, applies: Last week, this long-running British sci-fi series unveiled the 13th actor to play the title role &nda
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Oct
14
 
 
Will Kanye West’s White House visit this week get any coverage here? You can’t help but wonder… and hope.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Oct
14
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: One of the executive producers of this new remake of the popular (and, by TNT, endlessly rerun most mornings) Charmed fantasy series was also behind CW’s Jane the Virgin, so you’d expect a light and funny touch when remaking this series about a troika of wicca sisters. Instead, this 2018 version of Charmed leans, and in its first outing falls, in the opposite direction. It’s so on point with its determination to cover everything from #MeToo and minority empower
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Oct
14
 
 
Last week, in the Season 9 premiere, Maggie (Lauren Cohan) had a really rough time of it as a new community leader, and after being at the end of her rope, put an adversarial character at the end of his – and had him hanged. In tonight’s episode, with that act of justice and/or revenge still on her mind, she seeks out Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the man who forced her to kneel, along with all her friends, as Negan brutally murdered her beloved Glenn. Negan’s been confined to s
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Oct
14
 
 
Tonight is the episode in which (Maggie Gyllenhaal) realizes her relatively lofty X-rated filmmaking ambitions by hitting the streets of New York – not to sell her body in exchange for investment funds for the movie (she’s done that already), but to shoot, guerrilla style, the actual film, a modern-day, very bawdy retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood.” Her version is called, and is, “Red Hot,” and stars a fellow prostitute, Lori (Emily Meade, pictured), in the
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Oct
14
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: This new HBO comedy series is noteworthy, as it begins, because it stars two actors not best known for comedy – though Jennifer Garner has starred in romcom films that are light comedies, and David Tennant, in his reign as Doctor Who, has displayed a constant and winning comic flair. They play a dysfunctional married couple who go camping, and have a series of misadventures, in a series based on a British miniseries starring, and created by, Julia Davis of Nighty Night. Fo
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Oct
14
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE:  Alec Baldwin, who has hosted seasons of The Essentials on Turner Classic Movies, as well as his own podcasts, jumps into the talk show fray – but unlike most actors and others trying out the form, and shifting from interviewee to interviewer, is doing it on broadcast TV, and in prime time. His opening guests, with whom he speaks one at a time, are both actors: Robert De Niro, who directed and co-starred with Baldwin in 2006’s The Good Shepherd, and Taraji P. He
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Oct
14
 
 
Will Kanye West’s White House visit this week get any coverage here? You can’t help but wonder… and hope.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Oct
14
 
 
You don’t need any extraordinary powers to have predicted that the fondly remembered WB witch drama Charmed would return...