Linda Holmes appears in the following:
Pop Culture Happy Hour: Fargo, A Farewell, And Pop Culture Breadcrumbs
Friday, April 11, 2014
This week's show opens on a wistful note for us: our pal Trey Graham, a founding member of the PCHH family, has taken his leave from NPR, and thus from us. He checks in with a message about his plans, we all thank him for his profound effects on our ...
After The Horror Of War, What About Forgiveness?
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Telling a story about forgiveness in the presence of love is easy. Telling a story about forgiveness in the absence of love is hard.
Forgiveness in the presence of love is done all the time — it's every story about relationships broken by mistakes, repaired by apologies and righted by ...
German Fears About U.S. Spying Could Hurt Trade Deal
Thursday, April 10, 2014
Most Americans and Germans agree: More trade between the United States and the European Union would be a good idea.
But when you get down to details of a possible trade pact, suspicions pop up, according to a new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in association with ...
Silence And 'Godzilla'
Wednesday, April 09, 2014
If you've spent much time in movie theaters recently, particularly if you've watched any blockbusters, you've probably sat through three or four or eight trailers that blur into a noisy, explode-y, car-flippy, bombastic 16- or 17-minute assault.
Consider, for instance, the trailer for Pacific Rim. It gets louder and louder ...
Pop Culture Happy Hour: 'Captain America' And The Pitiless March Of Time
Friday, April 04, 2014
On this week's show, Matt Thompson sits in as we talk about Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Were we overwhelmed? Underwhelmed? Merely whelmed? How hard can I get myself thinking about the shots out the window of the Triskelion? (The answer to that last one is: entirely too hard, I ...
David Letterman's Meticulously Unchoreographed Exit
Friday, April 04, 2014
David Letterman's announcement on Thursday that he would be retiring from the late-night perch he's held in one form or another since 1982 was, in one sense, no surprise. He's 67, this possibility has rumbled around before, and he's outlasted his nemesis, Jay Leno, whose Tonight Show — the gig ...
An Interview With A Hypothetical Super-Independent Athlete Baby
Thursday, April 03, 2014
It might have seemed like an unsurprising thing to do when Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy took three entire days off to tend to his newborn child, but if you listen to sports commentary, you know that it was not without controversy.
Mike Francesa said on his WFAN ...
Captain America On The Potomac
Tuesday, April 01, 2014
A genre film – one about superheroes, for instance – holds certain variables constant and allows others to change. The visual style can move, the dialogue style can move, and the force to be battled can move: what fans of Buffy The Vampire Slayer call the "Big Bad."
But in ...
Oh, 'Mother': An Awful End To A Long Love Story
Tuesday, April 01, 2014
[WARNING: If you haven't seen the series finale of How I Met Your Mother, don't watch it. Just kidding! Sort of. This piece, at any rate, contains plot details from that finale.]
When How I Met Your Mother premiered in the fall of 2005, it was sandwiched between The King ...
10 Absolutely True Stories About Writing For Television Without Pity
Monday, March 31, 2014
[What follows is a personal reflection. Please indulge me.]
I felt a little strange when I learned that NBC Universal, which purchased the recap site Television Without Pity in 2007, was closing it on April 4. On the one hand, I quit in 2008, so it's been years since I ...
Essie Davis: On Playing A Sexually Liberated 'Superhero' Without Apology
Monday, March 31, 2014
In the first-ever episode of the Australian series Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, the central figure, Phryne Fisher, has to explain to her young, extremely Catholic new maid Dot what exactly is in the round, plastic case that Dot is holding in her hands. "Family planning," she says casually.
Phryne (pronounced ...
Sex And The Greater 'Good Wife': Archie Panjabi On Keeping That Big Secret
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Archie Panjabi is part of the cast of CBS's The Good Wife, which has spent much of this week hearing an earful about a major plot development on last Sunday's episode. (They discuss her feelings about the reaction, but do not specify what the development was.)
But on Saturday's Weekend ...
The Tyranny Of Release Dates, Part II: 'The Lunchbox'
Friday, March 28, 2014
The romantic comedy-drama is not dead; it's just being platformed.
I saw The Lunchbox, the first feature from director Ritesh Batra, at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of last year. Starring Irrfan Khan and Nimrat Kaur, it takes as its jumping-off point the dabbawalas of Mumbai, guys on ...
Pop Culture Happy Hour: 'Divergent,' Getting Personal, And Jesse Thorn
Friday, March 28, 2014
There's no one better to — as Stephen terms it — put the Y in YA than our youngest regular contributor, Code Switch's Kat Chow. So Kat sits in for our discussion this week of Divergent, which is not at all The Hunger Games, but ... sort of is. We ...
'Tell Me Two Things Good': A Happiness Experiment
Thursday, March 27, 2014
One of my old pals used to come walking into a room at the end of a long day, sigh, look around, and say, "Tell me two things good." They could be big things, small things, anything — he had to hear two things, and they had to be good ...
Not So 'Divergent': The Cookie-Cutter Nonconformist
Monday, March 24, 2014
Divergent, the new film starring Shailene Woodley based on the popular YA novels by Veronica Roth, describes a dystopian future in which everyone belongs to one of five "factions": Erudite (cold-blooded intellectuals), Amity (hippie farmers), Abnegation (plain-dress public servants), Candor (people who tell the truth all the time) (?), and ...
Ugh: 'Good Wife,' Bad Idea
Monday, March 24, 2014
[CAUTION: Do not, under any circumstances, read any farther unless you want to know what happened on Sunday night's The Good Wife. Do not say you were not warned.]
My friend Maureen Ryan has distinguished at times between a show being "not good" and a show being "not ...
Pop Culture Happy Hour: The Authenticity Business And A Colorful Quiz
Friday, March 21, 2014
On this week's episode, our pal Gene Demby is with us for a discussion of the recent Between Two Ferns episode in which the President of the United States chatted about the Hangover movies. What does this kind of appearance accomplish? What is the meaning of "keeping it ...
Would You Order The Grande Soy Oprah?
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Say this to yourself: "I'd like a grande skim Oprah."
Let it roll off your tongue. Let it echo in your head. Let it burn itself into your brain. Really feel it.
On Wednesday, Starbucks announced that, in partnership with Oprah Winfrey, it had developed Oprah Chai Tea, which will ...
'Mad Men' Reveals: In The New Season, People Will Wear Things
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Many of the more interesting shows on television have their little peculiarities: Community has Dan Harmon going on for thousands of words at a time about his feelings, Game of Thrones has fretting over the pace of the show versus the books, and Mad Men has creator Matthew ...