Linda Holmes appears in the following:
Not-stalgia: Why I Don't Miss 'Seinfeld'
Monday, February 03, 2014
I remember laughing occasionally at Seinfeld. I'm pretty sure there's tape of me somewhere, probably on a podcast, acknowledging that it's good. Because of peer pressure.
I don't like Seinfeld, I don't miss it, and every time I'm asked to participate in some sort of acknowledgment of its greatness, or ...
Philip Seymour Hoffman And The Blessings Of Friction
Monday, February 03, 2014
It is already a cliche, born in the past 18 hours, for a writer to puzzle over the task of remembering Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died Sunday. It is indeed hard to figure out what to say about an artist quite so universally admired, and quite so kindly spoken of ...
Yes, Jesse Eisenberg Should Absolutely Play Lex Luthor
Friday, January 31, 2014
When the news broke that Jesse Eisenberg was set to play Lex Luthor in the upcoming Superman/Batman movie, the negativity-oriented sections of the internet reacted exactly as they did when Ben Affleck was cast as Batman, and when Henry Cavill was cast as Superman, and when Gal Gadot was cast ...
Pop Culture Happy Hour: A Grammys Postmortem And Reality TV In Middle Age
Friday, January 31, 2014
We at PCHH have a long history with awards shows in general and the Grammys in particular, but this year's Grammys were a little different. Yes, Daft Punk took some big prizes, and Lorde took some big prizes, and Taylor Swift really played that piano super-hard, and Kacey Musgraves wore ...
I Like Big Trucks And I Cannot Lie: Cars, Trucks, And The Lady Brain
Thursday, January 30, 2014
You know, when it comes to studies about how women think, I must admit that I always plunge in with great and girlish (!) excitement, because as much as the stereotyping may officially bother me, let's face it: there is part of me that thinks, "Oh, this is going to ...
A Story About A Little-Known Song In A Little-Known Movie That Got A Big Oscar Nod
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Well, it's safe to say we're shocked — shocked — to find that Oscar campaigning was going on in here.
Tuesday night, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences — the Oscars people — rescinded the Best Original Song nomination for "Alone Yet Not Alone," from the movie Alone ...
Pete Seeger And The Public Choir
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Much will be said and has been said about Pete Seeger, who died Monday at 94, as an activist and musician. Blacklisted, tireless, stubborn, and funny, he wrote a lot of songs that seem to have simply always existed: "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?", "If I Had ...
Pharrell Williams And The Power Hat
Monday, January 27, 2014
Watch The Grammy Awards With Us
Sunday, January 26, 2014
You've gotta love the Grammy Awards.
They've got a zillion categories showcasing all kinds of great and interesting music (really!) in all kinds of genres (really!). But when it comes to awards night, you see a tiny selection of awards (eight or nine, maybe, in three hours), together with a ...
Pop Culture Happy Hour: Oscar Nominees And 'Looking'
Friday, January 24, 2014
You Can Now Send Someone You Temporarily Like A 'Bachelor' Bouquet
Friday, January 17, 2014
It's Friday, so let's take a moment to consider the greatest press release of the week. (And by "greatest," I mean "most ridiculous." As always.)
Today, I learned that ProFlowers is now officially offering a bouquet of roses called "The Bachelor Bouquet." It's ... it's a bouquet inspired by The ...
Pop Culture Happy Hour: Golden Globes And Eagle Eyes
Friday, January 17, 2014
This week's show (which we taped before the Oscar nominations were announced, so you can bet we'll be getting to those later) catches us post-Golden-Globes for a conversation about awards hosts, speechifying, satisfying victories, and the odd surprises that keep us tuning in to the season's drunkest ceremony of them ...
Complicating The Tonya And Nancy Narratives, 20 Years Later
Thursday, January 16, 2014
There have always been two Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan narratives. Always.
The first one — the sparkly, easy, TV-coverage one — is that Nancy Kerrigan was a beautiful, elegant, classy skater and Tonya Harding was trash. In this one, Tonya had a thug husband who arranged for a vicious attack on ...
'Gravity,' 'American Hustle' And '12 Years A Slave' Lead The Oscar Nominations
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Ever since the Oscars expanded the Best Picture field to include up to 10 nominees, they've been taking advantage of that extra space, and this year was no exception. While the original chatter was about the possibility of including more crowd-pleasers (there was much discussion of whether the expanded field ...
'Idol' Takes A Hugely Unexpected Step Toward Being Much Less Terrible
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
It's just me now, I thought this morning. All alone. I could almost hear the desert wind. I could almost see the tumbleweeds.
I once had a whole posse of sometimes bashful American Idol-viewing friends. We followed along, we had favorites, we lamented terrible decisions. I had a special touch ...
Chris Christie And Pulling The Red Handle
Monday, January 13, 2014
I'm going to tell you a story, and then we're going to talk about Chris Christie, and if you're not into those two things, you can tag out. I won't be offended.
Let's see. How to begin.
There are enough pictures of me scattered around NPR that it's not a ...
The Golden Globes Share The Wealth, Such As It Is
Monday, January 13, 2014
Let us say this first: The Golden Globes are Hollywood culture at its most purely self-perpetuating. Given out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a small group of journalists so gleefully obscure that there is usually a joke about how gleefully obscure they are, the Globes lack the gravitas of ...
Pop Culture Happy Hour: In One Year And Out The Other
Friday, January 10, 2014
Every year at this time, we at Pop Culture Happy Hour sit down to make some resolutions and predictions for the coming year. And, of course, we engage in the sometimes painful exercise of seeing how last year's resolutions and predictions turned out.
Well.
There is a moment ...
'Saturday Night Live' Takes A Very Important First Step
Wednesday, January 08, 2014
Saturday Night Live ignores so many perennial complaints — that it's stale, that it has a spotty history with women, that sketches are too long — that it was kind of surprising to hear in mid-December that it was holding not-very-secret "secret auditions" to find a black woman ...
The Unreal 'Her'
Monday, January 06, 2014
There is something prickly and provocative about the back story of Spike Jonze's Her, a futuristic drama in which a man named Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love, as it were, with his artificially intelligent operating system. The voice of "Samantha" was originally that of actress Samantha Morton, but when ...