Linda Holmes

It makes all the sense in the world to cover new things — the movies opening this weekend, the TV shows premiering right now, the books that have just been released — to the degree people are asking the questions (1) What's interesting about this new thing? (2) Is this ...

Every now and then, my random wanderings through file photos from the previous 24 hours bring me to something that makes me pause.

This is apparently the menu from an event referred to in the photo captions as Christina Hendricks Toasts Johnnie Walker Platinum. (It is at least a list ...

[Be aware that this post contains information about Sunday night's episode of Homeland. Consider yourself forewarned.]

Much of the first season of Homeland was just about perfect. The dance between federal agent Carrie Mathison's maybe-paranoia and returned soldier Nicholas Brody's maybe-nefarious intentions was effective in part because the withholding of ...

The finale of Breaking Bad on Sunday night gave Walter White a great degree of closure and control over the unfolding of events. While that may have been satisfying to those who roote...

The Emmy Awards on Sunday night honored some deserving winners, both surprising and not. But more than that, it was a ceremony that was slack, uninspired and sometimes insulting to the talent it was supposedly saluting.

Tastiest Scenery To Chew: August: Osage County, the John Wells-directed adaptation of the Tracy Letts stage play, stars Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Juliette Lewis, Chris Cooper, Margo Martindale, Benedict Cumberbatch, and a generally very impressive cast. But Streep is cranked up to 11 as the miserable, pill-popping matriarch. I expect ...

Bob Mondello and I took a break from our time at the Toronto International Film Festival today for a chat withAll Things Consideredand host Audie Cornish. We filled her in on just how many movies we've both seen, the surplus of stories about doppelgangers, the adventures of Daniel Radcliffe, and ...

The weekend brings some higher-profile screenings, and my schedule on Saturday and Sunday reflects that. If some of the Thursday/Friday films were an opportunity to see what you may never hear about again, some of the Saturday/Sunday films are a chance to get a jump on the next four or ...

Two days into the Toronto International Film Festival, I'm 10 films in. We'll talk more about all of these later, but it seemed only fair to share some basic impressions, since I'm certainly logging the seat time to earn them. So here are the 10 I've seen so far.

Closed ...

"You're looking again."

These are the words I say to NPR's Bob Mondello as he sits across from me and we try to figure out how to plan the next six-and-a-half days at the Toronto International Film Festival. Bob is looking at the Press & Industry schedule, a colorful grid ...

On this week's roundtable podcast, we open with Lake Bell's movie In A World, which takes place in the world of voiceovers. We chat about the movie itself, and about Bell, but also about where voiceovers stand right now. Are they still important? As important as they used to be?

...

Okay, background information first.

As an apartment-dweller, I have lived for 20 years in a series of white-walled boxes with neutral carpets. I have assembled and eventually ripped apart the kind of furniture that comes with an Allen wrench. And I have had my adventures. When leaving an apartment in ...

I am very happy to be back this week after being gone for two episodes (thank you to Audie Cornish, Gene Demby and Kat Chow for being great while I was gone).

We then turn our attention to Neill Blomkamp's Elysium, a film that all of us found ...

Words many of us never want to hear: "It's the transmission." "We can't get a technician out there until next Tuesday." "Your ex will be there."

And, of course: "Welcome to our redesigned site!"

I know how it is, believe me. I stumble through many, many sites every day. I ...

In the annals of The National Register Of Rather Ironic Ways To Die, I'm going to guess there would be a hallowed place for "tied two logs to a tractor and flipped it on myself while trying to test the steel-reinforced drawbridge on the castle my father built so that ...

Perhaps you heard that last night, a plucky little drug dealer named Walter White returned to television for his last eight episodes of the award-hoarding Breaking Bad.

But before he began his life of crime, Walter White was a chemistry teacher, and chemistry is what originally made him such a ...

[General plot/premise discussion within; no major spoilers regarding big developments.]

One of the great threats to any film is that the people who are making it live too much inside it. Just as you learn to navigate a city without looking at signs, they learn to navigate the world they've ...

The first person we meet in Bravo's new rich-white-ladies-fighting show Eat Drink Love is Waylynn. Waylynn is a pastry chef who has a store where she sells what she calls "fonuts."

Point the first: There's supposed to be a mark indicating it's a long "o," but I'm leaving it out ...

It's hard to import a European murder mystery without importing baggage along with it — expectations of a gray chill, of relentless and austere severity.

It's not that you won't see any of that in Broadchurch, the eight-part British drama that comes to BBC America beginning Wednesday night. It begins ...

A lot of shows kill a lot of people, but no show kills quite like Breaking Bad.