Linda Holmes

Unless you've seen every awards show since the dawn of time (which would make you The Unluckiest Person In The World), you can't really answer the question of whether last night's opener of the Tony Awards, hosted for the fourth time by Neil Patrick Harris, was the best opening ever.

There was considerable mouth-dropping from publications such as The New York Times at initial reports this week that NSA programs are gathering both telephone records and information gleaned from large tech companies like Google and Microsoft. But as those reports have settled in, reactions have gotten more complex.

One ...

This week's show pauses to appreciate the truly awesome Jean Stapleton, who recently died at 90 years old. We recall her work as Edith Bunker and connect her to many other sitcom moms, from Mrs. Cunningham to Mrs. Cleaver to Jill Taylor and Claire Dunphy. Glen manages to connect Julia ...

As you may have heard, Jon Stewart is taking a hiatus from The Daily Show to, among other things, work on his first feature film, Rosewater. He'll be gone 12 weeks, and eight of those weeks will include new episodes of the show hosted by correspondent John Oliver.

If you all think back all the way to when I was in Toronto last fall, you'll recall I was very enamored with Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing, the story of the bickering lovers Beatrice and Benedick. And now, months later, this morning, he was on Morning Edition to ...

On today's Here & Now from WBUR, I talked to host Robin Young about the weird situation of summer blockbusters — which can easily go the way of Iron Man 3 (hit!) or the way of After Earth (non-hit!) and it's not always easy to tell what you're ...

PBS has been remixing some of its most famous folks over the last year, and to mark the first anniversary of its "Garden Of Your Mind" remix with Fred Rogers, it's remixed him again, with this charming second chapter. It shows off not only the fact that he was sensitive ...

Hmm, tell me if this sounds like a publicity stunt to you.

Madame Tussauds is now offering bulk tissues and a "tissue attendant" because of the One Direction fans who flock to the cold, corpse-like copies of the boys they love dearly. Presumably, when they realize that wax ...

I have substantial affection for both Hollywood Reporter TV critic Tim Goodman and the Fox executive who tweets as "Masked Scheduler." They're both amusing, resolute grumps at times, but great fun to follow on Twitter. So you can imagine how uncomfortable it was to see them have a testy exchange ...

On the heels of Liz & Dick, Lifetime's campy take on the love story of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton that starred none other than Lindsay Lohan, BBC America will be delivering another made-for-TV version this fall. Because they couldn't call it Liz & Dick, this one is called ...

[Caution: Contains Deadly Spoilers.]

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that Lifetime had a movie coming up that was about a spa where things get deadly. It was called Deadly Spa.

There's something about the name Deadly Spa that just feels like they came up with it while drunk ...

[Attention: Vague spoilers on Fast & Furious 6, Star Trek Into Darkness, Iron Man 3, The Avengers. More specific spoilers on Die Hard, Die Hard 2.]

I get all my best ideas about Star Trek from NPR's White House correspondent Ari Shapiro, so naturally, when he came by my desk ...

Now and then, as I am wandering through the photos from the last day or two, I come upon one that I see as a thumbnail and absolutely have to click on, simply so that I can figure out what the heck is going on.

In this case: What exactly ...

I cannot tell a lie: Rita Wilson is an actor-singer-producer who's done all manner of interesting things, but is for me most warmly recalled for her unforgettable explanation of the plot of An Affair To Remember in Sleepless In Seattle. The film (which also stars her husband, some guy named ...

There's a part of basic cable that you might call "soft reality" — the unscripted shows where everybody is nice, almost all the stories are happy, the comedy is mostly gentle, and the main characters are meant to be very sympathetic. Soft reality loves pregnancy and childbirth, as seen on ...

Several years ago, my best friend and I crafted a hypothetical movie in our heads, beginning from the advertising campaign. It featured Ashton Kutcher, shrugging extravagantly with his palms helplessly upturned. He was surrounded by, say, eight angry-looking actresses, some with their faces twisted as they yelled at him, some ...

It's not every week you get to hear me go full-on fan-crazy. (Okay, it's some weeks, but usually not about the people who are in the studio.) But this week, I am extra-excited because Stephen Thompson and I are joined for our pop-culture roundtable podcast by Gene Demby and Kat ...

"Mr. Lashes, 34 years old, is an agent for Internet cats."

That's a quote from The Wall Street Journal in an article about Ben Lashes, who recently landed a movie deal for Grumpy Cat, the online sensation rapidly becoming an industry. G-Cat has a book deal, ...

Here's a question: If you go to the movies and the scheduled showtime is, say, 7:30, when do you actually expect the movie to start? If you said 7:30, you go to very unusual screenings. If you said 7:45, you're closer to what many experience. If you said 7:50, you're ...

Tuesday night on The Voice, Adam Levine — who's the lead singer of Maroon 5 when he's not judging reality television — had two of the singers on his team eliminated. To understand this, just know that each of the four judge-coaches (Levine, Shakira, Usher and Blake Shelton) starts out ...