Linda Holmes

Linda Holmes appears in the following:

How 'New Girl' Got Smarter, Sexier, And A Lot Less Annoying

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

In the early days of New Girl, Jess Day (Zooey Deschanel) was a toddler-sized tutu made flesh: cute, affected, hard to actually dislike, but earning grins largely by doggedly evoking childhood's clumsy and doomed attempts at grace. Building a comedy around her resulted in a one-note dynamic in which her ...

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A Banana With Dreadlocks: A Study In Misery

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

If this guy actually lost his life savings playing "Tubs Of Fun," that's sad. And if the game was rigged, that's fraud! Also, I think that banana is offensive.

But I find it almost entirely impossible to believe this is actually a dude who carries this item around with him ...

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Can Online Shows Be Habit-Forming? Soaps May Provide Some Clues

Monday, April 29, 2013

In the world of television, there's nothing quite like a soap habit. People watch characters evolve not over the 10 or 15 seasons that might mark a long run in prime time, but over 30 or 40 years, until they have kids and grandkids — sometimes played by the same ...

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Everywhere But Here, 'Iron Man 3' Is Already Huge

Monday, April 29, 2013

Iron Man 3 doesn't open in North America until this Friday (May 3), but this weekend, it's already up and whomping The Avengers at the international box office. The new adventures of Tony Stark, directed and co-written by Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black, brought in $195.3 million. That beat a ...

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Pop Culture Happy Hour: Our Great Big Summer Movies Show

Friday, April 26, 2013

This is the time of year when we take a deep breath and a look ahead to the long summer movie season. And this year, as Stephen is quick to point out, things look pretty dire. There's a lot of apocalyptic stuff going on, and zombies, and vampires, and even ...

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How 'The Office' Took A Scene From The Heart And Shot It In The Foot

Friday, April 26, 2013

This has been a difficult year for The Office. There are only three episodes left after "Paper Airplanes," which aired Thursday night, and where 30 Rock rallied as it headed to the finish, The Office has seemed lost, particularly by devoting substantial time to world-building Dwight's beet farm, a remnant ...

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Ryan Lochte And The Easy Life Of The Professional Public Dummy

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Is there any reason to be a professional public hero anymore when you can be a professional public dummy?

Let's back up. Specifically, let's back up to the summer of 2012, when swimmer Ryan Lochte won five Olympic medals to bring his lifetime total to 11. Prior to that time, ...

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Watch These Coachella Attendees Enthuse Over Made-Up Bands

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Jimmy Kimmel Live ran this rather remarkable segment in which, as the show explained it, people walking into Coachella were asked about bands that do not, in fact, exist. Nevertheless, these particular folks had strong opinions about the great "energy" of The Chelsea Clintons, and the album DJ Cornmeal, which ...

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Entirely Real Photos: In Which Katy Perry Seems Bored By Smurfette

Monday, April 22, 2013

This is a photocall for Smurfs 2. So you really can't blame any of these people who don't have felt heads for looking with their human heads like they're not having a great time.

Katy Perry and Neil Patrick Harris will both return for the sequel, scheduled for U.S. release ...

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Agony, Ecstasy, Irony: The Fight For The Soul Of College A Cappella

Monday, April 22, 2013

Saturday night at Town Hall in New York, the Nor'easters of Northeastern University in Boston were crowned national champions at the International Competition of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA), the entirely real battle dramatized in last summer's surprise hit Pitch Perfect.

On the same night, the organizers announced from the stage ...

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Pop Culture Happy Hour: A Sense Of Place And A Nostalgic Quiz

Friday, April 19, 2013

So let's speak candidly for a moment.

This is not an ordinary day. It has not been an ordinary week. We taped this week's podcast on Monday at 6:00 p.m., in the first hours of coverage of the bombings in Boston. We are posting it on Friday, in the first ...

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Entirely Real Photos: Our Creepy Wax Museum Series Continues With One Direction

Thursday, April 18, 2013

I can't really explain why I think wax museum pictures are so funny, but clearly, I do. And I do again.

And now, it's the members of One Direction, immortalized (sort of) at Madame Tussauds, where, at an official photocall, some girls obligingly posed with these ...

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'Off Pitch': A Show-Choir Story From The American Midwest

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Beware, Midwesterners: reality television is coming for you.

The last couple of seasons have brought an outpouring of what is ungenerously referred to as "redneck television" — shows that highlight the American South, sometimes affectionately and sometimes in a spirit of distilled mockery. While many of these shows have ...

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Boston's Art Museums Offer Free Admission To Provide A 'Place Of Respite'

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

UPDATE, 4:08 p.m.: In addition to the institutions mentioned below, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has announced that admission will be free on Wednesday, April 17.

At least two art museums in Boston, the Museum Of Fine Arts and the Institute of Contemporary Art, have announced that ...

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Real TV Listings: In Which People Play Musical Chairs On Television

Monday, April 15, 2013

Oh Sit! (The CW, 8:00 p.m.): When the CW first announced that it was going to have a show called Oh Sit!, which would basically be a game of musical chairs with a punny scatological name, it seemed like it would be exciting in its sheer stupidity. But as it ...

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Superheroines, Fighters, And Why Isn't There A Wonder Woman Movie?

Monday, April 15, 2013

Any comics fan of any seriousness can rattle off female superheroes who have either had their own books or appeared in other or ensemble books.

But what about ordinary absorbers of culture?

The same people who don't actually read comics but can tell you that Superman is the idealized, square-jawed ...

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Let's Rush To Judgment: 'Catching Fire'

Monday, April 15, 2013

After the huge success of The Hunger Games, both movie and book, it seems like a foregone conclusion that there's enormous pent-up demand for the next chapter of the film adaptation, Catching Fire. This is the book where Katniss' story becomes much more explicitly political, and her status as a ...

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Big Hair, Big Shoulders And Big Money: Linda Evans On '80s Excess

Monday, April 15, 2013

You may find a hint to the era in which you were born (as well as your taste in entertainment) in Linda Wertheimer's clarification that on the '80s nighttime soap Dynasty, actress Linda Evans played Krystle Carrington — Krystle with a K, that is. (And, she does not add, an ...

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Pop Culture Happy Hour: 'Mad Men,' Madmen And A Fond Farewell

Friday, April 12, 2013

With Trey out this week, we called upon one of our very favorite people, Barrie Hardymon, to join us. We start this week with a discussion of the two-hour season opener of Mad Men, which isn't dropping any major bombs about plot, I don't think, but which isn't tiptoeing either, ...

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Thank G-O-O-D-N-E-S-S: The National Spelling Bee Adds Meaning

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

As Eyder Peralta reported last night, the National Spelling Bee has made a big change to its rules.

For the first time, the written (or computerized) test students use to qualify for the semifinals and championship finals will include vocabulary questions requiring them to know the meanings of ...

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