television
‘Sons of Liberty’: Historically Inaccurate, Surprisingly Relevant

The American Revolution is hot. That's the only conclusion one can justify in light of t...

movies
Rush Celebrates Its 40th with North American Tour

You know the adjective old applies when a band you followed as a kid celebrates its 40th a...

genres
Star Wars, George Lucas, and the Pitfalls of ‘Auteur Theory’

It's a storyline we celebrate every Oscar season: the uncompromising film director, locke...

fiction1
‘Saint Odd’: A Fond Farewell to Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas

Ozzie Boone said that any talent—whether to write songs or to write novels or to track p...

movies
Feb. Netflix Discards Include Some Well Worth Watching

For Netflix subscribers, each month brings a new list of movies and TV series that will ...

genres
‘American Sniper’ Sets January Box Office Record

As if we hadn't always known, even in these supposedly cynical times of rampant moral re...

television
‘Breaking Bad’ to Live on in ‘Better Call Saul’

For Breaking Bad fans, this has to be good news: one of the show's most memorable charact...

television
Disappointing Ratings for ABC’s ‘Agent Carter’ Reflect Show’s Dreary Tone

It appears that both ABC-TV and Marvel Studios are surprised and somewhat dismayed by the...

culture-and-economics
Contest Promotes Small-Town Revitalization

Small towns in the United States don't get much media attention unless something very go...

people
Woody Allen, Amazon Ink Deal for New Streaming Series

My favorite theologian, Woody Allen, is coming to twenty-first century TV. From this morni...

books
‘Malice’: A Quietly Passionate Mystery

There are two strains in the tradition of the mystery story. They exist in tension but are...

manners-and-morals
Klavan: The Culture Is a-Changin’

One of my favorite cultural commentators is the inimitable Andrew Klavan, an award-winning...

movies
A Horror Farce: ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,’ by Ana Lily Amirpour

"Quirky" is an overused adjective in describing independent films, but in the case of th...

television
Netflix More Valuable Than Cable and Broadcast Among Millennials, Study Finds

In an observation that should surprise no one except a few cave-dwellers, a new study from...

art
Avenging the Honor of Free Speech

January 7, 2015, will be remembered as the day Islamic terrorists declared war against f...

culture101
Simenon’s ‘Transparent Detective’ Mysteries Return to Print

One of the great achievements in European popular fiction during the twentieth century was...

books
A Comedy of Ironies: ‘The Guide,’ by R. K. Narayan

In a way, the marvelous 1958 comic novel The Guide, by R. K. Narayan, is an undidactic ...

television
Upcoming TLC Program Sparks Controversy, Calls for Cancellation

The fraught relationship between identity politics and freedom of speech has become evide...

commerce
Minding the Gap Between Rich and Poor

Are you a 1-percenter? Like it or not, if you earn at least $370,000 annually in the Un...

television
‘Downton Abbey’ Returns, Continuing Sympathetic View of Individuals Coping with Modernization

The hit TV drama series Downton Abbey returns to PBS on Sunday night (Jan. 4, check l...

culture101
The Pleasures of ‘Banacek’

I've just discovered that several (and possibly all) episodes of the great 1970s TV series...