The Nevers Is an Unimpressive Monument to Joss Whedons Obsessions

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  6 minutes  |  1251 words  |  Aldo Pusey

Amalia True (Laura Donnelly) is one of several “Touched” citizens of The Nevers’ baffling Victoriana fantasy world. Near the end of the first episode of The Nevers, the new HBO series created and originally helmed by Joss Whedon, a dark-haired woman with a traumatizing superpower and incidentally great hand-to-hand combat skills starts to give chase. There’s a baddie, a serial-killer psychopath (but a lady!) who’s been terrorizing the show’s Victoriana fantasy world, and Amalia True (Laura Donnelly) is on the hunt, tracking her through a crowded opera house and down a rickety back stairwell. [Read More]

The Newsrooms John Gallagher Jr. on Pratfalls and His First Girlfriend, Aubrey Plaza

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  8 minutes  |  1681 words  |  Aldo Pusey

John Gallagher Jr. made his Broadway debut in David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play Rabbit Hole and went on to star in Spring Awakening (for which he won a Tony), Farragut North, American Idiot, and Jerusalem. Most recently, Aaron Sorkin cast him as The Newsroom’s Jim Harper, senior producer and Über-clumsy rom-com hero. Gallagher Jr. rang up Vulture to get real about the show’s lopsided love triangle (he knows, he knows), his traumatic time on The West Wing, and onetime girlfriend Aubrey Plaza. [Read More]

The Offices Gay Caricature

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  8 minutes  |  1620 words  |  Elina Uphoff

The office on The Office is a fairly inclusive place – African-American, Indian-American, alcoholic, or evangelist, all may work together more or less harmoniously. Kelly Kapoor (Mindy Kaling), for instance, is one of the most fully realized minority characters on television right now: a woman whose obsessions with celebrity gossip and Netflixing romantic comedies far outweigh the practically insignificant fact of her race. With Kelly undergoing business training, practically anyone could take over the office, once manager Michael Scott (Steve Carell) departs at the end of the season! [Read More]

The Old-Weird-America Pleasures of Dead Outlaw

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  9 minutes  |  1771 words  |  Zora Stowers

We live in an age of franchise bloat and narrative distension: Why adapt a book into one movie when you could stretch it into two or three, and they could all be three hours long? Save the world, sure, but then you’ve got to save the universe, then the multiverse, then the metaverse, and then you’ve got to blow it all up and start again, with bigger budgets and hotter actors. [Read More]

The Oscars Got a Barbenheimer Ratings Boost

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  3 minutes  |  603 words  |  Elina Uphoff

Thanks to a big Barbenheimer boost — and a ton ofviral social-media moments — the 2024 Oscars scored a post-pandemic high of 19.5 million viewers Sunday night on ABC, per preliminary Nielsen data. That’s nearly a million more than last year’s broadcast and represents the biggest tune-in for any awards show since February 2020. While not a massive gain from last year, it’s still up and continues the slow recovery of awards shows after pandemic restrictions helped push events to record lows. [Read More]

The Pink Power Ranger Isnt in the Reunion, and Its None of Ur Beeswax

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  2 minutes  |  392 words  |  Aldo Pusey

One mighty morpher. One of the original Rangers is ready to retire from morphin. Former Pink Power Ranger Amy Jo Johnson originated the role from 1993–95 but is not going to take part in the upcoming Netflix Power Rangers reboot, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always. “Please stop saying I didn’t do reunion because of money Simply not true,” Johnson tweeted on March 26. “Maybe I just didn’t want to wear spandex in my 50s 🤣 or couldn’t go to NZ for a month. [Read More]

The Prodigy Is a Cruelly Well-Made Bad-Seed Horror Movie

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  4 minutes  |  676 words  |  Zora Stowers

Nicholas McCarthy, the director of the new bad-seed movie, The Prodigy, works in a low key that still somehow scrapes your nerves, so when the nasty stuff arrives, you realize (too late!) that you’ve been softened up for the kill. The film is cruelly well-made. Not that there’s much heft to Jeff Buhler’s script, which is equal parts cunning and hackishness. The Prodigy is a New Age variation on The Exorcist and The Omen: Out go the Antichrist, demons, and martyred priests, in come metempsychosis experts complaining that Western minds are closed to the irrefutable evidence of reincarnation. [Read More]

The Protg

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  11 minutes  |  2188 words  |  Janel Helmers

Sean Thor Conroe lost his fiercest advocate before he published his first novel. Now he’s facing the hype without him. Photo: Marie Tomanova Sean Thor Conroe is outlining what he calls the “four pillars” of fuckboy-hood — the different ways you can be a self-aggrandizing, duplicitous, and otherwise distasteful man. First, there’s what he calls the classic spineless, “bitch-ass dude,” whom other men look down on because they’re not living up to the “masculine standard of toughness and integrity. [Read More]

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap, Reunion Part One: A Drop of Truth

 Posted on June 12, 2024  |  6 minutes  |  1250 words  |  Elina Uphoff

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Reunion Part One Season 7 Episode 19 Editor’s Rating 3 stars *** «Previous Next» « PreviousEpisode NextEpisode » The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Reunion Part One Season 7 Episode 19 Editor’s Rating 3 stars *** «Previous Next» « PreviousEpisode NextEpisode » Grumble, grumble, here I am for the multipronged reunion attack. [Read More]