Television
Nic Pizzolatto’s scripts for “True Detective” have their moments but, self-consciously literary, they also are painfully overwritten.
Read MoreAlthough there are bumps on the way from the brilliant first season to the uneven fourth season, “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” stands as a clever, thought-provoking and joyful creation – a pleasure that’s anything but guilty.
Read MoreIt’s possible to argue with several of Stephen Sondheim’s selections. Are all of these his best achievements? Yet it hardly matters, because the composer’s tales of his artistic life, culled from probably a dozen interviews, are completely fascinating.
Read MoreOver the past five years of Breaking Bad, the chemistry of fate has run its course.
Read MoreBefore he was a broadcaster, Mary Glickman was one heck of an athlete, a youthful hero in New York known as “the Jewish Red Grange.”
Read More“Mad Men” gets all manner of undeserved attention. Yet I attend to it.
Read MoreIn Russia, the defenders of Nadia, Masha, and Katia have compared their plight to the victims of the infamous Stalinist “Show Trials” of the ’30s.
Read MoreThe only way to sort of enjoy “Family Tree” is with modest expectations; and indeed, this is the most modest of series, as Christopher Guest cuts his molars on TV with a program which rarely tries to be more than fairly amusing, mildly ambitious, a kind of bemused apprentice work in a new medium.
Read MoreMr. Selfridge drives me nuts because the storyline, the rise of a mercantile empire, calls for edgy Darwinian conflict rather than paternal benevolence sprinkled with layers of powered soap opera.
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Arts Commentary: Rich in Creativity — But Nothing Else