It’s tough to sell a decades-old doll and actively make you question why you’d still buy a toy that comes with so much baggage. (Metaphorically speaking, of course — literal baggage sold separately.) The makers of Barbie know this. They know that you know that it’s an attempt by Mattel …
Read More »
Black Mirror is going to have to stick around for many more decades before it even gets within spitting distance of The Simpsons for eerily predicting future events. But the speed with which Holywood life imitated Black Mirror art was lightning quick this time. Think back to the bygone days …
Read More »
W HEN GRETA GERWIG was in preproduction on her Barbie movie (out July 21), executives from the brand’s owner, Mattel, paid her an inevitable visit. She gave them a preview of the movie’s look (very, very pink) and feel (Elf-y magical-realism ramped up a thousandfold). Then she hit them with …
Read More »
It was a night of laughs that’s still whispered about in comedy circles. During the last writers’ strike in 2007, Michael Cera hosted a DIY version of Saturday Night Live at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in New York City for around 200 people. The show was comprised of old …
Read More »
This post contains spoilers for the sixth season of Black Mirror, which is streaming now on Netflix. “Joan Is Awful,” the first episode of the new season of Charlie Brooker’s sci-fi satire anthology series Black Mirror, stars Annie Murphy as the title character, a tech-company executive horrified to discover that …
Read More »
Hollywood reunion content has been milked dry in a major shift toward playing into audience nostalgia. Early in the pandemic, casts reunited over Zoom for table reads. While that happens less now, it’s only been replaced by revivals and years-too-late sequels missing the core of what made the film and …
Read More »
For a few years in the mid-2010s, Amy Schumer was as prominent and acclaimed a comic voice as there was to be found anywhere in American pop culture. Her Comedy Central show Inside Amy Schumer wickedly parodied the television of the day. (Josh Charles came in for note-perfect spoofs of …
Read More »