I like my fictional TV women like I like my coffee — coursing with enough high-caliber force to take down a feral hog, ruin marriages via sapphic adultery, and power boozy brunch after boozy brunch. If this particular brand of desperate housewife sounds appealing, have I got a show for …
Read More »Is Jon Stewart Still the Right Person to Host 'The Daily Show?'
Whenever a popular sitcom or drama from years ago tries to come back, I worry. The series that we love are so often a product of a specific moment in time for the people who make them, the characters on them, and the people watching. Change that moment, things start …
Read More »Jon Stewart's Long Strange Trip Back to 'The Daily Show'
After an exhaustive yearlong search to find the show’s next host, Jon Stewart is returning to The Daily Show on a part-time basis, just in time for the 2024 election season. But he won’t be doing it alone. He’ll host Monday night’s broadcast beginning Feb. 12, with a roster of …
Read More »'American Fiction': How Cord Jefferson Took on Hollywood and Won
Cord Jefferson wants to tell a quick story. It involves something that happened to a friend of his, although the writer-director of American Fiction is quick to point out that the incident in question could have easily happened to any number of Black creatives he knows, or for that matter, …
Read More »'American Fiction' Is a Scathing Satire, a Family Drama, and an Absolute Triumph
Thelonious “Monk” Ellison has hit his breaking point. The students in his Southern-lit class at the prestigious university he teaches at are oversensitive snowflakes. His superiors think he needs a break from academia. Monk’s novels may still be in print, but you wouldn’t know it; they’ve all been relegated to …
Read More »An Orgy of Dicks, Ketamine, and Class Warfare
The solipsism of artists and influencers offers infinite variations on self-lacerating lampoon, and Sebastian Silva’s new film Rotting in the Sun comes up with a dandy. Here Silva, the Chilean filmmaker best known in the States for the Michael Cera psychedelic quest movie Crystal Fairy & the Magic Cactus, creates …
Read More »Edi Patterson Explains Why Judy Is the Most Gangster of 'The Righteous Gemstones'
The Righteous Gemstones wouldn’t gel without Judy. The middle sibling and only sister among three adult heirs to a televangelist empire in the brash, ungodly HBO series — played by the comedic wonder Edi Patterson, also a writer on the show — Judy Gemstone is a chaotic hinge for her …
Read More »'Final Cut' Is a French Zombie Comedy for Would-Be Tarantinos
Pop quiz: You’re a filmmaker. You’re making a zombie movie. The crew is … let’s be charitable and say “adequate.” The budget is somewhere in the high three-figure range at best. Your main actor is a pompous diva. Even worse, your lead actress isn’t giving you the amount of bone-chilling …
Read More »R.F. Kuang Is Not Your 'Cultural Tour Guide.' She's a Storyteller
THERE ARE A FEW obvious reasons for author R.F. Kuang to be drinking before 5 p.m. on a Friday. She’s just turned in the last paper of the semester for her Ph.D. She’s on Day One of a monthlong national book tour. And her new novel, Yellowface, which debuts Tuesday, …
Read More »'The Other Two' Stars Talk Roasting Hollywood (and Rolling Stone!) in Season 3
Drew Tarver and Heléne Yorke — the titular stars in the HBO Max comedy The Other Two — are joking about the time they first met one another. “We did a screen test together and, Heléne…, “ Tarver begins, “Remember you touched my face? Was that what it was? It …
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