Long before Horton heard a Who or a Grinch pilfered Christmas, Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, found himself with a literary hit on his hands. After making a few bucks illustrating bug-spray ads and submitting cartoons to magazines, […]
So-called “good” movies usually have something important to say — there’s not a lot of Oscar winners about the state of the world being fine as-is. It’s basically a prerequisite to examine at least one of […]
A sitcom pilot has to be good enough and funny enough to convince studio executives that it could launch several seasons’ worth of laughs. But while some pilots hit the ground running (Arrested Development, Brooklyn […]
As much as they like to insist they can be any person or animal or tree, even the best actors can get locked into one particular type of character because they’re just really good at it. […]
SNL hosts who want to take a walk on the wild side? Not always a great idea, explained Seth Meyers on this week’s Lonely Island podcast. “A lot of times actors come in and want to show […]
It’s been almost a week since the release of Jerry Seinfeld’s Pop-Tart movie Unfrosted, which critics are hailing as an “embarrassment” and “one of the worst films of the decade so far.” But because we live in Hell, millions […]
Every so often, Hollywood offers up two projects with nearly identical premises at the exact same time. Volcano and Dante’s Peak both came out in 1997, Armageddon and Deep Impact also hit theaters in 1997, and the fall of 2006 […]
You can solve all your problems if you just get your hands on some gold. Yes — gold! Sweet, sweet gold. With enough gold, you can get the law off your back. You can buy […]
In the 1991 Simpsons episode “When Flanders Failed,” Ned Flanders opened his famous Leftorium, a mall store that catered to the left-handed citizens of Springfield. The business had a rocky opening, but Flanders kept the Leftorium open all the […]
They say there are no such things as happy endings because nothing ever ends, and by “they,” we mean Peter S. Beagle. God, The Last Unicorn is so good. And he was right: Follow that unicorn for 30 […]
John Hughes movies as a rule haven’t aged well — just ask Molly Ringwald about Breakfast Club. But few characters are more problematic than Long Duk Dong, the horny Asian exchange student in Sixteen Candles played by Gedde Watanabe. […]
South Park has been on television for a hell of a long time. So long, in fact, that babies born when the show first debuted are now able to legally drink, wildly overdo it, and […]
“I think, therefore I am.” That only sounds profound because no one had written those five words in that order before. It’s been like 400 years since Descartes dropped that one, and a lot of people […]
People consider some food exotic, and their grandkids go on to consider it mundane. Go watch some TV show from the 1990s, and you’ll see a cappuccino was an absurd drink demanded by yuppies, while […]
When you think about it, movies are really just a series of revelations. Of course, there’s the classic plot twist, but that’s not always the movie’s big reveal. It might be an element thrown in to defy […]
Let’s journey back to 1989 and 1990. Back then, the Game Boy was billed as the first handheld gaming system, Cheers was a top-rated sitcom and violently choking your son was an acceptable form of child-rearing. This […]
No matter what talent has shot them to the upper echelons of fame, every celebrity wants to be a movie star. On the flip side, being a movie star can get tiring, so it’s tempting to […]
Not to get all Boomer on you, but movies are long as hell these days. Even a stupid comedy is likely to take you well beyond the 90-minute mark where it should have died, and if it’s […]
With those missteps in mind, here are four more of the worst decisions in SNL history… 1 Hiring Aykroyd and Belushi (The Brother Versions) I’m not usually one to cry about nepo babies, but early SNL was shameless in […]
One of the most popular movies on Netflix this month is Knocked Up, the 2007 Judd Apatow comedy that dared to ask “What if Seth Rogen was fertile?” and then constructed an entire 129-minute feature film […]