This entry is a follow-up to Dan K’s previous article on how politics has become hot show biz.
First of all, I agree: It’s compelling stuff, the whole “future of American society and civilization” deal. It’s high-ratings event coverage, all right. However, I will part company with Dan’s rather Swiftian suggestion we have sponsored elections, [...]

The long-awaited American version of Life on Mars makes it’s premiere this Thursday on ABC. I have no idea what to expect.
The original version was a British show, and it was very, very good. I’ve written on this show before, when the second season was set to begin on BBC America. Since then, I’ve been [...]

As promised, the Worlds Ugliest Dog contest was held this last weekend in Sonoma. I give you the winner - Gus!

True to form, Gus is a Chinese Crested breed, hairless except for a bizarre doggy mohawk, skinny as hell and unable to hold his tongue in his hideous head. The winners of the contest have [...]

Finally, finally finally got out and caught a movie, at the spiffy new Century 20 in Tanforan Mall. It’s a nice new theatre with excellent presentation, but it isn’t without some problems. For one thing, it’s understaffed: On the way to our auditorium I came across a pair of propped-open exit doors, which is an [...]

Generally, American scripted television series follow a familiar cadence of life phases, showing stages of youth, maturity and senescence in the same manner as the humans who created the shows do.
Pilot Era – That crucial first season. This is the stage where a show has to prove its Darwinian fitness. Fresh, full of ideas, often [...]

As we’ve learned from better science fiction, our creations sometimes surpass their original parameters. Sometimes they run amok (2001), sometimes they kill everyone everywhere (”Battlestar Galactica,” The Matrix), and sometimes they turn into charming naïfs (Data from Star Trek). Another unusual example can currently be seen during commercial breaks on American television.
Esurance, an online insurance [...]

The ol’ Trek-o-Meter, that linear scale used to track the intensity of one’s Star Trek fandom essayed in these pages last July, apparently isn’t quite ready to be retired yet. For one thing, there is finally a new original cast Star Trek movie in production, with Chris Pine (Smokin’ Aces) as Kirk and Simon Pegg [...]

The Met– The New York Metropolitan Opera– has been offering selections from their current season in selected movie theatres as live HD transmissions. Saturday morning, my wife and I attended the latest one: Puccini’s La Bohème, Produced for the Met by Franco Zeffirelli.
It was something we had intended to do for a while. On New [...]

Last weekend my niece Abigail reached a milestone in her young life– she was taken to her first movie.
This event is a sort of maturity marker for parents– To take a very young child to a theatres makes some basic assumptions: Will he or she sit still for two hours? Will he or she understand, [...]

Is it pile on Kate Hudson time here at Box Office Weekly? Maybe.
According to Variety, Kate Hudson, the star of The Four Feathers and You, Me and Dupree is set to star in Big Eyes, the biopic of Margaret Keane. If there is some sort of contest for least necessary movie, we’re looking at a [...]