Come September, guess what you won’t be able to pick up at Starbucks? Arabica roast? Nope. Oddly-shaped commuter mugs? Uh uh. CDs by artists your parents like? Skidoosh! You’re right!

Yep, in September Starbucks is getting out of the music distribution business, at least in the signifigant way it had been. Those big racks of music? [...]

I watched exactly twelve minutes of the very end of this season of “American Idol.”
I am not really going to go out of my way to say anything too bad about the show. I have to respect what “American Idol” does: connects well with it’s audience, makes ordinary people feel special and gives these ordinary, [...]

I’m proud of TPN:: Box Office Weekly. I believe the editorial and critical content on these pages is of a generally higher level than most media-news blogsites. At the end of the film Ratatouille, the food critic Anton Ego put forth a splendid little summary of what criticism truly is. I’ll excerpt it here:
In [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

I mentioned the painfully unoriginal one-sheet art for Fool’s Gold in comments a few entries down. In the words of Syd Field: Don’t talk, show!

I suppose this proves many Hollywood films are unoriginal, over-marketed pastiches. In other words, it proves nothing at all. It certainly adds to Daniel’s argument that we’re currently in a cinematic [...]

I love movies. I love Hollywood, and Hollywood cinema. Fresh-popped popcorn gets me a little high, and I think the little changeover cues in the corners of the frame are cute. And God help me, I’m just as hooked on television as everybody. But there are quite a few things about Hollywood I hate.
Most [...]

Everybody has been asking, what good is this writer’s strike doing? Unless you’re lucky enough to have David Letterman for a boss, you’ve been out of work for two months, forced instead to picket production companies in the dead of winter. Meanwhile the big media companies are seeing profits roughly equal to what they were [...]

I was channel-surfing a few evenings ago and I landed on “Hannah Montana” on the Disney Channel. Moments later saw something really weird.
I don’t follow this particular show, but much like High School Musical I’m kind of in awe of it. It’s got that hyperactive Disney synergy going. “Hannah Montana” hinges on a cute [...]

George Lucas is starting development of a live-action Star Wars TV series. It’s going to be about “minor characters” in that galaxy of his own creation far, far away (Alright, let’s hear from Biggs! Wedge Antillies, your time is now! Mon Mothma, it’s all about you, sweetie! Jar Jar… We’ll call you). As Mr. Lucas [...]