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Freddie Freeman's Saving Grace--May It Show Out Tonight!

Let's start with the fundamentals.  Tonight on Fox at 5 p.m. Pacific time, comes Game 5 of the Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series, all knotted up at 2-2 in the seven-game series.   With the Dodgers a bit bleary from traveling East (with more flight time to come this

A Spouse of Dynamite in "The Diplomat"

The American people “want some pomp and circumstance,”  says one wised-up character in Season 3, Episode 3 of “The Diplomat,”  the current Netlfix hit most popular among the streaming  culturati. The rest of that thought reverberates more relevantly than perhaps any utterance  in the entire enterprise. It's a

Ride or Die with "Slow Horses" and a Twisty Season 5

If Gary Oldman ever held doubts about the legitimacy of small-screen work for an actor who won an Oscar playing Winston Churchill  (“Darkest Hour,” 2017), said doubts have been thoroughly washed away by the popular and critical success of “Slow Horses,”  which airs the fourth  of six episodes tomorrow on

"One Battle After Another" Guns for Glory

"Gun is American poem!” shouts the deranged Russian poet in a certain madcap `70s comedy whose title eludes me, and that’s one angle from which to regard Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling action/comedy/satire epic, “One Battle After Another”. You too may be sprawling in your seat

Big Bad Beautiful Bitch Body; DJT

What’s all this rumpus about Trump and the Death of Democracy?  He seems nice.  A natural leader.  Clearly a very stable genius.  So much to like.  He’s giving those media types what for, baby. Like Jonathan Karl, who over decades became one of the most respected figures in

"Thank You for Being in That Job"

"To anyone who’s going on shift tonight or coming off shift tonight, thank you for being in that job,” said Noah Wyle in collecting his award as Outstanding Lead Actor in A Television series,  “This is for you.” Noah Wyle is such an embraceable—if sporadically edgy—onscreen

"This Person Is Too Powerful": Jeff Buckley Doc Slaps and Soars with a Legend

It takes nothing away from what director Amy Berg has accomplished with her (now-streaming)  Jeff Buckley documentary to note how strikingly watchable her key subject is in every frame he occupies. There’s a character he steadfastly refuses to play—the budding rock star with a big record deal and

The Bolton Raid and D.C. Streets Putsch Are Signposts on Trump's Speedway to Autocracy

---- This post was prepared before the heartbreaking news from the Minneapolis school shooting. Given the murkiness of the motive and of the sourcing of the weaponry, for now this blog will maintain respectful silence on that event. ---- This was the week Donald J. Trump asserted "The right

The Billy Joel Papers: All I Want is Someone to Believe

In this current recasting of career and personal Billy Joel highlights occasioned by the deserved popularity of the “And So It Goes” doc on HBO,  I’m bringing some  dramatis personae forward here on the blog. Along with excerpts from the biography I wrote with cooperation from Billy, I'

Dinner with Bobby and Cheryl

The missus and I have long been followers of the Kennedy clan and of its most infamous surviving specimen, Bobby Kennedy Jr. In recent months we were glad to see him move into a picturesque row house in our beloved Georgetown (surrounded though our enclave may be by that widely

Billy Joel: Everybody Loves Him Now

From the New York Daily News Magazine,   January 1, 1982: He asked Elizabeth to manage him in 1976. She'd already sat in quietly in most of the meetings of his carer. A former business student, she'd been seen as harmless. "I was regarded as Bily&

"It's Either Sadness or Euphoria"; the Billy Joel Documentary on HBO

Hello, esteemed subscribers and especially today, those who are interested in Billy Joel, either before or after seeing the expansive doc that dropped July 26 on HBO. At five hours, it’s stocked with insights on each of his albums,  and goes deep on a wide choice of topics from

"Tripping Balls" with "The Studio; the "Brutal Confirmation of Silence" in "Untamed"

"They're vampires," says Seth Rogen's Matt Remick early on in the splendiferously exploding  farce  that is "Cinemacon," the ninth of ten episodes in AppleTV+'s  "The Studio."  The relentlessly sweaty Matt has just heard some very bad news in

Put A Candle in the Window

John Fogerty at Hollywood Bowl Is All About Family Put a candle in the window/`Cause I feel I've got to move/But I won't, won't be losing my way, no no/Long as I can see the light...   That John Fogerty is an