When I saw Southland Tales, director Richard Kelly's second feature and follow-up to Donnie Darko, which is considered by many (even my former colleague and film fiasco lover Nathan Rabin) to be an epic boondoggle, for the first time, it was shortly after the film's release
I have been sick, sick, sick this week, so writing newsletters has escaped my grasp. But here I am, with answers to a few of your questions! Leah has a follow-up question to my last newsletter, about interviewing people: I recently had the opportunity to interview someone (it never got
When I was first starting out in my journalism career – and even in my criticism career – having to do a big interview would keep me up nights. I remember that I once did a big interview for the Los Angeles Times with Ryan McPartlin, the guy who played Captain Awesome
Welcome to the latest Friday mailbag! I write this installment as my wife browses Redfin and mumbles about the truly unfortunate interior decorating choices of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. Myself, I enjoy green, velvet curtains hung everywhere, and I don't care who knows it. Emily writes,
Chevy Chase changed my life. I know, I know. He's changed all of our lives. But what I mean is that I can point to a before and after moment in my life that involves Chevy Chase. Let me take you back to the spring of the second
Time for another mailbag! You folks need to send me some more questions. I almost had to beg my wife to send one in (and, actually, maybe I'll answer hers, because it was really interesting). Maxwell asks: Wasn't Late Night with Jimmy Fallon awesome? That was
A couple of weeks ago, I was having dinner with a TV writer friend, and we were talking about the show This Is Us, a series both of us liked, more or less, but that both of us also had significant problems with. And yet the show was such a
One of the most fateful things to happen to me in my career happened because I misheard someone. When The A.V. Club extended the offer to me to join their freelance TV critic crew (which at that point was pretty small), I hopped on the phone with then-editor Keith
Let's make it snappy this week, because I'm on the road, and all I want to talk to you about is how good Sunday in the Park with George is. But you don't care about that! You care about your questions being answered! Jordan
I'm traveling this week on business, which always leads to fewer newsletters. But I wanted to take the opportunity to alert you to my new podcast, I Think You're Interesting. Each week, I'll talk to somebody from the world of arts and entertainment. Some
What's this? Another Friday mailbag? Let's open up the ol' mailbag and answer some of the mail we found in the mailbag! James asks: It feels to me like sitcoms hit America in waves -- there are stretches of time where we have multiple great
Tonight, my wife, who is not a fan of Best Picture frontrunner La La Land, suggested that she felt Emma Stone was a big part of her inability to connect with the film. Though she is demonstrably wrong on this count (EMMA STONE IS GREAT IN LA LA LAND, AND