Sorry for the delay today, folks. In between the end of the holidays and moving, I’m running behind on everything. Starting tomorrow, there will be some familiar faces helping out here for the rest of the week (and I’ll be around, too). Over the Thanksgiving break, my brother took me to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I. I’ve long felt some ambivalence about the... 

This is so depressing: When Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis become pathetic schlubs who can’t cheat on their wives and can’t muster the energy to make marriage interesting either? This just makes me feel ancient. Owen Wilson was hot and indie and intriguing when I was sixteen: I could understand why Gwyneth Paltrow would cheat on Bill Murray with him even though she was clearly meant to... 

The kind publicity people at Jezebel sent me an email about the fundraising drive the blog’s doing for one of the couples on Teen Mom. While I think it’s sweet to want to reward kids who seem to be making mature decisions, I personally (and everything in this paragraph should be interpreted as a personal explanation for why I can’t promote the drive rather than as judgement on anyone’s... 

In our world of constant recycling and of new iterations of everything, I think Bruno Mars is the new Jason Mraz. Consider the evidence. There’s the vibe and the hat of Mraz’s most famous single, “I’m Yours.” Mars totally stole the hat. And he’s got the same lovey vibe both as a guest on “Nothing On You,” and even more so on “Just the Way Your Are,” The... 

It really would be terrific if the folks remaking Spider-Man, if they must cast a grown man as a teenager, could snag Emma Stone as Mary Jane. I thought Kirsten Dunst was quite good for the extremely sweet interpretation of Mary Jane the most recent trilogy selected, but everything felt a bit sad and heavy between her and Peter, so much of the time. It got to be a bit ponderous, angsty going. I wouldn’t... 

I wrote about The Imperfectionists, a book I sorely wanted to like, and didn’t: Journalism isn’t dying because the people who work in the industry are all cravens and fools. It would be convenient and comforting if that were true because then all you’d have to do is swap out the bad folks for good ones, and everything would be fine. But that’s not remotely the case. Rachman’s... 

Because to discuss any part of A Song of Fire and Ice in any detail is to spoil everything, because in this world, everything is important, analysis is below the jump. Today’s subject? Women who ride like men. One of my favorite parts of A Song of Fire and Ice is the rise of women to power in all sorts of ways. Whether it’s Daenerys Targaryen finding a love she didn’t expect in marriage,... 

Is the existence of the Fockers franchise the most depressing indicator of American cultural decline today? The evidence is at least nominally persuasive: Everything about these flicks is just poisonously unfunny—there isn’t even guilty, dumb pleasure, a “I can’t believe I laughed at that, but man was it funny” element to the proceedings. And yet, it’s here. It’s... 

Over at my blog, I called the week starting today “The Most Incredibly Exciting Week Ever,” and while that’s overstating things a bit, there is an awful lot of pop culture stuff going on in the next eight days or so. Alyssa suggested I link to the little calendar I wrote up, so here you go. There’s a lot of TV, plus some music, books, and movies. Oh, and Google. Enjoy!  Read More »

(Evening, folks. I’m BabylonSista: pop culture junkie, political soap opera lover, and music snob. Glad I can give Alyssa the break she needs and pinch hit this week.) I love it when older entertainers find their second wind–it happened for crooner Tony Bennett and for Johnny Cash, elder statesman of badasses, in the early 90′s. And it’s been just as heartening to see actress...