Time travel movies invariably make very little sense, and Source Code looks goofier and more arbitrary than is average: I mean, why would you build a technology that lets someone go into dead people? And why for the last 8 minutes of their lives? How do you not die if you’re in that person when they die?  Would a government agency really think it’s acceptable collateral damage... 

So, uh, Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts are doing August, Osage County? Nathaniel Rogers makes an interesting, if not wholly persuasive, case against casting Meryl Streep as Violet: I think the real problem is physical. Perhaps it’s just me, but I saw Estelle Parsons in the role on Broadway and I think her diminutive stature helped amplify her performance. That so much venom could come from such... 

Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are both just incredible, impeccable actors, and to see them sparring with each other, vulnerable and funny, makes The King’s Speech look tremendously promising: Royalty’s such an anachronism for Americans, we don’t understand it or understand why it might be important to understand it. With the modern presidency, men choose it, or choose to contest... 

Is it only because I’ve never seen The Notebook that it’s unfathomable to me that Ryan Gosling is a romantic hero? Any guy who did this to me on the bus, and then had the following conversation with me, would make me think he was a seriously screwed up person with boundary issues: BLUE VALENTINE: Movie Trailer. Watch more top selected videos about: Ryan Gosling, Derek Cianfrance This... 

Where have you been all my life? I realize, dear readers, that as a bureaucracy nerd and as someone who keeps a careful cultural eye on Washington, that I am a tad in the tank for Covert Affairs, even recognizing that it’s not more than smart, fizzy fun. But one element of the show I think deserves for credit above and beyond the call of a USA Network summer series is Kari Matchett, the wonderful... 

Okay, I’m sorry, but I’m someone who had a teaching gynecologist for a while, and even I would never, ever forgive, much less date, a person who snuck their way into a doctor’s appointment I’d made to figure out if I had a serious disease (the trailer implies it’s breast cancer, but apparently, Parkinsons): This movie actually looks kind of fun, but it really brushes... 

I understand why stars want to make guest appearances on television shows, and I understand why television show runners like to have them on. If you’re going to have your characters encounter new people as they go about their lives, wacky or serious, trite or momentous, those new people they meet might as well be a draw on their own. And there are some cases where the famous person cast for the... 

Man, is this a busy pre-vacation week! First up this morning, Morning Edition aired the episode I taped a while back about Real Housewives of Washington, DC, and I posted an interview I did with one of the stars. It’s absolutely fascinating seeing the gap between how these women are cut and portrayed on screen, and what it’s like to talk to them in person. Then, yesterday at The Atlantic,... 

Would you guys think I was an awful person if I admitted that I don’t actually love Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter”? I was listening to the song last weekend and realized the false rhymes and awkward scansions were getting to me: I think it’s partially cultural conditioning, too. After growing up on prairie girl stories and spending a lot of time around union... 

It seems inevitable that, given its importance in our popular culture as an avatar of disaster and decline, that someone would make a movie about the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood. And it doesn’t seem particularly surprising that the person who makes that movie would be Sofia Coppola: I don’t know what it says about Stephen Dorff that the first thing I think of when I consider him...