HBO

Article: Girls, Girls, Girls — Why everyone needs to have their say on Lena Dunham

Posted April 16th, 2012, 4:04 PM by Alida Nugent

The premiere of HBO’s newest sitcom Girlswas on Sunday night, but at this point, I don’t really remember a world where people weren’t talking about this show. There might have been a time where my subway ride was plastered with Garfield posters instead of Lena Dunham’s expression of disillusion, but I don’t really recall it. There might have been a time where me and my 20-something urban comrades went unrepresented, living under the radar as we listened to Feist and went to brunch, but now everybody knows our secret:

Article: Girls: One of a Kind?

Posted April 02nd, 2012, 2:04 PM by Paul Ohan

The first episode of Lena Dunham’s

Article: My hopes for HBO's "Girls"

Posted December 13th, 2011, 1:12 PM by Alida Nugent

HBO’s teaser trailer for Lena Dunham’s upcoming series Girls proves that everybody on television is having sex.

If that sounds too broad for you, let me put it another way—every girl on television and living in New York City is having sex. It might not be attractive or pretty or without use of the word ‘lube,’ but it’s something that is happening. In fact, it’s probably better television fare if it’s kind of gross. Gritty and unattractive are the new ‘honest’—like Kristen Wiig’s sex scene in BRIDESMAIDS or all the dark jokes in 2 Broke Girls. Sex has returned to its rightful place in the bottom of the gutter, and most female-centric comedies this season aren’t afraid to lay in it. It’s clear that the Sex and The City look-at-all-of-my-pretty-shoes-Lady is dead, only to be replaced by a vintage dress-wearing version who can’t stop rolling her eyes. She’s your new girl of the moment, and she’s certainly prevalent in Girls. She’s poor. She’s in charge of her sexual prowess but barely in charge of everything else, including her flailing limbs. No, I’m kidding, she’s not really in charge of anything because he’s not calling her back.

Article: I heart Valerie Cherish

Posted December 07th, 2010, 8:12 AM by Bradford Shellhammer

Upon graduating from Friends, the 6 cast mates went out into the world to find stardom without one another. Several of them succeeded and several have failed, but none took as big a risk as Lisa Kudrow, who became Valerie Cherish on THE COMEBACK.

THE COMEBACK is one of those cult classics. It never quite caught on in the mainstream. But, for many gays, it became a classic. Kudrow turns her back on everything fake and manufactured about Friends and created a character, and a show, complex, funny, and truly original. Like many things that fall under those three categories, it was misunderstood.

Article: Bill Maher for President

Posted September 24th, 2010, 3:09 PM by Bradford Shellhammer

On Facebook this week, during you know, the times the site was not down, I wrote the status update “Bill Maher should be president.” I don’t think I’d ever gotten as many “likes” as I did with this post. It got me thinking about Maher. He’s in the group of comedians turned political voices, that includes the intentional comics (Colbert, Stewart) and the unintentional comics (Beck, Coulter). But he’s better than them. He’s never acting. He just tells it like it is.

Article: HBO nabs Sundance film in early deal

Posted January 18th, 2010, 11:01 AM by areiter

Although the shimmering wave of industry bigwigs and cinematic glitterati won’t roll into Park City for a few more days, the Sundance Film Festival business deals have already begun. Last week, HBO announced that it had acquired the U.S. television rights to New York-based Argentinean filmmaker Nicolas Entel’s feature documentary SINS OF MY FATHER.

Article: Wild Thing: Spike Jonze

Posted September 17th, 2009, 4:09 PM by Bradford Shellhammer

Usually in Hollywood we hear stories about how a director’s vision is compromised and corrupted by the influence of big business, movie heads, and focus groups. The New York Times Magazine ran a story about Spike Jonze’s journey of bringing Maurice Sendak’s brilliant, iconic Where the Wild Things Are to life. It seems in this case, art, and the good guy, have won.

Article: Trailer: What would you do to reverse the aging process?

Posted May 30th, 2009, 11:05 AM by Andrew Hearst

In YOUTH KNOWS NO PAIN, her upcoming semiautobiographical documentary, my friend Mitch McCabe takes a funny and highly personal look at the anti-aging industry. The film is populated by a number of odd, obsessive characters, including a plastic-surgery-obsessed housewife from Texas and guy in late middle age who, with the help of scalpels and a…

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