Tom Shales At Large
In Depth: The World 3-D Film Expo celebrates the glorious heyday of old-style 3-D films
The World 3-D Film Expo III, running Sept. 6–15 at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, may be the last chance to see some great 1950s 3-D films projected the way they were intended to be.
Profiling, Fireworks, and Skittles: TV covers the George Zimmerman trial
Tom Shales comments on the television news coverage of the George Zimmerman trial. The media avoided the big issues of race and justice in favor of a sensationalistic ‘who will win’ approach.
In the Company of the King: Johnny Carson Interviews on TCM
Tom Shales looks at “Carson on TCM,” a weekly series of shows culling great Carson interviews.
Leno, late night & me
(AP photo)
Jay Leno and I go way back. One of my fondest memories is of Jay chasing me around the parking lot of the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. I always tell people that I thought of the Bel-Air, which I could still afford in those days (long long ago), as more a sanitarium than a hotel. You know how in L.A. your waiter has probably written a screenplay or two? At the Bel-Air, one of the parking attendants had actually starred in an ABC network series several years earlier! He played a wolf-boy.
The rousing return of Robin Roberts
(ABC photo)
Roughly five months ago, back in the summer of ’12, the spectacularly popular Robin Roberts, co-anchor of ABC’s “Good Morning, America,” left the show for a sabbatical of indeterminate length. She might be gone for six or eight months, viewers inferred, or for a year. Or, forever.
Kind of like ‘Top Chef,’ but with holy smoke
Aye, it’s the age-old story. Oh the naming of a new pope, sure, but there’s another less-age-old story: TV networks covering something that their anchors and reporters call a glorious spectacle and then ruining the spectacle with superfluous graphics littering the screen.
This one’s a keeper
(AP photo)
Back in ancient days of rampant ignorance and sexist effrontery, a TV commercial for a product now forgotten depicted a happy married couple whose cheer seemed guaranteed by the woman’s subservience to the man. At the end of the ad he uttered a phrase that entered, to the dismay of millions, the iconography of the time: “My wife — I think I’ll keep her.”
The Oscars: Captain Kirk was right
(AP photo)
Listen — a billion people are throwing up. That’s a rough estimate of course, but every year somebody at the Oscars says a billion people on the planet are watching the program; however many watched this year’s Oscar show, they may well have felt sickened by it. It was a stomach-churning, jaw-dropping debacle, incompetently hosted and witlessly produced.
How many Beyonci does it taketo blow out a Super Bowl?
by Tom Shales
Okay, now we know: God DOES “care” about the Super Bowl, as people were wondering during the big build-up to the game — the one that began around Thanksgiving, 2012. Yes, God cares; He HATES it. And that’s why He (or, yes, She) turned off the lights on Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans Sunday night and left everybody standing there and waiting for the second half to continue. Maybe it was a kind of Old-Testament warning — ya think?
Late-Night: Later Than You Think
By Tom Shales
Jimmy Kimmel still comes across like a guy who crashed a party and got caught at it, yet adamantly refuses to leave. He has no real business being there — hosting a late-night network talk show, that is — and may even know in his dark little heart that he’s out of his depth, but he’s gotten away with it for ten years, so why pull out now? Since he’s probably making $25 million a year or so, and ABC has agreed to underwrite the subterfuge, it’s hard to imagine Kimmel voluntarily getting the hell out of Dodge.
Obama’s Declaration of Independence
By Tom Shales
There was the tense sensation that actual news might break out at any moment — but we knew it would be just as well if it didn’t. The Second Inaugural of President Barack Obama, which occupied most of Monday on broadcast networks and cable channels, was actually rather compelling for an event which had little reason to exist.
Biden vs. Ryan: “More real”
by Tom Shales
Consensuses form so quickly now — faster than frost on a window pane. The vice presidential debate had barely ended last night when agreement emerged from within the vast media morass that Joe Biden had forcefully redeemed the honor of the Obama Administration, Paul Ryan did all right by himself and running mate Mitt Romney, and Martha Raddatz of ABC News had done a much better job at moderating than puffy and pompous Jim Lehrer did at the presidential debate earlier this month.
He plays the President on TV, too
(AP photo)
We can be very glad Barack Obama won his bid for re-election for reasons that have nothing to do with politics. Unlike Obama, his defeated opponent is, to put it gently, not a gifted public speaker. He actually has a warm and semi-mellifluous voice when speaking in a normal tone into a microphone; the best parts of his TV commercials were when he said he was Mitt Romney and he “approved this message. ” Up on stages and platforms, however, he displayed little talent for galvanizing a crowd, or even holding attention.
The Emmys: Everyone but his parakeet
Rarely does a TV show arrive with lower expectations than the annual Emmy Awards telecast. It’s a given that the thing will suck. Even so, this year’s — the 64th — managed to come up short and disappoint. And it wasn’t one of those “so bad it’s good” campy things you can enjoy making fun of, either. It was more like one of those “so bad it’s lousy” things that leave you incredulous and drained of the will to live.
Obama vs. Romney and Punxsutawney Phil
Network commentators and reporters fell all over each other in declaring Mitt Romney the winner of the first presidential debate Wednesday night, but maybe Romney didn’t so much win as Barack Obama surrendered. Obama all but handed it to Romney by mistaking “presidential” behavior for half-hearted diffidence. He acted over-confident when all indications are he has no reason to be over-confident.
Good Morning, Muppets
And the Emmy for Best Family Comedy Goes to — “Good Morning, America”? Well, why not? ABC’s weekday 7 a.m. “news” program is about as newsy these days as “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.” It’s also as warm, cuddly and cute as were “Ozzie and Harriet,” “The Smurfs,” “My Pink Pony” or the Muppets. In fact, the Muppets were busy overrunning the cast and set of “GMA” just the other day, although having them on hand only served to remind viewers that several of those in the “GMA” cast seem to have morphed into Muppets themselves.
Presidential mud and oil wrestling
(AP photo)
by Tom Shales
“What I try to do is be consistent,” said President Barack Obama. He was talking about energy policy — not about debating strategies, because as all the world knows by now, Obama projected a far more aggressive and engaged persona at his second debate against Mitt Romney than he did at the first. He managed to do it without being self-conscious, a neat trick since the reviews of his previous performance were so unanimously negative.
Early returns: The ascent of the Stephanopoulos
Polls may be open somewhere, results in many races remain inconclusive, but I am willing to make one fearless projection: ABC News is the winner in 2012’s Election Night coverage. In fact, ABC’s coverage of the entire campaign has generally left competitors red in the face if not green with envy, though that hardly means it was without its own fumbles, stumbles and wretched excesses.
The final debate: Whoppers and bayonets
(AP photo)
It was almost as if President Obama’s advisors had said before the debate, “Don’t agree with Romney on anything,” while Romney’s advisors might have said to their boy, “Agree with Obama as much as possible.” After all, this third and final presidential debate of 2012 was supposed to be about foreign policy, an area in which Obama is expert and seasoned and in which former governor Romney has no enviable credentials.
