The State of Scary TV
‘The Returned’ and ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’ join ‘The Walking Dead’ in offering high-quality horror.
October 19, 2012
Trailers of the Week: Carrie, The Man With the Iron Fists, Save the Date, and More
Jack Reacher (December 21) Silver: I see the folks at Paramount took my advice and sprinkled some Werner Herzog into this trailer. Why hold any of his scenes back? It’s not like his brilliance as a performer gets stale like an overused joke in a comedy trailer. But more than this, what I like — […]
Read moreSongs of the Week: Meek Mill’s Got Fancy Drapes, A$AP Rocky’s Got Puns
Hear seven days of jams.
Read moreVideo on Demand Report: That’s My Boy and Jay & Silent Bob Get Old Make Their Debut, Which Means It’s Madagascar 3 Night
The Headliner Moonrise Kingdom Wes Anderson’s love letter to love letters. How you feel about Moonrise Kingdom will depend entirely on your tolerance for Wes Anderson’s particular mode of tweeness. Period details and upper-class ennui abound in this tale of two 12-year-olds falling in love against the background of a hurricane on beautiful New Penzance Island. The […]
Read moreNBC Comedy Recap: A Night of Sex Idiots and Intolerable Cruelty
Every week in this space, Grantland’s Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: The order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.) 1. 30 Rock All truly great comedies are at least a little bit serious. It’s a delicate, delightful […]
Read moreHunted: Cinemax’s New Spy Show Is Heavy on Violence, Light on Sex, Medium on Quality
Habitués of Cinemax’s Friday-night programming are no strangers to gauzy Eurozone settings, wooden actors of unknown Slavic provenance, and loving, lingering shots of blondes submerged in bathtubs. So the network is definitely onto something with Hunted, its second original scripted series (after the charmingly steroidal Strike Back), debuting tonight at 10 p.m. EST. Those hoping […]
Read moreR.I.P., Sylvia Kristel, the Original Emmanuelle
In 1974’s Emmanuelle, the Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel — who died in Amsterdam on Wednesday, at 60, of esophageal and lung cancer — plays a young model who moves to Thailand with her husband, a French diplomat, and embarks on a journey of erotic self-discovery. If you’re straight and male and your own journey of […]
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Grantland Reality Fantasy League: Hang in There, Don’t Be a Quitter
The same way it’s nice to come home at Thanksgiving and see that your old bedroom is the way you left it, it’s nice to see the same old reliable insanity on reality television. So much has changed on Jersey Shore and The Challenge over the years, yet so much remains the same. Deena is […]
Read moreOctober 18, 2012
Rembert Explains the ’80s: The 1987 Crystal Light National Aerobic Championship
Welcome back to our series Rembert Explains the ’80s. Every so often, we’ll e-mail 25-year-old Rembert Browne a video from the 1980s that he hasn’t seen. Rembert will write down his thoughts as he’s watching the video, then we’ll post those thoughts here. This week’s installment was selected by Grantland reader Matt Barbee: the 1987 […]
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Day of the Pumpkin: A Daredevil Attempt to Eat Every Pumpkin-Flavored Item From the Local Trader Joe’s
[Disclaimer: Trader Joe’s did not pay for this story. Our gastronomic stuntperson did this all on his own, for the love of the game.] Right now the United States is in the middle of a collective seasonal affective disorder. The weather is apparently colder in most of the country (no fun!) and leaves somewhere are […]
Read moreMichael Bay Wages Anti-Megatron Campaign to Save the Elephants
Bay’s latest tiff has an altruistic root.
Read moreDrake Has Graduated From High School
On June 23, 2008, a young man named Jimmy Brooks graduated from Degrassi High School in Toronto, Canada. Despite a privileged upbringing, Brooks had overcome a lot of odds to get that diploma — he was left wheelchair-bound after an unfortunate gun-violence incident on campus, and his graduation was pushed back a year to make […]
Read moreThe Claire Danes ‘Cry Face’ Supercut: Is She the Greatest Crier of Her Generation?
Is Claire Danes the greatest crier of her generation? This isn’t a topic to which we’ve devoted the kind of deep thought necessary to make a definitive statement, but off the top of our heads, and considering the evidence provided in the above supercut we’ve all just watched, all sad roads to the title go […]
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Tom Cruise Is Losing His Touch … and Other Horror Stories From This Week’s Tabloids
In Touch Tom Cruise’s Midlife Crisis: “Alone and awkward, Tom Cruise wages a futile battle against time.” Tom Cruise is mortal? “He’s kind of broken. He’s too concerned with what people think.” Tom has been hitting clubs in an attempt to get over his divorce. “Tom’s trying to look cool and go out and be hip, […]
Read moreAmerican Horror Story: Asylum, Episode 1 — Welcome to Briarcliff
Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk sure do love them some secrets ‘n’ shame. The first installment of American Horror Story was a sort of revelatory study in how bizarre television can get, with its plates of brains and unabashedly over-the-top rubber suit rapes and “weep-sturbating”; it was campy while retaining its fright factor, psychologically fascinating […]
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