The State of Scary TV
‘The Returned’ and ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’ join ‘The Walking Dead’ in offering high-quality horror.
December 3, 2013
The Coen Brothers Are Writing a Movie Set in Ancient Rome
We’ve seen Jeff Bridges as an old-timey, eye-patchy U.S. Marshal, but how about the Dude as a chill citizen of history’s favorite empire? The Coen brothers are “plainly excited” about a new project they’re writing, “which they proudly explain is set in ancient Rome,” writes the Associated Press. “It’s like: Would you ever do a […]
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My Cheetah of the Year: On Cameron Diaz’s Performance in ‘The Counselor’
Now more than ever, pop culture is about the small stuff — an obscure TV show, a few notes in a pop song, a tweet. To celebrate a year of micro moments, every day a new Grantland writer will highlight one specific thing — a Big Little Thing — that we won’t soon forget. Warning: […]
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All Is Lost: The Formidable Robert Redford Takes on the Ocean
Director J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost is the spiritual sister to Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, and it deserves to enjoy a similar measure of critical and commercial success. What Gravity did for space, All Is Lost does for the open ocean. Made from a 30-page script by Chandor that contains barely any dialogue, All Is Lost is centered on a tour de force performance by […]
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Freak Show & Tell: Lasagna in a Dishwasher? Lasagna in a Dishwasher.
Extreme Cheapskates (TLC) Who Is This Now? Stephanie. Why Are We Watching Her? She is astonishingly frugal. How Did She Get Here? We never find out what made her so cheap in the first place, but based on the delight she takes in depriving her boyfriend Patrick of life’s simple pleasures (e.g., using more than […]
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The Wolfman Cometh to NBC, Courtesy of Dracula Producer Daniel Knauf
They must not make monsters like they used to. NBC is taking another spin on the vintage monster merry-go-round with The Wolfman, a series based on the 2010 werewolf film The Wolfman, which starred Benicio del Toro and Anthony Hopkins. The 2010 feature was itself a remake of the 1941 Lon Cheney vehicle The Wolf […]
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The Walkmen ‘Pretty Extreme Hiatus’ Playlist
If you were too busy spending time with loved ones to keep up with breaking indie rock news over the Thanksgiving holiday, shame on you. That means you are living your life woefully ignorant of the fact that the Walkmen basically broke up last week. But it’s OK. Family holiday time is over. It’s time […]
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The Wolf of Wall Street Has a Number of Opportunities to Be Vaguely Controversial
Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street will be the longest film of the 71-year-old auteur’s career and of the 2013 holiday season, clocking in one minute shy of three hours. If running times don’t count as scandalous, though, here’s what might: Scorsese flew to Marrakesh, Morocco, last week to judge a nine-day film festival immediately […]
Read moreDecember 2, 2013
Afternoon Links: Lindsay Lohan Is Ready for Her Share of the GTA V Money Now
It appears Lindsay Lohan finds a similarity between herself and one or more blondes portrayed in Grand Theft Auto V. TMZ writes that LiLo is taking legal action over parts of the game that she feels appropriate her persona — quests like helping a starlet escape the paparazzi and photographing another starlet having sex at […]
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Half-Baked Ideas Podcast: David Jacoby and Kevin Wildes
The return of Half-Baked! In this episode, David Jacoby and Kevin Wildes add a little flair to bowling, create the basketball bullpen, and devise much more. Listen to the podcast here: ESPN.com Podcenter Subscribe to the Grantland Network on iTunes, and check out our podcasts page.
Read moreLady Gaga’s Gagadoll Is Going to Revolutionize the Music Industry
Oh, look, what have we here? Just another wackadoo Artpop promotion from the as-of-late particularly wackadoo Lady Gaga, right? Getting naked for Marina Abramovic and doing a Thanksgiving special with the Muppets seems of a piece with commissioning a silicone sex doll of yourself, right? Everything just goes into the high-lowbrow, sexual-but-not-sexy kitchen sink that […]
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Meet Your Childhood Bogeyman! Grimm Introduces America (and Its Terrified Children) to the Cucuy
There is a television show that comes on Friday nights right now called Grimm. I can’t say with certainty what it is about, as I had never watched an episode until this most recent one, but mostly the plots seems to revolve around a policeman who captures criminals and monsters. The monsters are hidden inside […]
Read moreB.S. Report: Adam Carolla and Cousin Sal
Bill Simmons and Adam Carolla mourn the late actor Paul Walker and discuss the future of the Fast franchise. Later, Cousin Sal joins the show to guess the lines for Week 14. Listen to the podcast here. Subscribe to the B.S. Report on iTunes, and check out our podcasts page.
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TNT Is Tweeting Frank Darabont’s Mob City Pilot, Line by Line
TNT’s been watching your pool party, Twitter. It sees your TV hashtags and live-tweeted finales splashing in the shallow end, your blue-checkmark-verified actors doing fancy tricks off the diving board. And now TNT’s jumping in with its own cannonball, tweeting a complete multimedia adaptation of Mob City‘s pilot script. A press release first coins the […]
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Ja’mie: Private School Girl — Chris Lilley’s Great When He’s Not Messing Around With Race Stuff
I have often tried to imagine a female Kenny Powers, although the image sometimes goes no further than Danny McBride in a wig. As it turns out, that’s not too far off: The figure that HBO has anointed as the next Kenny is actually portrayed by an Australian man named Chris Lilley, who wears a […]
Read moreRon Burgundy Co-Anchors a Local Newscast in North Dakota, Achieving the Promotional Singularity
And, finally, we have the logical conclusion of the sprawling, reality-bending press tour in the lead-up to Anchorman 2: an entire local North Dakota newscast co-anchored by Ron Burgundy. Here’s the whole thing, in all its delightful Black Friday–shoplifter-apprehended, excited-about-the-Santa-parade-through-Mandan, Bismarck-man-wins-no-shaving-bet glory. You will want to savor every precious minute, even if it’s ultimately the […]
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My Eroding Generation Gap: On Eminem’s Bizarre College Football Cameo
Now more than ever, pop culture is about the small stuff — an obscure TV show, a few notes in a pop song, a tweet. To celebrate a year of micro moments, every day a new Grantland writer will highlight one specific thing — a Big Little Thing — that we won’t soon forget. I […]
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Rick’s Three Questions: The Walking Dead Midseason Finale ‘Too Far Gone’
At long last, after slogging like a one-legged walker through a Georgia mud slick, The Walking Dead reached the Season 3 finale Season 4 midway point with all the subtlety of a tank storming a prison wall. Beloved characters died; not-so-beloved characters died. The prison went up in a final symbolic fire. The result: a […]
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Death Is in the Details: The Cringey Not-Quite-Comedy of Getting On
Death is all over cable TV. You can find it walking, talking, and generally bleeding into every series, and why not? When it comes to surprising audiences, scaring complacent actors, or merely shaking up the status quo, there’s nothing more dependable than death. What television — and, if we’re being honest, culture in general — tends […]
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Elan vs. Diane: Missing Manners in the Latest Viral Twitter Hoax
Lately, we’ve been really digging Twitter-feed field reporting. Remember when Kyle Ayers documented a couple breaking up on his rooftop? As concerned as we are over the NSA, we can’t help but spy on each other whenever we’re commingling in public places. Eavesdropping now belongs to tweets-or-it-didn’t-happen territory, even though Twitter proof is flimsy at […]
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Paul Walker: 1973-2013
On Saturday, the actor Paul Walker — best known for playing cop turned adrenaline-junkie outlaw Brian O’Conner in 2001’s The Fast and the Furious and four of the five demented/delightful sequels that film spawned — was killed in a car wreck in Santa Clarita, California. The idea of the guy from the car-crash movies dying […]
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Box Office Top Five: Catching Fire and Frozen Lead Record-Breaking Thanksgiving Weekend
You thought you were just escaping your family and catching a flick over the holiday weekend, but you were actually MAKING HISTORY. The five-day nationwide box office total climbed to $294 million, setting an all-time Thanksgiving record. Thus we’re giving you the five-day grosses rather than the usual weekend tallies. 1. The Hunger Games: Catching […]
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