Entertainment

Some good, notable TV debuted in 2016, including Stranger Things. You may have heard of it. However, when looking back at 2016 in television there is another Netflix show that stands out to me as more relevant to the direction TV was headed. Not because it was good. In fact, …

1999’s American Pie was a game changer for film as the millennium turned. It did not invent the raunchy teen sex comedy, but it did revitalize a subgenre that had fallen out of favor. Of course, for every good comedy that tried to capture something from American Pie, there were …

Sometimes, when it comes to writing about a “Treehouse of Horror” episode, it feels maybe one step, two tops, above a clip show. These episodes are usually pretty good, with one standout segment and one that feels a bit tossed off. However, “Treehouse of Horror V” is a good episode, …

In 1999, Brendan Fraser starred in three films and became minted as an outright movie star. That’s even though only one of those movies, The Mummy, wholly worked. Blast from the Past was a mixed bag at best, critically and commercially, and Dudley Do-Right was a flop. In 2001, Fraser …

The television landscape in 2011 is so different from now. However, it’s also so different from 1996, much less 1976. Reality television was at its peak. Networks will still delivering new sitcoms for the new TV season, and the “TV season” still existed. People weren’t streaming television, per se, but …

Meryl Streep has three Oscar wins and a ton of nominations. One of those wins and 12 of those nominations came after she lent her voice to The Simpsons, but even so, a two-time Oscar winner stopped by for “Bart’s Girlfriend.” At least she got the titular role! It’s a …

The year 2006 gave me a lot of options for a show to cover in this television retrospective. Ultimately, I settled on two, but I am not cheating (by my own set of rules) because they are both tied to one another and serve to illustrate a single point. That …

You know what is an odd assertion? That you can fool all of the people some of the time. Of course, that’s not something you need to do, by and large, especially on the film front. You just have to blur the margins just enough and you can turn a …

A director’s “first movie” is rarely their first movie. Paul Thomas Anderson broke through with Boogie Nights, but even a lot of movie lovers haven’t seen Hard Eight (aka Sydney), or even heard of it. Wes Anderson popped with Rushmore, but don’t forget about Bottle Rocket (which is a better …

In 1994, The Simpsons poked fun at sensationalistic faux journalism, and of course since then that has become a thing of the past. Or not. The only thing about “Homer Badman” that doesn’t stand the test of time is that the things presented as exaggerated versions of tabloid news media …