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Media
September 25, 2007
Good Luck, Movie After 'Chuck'
Few movies of late have been met with such universally terrible reviews as the Dane Cook/Jessica Alba vehicle Good Luck Chuck. (It's the third-worst among current releases at Metacritic). While an extremely negative review can sometimes bring out a critic's creative side, many of those who reviewed this movie give it as little thought as those who greenlit the film.
Media
September 24, 2007
Turgid Movie Reviews
David Germain is the Associated Press's go-to guy on all matters cinematic. He writes movie reviews and covers the box-office side of Hollywood, as well. As far as Gelf can tell, one of the few aspects of the celluloid business Germain avoids is the porn industry. Which is strange, considering how often he uses the word "turgid" in his reviews.
Media
September 19, 2007
Return of the Bronco
In the fourth quarter of Monday night's Redskins-Eagles game, ESPN commenter Tony Kornheiser remarked, "The Packers are 2-0, the 49ers are 2-0, the Cowboys are 2-0, and O.J. is back in jail. It's like we're back in the mid-'90s again." The flashbacks didn't stop there. In the same week, Hillary Clinton unveiled her new health-care proposal; an earlier, failed effort defined her role in the early years of her husband's presidency. With the recent opening of the New York Times's archive to the general public, Gelf takes a look back at how the stories have changed—and remained the same—since that memorable low-speed chase.
Media
September 18, 2007
Cursing at the Emmys
You'd be forgiven if you were watching the Emmys on Sunday night and thought that Ray Romano said "fucking." That's because in the middle of Romano's joke about his former on-screen wife Patricia Heaton sleeping with her new on-screen beau Kelsey Grammer, the Fox censors used their seven-second buffer to cut awkwardly away from the presenter. While some articles that mention the incident reveal that the actual term used was "screwing" (and thus not particularly offensive), many media outlets are so worried about the delicate sensibilities of their readers that they fail to clear up the confusion. Here are a few examples:
Sports
September 17, 2007
Gaining Perspective on Oden
One of the old standbys in the sports columnist's arsenal is to occasionally step back from courtside and proclaim that the sporting world needs to be put in perspective. In the wakes of 9/11 and Katrina, for example, journalists tried to outshout each other while declaring how trivial the baseball playoff races and the upcoming football seasons were. But Oregonian writer John Canzano has taken what was a shaky premise to begin with—assuming your readers are too dumb to know the difference between sports and real life—and has totally outdone his peers.
Media
September 1, 2007
His Own Idaho Privates
For a movie that was made 16 years ago, took in less than seven million dollars at the box office, and is around the 20,000th most popular DVD for sale at Amazon, My Own Private Idaho is getting more than its fair share of press these days. That's due less to Gus Van Sant and River Phoenix's brilliance than to the irresistibility of cheap puns to writers and bloggers weighing in on a political scandal.
Sports
August 30, 2007
What's OK to Say?
For sports columnists, the line between edgy and offensive seems to move all the time. It can cost you part of your livelihood if you point out—as Pittsburgh Post-Gazette journalist Paul Zeise did on KDKA-TV's Sports Showdown—that "It's really a sad day in this country when somehow … Michael Vick would have been better off raping a woman if you look at the outcry of what happened." For that supposed offense, he had to issue an apology and will no longer be invited back on the show.
Media
August 22, 2007
Extra, Extra, Read All About It! (In My Upcoming Book)
Bill Simmons is not Bob Woodward. In fact, one could argue that they are journalistic opposites. Nevertheless, the two apparently share a common penchant for hoarding book-related material.
Media
August 21, 2007
CNN Lite
People who don't have time to read in-depth news stories often turn to CNN.com to get a lighter and briefer summary of the goings-on of the day. But the CNN folks seem to think that skimming through a couple hundred words about a subject may itself be too much: They've started to provide bullet-point summaries at the top of their stories.
Media
August 21, 2007
Getting Third-Railed
In February, William Safire of the New York Times used his On Language column to look into the origin of the oft-used warning that a particular issue is "the third rail of American politics." He found that the phrase—first coined by Kirk O'Donnell, an aide to former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil—has been in existence for only 25 years. For most of that time, the "third rail" only referred to Social Security. Lately though, every political stance beyond kissing babies seems to be cursed.
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