I write about TV and film as well as other areas of pop culture.
'Quiet On Set: The Dark Side Of Kids TV' Covers A Lot. And It's Still Not Enough.
Cast members from "The Amanda Show," from left: Nancy Sullivan, John Kassir, Amanda Bynes, Raquel Lee and Drake Bell.
Illustration: HuffPost; Photos: Nickelodeon/Everett/Getty
The question of a way forward always comes to mind when new allegations emerge against Hollywood and/or its foot soldiers, as is the case with “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.” The new Investigation Discovery docuseries reflects on allegations of toxicity at Nickelodeon throughout the late ’90s and 2000s.
It’s p...
'Boarders' Has The Potential To Become Tubi's First Original Hit Series — If People Watch It
Jodie Campbell (center left) and Josh Tedeku play teens struggling to navigate a problematic code of ethics at a mostly white boarding school in "Boarders."
Jonathan Birch/BBC/Studio Lambert Media Ltd.
In an unforgiving TV landscape where promising new scripted series are being canceled left and right, it can sometimes feel hopeless to invest time in a show that could be ― and is often very quickly ― on the chopping block, especially when it’s a streaming platform original.
Hulu’s “This Fool,...
Recent Parental Guidance Suggestions Seem Hopeless In A World With Book Bans
Many young people are aware of and desire conversation around sensitive topics, as seen in the Oscar-nominated documentary, "The ABCs of Book Banning."
Illustration:Jianan Liu/HuffPost;Photo:Getty Images, courtesy of mtv documentary films
To hear some adults tell it, adolescents are exposed to troubling and inappropriate messages found in many children’s and young adult books, TV, and film. But one look at the staggering (and growing) list of banned books will give you a sense of what those m...
There Is No Shortage Of Great Female-Directed Films
There's been a lot of talk this week about how certain (read: white) female filmmakers have been overlooked in the Oscar nominations. The Sundance Film Festival has made tremendous efforts to highlight a wide variety of bold new movies from women across all backgrounds. Will that same energy around "Barbie" be given to them too?
Illustration: Damon Dahlen/HuffPost; Photos: Courtesy of Sundance Institute
PARK CITY, Utah — Amid our inclination to focus on Hollywood’s many inequities, including,...
Interrogating The Black Female Image In AI
BINA48, the groundbreaking AI inspired by the real-life Bina Rothblatt, a Black woman, continued to both excite crowds at the Sundance premiere of the documentary "Love Machina" and provoke concern over how Black female identity is interpreted in the mostly white-led digital landscape.
Neilson Barnard via Getty Images
PARK CITY, Utah — Much has been written about how many Hollywood projects make strides in representation but lack the experience or creative input from those represented to pull...
Issa López Went To A Dark Place To Helm 'True Detective' — With The Support Of Native People
"True Detective" needed a recalibration of sorts. With showrunner Issa López at the helm, the hit thriller series gets an electrifying jolt — and from a personal, honest place.
Michele K. Short / HBO
Issa López is a bit anxious as we hop on a video call to discuss the fourth season of “True Detective.” For what it’s worth, though, it’s a pretty big deal for her. She’s the first female showrunner, writer, director and executive producer of the previously mostly white male-helmed and -centered ...
TV Shows We’re Looking Forward To In 2024
"The Woman in the Wall" (left), "Abbott Elementary" and "Elsbeth"
Photo illustration: Maddie Abuyuan/HuffPost. Photos: Chris Barr/BBC/Showtime; Matt Sayles/ABC; Elizabeth Fisher/CBS
We’ll have a lot to look forward to in 2024 as TV show production catches up.
With strikes by both the Writers Guild of America and the actors union, television was in a weird space for the better part of 2023. Delays and cancellations have had us waiting longer than usual for our favorite shows to come back or se...
18 Movies We're Looking Forward To In 2024
Maddie Abuyuan/HuffPost; Jojo Whilden/Paramount; Focus Features;
The start of a new year is a strange time for movies: We’re right in the middle of awards season, still sifting through the previous year’s Oscar contenders and their seemingly endless promotional campaigns, that it almost doesn’t feel like a brand new year.
Luckily, there are plenty of upcoming releases in theaters and on streaming, including releases as soon as January. And as always, there will be plenty more exciting movies ...
The Compromises Of 'The Color Purple'
It's been 41 years since the release of author Alice Walker's iconic novel, "The Color Purple." A glossy new film proves that white Hollywood still hasn't caught up with its categorically Black and queer feminist voice.
Illustration: Jianan Liu/HuffPost; Photo: Getty Images, Warner Bros. Pictures, wikipedia.org
There was a time when you couldn’t go to a Black woman’s home and there wasn’t a copy of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” lying around somewhere, probably dogeared with highlighted pa...
The Best Broadway Shows Of 2023
Highlights from The Great White Way in 2023 included something for everyone.
Illustration: Jianan Liu/HuffPost, Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman ("Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"); Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman ("Spamalot"); Paul Kolnik ("New York, New York"); Jeremy Daniel ("Summer 1976")
It should tell you something about this year’s Broadway season that the best shows included fart humor, a devastatingly complex story of sexual assault, a middle-aged female frie...
The Best TV Of 2023
Illustration: HuffPost; Photos: HBO, Netflix
At the start of this year, we didn’t really know about several of the developments that would end up shaping 2023 in TV.
Many of the best and most beloved shows ended (including “Succession,” “Reservation Dogs,” “The Other Two”); and two historic strikes in the entertainment industry brought much-needed attention to the workplace inequities facing the people who make the shows and movies we love, and the corporate greed undermining their work.
As T...
The Best Films Of 2023
Stills from Little Richard I Am Everything, Bottoms, and Polite Society
Maddie Abuyuan / HuffPost; Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures; Courtesy Focus Features
It’s a common belief that the most worthy movies are released toward the end of the year. Maybe that’s due to the idea of “award season,” a time designated for so-called “prestige” movies in contention for major accolades, like the Oscars, or are prioritized on popular media sites. But that’s always been a bit misleading.
Perhaps this year t...
'Origin' Is Barely A Movie
Ava DuVernay's "Origin," a rumination on racial and caste theory, is merely a framework for a movie.
Atsushi Nishijima/Courtesy NEON
One of the many foolish things the social media age has wrought is the inability to discern a great film from a bevy of abbreviated, compelling ideas that don’t make up a single cohesive thought. That’s how a lot of people have come to understand and discuss complex truths — through bursts of cursory statements that only lead to other, unrelated discussions.
Thi...
'Poor Things' And The Odyssey Of A So-Called 'Difficult' Woman
With the help of Emma Stone's marvelously uninhibited performance, "Poor Things" catapults Yorgos Lanthimos as one of few male filmmakers that are particularly fascinated by peculiar, challenging female characters.
Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
It seems a little low-bar to praise a director for doing what’s already part of the job: helming a terrific female character. But amid a season that includes “Priscilla,” a film that tells you nothing about its eponymous woman, and “Killers of the F...
'Saltburn' Isn't An Eat-The-Rich Movie. It's Also Not Great.
Writer-director Emerald Fennell's "Saltburn" doesn't work as an eat-the-rich delight. It has a lot of thoughts on the wealthy but nothing real to say — particularly about race.
Courtesy of Prime
“What is this movie about?” is the question I kept coming back to while watching “Saltburn.” In writer-director Emerald Fennell’s new movie, things happen, often inexplicably, as gorgeously shot and increasingly odious scenes lambasting England’s rich and grimy glide from one to the next and the humor...