Sara Vilkomerson

Here’s a teensy weensy spoiler about what’s ahead in season five of HBO’s Entourage, which starts on Sunday night. Johnny Drama gets the best line, and it involves the word “meth” (trust us: the crowd at the Ziegfeld theater for the premiere on Wednesday night roared). Beyond that, we’ll try not to ruin any surprises for what seems (hopefully) to be a return to what made Entourage so much fun in the first place.

When it first aired in the summer of 2004, Entourage bestowed a little La La Land glitz and glamour to the HBO landscape, which was sorely missing with the then-recent departure of the Sex and the City gals.  read more »

DVR is a funny thing sometimes…if you’re like us, you find yourself occasionally going down the rabbit-hole with old shows we'd nearly forgotten. In this case, we're newly, shamefully, re-addicted to Little House on the Prairie. By the time we get home at night, there they all are waiting, usually three episodes each day, courtesy of the Hallmark Channel (thank you!). This was our big time favorite as a kid, and reviewing it a quarter of a century later has been remarkable. For starters, there’s just no way on earth this show would make it on the air today.

Forget the blow jobs of the new 90210 or the “I killed someone” shocker on Gossip Girl. Little House used to go really dark! And not just horribly embarrassing dark, like the time Laura/Half-Pint stuffed her dress with apples-as-boobs and they fell out at the blackboard, or when Nellie Olsen (who could out-bitch any so-called mean girl today) secretly taped Laura talking about her crush on a boy using her newfangled “talking machine” and then played it for everyone at school. Anyone else remember the time Albert’s (the dreamy Matthew Laborteaux) girlfriend was raped in the barn by that dude in the mask? This episode was referred to in my house as “Little Rape on the Prairie.”  read more »

In the upcoming film The Women, a remake of the 1939 George Cukor classic that’s been re-imagined by writer-director Diane English, Meg Ryan’s hair could be billed as a supporting character to its gaggle of stars: Annette Bening, Cloris Leachman, Debra Messing, Jada Pinkett Smith, Candice Bergen, Eva Mendes and, of course, Ms. Ryan. When we meet her character, Mary, she’s a kind of superhero suburban mom—stretched violin-string-thin between charitable committees, parenting and grouting her bathroom floor—and The Hair is long and exceedingly ringlety. In classic Meg Ryan fashion, Mary flits charmingly if exhaustedly between her myriad responsibilities, The Hair showing the kinetic energy she’s expended in contrast to her best friend, Sylvia (Ms.  read more »

It seems, to us at least, that a truly great romantic comedy is getting harder and harder to find at the movies these days. We’re unabashed fans of the genre—from the classics like The Philadelphia Story to this year’s (underappreciated) Definitely, Maybe, and tons of stuff in between. Heck, we even kinda liked 27 Dresses! However, if there’s one thing to be learned from seeing lots and lots of these movies, it is that nothing is as insufferable as a romantic comedy that doesn’t work. (Hiya, Made of Honor and P.S. I Love You!) And such is unfortunately the case with this weekend’s Everybody Wants to Be Italian.  read more »

Oh David Duchovny. We’re so sad to hear the news that you have checked yourself into rehab for sex addiction. Sex addiction sounds like a totally exhausting thing to have to keep up with, and we can’t even begin to imagine how out-of-control things must have gotten to give a quote to the public about it. We know you’ve asked for respect and privacy for your wife and children (we totally love you too, Téa!), and we totally feel you on that, but here’s the thing we keep wondering. Would it or would it not be less embarrassing (and career damaging) for you and your family if you said the rehab was for some sort of drug or alcohol addiction? Something prescription (of course) and easily mended….  read more »

We here at the Culture Czar happen to be big fans of Variety and particularly of reviewer Todd McCarthy. Many times we’ll read his reviews, nod along, and even make mmmhmmm noises at our desk. Which was why we were shocked (shocked!) to see his review of the Coen brothers new film Burn After Reading, which opened the Venice Film Festival last night:

"After their triumphant dramatic success with 'No Country for Old Men,' the Coen brothers revert to sophomoric snarky mode in 'Burn After Reading.' A dark goofball comedy about assorted doofuses in Washington, D.C., only some of whom work for the government, the short, snappy picture tries to mate sex farce with a satire of a paranoid political thriller, with arch and ungainly results." Yeouch! We happened to see the movie yesterday too (not in Venice, of course, but in a very comfortable screening room on Broadway). And we freakin’ loved it!  read more »

Keira Knightley shimmies herself into the most impressive corsets and hairpieces (seriously, the wigs should get second billing) in the lush and golden-hued The Duchess, directed by Saul Dibb. Based on the book Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire, by Amanda Foreman, the movie features Ms.

Knightley as 18th-century Duchess of Devonshire Georgiana Spencer, real-life “original It Girl.” Georgiana grows up in splendid English countryside privilege, and is married off by her mother (the still ravishing Charlotte Rampling) to the Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes) when she is still a teen. But the Duke turns out to be rather cold and distant and seems to care

only about his dogs and his wife producing a male heir.  read more »

When it comes to having a party for anything at all J.J. Abrams–the man who still has us trying to figure out what the heck the deal is with smokey the smoke monster on Lost -- we suppose it’s best to expect the unexpected. But a premiere party for his new show Fringe (premiering September 9th on Fox) all the way out there on 28th street between West 11th and 12th avenue? It actually felt like a J.J. Abrams show.  read more »

The Olympics came to a close last Sunday night, with China once again showing the world just how freakin’ great it is (and scary, too!) at harnessing the manpower of a kajillion people to put on quite a spectacular synchronized show. But this weekend, a very different kind of Chinese story opens in theaters with Year of the Fish.

Year of the Fish is done in that dreamy fashion where real actors are in the scenes but then sort of watercolor-painted over—technically it’s called rotoscoped animation, but we’ll always just think of it as the Waking Life effect. The film opens with a giant red fish, who eyeballs the camera and opens his fishy mouth to intone, “Chinatown.  read more »

Like everyone else we know, we’ve become a little obsessed with Mad Men. And a late night perusal of IMDB revealed to us the following interesting tidbit: Talia Balsam, who plays Mona Sterling -- wife of the awesomely inappropriate Roger Sterling -- is the real life wife of actor John Slattery, who portrays Roger Sterling. Neat! But, wait there more. Ms. Balsam, whose television credits stretch back to Happy Days, is the niece of Dick Van Patten, and, perhaps more excitingly, the only woman to have married George Clooney. The couple wed after a long courtship in 1989, but split after three years (“Talia and I were together for a long time,” Mr. Clooney told Parade magazine in 1998. “She was the girl I chased and was in love with, the girl I always wanted to marry.”) Mr. Clooney, as we know, has gone on to say he’ll never marry again. Ms. Balsam, on the other hand, married Mr. Slattery, with whom she has a ten-year-old son. This leads us to the conclusion that Talia Balsam has just about the best taste in silver fox men, ever. Madam, we salute you!

As everyone's been buzzing about Tropic Thunder, we wanted to remind you that there's another satire in theaters, one that might be just as funny and certainly every bit as bananas. In Hamlet 2, Steve Coogan (who also has a small but essential role in Tropic Thunder) stars as Dana Marschz, a failed actor turned high school drama instructor in Arizona. Dana may have accepted the fact that the scope of his talent spanned the length of an STD drug commercial, but his passion for “the theater” is endless, even though he has only two students to stage his adaptation of Erin Brockovich and, in general, is seen by most—including his wife, Brie (Catherine Keener)—as a kind of buffoon.  read more »

Personally, we’re delighted Valerie Bertinelli has been having such a good year. The 48-year-old actress, whom we all were half in love with during the One Day at a Time era (did anyone have better high-waist jeans or feathered hair?), has signed on to star--and get a producing credit--in a TBS pilot playing a single mom with two small children trying to make her business work.

In February, Ms. Bertinelli, currently a Jenny Craig pitchwoman, published her memoir, Losin’ It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time. It made for some seriously compelling reading: there was her rock-n-roll roller coaster marriage to Eddie Van Halen amidst ‘80s debaucheries, her conflicted feelings about teen stardom and how her career could progress after the teen years were over, and her epic struggles with her weight (which really were epic).  read more »

The young woman who approached the table by the window at the Pinkberry on Eighth Avenue and 18th street was nervous, breathless. She was sorry to interrupt, sorry to be a bother, she said. It was just that she loved Taylor Momsen so much.

The just-barely-15-year-old Ms. Momsen, who plays aspiring queen bee Jenny Humphrey on the CW show Gossip Girl, gave the woman—who looked to be at least in her mid-20s, and was clutching a napkin and shaking like a whippet in winter—a warm, practiced smile and helped her locate a pen and piece of paper so she could sign the autograph on something suitable.  read more »

Ben Stiller’s directing career has been kinda quiet since 2001’s Zoolander, that goofy lampoonery of the male modeling world (an apparent favorite of the programmers at TBS and TNT) that tends to incite more than a few stoner chuckles. But the past seven years have been more about his acting, some good (The Royal Tenenbaums) and some fun (Night at the Museum, Madagascar) and some, um, somewhere in the gray maybe-it’s-a-rental zone (Along Came Polly, Meet the Fockers). So it’s been easy to forget that Mr. Stiller began his career writing and performing biting satirical sendups on The Ben Stiller Show. His latest directorial effort, Tropic Thunder, which he co-wrote with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, does more than just bring back the bite—it brings out the claws, too.  read more »

Tropic Thunder, the latest from writer-director-actor Ben Stiller, doesn’t open till August 13, but the trailer has been playing in theaters (and on laptops everywhere) for seemingly forever. The very funny—and often razor-sharp—big-budget film about the ridiculousness of big-budget films lampoons just about everything under the Hollywood sun. Per the previews, you probably know that Ben Stiller plays a fading action star; Jack Black, a tubby Warhol-wigged comedian; and Robert Downey Jr., an Australian method actor who undergoes an experimental pigmentation procedure in order to play an African-American soldier. All three are thrown together on the set of yet another Vietnam War picture (cue CSNY and the majestic helicopters!), where Steve Coogan is their bedraggled director.  read more »

We had high (heh) hopes for Pineapple Express, the latest boy-bonding-bordering-on-romance comedy from the prolific Judd Apatow universe. After all, it had what seemed like a perfect storm of elements going for it: the onscreen reunion between Freaks and Geeks’ Seth Rogen—who co-wrote the script with Superbad partner Evan Goldberg—and James Franco; a quirky, entertaining premise (more on that later); and behind the camera, indie favorite David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls). We went in wanting to fall in love. We left feeling confused and—gasp!—questioning the staying power of Apatow and his gang.

Pineapple Express asks this question: What would an action movie look like if the two would-be heroes were as constantly high as an elephant’s eye? Mr.  read more »

So, let’s just get this out of the way: The Dark Knight is apparently unstoppable—it’s bat-tastic, and it’s got legs (and wings!) and it will be number one for all time and make the most amount of money a movie has ever made ever in the history of moviemaking. O.K.? Moving on to this weekend, we’ve got The Mummy. Brendan Fraser returns as Rick O’Connell in this threequel, directed by Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious). If you’re like us, and the majority of your Mummy knowledge consists of snippets caught from the many TNT and TBS reruns of Mummy 1 and 2—don’t worry: There’s not much to catch up on here.  read more »

It was quite a Bat-tacular weekend, wasn’t it? Not surprising us in the least, but apparently still shocking to some, was that everyone went bat#@$% over The Dark Knight, which raked in a massive amount of moulah last weekend (158.3 million), setting all sorts of records—best first night, best three-day non-holiday-weekend, best performance for a movie with the word “Dark” in the title, etc.—and in general charting its course to world domination. Isn’t it nice to see this happen with a really good movie for a change?

THE BATMAN WILL no doubt take No. 1 this weekend (and the next, probably, too), but if it’s nonfantasy cinema you’re looking for, you’re in luck, as everyone seems to be releasing their documentaries right now.  read more »

There’s a moment in the new Batman movie The Dark Knight when the action—which relentlessly pounds, soars, twists and turns for a full two and a half hours—slows down for one brief and strangely beautiful instant. The Joker—certainly one of the more villainous, terrifying and electric characters to come our way in some time—speeds through Gotham’s sleek, gray streets, his head hanging out of a cop car window, eyes softly shut, mutilated face turned skyward, stringy and matted green hair flattened by wind. Chaos is under way, hope is dimming, the future looks grim … and the Joker is just enjoying the breeze.  read more »

It was a box office battle between two unlikely superheroes last weekend: the booze-bag Hancock played by Will Smith, trying to hang on to his Fourth of July domination, and Hellboy, a big red hero who loves kittens, Selma Blair and media attention. Surprise! Hellboy II: The Golden Army won it, earning over $13 million on just Friday alone. That’s impressive! But really, can’t we all just admit that we’re just killin’ time till The Dark Knight opens? Enjoy it while it lasts, Ron Perlman!

S0, YES, EVERYONE is in a tizzy over the new Batman movie opening this weekend, but it’s going to be awfully crowded getting into that IMAX theater for a while.  read more »

Just as we feared, audiences went just as nuts for Pixar’s Wall-E as critics did. This animated movie about the future—which seems to be inhabited by cute-talking little machines (thank you very much, Mr. Roboto)—took the top spot with $62.5 million in earnings. But there was even more for Hollywood box office watchers to shout about: Wanted did waaaay better than predicted, taking in over $51 million, thanks in no small part to the irresistibility of Angelina Jolie fondling firearms.

BUT NOW IT'S the big Fourth of July holiday weekend, traditionally a time of barbecues and swimming and, when the heat has everyone red and pooped, decamping for a couple of escapist hours in air-conditioned theaters.  read more »

Is it wrong to admit that we were quite pleased to see that The Love Guru missed the top spot last weekend? That honor went to Get Smart, the Steve Carell-starring remake of the 1960s TV comedy series; it pulled in $39 million while the grating Mike Myers vehicle earned only $14 million, taking a disappointing (for its studio) fourth place. Kung Fu Panda and The Incredible Hulk both hung in there, but we’re guessing they’ll get pushed out of the way this weekend when Angelina Jolie comes blazing through with the action-packed Wanted. And for the kiddies, there will also be Wall-E, the Pixar-iffic movie about a little robot (which we’ll be steering clear of).  read more »

We really do like him when he’s angry! Although general wisdom might have advised against bringing the Hulk—the mild mannered scientist by day, giant green ragey monster by night—to the screen again, after the Ang Lee’s adaptation went splat in 2003, The Incredible Hulk did pretty well last weekend. The Edward Norton-starring flick made $54.5 million, edging out Kung Fu Panda and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening. But what’s weird is that while The Happening was soundly trounced by most critics, it still managed to make $30 million and do healthy business overseas. Come on, Europe—you’re supposed to be the classy continent.  read more »

A little over a year ago, I was broken up with via the U.S. Postal Service. It was a handwritten letter announcing the demise of a long-term and serious relationship, and although it was the content that wreaked serious emotional havoc, I clung to the details for later, to adorn the outraged retelling. (That offensively thick creamy paper! The X-Men stamp!) “This is what I get for opening my mail,” I told friends, who couldn’t help but laugh. For, as most of them know, I have a bit of a mail problem. Meaning: Except on rare occasions like this one, I don’t open, let alone read, my mail.

I know that ignoring the mail can be bad for you, just like putting off that dentist appointment or neglecting to renew your driver’s license (wait long enough, and you’ll be taking a road test). Read the Andre Dubus book (or see the Ben Kingsley/Jennifer Connelly movie) House of Sand and Fog. It might be the only horror story told about what can happen when you don’t open the mail (lose a house, provoke suicide, major despair, etc). I’d be lying if I said that one didn’t give me serious pause.

All kinds of people can’t cope with their mail. Some are organizational disasters who can’t get anything together. Some are old people, or recent college graduates. Yet others are like me. I always pay my rent on the first of the month. I’m neurotically early to the airport and the movies. I remember people’s birthdays. But when it comes to dealing with all that arrives via that front-door slot, I’m paralyzed. The pile of credit-card applications; bank statements; Con Ed, Keyspan, Verizon and Time Warner Cable bills; requests from my college for donations; catalogs for stores I’ve never shopped in; the slippery takeout menus and so on—all this and more wind up on an out-of-sight table, stacked in orderly fashion. If it looks pretty, surely it will be easier to deal with! But it’s never been. And so, numerous and important things have been lost: freelance checks, a new ATM card that went unactivated, insurance documents, tax statements.  read more »

M. Night Shyamalan takes a fair amount of crap in the press and with audiences these days. He admitted himself in last week’s New York Times interview that he’s known solely as “‘… the guy who makes the scary movies with a twist.’” He will undoubtedly be forever followed around by people saying "I see dead people" thanks to his greatest success, The Sixth Sense in 1999. Some people liked his follow-ups Unbreakable, Signs and The Village well enough. But remember how fast the knives came out after his last film, The Lady in the Water? We’re guessing that’s going to be nothing compared to what’s sure to come after The Happening.  read more »

Holy Panda! Kung Fu Panda, the animated film from DreamWorks about a chubby, slacking, would-be Kung Fu fighter voiced by Jack Black, took the top spot last weekend, raking in over $60 million. That’s more than those boozy Sex and the City gals, who got bumped to fourth place. The film set a record for the best opening ever for a non-sequel DreamWorks ’toon, and comes in third place all time after Shrek and Shrek 2. Could the weekend’s back-breaking heat have helped fill up all those seats, we wonder?

   read more »

There have been just enough hot days these past few weeks to remind us what’s ahead: the crushing heat, the sticky nights and (joy!) the refreshing, Freon-filled multiplexes/oases that dot our city like Tasti D-Lites. Put away your hankies: It’s officially summer movie time! Serious films—about Iraq or oil or love torn asunder (no doubt because of war, or oil)—are on ice till September. For the next three months, its superheroes, special effects, explosions and giggles. Here’s our guide to the best.  read more »

Are we the only ones entirely unsurprised at the floor-wiping by Sex and the City at the box office this past weekend?  read more »

Indy rides again! A grizzled Harrison Ford and his hat brought the much-anticipated Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to the No. 1 spot Memorial Day weekend, bringing in $151 million domestically. But can you hear the clickity-clack, high-heel thunder of what’s coming next?  read more »

Scott Speedman was late. At the time of his scheduled Observer interview, the 32-year-old actor was still in transit from J.F.K., coming in from Los Angeles on a nasty, stormy night. He had already missed one flight early that morning (he overslept), and since Mr. Speedman doesn’t have a publicist (was that a breath of fresh air we just felt?) a man from Rogue Pictures—the studio behind his new horror film, The Strangers—lurked in the lobby of the Regency, waiting to “tackle” the actor and drag him immediately to his interview. Forty-five minutes ticked by.  read more »

No surprise that The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian took the No. 1 spot away from the mighty Iron Man last weekend. But the sequel didn’t gross nearly as much as box office forecasters (and Disney) had expected, pulling in just over $56 million. Still, we’re guessing Narnia’s reign will be brief: Our old pal Indy is back this weekend with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  read more »

Poor Speed Racer! The much-maligned flick from the wacky-pants Wachowski brothers failed to make even a dent in Iron Man at the box office last weekend. Adding insult to injury, Speed Racer’s opening-weekend earnings were just about even with the Cameron Diaz-Ashton Kutcher romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas, which cost a whole lot less to make. Yeouch. Iron Man’s charmed run could come to an end this weekend, though, as the The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian hits theaters. Bring on the Tilda Swinton!  read more »

O.K., temperatures may only sporadically hitting the 70s, but summer blockbuster season is officially here. Iron Man opened last weekend with a whopping $104.2 million stateside and another 96.8 million overseas ($201 million all together in its first five days). That beats even what the studio was hoping for (a mere $90 million domestically) and out there in Hollywoodland, executive types are thrilled that all the bemoaning and hand-wringing over the death of the box office was premature.  read more »