Viewpoints Radio
Award-winning reporting on current issues featuring America's leading experts.
Earlier this month, Netflix released The Haunting of Hill House, a 10-episode horror series loosely based on the novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson. The series follows the Crain family; two parents and five children, over the course of multiple timelines. We watch their time spent decades earlier in the Hill House, a creepy old mansion they moved into in an effort to flip the house, and we …
Movies with bank heists tend to be action-packed movies full of chase sequences and maybe a dramatic shoot-out. What bank robbery films tend not to be are quiet meditations on aging. But that’s exactly what director David Lowery’s latest film, The Old Man and the Gun set out to be.
One of the traditional ways that TV shows have kept these shock-and-awe moments coming is by moving things along quickly. As soon as some incredible act of deceit takes place, the show starts speeding toward that next signpost.
That’s where Better Call Saul, AMC’s Breaking Bad spin-off, differentiates itself. The show often moves at a glacial pace. It’s a law show with no case of the week format. …
Sometimes, classifying art in one specific genre can be tricky. Look at Star Wars. It’s a space opera, sure. But what does that mean? It was built to be a Western. And sci-fi. With some fantasy aspects? And who is the intended audience? Is it for kids? Teenagers? Adults? All of the above? That can be the difficulty in classification.
Now that summer is behind us, it’s time for fall movies to take over. Of course, there are some big ones coming, most notably Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Gindewald, the next installment in JK Rowling's wizarding world. But there is a lot of excitement for some non-franchise films as well.
Two years ago, NBC debuted a strange new comedy show called The Good Place. It was written by Michael Schur, a writer on The Office and the creator of Parks & Recreation, so people were willing to get it a change… but it’s logline was pretty out-there. It’s a half-hour comedy about people who died in the afterlife and, specifically, about Eleanor Shellstrop, a bad person who made it to heaven …
Fall is upon us. September is underway and with it comes the apex of the sports calendar. Last weekend, the NFL season kicked off and all month, the MLB’s pennant races and Wild Card hunts are shaking out. Then will come the MLB playoffs and the dawn of new seasons in both the NBA and NHL. Plenty of sports intrigue abounds this time of year- Four divisions in baseball are coming down to the wire, …
American Animals is a film that tells the true story of four college kids who stole millions of dollars in rare books from a library in broad daylight. I first saw the trailer in March and it has been on my radar ever since. I was intrigued to see a stylish heist movie starring some exciting up and comers like American Horror Story’s Evan Peters and Dunkirk’s Barry Keoghan.
In recent years, you’ve probably noticed a boom in TV revivals- old series brought back for new episodes. Fans of Gilmore Girls, Prison Break, Will and Grace, and more have all been gifted with new seasons and with reboots of Murphy Brown, Veronica Mars, and others in the works, this isn’t a trend that seems to be going anywhere.
There’s another brand of TV that’s easy to overlook, what I call junk food TV. In this comparison, those prestige shows are your nice dinners out: they’re prepared with care by professionals. This junk food TV is what you reach for when you just need something easy and fast and delicious.
In a wild moment, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced its intention to honor popular films at the Oscars. We explore why that’s a really bad idea.
One of this year’s gems at the cinema is in theaters now. It’s called Blindspotting, and it explores racial dynamics and gentrification in American cities.
Streaming networks have opened up the length an episode of television can run. Gone are the days when writers needed to accommodate advertisements. But episodes that run long often present a new slate of problems – namely, staying interesting.
A new documentary from HBO, Come Inside My Mind, explores the life of actor Robin Williams as told by his friends and family. The documentary is cleverly narrated by the actor himself using audio from earlier interviews.
Bo Burnham has followed in the footsteps of Jordan Peele and Greta Gerwig, transforming from a performer to the director of a terrific debut film. His movie, Eighth Grade is out now.
Christopher Nolan’s landmark superhero epic, The Dark Knight was released a decade ago this week, but its effects on our culture are still being felt.
It’s a dilemma many of us face from time to time: Should you keep reading a book even if you don’t like it very much, or should you set it down?
As apps like Spotify and Pandora have taken over, musicians have been forced to make their new albums into an “event.” We look at how they do that, and how streaming music impacts us as listeners.
Spider-Man movies have been done and redone several times now, but a new animated movie about the web-slinger is coming out in December, and it will finally tell the story from a fresh perspective.
The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize is given annually to what a panel of judges deem to be the funniest book of the year. But this year, the judges hit a snag: they didn’t think any of them were funny.
It’s summer, which is a great time to do some reading. We discuss four books that will keep you turning those pages all summer long.
Netflix and Amazon are go-tos for many Americans looking for a movie to watch. But how can people watch classics like The Maltese Falcon or Singin’ in the Rain in this new world?
Fox’s hit sitcom New Girl ended this month after 7 seasons. We take a look back at the show’s run and what makes sitcoms so special to us.
For years, Barnes and Noble was the big enemy to independent bookstores. Now, Amazon is the big bad and some are calling for consumers to ‘save” Barnes & Noble…but should we?
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