I published a little paperback mystery novel last fall (The Colorado Kid) that was long on mystery and short on solutions. Many book critics took me to task for it. I wasn’t surprised, but I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m the sort of guy who’s always liked questions more than answers, so sue me. And […]

A friend of mine sold her first novel this fall. She said the good part was finally being allowed into the playground where the big kids play. The bad part, she said, was that her book was tentatively scheduled for publication in 2007. She asked me if I thought people would even be reading novels […]

As this magazine has pointed out until it was blue in its editorial face, 2005 wasn’t a good year at the box office. EW has advanced lots of reasons for declining grosses, from the annoyance of in-theater advertising to the popularity of home entertainment centers. I’ve suggested that the improving quality of series TV […]

I don’t think it’s possible any longer just to talk about the best albums of the year and leave it at that; albums may not be as dead as the dodo, but they’re certainly an endangered species. I bought about 50 in the year just past (for the purposes of these best-of columns, my year […]

George Clooney’s film about Edward R. Murrow and the early days of TV news is probably sending many audience members on extra trips to the snack bar and bathrooms out of sheer claustrophobia. It almost never leaves the stark confines of the CBS newsroom and editorial offices. This will come as a shock to 21st-century […]

Gosh. Zowie. It’s almost Halloween again. Somebody peel me off the ceiling. If you sense a certain lack of enthusiasm, you get an A for perceptiveness and win this week’s first prize, a free ticket to see Venom (second prize: two tickets to see Venom). Halloween has been my least favorite holiday ever since the […]

I was browsing the Borders in Boston one day in late August when a clerk cruised up and murmured, ”Dude! Bret Easton Ellis is blaming his new book on you!” I thought he must have been joking – city-glitterati Bret Easton Ellis doing Stephen King seemed about as likely as Stephen King doing Philip Roth […]

Maybe one reason this summer’s movie offerings looked so cheesy was that they came after a particularly brilliant TV season, starring (but certainly not limited to) Desperate Housewives, 24, The Wire, The Shield, and Lost.
Ah, Lost. There’s never been anything like it on TV for capturing the imagination, […]

Oh God, it’s August. Ads for school supplies have started showing up in Staples. In the pharmacies, they’re offering big discounts on sunscreen, not to mention those crappy plastic toys that always get left behind at the beach when Mom and Dad pack up the little ones and drive back to Greater Suburbia. And once […]

This column was written two days after the fourth of July – if it seems a little sentimental, put it down to that. I’ve been dwelling on the back page of EW for two years now, and a surprising number of people still ask me why I do it when I have a perfectly adequate […]