It’s clear to me now.  The point of some Hollywood movie and TV production is to give the staff at Entertainment Weekly something to write about. The movies and TV shows don’t really matter.  The reviews, these are the point of all those deal making, casting, shooting, producing, agenting.  The movie or TV show is really just an accident of the process.  Really, all this takes place to occasion EW coverage.   (It’s an expensive way to go about it, but that’s American culture for you.)

Listen as Lisa Schwarzbaum damns the latest effort by Halle Barry with feigned excitement and sly criticism:

Something awful happened to young Frankie back in 1950s Georgia to make her so broken; it’s just a matter of time, flashbacks, many costume and accent changes, some more jazz and a triggering tune on the radio before the truth can set Frankie, and the audience, free.

Owen Gleiberman:

Darren Aronofsky’s backstage ballet thriller, Black Swan, is lurid, voluptuous, pulp fun, with a sensationalistic fairy-tale allure.

Ken Tucker on Men of A Certain Age:

[T]he achievement of this series is that it makes middle-aged failure so energetically entertaining.

Leah Greenblatt.

No other major pop diva seems to enjoy surrendering her vanity to the pure fun of video-making quite like Pink does (or, really, at all).

And then there are the anonymous writers of the magazine.  They write with a knowing air, as if to say, "surely, popular culture makes insiders of us all."  There is something familiar about their tone.  And I guess we should take this as an anthropological miracle, because they don’t know us and of course we don’t know them.  Perhaps not so miraculous.  After all, we and then have popular culture in common, and that’s a lot to have in common because popular culture is our culture, plain and simple.  

Ditch the adjective and let’s get on with it.  

Wahlberg and Co were one of the biggest boy bands ever.  And NKOTB are currently prepping for a summer North American concert tour that would totally make us hyperventilate…if this were 1989.

References

Anonymous.  2010.  They’re with the band.  Entertainment Weekly.  December 10, p. 96.

Greenblatt, Leah.  2010.  Pink "Raise your glass."  Entertainment Weekly.  December 10, p. 105

Schwarzbaum, Lisa.  2010.  Frankie and Alice.  Entertainment Weekly.  December 10.  p. 90.

Tucker, Ken. 2010.  Men of a Certain Age.  Entertainment Weekly.  December 10, p. 95.

Apologies

I am on the road and don’t have time enough to find an image or links.