I clearly have no idea who’s using Bluesky: one day it’s all idiots screaming at Ken Jennings; the next, Svengoolie is trending.
Ken Tucker
@kentucker.bsky.social
Music critic NPR's Fresh Air. Book, TV, movie critic: EW, New York Times, Village Voice, Rolling Stone, New York Mag, etc
I liked Margot’s Got Money Troubles all the way up til… that last episode, at which point David E Kelley went all Ally McBeal/Boston Practice/wacky courtroom.
You're kidding w that headline, right, @nytimes.com? Up until abt a year ago, the Times wdn't have even green-lit this piece. Also, the "hit" framing shows just how debased literary discussion has become. Maclean would laff. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/b...
Could ‘A River Runs Through It’ Have Been a Hit Today?
nytimes.com
I reviewed Robert Polito's exhilarating new book about latterday Bob Dylan music on today's @nprfreshair.bsky.social . You can listen to the piece here: www.npr.org/2026/04/09/n...
Watched Crime 101 last night: Heat with a maundering meathead as Neil McCauley and Fozzie Bear as Vincent Hanna. Was Halle Berry’s I-quit speech supposed to rouse a cheer? The way the movie treats her, her character seems unaware that in Our Current Era, no boss ever feels shame.
I could barely get a word in edgewise.
Joe Adalian@tvmojoe.bsky.social · 4mo agoWonderful time capsule of 1999 TV via this nearly complete episode of Entertainment Weekly on CNN, including a visit to the set of Sports Night, chats with @dherzog77.bsky.social and a certain CBS boss, plus a critics roundtable with @kentucker.bsky.social youtu.be/ok_AKHLyseM?...
Wonderful @mikebarnes4.bsky.social @thr.com obit of Matt Clark, who'll maybe get a second of air time at next year's Oscar In Memorium www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...
Matt Clark, Character Actor in a Barnful of Movie Westerns, Dies at 89
He appeared in ‘The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean,’ ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,’ ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales,’ ‘Hearts of the West’ and so many other films in the genre.
hollywoodreporter.com
RIP Tom Noonan. In 2009 I convinced the @nytimes.com to let me interview him about his tiny role in Damages because he was so great. He was really smart, funny, & severe: www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/a...
RIP James Van Der Beek. In my 1998 @EW Dawson review I wrote "[He] has handsome features attached to a face shaped like a cereal box." Years later, he told me he was "haunted" by that, & had a good laugh. ew.com/article/1998...
It's the idiocy combined with arrogant condescension... imagine having to put up with this kind of crap.
RIP Raul Malo. What a voice. Just call up “What a Crying Shame” in your phone right now and listen.
Copyediting, a lost art. "He often wrote under the pen name 'William Boot,' a self-deprecating homage to Evelyn Waugh’s supercilious journalist in her 1938 novel, Scoop." That Waugh, whatta dame... www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/ar...
Tom Stoppard, Cerebral Storyteller for Stage and Screen, Dies at 88
The British playwright won acclaim for 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,' 'The Real Thing' and 'Leopoldstadt' and received an Oscar for 'Shakespeare in Love.'
hollywoodreporter.com
Today on @nprfreshair.bsky.social I’m reviewing the new 50th anniversary release of Patti Smith’s debut Horses followed by excerpts from Terry’s interviews w Smith over the years. Give a listen www.npr.org/2025/11/07/n...
So we’ve now reached the point where we dread having Harper come up to bat at a critical moment. #phillies
Someone said it's Bryan Ferry's birthday www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBrj...
Bryan Ferry - This Is Tomorrow
YouTube video by BryanFerryVEVO
youtube.com
Finally got around to The Lowdown, a show that's pret-ty pleased w itself. Gotta say it was odd to make Joe Brainard a plot point but use his least-typical piece of art (if it even was?), but then have a C Comics cover in a later background. I guess I'm not cool enuf to "dig" it.
I think I can hit the hay. It’s not going to get better than Katherine LaNasa and Jeff Hiller. #emmys
I love Vince Gill but I’d much rather have seen a 3 minute clip of Teri Garr on Letterman #emmys
I cannot imagine how funny Bruce and Jon Landau must find the fact that they’re being played by the 2 most pretentious actors in America in that sad looking movie.
youtube.com/watch?v=c5v4... oh good: still no reason to subscribe to Peacock
The Paper | Official Trailer | Peacock Original
YouTube video by Peacock
youtube.com
Lotta stupid Emmy noms announced this morning (so many for the mildly amusing The Studio?) but at least Katherine LaNasa, central to the pleasures of The Pitt, got nominated.
Illiterate lit musing ("much of the architecture of book discovery is informally targeted at women"). Gee, maybe men (& women!) wd read good books if they were taught literature in school instead of "getting recommendations online from celebrities and influencers." www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/s...
Why Did the Novel-Reading Man Disappear?
nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/b... Hilarious: the closure “came as a shock.” Because we all know what a venerable publishing house TikTok is.
TikTok’s Owner Wanted to Publish Books. Not Anymore.
nytimes.com
Fellow Mouseketeers: Allow me to mention that my review of Sam Tanenhaus's mammoth biography of Wm F. Buckley Jr. will appear in this weekend's edition of Air Mail, the newsletter magazine that deftly massages the mind.
Wonderful John Cameron Mitchell & @nytopinion.nytimes.com repudiating everything the Times has promoted for the past decade. Free article. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/o...
Opinion | Today’s Young People Need to Learn How to Be Punk
nytimes.com