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Emily Nussbaum makes the case against Cougar Town in this week’s New York: Courtney Cox’s Jules Cobb is no Samantha Jones. “The Samantha Jones iconography has gone retro, regressing to a Cathy cartoon in heels,” Nussbaum writes. “Jules Cobb, the divorced ninny played by Cox, might date younger men but she’s no cougar. Samantha Jones might have ...

Hanna, I think you’re exactly right that Where The Wild Things Are is alternately too boring and too scary for kids. And as counterintuitive as it might sound to say about a beautifully shot movie featuring overly emotional, jeering, violent, hybrid beasts who bicker, build forts, and knock holes in trees, I think it just might be a failure of ...

Is precociousness always a put on? Or is it possible that some precocious kids, while certainly not as worldly as they seem to be, are as mature as they seem to be? ... (Read more in DoubleX.)

Should you doubt that Melrose Place has a unique purchase on the hearts of longtime television watchers, I direct you to the following positive reviews: “It’s as fresh as yesterday’s daisy,” “It's still not good, mind you, but it's more honest and enthusiastic about its badness, you know?” and “[It’s] operating at the same level of glorious ...

Dana, I have an Inglorious Basterd’s question for you. I saw the movie over the weekend and I loved it—it’s not perfect, by any stretch, but, damn, it was fun—and, unlike you, it didn’t leave me feeling a bit queasy. In your review, your major critique of the film was that Quentin Tarantino, again and again, “unproblematically offers up ...

Did anyone who watched Laura Ling and Euna Lee’s arrival in Burbank this morning not cry? Though the reunion of Lee and her daughter, Hannah, was the bigtime tearjerker, for all the obvious, poignant, mommy-daughter-love-runs-deep reasons, there was another quieter moment that had me dripping tears into my cheerios ... (Read more in Double ...

June, Drop Dead Diva ties together two things we’ve been kicking around the blog the last few days: Is T.V. a better place for women than film?... (Read more in Double X.)

What is television good for? Curbing population growth, of course! Ghulam Nabi Azad, India’s Health and Family Welfare Minister, wants to bring electricity to the most rural parts of his country, in hopes that it will slow down the baby making... (Read more in Double X.)

There was a hugely fascinating article in this weekend's New York Times about a Japanese social phenomenon that needs to be read to be believed: A growing community of men are happily in love with 2-D animated characters. It’s like Lars and The Real Girl, but instead of being in love with anatomically correct dolls, these men are in love with ...

After The Wrestler, Nacho Libre, Rocky, When We Were Kings, and scores of other films about hand to hand combat, you would be forgiven for thinking there’s nothing that could go down in a ring you haven’t seen before. You would be wrong ... (Read more in Double X.)