Grimm: A cult series in the making?
NBC’s darkly atmospheric Grimm premiered last Friday, blending the good old fashioned police procedural with the legends of the Brothers Grimm in a world that one of the characters assures us ‘is...
Category: Commentary
Once Upon A Time twists the fairy tale… but not far enough.
The first of two fairytale retellings slated for network television charged out of the gate on Sunday night at ABC, where Once Upon A Time put viewers in a world where fairytale characters have lost...
Can The Walking Dead survive a new season?
AMC kicked off its two week-long Fear Fest event on Sunday night with the hotly anticipated season two premiere of The Walking Dead, the zombie apocalypse hit that’s been released to critical...
What if Prince William were gay?
Though Valentine’s Day is celebrated on February 14th, this year perhaps our greatest celebration of love will occur on April 29th when Prince William, son of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, marries...
Editor’s Diary: Moscow expats and “going native”
I met an expat lady at GUM, Moscow's fanciest department store, the other day, and wound up horrifying her. She had asked me for directions in Russian, and I had noticed her accent, and spoke to her...
Editor’s Diary: the moral lesson of a (mildly) bloody restaurant brawl
The other day, I saw a pretty classic drunken fight. I was just at the beginning at what I assumed would be a delicious nap - having drunk a concoction that contained heated-up rum, coconut milk and...
Editor’s Diary: an apology to a Very Random Dude
A few months ago, I insulted someone horribly. Darting about outside in a helpless panic, I had accosted a young man who was, by the looks of him, just trying to get home after a long day. "Do you...
Did Rick Sanchez deserve to be fired?
Jon Stewart has spent quite a bit of time making fun of Rick Sanchez, and this week, Sanchez appeared on the satellite radio show "Stand Up! With Pete Dominick" and fired back. Sanchez called Stewart...
Weeping softly for Yury Luzhkov
It was only a matter of time before ousted Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov became re-cast as the victim of "the dark forces that govern Russia" (as one person put it to me in an e-mail, preferring not to...
Editor’s Diary: Bunin’s legend of the fall
Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin once wrote a brilliant story that is the very definition of "shot." In it, a nobleman riding alone sometime in autumn is nearly run down by a drunk peasant on his horse. The...