Tim Appelo
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Articles by Tim Appelo
Get Ready for the Best TV Shows of Fall 2025
Ethan Hawke stars in "The Lowdown," coming to FX Sept. 23. Shane Brown/FX From the networks to the streaming giants, there’s a whole new crop of comedies, dramas and documentaries in the pipeline. Here’s what to look forward to in the coming months. Black Rabbit (Netflix, Sept. 18) In a star-studded thriller series set in New York’s bustling nightlife, Jude Law, 52, and Jason Bateman, 56, play estranged brothers pushed to the edge.
Highlights of the 2025 Tony Awards
Audra McDonald performs a number from "Gypsy" during The 78th Annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall on June 8, 2025 in New York City. Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions Facebook Twitter LinkedIn “Broadway is officially back,” crowed host Cynthia Erivo at the Tony Awards June 8.
Summer Movie Preview 2025: The 15 Movies We Can't Wait to See
As director Francois Truffaut once said, “It’s a beautiful day — let’s see a movie!” Keep track of the sunny season’s new batch of movies, and when they’ll arrive in theaters and on streaming platforms, with our critics’ guide.
Adventures in Writing: Remembering Seattle Journalist Eric Scigliano, 71
[Editor’s Note: Eric wrote 59 stories for Post Alley. You can read them here.] Seattle author, reporter and editor Eric Scigliano, 71, who died last week in a diving accident in the Galapagos Islands, won’t be forgotten by his enormous network of friends in the local news community, who’ve recently gathered online and in person to tell Eric stories for hours.
Summer 2024 Movies: 16 Films We Can’t Wait to See
Article audio is made possible by CAST11 Prescott Podcast Network. A Talking Glass Media production. Summer 2024 is bringing some fun and exciting new movies to check out and as Director Francois Traffault once said, “It’s a beautiful day – let’s see a movie!” Keep track of the sunny season’s new batch of movies, and when they’ll arrive in theaters and on streaming platforms, with the AARP critics’ guide.
The 75 Most Unforgettable Moments in TV History
VIDEO: Things You Didn’t Know About 7 Iconic TV Moments Facebook Twitter LinkedIn In 1920, farmer Philo T. Farnsworth gazed at the parallel lines he’d plowed in his beet field and had an inspired thought: electrons could be lined up on a tube and transmit images. His “Image Dissector” invention helped create the TV industry, and we’ve been glued to the tube ever since America’s top radio star, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, made his — and the industry’s — telecast debut in 1939.
What to Watch on TV, Streaming and at the Movies This Week
Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl. Courtesy of Roadside Attractions Facebook Twitter LinkedIn What’s on this week? Whether it’s what’s on cable, streaming on Prime Video or Netflix, or opening at your local movie theater, we’ve got your must-watch list. Start with TV and scroll down for movies. It’s all right here. Giving back/Volunteering Volunteer with AARP Join AARP’s community of volunteers and donate your time and talent.
What to Watch on TV, Streaming and at the Movies This Week
Gary Oldman stars in "Slow Horses." Apple TV+ Facebook Twitter LinkedIn What’s on this week? Whether it’s what’s on cable, streaming on Prime Video or Netflix, or opening at your local movie theater, we’ve got your must-watch list. Start with TV and scroll down for movies. It’s all right here.
Who Will Win Gerry’s Heart? “Golden Bachelor” Experts Share Their Predictions
Plus, their picks for the Golden Bachelorette. When The Golden Bachelor premiered earlier this fall, we fell in love. Not just with single septuagenarian Gerry Turner, 72, but with the contestants, the stories, and the way this show seemed to veer away from Bachelor’s past. These women seemed to treat each other differently than their younger predecessors — with more respect and admiration. The connections came across as more genuine, without a lot of the fame-seeking the show tends to include.
At Last, Grownups Get Their Own Dating Show, ‘The Golden Bachelor’
ABC Facebook Twitter LinkedIn If you like the reality shows The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and Bachelor in Paradise, get ready for the most intriguing spinoff of all: The Golden Bachelor, focusing on, you guessed it, seniors looking for love. The show will premiere this fall on ABC, right after Dancing with the Stars on Monday nights.
Errol Flynn: Death of the Tasmanian Devil
The original "Robin Hood" actor is still remembered for his wicked, wicked ways 34 years after his death By Tim Appelo Updated October 15, 1993 at 04:00 AM EDT Errol Flynn got his start in Hollywood in 1935, playing a corpse in The Case of the Curious Bride. ”Some people claim it was my best role,” he quipped, but it wasn’t his only meaningful relationship with a cadaver.
The Truth About John Hughes and Dede Allen
Frequent TOH contributor Tim Appelo sets the record straight on John Hughes, Dede Allen and Planes, Trains and Automobiles: I blabbed, Anne blogged. Sipping Cari Beauchamp’s excellent Prosecco, I told her brunch guests that Dede Allen secretly edited the end of Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
The strange saga of ''The New York Post''
The strange saga of ''The New York Post'' -- Is this the death of the nation's oldest tabloid, or a movie in the making? By Tim Appelo Updated April 02, 1993 at 05:00 AM EST Post Script ”It’s like a Frank Capra movie!” says dazed New York Post newshound Bill Hoffmann, in one of countless movie comparisons the paper’s current perils have inspired among staffers.
HOLIDAY MOVIES; This Scot's English Is All Over the Map
HOLIDAY MOVIES Nov. 3, 2002 See the article in its original context from November 3, 2002, Section A, Page 2Buy Reprints TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. FOR most movie actors, turning 49 is scary. To the Scottish-born actor Brian Cox, it seemed like a smart time to move to Hollywood. That was in 1995, and since then he has been in more than 30 movies.
Michael Crichton's ''Jurassic Park''
Michael Crichton's ''Jurassic Park'' -- The author's new novel assembles a cast of rampaging dinosaurs to illustrate the dangers of genetic engineering By Tim Appelo Updated December 07, 1990 at 05:00 AM EST Fanged, eight-ton carnivores have been kind to Michael Crichton. Their colorful lives inspired his latest thriller, Jurassic Park, a novel about a theme park stocked with dinosaurs cloned from fossils by clever geneticists, whom the dinosaurs ungratefully regard as lunch meat.
The death of Janis Joplin
The death of Janis Joplin -- In 1970, the rock and blues singer overdosed and became the stuff of legend By Tim Appelo Updated October 02, 1992 at 04:00 AM EDT Despite all the full-tilt-boogie myths about her life, it’s not true that Janis Joplin — whose larynx-shredding singing style (as on 1968’s ”Piece of My Heart”) made the blues turn blood-red — never found a drug she didn’t like.
A culture explosion in Fort Greene
In a Brooklyn pizzeria, a black man called Buggin’ Out eyes the photos of Sinatra and DiMaggio that proudly line the walls and says to the owner, ”Hey Sal! How come you have no brothers up on the wall here?” *”You want brothers on the wall?” Sal retorts. ”Get your own place, you can do what you want.” *A few blocks away from where this scene from Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing was shot, ambitious young African-Americans have been doing just that.
The two faces of Steve Martin
L.A. Story This is Steve Martin’s brain: sane, sober, relentlessly reflective. This is Steve Martin’s brain on stage: sizzling with skewed humor, shish-kebabed by a magic-trick arrow, wild and you-know-what. Of course, Martin hasn’t been on stage lately. His new film, L.A. Story, is worlds away from the fall-down-funny stand-up act that made the comedian’s name in the ’70s.
11 Great Broadway Shows and Musicals to Stream Now
Broadway has gone dark, but you can watch hit plays at home. West Side Story (1961) Photo courtesy of Donaldson Collection/Getty Images. The trendy 2020 Broadway revival is closed and Spielberg's new movie version won't arrive until later this year, but Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein's Oscar-winning original film (directed by Robert Wise) will make you like to be in America. Rita Moreno steals many scenes, and Natalie Wood is terrific as the Puerto Rican Juliet of Hell's Kitchen.
Criminals can receive entertainment royalties
can receive entertainment royalties -- By overturning ''Son of Sam,'' the Supreme Court rules that crime can pay By Tim Appelo Updated January 10, 1992 at 05:00 AM EST A few weeks ago, ending a 14-year era, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down New York State’s ”Son of Sam” law by awarding ex-Mafia goon Henry Hill a cut of the profits from the book Wiseguy and the movie GoodFellas, which tell Hill’s life story.
Behind the scenes at CNN
Behind the scenes at CNN -- The ''chicken noodle network'' proves itself with its impressive coverage of the Gulf War By Tim Appelo February 01, 1991 at 05:00 AM EST It was the most-watched event in TV history, and CNN owned it. Within minutes of the first bomb-burst over Baghdad, the Cable News Network achieved total air superiority over the networks, and held it until Iraq temporarily shut down the news operation some 16 hours later.
Remembering Scott Timberg
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DECEMBER 16, 2019 SCOTT TIMBERG, the polymath arts journalist with a fierce love for the city of Los Angeles and a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of music and literature, died on December 10. He was 50. The cause was suicide, said the family.
By Tom Zoellner, Lynell George, Stanton Hall, Richard Thompson, Charles McNulty Verified, Janet Fitch, Steve Wasserman, Ted Gioia, Andy Hermann, Joe Donnelly Verified, Bill Holdship, Tony Ortega Verified, Tim Appelo, Dean Kuipers, Alissa Quart, Robert George, Willis Peter Bilderback, Jeffrey Turrentine Verified, Dana Gioia
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Los Angeles Review of Books
Verified
John Singleton: One of 1991's great entertainers
In a year full of high-profile films by black directors, ''Boyz N the Hood'' was the year's boldest film By Tim Appelo December 27, 1991 at 05:00 AM EST When John Singleton was a kid in South Central Los Angeles, police helicopters would swoop down several nights a week hunting for criminals in the streets. It’s a memory that elicits powerful emotions, but Singleton’s feelings are not primarily fear or horror.
''Presumed Innocent'''s Alan Pakula
''Presumed Innocent'''s Alan Pakula -- We talk to the director about bringing best-sellers to life By Tim Appelo August 10, 1990 at 04:00 AM EDT In Presumed Innocent, the smash new movie based on Scott Turow’s 1987 best-seller, the stupefyingly beautiful actress Greta Scacchi plays a fiery prosecuting attorney with a fatal taste for the bizarre.
Brandon Lee's death: Is moviemmaking dangerous?
The recent tragedy on ''The Crow'' spurs concern over the safety of nonunion film sets Would Brandon Lee be alive today if The Crow had been filming in unionized New York or California rather than in North Carolina, a nonunion, right-to-work state?
Alicia Ostriker
Poet, critic, and activist Alicia Ostriker was born in 1937 in New York City. She earned degrees from Brandeis and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Twice a finalist for the National Book Award, Ostriker has published numerous volumes of poetry, including Waiting for the Light (2017), which awarded the Berru Award from the Jewish Book Council, and The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog (2014), The Book of Seventy (2009), which received the Jewish National Book Award.
BOOKS IN BRIEF: FICTION & POETRY
MORE LIKE WRESTLING By Danyel Smith. Crown, $23.95. ''More Like Wrestling'' has a lyrical lilt and an original take on '80s crack culture: it treats trigger-happy dealers as regular people, not pious symbols or gangsta-flick clichés. In her first novel, Danyel Smith gives the fast kids of Oakland, Calif. (or Cokeland, as residents call it), family ties as heart-tugging as Tony Soprano's, and she reveals their folkways and self-deceptions with a save-the-drama-for-Mama knowingness.
Top 50 Film Schools of 2018 Ranked, From USC to ASU
This ranking of the top film schools first appeared in the special College Issue of TheWrap magazine. TheWrap’s third annual ranking of film schools was determined by an anonymous poll of almost 1,000 entertainment industry insiders, educators, deans, filmmakers and film pundits, along with a variety of experts tasked with evaluating each school’s achievements. The verdict: USC is No, 1 again, with AFI recovering from staff turmoil to rise to No 2.
Swank and Danner bring their caregiving experience to new film
At first, Blythe Danner and Hilary Swank seem utterly different as you watch them chatting together in a vast white room in Manhattan on a fine summer morning. Swank, 44, a former high school gymnastics champ who grew up in a trailer park in Washington state, is direct, peppy, coachlike. “Make a choice about the optimism you want to bring into your life!” she exhorts us at one point.
Elinor Wylie
Poet and novelist Elionor Wylie was born in Somerville, New Jersey to a socially prominent family, and grew up in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, and Washington D.C. As the daughter of a lawyer who later became solicitor general of the United States, she was trained for the life of a debutante and a society wife, but she rebelled against that destiny and became notorious, in her time, for her multiple marriages and affairs.
Terry's Gift | Portland Monthly
On the night he died, Terry Toedtemeier took the stage before yet another audience to talk about his life’s work, photography. Nearly two hundred people had crowded into the Columbia Center for the Arts in Hood River to hear the Portland Art Museum’s veteran curator of photography, a talented photographer in his own right, speak alongside coauthor John Laursen.
Top 50 Film Schools of 2017 Ranked, From USC to Full Sail
This ranking of top film schools first appeared in the college issue of TheWrap magazine. For TheWrap’s second annual ranking of top film schools, we interviewed industry experts and academics and compiled a list of the top 50 schools. Then we asked 1,457 film educators and industry insiders to rank each one in terms of prestige in an online poll in which the schools’ order was randomized for each voter. All votes were anonymous.
Shameless Shaman
One night in the 1950s, Malcolm Cowley, the Stanford writing teacher who made William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, and Ken Kesey famous, declined his student Kesey's offer of a cup of green hallucinogenic Kool-Aid from a punch bowl billowing sinister clouds of dry-ice smoke. "It looks like the sort of punch that Satan would serve," observed Cowley, who drank Kesey's grandma's Arkansas bootleg whiskey instead.
'Disjointed': Pot Yuks
Most of the jokes are shockingly awful, though now and then one lands, thanks to the talents of Bates and others. But often, when the audience guffaws, you are not sure why. They roar when Jenny (Elizabeth Ho), another budtender, talks to her mom on the phone in Chinese. I'm pretty sure the audience doesn’t know Chinese, but they laughed anyhow. It’s potentially funny that Jenny’s lying to her demanding family about where she works, but her character doesn’t really work.
Daniel Craig Steals 'Logan Lucky'
Those further from AARP membership are all tops, too: Adam Driver as angry one-armed Iraq-vet bartender Clyde Logan; Channing Tatum, who's gone from pumped-up to plumped-up, as Clyde's West Virginia coal-worker brother Jimmy, who needs cash after getting sacked for a pre-existing condition not covered by insurance; and Elvis Presley's granddaughter Riley Keough as their sister and lead-footed driver.
The King of Comedy, Jerry Lewis Dies at 91
The role captured some of his chronic bitterness toward unappreciative parts of the public, especially journalists — whom he called "stupid whores" — and women. He damaged his reputation with sexist statements too stupid to quote. And yet Lewis could be wonderful to coworkers. When he showed up to act in Cookie, Nora Ephron’s mob comedy for director Susan Seidelman, he’d memorized all 50 names of the cast and crew. For everyone he insulted, he may have made somebody else feel like a king.
‘Marjorie Prime’ Movie For Grownups, Movie Review
Bit by bit, we solve — nearly — the mystery locked in Marjorie’s head. If you want to see a Jon Hamm action flick, see Baby Driver. This is a deep dive into the human heart and mind, and the action is all in the acting. Hamm, 46, is as subtle as Jude Law’s robot in Spielberg/Kubrick’s AI or Scarlett Johansson in Her, and the faraway look that made Don Draper famous works well (if differently) here. You buy them as a couple — he helps reveal the girl within.
'The Glass Castle'
Naomi Watts, 48, scores in a smaller but intensely precise performance as Walls’ neglectful, half-mad artist mom, Rose Mary, but her character is a puzzling, remote figure (as the real Rose Mary seems to be in interviews). As millions of readers of Walls’ book know, her real life was stranger than a movie. At age 3, she ignited her dress cooking hot dogs while her oblivious mother painted in the other room.
Grim, Real-Life 'Detroit'
Based on an incident in which cops tortured innocent, mostly black people trapped by the riot in Detroit’s Algiers Hotel, the film is hobbled by the fact that the victim characters are based on real people, while the cops are fictionalized. Brilliant screenwriter Mark Boal had to make them composites, because a sharp lawyer, all-white juries, and a judge got the cops off despite their shifting alibis (even antiblack J. Edgar Hoover said they were obviously liars).
'Mad Men' Meets Old Hollywood
It’s better than Amazon’s series about his wife, Zelda (Z: The Beginning of Everything), and bristles with Mad Men-quality 1930s period detail (not surprising because producer Scott Hornbacher and seven-time Emmy-nominated costume designer Janie Bryant worked on that show, too). The studio-exec hero, Monroe Stahr (Matt Bomer), based on Irving Thalberg, looks more like a young Jon Hamm than Hamm does anymore, and he has a comparably haunted-genius look.
John Goodman's Billion Dollar Career
“I was shooting a movie, Kong: Skull Island, in Australia. I had a three-week Christmas break, so I shot Atomic Blonde [released July 28] in one week in Budapest,” he says. Goodman plays a just-the-facts-ma’am CIA agent debriefing Charlize Theron, a killer action hero. “She’s very funny, very good, very physical in this role,” he says, adding that Theron supplies brawn, while he’s the guy who explains the backstory and what’s going on.
‘Landline’ Is 1990s Cheaters in Love
OK, the setup is familiar, but the dialogue is smart — thanks to young director Gillian Robespierre and co-writer Elisabeth Holm — and the acting makes it fresh. Rising indie comedian Slate (SNL, Parks and Recreation) has quicksilver emotions and an attractively raspy voice that can yield abruptly to helium giggles or affecting woe. Her scenes with Quinn, full of sisterly zingers, are terrific.
WWII Epic ‘Dunkirk’ Outguns ‘Pvt. Ryan’
Even the triumphant finale is antiheroic — instead of hearing Churchill’s “We shall never surrender” speech in his stentorian oration, it’s read sotto voce by a soldier. This emotional abstemiousness may prevent an Oscar success on a par with Saving Private Ryan’s. Oscar likes overt emotion, like Sean Penn shouting, “Is that my daughter?” in Mystic River. Yet it makes the victory seem more hard-earned, rigorously unsentimental.
Emmy Gives a Huge Nod to Actors Over 50
More than 30 actors over 50 are nominated for television Emmy awards this year, more evidence that TV is a place where veteran stars can find a place to do their best work. Television has always been more tolerant of talent with experience (and a few crow’s feet), and its prestige is growing.
2017 Emmy Award Nominee Prediction Picks
TV's Emmy nominations will be announced Thursday, and I predict that dozens of actors over 50 — many longtime favorites among them — will get the nod. The Sept. 17 ceremony in Los Angeles will definitely be worth watching for all the grownup talent in the house.
Spider-Man's a Super Kid
This Spidey knows he’s overeager and underexperienced, and he respects his elders: wiseacre Iron Man, his grousing mentor Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), his bookish Aunt May (Marisa Tomei, who is criminally underutilized in this film) and his nemesis the Vulture (Michael Keaton). Downey’s quipster-hipster persona takes on a rather thoughtful, fatherly cast, and Keaton has a blast as a blue-collar worker impoverished and embittered by corporate ruthlessness.
The Beguiled - Movie Review - Movies For Grownups - AARP
In flattering, flickering candlelight conjured by cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd, whose muted work echoes Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon and The Godfather’s famous dark palette, a highly civil war is fought around the dinner table, within each pulsing heart and among the rivalrous women desiring Farrell against their principles. When Fanning brags about her cooking, telling Farrell, “I hope you like apple pie!” we feel the subtext.
Jazz Musician Tony Bennett Awarded Gershwin Prize
The truth is, Bennett wasn’t always one of the greats. If he had gotten disconsolately high and drowned in a bathtub at age 53 — as he once very nearly did, but his wife found him in the nick of time — he would’ve been nothing but a footnote in history, a one-smash wonder who left his heart in San Francisco in 1962, a lightweight tenor with a superficial style in a world of baritone titans like Sinatra.
The Hero - Movie Review - Movies For Grownups - AARP
Facing his life's sunset, Lee voices commercials to survive and gets high with his pot dealer, an old-time cowboy-show sidekick (laconic Nick Offerman, who costarred with Elliott on the top notch Parks and Recreation). They bond in melancholy, but then in walks another pot customer, stand-up comic Charlotte (Laura Prepon). At 37, she's a pistol, and her chemistry with Elliott is entirely convincing.
Bruce Willis Plays Man of Action in Directionless Film
The screenplay struggles to concentrate on the chase for Willis’ constantly abducted dog, but the chase has no sense of direction, nor do the Cullens. They keep stepping on their own gags, starting with the opening scene, where the hardened youths Willis lectures on the perils of hookers and blow turn out to be little kids.
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