Along with killing it as the star of Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Elisabeth Moss co-stars in the new boxing biopic Chuck as Phyliss, the long-suffering first wife of human punching bag and inspiration for Rocky Chuck “The Bayonne Bleeder” Wepner. In his review, our film editor A.A. Dowd…
There really was a Rocky Balboa. Well, sort of. His name was Chuck Wepner, and when he wasn’t throwing punches in the ring, he sold liquor in New Jersey. In the mid-’70s, the “Bayonne Bleeder,” so nick-named for his habit of absorbing a lot of blows to the face, was at the right weight at the right time to score an…
Generally, movies that tell the “real version” of some other story are cheap and desperate attempts to remake or cash in on a popular thing. But those “real versions” are also rarely lucky enough to be able to include Sylvester Stallone as a character in their narrative. Director Philippe Falardeau’s Chuck gets to do…
Months before his death last Saturday, Chuck Berry announced that he was working on a new album, his first in more than 20 years. Earlier this week, his family confirmed that Chuck was on its way, and now, they’ve released the first single from the upcoming set.
Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Monday, December 12. All times are Eastern.
Chuck Berry, the man whose very name John Lennon suggested as a synonym for rock ’n’ roll, is celebrating his 90th birthday today with the surprise announcement of a new album. Scheduled for release in 2017 on the Nashville-based Dualtone Records label, Chuck will be “comprised primarily of new, original songs…
In an effort to both serve our readers and help support The A.V. Club, we are going to post daily links to deals and interesting items that we find over on Amazon. If you use these links to click through and buy something—not just the thing you clicked—on Amazon, we will see a portion of that income. You don’t have to…
For most of the history of television, the barrier to syndication—and to profitability—has been 100 episodes. The shows that have made it to that mark are an unusual group. Many were big hits. Some found small cult audiences. Still others just hung on as best they could and never posted numbers quite low enough to be…
Cancellations have always hurt.
From its origins in the United Kingdom, pub quiz (or bar trivia, if you want to be crass about it) has combined two much-loved activities into a single popular pastime: the drinking of alcohol and the recitation of useless facts. Week in and week out, thousands of people in the U.K. and the United States gather…
It's been a year and a half since Chuck went off the air, and that show's creative team has finally recuperated from its constant-threat-of-cancellation stress and is back in the saddle. Executive producer Matt Miller and writer Zev Borow are re-teaming for a third time (after working together on the also-canceled …
“Safe” and “Cracking Ice” (season three, episodes seven and eight; originally aired 4/20/2004 and 4/27/2004)
If you come to my apartment (and please, stop on by) you’ll quickly figure out that I love the television program Gilmore Girls. Its first six seasons are prominently stacked underneath my TV (we can talk about the seventh season some other time). I’ve watched the damn thing through several times, encouraged my…
Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what roles we’ll ask them to talk about.
Your pop-culture resolutions for 2013 focused on stuff you finally plan on getting around to this year, which made me wonder, are there any cultural touchstones you’d like to get into, but that seem too extensive to even start? For me, this includes Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and the Comedy Bang! Bang! podcasts. I’m sure…
There’s so much good TV on right now that it’s impossible to confine to one list of 30 shows. As always, we’ve come up with a supplemental list of our favorite episodes of many other series that contended for our main list, but just fell short. After catching up on the top 30, follow up with these to figure out the…
With the tear Dexter has been on since the season began, it was easy to forget that a lull had to come at some point. “Do The Wrong Thing” certainly feels like a lull, though it has more than enough solid moments to justify its existence, and it wasn’t a chore to watch. More than that—and this is where I start to…
The New Normal debuts tonight on NBC at 10 p.m. Eastern. It moves to its regular timeslot—9:30 p.m. Eastern—on Tuesday.
Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what roles we’ll ask them to talk about.
If you were going to create a TV network that catered to the modern TV fan, it would be a network that aired lots of heavily serialized shows that were addictive and engrossing once you got into them. It would be a network that cared less about immediate Nielsen ratings and more about DVR plays and (even better)…
