Movies No, Hollywood films aren't going to get better anytime soon. Mark Harris on the (potential) death of the great American art form You want to understand how bad things are in Hollywood right now—how stifling and airless and cautious the atmosphere is, how little nourishment or encouragement a…
Brian Sutorius
Sean McClure of Craft making a non-alcoholic kumquat-and-fennel smash. Kirsten Luce for The New York Times A column that celebrates drinking should pause every once in a while to celebrate not drinking, given that alcohol is a two-edged sword: catalyst for delight and engine of destruction; handled…
There’s no one friendlier in a housing downturn than a small-town real-estate agent, and David Carter, a suntanned New Zealander with the über-Waspy look of most agents in Malibu, can often be caught smiling from ear to ear. On a recent Saturday, he bounds past a series of real-estate offices and…
The Bluths from Arrested Development. Photograph: 20th CENTURY FOX Have a confusing title Come up with an unwieldy title that perhaps comes from the realm of psychology, so that the title of your show is almost instantly forgettable. For example, if you were to call the show "Welcome Matt", an…
How a late-night Luddite accidentally fought his way back into bedrooms (and computers, smartphones, and tablets) across America. Conan O’Brien is in his bedroom. It’s a little bit past 11 p.m., and he’s shyly, hesitantly, nervously attempting to do his first webcast. But he keeps getting…
GQ Style Grooming Women Entertainment Culture Video Subscribe Now Get the magazine Get Even More GQ this month 12 Issues for $12 Let's do it Newsletter Search Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy Fall Trends 15 Standout Suede Jackets That'll Upgrade Any Outfit 17 Photos Travel in Style…
“Nothing is funnier than Karl in a corner, being poked by a stick. I am that stick.” Every episode of An Idiot Abroad opens with this quote from Ricky Gervais. And that’s exactly what happens. For one hour, every Saturday night at 10pm on the Discovery Science channel, Gervais and his producing…
It was 1994, and Miramax, a New York company which had risen from nowhere to bestride the independent-film world like the proverbial colossus, was on the eve of its golden age. Founded in 1979 by the notorious Weinstein brothers, Harvey and Bob, Miramax had gained its footing in 1989 with the…
FLIP: A Column About Skateboarding
Joel Rice is still coping with the sobering reality that he never became a professional skateboarder. He now writes this column about skateboarding and is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. In addition, his work has appeared in the Believer, ESPN The Magazine, the…
Abusive Games Most bad games don't try to be bad. But these games deliberately test your patience by taking a single game mechanic and make it hard to endure. For more information about abusive game design, see this academic paper and presentation by Douglas Wilson and Miguel Sicart at the…
The onetime improvisational comedian wants to prove that the social network can make money. Reporting from San Francisco — Before embarking on a career as a technology entrepreneur, Dick Costolo took part in an improvisational comedy troupe in Chicago that relied on quick wits to spontaneously prove…
On my list of horrendously bungled acquisitions, I put Delicious near the top. Since its acquisition by Yahoo in 2005, the biggest user-facing change to the site was a visual refresh in 2008. Even with this rampant feature stagnation, I’d stuck with the site because it solved a daily need for me —…
On July 11th, 2010, Tom Gerhardt and I had an idea for an iPhone accessory: a tripod mount that doubled as a stand. Five months later, customers began to receive our product, the Glif , in the mail. This turnaround, from idea to market in five months by two guys with no retail or manufacturing…
N o matter what your opinion of the now notorious online “ thesis ” of the recent Duke graduate Karen Owen—a comprehensive and often pornographic report on her sexual encounters with 13 athletes, most of them lacrosse players—you have to admit that it was a terrible PowerPoint . That program is…
Books of The Times New! Improved! Shape Up Your Life! Sign In to E-Mail Print The New York Times Book Review’s advice and miscellaneous best-seller list — the place where self-help books go to eyeball one another — is a boisterous rolling carnival of hustlers and hacks and optimists and jokers, with…
About Projects w Opinion Talks December 28, 2010 URL Design You should take time to design your URL structure. If there’s one thing I hope you remember after reading this article it’s to take time to design your URL structure. Don’t leave it up to your framework. Don’t leave it up to chance. Think…
Dewey Nicks for The New York Times “I know where we’re going. I just don’t know where the hell we’re parking.” A moment ago, Peter Principato had been on his Bluetooth, cheerily talking to someone named Tucker about a meeting with someone named Chad. We spent four minutes circling a three-block…
The office on The Office is a fairly inclusive place — African-American, Indian-American, alcoholic, or evangelist, all may work together more or less harmoniously. Kelly Kapoor (Mindy Kaling), for instance, is one of the most fully realized minority characters on television right now: a woman whose…
version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"? By May 14, 2016 In the winter of 1965, writer Gay Talese arrived in Los Angeles with an assignment from Esquire to profile Frank Sinatra. The legendary singer was approaching fifty, under the weather, out of sorts, and unwilling to be interviewed. So…
Editor’s note : Contributor J on Evans is an author and software engineer. He hails from the Great White North, but we let him write here anyway. Report from the app-development trenches: it’s gettin’ kinda crazy out there. I’ve lost track of how many NDAs I’ve signed this year from people with app…
To whom it may concern:
I have always loved humor and laughter. As a young engineer I got an impulse to start a Dial-a-Joke in the San Jose/San Francisco area. I was aware of such humor services in other countries, such as Australia. This idea came from my belief in laughter. I could scarcely…
HBO Ricky Gervais Ricky Gervais is the writer and star of HBO’s “Ricky Gervais Out of England 2: The Stand-Up Special.” To go to his website click here . Why don’t you believe in God? I get that question all the time. I always try to give a sensitive, reasoned answer. This is usually awkward, time…
Yesterday, we heard from some professional comedy scribes who are prolific joke writers on Twitter . Today’s segment will feature thoughts and insights from Twitter-savvy performers (all of whom also write) you might know from their stand-up, film or television work. Other than the escalating…
Here’s some music to enjoy while reading this article. You know, for ambiance! (Note: This isn’t just a ploy to get you to listen to songs from the Community soundtrack. Honest.) There’s a kind of demented brilliance to Community . It’s something I’ve been accepting of since early in the show’s…
Kevin Van Aelst When my grandmother was old and frail, my job was to run movies between her apartment and the corner video store. It wasn’t easy to choose movies for her. She was close to death, and she didn’t want a film that might upset her. That ruled out drama. But even comedies have conflicts.…
LOS ANGELES -- There are some dangerous places to be in the world. Inside Ron Artest 's Cadillac Escalade is one of them. Inside Ron Artest's brain is another. We're about to spend 16 hours inside both. Friday, Dec. 3 : 7:15 a.m. -- Yes, Ron Artest is crazy. Crazy people think Ron Artest is crazy.…
Jed Jacobsohn for The New York Times EARLY IN A GAME last month against Washington, a running back for the University of Oregon ’s powerhouse football team darted through a small opening on the right side of the line, then cut smartly upfield for a seven-yard gain and a first down. A typical-enough…
Posted on December 2, 2010 It only seems right for me to begin this blog with the topic that inspired me to start it in the first place. Not too long ago, I came across Jamey Pittman’s “Pac-Man Dossier” , which is a ridiculously-detailed explanation of the mechanics of Pac-Man. I found it absolutely…
OTL: Believeland ESPN: Home | OTL LEVELAND -- There is a burly, angry man with a Chief Wahoo tattoo on the inside of his left forearm, and he knows I work for ESPN. That makes me the devil. We are standing inside the Cleveland Cavaliers locker room not long after their first game without LeBron…
“Every relationship is just so tenuous,” David says. “One tiny miscommunication or mistake and it could be all over.” Credit Illustration by Steve Brodner At the end of the nineteen-eighties, Larry David was a standup comic in trouble. He was middle-aged, single, living in a building with subsidized…
Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2010 The Men Who Stole the World A decade ago, four young men changed the way the world works. They did this not with laws or guns or money but with software: they had radical, disruptive ideas, which they turned into code, which they released on the Internet for free. These four…
Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Image 1 of 10 Google Chief Doodler Michael Lopez demonstrates the process of how a doodle is created at Google in Mountain View, Calif. on Tuesday August 20, 2010. Google Chief Doodler Michael Lopez demonstrates the process of how a…
GQ Style Grooming Women Entertainment Culture Video Subscribe Now Get the magazine Get Even More GQ this month 12 Issues for $12 Let's do it Newsletter Search Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy The Great American Art-cation How to See All the Best Art in America (While Having a…
The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Saturday July 31 2004 In the article below, we said that Margaret Thatcher had declared that there was no such thing as society sometime shortly before the 1983 election. She made the statement in an…
Collections The Most Innovative Companies The top 50 companies in entertainment, media, sports, technology, and more. Most Creative People Meet this year's inspiring leaders. Innovation By Design A showcase for ingenious design solutions. World Changing Ideas New workplaces, new food sources, new…
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