FrumForum | Building a Conservatism that can win again

TLC Reveals the Lives of `All-American Muslims'

A new and very different kind of reality show that will be premiering this Sunday night at 10pm (ET/PT) on TLC--one that is perhaps the flip-side of Sarah Palin's recent reality show--called All-American Muslim. (We'll be giving the show a full review the week after next, Nov 18th, after we look at …

Written by Telly Davidson on Friday November 11, 2011

Looking Back at `America in Primetime'

For the next month, starting this Sunday, PBS takes a most interesting four-week look back at America in Primetime, a production of the late Peter Jennings' Documentary Group, in association with the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. The series appropriately coincides not only with …

Written by Telly Davidson on Friday October 28, 2011

Advice From The Younger Generation

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Written by Bea Frum on Friday August 19, 2011

How Oprah Became the Queen of Television

Few if any performers in history had the kind of impact that the Queen of Daytime has had on society, politics, and culture both high and low. When Chris Rock joked, “Look at the most powerful person in the world – and President Obama is sitting next to her!” at the December 2010 Kennedy Center …

Written by Telly Davidson on Friday May 27, 2011

HBO Takes on Wall Street

HBO's latest must-see, a film adaptation of "Too Big To Fail", takes us back to 2008 when the economic crisis we're still trying to escape from first shook Wall Street. In the spring of 2008, just as the wheels were starting to come off of Wall Street, HBO presented a movie about how the Bush era …

Written by Telly Davidson on Friday May 20, 2011

Goodbye, Michael Scott

With their pointless jobs and unimportant lives, the characters of The Office have managed to remind us of how replaceable we all are. In Michael Moore's ultimate propaganda masterpiece, Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore rhetorically asked how someone who got as many things wrong as Timothy …

Written by Telly Davidson on Friday May 6, 2011

Reality TV's First Family

HBO's new film "Cinema Verite" looks at the groundbreaking 1970s PBS series "An American Family", a show which blurred the line between fiction and real life. Today, (supposedly) "reality" shows that cynically and purposefully manipulate very real people into pre-arranged situations for maximum …

Written by Telly Davidson on Friday April 22, 2011

Telly Davidson: Anchors Away!

With Katie Couric leaving CBS News, the era of the big name news anchor is coming to an end. But will anyone even miss it? Breaking news! This just in! Katie Couric is likely to leave the CBS Evening News after five years for a probable syndicated talk show (not unlike her CNN colleague, …

Written by Telly Davidson on Friday April 15, 2011

Whose Story Does the Kennedy Biopic Really Tell?

This weekend will be the premier of the new miniseries about The Kennedy's, but should a biopic really try to cover a person's entire life? This Sunday, April 3 (at 8:00pm), after a protracted delay, the niche cable movie channel Reelz Network will rescue the controversial miniseries on America's …

Written by Telly Davidson on Saturday April 2, 2011

Kennedy Biopic is Bad, Not Slanted

The problem with the new Kennedy biopic isn't the slant of the history, it's just bad television. It's doesn't last a thousand days like the Kennedy Administration. It only feels like it does. "The Kennedys" miniseries, abruptly dropped by the History Channel amid hints of none too subtle …

Written by Tim Hodgson on Saturday April 2, 2011

We're All Charlie Sheen's Enablers

In the past, we wanted our stars and politicians to be larger than life, like American royalty. Now, we want to watch when they spin out of control. I'll ask the question myself. Why, when there is revolution in Egypt and Libya, a horrifying tsunami and earthquake in Japan, and a legislative …

Written by Telly Davidson on Friday March 11, 2011

Why Watch Cable?

As a sometime talking head on CNN, I'm arguing against interest here - but Friday was a day that fully drove home the uselessness of cable news. All day long, cable breathlessly reported the Tiger Woods story, while managing totally to ignore what had actually occurred. As a sometime talking head …

Written by David Frum on Saturday November 28, 2009

Palin's Heartland Appeal

Palin is a phenomenon of our times – arguably the only Republican at the moment with star power. With her book tour bus, complete with her portrait on the side, Palin is taking aim at heartland America – her constituency and a group immune to the appeals of the elite. Sarah Palin is back, using …

Written by Peter Worthington on Friday November 20, 2009

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