Leigh Finnegan
Idiot Box: The renaissance of reality TV
Earlier this week, I kept running into news about the all-important story of the week: Gene Simmons is getting married. Well, not actually—apparently the ceremony already happened on October 1. But on Monday and Tuesday, Simmons’s wedding was televised in a two-night special edition of his reality show, Gene Simmons Family Jewels.
By Leigh Finnegan October 19, 2011
Gainsbourg is the trip of a lifetime
Toward the beginning of Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life, the biopic’s subject, little Lucien Ginsberg, later to become the prolific and infamous singer/songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, is bopping down the streets of Nazi-occupied Paris. The Jewish son of Russian parents, Lucien is surrounded by frightening posters of anti-Semitic propaganda, featuring a large-headed, caricatured Jewish man with insulting French slurs written across the bottom. As Lucien walks by, the figure in the poster springs to life and climbs out of the portrait—a jarring moment for the audience, but not for Lucien. The figure, a Tim Burton-esque, short-legged cartoon strolling the real-life Parisian streets, interacts with the boy, who does nothing to hint that this is outside of an everyday occurrence.
By Leigh Finnegan October 13, 2011
Idiot Box: The truth about the Bluths
This past weekend, Christmas came early for television fans. No, I don’t mean that networks suddenly decided to air March of the Wooden Soldiers and re-run the 2004 classic Nick and Jessica’s Family Christmas. This was, quite possibly, even better.
By Leigh Finnegan October 6, 2011
Idiot Box: The sitcom that wasn’t shit
This week, the Internet has been abuzz with Emmy reactions. “Game of Thrones!” “Why didn’t Mad Men get any acting awards?” “Why do people still think Glee is funny?” But among all this hubbub, when you actually look at the winners, something fascinating comes to light—the night’s most successful show wasn’t a high-budget cable period piece, or a tried-and-true office comedy, or a bloody, serial killer drama (I know Dexter season five sucked, but seriously, Michael C. Hall deserves at least a pat on the back). It was…a network family sitcom?
By Leigh Finnegan September 22, 2011
Idiot Box: AMC plays the Bad guy
Imagine a character, one you’ve had three long seasons to grow deeply invested in, aiming a gun at another character. Your guy isn’t perfect, and you’ve seen him act in less-than-lawful manners before, but he’s been through a lot, and it reads in his terrified eyes while he holds a gun to a defenseless man’s head. He pulls the trigger, and the screen goes black. End of season three.
By Leigh Finnegan September 8, 2011
Girls, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, True Panther Sounds
Of the litany of complaints that doctors and educators have made about the tolls of the technological age on American youth, one of the most prominent is the obvious shortening of our national attention span. But if Father, Son, Holy Ghost, the sophomore album from San Francisco indie duo Girls, meets any kind of acclaim or success, our nation can rest easy that many of its youngsters are superhumanly attentive—because getting through Holy Ghost’s tediously repetitive 57 minutes in one sitting is enough to make anyone feel like a fifth grader trapped in Catechism.
By Leigh Finnegan August 26, 2011
Idiot Box: Baked and Wire-d
During pre-registration a few weeks ago, I was hell-bent on taking one specific philosophy class. It seems odd, considering that I’m not a philosophy major, and generally find the subject to be a pointless, theoretical pain in the ass. But the title of this class alone was enough to make me, and, my guess is, a good chunk of the television-watching population of Georgetown, slide it all the way at the top of my pre-reg list—“Philosophy and The Wire”.
By Leigh Finnegan April 28, 2011
Meet Metsu at Nat’l Gallery
Gabriel Metsu was a dog person. Sure, he was other things too—a prodigy, a technical master, a champion of capturing human emotion with a paintbrush, and, despite not even living to 40, one of the most prolific of the impressive band of seventeenth-century Dutch painters. But looking at the paintings in Gabriel Metsu, a new exhibition on display in the National Gallery of Art’s East Building, it’s clear that the artist really loved man’s best friend.
By Leigh Finnegan April 13, 2011
Critical Voices: TV on the Radio, Nine Types of Light
When trying to woo a woman, every man has a different game plan. There’s the flowers-and-candy set, the outside-her-window-with-a-stereo tactic, and, of course, the ever-popular love song. Although they don’t specify exactly whom they’re attempting to snag, on Nine Types of Light, TV on the Radio is apparently opting for this last approach. But before you think that everyone’s favorite Brooklyn experimental outfit has gone soft, be warned that this isn’t your typical acoustic-guitar love-rock—TV remains true to itself the whole way through, blasting their lamenting and lovelorn lyrics with explosions of carefully structured chaos that no indie-loving girl could resist.
By Leigh Finnegan April 13, 2011
M&B is in too deep with Rabbit Hole
From its opening scene, you might expect Rabbit Hole, Mask & Bauble’s latest production, to be the stage version of a gender-reversed Knocked Up. Izzie, a carefree woman-child clad in a Beatles t-shirt and skinny jeans, recounts her most recent bar fight to Becca, her tightly-wound older sister. After Becca gives her a verbal slap on the wrist for profanity and some motherly chiding about her partying lifestyle, Izzie reveals the reason for her alcohol-fueled altercation—she is pregnant by the woman’s boyfriend.
By Leigh Finnegan March 31, 2011