To Hollywood, the “hip-hop kung fu movie” was a short-lived fancy. To me, it was a phenomenon. Jet Li and Aaliyah, 2000’s Romeo and Juliet. Photo: Warner Bros. Jet Li and Aaliyah, 2000’s Romeo and Juliet. Photo: Warner Bros. Jet Li and Aaliyah, 2000’s Romeo and Juliet. On a March night 21 years ago, Hollywood’s latest riff on the Hong Kong action movie Romeo Must Die was having its red carpet premiere at Westwood’s Mann Village Theater.

Sally Field and Justin Theroux in Maniac. Not pictured: The Sucktube. While writing Maniac, creator Patrick Somerville and director Cary Joji Fukunaga invented an ordinary enough character: Dr. James Mantleray, a doctor who oversees a mind-bending pharmaceutical trial that aims to cure mental illness, until it all goes terribly wrong. Then, they decided to cast Justin Theroux. “They admitted, ‘We really want someone with a point of view and a take on it,’” Theroux told Vulture ahead of Maniac’s premiere, adding that aside from the basic story line, Mantleray wasn’t very defined on the page.

During the Rashomon-esque, ninth season episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, “The Gang Saves the Day,” we get a brief glimpse of what each member of the Gang envisions their lives being like after surviving a robbery attempt. In Deandra “Sweet Dee” Reynolds’ (Kaitlin Olson) daydream, the rest of the Gang is dead (by her own hand) and she’s the star of a sitcom where she plays Mr. Covington, a butler to a wealthy family in a mansion far away from Philly.

Superlatives A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers. Superlatives A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers. “I survived with three bloody addicts in a group. But I try not to think of it like that.” The story of the Who has always been the story of society. The volatile intensity of Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon reflected their audience — it was always about their audience — as if they were holding up a cracked mirror to their own experiences with angst, isolation, and rage.

Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage both say killing off Marissa Cooper in the season-three finale of The O.C. was a “terrible mistake.” In a chapter from Alan Sepinwall’s upcoming oral history of the show (excerpted in Vanity Fair) the cast, crew, production, and Television Without Pity commentariat all discuss the reasons Mischa Barton was essentially fired from The O.C. — and why, in hindsight, those reasons sucked. “Any rewatch or reevaluation of a show that came from a time before the present is going to require a tough look at our treatment of women overall,” says recapper Daniel Blau Rogge.

We live in an age of franchise bloat and narrative distension: Why adapt a book into one movie when you could stretch it into two or three, and they could all be three hours long? Save the world, sure, but then you’ve got to save the universe, then the multiverse, then the metaverse, and then you’ve got to blow it all up and start again, with bigger budgets and hotter actors.

Sometimes TV shows drag their unfunny, uninteresting, yet highly rated feet across our living rooms for years. “Who let this happen?” we cry in vain. Other times, the powers that be get things right. That’s where Brilliantly Canceled comes in, looking at the shows that didn’t make it past their first season and saved us all a ton of grief. Writers adapt all types of stories to the screen. Whether they be based on works of fiction, like novels, comics, or plays; myths, handed down from generation to generation; or even real stories that happened to real people.

Lakeith Stanfield. This review originally ran during the Sundance Film Festival. The film industry loves to indulge actors who get the directing bug, for better or worse — you can look at this year’s (or any other) Sundance lineup for proof of that. Sorry to Bother You makes me wish that more musicians did. I’m not sure very many of the resulting films would look like Boots Riley’s rambunctious, surreal comedy, but you can feel the difference in a film whose director is listening to it with the same attentiveness that he’s watching it.

The Real Housewives of New Jersey A Retreat to Remember Season 8 Episode 7 Editor’s Rating 3 stars *** «Previous Next» « PreviousEpisode NextEpisode » The Real Housewives of New Jersey A Retreat to Remember Season 8 Episode 7 Editor’s Rating 3 stars *** «Previous Next» « PreviousEpisode NextEpisode » This week on Jerz, we got more info on Margaret’s story with her kids, and it turns out their rejection has a lot to do with her cheating on her husband.

The Real Housewives of Potomac Stand In Your Truth Season 7 Episode 3 Editor’s Rating 3 stars *** «Previous Next» « PreviousEpisode NextEpisode » The Real Housewives of Potomac Stand In Your Truth Season 7 Episode 3 Editor’s Rating 3 stars *** «Previous Next» « PreviousEpisode NextEpisode » We have officially made it to episode three and have yet to see any Potomac taglines.