Browsing: Cinema & TV

A Brief History On June 10, 2016, 22 year old internet singing sensation Christina Grimmie was shot to death at an autograph signing after a concert in Orlando, Florida.  The beautiful Grimmie rode her beautiful voice to third place on the 6th season of the television singing contest, The Voice. Digging Deeper A 27 year old Florida man, James Loibl, shot the singer 3 times before being tackled by Grimmie’s brother.  Loibl then shot and killed himself during the struggle, his motives unknown at the time of this article. Grimmie had won a variety of music industry awards and had…

Read More

A Brief History Based on the British equivalent of the real life Amityville Horror referred to as the Enfield Poltergeist, the major motion picture The Conjuring 2 is set to open on Friday, June 10, 2016. Digging Deeper Having seen an advance screening (“screaming?”) of the film, we can assure ghost movie buffs of a solid treat with high production value. The casting, acting, and special effects are up to high industry standards, and the serious attempt to portray much of what happened during the real events in a run down section of Enfield, England from 1977 to 1979 give…

Read More

A Brief History On June 5, 1956, the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, introduced what would become his top selling hit, “Hound Dog,” on The Milton Berle Show, an early television favorite. Digging Deeper Elvis’s performance included exaggerated gyrations that drove the girls in the audience wild, and enraged parents and prudes across the country.  By this time Elvis had a number 1 hit with “Heartbreak Hotel” and was touring, continuing to draw animosity from the conservative media and prompting the Catholic Church (La Crosse, Wisconsin diocese) to contact J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI about Elvis being a threat…

Read More

A Brief History The once wildly popular Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert airing at 11 PM and 11:30 PM (Eastern Time) on weeknights on Comedy Central have flopped miserably with the replacement hosts. Digging Deeper Trevor Noah took over the Daily Show from Jon Stewart on September 28, 2015 and Larry Wilmore’s The Nightly Show replaced The Colbert Report on January 19, 2015. Since losing Stephen Colbert to network television as the host of CBS’s The Late Show, Wilmore has seen ratings in that time frame drop by a whopping 55% (as of…

Read More

A Brief History On May 9, 1961, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Newton Minow, shocked Americans by declaring commercial television programming to be a “vast wasteland.”  And you thought TV today was lousy! Digging Deeper Appointed as Chairman of the FCC by President Kennedy, Newton was giving his first speech in office to the National Association of Broadcasters, not exactly the audience likely to agree with him.  Minow went on to rail against all the game shows, slapstick comedies, phony portrayals of family life and the violence, which though tame by our modern standards, must have been shocking…

Read More