I hope everyone had a great weekend of gorging on Halloween candy then burning off all the calories cheering for your team in the World Series or running the marathon. Now that Halloween is over, I'm starting to hear the beginnings of end-of-year talk—there's chatter of holiday travel plans, people wondering about New Year's Eve, and that sort of thing.

My favorite part about the end of the year is the release of all the year-end “Best Of” lists. (And, since it's 2009, there might even be some “Best of the Decade” lists to look forward to.) And believe it or not, some of these...

Halloween is finally upon us. When this time of year rolls around—and in that brief window between seeing leaves at peak season and seeing Christmas decorations in CVS—I recommend accomplishing these four things:

1. See the Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze

Once you see the thousands of pumpkins aflame on the grounds of Van Cortlandt Manor, your neighbor's best Halloween display—no matter how many cans of spray-on spider-webs are used—will seem like child's play. Expert carvers transform pumpkins into aliens, pirates, witches, fairies, bumblebees, and—my personal favorite—dinosaur skeletons.

If you don't have a chance to see it in person, check out the videos taken by visitors at the

Posted at 02:24 PM | Permalink | Comments: 0

Suddenly, my DVR seems very full. That means some decisions need to be made. Now that the new fall shows have had a chance to hit their strides, it's time to evaluate whether or not they deserve that all-season TiVo pass.

So, what are the season's biggest winners and losers? I looked to Metacritic, that all-important aggregator of critical opinion, to see what the best and worst reviewed new series of the season are.

BEST REVIEWED

Modern Family
Metascore: 86/100
What It Is: This comedy takes the ever-popular, talk-to-the-camera mockumentary format...

There's something strange about horror movies: very few of them come out in October, when the approaching Halloween holiday makes audiences in the mood for them. Think about this year's horror/thriller fare. There was Jennifer's Body (September 18), Sorority Row (September 11), The Final Destination (August 28), A Perfect Getaway (August 7), and, my favorite, Drag Me to Hell (May 29). None of those have a Halloween-friendly release date. When October finally rolled around, the movies became more of a mix of art-house fare and comedies:...

In 42nd Street, the characters are excited to be cast in a new Broadway musical, not just because of their careers, but because the economy is bad and they're grateful for the jobs. Sound familiar at all? Luckily, even if you haven't been touched by the recession, the Westchester Broadway Theatre's production of 42nd Street gives you a lot for your money—lots of singing, lots of dancing, and lots and lots of fun.

Right from the very beginning, the talented ensemble cast comes out to perform a dance number, ostensibly the characters' auditions for the new musical. The dancers trot out a...

A few weeks into the school year, do your young scholars seem a little bit sharper than they had over the mind-melting summer? They don't have to be the only ones getting the back-to-school brain tune-up.

Don't get me wrong, the Emmys were great—does anyone else want Neil Patrick Harris to host everything that needs hosting from now on?—and TV is wonderful (Mad Men is back, after all), but maybe it's time to turn off the set and pick up some of the books that have been gathering dust on your night...

Sheesh! From all of the hoopla surrounding the Beatles last week, you'd think the Fab Four just displayed their mop tops on the Ed Sullivan Show for the very first time. In truth, that was 45 years ago—but you'd never know it from the way the band has reclaimed the pop-culture discussion.

So, what's the deal? Most of the excitement is centered around the release of a video game: The Beatles: Rock Band. In the game, you take your plastic instruments—buy the set and you can actually play a replica of Paul's famous...

Labor Day has passed, marking the unofficial end of summer. While most people get the blues about the shorter days and longer work hours, I say good riddance. Not only was this summer mostly a washout, summer is brutally boring when it comes to popular culture. Once the early movie blockbusters are over, there's nothing but bad reality shows out there.

I say, bring on fall! It's much better for pop culture. TV networks debut their new series, movie studios start rolling out their prestige movies, publishing houses switch from beach reads to the new Dan Brown, and theaters launch their new cultural seasons. There's so much to see, do, and write about, as evidenced by the September issue's

Posted at 05:19 PM | Permalink | Comments: 0

Last time we checked in on Taking Woodstock, things were not looking good for Larchmont director Ang Lee. He screened his film, based on the book of the same name by concert organizer Eliot Tiber and shot in the Hudson Valley, at the Cannes Film Festival—and received a bruising reception. Most of the critics placed it somewhere along the spectrum of sweetly nonessential to cartoonishly broad.

Now the film is in wide-release, available to the public and...