Chris Vognar

This week’s TV: ‘The Paper’ premieres, Spike Lee’s ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ streams, and the NFL is back - The Boston Globe Plus, dive into the Ruby Franke saga with a docuseries.

This week’s TV GPS: The Paper premieres (The Office at a newspaper), the NFL kicks off, Highest 2 Lowest streams, and more viewing recommendations.

Here’s what it’s like to attend the Venice Film Festival - The Boston Globe What's the Lido? And what separates Venice from other festivals? All that, and more, answered here.

Dispatch from the Venice Film Festival. I look at a couple of big upcoming releases: Bugonia, in which Emma Stone’s big pharma CEO is kidnapped by two conspiracy-mad cousins who think she’s an alien; and Jay Kelly, in which George Clooney’s aging movie star searches for his soul.

How the first episode of ‘Mad Men’ set the table for everything that followed - The Boston Globe The pilot offers a glimpse of Don Draper in all his many contradictions.

This week in my Autopilot series: I look at the first episode of Mad Men. To me it’s the ideal pilot, standing on its own as a masterpiece and setting the table for the entire series.

That’s a wrap: ‘And Just Like That...,’ ‘The Sopranos,’ and what we want from a series finale - The Boston Globe Ending in a TV show in a satisfying way is a complicated matter.

Wrote about why we expect so much from TV series finales — and why it’s not a one-size-fits-all deal. Have an onion ring.

Looking back at the birth of ‘The Rockford Files’ - The Boston Globe The 1974 premiere gave the viewer a solid glimpse of what the show would become.

Started a new series, Autopilot, looking at the best first episodes in TV history. First up: The Rockford Files (1974).

‘Long Story Short’: Netflix’s new animated series is something special - The Boston Globe The new series from "BoJack Horseman" creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg is a blast.

Netflix’s animated marvel Long Story Short feels like a series that we need right now: effortlessly intelligent, open-hearted, empathetic, and without a trace of saccharine.

Adult Swim’s ‘Women Wearing Shoulder Pads’ is a sexy Almodóvar homage — with giant guinea pigs - The Boston Globe A new stop-motion TV show thrives on the idea that with animation, you can do just about anything you want.

Adult Swim’s Women Wearing Shoulder Pads is a sexy, over-the-top stop-motion melodrama inspired by Pedro Almodóvar, about a bitter cloak-and-dagger battle over giant guinea pigs. I dug it immensely. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/20/a...

My Bergman series continues this Sunday at River Oaks Theatre with Persona. Looking forward to blowing some minds. As that hack Chris Vognar writes, “Cinema’s ultimate experiment in identity is also Bergman’s most formally daring film.” www.theriveroakstheatre.com/movie/RiverO...

‘America’s Team,’ Jerry Jones, and the pleasures of hate watching - The Boston Globe A new docuseries delves into the history of the Dallas Cowboys.

I wrote about hate watching Netflix’s new Jerry Jones/Cowboys doc series (which is quite good).

RIP to the great Terence Stamp, who will always be The Limey to me.

My Bergman series continues Sunday at River Oaks Theatre with The Magician. As some guy named Chris Vognar wrote, “It’s Bergman’s great statement on art and illusion, with a pull-back-the-curtain sequence that ranks among the great scenes in international cinema.”

‘Alien: Earth’ and the art of the perfect needle drop - The Boston Globe Lining up the right music cue for the right moment takes skill and subtlety.

Wrote a little about Alien: Earth’s knack for the perfect needle drop. The Mob still Rules.

How ‘South Park’ became the buzziest thing on TV — in its 27th season - The Boston Globe The animated comedy has had an attention-grabbing couple of weeks.

I wrote about the current South Park moment, in which the 27th season of the show (!!) is teeing off on all things Trump — and on its corporate parent.

On James Baldwin and the power of love - The Boston Globe Nicholas Bogg's biography of Baldwin is a lucid, propulsive, compassionate and deeply researched portrait of a writer and thinker whose wisdom the country has too often failed to heed.

Grateful I got to write about the new James Baldwin bio for The Boston Globe. Nicholas Boggs wisely frames Baldwin within the quality that was most important to him: love. As I write, “Boggs comes about as close as anyone has to wrapping his arms around Baldwin, embracing him in his entirety.”

The profound irony of Trump’s Kennedy Center honoring LGBTQ icon Gloria Gaynor - The Boston Globe The singer was part of a list of conservative pop culture figures who will receive the honor.

Wrote a little about the irony of Trump selecting disco queen and LGBTQ icon Gloria Gaynor as a Kennedy Center honoree.

Excited for the final installment of Brazos Bookstore’s Summer of Hitchcock series Wednesday night at River Oaks Theatre. We’ll be showing Psycho, and discussing Robert Bloch’s novel, which is a damn fine piece of pulp horror (with some major differences from the movie).

‘Mr. Scorsese’ promises an intimate look at one of the great American directors - The Boston Globe The documentary series premieres Oct. 17.

Mr. Scorsese looks like a cinephile’s dream, a candid, in-depth study of a filmmaker who loves to talk (often very fast).

Watching a bad show that’s just slathered with needle drops and it occurs to me that they’re used to try to distract you from how bad the show is

The tech bro is now the villain of the hour - The Boston Globe "Mountainhead" and "Alien: Earth" offer prime examples of the form.

The tech bro is pop culture’s villan du jour. I wrote about it for The Boston Globe.

Cartoon characters on cartoon accents in ‘King of the Hill’ - The Boston Globe The excellent Hulu revival makes some respectful changes to its voice casting.

On Speedy Gonzalez, Mel Blanc, and voice casting on King of the Hill. My latest for The Boston Globe.

Savoring my final few film visits to The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston before I move. Tonight was Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, famously a direct influence on Star Wars. It also shares DNA with any number of Westerns, as well as one of my favorite movies, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

It’s on Hulu, too. Godspeed.

After 46 years, a tired ‘Alien’ franchise gets new life, and new relevance, on TV - The Boston Globe "Alien: Earth" on FX taps into themes of corporate arrogance and artificial intelligence. And, yes, it is terrifying.

Alien: Earth is a thrilling and thoughtful revival that boldly goes its own way. I reviewed for The Boston Globe.

We’re showing Wild Strawberries Sunday afternoon at River Oaks Theatre. It’s a great entry point to Bergman; at times it has the shape of a Hollywood movie. I love it dearly. It’s also my gold standard for dream sequences.

How one photographer captured Black Houston over the years Most of Earlie Hudnall, Jr.'s photographs show anonymous Houstonians in moments of joy.

It was an honor to speak with 78-year-old photographer Earlie Hudnall Jr., who has been creating images of everyday Black Houston for almost 60 years. “The same faces that I saw 50 years ago, I see them now each and every day," Hudnall told me.

Review: Elvis biographer sets record straight about Colonel Tom Parker in hefty tome Colonel Tom Parker, the manager that helped turn Elvis into a star, gets the spotlight in Peter Guralnick biography of a carny turned kingmaker.

The Colonel and the King is a lot longer on the colonel (Tom Parker) than the king (Elvis Presley), and it can read like an apologia for Elvis’ oft-reviled manager. But Peter Guralnick always brings it, and Parker was more than odd enough to hold the reader’s attention. My Los Angeles Times review:

Through animation, a documentary remembers a notorious Texas shooting An artful, empathetic look at the University of Texas Tower shooting remembers the victims.

New from me in The Texas Canon: How Tower brings imagination to documentary — and provides a stirring memorial to the victims of Charles Whitman’s massacre.

Ed Sullivan emerges as a civil rights pioneer in ‘Sunday Best’ - The Boston Globe The TV show host was a low-key but high-profile civil rights pioneer.

The new Netflix doc Sunday Best tells of Ed Sullivan’s low-key progressiveness in booking Black performers, even when advertisers and Southern viewers got angry. From the late, great Sacha Jenkins, who died in May. I reviewed for The Boston Globe.

Why ‘Jaws’ Works

Any excuse to write about Jaws is a good one. In this case it’s a new doc, Jaws @ 50, that I covered for The New York Times. I, and it, make the case that it’s about the people, not the shark.

How a Texas funk single made the world move The R&B quartet's biggest hit taught the world to dance—the Houston way.

New from me in The Texas Canon: How Archie Bell & the Drells taught us to Tighten Up.