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Pope Francis, first Latin American pontiff, dies at 88
Pittsburgh Pop podcast: Talking Taylor Swift, Stan Savran, summer movies, ‘Secret Invasion’ 
In this episode of the “Pittsburgh Pop” podcast, host Tim Benz and TV Talk columnist Rob Owen discuss Pittsburgh pop culture news of the moment including the weekend’s Taylor Swift concerts and the passing of Pittsburgh sports journalist Stan Savran. The pair discuss summer movies, including box office failures so...
What makes a streaming hit? Desperate fans ‘game the system’ to save favorite shows
LOS ANGELES — Nikki Rodriguez wants Netflix to renew its fantasy series “Shadow and Bone” — so much so that she has watched its second season 15 times. She’s promoted fan videos on social media to court new viewers for the show. The New York resident also created a Change.org...
What if things could turn out differently? How the multiverse got into our heads and didn’t let go
“Let’s do things differently this time.” Those are the first words you hear at the beginning of this month’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” an otherworldly meditation on multiple realities and how our lives might unfold. The message is clear from the get-go: We have choices. Things could be malleable. You...
TV Talk: Former Pittsburgher is in the kitchen with Chef Carmy on ‘The Bear’ 
Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week. PASADENA, Calif. — Last summer’s FX- produced Hulu hit “The Bear,” about chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and his attempts to revive a grimy Chicago sandwich joint, returns for its second season with all 10 episodes...
Central Park birder Christian Cooper is turning his viral video fame into a memoir and TV show
NEW YORK — There’s nothing that can keep Christian Cooper from enjoying his “happy place,” the bird-friendly Ramble of Central Park — not even his tense, viral video encounter three years ago with a woman walking her dog off leash in his refuge. Cooper is a lifelong birder, and Black,...
‘The Flash’ opens to $55 million, a step off the typical superhero pace
DC and Warner Bros.’ long-in-the-works superhero movie “The Flash” opened to $55 million in its first three days in North American theaters, according to studio estimates on Sunday. Though a fair amount of money by normal standards, a sizable jump from DC’s last release, the “Shazam!” sequel, and enough for...
TV Talk: TV’s most memorable fathers
Just as TV seared decades of TV moms into our pop culture memories, so too do we remember TV’s most memorable dads. Let’s hop in Mr. Peabody and Sherman’s Wayback Machine and revisit some favorites, good and bad, via superlatives: Wisest dad Widower and single dad Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith)...
‘Abbott Elementary’ star Chris Perfetti feels at home with ‘King James’
NEW YORK — Chances are you won’t find Chris Perfetti fiercely debating on social media if LeBron James is indeed the GOAT, nor will you find him waiting hours outside of hotels, hoping to get an autograph or selfie from the basketball legend — but you wouldn’t know it from...
TV Talk: WQED hires new CEO
WQED Multimedia named Jason Jedlinski, most recently general manager of The Hill, a digital political news operation in Washington, D.C., as its new CEO. In an interview Thursday morning, Jedlinski said he has been tasked by the WQED board to “usher in a new era of enhanced service that meets...
2-time Oscar winner Glenda Jackson, who mixed acting with politics, dies at 87 
LONDON — Glenda Jackson, a two-time Academy Award-winning performer who had a second career in politics as a British lawmaker before an acclaimed late-life return to stage and screen, has died at age 87. Jackson’s agent Lionel Larner said she died Thursday at her home in London after a short...
TV Talk: ‘Walking Dead’ takes Manhattan; W. Pa. native offers psychic reading on ‘Big Freedia’ 
Following in the footsteps of the Muppets and Jason Voorhees, it’s now the walking dead’s turn to take Manhattan in AMC’s latest spin-off, the six-episode first season of “The Walking Dead: Dead City” (now streaming on AMC+; 9 p.m. Sunday on linear AMC). McCandless native Greg Nicotero, a “TWD” mainstay,...
TV Talk: Marvel-ous ‘Secret Invasion’ showcases Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury 
Two things about Marvel’s “Secret Invasion” can be true at once: Where Disney’s superhero franchise once had an easy-to-follow heroes-versus-villains plot, it has become a convoluted, labyrinthine ongoing story that requires a Ph.D. in Marvel (and viewing of all Marvel filmed entertainment) to completely understand. And yet, this latest Disney+...
Movie Review: Americana, told Wes Anderson-style, in star-filled ‘Asteroid City’
Wes Anderson gets back to the heart of things in “Asteroid City,” a film about grief, performance, storytelling, the cosmos and, well, everything. Or, as one character, a playwright played by Edward Norton, says when asked what his work is about: “It’s about infinity and I don’t know what else.”...
Fox onscreen message calls Biden a ‘wannabe dictator’ following Trump arraignment
NEW YORK — Fox News said Wednesday that an onscreen message that called President Biden a “wannabe dictator” was taken off TV immediately after it aired and “addressed.” The headline appeared Tuesday night under onscreen video of former President Donald Trump speaking to supporters live following his arrest, next to...
Tim Benz: Yogi Berra documentary is fun baseball nostalgia, well-crafted storytelling
Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. For many, two things are frequent triggers of that warm sense of yearning for days gone by. Baseball and movies. It’s even better when the subject matter at hand is about one of the more likable personalities the game has known. Those two pastimes intersect...
TV Q&A: Will late-night shows come back like they did during the last writers’ strike?
Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen answers reader questions every Wednesday at TribLive.com in a column that also appears in the Sunday Tribune-Review. Q: During the 2007 writers’ strike, late-night talk shows (“The Daily Show,” “Colbert Report,” “Tonight Show,” etc.) resumed producing “scriptless” new shows (except “The Late Show...
Movie review: Ezra Miller speeds back to the future in ‘The Flash,’ fueled by calories and cameos
“It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature,” went a famous ’70s commercial catchphrase. But we learn in “The Flash” — the much awaited, long gestated new DC Studios offering — that it’s Father Time one musn’t cross. Because trying to change the past can really mess you up when you...
Pat Sajak says upcoming ‘Wheel of Fortune’ will be his last as host
LOS ANGELES — Pat Sajak is taking one last spin on “Wheel of Fortune,” announcing Monday that its upcoming season will be his last as host. Sajak announced his retirement from the venerable game show in a tweet. “Well, the time has come. I’ve decided that our 41st season, which...
Pittsburgh Pop podcast: Talking Tonys and CMU, Taylor Swift, ‘Based on a True Story,’ ‘It’s Ain’t Over’
In this episode of the “Pittsburgh Pop” podcast, host Tim Benz and TV Talk columnist Rob Owen discuss Pittsburgh pop culture news of the moment including Carnegie Mellon University’s showing at Sunday night’s Tony Awards, an excellent awards show telecast in spite of (or because of?) a lack of writers...
Tony Awards telecast makes inclusive history, puts on quite a show despite Hollywood strike 
NEW YORK — The intimate, funny-sad musical “Kimberly Akimbo” nudged aside splashier rivals on Sunday to win the musical crown at the Tony Awards on a night when Broadway flexed its creative muscle amid the Hollywood writers’ strike and made history with laurels for nonbinary actors J. Harrison Ghee and...
‘Transformers’ edge out ‘Spider-Verse’ to claim first place at box office
It was Miles Morales and the Spider-Verse versus the “Transformers” at the box office this weekend and the bots came out on top. ” Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” the seventh entry in the series, took the No. 1 spot in its first weekend in North American theaters with $60.5...
Movie Review: New ‘Transformers’ tries but fails to energize the saga
With the “Transformers” franchise clearly at a crossroads, its latest protectors have turned to their deep bench of characters. But just adding more robots won’t transform this tired series. “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” returns the franchise to its galaxy-wide self-importance after taking a nice detour with 2018’s smaller “Bumblebee.”...
After making Oscar history, Troy Kotsur pays tribute to his father in new short film 
NEW YORK — When Troy Kotsur made history as the first Deaf male actor win an Oscar at the 2022 Academy Awards, he was thinking about his father. By then, Kotsur had already become a hero to the Deaf community, widely celebrated for his acclaimed performance in the family drama...
TV Talk: ‘Spider-Man’ star Tom Holland enters Apple TV+’s ‘The Crowded Room’ 
Hollywood has yet to produce a new movie star since the start of the social media era for many reasons — social media made stars overly accessible and less like chiseled faces on a Hollywood Mt. Rushmore; film devolved into all superheroes, all the time, sending actors scurrying to premium...
Under house arrest, fake heiress Anna ‘Delvey’ Sorokin launches podcast to rehab public image
NEW YORK — It’s a weekday morning and Anna Sorokin is on house arrest in a New York apartment building that has been condemned as imminently perilous to life. So she’s attempting to capture outside attention and relieving her boredom in the most quotidian way: starting a podcast. “So many...


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