https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/ en-US Mon, 25 Nov 2019 04:45:13 GMT hourly 1 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/ford-versus-ferrari/ Santana Row. There, we saw Ford V. Ferrari, which as veteran film critic John Nolte of Breitbart.com wrote in his review last week, is a brilliant exercise in male bonding through massively souped-up American race cars: ]]> Fri, 22 Nov 2019 16:33:45 +0000 24-82076 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/the-man-in-the-high-castle-concludes/ The Man in the High Castle, which concludes on Amazon Prime Video after four seasons, has always been a puzzle-box show, as befits a series executive-produced by Ridley Scott, and based on the book of the same name, the first title written by sci-fi author Philip K. Dick (1928-1952). ]]> Thu, 21 Nov 2019 17:02:28 +0000 24-82067 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/megyn-kelly-ashley-bianco-interview/ NewsBusters, Curtis Houck writes, "On Friday afternoon, Megyn Kelly continued her return to the news business in a bombshell interview with Ashley Bianco, the former ABC News producer who was fired after only four days at CBS News for allegedly being behind the tape of ABC’s Amy Robach admitting that the network quashed her reporting about alleged serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein." ]]> Sat, 09 Nov 2019 00:03:50 +0000 24-82055 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/abc-airbrushes-jeffrey-epstein/ Brian Stelter’s Hot Take On ABC/Epstein Story Is Everything Wrong With Journalism And Media ‘Firefighters’ Today:” “Tuesday’s video clip caused widespread outrage, particularly on the right, with many commentators using it to stoke hatred of the media writ large,” Stelter wrote in his newsletter last night. ]]> Thu, 07 Nov 2019 01:07:10 +0000 24-82042 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/led-zeppelin-the-oral-history/ a whole lot of marketing by Capitol Records). ]]> Wed, 23 Oct 2019 02:04:31 +0000 24-82019 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/star-treks-third-season/ the second season of Star Trek, when show creator and executive producer Gene Roddenberry assembled his best team of producers to rewrite and polish the scripts the show was receiving from freelance writers, but then sacked co-producer (and the show's best dialogue writer) Gene Coon after too many formula plots. Only a massive letter campaign, which NBC upper management strongly suspected (and correctly so) was orchestrated by Roddenberry saved the show. Which the network punished by burying it for the third season in the graveyard shift -- Friday night at 10:00 pm, fatal to a show that relied upon teenage viewers who tend to prioritize their social life around Friday night. To which Paramount responded by cutting the show's budget (again). The handwriting for the show's doom was on the wall, and Roddenberry knew it. ]]> Thu, 12 Sep 2019 15:25:34 +0000 24-81966 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/star-treks-second-season/ we explored the first season edition of These are the Voyages, Marc Cushman’s well-researched history of the original version of Star Trek, written with input from many of that show's behind the scenes team, and authorized by its producers (both sadly deceased), Gene Roddenberry and Robert Justman. This week, we'll look at its second season, when the original Star Trek reached the peak of its success — then began to fall apart. ]]> Fri, 06 Sep 2019 01:46:15 +0000 24-81958 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/rock-music-is-on-life-support/ The coming death of just about every rock legend,” Damon Linker of The Week explores the rock & roll carnage to come: ]]> Tue, 03 Sep 2019 17:32:58 +0000 24-81978 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/star-trek-history-season-one/ Batman, starring Adam West and Burt Ward as the campy crusaders debuted in January, giving the venerable comic book a shot in the arm in sales that kept the franchise alive long enough to lead to Warner Brothers’ movie franchise beginning in 1989 and continuing to this day. That fall, they would be joined by NBC’s The Monkees, Columbia television’s “pre-fab four,” inspired by director Richard Lester’s Beatles movies, and another NBC series with the longest legs of all, Star Trek. ]]> Fri, 30 Aug 2019 15:30:33 +0000 24-81944 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/kind-of-blue-miles-davis/ GQ listed Miles Davis' Kind of Blue as the number one title on its list of "The 100 best jazz albums you need in your collection," and noted: ]]> Mon, 26 Aug 2019 16:27:31 +0000 24-81928 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/arthur-c-clarke-predicted-digital-actors/ “Will Smith, Robert De Niro and the Rise of the All-Digital Actor,” the Hollywood Reporter spots the latest special effects trend. Old and busted? Digital spaceships. The new hotness? Digital thespians: ]]> Thu, 15 Aug 2019 00:08:08 +0000 24-81918 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/did-music-in-the-80s-suck/ Music in the 80s Sucked,” Erik Root, chair of Economic Philosophy at West Liberty University, writes at the American Greatness website: ]]> Mon, 22 Jul 2019 16:41:30 +0000 24-81898 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/kaepernick-and-nike-attack-us-flag/ those kneeling during the anthem were ‘not against our anthem or our flag.’ Whoops,” Karol Markowicz writes in the New York Post: ]]> Mon, 08 Jul 2019 23:29:33 +0000 24-81876 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/seinfeld-at-30/ Seinfeld’s 30th Anniversary: A ‘Show about Nothing’ Remains as Relevant as Ever,” Alec Dent writes at NRO: ]]> Mon, 08 Jul 2019 00:26:21 +0000 24-81870 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/grand-tour-season-3-concludes/ Grand Tour, its car show hosted by the original hosts of the BBC’s Top Gear, where they starred from 2002 until 2015, when show creator Jeremy Clarkson was sacked by the BBC for his boozy punch-out of a producer. As I wrote about the Grand Tour for PJM in January when the third season debuted, I figured I’d write up some thoughts on the season’s final episode, since it’s a farewell to the show’s old format. But as I was assembling this piece, Will Lloyd of the American edition of the London Spectator asked, “What do Game of Thrones critics think they’re watching?” ]]> Fri, 03 May 2019 15:59:43 +0000 24-81855 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/the-king-of-maga-country/ “Tomorrow, you'll know I wasn't kidding, and you'll all think I'm crazy. But, look, I figure it this way: better to be king for a night, than schmuck for a lifetime.” ]]> Mon, 25 Feb 2019 21:39:08 +0000 24-81834 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/dallas-cowboys-star-frisco-tx/ The Star, the Dallas Cowboys’ training and practice facility, which opened in 2017 in Frisco, TX, about an hour west of their stadium in Arlington. Dubbed a "Football Oz" last year by the Dallas Morning News, The Star is certainly impressively looking, filled with Cowboys memorabilia, ranging from reproductions of their uniforms throughout the years, to their five Super Bowl trophies. It also has two side-by-side practice fields (with space to park Jerry Jones’ helicopter between them) -- one with grass, the other with artificial turf. Back inside, there's a film room so big, you expect George C. Scott in Cinerama as General Patton to come bounding out to give a speech at the podium, not the Cowboys’ unassuming head coach Jason Garrett. ]]> Fri, 01 Feb 2019 00:59:41 +0000 24-81818 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/amazons-grand-tour/ Top Gear before watching the Grand Tour. I think I may have seen the name clicking through the DirecTV guide on BBC America in the mid-naughts, and if so, I had assumed it would be a very stiff magazine-format series on the newest British cars*. Deucedly boring to an American whose late father owned a Chevrolet dealership, old chap! It was only when I read Charles C.W. Cooke’s article in National Review on Jeremy Clarkson’s firing by the BBC in 2015 after he slugged a producer that I began to become intrigued. Cooke’s headline dubbed Clarkson “The Anti-Scold,” and at the time, I wasn’t sure such people still existed in England: ]]> Fri, 18 Jan 2019 16:50:12 +0000 24-81802 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/roger-daltrey-autobiography/ Thanks a Lot Mr. Kibblewhite (we’ll explain the title in a moment), is a fun read, but if you’re as diehard a fan of The Who as I am, you can’t help but notice it contains a few missed opportunities. Daltrey is the lead singer for one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s through the early 1980s, yet fails to comment on some of his group’s most important moments. ]]> Thu, 08 Nov 2018 02:13:31 +0000 24-81772 Ed Driscoll https://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/the-hammer-of-ahmet/ The Midnight Special, and Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. While Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner helped birth a print media devoted to rock in the mid-1960s, the bands themselves didn’t always reciprocate. During their heyday as Atlantic Records’ biggest act in the mid-to-late 1970s, Led Zeppelin held a near-iron lock on the profiles that music industry journalists wrote about them. Reporters for industry-themed publications such as Rolling Stone and Circus, who longed to be close to the action onboard Led Zeppelin’s Boeing 720 private touring jet, eagerly accepted press orders from the group during their 1977 tour. Those press orders demanded that "objective” journalists obey the band’s rules of engagement: ]]> Tue, 18 Sep 2018 15:38:19 +0000 24-81756