Home Box Office Inc.

James Gandolfini Dead at 51

Updated at the bottom: Two HBO producers say Gandolfini died in Rome and not, as has been reported, in Sicily. First posted at 4:37 p.m. Wednesday. James Gandolfini has died, apparently of a heart attack, TMZ is reporting. The patriarch and antihero of HBO's Sopranos mob series was in Italy for th ... More >>

If George R. R. Martin Wrote Every TV Show Ever

The Best TV Writer Panel Ever?

When the invitation went out from the Writers Guild of America, It seemed too good to be true. Norman Lear, Carl Reiner, James L. Books, Steven Bochco, and more, all on the same panel? And yet last night at the WGA Theater in Beverly Hills, to celebrate the organization's 101 Best Written TV Series ... More >>

Brody Stevens and Garfunkel & Oates on Their New Series for HBO Go

See also: *Brody Stevens Speaks Out About his Infamous Twitter Meltdown For three LA comedians looking to expanding their reach, HBO GO is offering a platform through its new batch of original programs, designated HBO Digitals. Available only to HBO subscribers, HBO GO launched early last year and ... More >>

Cookbooks: Eastbound and Down's Final Episode, The (New) White Trash Cookbook Tribute A Memorable Sandwich Recipe

How fitting, in a marshmallow salad sort of way, that 25 years after Ernest M. Mickler first published White Trash Cooking, the final season of HBO's Eastbound and Down has wrapped up. If you've missed "the best f--king show on HBO," as MTV's James Montgomery neatly summed up in Kenny Powers-appr ... More >>

HBO Cancels 'Luck' for Being Too Realistic

Turns out David Milch and Michael Mann's hardcore new horse-racing show for HBO, the extremely well-received Luck, was a little too realistic for comfort. PETA started the flamewar last month, enraged at the news that two horses had to be put down in a single season. And when word came today of a t ... More >>

HBO'S Mildred Pierce: Bad Diner Pies, Depression-era Food What Kate Winslet Was Doing to Chicken at Tom Colicchio's House

Andrew Schwartz/HBOKate Winslet in Mildred Pierce​ Just like James M. Cain's 1941 novel Mildred Pierce and the Oscar-winning 1945 feature film based on the book, HBO's Mildred Pierce, a five-part mini-series which starts on March 27th, (and which hews more closely to Cain's book than the post- ... More >>

Short Attention Span Dinner Theater: Your Week in Food, 3/21-3/25

Flickr/Lauren Manning​ In which we highlight the past week in food, either at home or abroad. "While waiting for Pho Minh to resurface (please, please, let it resurface), try Pho Filet, a couple of blocks away, which also has a delicious pho bac, highlighted by a slab of filet mignon that l ... More >>

NIGHTRANGER: NIGHT NYMPHS

Carrie Fisher Could Tell Stories, But They Might Kill You

Actress-Memoirist Retools "Wishful Drinking" for HBO

(Video) Zach Galifianakis Smokes A Joint On Bill Maher's Show In Support Of Prop. 19

HBOSpark 'em if you got 'em.​Comedian Zach Galifianakis pulled out a spliff and sparked it up as his appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher on HBO over the weekend turned to California's marijuana legalization effort. (Video after the jump). The big question is, was it real? Co-guest Margar ... More >>

Nightranger: Music & Passion Were Always the Fashion

Eastbound & Down: A Southern Punk on Hollywood Boulevard

Creator Jody Hill, stirring up shit on the margins of the mainstream

I Made Out With Him Anyway

Are Mushrooms L.A.'s Next Medicinal Growth Industry?

HBOCharacters on 'Entourage' hit the 'shrooms.​As the Los Angeles City Council Tuesday cracked down on a burgeoning medical-marijuana retail scene that might or might not have inspired a sprawling residential "grow-house" industry, authorities in Lake Los Angeles busted a rare grow house for ... More >>

True Blood Discussion

Tru Blood For Sale: The Fake Blood Substitute Vampire Drink Now Available

Blood, apparently, tastes like oranges. At least in the mind of Hollywood network executives. HBO is selling bottles of actual, real Tru Blood at $16 per four-pack. Got blood? ​There is, however, no real human (or other creature's) blood in it. Only a "delicious blood orange carbonated drink." ... More >>

The Scofflaw Cocktail: A Drink Deadwood Fans Would Love

Photo credit: HBO.comWhat to watch with your Scofflaw cocktail​I don't know about you, but I still mourn the loss of Deadwood, the cancelled HBO series starring ill-tempered, foul-mouthed Al Swerengen. So when I come across words that sound as poetically filthy, even Shakespearean, as the rest ... More >>

Comic Con Trades Tights for Toques, Keeps Utility Belts

Home Box Office, inc."Synthetic blood products contain varied cellular content than actual blood." Comic Con is known for its masked, spandex-clad, fans -- not its cuisine. In fact, "bring your own lunch" tops most Comic Con survival guides. But, when the annual event once again opened its door ... More >>

A Tale of Two L.A.s

Two distant critics on two radically different takes on L.A. offered by Hollywood. The comments below are on, respectively, the Kevin Spacey film Shrink and HBO's Entourage series. The truth, no doubt, lies somewhere in between. Somewhere.Jihan Abdalla/Roadside Attractions "Like smog settling o ... More >>

IRONY CAN MAKE FOR A FULFILLING CAREER

Just What We Need . . .

Snarking the Awful Golden Globes

... because they have zero integrity and credibility

The TV Crank's Wish List

A DVD gift guide for curmudgeons who think there's nothing good on TV anymore

The Bleeders: HBO's True Blood, FX's Sons of Anarchy

Vampires and biker bad blood

Who Cares Whodunit?

Five Days asks why

Tell Me You Love Me: The Thinking-Person’s Excuse for Graphic Nudity

The end of meaningless sex

Agency Clients, an Old Coot, and Counting Chads

What’s making news while Hollywood vacations

Fade to Black

If HBO doesn’t wise up, it could get whacked

Among the Squares

Are the upwardly mobile grifters of The Riches TV’s most relevant newfamily icons?

Your Own Private Cable Channel

Essential DVDs for a personalized TV Land

Child in Time

The Wire

Global Warning

Cutthroat TV

Treachery, corruption and ambiguous alliances in Rome and Prison Break

Watch This Show ... Please

Making the Case for The Wire

A Head Above

Bill Maher in real time

The Nature of Fall TV

Bada-bing or just bad?

The Cruelest Month

Stolen Summer, Son of the Bride and the dregs of March

Walk Like a Man

Not the Real World

2001 on TV

Deadlyland

Hanks and Spielberg’s bloody theme park

Mob Rules

David Chase on The Sopranos, the small screen, and rock & roll

My List

And welcome to it

Truth and Beauty

And adolescent mind control

The Wild, The Innocent, The Pugilistic Shuffle

Isabella Rossellini in Central Park, Don Cheadle in Louisiana, Jon Favreau in the ring

Darkness and Light

From solitary to the salon

The Vile, Vile West

John Cusack does the little screen; plus, a doc and a cartoon

Public Jocks, Private Dicks

Plus, Eddie Murphy's The PJ's and Scott Adams' Dilbert

The Balding Soprano

From antipasto to antidepressants: a Mafioso's midlife crises

Cracks in the Screen

And a little light shone in