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In the recent battles over late-night talk-show television, one host remained in the background: Craig Ferguson, the brainy, silly, endearing Scotsman who hosts CBS's Late Late Show. Last night, Ferguson conducted an experiment: He recorded his entire show with only one guest, the English actor and writer Stephen Fry, and with no studio audience ...

The news that the director Sam Mendes is in talks to helm the next James Bond movie is disorienting, in a fruitful way. Imagining the maestro of middle-class ennui putting Daniel Craig's 007 through his globe-trotting, gadget-wielding, babe-bagging paces raises all kinds of questions: What sort of career crossroads must Mendes be at to jettison ...

Frederick Wiseman's La Danse, a 158-minute documentary about the Paris Opera Ballet, opens this week for a two-week run at New York’s Film Forum, followed by a national rollout through December. If you know the director’s work already, that sentence stands on its own as an argument for seeing the film. For the past 42 years, Wiseman has been ...

In Janet Maslin’s New York Times review of a new oral biography of Robert Altman, an ambiguous portrait emerges of the renegade director. Depending on who’s testifying, Altman comes off as expansive and moody, generous and chiseling, an exacting artist, a freewheeling stoner, a skirt-chasing husband, and a painfully indifferent father. But ...

In the wake of Patrick Swayze’s death of pancreatic cancer at age 57, there'll be a lot of talk about the romantic leading men he played in his two biggest hits, Dirty Dancing and Ghost: rescuing Baby from that ignominious corner or spooning Demi Moore at the pottery wheel. But I'll remember Road House (1989) and Point Break (1991), two ...

Jody, I found your description of the Taylor Swift concert at Madison Square Garden—as well as the experience of listening to her music for the past week as preparation for our discussion of Swift on the last Slate Culture Gabfest—unexpectedly moving. Top 10 hits by 19-year-old country-pop starlets aren’t usually high in my iPod rotation, so no ...

At the risk of sounding like a helicopter parent (which believe me, I'm nowhere near; my parenting style hovers closer to the ''Whoops, I clean forgot I had a child, where'd she go again?'' end of the spectrum), can I just say that I have some sympathy for the anti-Mr. Softee camp? .... (Read more in Double X.)

Dan, if it's not too late I'd love to respond to your post on District 9, Armond White and the ''can a film critic be too contrarian?'' dustup. Maybe it's just because, on that nifty widget designed to graph the relative ''contrarianness'' and ''conformity'' of various critics, I came out occupying the bland middle of the spectrum, but I want to ...

Your question about what age his latest movie, Ponyo, would be right for is one I'm actively struggling with right now. While I was watching it, my pleasure was augmented tenfold by the image of my 3-year-old daughter flipping out as all of her favorite things (Magical transformations! Iridescent bubbles! Swimming! Brave girls performing heroic ...

There’s something profoundly icky about the breast-feeding baby doll, Bebe Glotón (the name translates to “Glutton Baby”), a Spanish creation that will be marketed internationally next year. But that ickiness has nothing to do with the idea of children holding up fake babies to their nonexistent breasts and pretending to feed them—a practice ...