Bob Verini

This week's opening night tribute to the Toronto Film Festival 's chief cheerleader, the late Roger Ebert , will beg a key question: Can anyone fill his shoes? No other...

Any playwright can stick celebrity facsimiles together in a room; it takes real talent not only to render those portraits believable but also to invest the encounter with dramatic weight....

Every year, a gaggle of gagmen and funnywomen set out in pursuit of that holiest of TV grails: the first-person sitcom -- a show written around a comedian's distinctive personality....

American plays about troubled families are a dime a dozen. But American plays which do more than merely flirt with politics are scarce, and those attempting to meld the personal...

American plays about troubled families are a dime a dozen. But American plays which do more than merely flirt with politics are scarce, and those attempting to meld the personal...

"Intimate Apparel" wears well. The Pasadena Playhouse revival of Lynn Nottage's award-winning 2003 drama, set at the turn of the century, boasts first and foremost a luminous lead performance by...

"Intimate Apparel" wears well. The Pasadena Playhouse revival of Lynn Nottage's award-winning 2003 drama, set at the turn of the century, boasts first and foremost a luminous lead performance by...

The unique ones come in two broad categories. The Holy Terrors bring attitude. Garage jockeys Chico Rodriguez and Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli effortlessly seize attention the moment they swagger into a...

Some quests are impelled by practical circumstances, others by inner longing. In TV's earliest decades, journeys are nothing more than physical adventures. King of the Wild Frontier Davy Crockett is...

Neil Simon's diametrically different poker buddies, sloppy Oscar Madison and neatfreak Felix Unger, remind us that the odder the couple, the greater the attraction. Some of TV's classic odd couples...