We’re mourning the loss this morning of David Carr, the culture writer and critic for The New York Times since 2002. Carr wrote about movies, television, celebrities, media, and popular culture as they intersected with politics and society, and as a favorite journalist of this writer, no one did it better.
The New York Times has his full obituary, in which they reported that Carr, 58, collapsed in the office Thursday and was pronounced dead shortly after. Just that day, he had moderated a panel interview with Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden via video to discuss Poitras’s documentary CITIZENFOUR.
Carr was recently featured in the documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times, in which he has a fantastic scene chewing out some new media journalists from VICE. But some of my favorite Carr features were the video discussions he did with New York Times film critic A.O. Scott called The Sweet Spot. They demonstrated Carr’s intellect and wit in a simple, digestible form.
And yet nothing could match his prose and his way with words. One of his most recent pieces concerned the Brian Williams scandal that has put the newsman at the center of the news this week. “his non-apology was not a safe haven, but a trap door, and his self-banishment was not a consequence, but a mistake,” Carr wrote on Sunday. “We want our anchors to be everywhere, to be impossibly famous, globe-trotting, hilarious, down-to-earth, and above all, trustworthy. It’s a job description that no one can match.”
Chris Pratt may be Starlord, Emmet from The Lego Movie, Andy Dwyer, the curator of Jurassic World, and the loser of Chris Evans’ Super Bowl bet, but if there’s one thing he probably isn’t, it’s Indiana Jones. We reported on a rumor recently that Pratt was Disney’s first choice to reboot the iconic Harrison Ford role, but TMZ caught him just about dumbfounded by the news when a fan approached him in the airport to sign an Indiana Jones poster. “I don’t know, I might be. I just got back from the woods killing a bunch of stuff.” Watch the video above.
This week after learning the sad news about Jon Stewart’s imminent departure from The Daily Show, we nominated seven people who could become plausible replacements. But the upcoming Hot Tub Time Machine 2 had already done the work for us, predicting that by 2025, present day correspondent Jessica Williams would be the host, speaking with “Dame Jennifer Lawrence about her Meryl Streep biopic.” If Back to the Future 2 correctly predicts the Cubs winning the World Series this year, I’ll believe anything. And hey, maybe I’ll actually see Hot Tub Time Machine 2. Watch the clip from the film via Uproxx.
If you were lucky at about 3:30 on Wednesday, Netflix accidentally released 10 episodes (of 13) of Season 3 of House of Cards onto their servers early (the show premieres February 27). Netflix rectified the error quickly, and even tweeted a joke at their own expense. No spoilers please!
A fan of The Simpsons is trying to outdo the folks predicting a single Pixar universe by arguing via Reddit and Buzzfeed that the last 22 seasons of the show are all a part of Homer’s imagination, as ever since the 1993 clip show, he’s been stuck in a coma. Near the end of that episode, Homer enters into a coma as a result of Bart’s April Fool’s Day prank. His argument seems to be, “Why else would the show have gotten so ridiculous over the last two decades?”
Also making news:
- IFC has renewed Portlandia for two more seasons
- HBO’s Getting On has been renewed for a third and final season
- Fifty Shades of Grey already had the second highest Thursday preview box office ever, with $8.6 million.
- SNL’s 40th Anniversary special this weekend will be extended an extra half hour, and now also includes appearances by Billy Crystal, Bradley Cooper, and Miley Cyrus, among others.