Profs to Buffy: You Slay Me

The Wire , The Sopranos , Six Feet Under , Mad Men —get the picture?

(NEWSER) - For television, the past decade has been “as the sixties are to music and the seventies to movies”—some of the worst content ever was produced, but the cream of the crop rose to the level of art, Emily Nussbaum writes. Sure, “you could easily memorialize the aughts as the Decade of Reality TV,” but then you’d be leaving out The Sopranos, Mad Men, and, most important, The Wire. The best of the best dared audiences to take them seriously and didn’t have time for those who wouldn’t. More»

Evil genius is too good for his own good, and so is his show

(NEWSER) - Hollywood’s Internet video forays have mostly been failures—remember Quarterlife?—but none of them starred a dorky singing mad scientist. Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog thankfully features just such a character, and it’s almost too successful for its own good. The first episode had been online less than 24 hours when demand crashed its site, sending Whedon scrambling for more bandwidth. More»

Whedon says a return to the air is unlikely

(NEWSER) - Fans of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer got a shot of the old magic last night when the cast reunited for a panel discussion at the William Paley TV Festival, the AP reports. But Joss Whedon dampened devotees' hopes of resurrecting the cult favorite. “So many stars would have to align," the show's creator said. More»

David Brooks: Profs brace for 'tsunami' of Internet learning

(NEWSER) - Online education isn't just an "experiment" anymore. Harvard and MIT have just set aside $60 million for free online courses, and schools from Stanford to Yale are pursuing online learning. In short, "what happened to the newspaper and magazine business is about to happen to higher education: a rescrambling around the Web," writes David Brooks in the New York Times . As Stanford's president put it: "There's a tsunami coming," and it carries many concerns with it—but also a good deal of hope. More»

Joss Whedon directs Robert Downey Jr. in superhero blowout

(NEWSER) - Sure, it's an effective moneymaking scheme: release movies about individual superheroes, then one about all of them. But with Joss Whedon at the helm, The Avengers really works. What critics are saying:

• "Even if you don't particularly like comic-book adaptations, this film just might make a believer of you," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times . "Whedon is the key reason why this $220 million behemoth of a movie is smartly thought out and executed with verve and precision."