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The year 2016 is at its end, and we’re looking back at the top film and television stories of the past 12 months. Here’s a chronological list of the most popular entertainment articles of the year.
13 Hours Trades Truth for Explosions – But It’s Not Truly Political
Benghazi is a hashtag battle-cry, a call to arms that many Americans don’t understand.
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
Patrick Warburton is that rare voice actor who looks like he sounds.
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
The Coens’ Hollywood Farce Hail, Caesar! Flames Out
A kick for those who’ve distractedly thumbed through Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, Joel and Ethan Coen’s bustling comedy Hail, Caesar! looks back to the waning days of moviedom’s golden age: specifically, to 1951, when big-studio fixers were still tidying up the messes left by the talent (scrubbing now done by publicists and lawyers).
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
Pubes, Poops, Periods: How Broad City Takes Body Humor (and Feminism) to the Next Level
The third season of Broad City (Comedy Central) opens with a toilet-centric montage that already feels like one of the year’s TV highlights.
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
Eva Husson’s Bang Gang Just Can’t Even With Teen Orgies
Teenage bodies are bared but fresh insight concealed in writer/director Eva Husson’s first feature, a dopey examination of Instagram-abetted adolescent abandon.
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
Pixar Dives Under the Sea Again – and Into Memory Itself
Finding Nemo may have been a cartoon about a clownfish traveling across the ocean looking for his son, but it was also one of Pixar’s first overt forays into the workings of the human mind.
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
Blake Lively and The Shallows Are Well Worth the Dive
According to IMDb, Jaume Collet-Serra’s over-before-you-know-it The Shallows runs for one hour and 27 minutes – a number that produces a reaction something like when an NBA roster lists a short-looking player at five-foot-nine and you marvel, Really?
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
Read on for more of the year’s top entertainment stories.
Me Tarzan. Me Sorry About Colonialism.
At last, a Hollywood reimagining with a point.
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
Ali Wong’s Baby Cobra: Have We Entered Television’s Golden Age of Transgressive Pregnancy?
Twenty-five years ago, Annie Leibovitz stunned America with her infamous portrait of Demi Moore – nude, bronzed, seven months pregnant – on the cover of Vanity Fair.
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
Like the real 1980s, Stranger Things gets more unsettling as it goes.
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
A Star Is Roleplayed: How Dungeon Master Spencer Crittenden Became the Lord of Harmonquest
You can be forgiven for thinking that the new show from Dan Harmon, creator of Community and Rick and Morty, might come off as niche.
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
“Dancing. Is. Important”: Netflix’s EDM Movie XOXO Is a Transcendent Goof
Where were you when you learned that you’d be making your DJ debut at the biggest rave of the year?
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
The Low-Heeled High Stakes of RuPaul’s All Stars 2
RuPaul’s All Stars 2 has been perhaps the greatest season of the only reality-TV competition that matters.
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
Netflix Kills the YouTube Star in Haters Back Off!, a Comedy About the Joys of Hatin’
Haters Back Off!, a new eight-episode comedy streaming on Netflix, is about putting yourself out there, ignoring the haters, following your dreams no matter who or what stands in your way, and utterly humiliating yourself on YouTube.
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
What’s Most Dissatisfying About Gilmore Girls‘ Return Is Also What’s Most True
In October, 200 coffee shops across the United States and Canada were made into Luke’s Diner for a day to promote the new revival of Gilmore Girls.
Read the full Phoenix New Times story here.
