Baseball

“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.

Culture and Criticism

From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.

Donors Choose and Contests

Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.

Stories, True and Otherwise

Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.

The Vine

The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!

Two Women
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

I should have known I wouldn’t like it when it showed up at the house; I couldn’t remember why I’d Netflixed it, and then I saw “DeSica” on the sleeve and I really couldn’t remember …

200 Cigarettes
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

What is going on with Ben Affleck’s hair in this movie?Seriously.It looks like…I don’t even know what it looks like.It looks, literally, like industrial carpeting.The hell?…Anyway.If you’re going to set a movie in the early …

Two for the Money
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

The only thing in this movie you might have seen a jillion times before is that it’s about sports-betting pickers. Even Piven is wasted in it, it’s such a trite-fest; the speechifying and montages are …

28 Days Later
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

I could point to about a dozen fairly consequential plotholes, loose ends, and issues with the set-up, but I liked it a lot anyway. I almost prefer that the movie left so much for us …

Troy
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

The crap I have to watch for work sometimes… Better than I expected, but still not very good, although in the filmmakers’ defense it is, I think, enormously hard to put this story on film …

Trick
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Meh. I wanted to like it; Campbell and Pitoc are quite charming in it, although they don’t have a ton of chemistry. But while it got certain things perfectly right (the teeny apartments, the rando …

Torn Curtain
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

It’s long, it’s dull, Julie Andrews and Paul Newman have about as much chemistry as two stale cookies — and the score is completely nutty, too, with a bunch of chirpy oboes and blatty horns …

To Catch a Thief
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

It’s not a particularly well-regarded Hitchcock; the charge usually leveled at the movie is that it’s too slow, but with the exception of the flower-cart scene, I disagree. It’s more that the plot is a …

Tin Men
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

One of those movies that’s sort of a trifle, but that works completely on that level. Plus, after you’ve seen Diner umptillion times, it’s gratifying to see the tertiary characters popping up again (aw, Bagel) …

The Third Man
March 5, 2007 · No Comment

Excellent movie, which I’d never seen before. So many scenes where you want to hit pause just to admire the shot. Orson Welles’s acting is a little off in spots, but it’s still really good …