Whether one chooses to be generous and call “Smart People” a companion piece to Noah Baumbach’s dryly hilarious dysfunction screed “The Squid and the Whale” (2006), or critical and call it a cheap imitation, the fact remains: It’s not nearly as good.

November 7, 2004

A TV miniseries called “The Reagans” won’t do much for the genre of history, but it does illustrate what’s wrong with our public conversation these days.

A slow release was my downfall.

Tis the season in which family problems become magnified. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, thank your lucky heritage. Mixed up in our holiday cheer is nearly always increased strain in relationships. It’s eerie. It begins to build soon after Halloween, kind of like a dust devil that stirs up emotional junk.

‘Tis the season in which family problems become magnified. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, thank your lucky heritage. Mixed up in our holiday cheer is nearly always increased strain in relationships. It’s eerie. It begins to build soon after Halloween, kind of like a dust devil that stirs up emotional junk.

“When Do We Eat?” affords the viewer a rare glimpse of holiday-themed domestic dysfunction as it appears around a Jewish dinner table during Passover, and guess what? Looks pretty much the same as it always does. Unleavened or no, meshuga is meshuga.

If loving the manufactured, made-to-order quirkiness of “Little Miss Sunshine” is wrong, then I don’t want to be right. This is a fine specimen of dysfunctional family formula.

MINEOLA, N.Y. - Ah, Long Island - land of Amy and Joey, birthplace of the bellicose Baldwin brothers, where Lizzie Grubman plowed her SUV through a nightclub parking lot and Billy Joel slammed three cars into assorted inanimate objects.

Fox is kicking off a yearlong 20th anniversary celebration of "The Simpsons" starting today with a poster contest looking for entries that reflect America’s most dysfunctional animated family in everyday life, “whether it’s a cob of corn that reminds them of Marge, a billowing cloud that looks like Homer or a picket fence that resembles the spikes of Bart’s hair.”

“Is there any other nation in the World whose president has sued one of his states to force them to allow illegal alien immigration? Only in America and only with a Democrat president in office.”

The Arizona Medical Board has revoked the licenses of two East Valley doctors — a longtime obstetrician previously in trouble for Internet prescribing and a Gilbert anesthesiologist with a history of substance abuse.

NEW YORK - Ever wonder what Bart Simpson would look like in human form? The longrunning animated Fox series "The Simpsons" is about to show you. The series will unveil a live-action opening sequence Sunday, 8 p.m. EST, a Fox spokeswoman announced Thursday.

Kelly Osbourne, daughter of heavy-metal icon Ozzy Osbourne and one of the stars of MTV’s popular reality series ‘‘The Osbournes,’’ is coming to rock the East Valley.

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge reluctantly went along with a plea deal Thursday that locked up a West Valley couple for 10 years each for making their 7-yearold son live in a closet.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - "Little Miss Sunshine," the heartwarming story about family dysfunction, and the musical "Dreamgirls," led winners at the 12th annual Critics' Choice Awards on Friday night.

As Medicare payments for penis pumps have soared by more than 500 percent in the past decade, federal fraud investigators have challenged the legitimacy of payments for thousands of the devices.

Pasadena, Calif. • “American Experience” executive producer Mark Samels pondered the question: When does history begin? At what point does it make sense for the respected PBS documentary program to profile a past U.S. president?

Pasadena, Calif. • “American Experience” executive producer Mark Samels pondered the question: When does history begin? At what point does it make sense for the respected PBS documentary program to profile a past U.S. president?

Pasadena, Calif. • “American Experience” executive producer Mark Samels pondered the question: When does history begin? At what point does it make sense for the respected PBS documentary program to profile a past U.S. president?

"The dust storm Tuesday night kind of made all the people that complain about leaf blowers look foolish."

It's no secret that in many high schools a diploma is little more than a certificate of attendance. While Arizona has tenuously adopted the AIMS graduation test as a solution, a coalition of 13 other states has agreed to try tougher courses and higher standards.

It ended soon after it began, this revolution. Not with a bang, or even a whimper. The soldiers, unsure of their cause, simply left the battlefield. As the sun set on the retreating army, the sun also set on the vision of a shining city on a hill, which remains darkened to this day.