The iconic photos from the southern plains states during the Great Depression say it all: the haunted eyes of weary mothers, children with their faces wrapped against the choking dust and families piling their belongings into trucks and heading to California.
In the two-part documentary The Dust Bowl, filmmaker Ken Burns (The Civil War, Baseball, Prohibition) focuses on the nearly decade-long drought that, coupled with unsustainable farming techniques, destroyed millions of acres in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico.
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Nevermind the hurricane, the show must go on — and it did Monday night at the Ed Sullivan Theater, where David Letterman hosted CBS' Late Show to an audience of zero. "It was very strange for all of us to be standing there and watching the show, with all of it looking the same, except for...
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It's awfully early for the summer TCA press tour — which began over the weekend, and continues through next week — to have peaked. It's even more rare for an entity like PBS to steal the bigger, richer, more hype-heavy broadcast networks' thunder.
But it's hard to imagine any single event, or show, generating a more enthusiastic, jubilant vibe during the annual gathering of the Television Critics Association than the opening night party in honor of Downton Abbey, perfectly timed to celebrate the period drama's astounding 16 Emmy nominations.
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Welcome to May sweeps (albeit still in April) and, more important, the countdown to the end of the official broadcast season on May 23. Meaning an end, for now, to those pesky repeats and the start-and-stop scheduling of favorite shows. Reason enough to celebrate? Wait until you see what NBC has in store for you tonight (or at least for those choosy few who gravitate toward the network's better Thursday night comedies).
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Renowned for his epic PBS documentaries, Ken Burns is aiming for his first proper theatrical release in 27 years with a controversial new feature. The filmmaker, his daughter Sarah Burns, and her husband, David McMahon, have jointly produced and directed The Central Park Five, a two-hour documentary about five New York teenagers whose convictions in the infamous 1989 Central Park jogger rape case were overturned after years spent in prison, and their current search for justice.
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