For all the hype about Natalie Portman's steamy lesbian sex scene with Mila Kunis in 'Black Swan,' the scene was still tame enough to earn an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board, which means it can (and will) be shown in theaters all over the country. Like Portman, Michelle Williams is on the receiving end of an oral sex scene in 'Blue Valentine' (opening Dec. ...

Visiting the multiplex over the last couple of weekends, you might have seen Eric Roberts in 'The Expendables,' the veteran tough-guy reunion movie that's been No. 1 at the box office since it opened two weeks ago. Or you might have caught his sister, Julia, in 'Eat Pray Love,' which has been close behind on the box office chart. Or, on a handful of art house screens, you may have seen Eric's ...

Looking for a musical act to book at your next office party or bat mitzvah? Such stars as recent 'American Idol' faves Kris Allen and Kellie Pickler are surprisingly affordable, while country vets Keith Urban and Rascal Flatts are probably out of reach. So suggests an article at The Smoking Gun, which has long specialized in obtaining the concert contracts of various music stars so that we can ...

Pop-Ed: Conventional wisdom has it that Megan Fox's career is toast. Her latest movie, the comic-book western 'Jonah Hex' (in which she co-stars with Josh Brolin), opened last week and underperformed even the already-low expectations placed on it (since its competition was the unstoppable 'Toy Story 3'), roping in just $5.4 million. That failure follows last fall's weak showing for horror tale ...

Ed O'Neill is no stranger to comedy controversy. Twenty years ago, critics assailed his show 'Married... With Children' for risqué content that supposedly went too far. Now, his hit show 'Modern Family' is the target of criticism that it doesn't go far enough. The ABC sitcom's critics have noted that its gay couple, Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Cameron (Eric Stonestreet), has not ...

Pop-Ed: Have we had enough of 'Sex and the City'? The reviews for 'Sex and the City 2,' the latest installment in the franchise, which began with the adaptation of Candace Bushnell's book into an HBO series 12 years ago, offer a consensus of complaints -- that the women are too old, too shallow and trying to hard to be young, fashionable and sexual. That time has passed them by, not just because ...

When you see the same plot twist on more than one TV show in a season, you might call it a coincidence. Three times, it might be a trend. Four times? A cliché. But what do you call it when the same plot device turns up multiple times on several shows on the same night, on the same network? A company directive? A conspiracy? An epidemic of lazy writing? Whatever you call it, it happened ...