Rawmarsh The network that made late night must not be watching it anymore.

http://iowacomicbookclub.com/wp-content/themes/bolster-theme/include/lang_upload.php CBS will end The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in May 2026, marking the quiet death of a loud tradition. No scandal, no ratings collapse, no creative dispute—just a memo, a merger, and a bottom line that couldn’t carry one of television’s last grown-ups.

Colbert took over the desk in 2015 after David Letterman retired. Letterman, of course, launched The Late Show in 1993, still steaming from NBC’s decision to hand The Tonight Show to Jay Leno. His jump to CBS wasn’t just a job change—it was television mutiny. It made The Late Show the outsider’s flagship.

Letterman made his bitterness funny. Colbert made his indignation useful. Both were at their best when something wasn’t sitting right.

Colbert was never the agent of chaos Letterman was. He didn’t throw pencils or roast guests for sport. But he did something equally rare: he brought intelligence and conviction to a time slot that usually prefers charm. He wasn’t afraid to drop the comedy when the moment called for clarity. In a field full of punchlines, he gave some context.

And now he’s being cut—not for failing, but for costing too much.

CBS claims the decision is financial. It likely is. The parent company, Paramount Global, is slashing expenses ahead of a planned merger with Skydance Media. No one is replacing Colbert. The franchise is being retired. The Ed Sullivan Theater will go dark, just as the election cycle heats up.

Here’s some more context: The merger relies on Trump’s approval.

It’s fitting, in a way. The nation has decided it prefers cons to comedy.

And bean counters always loomed. Streaming overtook broadcast and cable this year. Ad revenue for network late-night shows has collapsed—from $439 million in 2018 to $220 million last year. Even the Emmys, which once celebrated the genre, could only come up with three talk show nominees this year.

There’s no denying the business case. But there’s also no denying the optics.

Colbert didn’t just entertain. He challenged. He called out Trump when few would. He went after hypocrisy—even in his own network. And he did it nightly, with a smile that rarely softened the blow. He was a critic, a commentator, and sometimes, a stand-in for the adult in the room.

It’s easy to say his act ran its course. But nothing has replaced it. What’s rising in late-night’s place isn’t sharper, smarter, or braver. It’s… cheaper.

Which brings us full circle.

David Letterman jumped ship because he got screwed by NBC. Stephen Colbert stayed until CBS pulled the rug. Different networks. Same punchline.

Maybe The Late Show was always destined to end this way—not with applause, but with accounting.

Colbert gets one more season. Then the lights go out. The show that once defined late-night dies with its host at the top of his game, the audience still tuning in, and the studio still humming.

That, more than anything, tells you what kind of business TV has become. The host who made sense of the madness just got cut for budgetary reasons.

That’s comedy.

Some films stagger toward redemption; Sinners sprints straight into the flames and emerges laughing.

Director Ryan Coogler doesn’t just make a movie — he orchestrates a fever dream of guilt, grace, and gorgeously rendered doom. From the opening shot, where a lone figure flicks a cigarette into an endless black highway, to the final frame’s echoing silence, Sinners moves like a confession set to a drumbeat.

The cast is flawless. Michael B. Jordan delivers a performance that feels less like acting and more like exorcism. You see every tremor, every regret, every moment he considers salvation and spits it out. Jack O’Connell, meanwhile, plays the devil’s advocate not with horns but with a sly wink and a whiskey-smooth voice that makes you want to buy what he’s selling, no matter the price.

But it’s the script that crackles most. Every line sounds like it was carved into a bar bathroom stall at 3 a.m., equal parts poetry and profanity. There’s no false note, no filler. The dialogue doesn’t explain — it slices.

Cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw turns sin into a visual playground. Neon reds bleed into midnight blues, streetlights pool like molten gold, and shadows crawl with a life of their own. The film looks like a nightmare you almost enjoy before waking up in a cold sweat.

Yet amid all the grit and grime, there’s a surprising tenderness. In its quietest moments, Sinners suggests that redemption might be possible — but only if you’re willing to bleed for it. The score underlines this tension perfectly, mixing smoky jazz with industrial echoes, making you feel like you’re inside a haunted jukebox.

At its core, Sinners feels like O Brother, Where Art Thou? meets From Dusk Till Dawn — a Southern-fried fever dream that sings the blues and drinks your blood in the same breath.

In a year of bloated franchises and cynical reboots, Sinners feels like a fistfight in a church: unexpected, thrilling, and deeply satisfying. It’s a reminder that cinema can still surprise, seduce, and scar you — all in the same breath.

See it now. Confess later.

American Apparel once promised salvation in a cotton T-shirt. Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel shows it was selling a fantasy stitched together with hubris and hormones.

The film doesn’t so much unfold as it crashes forward, propelled by confessions from former employees, vintage campaign shots, and the magnetic, maddening presence of Dov Charney. We watch him strut through office hallways half-dressed, spouting slogans about sexual liberation and free expression, as if he were both prophet and product.

The documentary understands that Charney is its tragic clown — a man too convinced of his own genius to notice the moral sinkhole widening beneath him.

What emerges is a portrait of a workplace that felt less like a company than a fever dream. Employees describe a place where lines blurred: between boss and lover, between art and exploitation, between progressive values and old-fashioned power grabs. They speak of late-night parties, of “creative meetings” that doubled as auditions for Charney’s private fantasies, and of the peculiar glow that surrounded anyone anointed as one of his favorites.

Director Sally Rose Griffiths wisely lets these voices do most of the talking. They are by turns shocked, regretful, nostalgic. You feel the pull that must have existed in those early days: the chance to be part of something daring and new, to embody an idea bigger than yourself.

It’s the same seduction that lured young artists to Andy Warhol’s Factory, though here the silkscreens have been replaced by bodysuits and sexually charged billboards.

Yet for all its fascinating material, the film doesn’t always push hard enough. It catalogues the sins and the slogans but hesitates at the threshold of real critique.

We’re given glimpses of Charney’s legal troubles and the ethical contradictions of “sweatshop-free” labor, but these remain shadows at the edge of the frame. The film seems content to watch the trainwreck rather than search the wreckage for answers.

There is an undeniable rhythm to the storytelling — quick cuts, pulsing music, a sense of movement even when nothing is being said outright. It mirrors the brand’s marketing genius: distract with skin, dazzle with slogans, move fast enough that no one has time to ask what it all means.

You sense the filmmakers wrestling with this tension, caught between documenting the spectacle and interrogating it.

Still, there is power in the accumulation of voices, in the slow revelation of how a brand that sold authenticity built itself on illusion. In the end, Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel feels like trying on a shirt that looked perfect on the mannequin, only to discover the seams itch and the fit is all wrong.

We leave the film not wiser, perhaps, but sobered — reminded that behind every shining brand stands a man with a mirror and a sales pitch.