With each passing year, it seems more and more archaic to refer to television’s current landscape as a ‘Golden Age.’ How long exactly can a ‘Golden Age’ last before we start to consider it a permanent phenomenon? For a decade and a half now, we’ve seen a steady stream of pioneering shows that have changed the mainstream standard for quality television. Yes, many of these shows exist on the fringes of TV – are supremely low-rated or in constant threat of cancellation. And yes, the medium is still undoubtedly in a state of flux, as everyone scrambles to figure out …

The first season of Lena Dunham’s Girls had its sneak preview at SXSW in March this year, but the show was such a success that it’s going to be already in early January 2013 that season two kicks off. The newly released first trailer for the new season is below, and I for one am excited to see what Filmmaker‘s ridiculously successful former intern will be offering up in the new year.

In Nobody Walks, Ry Russo-Young’s third feature film, which she co-wrote with Lena Dunham, Martine (Olivia Thirlby), is a young artist from New York who comes to stay in the pool house of a Los Angeles therapist and sound designer (Rosemarie DeWitt and John Krasinski) to finish the sound mix on her film. Her presence alters the warm, supportive environment of this supposedly open-minded household. There are permanent repercussions for the whole family, and most crucially for Martine. It’s a smart, sexy, and unresolved film about the struggles a young woman can find in trying to express herself sexually and …

Gayby might be the first feature from writer/director Jonathan Lisecki, but its ace comic timing and deft depiction of physical humor suggest a seasoned comedic maestro. Expanded from a short that Lisecki shopped around the festival circuit in 2010 (it debuted at Slamdance and went on to hit more than 100 venues), the film is easily one of the year’s funniest, much thanks to its maker’s classic instincts for drumming up laughs. A veteran of independent theater, Lisecki couples a sharp, knowing wit with a mature sense of benevolence, yielding a well-rounded comedy for a demographic that desperately needs it. …

For The New Yorker, Lena Dunham has penned a wonderful remembrance of writer/director Nora Ephron, who passed away this week of leukemia. Not surprisingly, they knew each other and, last year, had become friends. Here’s Dunham on that friendship: …I devoured her prose, her other film offerings, and became a fangirl right along with my mother, aunt, grandmother and every other intelligent woman in the tristate area. Which is why it was so momentous when, in March of 2011, I received a short, perfect e-mail from Ephron, saying she had seen and enjoyed my film and would like to take …

The “Keep Santa Cruz Weird” campaign in the northern California city that’s been host to the Santa Cruz Film Festival for nearly a dozen years now seems more than a cheap ploy to sell bumper stickers (though the one that read “You’re just jealous because the voices are talking to me” probably captures the essence of the place even better). It’s a serious – and controversial – plea to retain a way of life. For Santa Cruz is nothing if not, well, weird. So exotic, in fact, that SCFF should probably qualify as a foreign film festival showcasing American flicks …

How to take stock of the Tribeca Film Festival? 9/11 was a long time ago, after all. Bin Laden is dead. Rebuild the neighborhood, De Niro said. Bring back economic activity and all that. Perhaps the machinations of the real estate market took care of it. A classy sandwich down here costs $16. Not like I buy any food during the festival in Tribeca; it’s all free. Go to the Apple Store (in SoHo, but close enough) and have some wine. The 92YTribeca had bite-sized bacon cheeseburgers during GE’s-sponsored Film Forward shorts program yesterday. And if I actually want to …