Category: Actresses (Page 132 of 258)

“Leverage” finishes strong

February 25, 2009 /

I wrote back in early January that “Leverage” seemed to be getting better, and then Will Harris had a chance to spend 10 minutes interviewing Christian Kane (who plays Elliot Spencer on the show), just before the two-part season finale aired.

After watching the finale, I think it’s safe to say that the show finished strong. The two-parter focuses on Nathan Ford (Timothy Hutton) and his obsession with taking down the head of the insurance company (that he used to work for) that failed to pay a claim that might have saved his son’s life. We meet Nathan’s ex-wife, Maggie (Kari Matchett), and Nathan’s rival at the insurance company, Sterling (Mark Sheppard), makes for a good foil.

Sure, the gang relies on a house-of-cards type progression to get through most of their jobs, but if you don’t spend too much time thinking about how ridiculous some of these plot points are, the show can be quite enjoyable. (I especially like the budding romance between Parker and Hardison.)

The series definitely has an “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Hustle” (BBC) feel to it, though I think that it would work better as the occasional two-hour movie than it does as a television series. (However, I do applaud TNT for limiting the season to 13 episodes — I would be frightened to see what kind of filler we’d get if it ran 22+ episodes.) TNT already greenlit a second season, so new viewers can dive in without fear that it will be canceled.

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Interviews, Movies, TV, TV Comedies, TV Dramas

Dude, Where’s My Oscar? Bullz-Eye revisits recent Academy Award “mistakes”

February 18, 2009 /

Dude, Where's My Oscar?

There are times when we swear that “Entertainment Weekly” has either bugged our office or is tapping into our conference calls. Numerous pieces of ours wind up on their pages at almost the exact same time, be it a list of the best sequels, cinematic stoners, or our long-gestating piece on the Bullz-Eye Fantasy Band Draft, which will drop later this year. They’ve even named their hot/not meter “The Bullseye.” Hmmm.

And sure enough, they scooped us once again, when they put the top awards from various Academy Awards results to a new vote, to see how the current Academy would fix the previous generation’s “mistakes.” We’ve been throwing that idea around for over a year, and just when we begin to put pen to paper: boom! — they beat us to the punch. We’re not at all surprised that they saw the appeal in such a topic; every year there is at least one head-scratching moment, one that usually owes more to awarding a long-overdue actor for their overall body of work than for the performance at hand (ahem, Al Pacino, “Scent of a Woman”). Enter Bullz-Eye, Mighty Mouse-style, to save the day and make sure justice is served. We’ve examined recent Academy Award winners and their competitors, and we found a few, um, irregularities. Revisionist history begins now.

Oscar Snubs

Elaine Benes summed up our feelings for “The English Patient” as well as anyone. Actually, that’s a tad unfair; we didn’t think “Patient” was awful, just long and, in the end, anti-climactic. Without Juliette Binoche carrying her co-stars from start to finish (her Oscar, unlike this one, was well deserved), we wonder if “Patient” would have received half the praise that it did. Then there’s “Fargo,” which featured invaluable contributions from its leads, the supporting cast, and even the characters who were only in a scene or two (Marge Gunderson’s Japanese high school classmate had us in tears). It’s funny, shocking, coy, and best of all, normal, an expertly crafted movie all the way around. Guess the Academy wasn’t quite ready for the Coen brothers yet.

Oscar Snubs

To be fair, this one isn’t a staff pick; it’s mine and mine alone. My colleague Jason Zingale loved “Crash,” as did most people. I, however, loathed it like no movie I’ve seen since “Shrek.” The manner in which people would instantly spew the most hateful, ignorant nonsense in scene after scene was just unbearable, and I wanted to throttle Sandra Bullock’s ridiculously underwritten shrew of a character. Granted, “Brokeback Mountain” is not a perfect movie by any stretch, but I’ll take it over “Crash” any day of the week and twice on Sunday for the sheer fact that it didn’t try to beat me into a coma about what a racist pig I am. Fuck you, Paul Haggis.

Click here to read the rest of Dude, Where’s My Oscar? Bullz-Eye revisits recent Academy Award “mistakes”

Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, South Park

“My Boys” is returning to TBS on March 31st!

February 18, 2009 /

C’mon, who else out there is a “My Boys” supporter?

I swear, I think I’m the only one within the Bullz-Eye / Premium Hollywood corral of contributors who has a full-on love for this show, but the camaraderie between P.J. (Jordana Spiro) and the boys (Jamie Kaler, Kyle Howard, Reid Scott, Michael Bunin, and the inestimable Jim Gaffigan) feels as real as any sitcom ensemble this side of “How I Met Your Mother,” as does the back-and-forth between P.J. and Stephanie (Kellee Stewart)

If you haven’t seen the show yet, it won’t surprise you that I heartily endorse the Season 1 DVD set, but if your wallet’s about as empty as mine, then you can at least check out this quick but effective wrap-up of Season 2’s events in time to prepare for the March 31st premiere of Season 3:

Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, News, TV, TV Comedies, Video

Friday night — where good shows go to die

February 17, 2009 /

In theory, Fox had a solid idea. Pair Joss Whedon’s new hour-long drama, “Dollhouse,” with “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” to create a male-skewing sci-fi block on Friday night. They’ve had success on Friday’s in the past with sci-fi; “The X-Files” flourished there (or at least paid for itself) for several years. But The Live Feed reports that ratings for both shows were a disappointment.

The series premiere of Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse” was seen by 4.7 million viewers Friday night and garnered a 2.0 preliminary adults 18-49 rating and 6 share. It was beaten in the 9 p.m. hour by ABC’s “Supernanny” (6.1 million viewers, 2.2/7) and is the lowest-rated scripted series premiere on a major broadcast network this season aside from NBC’s now-defunct “Crusoe.”

“Dollhouse” was paired with the midseason return of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” (3.7 million, 1.3/5), which was shifted from its previous Monday post. “Terminator” came in third place in the hour and hit a series low (by like 27%). “Terminator” beat NBC’s “Howie Do It” (3.9 million, 1.2/4), but not by much. Both “Ghost Whisperer” (10.3 million, 2.4/8) and “Wife Swap” (4.3 million, 1.5/5) did better.

I thought “Dollhouse” had a pretty solid premiere, but I was by no means blown away. The premise is interesting — that there’s a business that can reprogram “dolls” to become whatever its clients need. In the premiere, Echo (Eliza Dushku), started out as a party girl meant to entertain a rich playboy, but was reprogrammed to become an expert in kidnapping scenarios. Dushku looks great in a dress, but was a little stiff when she was trying to convince the father of a kidnapped girl that she was the right person for the job. I’m not sure that she’s the right one to carry the series, though future episodes will decide this. Stepping back a bit, I’m not sure how some viewers may react to seeing this pretty girl having her brain wiped at least once per episode. If the heroine doesn’t have some consistent character traits week-to-week, she may be tough to relate to.

I’ve liked “Terminator” all along, and I’m surprised that it is struggling in the ratings. I suppose this has to do with the collective attention span of fans of the movie series. Maybe stringing out a serialized plot over 20+ episodes is just too slow of a pace for those that fell in love with the action-packed “Terminator” films. This is a perfect example of a series that should have a 13-episode season, like many of the series on HBO, Showtime, FX and TNT. Shorter seasons means a compact season-long story arc and no filler, which is the main reason that a series loses viewership. When people get bored they naturally move on.

Another Friday show that is dying a slow death is “Friday Night Lights.” It consistently scored in the 4.0-5.0 range in its first season, and that fell to the 3.0-4.0 range in its second foray. Now, after premiering on DirecTV this fall, the show is garnering ratings in the 2.2-2.8 range as NBC runs the episodes for the non-DirecTV folks. Is this enough to keep this stellar show on the air for another season? Only the big-wigs at DirecTV and NBC know for sure, but given the state of the economy, it would be surprising if it were granted a fourth season.

Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Friday Night Lights, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

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