Category: Actresses (Page 158 of 258)

Comic-Con 2008: Day Three – Fringe

July 27, 2008 /

Especially if you wanted to see panels on such phenomenon as “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” or “Battlestar Galictica,” getting into Comic-Con’s 4000 seat Ballroom 20 required fans to arrive significantly early, with some guests sitting through hours of events they cared little about to see the event they came to see in the first place. Such was not the case, however, if you wanted to check out the J.J. Abrams-led panel on “Fringe.”

The new show from super-creator Abrams (“Lost,” “Alias,” “Felicity”) and the co-screenwriters of Transformers as well as Abrams upcoming theatrical “Star Trek” reboot, has been the beneficiary of viral marketing and a significant amount of buzz, while also being the victim of an unauthorized Internet leak of an incomplete version of the show’s pilot. On Wednesday night, a complete version of the episode was screened as part of the Comic-Con’s preview night.

Though the pilot received good reviews from online critics for Time and MovieWeb, yours truly found those opinions fairly inexplicable. The eighty minute production slowly drains the energy from a fun and intriguing premise (what if most of what we now call pseudoscience was real science?). Though the cliche-ridden, often campy, dialogue was one problem, far worse was a dead-in-the-water performance by Anna Torv as an FBI agent racing to discover what mysterious force killed all of a plane’s passengers and is now severely endangering her coworker/lover (John Valley). “Fringe” also features Joshua Jackson (“Dawson’s Creek,” “The Skulls”) as a cynical adventurer/scientist and John Noble (ultimate bad dad Denethor in LOTR) as his father — an actual mad scientist…or possibly merely an eccentric one. Not surprisingly, Noble steals all his scenes.

Still, who cares what I think? It’s the judgment of fans that counts for team Abrams. But, with Comic-Con attendees apparently voting with their feet, it was the job of the panel, moderated by Television Week‘s Joe Adalian, to make that half-empty auditorium feel half-full. All the principles were on hand, including the three stars, Abrams, and writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (“Transformers,” “Star Trek”). Abrams did most of the talking and, while the mood was upbeat on the surface, damage control was under way. Later on, when an audience member praised the pilot, declaring it “awesome,” two or three audience pairs of hands out of some two thousand applauded.

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Actors, Actresses, Comic Con Blog 2008, Comic-Con, External TV, TV Sci-Fi

Comic-Con 2008: Day Three – Dollhouse

July 27, 2008 /

Of course, the “Dollhouse” event was a love fest. Actually, a mega-love fest.

That’s absolutely no surprise if you know anything at all about the kind of admiration (both lusty and talent-wise) aroused by star Eliza Dushku (“Tru Calling,” “Bring it On”) and the Bono-esque stature of multi-hyphenate series creator Joss Whedon (“Buffy, the Vampire Slayer,” “Firefly“) across a huge swath of Geektopia — a swath recently made even larger by the net-success of his second acclaimed genre-blending musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.” Add to that the appearance of Dushku’s excessively handsome costar, Tahmoh Penikett of “Battlestar Galactica” (a show with a few gazillion ardent fans of its own) and you have fanboy and fangirl critical mass.

And, indeed, the first three quarters of the panel was loaded with silliness, over-the-top praise, jokey-silly putdowns (a Whedon trademark) and flirtatious asides between the three folks onstage as well as with the audience. Topics early on included the peripatetic Ms. Dushku’s trips to such locales as Iran, where she survived a “terrorist attack” from some errant Persian rugs.

Moving to a Q&A, the first question was about the source of the premise of “Dollhouse,” in which Dushku will play an “active,” a sort of human blank slate who is downloaded with a new personality and skill set for each new assignment, with jobs that range from from pre-tailored love/sex object to hyper-skilled operative. The show appears to take place in a world much like our own, and this sort of thing sure sounds highly illegal, not to mention extremely immoral, and BSG’s Pennikett will play a cop wondering just why this beautiful woman he keeps meeting never seems to be the same person twice. The show is currently set to premiere this January.

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Actors, Actresses, Comic Con Blog 2008, Comic-Con, External Entertainment, External TV, Movies, New Media, News, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Secret Diary of a Call Girl: Season One, Ep. 6

July 26, 2008 /

Belle/Hannah (Billie Piper) goes for a meeting with Stephanie (Cherie Lunghi) at a swank-looking restaurant, and notices some of the other girls are giggling at a laptop screen. Turns out Belle has been given a terrible online review by a client – a review that ends with “the word frigid comes to mind.” She laughs uncomfortably and says “Who listens to the critics anyway?” But then she nervously looks at the viewer, which seems to tell us something else. Sure enough, her business begins to suffer, which results in Stephanie sending her a rather odd client late one night.

At first Lewis (Kevin Doyle) seems fairly normal, but almost as soon as Belle closes the door, he begins acting strange. When she goes to make a usual business call to Stephanie, he becomes cold and demanding. It’s a very strange scene for this series, but realistically isn’t at all out of place. It almost looks as if things could get violent when Belle all but throws him out of her apartment. She’s left alone, shaken and confused. Who else can she turns to but buddy Ben (Iddo Goldberg)? He’s closing up the bar where he works when she shows up. He rambles on about his upcoming wedding to Vanessa and her insistence that the napkins should look like doves before even noticing that something might be wrong with Hannah. She tells him what just happened with the client and he, of course, becomes immediately overprotective. Stephanie calls and Hannah goes off on her, questioning why she would send her such a client. Turns out, he’s someone that another girl no longer wanted to deal with and she thought Belle could “handle it.” Belle accuses her of being nothing more than a pimp these days and hangs up. Then to the audience she says, “What a difference a year makes.”

Flashback to her first meeting with Stephanie. The woman asks her about her A-levels, and Hannah rattles off a list of her scholastic achievements, and Stephanie replies, “What I meant was, do you do anal?” Groan! What a godawful joke. Would anybody actually ask such a question using the phrase A-levels? Stephanie tells her, “I’m going to keep you safe. I’m going to be your best friend Hannah – a best friend who takes 40% and doesn’t tell you her real name.” Back in the here and now, Ben suggests that maybe she should take a break from her job – just for a while. In fact, he bets her that she won’t miss the job.

Apparently taking a break from being a whore means spending your days sitting on park benches watching “normal” people live their lives – as if Hannah never noticed what other people do before now. All the while some really goofy music plays in the background. Go figure. Of course, out of boredom she calls Ben for lunch – a repetitive moment that again exposes how few people Hannah has in her life on this show. Hopefully next season the show writes a few more characters into the mix. Anyway, Ben cannot meet her since he’s consumed with work and wedding planning. She decides to take the opportunity to go shopping for a wedding present and meets a clerk named Tim (Matt Smith). She takes a sort of liking to him and ends up bringing him back to her place and sleeping with him, and then he simply won’t go away. Hannah’s not used to people not going away. At one point he discovers her collection of oils and such in the bathroom, and deduces that she must be a masseuse. She awkwardly says that she doesn’t like telling people because most assume a masseuse is also a whore (a word she cannot bring herself to use…ha, ha.) Eventually Ben comes over claiming to be her fiancé and the guy quickly exits. The two friends converse and she insists that she won the bet. Being “normal” just isn’t her thing. He says that the least normal thing about her is her love for marmite(!). For the record, marmite, a yeast extract the Brits spread on toast, is actually pretty tasty.

Belle gets a call from Stephanie saying she’s once again in demand as someone wrote a sparkling review of her online. She tells the agent she’s ready to go back to work, but more or less threatens her business if she ever pulls anything like that again. (Could Belle ever really be a threat to Stephanie?) As the episode draws to a close, we see it was Ben who wrote the review for Belle, a scene that brings to the forefront the biggest problem with this episode: Why didn’t Belle just get online a write a new review (or even several) after the bad one? The answer is that we then wouldn’t have an episode, or at least we wouldn’t have this episode. Overall, this really seems to be the weakest entry thus far and it really doesn’t do much of anything other than further strengthen the friendship between Hannah and Ben, which could’ve been done dozens of other ways. The rest of it, Belle embracing her inner Hannah was really pretty weak, unless the goal was to show that there no longer is a Belle and a Hannah, but just one woman. Maybe that was the point, and maybe I missed it. (Or not, since I just mentioned it.) In any case, the tone was all over the place, going from dark and disturbing to light and airy. If someone tuned in to the show for the first time and saw this, they likely wouldn’t tune in again.

(This recap was very late. Apologies to regular readers, but the good thing about Showtime is that this series plays over and over throughout the week…and then there’s always Showtime On Demand. In fact, as I type there’s a “Call Girl” marathon going on on one of the Showtimes!)

Actresses, TV, TV Comedies, TV Dramas

TCA Press Tour, Day 12: The CW

July 22, 2008 /

Well, as I mentioned a few posts ago, I wasn’t around for any of The CW’s panels after their “90210” presentation…which, as it happens, was their very first panel. Fortunately, however, the beauty of being a member of the TCA is that I can still provide you with highlights from the panels I missed. God bless transcripts, that’s what I say…

Even before we offer up the “90210” coverage, however, let’s take a gander the info that emerged from the executive session hosted by the President of Entertainment at The CW, Ms. Dawn Ostroff.

* Like last year, The CW brought us details of a new reality show. This time, however, it’s not as underwhelming a pitch as “Crowned” or “Farmer Wants A Wife.” Not that I didn’t end up watching those shows, but “13 – Fear is Real” is one that I actually want to watch, since it’s executive-produced by Sam Raimi and Jay Bienstock. “The best way to describe this show is ‘The Blair Witch Project’ as a reality show,” said Ostroff. “It’s a competition show, but there’s certainly a lot of tension, a lot of fear, and it’s different. There’s an environment that they created in the bayou of Louisiana where, of course, they know it’s a reality show, but the intensity of the situation that they’re living in and the kinds of challenges that they’re faced with really feel real to them while they’re in it. This is hot off of the editing bay…this week, as a matter of fact…and it was shocking to see how invested these contestants were. I mean, they really felt the horror.”

* There wasn’t much “Reaper” news, unfortunately, except that it definitely has a place on the schedule in mid-season. “It’s a great show for us to have in our arsenal,” said Ostroff. “It’s a show that we believe in, which is why we picked it up.” Yeah, but let’s call a spade a spade: they only believed in it enough to pick it up as a mid-season replacement, not for a full season. We can only hope that, come mid-season, the show’s fanbase has built up enough steam to keep it rolling for a third year.

* There is currently no plan for another season of “Beauty and the Geek.” There is also no formal word of cancellation, however.

* And I’ve saved this bit for last because, frankly, I don’t want to believe it, but…ugh…Ostroff claims to have been happy with the time-jump on “One Tree Hill.” “Our expectations were we would do something different that felt, certainly, in line with the show, because the actors had gotten older,” Ostroff said, “and they were excited about the idea of playing characters closer to their real age. We know that when characters often go into college years on a show, it’s sort of hard to keep them together, and the storylines aren’t quite as relatable, so the idea of jumping the show four years forward, having the characters outside of college, in the working world, being young adults, just felt like the time was right. We knew we would have interesting storylines for each of the characters, and Mark Schwahn is just a really good writer. He took all of these characters and put them into young adulthood, created new arcs, new situations, and the show had a renaissance. I mean, it was a great idea, and it really did pay off for us.”

Pft. The results still felt trite to me, and I’m not backing down on this.

Okay, now we move on to…

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, Fall TV Preview, News, Reality TV, TCA Blog 2008, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Dramas

TCA Press Tour, Day 11: Showtime

July 21, 2008 /

It’s rather gratifying to see Showtime continue to grow into its own as a premium cable network that can compete with HBO. For so long, they were hovering just a shade higher than Cinemax in the eyes of viewers (I don’t know about anyone else, but I distinctly remember seeing many a bare breast on the network back in the day), but now they’ve got a reputation for having at least as much quality original programming as the folks over at Home Box Office, and their popularity is such that the network earned their own executive session.

Matthew Blank offered us a heartfelt introduction, along with the announcement that “Inside the NFL” will be coming to Showtime next season, then promptly passed the buck to Robert Greenblatt, the network’s President of Entertainment, who provided us with several other revelations about upcoming programming:

* Coming soon: “The United States of Tara,” which stars Toni Collette and John Corbett, is executive-produced and based on an idea by Steven Spielberg, and is written by Diablo Cody.

* There are very serious discussions about an “L-Word” spin-off, though it seems to exist predominantly on paper at this stage of the game. “Eileen Chaiken is creating that for us,” said Greenblatt. “We’re going to be shooting it right after ‘The L Word’ wraps this year, and it will star one of the girls from ‘The L Word’ as a sort of crossover. The storyline at the end of ‘The L Word,’ the final episode in the final season, there will be an open-ended component to it. And Eileen is going to carry that story along on the Internet, which we think is an interesting way to keep ‘The L Word’ experience going. Then if we decide to go ahead with the spin-off that storyline will segue into the new series.” He would not, however, commit to which girl was intended as the star of the spin-off, mostly because the actress hasn’t even been told that she’s under consideration yet!

* Another season of “Penn & Teller: Bullshit!” has been ordered, and with this 7th season, it will officially become the longest-running series in the history of Showtime.

* There will be a new reality documentary series called “Locked and Loaded,” which is not about Denis Leary but, rather, about a gun store in rural Colorado. Greenblatt described the series as “sort of a fly-on-the-wall show. You see many, many different kinds of people coming into a gun store, and you see the reasons why they buy handguns and rifles and all kinds of other things.”

* Based on the creative success (but, ultimately, due in no small part to the ratings success) of “Weeds,” the network has ordered two more 13-episode seasons of the show.

* After much discussion on the ‘net about the possibility, Greenblatt confirmed that the Edie Falco pilot, currently known as “Nurse Jackie” (a title which may or may not stick), has been ordered to series. She plays what Greenblatt describes as “a very complicated nurse in a New York City hospital,” and based on the clips we saw, by “very complicated,” he means she’s a drug addict. And, yes, someone else did bring up the similarity to “House,” but Greenblatt assured us that “it’s not going to be big medical story of the week necessarily. I think it’s a different take on a medical show that’s grounded by a really iconic, caustic character played by a great actress.”

* Even though they’re limited by history, Greenblatt thinks that there’s at least another two years of plot possibilities left in “The Tudors.” “The third season is the next two (wives of Henry VIII), Anne of Cleves and Jane Seymour…I love meeting people who think Jane Seymour, the actress, is in the show…and then the following season, I think, will be the final two wives,” he theorized.

* The future of “This American Life” is murky. “Ira (Glass) is not only the most dedicated person in the world, he’s a perfectionist and he doesn’t want to put any episode out that isn’t really extraordinary,” said Greenblatt. “And I will tell you that’s not true of all producers. He’s also doing a radio show, and he will not let anything affect the quality of the radio show. And the same people are doing the radio show and the TV show. So every year, we step back and have a conversation with him. ‘Can we do ten? Can we do eight? Can we do six?’ There may be a year where we do a couple of long-form specials with him and we don’t do episodes of the show, per se, because it’s really hard to find those stories. They don’t just fall into his lap.” To put a fine point on it, a third season has not officially been ordered, but per Greenblatt, “We’re talking to (Ira) about how many he wants to do and what form it might take.”

* Showtime is currently planning to air the three seasons of “Secret Diary of a Call Girl” – one’s already aired in the UK, Season 2 premieres there in September, and the third has been commissioned but hasn’t yet begun filming – and reserves the right to consider airing any future seasons, should there be any. “But,” added Greenblatt, “it looks like a
franchise that there’s a lot of interest in.”

Okay, that’s that. Now, we move onto a panel described as “Showtime’s SHO Stoppers,” which featured the stars and producers of the network’s four signature series: Weeds (Mary-Louise Parker and Jenji Kohan), Californication (David Duchovny and Tom Kapinos), Dexter (Michael C. Hall and Clyde Phillips), and Brotherhood (Jason Clarke and Blake Masters).

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Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External TV, News, TCA Blog 2008, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Action, TV Comedies, TV Dramas

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