Category: Reviews (Page 35 of 120)

NBC: What’s New for Fall 2009

September 6, 2009 /

The Jay Leno Show (Mon., Sept. 14 @ 10:00 PM, NBC)

The competition:
• Monday: “Castle” (ABC), “CSI: Miami” (CBS)
• Tuesday: “The Forgotten” (ABC), “The Good Wife” (CBS)
• Wednesday: “Eastwick” (ABC), “CSI: New York” (CBS)
• Thursday: “Private Practice” (ABC), “The Mentalist” (CBS)
• Friday: “20/20” (ABC), “Numb3rs” (CBS)

Starring: Jay Leno
Producers: Debbie Vickers, Larry Goitia, Jay Leno, Jack Coen, Stephanie Ross (“The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”)
Network’s Description: Marking a new era in television, Jay Leno, recently named America’s Favorite TV Personality by the 2009 Harris Poll, moves from late night to primetime on September 14 when his series becomes the first-ever entertainment program to be stripped across primetime on broadcast network television. The series promises more comedy in the 10 o’clock hour and will showcase many of the features that have made Leno America’s late-night leader for more than a dozen years.
The Buzz: About as mixed as buzz can be. This is the most controversial maneuver in the past several decades of television history, a Hail Mary by the people at the Peacock. It’s highly possible that the people who’ve abandoned “The Tonight Show” since the tall, skinny Irish kid took over have just decided to go to bed early for a change and are fully prepared to start watching their old buddy, Jay, in his new locale. Then again, maybe they won’t. It’s a crazy crap shoot, this series, and all that us critics can do is sit back and see what the viewers decide to do.
Pilot Highlight: None, obviously, due to the live nature of the show.
Bottom Line: If you like Jay Leno, you’ll like the show. If you don’t, you won’t. It’s really as simple as that. But will you watch the show? Leno has the right attitude by acknowledging outright that he doesn’t expect to beat original programming, only anticipating that they’ll probably start to take home the ratings gold once the reruns start. I like Leno as much as the next guy, but I like scripted dramatic programming better. For that alone, I’m not exactly rooting for him to succeed. But with that said, I’m mostly just curious to see what’s going to happen.

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External Entertainment, External TV, Fall TV Preview, News, Pilots, Reviews, TV, TV Action, TV Comedies, TV Dramas

Fox: What’s New for Fall 2009

September 6, 2009 /

Glee (Wed., Sept. 9 @ 9:00 PM, Fox)

The competition: “Modern Family” and “Cougar Town” (ABC), “Criminal Minds” (CBS), “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” (NBC), “The Beautiful Life” (The CW)

Starring: Jane Lynch, Jayma Mays, Corey Monteith, Lea Michele, Dianna Agron, Matthew Morrison, Jessalyn Gilsig, Chris Colfer, Patrick Gallagher, Kevin McHale, Jenna Ushkowitz, Amber Riley, Mark Salling
Producers: Bradley Buecker, Brad Falchuk, and Ryan Murphy (“Nip/Tuck”), Zachary Woodlee (“Eli Stone”)
Network’s Description: A one-hour musical comedy that follows an optimistic high school teacher as he tries to transform the school’s Glee Club and inspire a group of ragtag performers to make it to the biggest competition of them all: Nationals. McKinley High School’s Glee Club used to be at the top of the show choir world, but years later, a series of scandals have turned it into a haven for misfits and social outcasts. Will Schuester, a young optimistic teacher, has offered to take on the Herculean task of restoring McKinley’s Glee Club to its former glory with the help of fellow teacher Emma Pillsbury. It’s a tall order when the brightest stars of the pitch-imperfect club include Kurt, a nerdy soprano with a flair for the dramatic; Mercedes, a dynamic diva-in-training who refuses to sing back-up; Artie, a geeky guitarist who spends more time avoiding bullies than chasing girls; and Tina, an awkward girl who needs to suppress her stutter before she can take center stage. Will’s only hope lies with two true talents: Rachel Berry, a perfectionist firecracker who is convinced that show choir is her ticket to stardom; and Finn Hudson, the popular high school quarterback with movie star looks and a Motown voice who must protect his reputation with his holier-than-thou girlfriend, Quinn, and his arrogant teammate, Puck. Driven by his secret past, Will is determined to do whatever it takes to make Glee great again, even though everyone around him thinks he’s nuts. He’s out to prove them all wrong – from his tough-as-nails wife Terri Schuester to McKinley’s cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester to an über-hip world that thinks jazz hands and sequined tuxedos litter the road to infamy rather than pave the way to Hollywood dreams.
The Buzz: Crazy insane. (Insane? Crazy?) Fox’s decision to air the pilot for the show back in May and let it simmer for the summer was one of the strongest marketing moves in recent television history, as evidenced by the ridiculous amount of iTunes downloads of the songs from the show, and while having the cast turn up at Comic-Con might’ve seemed out of place at first, given how close the lines for “glee club members” and “comic book and sci-fi aficionados” lie on the geek flowchart, it shouldn’t have. And now they’re preparing to tour the malls of America…? The buzz buzz buzz you’re hearing in the drum of your ear is the sound of “Glee.”
Pilot Highlight: If you didn’t want to leap to your feet and applaud at the end of their performance of “Don’t Stop Believin’,” you are dead inside. Dead, I say.
Bottom Line: It’s going to be like having a new volume of “High School Musical” airing every single week, except with sensibilities falling closer to “Freaks and Geeks.” If it isn’t a huge hit, and if the soundtrack to the show isn’t one of the biggest selling albums of the holiday season, I will be shocked…and crestfallen, too, as I’m totally in the “Glee” club as well.

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External Entertainment, External TV, Fall TV Preview, News, Pilots, Reviews, TV, TV Cartoons, TV Comedies, TV Dramas

The CW: What’s New for Fall 2009

September 6, 2009 /

Melrose Place (Tues., Sept. 8 @ 9:00 PM, The CW)

The competition: “Dancing with the Stars” (ABC), “NCIS: Los Angeles” (CBS), “The Biggest Loser” (NBC), “So You Think You Can Dance” (Fox)

Starring: Laura Leighton, Shaun Sipos, Thomas Calabro, Katie Cassidy, Colin Egglesfield, Stephanie Jacobsen, Michael Rady, Jessica Lucas, Ashlee Simpson-Wentz
Producers: Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer (“Smallville”)
Network’s Description: In an elegant Spanish-style apartment building in the trendy Melrose neighborhood of Los Angeles, a diverse group of 20-somethings have formed a close-knit surrogate family. Sydney Andrews is the landlady, still beautiful at 40, and a central figure in the lives of all her tenants, especially handsome and rebellious David Breck. Sydney started an affair with David despite her turbulent history with his estranged father, Dr. Michael Mancini. Both father and son learned through experience that Sydney was not above using blackmail to control people. Another tenant, high-powered publicist Ella Simms, once considered Sydney her mentor, but their friendship was destroyed by betrayal, and Sydney threatened to evict Ella and ruin her career. Sydney also played a pivotal role in the career of Auggie Kirkpatrick. After they met at an AA meeting, she became Auggie’s sponsor and encouraged his dream to become a chef. Now a successful sous chef at the trendy restaurant Coal, Auggie has been avoiding Sydney since she began drinking again. The other tenants include Lauren Yung, a medical student in desperate need of money to pay her student loans, and Jonah Miller, an aspiring filmmaker who has just proposed to his live-in girlfriend Riley Richmond, a first-grade teacher. The newest tenant, 18-year-old Violet Foster, has just arrived in LA with her own secret connection to Sydney. When a bloody body is found floating in the courtyard pool, David is the leading suspect. However, as the police are soon to discover, almost everyone living at Melrose Place had a reason to want the deceased out of the way.
The Buzz: There hasn’t been nearly as much excitement about this reboot as there was for “90210.” After watching the pilot, there appears to be good reason for that.
Pilot Highlight: The temptation is to say either the discovery of the body or the discovery of who David’s father is, but by the time the show premieres, it’s a fair bet that both pieces of information won’t be nearly as much of a surprise for you as they were for me. As such, let’s go with the closing moment, when we’re handed a shot which implies that we’re looking at the murderer.
Bottom Line: The characters and scenarios feel clichéd, and as it stands right now, the connections to the original series seem tenuous at best. You can appreciate The CW’s desire to have lightning strike twice, but this just couldn’t feel more rushed…or unnecessary.

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External Entertainment, External TV, Fall TV Preview, News, Pilots, Reviews, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas, TV Sci-Fi

Void at the box office

September 4, 2009 /

gerard_butler_gamer

There’s a definite feeling of apathy about this week’s new box office releases, but on we go.

Topping this Labor Day weekend’s movie newbies is the Gerard Butler sci-fi action flick from the team who brought us “Crank.” “Gamer” adds a video game twist to such past violent media commentaries as “Death Race 2000” and “The Running Man.” Lionsgate isn’t screening this one for critics, so there’s no reason to assume there’s anything terribly clever or satirical about it, though a capable supporting cast led by Michael C. Hall (Showtime’s “Dexter“) as a villainous game designer as well as Ludacris and Kyra Sedgwick seem to indicate someone, at one point, hoped to do something interesting with this one. As for commercial success, it appears to all be laid at the feet of Butler. Nothing against the very capable Scottish thespian, but I just don’t see this one beating last week’s leader, the gimmick-driven 3-D horror opus, “The Final Destination.”

And that, I’m sure goes double for next of the three new major releases of the week, the Sandra Bullock headlined screwball romantic comedy, “All About Steve.” A film which the nation’s critics might well wish Fox had withheld, it has achieved the still fairly rare honor of a 00% Rotten Tomatoes “Fresh” rating (as in 100% “rotten”). Costar Bradley Cooper’s newfound recognizability via “The Hangover” probably won’t help much here, and Thomas Haden Church doubtless deserves better. Apparently the creators of this one intended Bullock’s character to be a lovable eccentric, but instead wound up with the more usual sort of eccentric — the kind who’s just weird. There’s likely a reason this one’s being dumped at the end of a long movie summer.

It’s in significantly fewer theaters than its competitors at only about 1,500, but Mike Judge’s “Extract” simply has to be better than either of them. At a 55% RT rating, the nation’s critics pretty much reflect the divided reaction of my fellow PH-er Jason Zingale, who calls it “a wildly uneven film that is deftly funny at some points, and just plain dull in others.” Still, though Jason 100% detested Judge’s earlier, barely released, “Idiocracy” that film got better reviews and the portions I’ve seen on cable certainly made me laugh — not that anyone cares what us critics think.

Jason Bateman in As the writer-director of “Office Space” and the creator of TV’s “King of the Hill” and “Beavis and Butthead,” Judge is a knotty figure when it comes to movies. His now legendary workplace comedy was pretty much dumped at the box office only to be discovered later on vide0, and “Idiocracy” got even less promotion than the original release of “Space.” (Jason would say for good reason.) “Extract” star Jason Bateman is a skilled comedian but despite important parts in numerous hits, including “Juno,” he’s a very long way from the film stardom of his onetime TV son, Michael Cera. Still, both Judge and Bateman have a lot of pent-up goodwill. Maybe there’ll be a surprise here, but don’t bet the farm, or even the garden, on it.

That leaves two 100-theater releases. The first is a horror flick being dumped after the demise of Paramount Vantage. “Carriers” seeks to milk horror from pandemic fears. Quarantined from critics, it stars the talented Lou Taylor Pucci and the new Captain Kirk, Chris Pine. Speaking of James Tiberius, the other release isn’t new at all but another chance to catch J.J. Abrams’ hugely entertaining (if oddly filmed) “Star Trek” in Imax, which has certainly lived long and prospered at the box office.

Star Trek

Action Movies, Actors, Actresses, External Entertainment, External Movies, External TV, Horror Movies, Movie Comedies, Movies, News, Reviews, Sci-Fi Movies, TV, TV Cartoons, TV Comedies, TV Sci-Fi

True Blood 2.11 – This love gushes from my heart, like a water from a spout

August 30, 2009 /

“Is this a bad time?”

You know, for as much as I’ve decried the lack of eroticism inherent in blood, Evan Rachel Wood is so damned sexy that you could almost…not quite, but almost…overlook the fact that her face was covered with the stuff when she made her first appearance this evening. Or maybe it was the other woman moaning in the background that helped make the scenario somehow more sexy than creepy. Whatever the case, it was clear from the get-go that Queen Sophie-Anne LeClerq, Vampire Queen of Louisiana, was not going to be a woman to be trifled with. She knows more than any other vampire we’ve seen, and although we didn’t necessarily see all that much of her power, all we really had to see was the way Bill acted around her to know that, man, she’s got to be off-the-charts powerful. Her comments throughout the episode ranged from funny (“I haven’t enjoyed sex with men since the Eisenhower administration”) to cynical (“Never underestimate the power of blind faith”) to a combination of the mystical and the mystifying (“Everything that exists imagined itself into existence”), but the most telling of her comments came from her complete dismissal of Maryann and her actions. In short, she can’t really be bothered by this creature…or much of anything outside of her own existence, really. Looks like the holier-than-thou manner of royalty remains consistent within both the human and the vampire worlds.

Poor Hoyt. He gets pissy with Jessica for her decision to bite his mother because of her insolent comments, only to have her offer disconcerting revelations about how she’s been longing to head over to Merlotte’s to find herself some manly company, then put the cherry on top of the conversation by destroying everything he ever knew about his father and his noble death.

Poor Tara. She was so chomping at the bit to save Eggs that she basically tried to alienate every single person in the house. My wife theorized that her angry words were due to the approaching mob, but, no, it appears that she was just being incredibly shitty. During her awful heart-to-heart chat with her mama, she did her very best to make her mother feel like complete and total shit…and, yet, Mama responds by playing the sucker and deciding that this is her only possible way to get her daughter back. I don’t blame her for her desperation, but, c’mon, this is Tara’s cousin and best friend. Given everything that had gone down in the previous few hours, did she really think that her daughter knew best?

I can’t imagine that anyone would deny that, if this episode belonged to anyone other than Queen Sophie-Anne, it was the tag-team dumb-ass duo of Jason and Detective Andy. Who would’ve thought that Andy would turn out to be the sensible one of the pair? There were laughs from Sam’s attempts to explain his shapeshifting abilities to them (eventually leading to the discussion later in the episode where Jason tried to work out the most sordid angles of Sam’s powers), from Jason’s dramatic comment about having read about the impending Armageddon in a book (just when you thought he was going to say it was the Bible, he revealed that it was Max Brooks’s “World War Z”), from trumpeting his awesomeness and then promptly running headlong into a tree, and…oh, hell, there were too many laughs to count, but the one that still resonates the most was surely this line.

“‘Sometimes you need to destroy something to save it.’ That’s in the Bible. Or the Constitution.”

God love you, Jason Stackhouse.

The whole sequence within the sheriff’s station was hilarious, though I thought it was a bit cheap to have Andy be wearing kevlar underneath his shirt when he got shot. Still, how can you go wrong with William Sanderson dancing his heart out in his boxers? Their intense discussion in the truck was pretty hilarious in its own right, particularly Jason’s assurance that “I watch a lot of porn to learn stuff,” but the sudden decision to turn this mystical invasion into something patriotic was somehow perfect for these two redneck yokels. The only thing that would’ve made it better would’ve been to have Jason and Andy start singing “God Bless The USA.”

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