Tag: Crash (Page 2 of 2)

Starz series “Crash” does its inspiration justice

August 25, 2009 /

After mowing through the first season of “Crash” on the Netflix streaming service, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. The series is based on the same concept as the 2004 film of the same name — the lives of otherwise disparate Angelinos are ultimately connected.

It stars Dennis Hopper as Ben Cendars, a past-his-prime record mogul. In reality, Hopper is playing the same role he always plays — a man with great presence and intelligence who may or may not be totally insane. He takes a young wannabe rapper (Jocko Sims) under his wing as he tries to wrest control of his record company from his resentful daughter (Kari Matchett).

Another (and more dominant) storyline revolves around a married police officer (Ross McCall) who, via a car crash, gets involved with a beautiful but dangerous gypsy (Moran Atias). His partner (Arlene Tur) is having an affair with a dirty detective (Nick Tarabay) who is moonlighting for a Korean kingpin. A gang-banger-turned-paramedic (Brian Tee) gets tangled in this web, and a detective from another precinct (Tom Sizemore) is called in to investigate.

The series also follows a Guatemalan immigrant who makes the trek through Mexico to the U.S., a married couple that loses their life savings in the real estate market, and a homicide detective who is tasked with keeping a young witness alive long enough to testify against a murder suspect.

As we learned on “The Shield,” dirty cops make for excellent television, and while “Crash” isn’t quite as gritty, it serves as a nice fix for those missing Vic Mackey and Co. I’d also recommend it to those that liked “Southland” in that it’s successful in telling a big story that involves a lot of different moving parts. Unlike these two series, “Crash” is on pay cable, so the creators have even more freedom to tell their story.

Season 2 debuts on Starz on September 18. Between this series and the excellent comedy “Party Down,” Starz has something going.

Actors, External Entertainment, External TV, Movies, Reviews, TV, TV Action, TV Dramas

TCA Tour – You Asked For It: Ira Steven Behr’s opening remarks

August 3, 2009 /

I guess one person’s request doesn’t necessarily qualify as “clamoring,” but since it’s been requested, I thought I’d go ahead and offer up Mr. Behr’s opening remarks from the TCA Press Tour panel for Season 2 of “Crash.” Truth be told, it’s as educational a lesson about what to expect from the show’s sophomore season as one could possibly have hoped for…and if he’d just sent this off in an E-mail or letter to all of the writers in attendance rather than delivered it orally, he probably would’ve found a lot more people saying, “Say, I am curious to check out this show!”

Okay, here we go…

“Crash,” Season 2.

L.A.

Los Angeles.

Okay, we’re in Pasadena, but pretend.

Los Angeles is paradise, but paradise comes at a price and everybody pays, and that’s the new season of “Crash.” So I’d like to introduce some of the new characters who will be paying that price this year along with the wonderful Dennis Hopper as Ben Cendars, Ross McCall as Kenny Battaglia, and Jocko Sims as Anthony.

Continue reading »

External Entertainment, External TV, News, TCA Blog 2009, TCA Press Tour, TV, TV Dramas

TCA Tour, Day 2: “Crash”

August 1, 2009 /

Hey, wanna see a panel come to a screeching halt before it even gets rolling? Just ask Ira Steven Behr to step up to the mike.

I’m a big fan of Behr’s work, particularly on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and “The 4400,” but, holy cow, Starz main man Bill Hamm has got to still be kicking himself over his decision to say, “Before we open it up for questions, I want to ask Ira to give us some details about the direction of the second season and some of our exciting additions to the cast.” There’s no way I’m going to offer up everything Behr had to say, but I’ll tell you that, having copied and pasted the text of his comments into a Word document, it totals out at over 600 words, and his halting delivery made it seem as though it lasted forever. I’d actually been excited about the panel, which was to provide details about the upcoming second season of “Crash,” but I quickly found myself within an inch of standing up and yelling, “Geez louise, Ira, wrap it up, wouldja?”

Eventually, of course, Ira did wrap it up, and things moved onto the most obvious new development about the new season of “Crash”: the addition of Eric Roberts to the cast.

This isn’t the first time that Eric Roberts and Dennis Hopper have worked together, but it’s the only time that Roberts is interested in talking about, even if Hopper seemed to enjoy needling his new co-star about it.

Dennis Hopper: We did a movie together, too.
Eric Roberts: We don’t want to talk about that, Dennis.
Dennis Hopper: Okay. It was the first…
Eric Roberts: We don’t talk about that, Dennis. Terrible movie. (Shrugs) I made a couple.
Dennis Hopper: I made more than a couple!

Actually, Roberts tried his best not to say anything at all during the panel, as was further evidenced when a writer asked him and Hopper about the differences between working on television versus working in motion pictures.

Dennis Hopper: Well, you don’t have as much time, but I’ve worked in a lot of independent films through the years, so it doesn’t get that much different. I’ve had a lot of dialogue in this series, so that’s been the most difficult part for me. Beyond that, we work 15, sometimes 17 hours, but we have a great crew. Never heard anyone complain, except me. But nobody listens to me, so it’s okay. But the crew and the cast are just wonderful. Yeah, I’m having a joyous time, even though it’s difficult. But since we’re shooting other episodes, we have our three days off and four days off, you know, every two weeks, whatever. So it’s a nice schedule.
Eric Roberts: What he said.

Now, here’s the big question: how many of you even watched “Crash”?

Continue reading »

External Entertainment, External TV, Interviews, TV, TV Dramas, Video

When a Double-0 Does It, It is Not Illegal + “G.I. Joe,” F**k No!

June 12, 2009 /

A couple of items hot off the action film presses…

* As per Cinematical, writer Peter Morgan has been hired to work on the as-yet-untitled 23rd (!) James Bond film. If the name rings a bell, he’s the playwright and screenwriter best known for the slam-bang action fests “Frost/Nixon” and “The Queen.” (Yeah, I know, but they cut out the lengthy sequence where Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II dons a cat suit and tears a bunch of foreign agents limb from limb as she foils a plot to blow up Buckingham Palace before tea and crumpets with the French premier.)

It’s actually not a big change in strategy. Both “Casino Royale” and “Quantum of Solace” were written by the team of Robert Wade and Neal Purvis with a “polish” from Oscar-winning veteran scribe Paul Haggis (“Crash“, “Million Dollar Baby“). After what many perceived as a bit of a let down on “Quantum” both in terms of story and direction, apparently the idea was to get a fresh Oscar-nominated, if not actually Oscar-winning, writer on board. So, no need to worry that “Bond 23” will be an earnest examination of the legal and ethical issues created by giving random blokes a license to kill people — though I’d pay to see that. As usual, interesting choices are being bandied about for the Bondian director’s chair, but in 22 films, for better or worse, a director with a strong personal vision has yet to be hired, so no reason to think the Bond producers will break the pattern now.

* Rumors have been flying all over the place about a supposed disastrous screening of “G.I. Joe” — a movie that wasn’t exactly being awaited with baited breath at least in my corner of the geeksphere. Anyhow, the upshot is that helmer Stephen Sommers, best known as the writer-director behind the Mummy films, or other heads may or may not roll or be diminished creatively.

For insight, I hereby direct you to Anne Thompson‘s refreshingly FACT-ual approach to the matter. Looking at the trailer, I can’t help thinking that this movie has somehow already been made….

Action Movies, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movies, News

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

Newer posts »

© 2023 Premium Hollywood

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑