by Linda Holmes
We're happy to bring back The Discerning Viewer after its hiatus-inspired...er, hiatus. Take note that all times are Eastern, and that all times tonight should be assumed to be very tentative, because President Bush delivers his farewell address on all the networks at 8:00 p.m.
When we last saw the crew at The Office, everyone except poor Andy (Ed Helms) knew all about Angela and Dwight's fling; tonight, the fallout when the news finally reaches him. If the episode title "The Duel" refers, as it seems it does, to a battle between Andy and Dwight, that's guaranteed gold. (NBC, 9:00 p.m.)
Last week's 30 Rock was, in a word, brilliant, and Salma Hayek's guest run continues this week in "Flu Shot," which also features the always-welcome Dr. Spaceman (Chris Parnell). If Tracy Morgan's spectacularly weird speech at the Golden Globes made you wonder what all the fuss is about, it's time to join in, if only because then, people will stop harassing you to watch it. (NBC, 9:30 p.m.)
Patrick Swayze has been in the news lately as a result of his battle with cancer, but A&E is forging ahead with the premiere of his new series The Beast, which I haven't yet seen, but which has gotten mixed reviews from some of my most trusted reviewers, including Alan Sepinwall and Mo Ryan. (A&E, 10:00 p.m.)
2:09 PM ET | permalink
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Tonight, CBS airs the final CSI featuring William Petersen. (The show is currently pegged for 9:15 p.m. Eastern, though that's soft, based on the running time of President Bush's farewell address and the attendant coverage -- so be sure to consider that in the setting of your DVR, where applicable.)
Having seen the episode, I can tell you that Petersen's send-off contains elements of send-offs past from other shows (you'll know them when you see them), as Gil Grissom's departure shares space with the permanent installation of Laurence Fishburne's Dr. Raymond Langston, the new lead. Honestly, Fishburne doesn't seem to be moving entirely comfortably in the character quite yet, but taking an extremely high-profile position in an ensemble that's been together since 2000 can't be easy, even for an actor of his caliber.
Some shows manage what seem to be crippling departures surprisingly well: M*A*S*H, of course, did it a few times; ER gradually lost its entire original cast and survived commercially if not artistically; Cheers lasted long after Shelley Long bailed on the enterprise. Here's the question: What departures have worked the best? Maybe it's a big one, like when Clooney left ER, but maybe there's a small character whose absence was wisely leveraged into a great story. As television's top-rated show loses its lead, I ask you: what TV departures did you most admire?
11:50 AM ET | permalink
Did you see what I did? I did it to him right in the headline. I made Ricardo Montalbán, who died yesterday, all about Fantasy Island, even though his career as a movie and television actor adds up to 167 listings in his Internet Movie Database entry, and that doesn't count his work in theater.
But to me, and to a broad swath of people who were young when Fantasy Island bowed in 1978, he is the white-suited Mr. Roarke, who welcomed guests to his private island, where he had the ability to...well, make fantasies come true. Kind of. Often ironically. You can see full episodes online -- here, for instance, is one where the two stories are a man who wants to find the perfect woman and a woman who wants to learn about the criminal mind.
"Khaaaaaaan!", after the jump...
Continue reading "Ricardo Montalbán: 'Smiles, Everyone, Smiles'" »
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If you're familiar with the site Rotten Tomatoes, you know that it aggregates the opinions of many, many critics in order to present a general sense of a film's critical response. These are critics who have at least some credentials; they're not rounding up everybody with a blog and a ticket to the cineplex.
What emerges is an imperfect system in which every registered critic's opinion is counted, meaning that some people you wouldn't trust with your cable remote are weighted equally with people you've been reading for 25 years. It's absolutely, emphatically not a substitute for reading real reviews, and it's not a substitute for thinking for yourself, and it would be a grave mistake to suggest that the quality of a film is reliably reflected in its ability to appeal to the largest number of critics.
Nevertheless, what they call "Tomatometer" rankings do make for an interesting data set, and they've now released the "Golden Tomato Awards," in which they determine which movies were, overall, the best-reviewed of the year.
In the past, this hasn't correlated reliably with awards performance. I was intrigued by the fact that the top-rated dramas of 2007 were, in order, Away From Her, Gone Baby Gone, The Savages, There Will Be Blood, and This Is England -- only one of which got a Best Picture nomination. (I noted with some satisfaction the very high placement of Gone Baby Gone, which I thought was outstanding and very unfairly left out of almost all awards consideration last year in favor of more bombastic movies.)
So what happened this year? We investigate, after the jump...
Continue reading "Criticism As A Democracy...For What It's Worth" »
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I've been trying to think of good ways to sort through the piles and piles of entertainment news that hits my radar every day, and it ultimately occurred to me that what we need is a sorting mechanism. Some things you should actually read, some you should make note of, and some (let's be honest: most) you can safely ignore. Let me help.
Read:
• The Cinematical roundup Sundance '09: Our 12 Most Anticipated Films. You will hear about many of these quite a bit more in the coming year; it's good to start becoming familiar with them. • The New York Times explanation of the significance of Beethoven in Peanuts. Lovely.
Note:
• Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher on The Sopranos, thinks he knows what happened in the finale. • Leonard Cohen, whose career has (it cannot be denied) benefited in part from the "Hallelujah" revival that has been (I'm sorry; I know it's not fair) partially nudged along by American Idol and similar shows, is on tour and coming to New York. • Speaking of which, Idol alum and Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson will perform the national anthem at the Super Bowl. After squeamishly turning away from saturation coverage of recent tragedies in her personal life, I'm pleased to see her in the news as a talented performer again. • If you have listened to the audio commentaries on the Moonlighting DVDs -- and I have -- you won't be surprised that there is (admittedly very early) chatter about a reunion movie. Love-hate relationships between co-stars, remember, are 50 percent love.
Ignore:
• Katie Holmes and Victoria Beckham both have their pictures taken looking like zombies. This, fortunately, does not affect you. • Paris Hilton cuts her hair. I wish Paris Hilton would move to New Zealand. • Non-noted fitness non-expert Gwyneth Paltrow is opening a gym. You will almost surely not join this gym.
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by Marc Hirsh
Yesterday was a tough one for sci-fi fans, as the news hit that both Ricardo Montalbán and Patrick McGoohan had died. While Montalbán's performances in Fantasy Island, Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan and the thickly cushioned front seat of a Chrysler Cordoba gave him fame across multiple audiences and generations, McGoohan's renown was more limited, as it hinged primarily on a single thing: The Prisoner, the landmark television show he helped create in the late 1960s.
I first came across The Prisoner in college, when I stumbled on it one Sunday evening on the television in the common room of my dorm. I had no idea what to make of the thing, and neither did the other guy who happened to be in the room. We watched with befuddled glee as Number Six foiled the plans of what we would soon learn was one of many Number Twos.
And we were hooked. The two of us never really spoke outside of that (not that talking would have helped), but every Sunday, it was just him, me and the local PBS station freaking our minds out but good. Pre-Internet, we had no idea what it was; pre-DVD, we had no way of catching up on any episodes we'd missed. It was just this weird, amazing anomaly that we had to catch while we could or be left wondering.
How you, too, can have your mind blown, after the jump...
Continue reading "Sad News From The 'Tally Ho'" »
7:16 AM ET | permalink
What was surprising about last night's American Idol premiere is that it actually did, in some ways, show signs of improvement in the ways producers promised. They said it would be less about inflicting pain on the hapless and hopeless, and it was. Less of what one of my pals calls the "emotional snuff film," in which a bad audition is shown, and then the auditioner has a lengthy breakdown, wailing about how this was his/her only chance at happiness. Somewhat less delusion. A little more graciousness, on average, about being rejected. In that sense, it was a bit more comfortable.
But then: Bikini Girl, as they called her. Katrina Darrell auditioned in her two-piece, and she received lots and lots of attention, just as she planned, none of which was for her singing. Her actual audition was mercilessly average, no better than any one of ten girls you could find in any college a cappella group. New judge Kara DioGuardi took her down a peg, as judges have done since the show began.
And then came the sexist classification of it as a "catfight," the mention of "claws" that has somehow never come up when Simon Cowell has said things hundreds of times nastier than this to contestants both male and female...and eyes rolled all over again.
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During a recent vacation, I happily devoured Nixonland, an 800-plus-page behemoth that I stuck to with such constancy that I'm fairly sure that toting it around and clutching it awkwardly with my short-lady fingers actually injured my wrist. Not kidding.
As L.A. Times book editor David L. Ulin points out today, this would not help me contribute to American "reading" under the definition used by the National Endowment for the Arts in its series of studies on reading in America. The last couple of reports had stated that reading was on the decline, but the one released this week, called "Reading On The Rise," shows that the trend is reversing itself. American "literacy," they say, is improving.
What's the catch? After the jump...
Continue reading "Are We Readers? And Are We The Right Kind Of Readers?" »
8:03 AM ET | permalink
by Glen Weldon
So yes, as you have likely heard, the Obama-Meets-Spidey issue of Amazing Spider-Man comes out today.
This has duly occasioned the predictable, but no less puzzling, mainstream media response that such publicity stunts are engineered to bring about. If you're interested, you can read about it here, or here, or here, or here or here.
Not here, though.
No, here we've got bigger, less nakedly exploitative Spider-fish to fry, namely: Marking the one-year anniversary of the Quickie Divorce that Quite Literally Changed the (Marvel) Universe.
After the jump: A disquisition on matters matrimonial and meta-human, or: Why the cosmic annulment of Spidey's marriage to Mary Jane made for a better comic, and why Lois and Clark need couples counseling.
Continue reading "Until Retroactive, Reality-Altering, Demon-Wrought Reboot Do Us Part" »
6:45 AM ET | permalink
While watching the Golden Globes and the tribute to Steven Spielberg, I got talking to a friend about Twister. Not a movie I think about very often -- not a movie anyone thinks about very often. Except maybe Philip Seymour Hoffman, who thinks, "Wait, I was in Twister?" (Yes. Yes, you were. And also Patch Adams. The Robin Williams silly-doctor movie. We won't tell the Academy.)
But what's amazing, in retrospect, is how terrifying and fabulous the Twister trailers were, particularly compared to how flat the movie is. Sure, the trailer has the advantage of skipping over the boring bickering-exes business between Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, but it also suggests far more movement and genuine suspense than the movie comes anywhere close to delivering. Even more than the trailer above -- which is a corker -- I remember a trailer I can't find online now, which featured an almost entirely dark screen as the sounds of the tornado approached, rattling the...root cellar, or wherever we were meant to be hiding. I don't think any of the movie was even shown; just the sounds in the dark theater. And I came home thinking, "I cannot wait to see that movie."
And then that movie turned out to be Twister.
Has this happened to you? I'm not talking about ordinary situations where the clips make the movie look better than it is. (And some other time, we will discuss the trailer that tells the entire story and thereby ruins the movie, which is a separate pet peeve.) I'm talking about sitting in the theater sounding your internal "WOOOO!" only to find, a few weeks later, that you have been wooed falsely, as it were. You have hooted in vain. Tell your tale. We care about your wasted hoots.
11:30 AM ET | permalink
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