Tuned In
As a director, Todd Haynes (Safe, I’m Not There) sometimes seems less like a filmmaker than an enthusiast: a collector, say, of a certain brand of out-of-production figurine (he cast his early Karen Carpenter biopic, Superstar, with Barbie dolls) or a passionate fan of a highly particular out-of-fashion design genre. His 2002 film Far …
Tuned In
Has there ever been a better-targeted show than Portlandia? A gentle sketch-comedy sendup (debuting tonight) of high-minded, laid-back, arts-focused, sustainability-oriented living in Portland, Ore., for IFC channel, it is, essentially, a comedy for people who watch IFC, about people who would watch IFC (if they owned televisions), on …
Tuned In
In its fourth season Big Love, HBO’s drama about plural marriage, had problems with plural storylines. As befits a show about big families, Big Love was never afraid to be expansive, developing a large cast and piling on story developments, but the torrent of can-you-top-this plot developments became almost comical. To his big-box …
Tuned InUncategorized
This weekend, midseason-debut frenzy kicks into high gear, with several new shows debuting on Sunday alone. I’m on deadline for the print magazine, as well as trying to get some work done in advance before taking some time for personal business next week, so I don’t have time to review any of them at length. But here are some capsule …
Tuned In
Though it’s not TV news exactly, there are enough fans of the original British The Office here that I should note that Martin Freeman (our friend Tim from Wernham Hogg) has been cast as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. It’s an exciting choice: Freeman has both the comic and dramatic ability the role needs, and simply physiologically he’s …
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To the great Sunday-night pileup that AMC and HBO have wrought, this weekend we add the return of Bored to Death.* There are a lot of things to love about the story of writer-turned-private-dick Jonathan Ames (Jonathan Schwartzman): the shaggy-dog hipster-noir stories, the highbrow-lit-meets-lowbrow-slapstick plots, the loving use of …
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Technically speaking, this is really TV Next Monday material, but I’ll be out next week, so a reminder: Laura Linney stars in Showtime’s cancer dramedy The Big C, debuting Aug. 16. You can read my impressions of the first three episodes here. There are some broad supporting characters and more than an echo of earlier Showtime dark …
Tuned In
This Sunday, HBO returns the second season of Hung and the seventh of Entourage, two series that I continue to follow despite their considerable challenges, but for very different reasons. With Hung, the story of a Detroit-area male prostitute (Thomas Jane) and his pimp (Jane Adams), I feel that there’s a really good dark comedy about …
Tuned In
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt3VeLsukGU]
The second season of HBO’s True Blood ended on a cliffhanger, as vampire Bill asked mortal-or-mostly-mortal (I think) Sookie (a.k.a. “Suh-key”) for her hand in marriage, then disappeared after she asked for a minute alone to think. The first three episodes of True Blood’s season 3 …
Tuned InUncategorized
I’m not the hugest fan of the kind of biopic film that HBO tends to favor for its original movies: these bio movies (both HBO’s and feature films) are often either straight-ahead recountings of the lives of figures I’m already familiar with or accounts of people I don’t much want to know more about. And nowadays I’m leery of the work …
It’s been a fun week, interjecting on Jim’s behalf, but I do believe our fearless hero is returning in just a couple days, so my brief tenure has come to an end. Party’s over, and I’ll make my way to the exit.
But if you’ll permit me a final, random post, I’d love to toss three items at you, as suggestions for archive …
Back on Tuesday night, I had a surprising revelation.
Around 6 p.m. I rushed in the rain to a screening of Clash of the Titans, ready to get a face full of the Kraken (you can read my full take on the film over at Techland). But on the subway ride home – after a film that was probably about 30 minutes too long, and easily 15 minutes …
Tuned InUncategorized
I liked Breaking Bad from the get-go; it had one of the best drama pilots I’ve ever seen, and I put it on my list of the 10 best shows of 2008 its first season. But season one did have its problems, chief among them a common affliction of cable dramas: a sense of frenzy and hurry, as if the show felt we’d lose interest if it didn’t …
