If Fox runs out of episodes of 24, the network can run this top secret, never before seen pilot: what the deadly game of spies vs. terrorists would have looked like in 1994.
Produced by College Humor
(Thanks to Andrew Hearst of Panopticist for the link)
Everything that the movie DOMINO should have been, and all the bail bond parts of JACKIE BROWN -- but with tough dames instead of tough Robert Forster: that's Court TV's new reality series BOUNTY GIRLS, my new TV obsession.
How cool are these bounty hunters, the four wily Miami women of Sunshine State Bail Bonds? On their recent visit to NBC's Today show, they demonstrated the art of taking down a suspect -- or somebody who's bugging you.
Looking around at the Emmy Award previews in Variety and elsewhere, I saw some familiar names in the directing categories.
First up: the nonfiction category. No surprise to see which network dominates the category: HBO devotes considerable support to the documentary form (though Cinemax, PBS and Showtime deserve praise for their doc series, too.)
If Spike Lee's shattering Hurricane Katrina epic WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS doesn't win the award, I think you'll hear shouts of protest. This is passionate, pointed filmmaking from a director working at the top of his form.
My new favorite TV show -- and TV personality -- have come under attack.
Discovery Channel's MAN VS. WILD, the survival-travel-adventure show hosted by ex-SAS man Bear Grylls takes viewers on a thrilling, vicarious trip to parts unknown and unpleasant. Host Bear Grylls, a sturdy/geeky looking ex-SAS man who's alway announcing how uncomfortable and scared he is, parachutes into faraway places (Australia, Iceland, the Alps, the Everglades), braves the elements, and lives on whatever he finds there: snakes, bugs and worse.
Though MAN VS. WILD (and Bear in his to-camera narration) indicates that he and his camera person are alone in the wild, the credits indicate a "Fixer" -- presumably an expert in local climate and wildlife. Some sequences, such as the host jumping from the top of a cliff and then being seen landing at the bottom, indicate a two-man camera crew. Or at least two cameras.
Now he's been accused of living it up in luxury spas and lodges while claiming to be roughing it in the WILD. New York Times blogger Mike Nizza has a report here. The Hollywood Reporter has more.
What do you think? Is a little fakery okay in the service of educational and entertaining TV?
Cinemax's Reel Life documentary series begins with HAVE YOU SEEN ANDY? Melanie Perkins first-person exploration of the unsolved crime that has haunted her life -- and the city of Lawrence, Massachusetts.
The 1976 disappearance of 10 year old Andy Puglisi - Perkins' childhood friend - gives the lie to the idea that kids of today have so much more to fear than we did. The past wasn't a more innocent age. It was simply a more ignorant one.
Check this one out, Tuesday, June 12 at 7 pm (check Cinemax's site for repeats)
http://www.bostonist.com/archives/2007/06/11/have_you_seen_andy.php
Watch it again for the communal "Huh?"
HBO
The Sopranos. Episode 86 "Made in America"
The fascinating things one learn in the New York Times Sunday Arts section: In a long overdue profile of '24' character actor James Morrison -- the silver haired, serious man, former Marine type CTU boss who's got a hotline to the White House, terrorists and terrorist-slayer Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) -- it is revealed that the sleek, whippet-thin, ramrod-straight looking actor is secretly quite flexible.
Morrison is a certified yoga instructor who's been teaching for five years. He tells writer Walter Dawkins that yoga has helped him play Buchanan. “There’s so much insanity and so much dysfunction in the story that it craves an element of balance,” said Mr. Morrison, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Riad Galayini, and their 7-year-old son, Seamus. “I’m a yogi, and that’s what I try to bring wherever I go.”
Even more surprising: Morrison is an ex-circus clown. (The crying on the inside kind, obviously: he hated that job, he says) and tightrope walker. "It did prepare me for being an actor,” he said, “because as bad as it can get in Hollywood trying to make a living, nothing compared to how bad it was in the circus.”
MORE 24! Reiko Aylesworth (aka CTU's plague-surviving, Tony-loving Michelle Dessler) talks to New York magazine about the tick-tick-ticking clock and the show's rising absurd-o-meter.
The fur will fly this Saturday as IFC network's angriest, artsiest puppet ensemble takes on Mel Gibson in their version of THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. Watch Greg the Bunny, Warren the Ape, assorted felt-covered apostles and Pharisees attempt to scourge our memories of the 2005 blockbuster. This episode, the final one of the second season, features special guests Mark Borchardt and Mike Schank of AMERICAN MOVIE.
IFC will let you download webisodes and, of course, buy buy buy DVDs of their shows on its website.
More GREG THE BUNNY love here.
In recognition of World AIDS Day, Showtime cable TV network is airing two independent films, THREE NEEDLES and BEAT THE DRUM – two films about the global pandemic with an international focus. Three Needles played at festivals and is now in theatres in a few North American cities, but far more people will see the film on the premium cable network. Wherever you are, check them out.
THREE NEEDLES explores the lives of three people after they come in contact with the HIV virus. Director Thom Fitzgerald (THE HANGING GARDEN) is reported to have revised the film since its debut at the Toronto Film Festival. In the Chinese story, a blood smuggler (Lucy Liu) unwittingly unleashes a deadly plague in a farming village. In Canada, a struggling porn actor (Shawn Ashmore) fakes his HIV status in order to keep working. And in South Africa, a religious novice (Chloe Sevigny) strays from her mission to raise a family of AIDS orphans. (Showtime, Mon. Dec. 4, 9pm). Also look for replays of BEAT THE DRUM, a South African-made drama that premiered on Dec. 1. Director David Hickson tells three stories of three people: an orphan (Junior Singo) who leaves his AIDS-ravaged village for Johannesburg, a truckdriver whose on-the-downlow detours endanger his wife's life, and a wealthy lawyer who learns he is HIV positive.
If you missed the premiere of TNT network's "Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King," you've got another chance tonight at 11pm to catch the ripping opening episode.
How fitting, too, that the teleplay for "Battleground" -- a nearly wordless showdown between a hitman (William Hurt) and a miniature army -- was adapted by Richard Christian Matheson, son of the prolific author and screenwriter Richard Matheson.
Matheson, senior, wrote the script for TRILOGY OF TERROR, the mid-1970s TV movie starring Karen Black (and Karen Black and Karen Black) in three tales that probably gave you nightmares if you were young enough to be traumatized by the medium's Golden Age of original horror movies.
In the best of the three, the heroine unpacks a "Zuni fetish doll." But the toothsome little warrior comes to life -- and it wants blood. Now you can welcome your own Zuni friend into your home. Just don't sent one to me, okay?
The common ground between gangsters and government gets a brooding, bloody exploration in Showtime's highly praised new series BROTHERHOOD, which debuts Sunday July 9 at 10pm.
A tale of two Irish-American brothers--one a mysterious criminal (Jason Isaacs), one a rising Rhode Island state lawmaker (Jason Clarke)--has an obvious real-life parallel in the Bulger brothers, Whitey and Billy, of Massachusetts. And the gangland milieu has drawn obvious comparisons to HBO's THE SOPRANOS. But a better comparison may be to HBO's late, lamented law-and-order series THE WIRE, which made the city of Baltimore as much a character as its narcotics cops and drug dealers.
Several superb film directors, including Philip Noyce, Nick Gomez, have done BROTHERHOOD episodes, and the cast is first rate. Check out my review in the Boston Phoenix and Alessandra Stanley's writeup in the New York Times.
As Showtime proved with SLEEPER CELL and WEEDS, there's more than one premium cable making the best drama in or out of movie theatres.
Showtime's site is http://www.showtime.net
Offbeat sketch comedy hasn't thrived on Comedy Central since the heyday of The Kids in the Hall, but fans of the oddly addictive Exit 57 and Strangers With Candy can celebrate the return of the world's oldest high schooler, Jeri Blank (Amy Sedaris) and her beleaguered schoolteacher (Stephen Colbert). Now that the STRANGERS WITH CANDY movie is coming to the big screen on June 28, Comedy Central is re-airing old episodes of the TV series.
You'll have to stay up late for these marathons: they're on from 2-4 AM Eastern. Check Comedy Central's site for details.
For me, Monday's the happiest video day of the week.
It's the day that my TiVo Now Playing List shows nothing but episodes of Fox's 24 - the addictive thriller that I never get tired of. And I'm not the only one who's obsessed: Panopticist's Andrew Hearst geeks out on the timecode.
Even the THE SENTINEL, the Secret Service action movie that was essentially an side-sequel for the Fox/24 brand, worked okay*** for me. If Kiefer Sutherland can stand to play Steve McGarrett law enforcement types every so often, I'll be delighted to go see his movies. Sutherland conveys a badass-to-soulful ratio that few of his contemporaries can match. Onscreen, onscreen, he's grim and slightly terrifying, in the way that Humphrey Bogart could be in movies like THE TWO MRS. CARROLLS and THE PETRIFIED FOREST.
Both Bogart and Sutherland are the gaunt, gun-wielding aristocrats of B-movie thrillers. There may not be room for much emotional range in every episode of 24 (how many ways can there be to flip open a mobile phone and snarl, "This is Jack Bauer--who's running CTU?" But even at the silliest of moments, Sutherland never looks down on the material, and he never flinches.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/ford_wayne.html
PBS' American Masters returns for its 20th season with a portrait of two movie icons: director John Ford and actor John Wayne. (Check local listings for repeat airings this week.)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/
You think John Wayne was tough in The Searchers, Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and They Were Expendable?
Ford was tougher.
If only these two had lived long enough to record special edition commentaries for DVD releases of all their film collaborations. I doubt there would be room for air-kissing and bullshit like "Ford's a genius" and "John was such a joy to work with, he really took a risk doing this role."
This Q&A from the PBS website sums up the way they worked.
Q: John Ford was reportedly angry at John Wayne for not serving in World War II as he and many other Hollywood icons did. How did this affect their relationship?
Documentary director Stephen Pollard: I don't think Wayne not serving really had a strong effect on his relationship with Ford. Ford always treated Wayne horribly from his early days as a prop man to his years as one of the biggest stars in the world.
How did these two remain friends? They didn't talk politics, even though Wayne was a rabid anti-communist in the 1950s, while Ford deplored red-baiting and put his career on the line to stop it.
The documentary's director, Sam Pollard, rounded up archival footage, film clips from all their collaborations, and interviews with Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Mark Rydell, and John Milius.
Future installments of American Masters will explore the creative lives of Marilyn Monroe, Edward R. Murrow, Willie Nelson, Preston Sturges, Judy Garland, Arthur Miller & Elia Kazan, and Andy Warhol.
Check your local listings for airtimes. This show will send you directly to your DVD classics collection.