TLC’s Here Comes Honey Boo Boo begins Season 2 with an interactive “Watch ’n’ Sniff” scratch card – inspiring this Honey Boo Boo review haiku. Or, in this case, haikoo...

2013

Jul

SIXTEEN CANDLES By David Bianculli

Consider this a salute to writer-director John Hughes, whose first two films as a writer-director are presented as a prime-time double feature. Sixteen Candles, from 1984, starts things off, starring Molly Ringwald as a teenager with an impending birthday and some serious issues to confront, at school and at home. Costars include Paul Dooley and such members of the Hughes “company” as Anthony Michael Hall and John Cusack. Ringwald and Hall also would costar in Hughes’ follow-up

2013

Jul

7 FACES OF DR. LAO By David Bianculli

This 1964 fantasy drama, directed by George Pal, has a more serious moral than many – partly because the screenplay adaptation of the Charles G. Finney novel is by Twilight Zone frequent collaborator Charles Beaumont. Tony Randall stars, in a show-off role of the type Peter Sellers sometimes played, embodying a multitude of very different characters in the same film. Randall, as the mysterious traveling showman Dr. Lao, plays everyone from Merlin to Medusa, while his co-star, Barbara Eden,

2013

Jul

FUTURAMA By David Bianculli

What would a Saturday morning cartoon show look like if done by Matt Groening and Futurama co-author David X. Cohen? It might look something like this: Tonight’s episode presents a long look at Futurama and Friends Saturday Morning Fun Pit, presenting the Futurama characters in a sort of Smurf-ish fantasy world called Purpleberry Pond. And don’t touch that dial, because this Saturday-morning TV spoof includes its own tie-in commercials for super-sugary cereals.

2013

Jul

THE BRIDGE By David Bianculli

Diane Kruber and Demian Bichir, as, respectively, U.S. Det. Sonya Cross and Mexican lawman Marco Ruiz, begin working together seriously, even conducting a joint interrogation of the journalist, played by Matthew Lillard from the Scream and Scooby-Doo movies, who has some connection with the bisecting-bodies killer. The tension is upped even higher, as is the level of the performances.

2013

Jul

THE COLBERT REPORT By David Bianculli

Tonight’s guest is a big one: Jerry Seinfeld, who’s here to promote the new season of what may be my favorite web series yet, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (seen in photo). Colbert, I'm guessing, will be serving coffee...

2013

Jul

NETFLIX HAS COME UP WITH GREAT NEW SHOWS; NOW, ABOUT THE WAY IT UNVEILS THEM… By David Bianculli

Netflix has done a great job presenting original programming this year, but there’s one problem it hasn’t solved: how to keep word spreading after a new show premieres…

2013

Jul

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL ALL-STAR GAME By David Bianculli

The starting pitchers for this year’s All-Star Game had a sort of inside track. American League manager Jim Leyland chose his own starter from the Detroit Tigers, Max Scherzer (pictured), to take the mound to begin the game, while National League manager Bruce Bochy selected Matt Harvey of the New York Mets, whose hometown turf is Citi Field, the site of this year’s contest. But those aren’t the only reasons those starters were selected: Scherzer is 13-1, and Harvey, with eight

2013

Jul

WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY? By David Bianculli

SERIES REVIVAL: This series began as a summer diversion for ABC in 1998, so it’s fitting that CW, in reviving the show, starts it during the summer months. The ABC version, hosted by Drew Carey, was popular enough to move to the regular series and run for six years. Carey is a daytime game-show host now, so Aisha Tyler is the new host, but the improv gang having all the fun remains the same: Ryan Styles, Wayne Brady and Colin Mochrie.

2013

Jul

HOLLYWOOD GAME NIGHT By David Bianculli

This simple show explains the popular appeal of prime-time game shows in the 1950s: They’re astoundingly cheap to produce, show celebrities in a new and less controlled light, and are light, silly fun to watch. (Last week, watching Martin Short as a gloating winner was almost as much fun as watching Matthew Perry as a morose loser.) Now for the bad news: Such guessing games as Name That Snack Food, or whatever it was called, are nothing more than unimaginative product placement. But what e

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