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March 2009 Archives
WATCH ONLINE: March Madness continues
March 30, 2009 9:33 AM
Don't forget that CBSSports.com has free streams of March Madness on Demand, offering live game action online until the NCAA men's basketball championship is decided April 6.
Visit the March Madness on Demand site to make sure your computer/browser can handle all the basketball truth. Broadband connection speeds are definitely necessary to enjoy MMOD's new High Quality player with better video and one-click access to bracket updates. (The site will tell you if your browser/computer is up to speed.)
You can even watch via iPhone.
Of course, you can always watch the old-fashioned way, on TV. Check the listings for all the March Madness games on both CBS and ESPN.
WATCH THIS: 'Family Guy' takes a trek
March 29, 2009 11:04 AM
[UPDATE: You can watch the full episode "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven" and/or short clips online here.]
C'mon, you know you've been eagerly awaiting the day when Stewie and Brian would meet Data and Worf. And now that day is here!
Sunday's new Family Guy (9 p.m. ET, Fox) has our favorite homicidal tot transporting the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation to his humble Quahog home. Yes, all the cast members of that '80s fave make it so.
Family Guy doesn't always impress us -- too many gags are simply scattershot and/or scatalogical -- but when animator Seth MacFarlane's show clicks, it's screams. And it's never better than when he's attacking pop culture (with a vengeance).
BTW, if you haven't seen MacFarlane's completely creepy Hulu commercial -- Mr. Many Voices makes an even ickier alien mutant than Alec Baldwin does -- watch below.
FLICK PICKS: All-day '50s flashback
March 29, 2009 7:16 AM
Have fun (and fears) in the '50s all day this Tuesday as Turner Classic Movies salutes a pivotal decade. TCM's time trip collects everything from a surreal lesbian western smackdown (Johnny Guitar) to a gritty drama of media manipulation (Sweet Smell of Success) to an all-night wallow in Hollywood's original mix of monsters and aliens.
That prime-time event starts with 1958's great-title treat I Married a Monster From Outer Space (8 p.m. ET, TCM) and moves on through Invasion of the Body Snatchers (9:30 p.m. ET, TCM), Don Siegel's 1956 classic of Kevin McCarthy vs. the pod people. Gene Barry stars in 1957's intriguing The 27th Day (11 p.m. ET), where humans get apocalyptic alien powers, and Japan gives us 1958's creepy nuclear cautionary tale The H-Man (12:30 a.m. ET). Sci-fi goes A-list in MGM's 1956 color gem Forbidden Planet (2 a.m. ET), the Shakespeare-based space tale with Walter Pidgeon [photo above], Leslie Nielsen (pre-comedy, of course), and the still-cool Anne Francis. After 1958's The Lost Missile (3:45 a.m. ET), our '50s sci fi trip concludes with the documentary study Hidden Values: The Movies of the '50s (Wednesday at 5 a.m. ET, all on TCM).
But tune in earlier Tuesday to explore further fascinating '50s mindsets on TCM:
Born Yesterday (7:45 a.m. ET) - In George Cukor's sparkling comedy-drama, D.C. reporter/babysitter William Holden shows naive kept-gal Judy Holliday that there's more to life than her bellowing shady-business boyfriend Broderick Crawford.
All the King's Men (9:30 a.m. ET) - Crawford had earlier won an Oscar corrupting southern politics as an only slightly disguised Huey Long.
Johnny Guitar (11 a.m. ET) - Joan Crawford vs. Mercedes McCambridge fire up an old-west town in garish Technicolor, hissing like cobras and using boy-toys Sterling Hayden and Scott Brady along the way. Nicholas Ray's stylized desert staging turns his female gun-toters into operatic divas. Did Francois Truffaut really call this "the Beauty and the Beast of westerns"?
Marty (1:45 p.m. ET) - Ernest Borgnine (still acting today at 90!) made his early mark winning an Oscar in this 1955 film adaptation of Paddy Chayefsky's TV character study of a lonely butcher. Rod Steiger had starred on the tube, alongside Sopranos mom-from-hell Nancy Marchand. Could TV be this quietly insightful again, or does it now demand too much cacophony?
Sweet Smell of Success (3:30 p.m. ET) - Heartthrob movie stars Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis proved they could play heartless scum in this 1957 noir of all-powerful newspaper columnists. (Newspapers? Power? So quaint.) Their career making and breaking renders with realistic grit amid James Wong Howe's black-and-white cityscapes and Elmer Bernstein's jazzy score.
It's a lot to watch (or to record for later viewing). But well worth it.
Preview some video clips here.
CLASSIC FLICK PICKS: Pre-code naughtiness, Chuck Jones animation, vintage sci-fi, more
March 23, 2009 6:16 PM
This week's movie treats range from raunchy pre-code Hollywood all the way to late-century Steve Martin.
First up: More racy "forbidden Hollywood" Monday night, in pre-code movies directed by William "Wild Bill" Wellman (all night Monday starting at 8 p.m. ET, Turner Classic Movies) -- Wild Boys of the Road and Other Men's Women lead off a lineup of six seedy Wellman features from the early '30s. Wild Boys (8 p.m. ET) stars Frankie Darro among its Depression-era gang-ers, while 1931's Other Men's Women (9:15 p.m. ET) is one of the handful of films featuring James Cagney prior to his "overnight" stardom in The Public Enemy (also forcefully directed by Wellman). The rest of the lineup, all made 1932-33: The Purchase Price (11:30 p.m. ET) with Barbara Stanwyck, pre-Baby Face; Frisco Jenny (12:45 a.m. ET), with Ruth Chatterton and Louis Calhern; Heroes for Sale (2 a.m. ET), a drug tale with Richard Barthelmess; and Midnight Mary (3:15 p.m. ET), with Loretta Young and Richard Cortez. There's also the immensely entertaining Wellman portrait from The Men Who Made the Movies (11:30 p.m. and 4:30 a.m. ET), evoking all the director's hell-raising glory in a late-life interview spiced with vintage clips.
Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood (Tuesday at 8 and 10:30 p.m. ET, TCM) -- In a lively new half-hour featuring original animation, the late cartoon king recalls how influences from his early years inspired his legendary classics. Which then unspool in all their one-reel glory -- nine Warner Bros. gems and two MGM cartoons, along with his 1969 feature The Phantom Tollbooth (11 p.m. and 3 a.m. ET). Among the seven-minute gems: Duck Amuck (9:30 p.m. ET), One Froggy Evening (9:40 p.m. ET) and What's Opera Doc? (9:50 p.m. ET, all on TCM). The entire lineup repeats starting at 10:30 p.m. ET.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. ET, Fox Movie Channel) -- Forget that horrible Keanu Reeves remake. Enjoy 1951's spellbinding black-and-white original starring Michael Rennie as the wise alien trying to snap the people of Earth out of their aggression with warnings that the rest of the universe will put a stop to it. Patricia Neal and Father Knows Best kid Billy Gray play his human pals. Klaatu barada nikto!
Steve Martin sextet (Thursday starting at 3:10 p.m. ET, Encore) -- Hollywood has never quite known what to do with this comedian's exuberance. But you can watch directors try to figure it out in a six-film marathon. The movies: 1983's The Man With Two Brains (3:10 p.m. ET), a horror spoof written by Martin, directed by Carl Reiner and costarring Kathleen Turner; 1984's The Lonely Guy (4:45 p.m. ET), with Charles Grodin; his 1996 remake of TV's beloved Sgt. Bilko (6:20 p.m. ET), featuring former Saturday Night Live playmates Dan Aykroyd and Phil Hartman; 1991's smash Father of the Bride (8 p.m. ET) and its 1995 sequel Father of the Bride II (9:50 p.m. ET); and 1991's romantic L.A. Story (11:40 p.m. ET), which Martin wrote for himself and then-wife Victoria Tennant, also giving former kid star Sarah Jessica Parker an early adult role.
Gene Wilder double feature (Thursday starting at 6 p.m. ET, FMC) -- The mid-'70s saw Wilder hitting his stride as both a writer and a star -- and a film fan. Young Frankenstein (8 p.m. ET), co-written with director Mel Brooks, still stands as a horror appreciation above all others, lampooning those old black-and-white spooky castle cliches, while giving comic room to roam to Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Peter Boyle, Teri Garr and Cloris Leachman. Silver Streak (6 and 10 p.m. ET) provided the propitious initial on-screen pairing of Wilder and Richard Pryor, in a comedy-mystery aboard a cross-country train.
Things to Come (Thursday at 10 p.m., TCM) -- H.G. Wells adapted his own science-fiction novel into this 1936 saga of a war-torn world bombing itself into oblivion before forging a more technologically advanced future. Lavishly produced in Britain's Korda Brothers factory (and shown here as part of TCM's monthlong Kordas salute), it's a visual stunner. The futuristic production design evokes Metropolis while creating its own remarkable milieu.
FLICK PICKS: Ronnie & Nancy
March 23, 2009 10:53 AM
Ronald Reagan and First Lady-to-be Nancy Davis made only one film together. This is it -- Hellcats of the Navy (Wednesday at 11:15 p.m. ET, Turner Classic Movies), an otherwise forgettable 1957 World War II submarine drama/romance.
As one IMDb user review puts it, "The director should be spanked."
It's part of a full night of Reagan westerns and war movies closing out TCM's star of the month salute to our only movie star POTUS.
WATCH THIS: Frakkin' brilliant!
March 20, 2009 7:52 AM
I'm glad Battlestar Galactica ends this Friday night -- only because I can now start watching it over again from the beginning, on DVD, in uninterrupted marathon sessions. That's the ideal way to absorb this landmark series' escalating stakes and ever-keener insights.
Not to mention the elation of immersing yourself in a smart story that knows precisely what it wants to accomplish, then does it in such thrilling fashion.
The final two hours (March 20, 9-11 p.m. ET, Sci Fi; repeating March 27, 7-9 p.m. ET) turn out to be a superb summation of four seasons of wide-ranging ambitions, though I have to admit it'll be incomphensible to those new to the story's intricacies. It's not like there's a quick series summary to be had:
A very recognizable civilization is nuked to within an inch of its life, sending survivors fleeing through space in search of a new home, all the while dueling the very humanlike robots they'd created and who attacked them, each side seeing the other as a cancer that must be destroyed for life to flourish.
That's maybe 10 percent of the tale. Maybe not even. The humans fight amongst themselves. The human-like Cylons do, too. They're both struggling to forge some "better" new society. And the definition of that ideal is forever in flux.
Let us count the ways this astounding saga has been endlessly stimulating.
Spiritual explorations.
Political machinations.
Religions in pitched battle.
War waged by and against the rules.
Class conflict.
Dwindling resources.
Fathers and sons and mothers and children.
Families fractured.
Lovers at loggerheads.
Alliances, betrayals, mutinies, murders.
Sex, drinking and rock 'n' roll.
Philosophical debates delivered through rip-roaring action.
Women characters on the same kick-ass footing as men.
Humor in the face of heartbreak.
People losing their moral compass. And finding it.
Good vs. evil.
And wondering which side is which.
Or if there even is a side.
And what the hell: What IS The Meaning of Life, anyway?
All here. All dynamically delved into and delivered upon in this three-hour finale.
(Last week's first hour repeats Friday at 8 p.m. ET on Sci Fi before this Friday's 9-11 p.m. end of the end. All three hours encore Friday night 11 p.m.-2 a.m. ET.)
Watching the series' culminating episodes over the past month, I've scribbled down dozens of "important lines" of dialogue I might want to reference. They all feel crucial.
"Sometimes lost is where you need to be. Just because you don't know your direction doesn't mean you don't have one." "A new life requires a new way of thinking." "Our brains have always outraced our hearts. Our souls lag behind."
Profound in context, they sound syrupy outside it. There is just so much context in this intense tale. That's always made it hard to jump onto the Galactica train as it hurtled down its track. You had to know where it had been to understand where it was going.
Bingo. Everything about Galactica -- including that last sentence -- references something else, perhaps in earlier episodes, or in today's real-life society, or in human yearnings over thousands of years. For an action-packed show with so much firepower and frakking -- a show that raised its own profane euphemisms to a fine art -- there was even more introspection inspired in both characters and viewers. Even when neither knew it was happening.
Now finally, all the pieces of the puzzle fall together, onscreen and inside our heads. See, it even dovetails with what can be seen and what cannot. Battlestar Galactica has always been a religious experience in more ways than one. That's made ultimately clear here, even as the action is paying off the character drama in a dozen different directions.
It's a visceral experience. And a profound one. Thanks go not just to series auteur Ronald D. Moore but to his entire crew for plunging us deep inside a world that sometimes seems more palpable than our own. I can't remember ever feeling so spellbound by a show, so emotionally shattered, so exhilarated, so satisfied. Or so awed, by both the ambition and the execution. Who knew that the last tube of toothpaste in the universe could be so meaningful? That the strains of All Along the Watchtower could become such a rallying cry? ("There must be some kind of way out of here/Said the joker to the thief/There's too much confusion/I can't get no relief.") Who suspected that death and renewal and the full-circle of the universe could be made so plainly transcendent -- in a wham-bam TV show!
This is what sci-fi can do. Not just spaceships and aliens and technobabble, only the first of which is even remotely in residence here. Battlestar Galactica is this genre -- heck, art -- at its finest, showing us something profound about ourselves by telling us a magnificent story about something else, or at least what we perceive to be that. Sci-fi sneaks around and mows us down with its insight when it is this smartly imagined and electrifyingly told.
Why a channel just concluding such a masterpiece would choose this moment to announce it's changing its name -- as if to downplay the just-proven potency of its focus -- is beyond me. (And to the belittling SyFy? Are they kidding?)
Lest we forget, the oft-touted "greatest story ever told" is essentially one that is factually undemonstrable. You have to let your mind go with the flow, and take it on faith. It's sci fi, too, people. Could be. Might have been. Wish it was. Maybe it really was/is. Wow.
It's dreamers and cynics as one -- as Galactica explores in this finale -- and believing in something greater than yourself, whatever it might be. It's living stronger in hope than in fear.
Thanks, Battlestar Galactica. For reminding us.
-----
Here's how Sci Fi sends Battlestar Galactica out with a bang.
TRIBUTE SPECIAL
Battlestar Galactica: The Last Frakkin' Special, including cast interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, and more.
Wednesday night, March 18 at 1 a.m. ET
Thursday night, March 19 at 1 a.m. ET
Friday, March 20, at 7 p.m. and 2 a.m. ET
SEASON 4 EPISODES
(All on Friday, March 20, all times ET)
Sine Qua Non - 8 a.m.
Hub - 9 a.m.
Revelations - 10 a.m.
Sometimes a Great Notion - 11 a.m.
A Disquiet Follows My Soul - noon
The Oath - 1 p.m.
Blood on the Scales - 2 p.m.
No Exit - 3 p.m.
Deadlock - 4 p.m.
Someone to Watch Over Me - 5 p.m.
Islanded in a Stream of Stars - 6 p.m.
FINALE
(Friday, March 20)
Daybreak Part 1 - 8 p.m. ET encore
Daybreak Part 2 - 9-11 p.m. ET premiere
ENTIRE FINALE ENCORE
(Friday, March 20)
Daybreak - 11 p.m.-2 a.m. ET
And there's also:
ONLINE VIEWING
The past month's episodes are streaming via Hulu and Sci Fi.
ON DVD
Seasons 1, 2, 3 and 4.0 (last year's 10 episodes) are discounted through this link at Amazon. Season 4.5 (including this spring's final hours) is expected soon. Industry insiders predict a complete series Blu-ray release this year.
TV WORTH BUYING: 'Man From U.N.C.L.E.' box at half-price!
March 20, 2009 4:12 AM
Another great deal on another collectible TV classic. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is on sale Friday only as Amazon's deal of the day -- the complete series boxed in a cool attache case.
For $83, you get all four seasons of the '60s spy saga with Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo and David "Ducky" McCallum as Illya Kuryakin, working together across the Iron Curtain to thwart the nefarious forces of THRUSH. Note that the season sets are placed into the box separately in standard packaging, unlike many full-series releases.
Amazon's regular Man From U.N.C.L.E. price is $169 (the box lists at $200), so it's a half-price deal even from the online retailer's usual discount.
This set also gets bonus points for including among its four commemorative booklets a savvy essay by our own David Bianculli.
Check it out here.
CLASSIC FLICK PICKS: Ronald Reagan, western musicals, more
March 16, 2009 2:21 PM
While it's great to know what's worthy on TV tonight, it's even better to plan ahead, especially when it comes to movie classics and film festivals. Here are some of this week's cinematic must-sees.
Buster Keaton in The Navigator (Monday at 8 p.m. ET, Turner Classic Movies) -- The great stoneface's 1924 silent comedy is just the start of an eclectic night of goodies picked by this month's TCM guest programmer, director John Landis (Animal House, Coming to America). He's also hosting the 1962 horror cheap-treat The Brain That Wouldn't Die (9:30 p.m. ET); 1936's original Showboat (11:15 p.m. ET), with the legendary Paul Robeson; and Alfred Hitchcock's 1972 late-career dip into modern adult filmmaking, Frenzy (1:15 a.m. ET, all on TCM). Between features, Landis spotlights classic silent shorts with unjustly maligned comedy master Fatty Arbuckle (9:15 p.m., 10:45 p.m., 3:15 a.m., all times ET, TCM). A rare roundup, indeed.
St. Patrick's Day movies for Tuesday:
- The Quiet Man (8 p.m., TCM) -- John Wayne's 1952 Ireland stop leads into 1965's Sean O'Casey portrait Young Cassidy (10:15 p.m. ET); late-career James Cagney as a scarily obsessed Irish rebel in 1959's Shake Hands With the Devil (12:15 a.m. ET); Daniel Day-Lewis' 1989 Oscar winner My Left Foot (2:15 a.m. ET); and 1940 romance Three Cheers for the Irish (4 a.m. ET, all on TCM).
- The Brothers McMullen (8 p.m., Fox Movie Channel; 10:55 a.m. and 9 p.m. ET, IndiePlex) -- Edward Burns' warmhearted 1995 indie hit explores the relationships of three Irish Catholic brothers on Long Island. FMC also has 1948's The Luck of the Irish (noon ET) and 1944's Irish Eyes Are Smiling (2 p.m. ET, both on FMC), while Indie adds the Dublin-set 1996 coming-of-age sleeper The Last of the High Kings (late Tuesday night at 1:35 a.m. ET, IndiePlex), with Christina Ricci, Jared Leto, Gabriel Byrne and Catherine O'Hara.
Ronald Reagan's best (Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET, TCM) -- When they talk about Reagan's Hollywood highlights, these are the two films they mention: 1940's Knute Rockne, All American (8 p.m. ET), where he plays inspirationally ailing Notre Dame footballer George Gipp, and Kings Row (10 p.m. ET, both on TCM), a surprisingly hard-edged 1942 slice of small-town life.
Western musicals:Cat Ballou (Saturday at 8 p.m. ET, TCM) -- Don't worry. The songs in this 1965 delight don't come in Lee Marvin's Oscar-winning comedy turn as a drunken gunfighter aiding feisty orphan babe Jane Fonda -- the tunes arrive in running commentary from strolling troubadours Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole (just before his early death from lung cancer). But then, unfortunately, Marvin does sing in 1970's ill-cast Paint Your Wagon (10 p.m. ET), costarring (hold your ears) Clint Eastwood. Finally, it's 1955's Oklahoma! (1 a.m. ET) and Roy Rogers' 1947 ad On the Old Spanish Trail (3:30 a.m. ET, all on TCM).
THINGS TO COME: David Chase eyes Hollywood in 'Ribbon of Dreams'
March 16, 2009 1:45 PM
David Chase's next project for HBO after his triumph with The Sopranos will be something even cooler for classic movie nuts like me -- Ribbon of Dreams, "a miniseries about the invention of cinema and subsequent growth of the Hollywood film industry," according to HBO's just-dropped press release.
Starting in 1913, it'll follow a college-grad engineer and a two-fisted cowboy, who join forces to help pioneer Hollywood. They will, of course, cross paths over subsequent years with the legendary likes of John Ford, Bette Davis, John Wayne and other names, spanning from silent films to sound, into the studio "golden age" and beyond, to television.
As a film history grad and Turner Classic Movies devotee, I'm only sorry that Ribbon of Dreams is just a miniseries. Hollywood's early history, especially, is rich enough to run for years -- a crazy cauldron of westward-ho individualism, city building, image making, culture exporting, overnight rises (and falls), energy and excess, wealth and waste, and combustible collisions between corporate moneymen and creative artists.
That much is made non-fiction vivid in all those TCM profiles of early stars/titans, along with such broader portraits as historian Kevin Brownlow's classic 13-hour Hollywood series delving inside the silent era. Brownlow's cameras in the 1970s documented the first-person accounts of early Hollywood movers and shakers who were then dying off, as their silent art had 50 years earlier. Now's the time for PBS, VOD and some enterprising DVD distributor to resurrect Hollywood's moving pastiche of personal memories, rare clips, and astute analysis of it all. That early era set up all the innovation and agony Hollywood continues to represent today.
Here's HBO's press release.
UPDATE (March 17) --
Turner Classic Movies is stepping in to provide another dose of Hollywood history, in a 10-part documentary called Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood (working title).
While it's not completely an early-era focus, the upcoming series -- from Bill Haber's Ostar Productions, who did TNT's Stephen King mini Nightmares & Dreamscapes -- does cover that era as "an epic project that promises to be a landmark event for TCM," said Michael Wright, head programmer for TCM, TNT and TBS.
Moguls and Movie Stars will be "a rare, personalized look at the American film industry, featuring the remarkable men and women whose drive and ambition founded the 'Dream Factory' that became Hollywood," Haber said in the same press release. "At the heart of our story is a remarkable generation who, in a few short years, created an entertainment empire -- among them such names as Mayer, Goldwyn, Warner, Fox, Zanuck and Selznick. Many began as impoverished immigrants and became among the wealthiest and most influential figures in American culture."
Expected premiere is 2010.
TV WORTH BUYING: 'I Love Lucy' DVD sale
March 16, 2009 7:06 AM
The complete series of I Love Lucy is Thursday's deal of the day at Amazon.com, bringing the online retailer's price down to $85 for all nine seasons, including the Lucy-Desi hour shows, too. (Amazon's price is regularly $190.)
That's an amazing buy for 34 discs with 194 episodes plus extras -- lost pilot, cast commercials, backstage footage, writers' reminiscences, radio shows, even a (lovingly) colorized version of "Lucy Goes to Scotland." And they come in a collectible heart-shaped box with a flat bottom for easy shelving, packed in a plastic protective case.
Take a look here.
WATCH ONLINE: March Madness streams free
March 12, 2009 6:14 PM
CBSSports.com's free online streams of March Madness on Demand start with Sunday's live "Selection Show" (March 15 at 6 p.m. ET) and continue with live game action throughout the annual three-week championship of NCAA men's basketball (March 19-April 6).
That means now is the time to make sure your computer/browser/software are ready to deliver all the action. Visit the March Madness on Demand site to get what you need (software downloads are free), to see the brackets take shape, and to revisit video of previous seasons' highlights.
Broadband connection speeds are definitely necessary to take it all in, especially if you want to use MMOD's new High Quality player with better video and one-click access to bracket updates. (The site will let you know if your browser/computer can handle it.)
Other MMOD goodies now hook into Facebook, your own website, and update widgets. Got an iPhone? You can watch there, too.
Last year's March Madness on Demand drew almost 5 million unique users online, while this year's is expected to lure more than 7 million. It's turning into a major demonstration of live online viewing power, and a big building block for CBSSports.com as it seeks to become a gateway destination for sports online.
But what about sports on good old TV? March Madness reigns supreme there, too, with five dozen games set to be seen on both CBS and ESPN.
WATCH THIS: 'Doctor Who' regeneration marathon
March 10, 2009 6:46 PM
Back in 2005, fans of the UK's 40-year-old fantasy cult fave Doctor Who were hopeful but not necessarily optimistic. The BBC franchise that began back in 1963 as a somewhat cheesy kids' adventure was being reinvented -- yet again -- much like The Doctor himself.
How shocked were we to discover that the ninth inhabitant of the character would resuscitate the 10-years-dead franchise into a surprisingly grownup must-see, bursting with life, wit, warmth, heartbreak and pulsating adventure? Revisit the re-creation in an all-day marathon of the new Doctor Who (Thursday 8 a.m.-4 p.m. ET, Sci Fi) that cherry-picks episodes from its first season to showcase Christopher Eccleston's dynamic embodiment of the affectionate rejuvenation by writer Russell T. Davies (creator of Britain's original Queer as Folk).
All this, and the introduction of John Barrowman's omnisexual hottie Captain Jack Harkness, too!
The original Doctor Who hardly started life like the smartly cinematic thrill we see now. Those initial '60s episodes were done in-studio on videotape by a BBC that hadn't yet switched from black and white to color production. The "scary" villains and "special" effects were cobbled together props and tricks of dubious quality, and the entire proceeding fairly defined the term "low budget." But its creative ideas were tantalizing enough to interest adults in the youth-aimed tale of an alien "time lord" bouncing through space in his phone booth TARDIS, righting wrongs with the aid of youthful human "companions" encountered along the way.
The Doctor (no other name, prompting the "who" question) was quickly established as being able to regenerate himself into various incarnations, allowing the series to endure over the next quarter-century with seven different stars, from elderly First Doctor William Hartnell to playful Fourth Doctor Tom Baker (whose PBS-imported episodes cemented the series' American appeal). That effectively re-booted the character's attitudes as the series' savvy increased over its original 26-year run, ending in 1989. A first attempt to revive the studio-bound tale as a filmic adventure failed in 1996, when the BBC and our Fox network presented a one-off TV movie (with Paul McGann) that failed to draw enough interest to continue.
But Russell T. Davies had grown up with The Doctor, and the acclaimed writer had actually started with the BBC by writing for children's programs, before maturing into the gay-themed drama Queer as Folk and the challenging TV movie The Second Coming, starring Christopher Eccleston as a modern-day messiah. Davies could feel The Doctor in his bones, enabling him to create a 21st century incarnation for Eccleston that respected the plainer original yet robustly delved deep into a more complex contemporary traveler.
Eccleston's first series/season was a smash on both sides of the Atlantic, establishing the modernized model for Tenth Doctor David Tennant (Viva Blackpool) to take over for three more series/seasons. Both actors played well against John Barrowman's more adult time tripper Captain Jack, who was launched into his own more mature drama, the current hit Torchwood (the title an anagram of Doctor Who).
Barrowman's three-part introduction is among the episodes airing Thursday in Sci Fi's flashback marathon, which begins with the 2005 re-invention's instantly impressive return introducing Eccleston and companion Billie Piper, now starring in Showtime's Secret Diary of a Call Girl. (Full Sci Fi marathon lineup here.)
Be aware there's an Eleventh Doctor on the way. Tennant plans to leave the role after the coming season's specials, to be succeeded by Matt Smith, who at 28 will be the youngest doctor yet.
Doctor Who may just regenerate forever.
WEIRD & WILD: Jonas Brothers + purity rings = 'South Park'
March 10, 2009 6:37 PM
[UPDATED! -- Episode turns into ruthless Disney corporate takedown! Beware Mickey Mouse blasphemy/profanity while watching key scene here.]
South Park is back for its 13th season Wednesday (10 p.m. ET, Comedy Central), with another stew satirizing a tasty menu of topical ingredients.
Kenny upsets his school pals' delicate boy balance by getting a "slut" girlfriend, then takes her to a Jonas Brothers concert where he discovers purity rings are part of the equation.
It's the first of seven new episodes from the consistently savvy pop culture send-up that debuted in (hard to believe) 1997 -- pre-Monica Lewinsky!
WATCH THIS: 'Breaking Bad' marathon
March 5, 2009 7:30 PM
Bryan Cranston's Emmy-winning turn on Breaking Bad runs allatonce this Friday night, in a seven-hour first-season marathon (8 p.m.-3 a.m. ET on AMC). It's a must-see, for catching up with this smart, funny, shocking series before the second season starts on AMC Sunday night at 10 ET (encore at 11 p.m. ET).
If you've got digital cable with AMC in the video-on-demand lineup, you can also watch all seven episodes there through Sunday (in HD where available). The pilot episode is streaming online, too, at Fancast.com. Pressed for time? AMC's web site unreels a one-minute season recap (along with web-only minisodes and Season 2 sneak peeks).
And of course, Season 1 of Breaking Bad is newly out on DVD -- see our review here -- which allows you to plumb the show's depth at your leisure. Beyond Cranston's tour de force performance as the dying family man turned meth-cooker (hard to believe this is Malcolm in the Middle's sitcom dad!), there's shrewd writing and impressively cinematic direction. All the supporting performances prove just as deft as Cranston's in their harrowing/humor/heart nimbleness.
How rare is it to see a season that doesn't seem to have any lulls lurking along the way? (It helps that it's only seven episodes long.) Breaking Bad's milieu of drugs, violence and deception can be gruesome at times -- but those who stomach it are more than rewarded in this profound slice of desperate humanity.
WEIRD & WILD: There's 'Life on Mars' (and death on 'Mars')
March 5, 2009 7:17 PM
Big week on Mars.
Some bad news: ABC cancels the American version of the retro copfest Life on Mars, ending its run after this single season.
Some good news: Acorn DVD says they'll bring us the original British Life on Mars, releasing its first "series" (as the Brits call seasons) on July 28.
And more good news: BBC America begins airing that show's spinoff Ashes to Ashes this Saturday (March 7) at 9 p.m. ET, reshaping the '70s flashback premise for a female detective who bounces back to 1981 (and Mars' politically incorrect cowboy cop Gene Hunt).
But how weird is it that Acorn's announcement comes the same day as news of ABC's cancellation?
It's almost as weird as Mars itself.
Themselves.
See what we mean?
READ THIS: 'The Wire' creator returns to police reporting
March 5, 2009 6:09 PM
What do TV writer-producers do when their show gets canceled?
If you're The Wire creator David Simon, you can always fall back on your old crime reporting role. The former journalist tells in this Washington Post article how whitewashed coverage of a Baltimore police shooting created a situation where "one old police reporter lost his mind and began making calls."
As fans of The Wire know, Simon can spin a story, and he does that here -- with his usual deliberate (aka leisurely) speed -- while analyzing the fallout after "print journalism spent the 1980s and '90s taking profits and then, in the decade that followed, impaling itself on the Internet."
"Half-truths, obfuscations and apparent deceit -- these are the wages of a world in which newspapers, their staffs eviscerated, no longer battle at the frontiers of public information."
His HBO show may be over, but Simon is still crusading.
TV WORTH BUYING: 'Seinfeld' complete series for $100
March 5, 2009 4:01 PM
The Seinfeld complete series DVD box set has drastically dropped in price to just $100 as Amazon's deal of the day for Thursday.
That's nine seasons in a gift box with fresh extras (including cast reunion disc and coffee table book), and it's $80 off Amazon's regular price.
Sorry to be so late posting this, but as of 4 p.m. ET, the set was still available.
