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July 2009 Archives
PLEASE STAND BY: The trouble is not with your set . . .
July 20, 2009 4:34 PM
It's actually me who's heading into the repair shop for a bit, so I may not be able to update here for a week or two.
In the meantime, try to catch these shows I might otherwise have written more about . . .
Summer Under the Stars (Aug. 1-31 on Turner Classic Movies) -- The fun-with-films channel delivers its annual monthlong festival in which each entire day is devoted to a single classic performer. Early treats include the underappreciated silent-to-sound comedian Marion Davies (Aug. 3) -- the William Randolph Hearst paramour who's actually eons more charming and talented than director Orson Welles would have it in Citizen Kane (as second wife Susan). There's also Judy Garland (Aug. 6), in just about everything except The Wizard of Oz. Peruse all the August pleasures here.
Frost/Nixon: Original Watergate Interviews (PBS, check local listings; in New York, Aug. 3 at 8 p.m. on WLIW/21 and Aug. 4 at 8 p.m. on WNET/13) -- Frank Langella's movie re-creation has nothing on the real U.S. president who resigned in the wake of his cover-up of a "third-rate burglary" by his "plumber" minions. Interviewer David Frost insisted there be no pre-conditions for these unprecedented sit-downs, and he tenaciously bored in toward whatever truth he could extract during two dozen hours of tapings. Frost also hosts to look back at this amazing 1977 TV event. (Video here.)
EARLIER RECOMMENDATIONS:
Torchwood: Children of Earth (Monday-Friday, July 20-24, 9-10:15 p.m. ET, BBC America; marathon repeat Sunday, July 26, 1-8 p.m. ET) -- In lieu of a third season, series creator Russell T. Davies delivers this drop-dead-entertaining alien-invasion miniseries, which segues from jaw-dropping horror to lip-smacking fun to thought-provoking political drama to bone-chilling urgency. The icky alien that lands this time has taken over the planet's children to convey its creepy messages. And it would like to use them for other things, too. Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) is there to help, but it turns out Jack helped just a little too much back in 1965 to fuel the mess in which the entire planet now finds itself. He and his Torchwood operatives end up on the run, as a complicit government tries to cover up past sins and negotiate its way through what might be an even more horrific new one. (Jack uncorks a mortal sin of his own.) There are secret agents, middlemen, gunplay, deniability, appeasement and the ever-popular "How can we sell it to the voters?" TV doesn't get much more thrilling. Or challenging. Or adult. Or just plain riveting. Doesn't matter if you haven't seen the show before. Doesn't even matter if you hate sci-fi. You. Must. Watch. This. (Preview video here.)
Comic-Con '09 Live (Saturday, July 25, 2-7 p.m. ET, G4) -- Why battle San Diego's throngs of thousands when you can watch from the comfort of your couch? This report on the annual comic/fantasy/sci-fi/movies/TV/video game extravaganza includes exclusive live coverage of the the big Star Wars Spectacular panel. (More at G4's Comic-Con site.)
Secret Lives of Charles Lindbergh (Monday, July 27, at 9 p.m. ET, NatGeo) -- If only they'd had TMZ, In Touch, E! and Twitter way back when. Not to cover Lindbergh's historic first solo flight across the Atlantic. To cover what he did when he got there. Clandestine lovers! Secret families! Lifelong deception! It's an hour of better-late-than-never dirt.
Pre-Code Musicals (Wednesday, July 29, starting at 8 p.m. ET, Turner Classic Movies) -- It's probably too much to ask for a screening of Cecil B. De Mille's demented Madam Satan, with the airborne barely-clothed masquerade party and dramatic zeppelin-crash climax. Now that's entertainment. But TCM does its best with another dose of "forbidden" Hollywood wickedness from the early '30s, before the Production Code started cleaning up the screen. Hips, Hips, Hooray (8 p.m.) pairs the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey with hottie Thelma Todd of Horse Feathers and Monkey Business. Geometric marvel Busby Berkeley struts his scantily clad choreography with sassy Joan Blondell and Ginger Rogers in Gold Diggers of 1933 (9:15 p.m.), onetime hoofer James Cagney tapping it up in Footlight Parade (11 p.m.), and Bette Davis with William Powell in Fashions of 1934 (1 a.m.). Read up on all the raciness here.
REALITY CHECK: Diane Holloway on 'Supreme Court Survivor'
July 16, 2009 10:32 PM
Diane Werts here: Our other Diane elbows into my space after watching this week's Senate committee hearings on Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination. She's happy to have real news coverage back after TV's seemingly endless Michael Jackson memorial marathon. But who'da thunk the Senate committee transcript would reference both I Love Lucy and Perry Mason?
By Diane Holloway
For viewers disgusted by the obsessive news coverage of Michael Jackson's death and memorial extravaganza, Judge Sonia Sotomayor's weeklong grilling before the Senate Judiciary Committee provided enough serious TV news to satisfy.
Our daily dramas can be both bizarre and important, right?
No matter which cable news channel you tuned to, the daytime saga known as The Sotomayor Hearings were all over the place this week. For the political junkies and wonks among us (including yours truly), this was riveting stuff.
Sotomayor, President Obama's first pick for the Supreme Court, brought intelligence, dignity and extreme caution to the show. She also brought the occasional flash of wit, which is all the more remarkable because, for the most part, she faced a bunch of grumpy old (white) men who subtly and not-so-subtly accused her of racism with her now infamous "wise Latina woman" remark in a speech years ago.
The hearings quickly took on the flavor of a reality show contest. To win the game, the contestant (Sotomayor) had to face sometimes witheringly disrespectful comments from senators like John Kyl (R-Arizona) with a smile on her face and a serious response in mind. She had to be unfailingly polite ("Good morning, sir" "Thank you for that question, sir"), and she had to choose her words carefully on hot-button topics such as abortion and gun control, without seeming to be evasive.
Viewers will be the judge of whether she won the game or not, but it seems a slam dunk that Sotomayor will be approved by the committee and move on before the full Senate to the next stage of "Supreme Court Survivor."
During the first stage, Sotomayor remained stalwart, forcing her opponents to walk a fine line between being tough and seeming rude.
After all the insinuations that this "wise Latina woman" must surely be bigoted beyond belief, Sotomayor deserved a medal for her unflinching reaction when Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) attempted a Desi Arnaz-style Cuban accent out of I Love Lucy, finger-wagging at the nominee "You've got lots of 'splainin' to do."
Oy. I could be wrong, but I think I heard groans from the crowd. I know I heard groans from myself, and possibly even my loyal hound.
Lucy wasn't the only TV show that cropped up in these hearings. Sotomayor said she had been inspired by the 1960s legal series Perry Mason while growing up in the Bronx. Besides the lead legal eagle, she said, she was even inspired by the show's long-suffering district attorney, the poor guy who continually lost to Mason but once declared that he didn't mind losing "as long as justice is served."
Al Franken (D-Minnesota), the new senator formerly known as Saturday Night Live's Stuart Smalley, decided to grill Sotomayor as to which Mason episode was the source of her inspiration. Funny -- but oh-so-sophomoric.
And Sotomayor, a 55-year-old Puerto Rican-American, is one of those American success stories that can warm even the coldest hearts. Accompanied by her 82-year-old mother, who worked two jobs to raise her two children, Sotomayor was a formidable TV presence all week.
The hearings for a Supreme Court nominee represent what cable news does best: provide live coverage of an important event. Luckily -- for the networks that served up the gavel-to-gavel coverage and for the viewers who were glued to it -- all the players were worth watching.
Tabloid entertainment stories are juicy, but shining light on our government can be tasty viewing, too.
AD BREAK: Actors/characters do commercials, Earth continues spinning
July 14, 2009 9:48 PM
The Flintstones smoked Winstons. The Clampetts hawked Corn Flakes. Ozzie & Harriet loved their kitchen's natural gas. And Hogan's Heroes savored their Jell-O. (The favorite food of every POW camp!)
So what's the big deal with commercials being incorporated into the new sketchcom Michael and Michael Have Issues (Wednesday at 10:30 p.m. ET, Comedy Central)?
Ad Age reports that stars Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter will do spots in six of the season's seven episodes, for advertisers like Dunkin' Donuts and Mike's Hard Lemonade -- your standard young-guy-demo sponsors. Klondike bars are pitched in this week's premiere, says Ad Age, and also on the web in a Michaels online micro-series.
The article treats this like some amazing innovation. But TV's first few decades (late '40s-early '70s) were full of it. Series stars routinely shilled both in and out of character, and not only in the commercial breaks. The early '50s George Burns and Gracie Allen Show wrote their sponsor Carnation's instant milk right into the scripts, finding ways for George and Gracie to discuss the product with household visitors.
Somewhere along the way, a church/state wall seems to have gone up between program content and outright product pitching-- but you could argue that old-time star shillery is a bit cleaner than today's "product placement," where you're never sure if a brand name is mentioned because of script intent or sponsor dollars. Everybody knew way-back-when that these commercial testimonials were ads -- even kids knew, and even if characters like Granny and Jethro were doing them.
Besides, they were fun, and often funny. (We're lucky that some TV DVD sets have included these in-character commercials among their bonus features, among them The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Beverly Hillbillies season sets, and I Love Lucy, where Lucy and Desi smoke Philip Morris, before tobacco ads were banned from TV in 1971.)
Of course, sponsors actually put their names in the titles of shows in TV's earliest days of Colgate Comedy Hour, Texaco Star Theater and Westinghouse Studio One.
And somehow, both the republic and the medium survived.
TV ON DVD: New reviews!
July 13, 2009 1:10 PM
Our TV on DVD page is finally getting updated -- sorry it's taken us so long to refresh! Look to the lower right on the home page, or click here, to learn about great Classics to Consider from timeless comedies Barney Miller and Night Court.
More to come soon, so keep checking back . . .
WATCH ONLINE: ABC hops on Hulu
July 6, 2009 11:23 AM
Hulu is heading toward behemoth status. The NBC/Fox-launched TV streaming site today adds the ABC corporate family to its hosted offerings. That means episodes of shows from ABC (starting with Grey's Anatomy), ABC Family, Disney Channel, SOAPnet and more, all in the familiar clean Hulu interface.
Other ABC-owned shows are being linked from their own sites for now, like The Secret Life of an American Teenager from ABC Family. Expect moves onto Hulu in coming weeks.
That leaves CBS the lone Hulu holdout among major networks, alongside its CW sibling (though Hulu does link to their CBS site streams). CBS has a pretty clean and fast interface of its own, and has been a network leader in original production for its web site (creating series like the soaps-based reality competition InTurn).
Launched in March 2008 by NBC and Fox, Hulu heightened its profile in past months with science-fictiony ads featuring Alec Baldwin and Seth MacFarlane as alien invaders taking control of Earth through online TV. The service claims more than 40,000 videos for viewing (some are clip-length), from more than 130 content partners, watched by more than 24 million users a month.
WEIRD & WILD: The incredibly strange Jonathan Ross show
July 6, 2009 10:36 AM
A QUICK UPDATE . . .
. . . because the guests chatting with British talker Jonathan Ross on BBC America this Friday (July 10) at 8 p.m. ET include the incredibly strange William Shatner (discussing "legal sprinkling").
Also Glenn Close. And Eddie Izzard. And Lily Allen.
Top that, Americans!
ORIGINAL POST --
The Incredibly Strange Film Show has to be one of my all-time favorite series, exploring the heights -- or should I say depths? -- of indie B-moviemaking in all its bloody, breasty, low-budget glory. The perpetrator of this loving '80s look at the likes of Russ Meyer, Ray Dennis Steckler and a dozen other gonzo directors was Jonathan Ross, a breezy Brit who conducted low-life interviews and screened sleazy clips with the gusto of a truly irredeemable pop culture junkie.
(Takes one to know one.)
Now Ross puts that jones to weekly use as host of Friday Night With Jonathan Ross (Friday at 8 p.m. ET, BBC America), a London-based chatfest that also takes everything and nothing seriously. And while it couldn't possibly reach the giddy greatness of Incredibly Strange -- masked Mexican wrestler El Santo! -- Friday Night has been keeping Brits amused since 2001 with interviews of actors, rockers and other fame hangers-on. (Most frequent guest: Ricky Gervais.) BBC America picked up the show this month, so far airing outings featuring Hugh Laurie, Ben Stiller, Dustin Hoffman and Jack Black.
This week's BBC America show (July 3) gets lost with Matthew Fox, whom Ross pumps for Lost finale information, then badgers into speaking about spanking.
Next week: Who knows?
SNEAK PEEK: Ken Burns 'National Parks' online
July 4, 2009 6:14 PM
UPDATED WITH ADDITIONAL TV AIRINGS --
Can't wait to see Ken Burns' fall epic The National Parks: America's Best Idea? Online site PBS Video lets you watch a half-hour preview anytime. Excerpts from the 12-hour project unreel alongside interviews of Burns and collaborator Dayton Duncan discussing their take on the subject.
That same preview can be found on TV, too. PBS has scheduled additional national feeds for July 26 at 10:30 p.m. ET and July 28 at 11:30 p.m. ET -- but public TV member stations determine their own individual broadcast schedules. So it may run at another time in your area (or not at all; check local listings).
The National Parks: America's Best Idea debuts on public TV in six parts, starting Sept. 27, after six years in production. (Location photo at right shows Burns with cinematographer Buddy Squires.) With the scenic vistas offered by those 391 varied park facilities, you'd expect the widescreen high definition visuals to look amazing -- and they do, even in that little online preview window. (There's a full-screen viewing option, but blowing it up makes the streaming quality not so hot.)
Here's the official PBS description:
"The National Parks: America's Best Idea is the story of an idea as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence and just as radical: that the most special places in the nation should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, but for everyone. As such, it follows in the tradition of Burns' exploration of other American inventions, such as baseball and jazz.
"The narrative traces the birth of the national park idea in the mid-1800s and follows its evolution for nearly 150 years. Using archival photographs, first-person accounts of historical characters, personal memories and analysis from more than 40 interviews, and what Burns believes is the most stunning cinematography in Florentine Films' history, the series chronicles the steady addition of new parks through the stories of the people who helped create them and save them from destruction. It is simultaneously a biography of compelling characters and a biography of the American landscape."
WEIRD & WILD: Could you eat 60 hot dogs in 10 minutes?
July 2, 2009 1:11 PM
Fireworks are soooo 20th century. The modern age knows how to really celebrate America's independence -- gut-stuffing up-chucking gluttony! With that most all-American "food product," too.
Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest (Saturday at noon ET, ESPN) has become the Fourth of July's most anticipated event among the cult cognescenti. Who needs LeBron vs. Kobe when you've got Takeru Kobayashi vs. Joey Chestnut? And that classic Coney Island shore setting? And wanton chewed-food spewing?
For the record, Chestnut owns the 12-minute eating record -- 66 hot dogs. Last year's match changed the traditional time span to 10 minutes (said to be the length of 1916's original match), at which Chestnut and Kobayashi tied with 59. A five-dog "eat-off" found American Chestnut besting the longtime Japanese world champ for the second straight year.
Neither is a beefy dude. And Sonya Thomas, the tiny American who owns most women's records, is even smaller. This isn't just sports, it's sociology.
Lest anyone think this contest is some lame manufactured TV event (which see: The Superstars), it's certified by the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE).
And lest you fear America no longer stands for progress, the winner of that first 1916 contest ate 13 hot dogs. We've since progressed nearly five-fold.
Happy hot dog day!
