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September 2009 Archives
FLICK PICKS: October festivals
September 29, 2009 8:12 PM
With a new month comes a host of new festivals on Turner Classic Movies. October salutes Leslie Caron, Esther Williams, Depression-set films, and thrillers to kick off an ongoing survey of movie genres.
"A Night at the Movies" is the new umbrella label for not just stylistically paired titles but also original documentaries delving into them. The new hour The Suspenseful World of Thrillers (Friday, Oct. 2 at 8 p.m. ET, TCM) really does cover the waterfront -- not just the studio-era staples of TCM (Hitchcock, Gaslight, Sorry Wrong Number), but everything from vintage chillers like Fritz Lang's German early-sound classic M to thriller-come-latelys like Fatal Attraction and Paul Verhoeven's 2006 Dutch film Black Book (with ever-handy Nazi villains).
That's a lot to do in an hour, and you could make accusations of both gloss-overs and omissions here. (Not to mention too many stills and too few clips, a telltale sign of a too-low production budget.) But TCM is at least still trying to honor the richness of our cinema heritage in ways that other supposed "movie" channels (yes, you, AMC) have long since abandoned. ("A Night at the Movies" is also a nice nod back to the late '80s founding of TCM precursor TNT, too, with its Film School "essentials" collections.)
Hitchcock gets the first week's focus of thrillers filling Friday nights all month. Rear Window (Oct. 2 at 9 p.m. ET) is followed by a Suspenseful World repeat (11 p.m. ET) and then the master's own favorite film, the evil-in-the-family creepfest Shadow of a Doubt (midnight ET, all Friday night on TCM).
Political thrillers unreel on Oct. 9, led by, of course, The Manchurian Candidate. Oct. 16 has crime thrillers like The Narrow Margin. Gothic thrillers on Oct. 23 include The Night of the Hunter. (Oct. 30 is taken over by TCM's Halloween marathon.)
The Depression comes first on TCM, though, starting Oct. 1 with David Carradine as activist balladeer Woody Guthrie in 1976's Bound for Glory (Thursday at 8 p.m. ET), launching TCM's run of hard-times Thursday nights all month. The opening night proves this festival has range, too -- from King Vidor's studio-bucking 1934 indie drama about communes, Our Daily Bread (10:45 p.m. ET), to the '30s war veteran anti-drug tale Heroes for Sale (12:15 a.m. ET), to John Ford's immortal The Grapes of Wrath (1:30 a.m. ET), to Pare Lorentz' dust-bowl documentary The Plow That Broke the Plains (3:45 a.m. ET, all Thursday night/Friday morning on TCM).
If those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it, maybe we'd all better pay attention to this earlier era of economic emergency. Oct. 8's titles include cutting comedies like Preston Sturges' must-see Sullivan's Travels, where the Coen brothers got the notion for O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Which shows up Oct. 15 alongside such other retro takes as Paper Moon. The mix on Oct. 22 is mind-bending, from Busby Berkeley's Gold Diggers of 1933 to Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo. And Oct. 29's finale collects six films from the 1932-33 depths of it all, instant history written with Hollywood lightning.
Leslie Caron films fill Monday nights starting Oct. 5 with TCM host Robert Osborne's 1999 Private Screenings chat with the French-born actress, followed by some of her '50s musical magic, An American in Paris and Gigi. Subsequent TCM Mondays move through the gamine yet glamorous actress' career till Oct. 26 spotlights 1970s efforts Goldengirl and Valentino.
Esther Williams would represent a polar opposite star -- all-American, athletic and pretty much accidental, having come to Hollywood off a champion swimming career. If you've seen That's Entertainment! you know what this '50s box-office topper can do with a pool and a smile. Getting October Tuesday nights into the swim on Oct. 6 are quintessentials Easy to Love and Million Dollar Mermaid.
TCM has more, of course, with Dennis Miller on the 21st playing October's guest programmer (The Third Man AND Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House), plus Halloween-centric salutes to Lon Chaney, William Castle, silent shockers, meteor movies, psychic powers and more.
We'll catch up to those in due time. What we've already recommended should be enough to keep your DVR humming till then . . .
FALL TV: 'Dexter' gets even better
September 24, 2009 2:14 PM
Oh, it's sooo tempting:
Here's another killer season of Dexter! Michael C. Hall's performance will slay you! Guest star John Lithgow is lethal! The twists and turns are brilliantly executed!
You gotta give in when a series is this, um, mortally amazing. In its fourth season (starting Sunday at 9 p.m. ET), Showtime's Dexter delivers more dangerously than ever. Michael C. Hall's seriously disturbed serial-killer-of-serial-killers is now a spouse and daddy. (How much do we love those blood-or-is-it-juice-stained baby pix?) He's even becoming a howdy-neighbor suburbanite.
Every strong new tie to normality threatens to make him a weaker avenger. Sleep deprivation? Check. Household emergencies? Check. Neighborhood watch group? Check. And of course, loved ones you just know will be easy prey for anyone who gets a whiff of what Dexter is doing.
That's likely to be Lithgow, who arrives this season even before Dexter does, and immediately reveals what kind of a monster he'll make. (Nice buns, too!) But this season's sniffer could also be homicide detective Quinn (Desmond Harrington), who develops a self-preservation reason for making extra nice with Dexter -- a guy that so doesn't "get" the friendship thing, he perilously fails to respond in kind.
But Season 4 has more -- a returning rival in Keith Carradine's FBI agent Lundy from Season 2, now retired, with enough time on his hands to dedicate himself fully to the quarry who most haunts his head. He also puts the charm to his ex-squeeze, Dexter's ceaselessly insecure detective sister 
Deb (Jennifer Carpenter), who was just starting to build a live-in relationship of her own. It's not like she can handle intimacy, either.
And as all these puzzle pieces fall together, Dexter turns around and blows up the whole picture with an amazing season-opener cliffhanger. Yes, the season's first episode ends with a couldn't-see-that-coming punch in the gut.
That's the kind of show Dexter is. It shakes up the whole equation. It makes you adore, and pull for, a man whose purpose in life is killing people. People who "deserve" it, of course -- kid killers and other not-brought-to-justice villains, as outlined by the Code of Harry, the adoptive father and cop who steered damaged kid Dexter's homicidal impulses toward vigilante executions of evildoers.
But still, he's a killer, and Dexter puts us in bed with Dexter Morgan. He seductively takes us into his confidence through Hall's eerily ironic narration -- one of television's most underrated examples of laugh-out-loud comedy writing. Now Dexter's got that new baby to confide in, too, whispering "daddy kills people" while singing America the Beautiful to lull his son to sleep. "I'm killing for two now," he coos.
Wait till the season's second episode Oct. 4, when all hell has crashed down on Dexter and his latest dead body, and an unknowing cop reassures him, "It's never as bad as it looks." "I'm pretty sure this is worse," deadpans the secret serial killer's inner self. What other show would get such a crossword puzzle kick out of the word SEVER--? Or let the ghost of Dexter's dead dad ("I didn't kill him" was a dry Dexter punchline in a previous episode) remind a dawdling Dexter that he's got "a family to support and people to dismember"?
Harry (James Remar) seems a bit more warped this season, for reasons that become evident by the second episode. That one's a nailbiter nasty in its suspense. But the third and fourth hours (Oct. 11 and 18) get to the meat (sorry) of the season's mettle. Dexter's greatest challenge has arrived, and it's not Lithgow's character or Quinn or Lundy.
It's connection. The lethal loner who can't read emotional cues is now a full-fledged member of a community, hanging with the family, heading to neighborhood barbeques. That means there's threat everywhere. The only saving grace may be that the people closest to catching him are just as bad at building relationships as he is -- his desperate sister, the screwy detectives they work with, can't-get-a-life Lundy, and obviously Lithgow, whose own serial killing string is marked by wanderlust.
That fourth episode also provides Dexter a new target whose murderous impulses introduce him to himself in a shocking new way. It becomes clearer, too, how Dexter remains under the radar by being much like Chance in Being There -- an impassive character into whom observers read motivations that are actually in their own heads.
And after four Season 4 episodes, just when you think Dexter can't get any deeper, bang -- there's an even more stunning cliffhanger here!
If these early episodes show Dexter just a bit off his garroting game, they also demonstrate that showrunner Clyde Phillips and his crew are running at the top of theirs. They've added producer-writer Chick Eglee, most recently of The Shield, and sharp directors like Marcos Siega have the episodes visually oozing both blood and irony.
Before Sunday's 9 p.m. ET season premiere, be sure to check out Showtime's rich Dexter web site, which includes a Season 4 preview, recaps/video from previous years, episode listings, special features that include a Dexter action figure stop-motion short, even a contest to win a walk-on role.
FALL TV: Hot 'House' tonight
September 21, 2009 11:05 AM
[UPDATE: Episode repeats Thursday, Oct. 1 at 11 p.m. ET on USA . . . ]
If you were in a mental hospital, wouldn't you be happy to find Hugh Laurie's Dr. House as a fellow patient? The guy's funny, he's smart, he's an anarchist, he's guaranteed thrills. Also painful insults, but hey, you can't have everything.
Except in tonight's season-starter for House (Monday 8-10 p.m. ET, Fox). If Hugh Laurie doesn't win the Emmy for this, they should stop giving them away. (Of course, I've been saying that for years about Dexter star Michael C. Hall, and Sunday night they had another Emmyfest anyway. At least Hall got nominated.)
As the sixth season of House unreels, Laurie pretty much boils down his entire character into a world of hurt. And not just aimed against others. Finally, we see how Greg -- and it really feels here like we should call him by his first name -- labors under mountains of emotional torture. Forget the leg, and even the pills. He's been burying his psychic pain so deep and so relentlessly that it's risen to approximate the size of the Staten Island landfill. (You can see it from space!)
Digging in with equal determination is Andre Braugher, who's as cool here playing House's shrink as he was hot playing Homicide interrogator Frank Pembleton. When they go mano a mano -- or is that cabeza a cabeza? -- it's a spine-tingler. You know this guy's gonna drill down to the core. And ultimately, he does.
But along that rocky road, we encounter a whole host of flesh-and-blood characters, courtesy of some sensitive directing by series showrunner Katie Jacobs (who really needs to get behind the camera more). House finds himself in group therapy with the Girl Who Won't Speak, the Manic Guy Who Won't Stop Talking, and other memorables. House misbehaves amusingly, and also solves a case in the clink. He even manages to meet a patient's best friend who, since she's played by Franke Potente (The Shield's Armenian mobster), turns out to be oh so much more involved than a simple acquaintance.
The most important connection, though, is that House gets to meet House. Not pretty, perhaps, but pretty compelling. So the riveting two-hour opener ends with a new beginning, which presents a fascinating fork in the road for series scripting chief David Shore. He and star Laurie have managed to reinterpret if not reinvent House time and time again, but here they're tackling their biggest challenge.
How thrilling is it to see a show take the hard way out? They're doing it this season on Dexter, too -- Showtime's season premiere is Sunday, Sept., 27 -- with another deft actor who perpetually reveals layers of expression in a man working hard to hide behind an impassive mask.
House and Dexter both do shockingly horrible things. That's entertaining to watch. But we continue to follow them intensely because we spy more beneath -- there's a soul of some kind, or they wouldn't be doing work to "help" people. (With Dexter, we use the term extremely loosely.) And we wouldn't care. These are characters we can savor on the surface and then peer deep inside of, making us partners of a sort in their performance.
And their attitude. Ever been a cranky-pants yourself? Ever wanted to off an evildoer? These guys get away with it. But not without cost. We keep hoping to see those hearts beating, and in treats like tonight's House, our devotion is rewarded with the kind of cumulative impact that series TV was made to deliver.
Sometimes, you can have everything.
(See preview clips of House here and Dexter here.)
WATCH THIS: 15 more TV treats
September 21, 2009 7:55 AM
[UPDATED AGAIN: Upcoming shows brought to top.]
While Bianculli tracks the big-name shows coming up on the networks and cable, I prefer to travel the tube's backroads, seeking slightly more obscure stuff worth watching.
So I'll match him 15 for 15 with these (less obvious) September TV treats.
14. The Prisoner (premieres Friday, Sept. 25, 8-11 p.m. ET, IFC) -- Patrick McGoohan's classic '60s mystery refreshes our memories before AMC's November remake. Co-creator/director McGoohan made himself immortal playing a resigned spy imprisoned in a too-perfect Village patrolled by a nasty weather balloon. This cerebral (even hallucinatory) puzzle is beautifully produced, and distinctly one of a kind. At least until November. (You can also watch all 17 of McGoohan's Prisoner episodes online.)
15. The Joy Behar Show (premieres Sept. 28, nightly at 9 ET, HLN) -- Love her or hate her, the brassy comic/cohost of The View certainly provides a loud liberal counterpoint to high-volume right-wing talkers.
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PREVIOUS PICKS:
1. Soul of a People: Writing America's Story (Sunday, Sept. 6, 8-10 p.m. ET, Smithsonian) -- The Depression wasn't fun, but it did leave lasting value, as evidenced by this look at the controversial Federal Writers' Project, described as "America's first-ever self-portrait." Studs Terkel talks about his work chronicling American life alongside the likes of Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Saul Bellow and John Cheever. (Encores Sunday night at 1 a.m., Labor Day at noon and 6 p.m. ET.)
2. Everybody Hates Chris (Monday, Sept. 7, 10 p.m.-6 a.m. ET; then nightly at 10 and 10:30 p.m. ET, Nick at Nite) -- Chris Rock's charming and sharp childhood flashbacks -- which never lured the audience they deserved on UPN/CW -- find the perfect afterlife on a rejuvenating Nick at Nite.
3. King of the Hill (Sunday, Sept. 13, 8-9 p.m. ET, Fox) -- Mike Judge's longrunning animated family -- Texas propane dealer Hank Hill, savvy wife Peggy and awkward son Bobby -- says 'Bye, y'all' with two final fresh episodes.
4. Drop Dead Diva (Sundays, Sept. 13 and 20, 9 p.m. ET, Lifetime) -- Whatever you think of this tale of a vapid model reincarnated as a plus-size attorney, these are must-see guest shots: Paula Abdul on Sept. 13, and Liza Minnelli, Delta Burke and Rosie O'Donnell Sept. 20.
5. Inside the Actors Studio (Monday, Sept. 14 at 8 p.m. ET, Bravo) -- This should be good. Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane gets the James Lipton "grilling" in one of Bravo's few shows still worth watching.
6. Bernard Herrmann/Alfred Hitchcock films 
(Tuesdays, Sept. 15 and Sept. 22, starting at 8 p.m. ET, Turner Classic Movies) -- TCM's monthlong Hermann tribute screens six memorable Hitchcock suspensers with memorable Herrmann scores. On Sept. 15: The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo. On Sept. 22: North by Northwest, Psycho and Marnie.
7. Full Color Football: The History of the American Football League (premieres Wednesday, Sept. 16 at 8 p.m. ET, Showtime) -- Run 'n' gun sports on a shoestring. It was nothing like today's corporate sports world when an upstart football league challenged the stodgy NFL starting in 1960. Joe Namath [photo at right], Al Davis, John Madden and other rebels figure in this lively underdog story spread across five Wednesday nights.
8. Georgia O'Keeffe (Saturday, Sept. 19 at 9 p.m. ET, Lifetime) -- Joan Allen plays the 20th century desert painter in a new biopic costarring Jeremy Irons as Alfred Stieglitz. Other screenings: Sept. 20 at 7 p.m., Sept. 22 at 9 p.m. ET.
9. Holy Grail in America (Sunday, Sept. 20, 8-10 p.m. ET, History) -- Did the DaVinci Code's Knights Templar stash Christ's cup in the States? And did they do it a hundred years before Columbus? This special investigates.
10. The Brady Bunch 40th anniversary marathon (Monday-Friday, Sept. 21-25, 7-9 p.m. ET, and Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 26-27, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. ET, TV Land) -- Sing along now: It's the story of an unavoidable sitcom about a blended family, a dog and a maid named Alice. (And, late in the series' run, some reeeeally bad man-perms.) Gorge yourself on the grooviness.
11. Man on Wire (Monday, Sept. 21 at 8:25 p.m. ET, Sundance) -- 
Amid its dysfunctional '70s depths, New York City found itself transfixed in wonder when French daredevil Phillippe Petit took an illegal wire-walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. James Marsh's documentary film about this guerrilla act captures both its intricate planning and its inspirational impact on a downtrodden city.
12. Brick City (Monday-Friday, Sept. 21-25, 10 p.m. ET, Sundance) -- Young-gun Newark mayor Cory Booker struggles to revitalize his blighted New Jersey metropolis by rallying police, gangs and everyday people, in this five-part documentary produced by Forest Whitaker.
13. Stephen Fry in America (Tuesday, Sept. 22 at 10 p.m. ET, HDNet) -- Hugh Laurie's old comedy partner (A Bit of Fry and Laurie) drives a London cab through all 50 states, discovering fascinating landmarks, customs and citizens.
WATCH THIS: Ricky Gervais' original 'Office'
September 17, 2009 10:06 PM
Ricky Gervais is now a comedy cottage industry, but he was nobody back in 2001 when he co-created and starred in the original British version of The Office. Find out why he's been hot stuff ever since, as the show gets another go, in late night's adult swim block. Its delight and discomfort start on Cartoon Network this Friday night at midnight ET (repeated at 4 a.m. ET) -- a tucked-away time that's easy to overlook. (As we did, until astute reader Gregg B brought it to our attention.)
But what a way to head into the weekend, watching Gervais' "seedy boss" become a TV classic, 
cementing the dead-stop painful silence as one of modern sitcomedy's crucial contributions. Poor David Brent -- he wants to be loved, he wants to be clever, he wants to climb the corporate ladder, he wants to dance and sing up a storm. Too bad he's utterly inept. At everything.
Yet Brent isn't just silly, he's poignant. The BBC's original Office conveys a depth of compassion that NBC's American version can't equal. That's because Gervais is a terrific actor -- not merely a comedian, but a master of wounded humanity. The bleakness of his firm's paper-pushing drudgery truly hits home when his vulnerability and desperation intersect with his stunned staff's horror at feeling forced to endure their forlorn chief's efforts to "amuse" them.
Gervais put that talent to more impact in HBO's Extras, his 2005 series about a one-line actor who manages to make even movie stars ill at ease while pursuing his "career," abetted by an amiable but useless agent played by co-creator Stephen Merchant (and an equally adrift fellow actor played by Ugly Betty sidekick Ashley Jensen). When Gervais' dubiously talented actor actually makes it big, he and Merchant have an even more ruthless rip at the structural cliches of the trite sitcoms on which they were raised.
But The Office remains the pair's masterpiece of inspiration and insight -- all the more effective because they only made 12 episodes. That's the same number as (and this can't be a coincidence) Fawlty Towers, the '70s John Cleese gem that pretty much summed up series farce and dared anyone to do better. Gervais and Merchant learned the lesson: Do it right, and leave it alone. (Both shows ran two seasons of six episodes each.)
Gervais and Merchant did come back to The Office one more time in that wonderful British tube tradition of the Christmas special -- a one-off summing up a show's essence, and airing around the holiday without necessarily having anything to do with it. But their movie-length series finale did, and it beautifully captured the warmth and reflection of the Christmas season, while sending David Brent off into his well-earned sunset. (The two would later turn the same trick with Extras.)
Lucky for us, The Office Christmas Special is on tap, too, airing this Sunday at 11 a.m.-1 p.m. ET on BBC America. If you haven't seen all of Gervais' Office, that's leaping ahead a bit, so record the special now and watch later, after you've seen all of adult swim's weekly episode airings.
The Office is on DVD, too, with excellent extras in which Gervais and Merchant riff on their writings in both funny and fulfilling ways. For its part, TV's adult swim block emphasizes how it's now more than animation with some fresh video from Gervais on its web site.
Nothing against NBC's Office, but Gervais' original really nails it. So hard it hurts.
CLICK HERE: A TV blog too good to be true (but it is!)
September 14, 2009 9:54 AM
If there's one thing I really hate, it's reading a TV blog entry I wish I'd written.
And if there's one thing I really, really hate, it's reading one of those every day.
Too bad for me I'm hooked on Jaime J. Weinman's TV Guidance blog on Canada's Maclean's magazine site. Weinman writes about "new shows, reruns and forgotten classics" (as his page logo promises), but mostly he writes with aplomb about the first-person experience of watching TV, which has always been one of my passions.
I love quality shows, of course. But I also love absolute dreck and inexplicable obsessions.
I love deconstructing shows that lose their way along the way, or find it.
I love saluting the people who make TV great or aggravating (or both).
I love discovering vintage TV hallucinations.
I love little tube-as-life anecdotes.
And of course, I love just riffing on my favorite medium because it's so gosh-darn wacky!
Weinman not only does all of the above, he does it in one week of TV Guidance. Look back just a tad further, and he's eyeing TV DVD, the re-invention of Jay Leno (watch NBC tonight to see the latest incarnation), "shows you liked better after crass re-tooling," and one of my own personal obsessions, film vs. videotape. (Please tell me you can tell the difference, too.)
He seems to read every other cool TV blog, and to have an encyclopedic TV memory, not to mention a wonderfully intimate yet detached writing style, all of which only make me exceedingly more jealous.
But I love TV Guidance so much, I can't resist sharing its fun. Just promise you'll come back to TV Worth Watching, too.
At least Weinman doesn't make any nightly viewing recommendations.
Thank goodness he's Canadian.
GO FIGURE: Ellen on 'Idol'?
September 11, 2009 10:22 AM
So Ellen DeGeneres is replacing Paula Abdul on American Idol.
I don't get it. Do we really want to hear jokes while contenders' performances are being assessed? (OK, intentional jokes.) Or are producers thinking Ellen will bring warm-and-cuddly support?
What I do get is how relatively fast the producers moved to bring in a big name who couldn't be elbowed aside if/when Paula wants to return. They don't want her back, that's clear.
But it's a mistake on both sides. Abdul needs the show's exposure. Ever hear her name in the dozen years preceding? And the show truly benefited from her giddy encouragement of the contenders, wacko as it could be. If it's Simon Cowell's job to read them the riot act of truth, playing mean-old-dad, it was Paula's to be the sappy mommy cooing she loved them no matter what, even if she might be just a tad disappointed in them right now. (Guess that makes Randy Jackson the too-cool older brother, dawg.) And admit it, you loved tuning in just to see how loopy Paula could be.
Something else to consider -- that crucial I've-been-in-your-shoes empathy. Ellen may be a performer with onstage experience, but she's not a singer, which is, after all, the show's raison d'etre. Maybe the producers want Ellen to represent The Public. But the show's judges are there to offer expertise, not (wo)man-in-the-street blather.
Which means I'm not really seeing the angle from which Ellen fits into the Idol equation.
Anyway, here's the spin Fox put on Wednesday night's announcement (verbatim from press release):
Emmy Award-winning talk show host Ellen DeGeneres has joined AMERICAN IDOL as a fourth judge. DeGeneres will sit alongside Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Kara DioGuardi and offer her own unique perspective to the contestants throughout the competition.
The ninth season of AMERICAN IDOL premieres January 2010 on FOX. DeGeneres will join the judges' panel after the auditions, which will feature appearances by guest judges Victoria Beckham, Mary J. Blige, Kristin Chenoweth, Joe Jonas, Neil Patrick Harris, Avril Lavigne, Katy Perry and Shania Twain."I'm thrilled to be the new judge on AMERICAN IDOL," said DeGeneres. "I've watched since the beginning, and I've always been a huge fan. So getting this job is a dream come true, and think of all the money I'll save from not having to text in my vote."
"I could not be more excited to have Ellen join the AMERICAN IDOL family," said creator and executive producer Simon Fuller. "Ellen has been a fan of the show for many years, and her love of music and understanding of the American public will bring a unique human touch to our judging panel. I can't wait for this next season to begin."
"We're all delighted to have Ellen join our ninth season of AMERICAN IDOL," said executive producer Cecile Frot-Coutaz. "Beyond her incredible sense of humor and love of music, she brings with her an immense warmth and compassion that is almost palpable. She is one of America's foremost entertainers, and we cannot wait to have her join our team."
Mike Darnell, President of Alternative Entertainment for FOX added, "We are thrilled to have Ellen DeGeneres join the AMERICAN IDOL judges' table this season. She is truly one of America's funniest people and a fantastic performer who understands what it's like to stand up in front of audiences and entertain them every day. We feel that her vast entertainment experience -- combined with her quick wit and passion for music -- will add a fresh new energy to the show."
DVD DEAL: 'Will & Grace'
September 11, 2009 7:29 AM
Ah, the old days of NBC's Thursday-night juggernaut. Time travel back to the '90s with the complete series box (or should we say cube?) of Will & Grace.
It's Friday's Amazon TV Week deal at $125 for all eight seasons.
Besides presenting each season in a separate "book," the compact 33-disc set includes bonus episode commentaries and featurettes. But fans are vociferous online about trimmed episodes (music rights problems?), plus full-screen rather than widescreen presentation. (You decide whether that matters.)
Buy it here.
DVD DEAL: 'King of Queens'
September 10, 2009 8:13 AM
As multicamera sitcoms slip further into the sunset, here's a longrunning one on special at Amazon.
For Thursday only, all nine seasons of Kevin James' CBS hit King of Queens can ride to your house in a collectible truck-shaped box for $94.
That's more than half-off, as part of Amazon's TV Week featuring TV DVD deals of the day through Sunday.
DVD DEAL: 'West Wing' complete
September 9, 2009 10:05 AM
If current events have you longing for the solid leadership of Martin Sheen's President Bartlet, here's your chance to wallow in his work.
Wednesday's daily deal at Amazon has all seven seasons of The West Wing for $121. That's for the keepsake complete series box that includes a script booklet and other memorabilia. (The set's price is usually well over $200.)
Order it here.
NEWS NEWS: Diane Sawyer steps up
September 2, 2009 3:33 PM
The early bird gets the anchor slot.
Charles Gibson, Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw and Barbara Walters way back when, and now Diane Sawyer -- all morning-show hosts who made the leap to anchoring their networks' evening newscasts.
Sawyer takes over ABC World News in January, when Gibson retires as just announced by ABC.
So it's interesting to see that career path becoming almost de rigeuer now. Evening anchors used to come out of the reporting ranks. Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Bernard Shaw and Brian Williams all worked the White House or foreign correspondent job first. Now anchors are chosen less for their news chops -- no offense, Diane, we know you've got the goods -- than for their "presentation" polish.
Walter Cronkite would never get the gig today.
