NBC CEO Jeff Zucker In a move that bodes well to strengthen TV programming overall in both primetime and late night, NBC has confirmed that Jay Leno will be moved back to his original 11:30 slot and his 10 p.m.
Press reports and even jokes on last night’s Jay Leno Show point to the likelihood that NBC’s experiment with moving Leno from late night to prime time is over, and that the instigator of the changes, Conan O’Brien, will have
In the classic manner of series television, the USA Network’s latest new dramedy, White Collar (Fridays at 10 EST), smartly combines elements common to numerous other contemporary TV crime dramas, especially other USA Network shows, in a way calculated to
Monk has been one of the best fiction series on U.S. television during the current decade, and tonight’s concluding episode (9 p.m. EST, USA Network) promises to tie up the few remaining vagrant plot strands. The show’s producers have done
Edward Woodward, star of the iconic 1980s U.S. TV series The Equalizer and acclaimed films such as The Wicker Man and Breaker Morant, has died at the age of 79 after a long illness. Woodward was best known for portraying
Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture-animation version of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol had a fairly blah opening weekend at the North American box office, finishing first with an unexpectedly miserly total of $31 million in ticket sales. Industry insiders had
Government broadcaster PBS is running a new, five-part series on a subject naturally interesting in our time: American Experience: The 1930s. Episodes are available for online viewing here. The program is just what one would expect from PBS: earnest, well-researched,
After several years of mostly miserably failed attempts to ride the wave of crime dramas most of the other TV networks were successfully navigating, ABC has turned to the TV and cinematic crime drama maestro Jerry Bruckheimer for help. The
The new ABC sitcom Hank is rather short on big laughs, but it’s well-stocked with good ideas and sound values. The big question is, will ABC give it a chance? Hank is the first of two family-oriented comedies ABC is
The smart new sitcom The Middle presents a positive but realistic view of Middle America’s pursuit of the American Dream. Set in the fictional small town of Orson, Indiana, The Middle (8:30 EDT) follows Hank in ABC’s new Wednesday night
So what we have here are two worlds. One, without God and controlled by thoughts of evolution, is a spectacularly dreary, unhappy place without love or meaning. On the other hand, even a fictional God brings the world meaning, joy,
After a couple of weeks of unsubstantiated rumors, it has been confirmed that the forthcoming film The Invention of Lying is indeed intended to satirize religion and religious believers. New York Post critic Kyle Smith has seen the film and
As overly serious police procedurals have begun to saturate the primetime network TV schedules, the FOX network has quietly but wisely been exploring alternatives. Introduced a few years ago, the highly popular House varied the formula by moving it to
Given the huge advertising and publicity push, plus the presence of star actor Matt Damon (Bourne spy film series) and star director Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s series of heist films), I thought The Informant! had a good chance to win the
The latest episode of PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery includes a surprise: criticism of communism. The U.S. TV network PBS and the British Broadcasting Corporation, both government-owned, tend to soft-pedal the evils of communism while placing every imperfection of life in the
Filmmaker George Romero has had exactly one good idea in his life: the original, 1968 zombie film Night of the Living Dead. Since then, he has been coasting on a reputation as a maker of smarter than average horror films.
Director Ang Lee’s films tackle a wide variety of ostensible subjects and genres, but they’re consistent in conveying antinomian-individualist platitudes. After his big international success with the superb martial arts saga “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Chinese-born film director Ang Lee
Following on the heels of the strong opening weekend for the relatively intelligent alien invasion story District 9, Quentin Tarantino’s World War II adventure Inglourious Basterds opened at number one at the U.S. movie box office this past weekend, taking
Proving once again its claim to the hotly contested title of Stupidest Television Network, ABC has canceled “The Goode Family” and “Surviving Suburbia,” continuing their business strategy of desperately trying new things and failing to give them a chance to
The return of the popular mystery-comedy series Monk and Psych for new seasons on the USA Network (at 9 and 10 p.m. EDT, respectively) is a bittersweet thing for most followers of the popular show featuring Tony Shaloub as the
Weighed down by a depressing premise made all too apparent by the theatrical trailer and advance publicity which made the film’s title too obviously sarcastic, Jud Apatow’s Funny People opened relatively poorly at the U.S. box office, taking in only
The Philanthropist (NBC, Wednesdays, 10 p.m. EDT) is a bad idea for a television series, but in the execution it manages to be even worse. In fact, in making extravagant claims about the value of philanthropy, the show actually undermines
This year marks the 70th anniversary of Hollywood’s greatest year, 1939. Accordingly, Turner Classic Movies is celebrating the anniversary this month by showing 39 films released in ’39, starting with The Wizard of Oz. Throughout the month, TCM will also
Actor Karl Malden, who died at age 97, was a fine performer who stood for good principles and conveyed a sense of moral responsibility in his performances. Malden was instrumental in pushing the Motion Picture Academy to give a lifetime
The new film Year One is definitely taking a beating from the critics, especially conservative ones. Two reviews by my colleagues at Big Hollywood exemplify the complaints. Comedienne Victoria Jackson expresses immense disappointment with the film’s high proportion of obscenity
It will be a good thing if the Sandra Bullock romantic comedy The Proposal continues its box-office success—if Hollywood draws the right conclusions about why it did well. The film had a rather surprisingly strong opening weekend at the U.S.
The death of television personality Ed McMahon at the age of 86 marks the passing of a true original. McMahon was one of the very first Americans to enjoy the postmodern status of being a celebrity solely by virtue of
The centenary of John Wayne’s birth passed in 2007 with hardly any attention from the U.S. media, which shows both how out of touch the critical community is and how much more astute audiences are than the great majority of
The new Will Ferrell comedy, Land of the Lost, based on an astoundingly bad mid-1970s children’s show produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, is typical of Farrell’s films–it’s funny, imaginative, action-filled, nonsensical, and essentially well-meaning. Unlike most of his comedies,
