Fall TV Preview - Tuesday

=Tuesday=

8/7
ABC - NO ORDINARY FAMILY
CBS - NCIS
NBC - Biggest Loser Hour 1
FOX - Glee
CW - One Tree Hill

9/8
ABC - Dancing with the Stars results
CBS - NCIS: Los Angeles
NBC - Biggest Loser Hour 2
FOX - RAISING HOPE
- - - - RUNNING WILDE
CW - Life Unexpected

10/9
ABC - DETROIT 1-8-7
CBS - The Good Wife
NBC - Parenthood

New Shows:

NO ORDINARY FAMILY - Michael Chiklis (The Shield) and Julie Benz (Dexter) head a family that suddenly gain super powers. Sounds like a live-action The Incredibles. Sounds like it intends to be brighter than the now-axed Heroes.

RAISING HOPE - Blue-collar dark comedy about a 23-year-old who has a surprise baby daughter Hope left on his doorstep. Garrett Dillahunt (Terminator: TSCC) and Martha Plimpton (Goonies) are his parents, and Cloris Leachman is Grandma. Supposed to have a My Name Is Earl meets Arrested Development flavor to it.

RUNNING WILDE - Speaking of Arrested Development, Will Arnett stars as a lazy son of a millionaire who finds out his old high-school crush (Keri Russell) is single and he tries to win her over. She's an environmental activist (hopefully not to the James Lee level), so he has some work to do. Word has it they reshot the pilot after it scored lower-than-expected test scores.

DETROIT 1-8-7 - This drama about homicide cops in Detroit was going to be faux-documentary style, but they had to scrap that idea and now shoot it as a straight drama. Michael Imperioli (The Sopranos, Life on Mars) and James McDaniel (NYPD Blue) star.

My Prediction:

Tuesday's opening slot looks tough, but I can see No Ordinary Family defying odds and breaking out somehow. That'll mean either Biggest Loser or Glee has to slip. It also means the Fox sitcoms are in a high-risk/high-reward bind. Fox hasn't been able to get a sitcom to last for a while. (Til Death should have been cancelled two years before it actually was.) The Good Wife will continue to dominate, and it'll be up to Detroit and Parenthood to duke it out for second.

Fall TV Preview - Monday

New shows in All Caps.

=Monday=

8/7
ABC - Dancing with the Stars Hour 1
CBS - How I Met Your Mother
- - - - Rules of Engagement
NBC - Chuck
FOX - House
CW - 90210

9/8
ABC - Dancing with the Stars Hour 2
CBS - Two and a Half Men
- - - - MIKE & MOLLY
NBC - THE EVENT
FOX - LONE STAR
CW - Gossip Girl

10/9
ABC - Castle
CBS - HAWAII FIVE-0
NBC - CHASE

New Shows:

MIKE & MOLLY (CBS) - Sitcom following the courtship between two overweight people. I've heard more good things than bad.

THE EVENT (NBC) - This treads conspiracy-theory waters and hopes to succeed where FlashForward failed. I do hear there's an assassination attempt and a CIA cover-up of... something. Cast includes Blair Underwood (as the Prez), Jason Ritter (The Class), Laura Innes (ER) and Zjelko Ivanek (Damages).

LONE STAR (FOX) - A man juggles two lives in Texas between a wife and mistress and hopes his powerful father-in-law (Jon Voight) doesn't find out. Supposed to be a less-cheesy Dallas. Zap2It named it the #1 must-see new show this fall.

HAWAII FIVE-0 (CBS) - Remember how CBS kept giving Simon Baker series after series until they found the perfect package in The Mentalist? They're hoping they've found the right vehicle for Alex O'Loughlin, late of Midnight and Three Rivers. His supporting cast includes Entourage's Scott Caan, Lost's Daniel Dae Kim, and Battlestar Galactica's Grace Park.

CHASE (NBC) - Show about U.S. marshals chasing the fugitive of the week.

My Prediction:

NBC is in a world of hurt this year. They have a lot of hopes on The Event, but Lone Star has a much stronger lead-in, and ABC and CBS's scheduling looks bulletproof. Then again, soapy dramas are as big a gamble as mystery series where viewers need to watch each week. I think the gamble of moving CSI: Miami to Sundays is a good one to help a new show. I see Hawaii Five-0 being a hit. I see Chase being the first NBC cancellation of the year, and The Event not being far behind unless word-of-mouth is really strong. But then again, it's NBC. If The Event can just improve on Chuck's lead-in, it'll be considered a hit.

Harry Brown - DVD Review

**

Starring Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Charlie Creed-Miles, David Bradley, Liam Cunningham, Iain Glen and Sean Harris.
Directed by Daniel Barber.

Michael Caine is great in everything he does, and when he's the lead, he really gets to show what he can do. I was excited at the prospect of him starring in his own Gran Torino, but that was my first mistake. Gran Torino was really good, and this one pales by comparison, though through no fault of Caine's.

Caine plays Harry Brown, a man living in a rougher, poorer section of London, and the gang violence is increasing around him. The cops don't seem to be effective and after a couple tragic events, Harry Brown decides enough's enough. The guy's a former Marine after all.

He wanders into the seedier parts of town and uncovers the tangled webs between gangs and the drug culture. Dead bodies of lowlifes pile up, and the local inspector (Emily Mortimer) is sympathetic but thinks it might be Harry behind the body count.

Caine's cool, but it really is just a cockney Death Wish.

Machete - Movie Review

**1/2

Starring Danny Trejo, Robert DeNiro, Steven Seagal, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Jeff Fahey, Don Johnson, Cheech Marin, Lindsay Lohan, Tom Savini, Daryl Sabara and Shea Whigham.
Directed by Robert Rodriguez.

I thought the two-minute fake trailer was great in Grindhouse (2007). For some weird reason I wasn't expecting this movie to still feel like a 90-minute trailer of itself, but it was.

The previews we had set the mood. The Town looks good, I'm hyped for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (kudos to the marketing guy who thought of using "Sympathy for the Devil"), and I'm tired of seeing the preview for Devil ("from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan.") We also had Saw 3D and Resident Evil: Afterlife, this decade's version of grindhouse.

Then the movie.

Trejo's got a very interesting face. It looks like it's made from granite after centuries of ocean splashed against it. He doesn't need to say anything; his intense physical presense commands the screen. He's also got an impressive body for a 67-year-old man. Here he's a federale in Mexico whose wife and child get killed by the local kingpin Torrez (Steven Seagal). They think they've killed him too, but he re-emerges in Texas, doing odd jobs. There we find an eclectic cast of characters. There's Robert DeNiro as Sen. John McLaughlin, running a hate-filled anti-immigrant re-election campaign. There's SHE (Michelle Rodriguez) who runs a secret underground operation treated with the reverance of Harriet Tubman. There's Don Johnson, having the most fun as the evil border vigilante.

The political undertones of the movie were weird, off-putting. The argument seems to be that there should be an open border between the US and Mexico, and sending anyone back to Mexico is cruel, unusual and inhumane. And anyone who wants a secure border is a racist murderer. I guess.

Lindsay Lohan does show up and at one point finds herself in a nun's habit pointing a gun. She actually wasn't very good in this movie. I'm one who keeps hoping she'll get her life cleaned up. She CAN act. Freaky Friday, Mean Girls, A Prairie Home Companion. But her performance here was one where I felt like her off-screen life is catching up to her.

Then there's Steven Seagal. He's best when he's in the teleconferencing scenes, where we only see his head. The guy is really out of shape. I don't know he's been seriously injured recently or what, but he can't move. He cannot do a convincing fight scene. I think they would have needed less tricky camera work if Trejo had been fighting DeNiro. I wasn't convinced Seagal could hold a sword for ten seconds. I don't know what it was.

The movie's full of posing, of allegedly iconic moments. When I was younger, I dug this stuff. I remember thinking how cool it was in Desperado that a guy's guitar case was actually a machine gun. I liked the Mariachi trilogy more. I think I even liked Planet Terror more. Machete is fine while watching it, but I felt like I'd eaten too much junk food the morning after.

I'm ready for Robert Rodriguez to put out his own Inglourious Basterds, as I see RR as QT's perpetual little brother. It may be, though, that Rodriguez is never going to be able to top what he did in Sin City, and this level is his future.

P.S. Kudos for having three LOST alum in the cast.

AMC's Rubicon - TV Review

I have this on my DVR, and I watched two episodes, and I'm wondering if this is going to pay off. It's remarkably unsentimental about its characters. There is no expository dialogue; it's as though we're eavesdropping on morose code-breakers at the CIA and all their dialogue is in the natural short-hand you can have with co-workers you've known for years. So far it's dense and joyless and I'm just wondering if it'll be worth the time investment.

Dwayne Johnson joins Journey 2

I guess the spectacular success of Furry Vengenace has made Brendan Fraser a bit big for his britches. He will not be back for Journey to the Center of the Earth 2, though Josh Hutcherson will. Coming Soon reports that Dwayne Johnson has signed on to play his uncle and that it'll be loosely based on Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island, hence the official title:

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

New Dancing with the Stars cast

I don't watch this show, but for those interested:

The official 12 for Dancing with the Stars: singer Michael Bolton, former America's Got Talent judges David Hasselhoff and Brandy, Brady Bunch matriarch Florence Henderson, Dirty Dancing star Jennifer Grey, comedian Margaret Cho, NBA vet Rick Fox, NFL vet Kurt Warner, Disney Channel's Kyle Massey, former Alaskan first-daughter Bristol Palin, Jersey Shore's Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, and The Hills' Audrina Partridge.

Full Emmy Award Results

Drama
BEST DRAMA - Mad Men
BEST ACTOR - Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
BEST ACTRESS - Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR - Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS - Archie Panjabi, The Good Wife
BEST WRITING - M. Weiner & E. Levy, Mad Men
BEST DIRECTING - S. Shill, Dexter
BEST GUEST ACTOR - John Lithgow, Dexter
BEST GUEST ACTRESS - Ann-Margret, Law & Order: SVU

Comedy
BEST COMEDY - Modern Family
BEST ACTOR - Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory
BEST ACTRESS - Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR - Eric Stonestreet, Modern Family
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS - Jane Lynch, Glee
BEST WRITING - S. Levitan & C. Lloyd, Modern Family
BEST DIRECTING - R. Murphy, Glee
BEST GUEST ACTOR - Neil Patrick Harris, Glee
BEST GUEST ACTRESS - Betty White, Saturday Night Live

Reality
BEST REALITY COMPETITION - Top Chef
BEST REALITY PROGRAM - Food Revolution
BEST REALITY HOST - Jeff Probst, Survivor

Variety
BEST VARIETY - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
BEST WRITING - The 63rd Annual Tony Awards
BEST DIRECTING - Vancouver 2010 Olympics Opening Ceremony

Mini-Series/Movie
BEST TV-MOVIE - Temple Grandin
BEST MINISERIES - The Pacific
BEST ACTOR - Al Pacino, You Don't Know Jack
BEST ACTRESS - Claire Danes, Temple Grandin
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR - David Strathairn, Temple Grandin
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS - Julia Ormond, Temple Grandin
BEST WRITING - You Don't Know Jack
BEST DIRECTING - Temple Grandin

Un Prophete - DVD Review

***

Starring Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup and Adel Bencherif.
Directed by Jacques Audiard.

Does the world need another prison/gangster drama? Only if it's done well. This is done well.

It's also from France, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen a French prison/gangster drama. The story follows Malik, a small-time crook thrown into the prison. He's low in the pecking order due to his being Arab, but he catches the eye of Cesar Luciani, a lifer mobster who gives him a choice. Malik can kill a fellow prisoner, or get killed himself.

From there, Malik follows the trajectory of any Al Pacino gangster movie, but I give the movie credit for telling a familiar story in an original way.

The Killer Inside Me - DVD Review

*1/2

Starring Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Ned Beatty, Simon Baker, Elias Koteas, Tom Bower, Bill Pullman, Brent Briscoe, Liam Aiken and Jay R. Ferguson.
Directed by Michael Winterbottom.

Some movies can be really well-made but are so repellant at their core that it overrides whatever technical expertise or finesse it took to put it all together. Casey Affleck mumbles his way through this period drama about a small-town deputy sheriff who one day decides to beat a woman to death. After that, more and more bodies are left in his wake as he continues to cover his tracks. The movies invites the audience to be as detached from the killings as the protagonist, but why should they want to?

City Island - DVD Review

***1/4

Starring Andy Garcia, Julianna Margulies, Steven Strait, Emily Mortimer, Dominik Garcia-Lorido, Ezra Miller, Alan Arkin, and Carrie Baker Reynolds.
Directed by Raymond De Felitta.

We get 10-20 dysfunctional-family movies a year, but this is better than most of them.

Andy Garcia is patriarch Vince Rizzo, a classic name for a guy who's not going to live to the end of a Sopranos episode, but he's basically a good guy, a corrections officer working at the prison, living in (on?) City Island, a section of New York that just doesn't get the pub. He's got a wife, a son and a daughter who each harbor secrets, and he harbors his own. We learn all these secrets fairly early; we as the audience can just enjoy to what lengths the family members go through to keep their secrets hidden.

Garcia did a really good job here as Vince, one of his more memorable roles. I also liked Julianna Margulies, queen of Chicago TV characters, in a New York blue-collar role she normally would not get offered. Especially good is the final ten minutes, where the houses of cards everyone has built comes crashing down.

Mad Men & Modern Family win

Good. Wouldn't mind seeing a different drama, but Mad Men's been a must on my DVR since it debuted, and Modern Family was the best new comedy of last year.

Brycan Cranston wins 3rd time for Breaking Bad

I love Cranston's work on that show, but I would have given it to Michael C. Hall for Dexter. Glad to see it won for at least Directing and Guest Actor.

I don't watch The Closer, so I was pulling for Julianna Margulies, but Sedgwick's always truck me as a good person.

Aaron Paul wins for Breaking Bad

Paul had a good year, but I'm surprised he actually won. And yet it may have been the deepest category, with O'Quinn & Emerson from Lost and Martin Short from Damages.

Happy for Archie Panjabi. My vote probably would have gone for Christina Hendricks, and just because she did two episodes of Firefly, though it helps.

Top Chef wins Best Competition Program

The Amazing Race has been unseated! Wow.

Others:

JIM PARSONS wins for BIG BANG THEORY. Thrilled!

EDIE FALCO wins for NURSE JACKIE. Eh, I would have rather seen it go to Amy Poehler or Lea Michele.

ERIC STONESTREET wins for MODERN FAMILY. Awesome. I hope next year Ed O'Neill allows imself to be up for Best Actor rather than in the Best Supporting pool.

JANE LYNCH for GLEE. The first Emmy for her? Well, I'm glad she won it.

Great Opening for the Emmys

Jimmy Fallon and Neil Patrick Harris should switch off hosting every year for the next ten years.

My One and Only - DVD Review

**
Starring Renee Zellweger, Logan Lerman, Kevin Bacon, Mark Rendall, Chris Noth, Nick Stahl, Eric McCormack, David Koechner, Steven Weber, Troy Garity and Robin Weigart.
Directed by Richard Loncraine.

I remembered this was based on the childhood of someone famous, but I didn't look up who so I could watch it unbiased. And I was surprised when the reveal came who he is.

My problem with this was the tone and the borrowing. One scene comes straight out of Monty Python's Life of Brian. Another scene comes right out of GoodFellas. And I don't mean tone-wise, I mean they literally felt like someone took those scenes and changed the dialogue a little,a nd then plugged them into this movie.

So is this a comedy or a drama? Zellweger's socialite mother seems like a comic character but with bad things that happen to her. Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson) has the intensity of a dramatic character but when we find out who he is, I don't know, seems like he would've been a little more light-hearted in his youth.

She's a rich woman who learns her husband's cheating on her so she puts her two teenage boys in the car and drives across the country looking for a new husband/sugar-daddy to take care of them. Each guy seems to get 5-10 minutes and then she moves on, and after the third failure, I found myself growing impatient with what's going on. So... she's going to go through the rest of the actors I've heard of in the opening credits before she has her epiphany? A big meh from me.

Brooklyn's Finest - DVD Review

**1/2

Starring Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, Wesley Snipes, Will Patton, Ellen Barkin, Lili Taylor, Brian F. O'Byrne, Michael K. Williams, Jesse Williams and Vincent D'Onofrio.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua.

If you've seen Training Day, Dark Blue, Deep Cover, or any corrupt-cop movie in the past 40 years, you've seen Brooklyn's Finest. The appeal then is just watching a different set of actors go through familiar motions.

It's an ensemble piece that focusses on three different, very loosely connected cops. So loose that I don't think any gets more than ten seconds of screen-time shared with another. Richard Gere is the beat cop who has one week until retirement. Don Cheadle is the undercover cop who's been under so long he's starting to lose his grip on his own humanity. Ethan Hawke is the detective struggling with the temptation to pocket drug money from their busts with his bills stacking up.

There are so many cliches in the movie that it has fun with it. It sets up about twelve cliched plot turns but only follows eight of them, while the other four just evaporate. It gets pretty violent, and director Antoine Fuqua has a fetish for blood splattering on the wall. In fact, it got to where any time a character was standing near a wall, I figured he wasn't long for this world.

The performances are all fine, especially Hawke as the cop at the end of his rope. It's also nice to see Snipes in a movie that didn't go straight to DVD. It all builds to an allegedly powerful climax but th impact isn't there, maybe because it feels so inevitable.