Author Archive
 

 

UPDATED: THE SKED CABLE/NETWORK SCORECARD – 4/10/14

  UPDATE:  Lots of adjustments, but none of them over 0.1, with AMERICAN IDOL, THE BIG BANG THEORY, GREY’S ANATOMY, SHARK TANK and COMMUNITY up (narrowly avoiding series lows in some cases), and THE MILLERS and ELEM...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

“THE TREE OF LIFE” – God, Man & Terrence Malick

> Worth A Ticket; An often stupendous achievement that courts ridicule–and sometimes earns it. Terrence Malick’s THE TREE OF LIFE is at once the filmmaker’s most emotionally grounded and dizzyingly ambitious f...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

SHOWBUZZDAILY SUNDAY NETWORK SCORECARD – 5.5.2019

  Note that afternoon golf on CBS pushed 21 minutes into primetime, so the network’s preliminary ratings are likely to adjust in finals. DEMOGRAPHIC DETAIL: For each broadcast program (or hour segment), the chart be...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Oscars Live-Blog

  We’re live-blogging the Oscars tonight, for what may be a historic night for La La Land–or not  The red carpet arrivals were notable for their lack of political commentary, and we’ll see how long that ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

Toronto Film Festival Reviews: “The Woman King” & “Prisoner’s Daughter”

  THE WOMAN KING (Tri-Star/Sony – Sept. 16):  Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King feels something like what would happen if the Themyscira Island Amazonian sequences of Wonder Woman were feature length.  D...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE SKED Season Premiere Review: “The Fosters”

  THE FOSTERS:  Monday 9PM on ABCFamily THE FOSTERS ended its first season on a near tidal wave of melodrama, and along the way it lost a great deal of the modest charm and believable emotions that had made it work in the...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

AFI FEST Film Review: “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”

  THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY:  Buy A Ticket – Ben Stiller’s Imaginative, Flawed Reboot Of The Classic Tale The movies Ben Stiller directs for himself (Reality Bites, Zoolander, Tropic Thunder) are nearly ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

THE STATUETTE STAKES: The Contenders (Part I)

> While you weren’t looking, the Oscar race began. One could make the argument, of course, that it’s been on for months–since, at least, Woody Allen’s MIDNIGHT IN PARIS energized the indie/art-film audie...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “Taxi Brooklyn”

  TAXI BROOKLYN:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel NBC’s summer action comedy TAXI BROOKLYN has a remarkably full history for such a negligible project.  It started as a French movie hit in 1998, wr...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY WEDNESDAY NETWORK SCORECARD – 8.16.2017

  NBC’s MARLON debuted well–but with an asterisk or two. DEMOGRAPHIC DETAIL: For each broadcast program (or hour segment), the chart below displays preliminary key advertiser demographics (adult 18-34, 18-49 a...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: “Gravity”

  It’s not really a surprise to see Alfonso Cuaron join James Cameron, Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott in that small group of film artists who have made 3D part of the essential toolbox of their imagery (no, Baz Luh...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Finale Review: “Ray Donovan”

  Only in the world of RAY DONOVAN would a season’s (more or less) happy ending commence with the chainsaw dismemberment of corpses, but that’s Showtime’s twisted family saga.  The headline of Season 6 w...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “Maron”

  MARON:  Friday 10PM on IFC – If Nothing Else Is On… Everyone wants their Louie.  TV comedies built around fictional versions of real-life comics are nothing new–they go back to the days of Jack Benny ...
by Mitch Salem
 

 
 

SHOWBUZZDAILY Series Premiere Review: “Divorce”

  DIVORCE:  Sunday 10PM on HBO – In the Queue In its opening half-hour, HBO’s DIVORCE doesn’t show much interest in the “-medy” part of “dramedy.”  The series creator is Sharon H...
by Mitch Salem
 

 

 

THE SHOWBUZZDAILY REVIEW: “Happy Feet Too”

  HAPPY FEET TWO:  Watch It At Home – Not So Happy This Time   Most sequels, by and large, exist only because an earlier movie made lots of money–that’s just a fact.  But sequels often at least try...
by Mitch Salem