> MAGIC CITY:  Premieres Friday April 6 at 10PM on Starz – Potential DVR Alert Starz’s new MAGIC CITY is another stroll down Mad Men lane:  glamorous people in impeccably detailed 1960s settings (technically very late 1950s), smoking, drinking to excess, having lots of illicit sex, and generally enjoying what they don’t know is their […]

  On Homevideo and VOD:  At Home In Your Home Morning Glorydidn’t make Rachel McAdams into the new Julia Roberts/Katherine Heigl/Sandra Bullock (it grossed around $53M worldwide), despite the strong pedigree of having been written by Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada), and directed by Roger Michell (Notting Hill). It’s not really a romantic […]

    OUR IDIOT BROTHER – Watch It At Home:  Sitcom On A Big Screen   Although it premiered at Sundance, OUR IDIOT BROTHER was an “independent film” only in a technical sense:  it was produced on a relatively low budget and didn’t have US distribution in place.  (Harvey Weinstein picked it up at the […]

  TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY:  Worth A Ticket – An Epic of Betrayals   John LeCarre is (I guess one should say “arguably”) the greatest of all spy novelists, and his 1974 TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY is “arguably” his finest work.  Incredibly, the 1979 BBC miniseries adaptation lived up to the level of the novel, […]

    THE LORAX:  Not Even For Free – A Seussian Mess   It may not be pretty, but surely it’s true–Credit must go where credit is due.  In this case, that means the Universal Pictures Marketing Department, which as it turns out has done a splendid job these last few weeks of hiding just […]

BURN NOTICE – Thursday 9PM on USA   WHERE WE WERE:  On the jailhouse steps.  Uber-evil Anson Fullerton (Jere Burns), the shrink who “burned” our hero Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) and destroyed his CIA career for years, had successfully framed Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar), the love of Michael’s life, for a bombing that killed innocent people.  […]

  BREAKING BAD:  Sunday 10PM on AMC   WHERE WE WERE:  Gasping, probably.  Walter White (Bryan Cranston), the former New Mexico high school chemistry teacher who took to cooking meth as a way to pay off his family medical bills when he was diagnosed with lung cancer, has gradually moved from being a tourist in […]

  A suburbanite with money troubles gets into the drug business, gradually becoming corrupt, paranoid and power-hungry, increasingly alienated from family and former life… Not to take anything away from Breaking Bad, which is one of TV’s great shows–but WEEDS was there first. For 8 seasons, Jenji Kohan’s dramedy about the pot trade has been […]