We’re gradually discovering that Steven Soderbergh’s definition of “retirement” from filmmaking is a fairly narrow one.  It was recently announced that he plans to direct a new series for Cinemax, and he has another cable/online series in development.  It appears that the one thing he won’t be doing for the foreseeable future is directing […]

  MAJOR CRIMES:  Monday 9PM on TNT MAJOR CRIMES, TNT’s spin-off of The Closer, will always have a weakness at its center, caused by the odd decision to build the show around the character of Sharon Raydor (Mary McDonnell), the not very likable or interesting LAPD detective who’d originally been introduced as an officious internal […]

  DEVIOUS MAIDS:  Sunday 10PM on Lifetime Previously… on DEVIOUS MAIDS:  A quintet of maids toil for the vapid, selfish, and sometimes downright evil well-to-do of Beverly Hills.  Carmen (Roselyn Sanchez) hopes contact with her music-star boss will jump-start her own singing career.  Zoila (Judy Reyes) is trying to keep her daughter Valentina (Edy Ganem) […]

  STAR-CROSSED:  Monday 8PM on CW – Change the Channel If aliens are in high school, we must be on CW.  The network’s midseason entry STAR-CROSSED plays as a clip reel of CW’s greatest hits, from the supernatural teen romance of The Vampire Diaries to the forbidden love of Beauty and the Beast to the […]

  Less intimate but perhaps even more irresistible than his micro-indie smash Once, John Carney’s follow-up CAN A SONG SAVE YOUR LIFE? plays a similar tune with broader orchestrations.  The city this time is New York rather than Dublin, and the focus is again on two people enraptured by the possibilities of music. Greta (Keira Knightley) has come […]

  CSI:  Wednesday 10PM on CBS As with Law & Order before it, the franchise that is CSI has dwindled down to a single entry, in this case the original Las Vegas-set version.  The cast has mostly been refurbished, with Ted Danson and Elisabeth Shue now toting the biggest forensics kits, and the ratings are […]

  WITCHES OF EAST END:  Sunday 10PM on Lifetime – Potential DVR Alert The supernatural serial isn’t exactly a neglected genre on TV–this week alone brings the season debuts of American Horror Story and The Walking Dead, and The Originals and Sleepy Hollow have just gotten started–but based on its pilot, Lifetime’s new WITCHES OF […]

  Edward Norton, a very fine actor who’s shown occasional comic chops, is the oddest choice to host SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE in recent memory.  It’s been a long, long time since he was anywhere near the forefront of the pop culture zeitgeist, and he didn’t even have anything new to plug this week.  It would […]