One of the things that happens at film festivals is that as you see many films in back-to-back proximity, mini-trends start to emerge, at least in the mind, and pictures that were made entirely separately, and which may well end up released months apart from each other, seem to be in direct competition.  So […]

  BONES:  Monday 8PM on FOX WHERE WE WERE:  Watching Brennan drive away, baby Christine in tow.  Temperance (Emily Deschanel) had been framed by cyberpath Christopher Pelant (Andrew Leeds) for the murder of an old friend, and rather than be arrested, she fled with the help of ex-con dad Max (Ryan O’Neal), leaving Booth (David […]

  DEXTER:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime WHERE WE WERE:  In a frozen instant of time, as Detective Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) watched her adopted brother Dexter (Michael C. Hall), a blood spatter expert on her own forensic investigative team, murder a man in cold blood. WHERE WE ARE:  That same moment.  And there was reason […]

  HUNTED:  Friday 10PM on Cinemax – Potential DVR Alert On the same night that coincidentally brought the season premiere of Nikita, we have a new series that treads similar ground, both centering on gorgeous, betrayed spies, although the tones of the two shows are very different.  In HUNTED, set and produced in Britain but […]

  ABC’s NASHVILLE has reached the midpoint of its season as one of the better dramas on network television, and also one of the more frustrating.  Particularly galling is that it seems to falter worst at the things other, less interesting shows do with much less effort. Plotting, for example.  Within the show’s mostly parallel […]

  JUSTIFIED has the luxury of time.  The series typically tells one or two extended stories through the course of its season, so tonight’s Season 4 premiere, written by series creator Graham Yost and directed by Michael Dinner, mostly served to introduce the year’s plotlines and allow us to make the acquaintance of some new […]

  When Joseph Gordon-Levitt decided to make his feature writing and directing debut with DON JON’S ADDICTION (starring in it as well), his attitude was clearly Go Big Or Go Home.  To a large extent, he’s pulled off his audacious comedy, although in keeping with its theme, this may be the kind of movie people […]

  Greg Garcia has made a successful niche for himself on network television as poet of the lower-middle-class, small-town, gently surrealist sitcom, first with My Name Is Earl and now with RAISING HOPE.  The only problem with Garcia’s type of show is that the constant requirement for more inventively conceptual, eccentric storylines can lead to […]