> THE FIRM:  Thursdays 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel THE FIRM isn’t NBC’s #1 priority for midseason–that would clearly be Smash.  (In other news, there’s no truth to the rumor that NBC has decided to change its corporate name to “Smash–The Monday After the Super Bowl”.)  But The Firm is the inheritor of […]

> A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and production of episodes for the regular season:  a writing/producing team is hired, audience focus groups weigh in, networks and studios (which may have had their own turnover in the off-season) give plenty of notes, both helpful and otherwise, and […]

> One of the good things about going to midnight premieres of blockbusters (there aren’t all that many) is that the audience is exactly the group (young, first adopters, eagerly moviegoing) Hollywood is targeting.  A theatre almost entirely composed of that crowd provides a ready-made focus group to gauge how upcoming releases are faring with […]

    RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES – Worth A Ticket:  Simian Power   Although it’s positioned as the last big adventure epic of the summer, for most of its length Rupert Wyatt’s RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES isn’t really an action movie.  Somewhat surprisingly, while it establishes an alternative mythology […]

  THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN:  Worth A Ticket – The Return of Steven Spielberg   Remember how lousy the last Indiana Jones movie was?  Remember watching it and wondering sadly what had become of Steven Spielberg, the magician who for decades had an irresistible, inexhaustible ability to spin action sequences into sight gags into satisfying […]

  21 JUMP STREET:  Watch It At Home – High School Meta-Bromance   The meta-ization of contemporary comedy marches on:  Community, of course, is a virtual meta-kingdom, but Happy Endings makes Friends jokes, this week’s 30 Rock undercut what appeared to be its own sentimental ending with jokes poking at viewers who might like sentimental […]

The problem with making a show about someone dying of cancer is that no one really wants to watch a show about someone dying of cancer.  Viewers will roll along with the dark and disturbing, but by and large they draw the line at bleak and depressing.  So Walter White, on Breaking Bad, hasn’t had […]

  ICE AGE:  CONTINENTAL DRIFT – Watch It At Home – The CSI of Family Franchises Does Its Thing   You know what the fabulous Peter Dinklage never gets to do on Game of Thrones?  Sing!  That’s remedied in the new 3D animated ICE AGE:  CONTINENTAL DRIFT, where as the voice of monkey pirate Captain […]