> WARNING:  Spoilers Abound That expelled breath heard around the country this evening was a collective sigh of relief:  HOMELAND‘s season finale didn’t collapse.  On the contrary, it delivered a satisfying conclusion that resolved Season 1 storylines while setting the stage for an intriguing, and somewhat different, Season 2. No recent show has walked a […]

> Previously… On ALCATRAZ:  San Francisco cop Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones), whose partner was recently killed, finds herself embroiled in a mysterious case in which an Alcatraz inmate from 40 years ago, apparently long dead, has turned up not having aged a day and committing new murders.  Rebecca learns that all the Alcatraz prisoners who […]

> The Academy limits the number of movie ads that can be aired on the Oscar telecast (until recent years, they didn’t allow any), so as not to make the night look like the awards are shilling for the studios.  (God forbid!)  It’s not clear whether that’s the reason only 2 movie promos made it […]

>THE CLIENT LIST: Sundays 10PM on Lifetime – If Nothing Else Is On… It’s the very prosaic, unsexy ordinariness of THE CLIENT LIST that makes it somewhat revolutionary. For HBO or Showtime to air salacious shows about the lives of hookers (as they have, with Hung and Secret Diary of a Call Girl) is just […]

  WAR HORSE:  Watch It At Home –  Spielberg’s Beautiful Muzak   Earlier this year, audiences were presented with Super 8, J. J. Abrams’s pastiche of Steven Spielberg’s classic sci-fi adventures from the 1970s and 80s (Spielberg was a producer on the project).  Now with WAR HORSE, we have Spielberg’s own pastiche:  of John Ford, […]

  PUNCTURE:  Worth A Ticket – A Bracingly Dark Ride   No one is going to see PUNCTURE in theaters, and that’s a shame, because unaccountably, it’s one of the best pictures around.  “Unaccountably,” because this is a film that doesn’t even seem to know there’s a radar to fly below:  although it contains an […]

  James Ponsoldt’s SMASHED (not to be confused with NBC’s Smash), which premiered in the Dramatic Competition at Sundance, is a new spin on a fairly old story.  The concept goes back (at least) to 1962’s Days of Wine and Roses:  a couple (Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Aaron Paul), very much in love with both […]

  THE CABIN IN THE WOODS:  Watch it At Home – Clever and Culty   Seeing THE CABIN IN THE WOODS is sort of like being in Fight Club:  the first rule is not to talk about it.  Or, at least, not to reveal any of the wild, ingenious twists put into place by its […]