THE BOOK THIEF:  Watch It At Home – A Nazi Germany Fairy Tale THE BOOK THIEF is about as heartwarming and easygoing as any story could be that’s narrated by Death and touched by the Holocaust.  That’s its strength and also its weakness; it’s history’s abyss as a singalong. Based on the acclaimed bestselling […]

  For Jay Pharoah and Kenan Thompson–but especially Pharoah–this week must have felt like alternate-universe SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, because with Kerry Washington as host, suddenly he was the show’s featured leading man, a situation he probably shouldn’t expect to see again anytime soon.  Washington herself was an enormously enthusiastic host, very funny (despite a certain […]

  ENDER’S GAME:  Watch It At Home – Breaks The Rules, But Doesn’t Win the Game You don’t often see a $110M (plus marketing) YA adventure, intended to kick off a new movie franchise, as resolutely off-putting as ENDER’S GAME, and that’s worthy of some respect.  Its protagonist, Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield), isn’t cool like a […]

  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 […]

  THE CARRIE DIARIES:  Friday 8PM on CW When THE CARRIE DIARIES was almost unaccountably renewed by CW despite its awful ratings, even by that network’s standards (supposedly because of online and DVR strength as well as appeal to the young female demo–although the latter wouldn’t make the network’s move of the show to Fridays […]

  DRACULA:  Friday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… A century of vampire movies and TV shows has taught us that undead is by no means the same as lifeless, but NBC’s new excavation of DRACULA doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.  Produced on a lavish scale (at least in the […]

  GRIMM:  Friday 9PM on NBC Although it’s technically in the action genre, action hasn’t turned out to be what GRIMM does best, which made tonight’s rat-a-tat Season 3 premiere feel somewhat off-brand.  Over its two years on the air, the series has transitioned nicely from a demon-of-the-week supernatural procedural with a fairly wooden lead, […]

  REIGN:  Thursday 9PM on CW Previously… on REIGN:  Before there were vampire teens or telekinetic teens or alien or witch or werewolf teens, there were royal teens.  In 1557, 15-year old Mary Queen of Scots (Adelaide Kane), hunted by her English cousins and in need of a military alliance, travels to France, where she […]