THE GIRLFRIENDS’ GUIDE TO DIVORCE has made its way, at least somewhat, past a very shaky start–not so much in the ratings, which have remained mediocre (although steady enough for Bravo to declare its first scripted 1-hour a win and order another season), but dramatically.  At the start, Girlfriends pandered all too blatantly to […]

  30 ROCK:  Thursday 8PM on NBC WHERE WE WERE:  Jack (Alec Baldwin) was divorcing his now-freed North Korean prisoner wife Avery (Elizabeth Banks).  Jenna (Jane Krakowski) was engaged to her Jenna-impersonator boyfriend Paul L’Astname (Will Forte).  Liz (Tina Fey) was, somewhat surprisingly, still with boyfriend Criss (James Marsden), and even more surprisingly, former page […]

  HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2:  Worth A Ticket – Bigger Isn’t Always Better, But Still Good Enough Like a lot of sequels animated and not, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 has been conceived on a much more spectacular scale than its predecessor, and as it’s become a bigger and more conventional action-adventure, […]

  DANCING ON THE EDGE:  Saturday 9PM on Starz Starz’s latest British import, DANCING ON THE EDGE, seems on the basis of its first double-length episode to be intended for viewers who enjoy the jazzy millieu of Boardwalk Empire but find its pace too rapid and its violence too rude.  It’s a well-produced, intelligent drama […]

  PEOPLE LIKE US:  Watch It At Home – Not The First Movie Like This   Sam Harper (Chris Pine) is a guy we’ve met before.  He’s the fast-talking, self-absorbed hustler who gets along in life by sheer nerve, and doesn’t really care about anyone else.  He needs to open himself up to the problems […]

> Sundance has a thriving Park City At Midnight program that features plenty of high-octane horror movies, but the most unnerving and disturbing film of this year’s festival may have been Craig Zobel’s COMPLIANCE, a low-key drama based (apparently rather closely) on a true story without any hacked-off limbs or hint of the supernatural. In […]

  The Sundance programmers, one has to assume, are big fans of TV’s Happy Endings.  Casey Wilson is part of that show’s wonderful ensemble, and one of its most reliably hilarious members.  The news that she was co-writing (with co-star June Diane Raphael) her own comedy vehicle must have seemed promising.  Yet at some point […]

  ANIMAL KINGDOM:  Tuesday 9PM on TNT ANIMAL KINGDOM has been a key part of TNT’s rebranding as a hipper TV destination than the home of Major Crimes and The Last Ship, and tonight’s Season 2 premiere promised more of the same, with plenty of FX-level sexuality and general grittiness on display.  The key change, […]