Read All Our Fall Pilot Reports here. SLEEPY HOLLOW:  Monday 9PM on FOX – If Nothing Else Is On… For what’s supposed to be an original series, SLEEPY HOLLOW feels awfully familiar.  Part of it, of course, is that writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are doing a spin on the Washington Irving classic […]

  UNDER THE DOME hasn’t been particularly important as TV drama, but it’s provided some vital information to the broadcast network business.  After years–decades, really–of treating summer as a repository for scripted burn-offs (this summer’s The Goodwin Games as well as flops like Do No Harm and 666 Park Avenue) and cheap international co-productions (Camp, Crossing Lines, Siberia, Motive, etc) […]

It is, to be honest, somewhat difficult to focus on the clatter of THE NEWSROOM on the same night that Breaking Bad aired one of the most devastating episodes in its history–which made it one of the most devastating hours in this TV era.  “Ozymandias,” as the episode was called, was the second consecutive episode of Breaking Bad that most shows […]

  In recent years, the… let’s call it mature audience has been a profitable one, making moderate hits of films like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Quartet.  This holiday season, the title of choice for this niche is likely to be PHILOMENA, a literate tearjerker that Harvey Weinstein unveiled at the Venice and Toronto film festivals. Based on a true […]

  BURN NOTICE went heavy on action for its final hour, attempting to look like a more expensive show than it actually ever was.  Burn was never a well-respected series (it was memorably ridiculed in an SNL skit as a hit no one knew anything about), with inch-deep plots and characterizations that hardly budged in the 7 seasons it […]

  ROOKIE BLUE did a solid job of wrapping up its fourth season and setting up cliffhangers for Season 5 (already ordered) with last night’s episode.  Although the Grey’s Anatomy-with-guns police soap has never had the level of success as its medical forebear, it’s been a steady summer performer for ABC, and this season successfully saw it […]

  THE LAST OF ROBIN HOOD is an odd miss, a sliver of movie history that seems to have all the right elements but never quite jells.  The title refers to Errol Flynn, legendary swashbuckling star of The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, The Dawn Patrol and many other classic Hollywood adventures, and it’s hard to […]

  A film festival is certainly the place for a feature-length semi-linear flow of unscripted dialogue and bizarre imagery if anywhere is, so welcome to UNDER THE SKIN.  The writer/director Jonathan Glazer has gradually been transforming into an abstract filmmaker:  he started with Sexy Beast, which was a fairly traditional narrative, then followed it with Birth, a piece […]