BEAUTIFUL CREATURES:  Watch It At Home – Many Witches, Little Magic BEAUTIFUL CREATURES can’t be dismissed as merely an overlong TV episode meant for the CW, but it never really comes together, either.  Richard LaGravenese’s film is another on the tall pile of Young Adult fantasies trying to latch onto audiences now adrift without […]

  SAFE HAVEN:  Watch It At Home – Nicholas Sparks Churns Out Another This year’s Nicholas Sparks romantic melodrama SAFE HAVEN is so much like last year’s Sparks romantic melodrama The Lucky One that one might suspect Sparks wrote it using tracing paper.  In both stories, a mysterious stranger with a hidden past comes to […]

  A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD:  Not Even For Free – Yippee-Ki-Boo As part of its promotion campaign for the new A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD, 20th Century Fox is holding a day-long series of Die Hard marathons around the country, culminating in the opening night screening of the latest chapter in the […]

  IDENTITY THIEF:  Watch It At Home – Star Power Makes This Rote Comedy Look Better Than It Is IDENTITY THIEF is basically a string of contrivances, which makes it not all that different from most big-studio comedies these days.  The story arc traces all the way back to the screwball comedies of the 1930s […]

  Well, the studio audience seemed to be having a great time at SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE tonight.  There were more squeals than laughs to be had, what with Justin Bieber in the house as both host and musical guest.  The show was very careful never to force Bieber out of his comfort zone, and while […]

  TOUCH:  Friday 9PM on FOX Tim Kring’s Heroes is a famous example of a hit series imploding in its second season, but his TOUCH–not nearly as big a success in its first version–is, at least, more intriguing after a Season 2 reboot. Touch started as a sort of New Age “Touched By An Autistic”.  […]

  DO NO HARM:  Thursday 10PM on NBC A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and the 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) give plenty of notes, […]

  COMMUNITY:  Thursday 8PM on NBC In 1984, MGM released the movie 2010, which was a sequel to 1968’s classic 2001:  A Space Odyssey. 2010 had credentials to prove it was no mere rip-off:  it was based, like 2001, on a novel by Arthur C. Clarke, its characters and storylines related back to the original, […]