Add to Louis C.K.’s remarkable list of recent achievements the ability to intermittently brighten up a routine episode of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. They weren’t all gems, but a couple of tonight’s sketches were among the season’s best so far.  Chief among them was “Lincoln,” which wasn’t just a letter-perfect parody of Louie, but one […]

  LAST MAN STANDING:  Friday 8PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  In the home and workplace of Mike Baxter (Tim Allen).  Not just a man’s man but a sitcom dad’s sitcom dad, Mike argues the cause of hunting, fishing, and all other middle-class-straight-white-male pursuits in the vlogs he does for his sporting goods company, where […]

  HITCHCOCK:  Worth A Ticket (Opens November 23) – A Moderately Good Eve-ening The American Film Institute’s yearly festival opened tonight with the world premiere of the fittingly movie-centric HITCHCOCK.  In choosing the film, AFI celebrated another occasional Hollywood tradition:  the tendency to make two unrelated films on the same subject in a brief period […]

  FUN SIZE:  Not For Any Price – As Halloween Movies Go, John Carpenter’s Are Funnier FUN SIZE marks the feature directing debut of Josh Schwartz, but he’s hardly a neophyte, being the muscle behind (and for the most part a writer/creator of) The O.C., Gossip Girl, Chuck and Hart of Dixie.  He certainly knows […]

  It isn’t often that one needs to invoke Intolerance to describe a current film, but CLOUD ATLAS demands it.  Like D.W. Griffith’s epic, it intercuts between stories taking place across hundreds of years of human experience–in this case, from the 19th to the 23rd centuries–in order to tell a larger, inspirational story about destiny and freedom.  Although […]

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, helpful and otherwise, and critics begin to rear […]

  DON’T TRUST THE B– IN APT 23:  Tuesday 9:30PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  New York City, where naive midwestern arrival June shares an apartment with street-smart, manipulative Chloe (Krysten Ritter).  Their neighbor, and Chloe’s best friend, is James Van Der Beek, playing the same kind of version of himself that Matt LeBlanc does […]

  HAPPY ENDINGS:  Tuesday 9PM on ABC WHERE WE WERE:  Chicago, where six of the oddest balls on television hang out.  When last seen, Alex (Elisha Cuthbert) and Dave (Zachary Knighton), who started the whole show off when she deserted him at the altar, were secretly back to seeing each other again.  Brad (Damon Wayans, […]