ALPHAS:  Monday 10PM on Syfy   WHERE WE WERE:  Think X-Men without the big special effects, the cool gadgets and the costumes.  Dr. Lee Rosen (David Stathairn) is the shepherd to a group of Alphas, individuals with mutations that give them abilities beyond the normal:  Hicks (Warren Christie) has super-aim, Harken (Malik Yoba) has […]

  We’re at the halfway point in Season 1 of THE NEWSROOM (so, yay!), and Aaron Sorkin celebrated by firing almost his entire writing staff.  (In a delightfully self-referential touch that TMI Magazine would appreciate, the only person he retained was his own ex-girlfriend.)  This would have more meaning if Sorkin hadn’t already taken sole […]

  POLITICAL ANIMALS: Sunday 10PM on USA 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 […]

  Warning:  this piece will discuss details of the storyline of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES as well as the other Batman films.  GIANT SPOILERS WILL ABOUND; proceed at your own risk. Christopher Nolan is remarkable among the great directors of action films–Steven Spielberg, David Lean, James Cameron, John Ford, certainly Michael Bay–in that while working […]

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES:  Worth A Ticket – The Saga That Rewrote Superhero Movies Goes Out With A Weighty Bang Christopher Nolan likes his intricate, novelistic plotting.  You remember the portion of The Dark Knight where Batman had to travel to Hong Kong to capture a banker who was laundering money for Gotham City’s gangsters, because […]

  If THE DARK KNIGHT had no superhero or comic book trappings–if The Joker were scarred but not hideously made up, and Batman were a bit lower-tech and merely disguised rather than wearing a cowl and cape–Christopher Nolan’s film would still be one of the best action-adventure crime movies of the past 20 years.  Within […]

  PERCEPTION:  Monday 10PM on TNT 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 […]

  To say BATMAN BEGINS successfully rebooted the Warners franchise is accurate, but incomplete.  Christopher Nolan’s film, from the script he wrote with David S. Goyer, is a complete rethinking of the very concept of a comic book/superhero movie, one comparable to what The Godfather and Cabaret did with the gangster movie and the musical […]