When Joseph Gordon-Levitt decided to make his feature writing and directing debut with DON JON’S ADDICTION (starring in it as well), his attitude was clearly Go Big Or Go Home.  To a large extent, he’s pulled off his audacious comedy, although in keeping with its theme, this may be the kind of movie people […]

  Heroes probably still sets the bar for disastrous second seasons of initially enjoyable TV shows, but this year’s REVENGE came uncomfortably close.  ABC more or less acknowledged that fact when it (in a genteel, corporate way) fired series creator and showrunner till now Mike Kelley from the upcoming Season 3 (fellow Executive Producer Sunil […]

  Despite the declining fortunes of network TV, it was a good season for newly-launched dramas, with big hits emerging for FOX in Empire, ABC in How to Get Away With Murder, and CW in THE FLASH.  The latter isn’t just one of its network’s highest-rated shows ever, but remarkably has outrated series in its […]

> MAGIC CITY:  Premieres Friday April 6 at 10PM on Starz – Potential DVR Alert Starz’s new MAGIC CITY is another stroll down Mad Men lane:  glamorous people in impeccably detailed 1960s settings (technically very late 1950s), smoking, drinking to excess, having lots of illicit sex, and generally enjoying what they don’t know is their […]

> WHERE WE WERE:  Reeling from the news that Don Draper (Jon Hamm) had proposed to his French-Canadian secretary Megan (Jessica Pare).  In other cubicles at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, Joan (Christina Hendricks), pregnant by Roger Sterling (John Slattery) and not her doctor/soldier husband, had decided to keep the baby after all, assuming hubby wouldn’t […]

> There are few opportunities left to tune in to NBC and bask in the glory of the network that used to be.  One that remains, though, is 30 ROCK, postponed this season to winter due to Tina Fey’s pregnancy but now back on Thursday nights. WHERE WE LEFT OFF:  Wacky, smart, mildly surreal, wickedly […]

  THE DISCOVERY (Netflix):  Charlie McDowell’s first film was the ingenious metaphysical farce The One I Love, so there was plenty of reason to eagerly anticipate his follow-up.  He (and, once again, co-writer Justin Lader) return to some of the same philosophical territory again with The Discovery, but with less pleasing results.  The main action […]

  MINORITY REPORT:  Monday 9PM on FOX Previously… on MINORITY REPORT:  In 2065, 11 years after the events of Steven Spielberg’s film, the “precog” program, in which a trio of psychically gifted empaths were used to predict crimes that hadn’t been committed yet, allowing police to arrest the potential perpetrators before the fact, has been […]