BLUE JASMINE:  Worth A Ticket – Cate Blanchett Is Dazzling in Woody Allen’s Latest Woody Allen has made so many movies at such regular intervals, and they’re so thematically linked, that it’s tempting to view his work as one gigantic serial, a by-now 60-hours-plus epic of disappointments in life and love, artistic fantasy, moral […]

> A lot can happen between the creation of a TV pilot in the spring and 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 in the off-season) give plenty of notes, both helpful and otherwise, and […]

  In a season that was loaded with bad news for the broadcast networks, none may have been more distressing than the ratings trajectory of EMPIRE.  With all due respect to This Is Us, Empire was the last network show to provide reassurance that not just solid hits but actual blockbusters were still possible–at its […]

  It’s been fascinating to watch AMERICAN GODS play out side-by-side with David Lynch’s rebooted Twin Peaks on the past several Sunday nights, because Bryan Fuller (who created the TV version of Gods with Michael Green from Neil Gaiman’s novel) may be this generation’s most overtly Lynchian TV artist.  Fuller and Lynch are both besotted […]

  OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL:  Watch It At Home – Not All Yellow Brick Roads Are Golden The digital landscapes in Sam Raimi’s prequel OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL are gorgeous:  eye-poppingly colorful, and crammed with beautiful, intricate detail.  There’s also a flying, talking monkey and a living china doll, both generated in the […]

> For a new play, WAR HORSE has strong movie connections.  The play is adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford from the 1982 novel by Michael Morpurgo, and that novel is also the basis of Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film, which will be in theatres for Christmas (the script for which is by Lee Hall […]

  After an entire season, it’s still not clear just what AMC’s PREACHER intends to be, but it’s been a dazzling ride all the same, sort of a Quentin Tarantino version of a Coen Brothers version of a Luis Bunuel version of the apocalypse.  Every episode has had at least one remarkable set-piece sequence, and […]

  The well-oiled Greg Berlanti & Co DC superhero TV machine has so far slipped a gear with CW’s LEGENDS OF TOMORROW.  Despite half a season of careful preparation before its January start, including pre-premiere appearances on The Flash and Arrow and a cast largely familiar from both those shows, Legends hasn’t jelled on any […]