THE WALKING DEAD:  Sunday 9PM on AMC Last year’s season premiere of THE WALKING DEAD was the show’s most polarizing hour, introducing long-awaited Big Bad Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and lingering on his brutal murders of two series regulars.  That seemed to hit a saturation point for some viewers, and although Dead is still […]

  THE FORGIVEN (Focus/Universal – TBD):  In 1963, Pauline Kael famously wrote a piece entitled “The Sick-Soul-Of-Europe Parties,” and almost 60 years later, if you add the US to the guest list, John Michael McDonagh’s The Forgiven presents a bash in the same vein.  McDonagh’s script, based on a novel by Lawrence Osborne, underlines in […]

  The Toronto International Film Festival is, of the major North American festivals, by far the most pleasant to attend.  Its line-up of films and clout are matched only by Sundance’s, and it substitutes balmy 70 degree weather and large, well-appointed theaters for that festival’s snowy winds and converted high school auditoriums and hotel ballrooms.  […]

  ABC, which passed on DEVIOUS MAIDS and allowed it to be picked up by corporate sibling Lifetime, is probably lucky the cable network only programs the show during the summer off-season.  Maids, which of course is the brainchild of Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry, has been zeroing in on what was once the Housewives […]

  MAGIC MIKE:  Worth A Ticket – Soderbergh Again Earns His Crumpled Dollars   Although he hasn’t appeared in any of the year’s giant action blockbusters (GI Joe 2, probably not that giant anyway, was postponed to next year), 2012 could well be remembered as the year of Channing Tatum.  He’s had 3 major hits in […]

  There were more cameo stars in the first 15 minutes of tonight’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE than regular cast members, and since SNL has enough regulars for a small city, that’s saying something.  It all got Paul Rudd’s third stint as host off to an energized start, which the show predictably proceeded to dribble away […]

  The limits of critical adoration are demonstrated by LOUIE.  Despite possibly terabytes of raves and features about Louis C.K.’s show in every corner of the media all season, the ratings, especially since Anger Management finished its run, have been terrible, and last night’s season finale was watched by fewer than 450,000 people in its […]

  IRONSIDE:  Wednesday 10PM on NBC – Change the Channel “There are rules, dammit, and they need to be followed!”  That actual line is spoken, with a completely straight face, about four minutes into the pilot for NBC’s reboot of IRONSIDE, and it may rightly make your heart sink.  We know we’re in 2013, because […]