THE KNICK:  Friday 10PM on Cinemax Previously… on THE KNICK:  New York’s Knickerbocker Hospital circa 1900 is a highly respectable institution, funded by wealthy benefactors and with a conscientious staff, but to modern eyes, it’s little more than a sewer, with “state of the art” operating procedures that seem savage and conditions that are […]

  A planted pilot is just what it sounds like:  an episode of an existing TV show temporarily invaded by the elements of a prospective newcomer for an semi-official on-air tryout.  Networks and studios like them because they’re cost-effective, since most of the expenses can rolled into the episodic budget of the series being utilized, […]

Stuart Blumberg’s first film as a director (his screenwriting credits include The Kids Are All Right), THANKS FOR SHARING, never quite manages to solve its own central problem:  how to make a sensitive and funny (and not harrowing) movie on the subject of sex addiction. We’ve had the harrowing version, of course, with Steve McQueen’s […]

  Under showrunner Scott M. Gimple, this fifth season of THE WALKING DEAD became steadily better as drama than the series has ever been, drawing closer to deserving its phenomenal level of ratings as still (even after the arrival of Empire) TV’s biggest non-football success.  Gimple and his team have greatly improved the show’s eternal […]

  It’s not really a surprise to see Alfonso Cuaron join James Cameron, Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott in that small group of film artists who have made 3D part of the essential toolbox of their imagery (no, Baz Luhrmann and Guillermo del Toro don’t make the list, although Michael Bay might).  Cuaron is a […]

  FOX executives have been swearing to anyone who’ll listen that DADS improved greatly after its much-panned early episodes, so it seemed appropriate to check back in with the show on the occasion of its back-to-back season finale half-hours. And the answer is… no.  Dads ended the season just about as awful as it began, […]

  WAR HORSE:  Watch It At Home –  Spielberg’s Beautiful Muzak   Earlier this year, audiences were presented with Super 8, J. J. Abrams’s pastiche of Steven Spielberg’s classic sci-fi adventures from the 1970s and 80s (Spielberg was a producer on the project).  Now with WAR HORSE, we have Spielberg’s own pastiche:  of John Ford, […]

  GUYS WITH KIDS: Wednesday 8:30PM starting September 26 on NBC (“sneak peek” Sept 12 after “America’s Got Talent” season finale) – Change the Channel Disclaimer: Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall. Pilots are often reedited and re-scored, and in some cases even recast […]