Reviews

THE SKED FALL FINALE REVIEW: “Nashville”

Posted December 6, 2012 by Mitch Salem

  ABC’s NASHVILLE has reached the midpoint of its season as one of the better dramas on network television, and also one of the more frustrating.  Particularly galling is that it seems to falter worst at the things other, less interesting shows do with much less effort. Plotting, for example.  Within the show’s mostly parallel […]

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Pilot + 1

THE SKED Pilot + 1 Review: “Low Winter Sun”

Posted August 18, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  LOW WINTER SUN:  Sunday 10PM on AMC Previously… on LOW WINTER SUN:  Detroit Detective Frank Agnew (Mark Strong), along with fellow Detective Joe Geddes (Lennie James), have murdered Geddes’s partner, a third Detective named McCann.  Geddes convinced Agnew that McCann had brutally killed Agnew’s girlfriend Katya, sawing off her head, hands and feet, but […]

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Archive

THE SHOWBUZZDAILY 10 BEST FILMS OF 2012

Posted December 29, 2012 by Mitch Salem

  2012 was, in the end, a very good year for movies–or a a good half-year, more accurately.  With the studios continuing to load their best efforts into the festival- and awards-heavy fall and winter part of the calendar, not a single one of the Top 10 below opened before July, and only 3 before […]

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Reviews

THE SKED Season Finale Review: “Tyrant”

Posted August 27, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  TYRANT wasn’t the summer’s worst show, but it’s been the most piercing disappointment of the mini-season,  wasting a potentially thrilling premise–behind the scenes at a Middle Eastern military dictatorship–that seemed perfectly suited to FX, one that could combine the network’s trademark narrative energy and ambition with prestige (series co-developer Howard Gordon is also a […]

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Film Festival

SHOWBUZZDAILY Virtual Toronto Film Festival Reviews

Posted September 20, 2020 by Mitch Salem

  This was a Toronto Film Festival unlike any other, and not just because I “attended” it from the laptop in my house.  Toronto has become an important stop on the road to the Academy Awards, with 9 of the past 10 Best Picture winners premiering or screening there.  (Birdman was the exception.)  But no […]

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Reviews

SHOWBUZZDAILY Season Premiere Review: “Dominion”

Posted July 10, 2015 by Mitch Salem

  DOMINION:  Thursday 10PM on Syfy This summer, long-suffering USA and Lifetime finally succeeded in airing image-changing original series with Mr. Robot and UnReal.  Syfy, though, still dwells in the desert where most of its low-rent programming seems to be shot, watching other networks notch hits even in its own home genre.  If Defiance is […]

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Reviews

THE SKED SERIES PREMIERE REVIEW: “Monday Mornings”

Posted February 5, 2013 by Mitch Salem

  MONDAY MORNINGS:  Monday 10PM on TNT – If Nothing Else is On… About 15 years ago, David E. Kelley was David Chase, Aaron Sorkin and Ryan Murphy combined.  Legendary for his ability to personally write most of the scripts for his multiple shows himself (in long-hand on legal pads, no less), Kelley was the […]

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Pilot Reports

THE SKED Series Premiere Review: “Welcome to Sweden”

Posted July 11, 2014 by Mitch Salem

  WELCOME TO SWEDEN:  Thursday 9PM on NBC – Potential DVR Alert WELCOME TO SWEDEN has one of the more unusual provenances of any show on a US broadcast network.  It was commissioned by Swedish television, where it aired last spring–and which explains its heavy use of subtitled Swedish dialogue.  Although it includes some familiar […]

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