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GUEST BLOG #81: Diane Holloway feels 'Justified'
[Bianculli here: The FX network has another raw, standout series on its hands, featuring a modern lawman with the most imposing Stetson since "McCloud." For me, FX's "Justified" is love at first sight. For contributing critic Diane Holloway, it's love at second and third sight -- but she's smitten, too...] (more)
Monday, March 15, 2010
CHUCK NBC, 8 p.m. ET The failure of Jay Leno in prime time has given this show a new lease on life – but I’m not convinced it’s necessarily a long-term lease. The show’s writers have found ways to keep all the characters at arm’s length, yet haven’t tightened the relationships of any of them. Tonight’s show gives Adam Baldwin’s Casey a chance at center stage, but, again, somewhat apart from the others. And Sarah’s off-again, off-again relationship with Chuck? Too little, too often. |
HOUSE Fox, 8 p.m. ET This new patient isn’t the first patient whom House has treated who is incapable of communicating – but locked inside this latest patient is a series of vivid hallucinations, which include the physicians trying to treat her. House as an angry hallucination? Seems positively plausible. |
THE BREAKFAST CLUB Encore, 8 p.m. ET At the Oscars, the actors in this 1985 movie reunited to salute their communal and influential filmmaker, writer-director John Hughes. Tonight you can go back 25 years and see them in their youthful prime: Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall. |
24 Fox, 9 p.m. ET Last year on this show, it was the President’s daughter who was, for a while, threatened by terrorists. On tonight’s show, it’s the same plot, different country. But, once again, Jack is there to attempt a rescue. |
DAMAGES FX, 10 p.m. ET Patty is getting nastier and nastier, as is this case, as both the evidence and the witnesses keep shifting and vanishing. |
Showtime, 10 p.m. ET As this season nears its end, Hannah decides to pad her upcoming memoir by experiencing things from the other side of the fence – by ordering a male escort for herself. |
SECRET DIARY OF A CALL GIRL 
WATCH THIS: You are there, except you're not
FLICK PICKS: Ginger & Fred & Akira Kurosawa
DVD THIS WEEK: Polyester cheese!
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FOR BETTER OR WERTS
Now you know how TV shows manage to afford the cinematic look of all that location shooting we've been seeing. They don't. They're using the cinematic trick of CGI, more and more, in shows ranging from 24 and Heroes to Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy. It's well demonstrated in an amazing "virtual backlot" reel of work from the Stargate Studios computer-imaging folks . . . 
[UPDATED] Ginger Rogers is in the money for St. Patrick's Day. Turner Classic Movies' salute to this versatile actress continues with a double feature of her snappy Warner Bros. Depression musicals 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933 (Wednesday at 8 and 10 p.m. ET, TCM), made before her RKO pairing with Fred Astaire. After shuffling off to Buffalo in Busby Berkeley's geometric choreography, Rogers shows her acting range in four pre-code flicks spanning comedy, drama and war. But first, on Tuesday night, TCM's March salute to Akira Kurosawa spotlights his crime thrillers . . . 
Sometimes you just need to watch something awful. Shut down your brain. Let the recycled plots, banal dialogue and bad acting wash over you. Maybe even mock it madly, MST3K-style. What you need is Matt Houston. The first season of ABC's 1982-85 private eye romp arrives on DVD this week as the ne plus ultra of the Aaron Spelling school of celeb-stuffed cheese. Here it is in a nutshell: Mustachioed wisecracker Lee Horsley channels Smokey and the Bandit-era Burt Reynolds, playing a Texas oil gazillionaire moved to Hollywood to solve murders among his famous friends. He flies his own helicopter from his rodeo ranch . . . 
NEW and RECOMMENDED
Want to know how to write a TV script? Get your mitts on the new Blu-ray release of Breaking Bad: The Complete Second Season. Series creator Vince Gilligan walks you through it in one of the coolest and most informative season-set extras yet. [Extras on the new DVD release are detailed below.] Gilligan offers an interactive look at the scene-breaking, script-writing and visualizing process for last season's stunning finale, which brought the year's 13 episodes full-circle back to the dreamlike teaser that started the season premiere. (Hint: eyeball floating in pool.) Blu-ray's interactive capability is nicely exploited here, as a Gilligan voiceover introduces us to a visual of the writers' room bulletin board -- where each episode is broken down scene by scene on 3-by-5 index cards before the script itself is written . . . CLASSICS TO CONSIDER Unauthorized TV DVD releases are a bad thing. They're often low quality. The sellers can be dodgy. They violate the legal rights of those who own the show. And they discourage official releases by diverting revenue into the hands of pirates. Now here's why I'm making an exception for The Nostalgia Merchant's two-set release of Amos 'n' Andy. The transfers from the sitcom's vintage film prints aren't bad. This particular video distributor has a 30-year track record. And it's that rare case where the show's ownership simply can't release an authorized version. There's just too much lingering controversy over this 1950s hit -- TV's first major network series with a black cast -- for rights-owning corporation CBS to go there . . . |
