SPECIAL PREMIERE: The very, very funny Judd Apatow, who has written the screenplays for The 40Year-Old Virgin and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and produced Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy, Bridesmaids and Trainwreck, takes another page out of the Mel Brooks playbook. After decades as a writer, producer and director, he returns to his standup comedy roots and does his first solo standup TV special. It’s taped in Canada, and manages to cover both sexual harassment and politics witho

2017

Dec

THE VOICE By David Bianculli

What do you get when you subtract the lowest-ranked contestants from the Top 8, and have them sing for a shot at instant survival? Tonight’s show, that’s what.

2017

Dec

THE MIDDLE By David Bianculli

The holidays never are calm around the Heck house, but tonight’s episode has things registering as especially tense. Axl is questioning not only the annual Christmas holiday family rituals, but his own faith.

2017

Dec

GWEN STEFANI: YOU MAKE IT FEEL LIKE CHRISTMAS By David Bianculli

Who says Christmas is commercialized? Tonight’s one-hour special, which follows an episode of The Voice featuring judge Blake Shelton, is a holiday showcase for Gwen Stefani, who has appeared as a judge on The Voice in the past – and appeared last week to sing this special’s title song, with Shelton, as a special Voice guest star. Tonight, Shelton shows up to sing the song again, as a guest on Stefani’s NBC special – which also has the same name, and the same featur

2017

Dec

THE VOICE By David Bianculli

Tonight’s competition has the remaining eight finalists singing for survival. And since, this year, there are at least six impressively talented performers vying to win The Voice, there’s very little slack, and every live performance, and song selection, matters.

2017

Dec

THE DEER HUNTER By David Bianculli

This amazing 1978 war movie, directed by Michael Cimino, begins on the home front, with Robert De Niro, John Cazale, John Savage, Christopher Walken, and George Dzundza playing friends in a factory town in Pennsylvania. After a wedding – with a bridesmaid played by a young and radiant Meryl Streep – some of the equally young men go off to war in Vietnam, where things get horrible. And, from that point, never get much less intense. It’s an astounding film, with riveting performa

2017

Dec

BEING THERE By David Bianculli

Here’s another great movie from the same period. This 1979 dark comedy, starring Peter Sellers as a mercurial man who ascends, somewhat mysteriously, to power in Washington, D.C., was on TV recently. And, once again, I recommended it, and watched it all over again, and “lost” another few hours being charmed by the performances, the direction, the music (yay, Deodato!), and Jerzy Kosinski’s amazingly poignant yet moralistic fable. Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, and Jack

2017

Dec

THE GIFTED By David Bianculli

In what’s called the fall finale, the parents, Reed and Caitlin, take the lead after their own kids are captured by the government.

2017

Dec

ROBERT KIRKMAN'S SECRET HISTORY OF COMICS By David Bianculli

MINISERIES FINALE: This six-part documentary series on the history of comics, told from the perspective of Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, ends with an episode devoted to Image Comics, the firm that released The Walking Dead as a graphic novel before it was adapted by AMC. It’s called “Image Comics: Declaration of Independents,” and, aside from a couple of other titles like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, may not otherwise be worth the devotion of an entire hour, unless you&

2017

Dec

FROZEN By David Bianculli

The most popular animated film in history, made in 2013, gets a prime-time airing tonight on ABC – which is owned by Disney, which released the super-popular cartoon musical in the first place. And since then, the company, like its young audience base, hasn’t… let it go.

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