SERIES PREMIERE: The set design of this new Starz series, set in Miami in 1959, is dazzling. Unfortunately, the acting is not, and the writing is worse. So this is a warning, not a recommendation – but, like televised parades, it’s beautiful to watch with the sound off. For a review, see today’s Bianculli’s Blog.

2012

Apr

'MAGIC CITY': IT LOOKS GREAT, BUT ISN'T By David Bianculli

The new Starz series "Magic City," premiering Friday night at 10 ET, stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the owner of a flashy Miami Beach hotel in 1959 -- they got the look just right. With equal assurance, however, I can say they got everything else just wrong...

2012

Apr

HOLY GROUND: FOR GOLF FANS, IT'S AUGUSTA NATIONAL AND THE MASTERS By Gerald Jordan

This is holy week. Notice the lower case spelling: that's because it's holy week for golf...executives at ESPN and CBS are praying that millions flock to their TV sets over the next three days to witness golf's greatest show, The Masters...

2012

Apr

"GIRLS" ARRIVES ON HBO By Diane Werts

We've seen three episodes of HBO's April 15 arrival "Girls," and it's good. Raw, painfully funny, awkwardly real -- yup, good. Lena Dunham creates and stars in this half-hour slice of life about four twentysomething NYC girlfriends who are definitely NOT Sex and the City material. -DW

2012

Apr

2012 MASTERS GOLF TOURNAMENT By David Bianculli

Last year at Augusta National Golf Club, young Rory McIlroy (at left) crashed and burned in the final round of the Masters, bogeying away a four-stroke lead and finishing with an 8-over-par 80, including a soul-crushing triple bogey on the 10th hole. He has a lot to prove this week. So does Phil Mickelson, who has earned three Green Jackets to date – if he wins this week, he would tie Tiger Woods’ career total of Masters wins, at four. And Tiger himself? He hasn’t won a major t

2012

Apr

THE BIG BANG THEORY By David Bianculli

Tonight, this geek sitcom lands its ultimate guest star: Stephen Hawking. Expect this episode to be relatively amusing – in more ways than one.

2012

Apr

THE ABYSS By David Bianculli

James Cameron is re-releasing Titanic in 3-D this week, and has just returned from a solo visit to the ocean’s deepest trench. This, then, is a perfect time to revisit the 1989 movie that prefigured both of those undersea passions. Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio star in a story of ocean explorers and rescue divers drawn, for various reasons, to unknown and previously unexplored depths. Some of the special effects used in this film were unprecedented, but Cameron’s directio

2012

Apr

GOD IS THE BIGGER ELVIS By David Bianculli

Dolores Hart was 19 in 1957, when she starred opposite Elvis Presley in Loving You. As we learn in this charming profile by Rebecca Camissa, it was Hart’s first screen kiss. His, too. Yet after appearing in a string of iconic Sixties youth movies, including Where the Boys Are and Come Fly with Me, Hart retreated to a community of Benedictine nuns in Connecticut – and never left. Now 73, Hart looks back on her short career in Hollywood, and her much longer one devoting herself to God.

2012

Apr

INDEPENDENT LENS: "BEING ELMO" By David Bianculli

Kevin Clash is the man behind Elmo – and the voice, as well as the arm inside him. This profile lets us know the puppeteer who brings the beloved Muppet to life, in such a magical way that even when Clash is included in the camera shot, all eyes – yours as well as those with whom he’s interacting – are on Elmo.

2012

Apr

LOWER THAN AN 'A' FOR HBO'S 'GOD IS THE BIGGER ELVIS'? ED BARK WILL HAVE NUN OF IT... By Ed Bark

Nuns are all right by me...So that's the context of this review of "God Is The Bigger Elvis," the Oscar-nominated short documentary film charting the transformation of Dolores Hart from movie star to the current Mother Prioress in Bethlehem, Connecticut...

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