It might be either reassuring or depressing, under present circumstances, to hear the lyric “No one is alone,” but I highly recommend this weekend’s special offering of a double dose of TV versions of stage presentations of the brilliant Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical. Today and tomorrow, the BroadwayHD website presents access, with its regular subscription fee (but you can opt for a one-week free trial) to two deep dives into the Woods. The first to watch is t

2020

Jul

THE SHINING By David Bianculli

Only two Saturdays ago, HBO premiered the 2019 movie Dr. Sleep, a movie based on Stephen King’s sequel to his own horror novel The Shining. So it’s an opportune time, tonight, to revisit Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation of The Shining itself. King didn’t like much of what Kubrick did – but I love it. Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall star. And Lisa and Louise Burns, in very small roles, make a huge impact. They played the twin girls

2020

Jul

DR. STRANGELOVE, OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB By David Bianculli

A government out of control. A president helpless to act in the face of imminent danger. Madness and unpredictability everywhere you turn. A sick feeling that our government and way of life may be at risk, and there’s little to be done to stop it. Substitute the word “Virus” for “Bomb” in the subtitle of this 1964 classic Stanley Kubrick film (yes, him again), and you may get a sense of why this very dark comedy is more vital and pertinent than ever. Peter Sellers s

2020

Jul

THE MOUSE THAT ROARED By David Bianculli

Peter Sellers (yes, him again) stars – playing several roles, as he would do later in Dr. Strangelove – in this 1959 comedy, which predates and politicizes the general concept of Mel Brooks’ The Producers. In that Sixties classic, Broadway producers schemed to mount an intentional flop so they could profit from all the unrecoverable losses. In The Mouse That Roared, a tiny country declares war on the United States, so it can lose quickly and benefi

2020

Jul

2020 TCA AWARD NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED By Mike Hughes

Pamela Adlon and Ramy Youssef now have two more things in common...

2020

Jul

GREYHOUND By David Bianculli

MOVIE PREMIERE: Tom Hanks not only stars in this WWII drama, playing a commander escorting a convoy of Allied ships across German U-boat-infested waters, but wrote it as well. It sounds massively big in scale and budget, but Greyhound (the name of the vessel Hanks’ character commands) is oddly compact and focused. It’s almost like an Allied version of Das Boot, with the claustrophobia and paranoia part of the mix on and under the ocean waves. Hanks basically has t

2020

Jul

LITTLE VOICE By David Bianculli

SERIES PREMIERE: The first three episodes of this new drama series with music premiere today, with the remainder arriving once weekly on subsequent Fridays. It’s about Bess, a young singer-songwriter trying to make it in New York. Bess is played by Brittany O’Grady, who already played one aspiring singer in Star – but here, she has a behind-the-scenes advantage or two. The songs sung and allegedly written by Bess actually are composed by Sara Bareilles, who produces t

2020

Jul

PALM SPRINGS By David Bianculli

MOVIE PREMIERE: Cristin Milioti, in the “USS Callister” episode of Black Mirror, played a woman suddenly thrust into an unreal world from which there seemed to be no escape. Here comes a reset of sorts: Palm Springs stars Andy Samberg as a man caught in a Groundhog Day loop on the day of a friend’s wedding, and Milioti plays the bride’s maid of honor, who gets pulled into the seemingly endless cycle of reliving the same day. As with Grou

2020

Jul

THE OLD GUARD By David Bianculli

MOVIE PREMIERE: Based on the graphic novel series, this new Netflix movie stars Charlize Theron as the leader of a small band of immortal warriors who spend century after century fighting the good fights without being captured or identified. In this movie-length adaptation of the comic-book series, two major things happen: The group discovers a potential new member, and outsiders potentially discover all of them…

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