DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
2014
Sep
16
 
 
Alan Alda, the actor whose TV achievements start with M*A*S*H, include great work on The West Wing, and – hey, really, who needs more than that? – guides six very lucky young students through a master class in improv acting, and also gives some valuable advice about how to pursue an acting profession. (Regarding the unavoidable string of rejections after auditions, his simple but key advice is to bend, not break.) And the improv exercises, which he both takes very seriously and enjoy
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
16
 
 
Part 3. This third installment of The Roosevelts is keyed on Teddy, though not as exclusively. Time is spent on Franklin’s betrayal of Eleanor with Lucy Mercer – and while this episode doesn’t shy away from confronting and identifying Teddy’s “blood lust” when it came to animal safaris, it also explores his aggressive position on international warfare – which, like his political positions and battles, transformed the coming century. For my full review, s
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
16
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: This new season of New Girl begins with a wedding – but none of the show’s principals is getting married. They’re wedding guests instead, and trolling the event in search of attractive singles. But others have the same idea – and when Jess (Zooey Deschanel) decides to flirt with one intriguing fellow guest (played by Reid Scott of HBO’s Veep), she finds herself competing for the same wedding-day prey with a sexy scientist (played by another familiar
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
16
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: In this season opener, Mindy (Mindy Kaling) may actually have found some lasting measure of happiness with Danny (Chris Messina) – unlikely as that sounds. But their newly intimate relationship seems to be working – at least for now.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
16
 
 
In last week’s season premiere, Jax (Charlie Hunnam) ended up torturing and killing the man he was told killed his wife, Tara. What he doesn’t know yet – but is bound to find out before this final season of Sons is over – is that Jax was lied to. And the lie, as viewers know already, came from the real killer: Gemma (Katey Sagal), Jax’s own mother. It’s quite an intense story line – which might explain why last week’s premiere was, by far, the high
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
15
 
 

Say it’s late October and you’ve got NBC’s Constantine on. That means you’re watching a hangdog Brit channeling Keith Richards, if he was a supernatural exorcist... And you might be wondering if that’s all there is to new television this year...

 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
15
 
 
Part 2. Last night’s opening episode established the Roosevelt family tree, and in particular tiptoed along one branch, following brash young Theodore as he worked his way into politics, ultimately ascending to the largely ceremonial office of U.S. Vice President. Beginning with tonight’s Part 2, Teddy Roosevelt suddenly finds himself as the President – and what he does with that office, expanding its powers largely through force of will, gets the 20th century off to an amazing
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
15
 
 
Tonight and tomorrow night, TCM presents a two-night salute to the late Lauren Bacall. The salute begins tonight in prime time, with a repeat of the interview special in which TCM host Robert Osborne spoke to Bacall about her career, and her life, in 2005. That’s followed by two of her very best movies: 1944’s To Have and Have Not at 9 p.m. ET, in which Bacall made her famously sultry film debut at age 19, and, at 10 p.m. ET, 1946’s The Big Sleep, another film noir classic in w
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
15
 
 
Many of today’s scripted horror movies are built around the concept of “found footage” – of framing their drama, visually and narratively, from the point of view of hand-held and surveillance cameras. This new documentary does the same thing, but this is no trick, and the horror in this hour-long program is that the violence is all too real. British filmmaker Dan Reed assembled Terror at the Mall using surviving footage from hundreds of surveillance cameras, still photos,
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Sep
15
 
 
Tonight’s show features two of the people making some of the smartest, most entertaining and most illuminating television of their generation: guest Ken Burns, whose The Roosevelts: An Intimate History continues tonight on PBS, and host Jon Stewart.