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
Jun
4
 
 
It’s two days before the anniversary of D-Day 70 years ago, but National Geographic couldn’t wait, so is presenting this prime-time documentary special, which recaps the bold, bloody 80 days from the original landing on the Normandy beach to the Allied liberation of Paris.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Jun
4
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: The newest original sitcom by TV Land is a departure of sorts for the network. Instead of a standard, vintage-style multi-camera sitcom performed before an audience, Jennifer Falls is a single-camera comedy, like, say, My Name Is Earl. And that’s an intentional name drop, because the star of Jennifer Falls, playing a formerly successful career woman who moves back in with her mother when hard times hit, is Earl star Jaime Pressly. Another Earl veteran, Ethan Suplee, plays
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Jun
4
 
 
The documentary currently airing on CNN, The Sixties, was reviewed in Newsday recently by Verne Gay. In his article, the author noted that notable television critics are interviewed in the series -- but only one critic was mentioned by name: our Founder and Editor David Bianculli...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Jun
3
 
 
The passing on Sunday of beloved Brady Bunch star Ann B. Davis brings all sorts of memories to mind for people lucky enough to have grown up during the Television Generation...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Jun
3
 
 
Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film was a genre masterpiece then, and it’s a genre masterpiece today – and, most likely, will remain a genre masterpiece tomorrow. The movie seems to be almost nothing but extended set pieces, each iconic movie sequence leading to another. Monoliths. Moon shuttles. Malevolent supercomputers. Star childs. Trips to the end of space and time. And speaking of trips – watch again, as paranoid shipboard computer HAL uses his photographic red “eye&r
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Jun
3
 
 
This show just builds and builds, as its characters deepen along with the plot. And Billy Bob Thornton as Malvo – he may just be the most deadpan antihero, or villain, in TV history. Or at least since Miguel Ferrer popped up as super-droll FBI forensics specialist Albert in Twin Peaks.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Jun
3
 
 
So now we know what Wil Wheaton’s new show is all about. It’s an overview of the week in sci fi – part recap, part preview, and part politely snarky observational humor. The humor needs a little work, but Wheaton, and Syfy, may be on to something here, especially with the proliferation of the Talking Dead-type TV shows popping up all of a sudden. And with Chris Hardwick, that show's host, popping up on Wheaton's first show as well...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Jun
3
 
 
2001: A Space Odyssey isn’t the only outer-space film classic shown tonight on TCM. Right after that 1968 movie ends, 1979’s Alien begins – and, before long, presents one of the scariest scenes in all of science fiction cinema. Sigourney Weaver stars.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Jun
3
 
 
Earlier this same evening, TCM presents a groundbreaking outer-space movie in terms of themes and special effects (2001: A Space Odyssey), followed by an equally groundbreaking one in terms of gender (Alien, presenting Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley as a take-no-prisoners heroine). Stay up long enough, though, and those films from the Sixties and Seventies, respectively, will be crushed in counterpoint by this movie from the Fifties. Queen of Outer Space, made in 1958, is as laughably horrible
 
 
 
  
 
 
2014
Jun
2
 
 
It’s an easy day’s night for me, reviewing-wise, when this 1964 classic movie musical is one of the day’s TV offerings. A Hard Day’s Night is a brilliant, bouncy, bravely innovative movie, directed by Richard Lester in a way that captures all the freshness, excitement and insanity of Beatlemania. In the U.S., the soundtrack album was padded with lots of incidental music in place of some of the Beatles’ music from the film – but the British pressings, and the e