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

 
 
2012
Jul
2
 
 
Part 1 of 2. In this week’s two-parter (concluding tomorrow night), the wannabe chefs compete in Las Vegas, and have to concoct a recipe whose ingredients are determined by a slot machine. Hmm. If they’re playing the one I’m thinking of, and with similar luck to mine, they’ll be making a smoothie: two oranges, one cherry.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Jul
2
 
 
May as well start early. Tonight and tomorrow, AMC is presenting the same 1996 action film it plans to present on Independence Day: Independence Day, starring Will Smith (pictured) and Bill Pullman. No matter when AMC shows this movie, I’ll have the same complaint: In the scenes where everyone is fleeing Washington, D.C. at the presumed end of the world, the outgoing highways are jammed, but the incoming ones are empty. What’s to prevent drivers from shifting to the wrong side for an
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Jul
2
 
 
Alfred Hitchcock once remade one of his old movies with a new cast, but this 1953 film is just as much of a revisited rarity. Mogambo is  a John Ford remake of 1932’s Red Dust, a Victor Fleming film about a rubber plantation owner torn between two newly arrived women: an opportunistic showgirl seductress, and the alluring wife of a visiting surveyor. In Red Dust, the two women were played, respectively, by Jean Harlow and Mary Astor. In Mogambo, the women are played, instead, by Ava G
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Jul
2
 
 
Marina Abramovic is called, by some, the “grandmother of performance art,” and this documentary traces the path that led her from a standard course of study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade to using her body, and her images, to entice, inflame and outrage the art world. For a full review, see Eric Gould’s Cold Light Reader column HERE.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Jul
2
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: It pays to have fans. When Lisa Kudrow ran into Meryl Streep last year, the latter raved about the former’s Web Therapy comedy series. Kudrow offered Streep a guest-star role, Streep said yes, and tonight’s Season 2 premiere is the result. Streep plays a therapist whose area of expertise is “gay conversion,” seeking to scare her patients straight.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Jul
1
 
 
The title character of the long-running PBS import Inspector Morse was dispatched to his final resting place a dozen years ago – but now comes a prequel, the pilot for a forthcoming new series. Replacing John Thaw as Endeavour Morse, and playing him as a younger man, is Shaun Evans. He doesn’t nail the younger incarnation as, say, Josh Brolin channels a younger Tommy Lee Jones in the newest Men in Black sequel, but doesn’t really try. By the way, this isn’t the first time
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Jul
1
 
 
This is the last of this season’s episodes that were provided for preview, and I’m already impatient to see what comes next. But I’ll tell you, without telling too much, that the way Eric and Bill are controlled in this episode is technologically and creatively ingenious – and makes ankle bracelets look like candy necklaces. And yes, hilariously, there’s an app for that.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Jul
1
 
 
This second episode of Aaron Sorkin’s new series institutes the fictional TV news show’s inaugural relaunch, with new rules, new ideals – and a lot of old-fashioned behind-the-scenes, and on-the-air, disasters. Jeff Daniels stars.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Jul
1
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: This is the eighth and final season for this Mary Louise Parker dark comedy, and it certainly opens on the darker side. Parker’s Nancy has assembled her extended and eccentric family to start yet another new life – this time in a communal residence back in suburbia, where the series began – when a laser dot appears on her forehead (pictured) just as she’s giving a toast to their new fortune.  That turns out to be a false alarm – a dot from a la
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Jul
1
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: This droll, deliciously wry comedy about Hollywood’s lures, dangers and excesses returns for a second season, picking up at the point where the show-within-a-show, Pucks! starring Matt LeBlanc, is about to premiere – but not to the best of reviews. For my full review – of Episodes, not Pucks! – see Bianculli’s Blog HERE.