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

 
 
2018
Feb
3
 
 
Tonight’s new 48 Hours, “Death in Deep Water,” revisits a cold case involving a long-deceased movie star. Actress Natalie Wood, a familiar and memorable film presence since befriending a department store Santa in 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street, died suddenly, and somewhat mysteriously, in 1981, in what was called a boating accident in Catalina. The last people to see her alive were the boat’s captain, her then-husband Robert Wagner, and good friend Christopher Walken
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Feb
3
 
 
TCM’s annual “31 Days of Oscar” lead-up to the Academy Awards is underway again, and tonight the network is showcasing several of the winners in the Best Cinematography category. One of the most notable of these, 1976’s Bound for Glory, is an evocative biography of folk music icon Woody Guthrie, played by David Carradine. And I associate it, all these years later, as the first film in which I saw the Steadicam camera used, gliding in and above and around scenes like a bir
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Feb
3
 
 
Natalie Portman returns to host Saturday Night Live, after doing such a tremendous job way, way back in 2006. That’s more than a dozen years ago now, but she killed it, specifically in an early Lonely Island musical digital short, “Natalie Raps,” in which she pretends to be her badass, unchecked alter ego during a celebrity interview. What she’ll do this time around, as host, is anyone’s guess, but I’m guessing it’ll be funny, and fully committed. The mu
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Feb
3
 
 
Untethered from his milestone Mad Men role as antihero Don Draper, Jon Hamm continues his impressive film and TV presence, now as a holographic projection of a deceased husband visiting his wife, afflicted with dementia in her old age...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Feb
2
 
 
Numerous documentaries, on television and elsewhere, have tackled elements of the drug epidemic. Showtime’s new The Trade attempts to connect all the dots...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Feb
2
 
 
Stana Katic, whose Detective Kate Beckett was both hunter and hunted through eight seasons in the good-natured Castle, now finds herself back in that same situation on a much darker show called Absentia...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Feb
2
 
 
One of television’s most successful gender diversity initiatives has entailed letting women in on the fun of noisy violence, so it’s only fitting that Cinemax’s revived Strike Back no longer looks like a boys club...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Feb
2
 
 
SERIES PREMIERE: Stana Katic from ABC’s Castle stars as an FBI agent who is captured and held captive by a serial killer – for six years, long after her husband and young son, along with her colleagues at the bureau, have presumed her dead. Then she suddenly resurfaces, but with no memory of her captivity. And the word “resurfacing” is literal, because she emerges from a large glass tank filled with water, used intermittently to almost drown her. It’s the same tortu
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Feb
2
 
 
SERIES FINALE: Netflix is spending a lot of money and effort lately on big-budget science fiction movies and TV series, and here comes another one. Based on the novel by Richard K. Morgan, it’s set in a future in which people can transfer and transplant their consciousness to other bodies at will. Therefore, the protagonist of Altered Carbon, a well-trained soldier revived after centuries on ice, is played by two completely different actors: Will Yun Lee in the “past,” and Joel
 
 
 
  
 
 
2018
Feb
2
 
 
Television shows, in prime time, make a huge deal out of reaching the milestone of 100 episodes, and any multiple of that, getting as high as 200 or 300, is a hugely successful achievement in the competitive world of television. So give Let’s Make a Deal a big tip of the hat: Today it celebrates its 1500th program. And to mark the occasion, Deal model Tiffany Coyne introduces a brand new game, “Winfall,” involving colored die, foam blocks, and gravity. Check local listings.