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
Mar
29
 
 
I'm not sure what to make of the big surprise on "General Hospital" this week -- but then again, I haven't known what to make of GH in a very long time (years, actually). Robin Scorpio is alive -- and looking very tanned and rested, I might add...
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
29
 
 
Sure looks seductive, doesn't it? "Magic City," Starz' sleek big-money look back at circa-'60 Miami Beach, gets a sneak peek this Friday. That's at 11 p.m. ET, after the season finale of "Spartacus: Vengeance," into whose 10 p.m. time slot "Magic City" slides the following week. - DW
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
28
 
 
Well, we don’t have Erika Van Pelt around any more – the blonde who went brunette for Billy Joel week, but was ousted despite her one-woman extreme makeover. So now it’s another live two-hour performance show – and then, tomorrow, another show where Jimmy Iovine assesses the performances bluntly, while the “real” judges play verbal versions of "duck and cover."
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
28
 
 
You gotta get a gimmick, and in this 1962 movie version of the famous stage musical, Natalie Wood plays the child performer who grows up to be infamous burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, after a lifetime of being pushed into and around show biz by her overbearing mother, Rose (Rosalind Russell). Think of it, if you like, as Toddlers and Tiaras: The Musical.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
28
 
 
One of tonight’s reports looks at the currently ubiquitous practice of negative political advertising – who generates it, who pays for it, and who approves it. The segment’s title is a good one: “Let There Be Mud.”
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
28
 
 
How can you mine any excitement, much less comedy, out of a grade-school filmstrip? In tonight’s new South Park, you do it by speeding up the process of evolution, so that there’s a mutant-type new life form running around South Park. And actually, there’s more than one…
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
28
 
 
SEASON PREMIERE: Last season, this modern-day British detective series made headlines by revisiting them – and examining a serial killer who borrowed heavily from the historical crimes and legacy of Jack the Ripper. To open this second season, Whitechapel unearths another old case with apparent ties to a current crime spree. This time, the case is the Ratcliff Highway murders of 1812, where killings took place behind closed doors – an unusual event at the time, when most murders were
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
27
 
 
This movie musical, based on a work stoppage by New York City newsboys in 1899, is 20 years old now – but has just been turned into the newest Broadway musical by the folks at Disney. So it’s worth a peek for that reason alone – but also because the film features the breakout role of its young star, Christian Bale.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
27
 
 
Robert Mitchum is the prime-time star saluted by TCM tonight, in a double feature that shows his range, and, more than anything else, his charismatic screen presence. In this 1962 movie, he’s an ex-convict who targets the lawyer responsible for his conviction – and as menacing as Robert De Niro was in Martin Scorsese’s intense 1991 remake of this film, Mitchum is even scarier in the original. Even Gregory Peck, who cuts a fairly commanding screen presence himself, looks underst
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
27
 
 
Lowell Bergman, one of the finest and most tenured reporters in the Frontline stable, takes on a much larger media icon in this new documentary about the behind-the-scenes efforts to uncover the News Corporation phone hacking scandal. Think of it as a British Watergate, but one whose ripples spread cross the Atlantic quickly and easily: What did Rupert Murdoch know, and when did he know it?