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
22
 
 
CBS, 7 & 9:45 p.m. ET; TBS, 7:45 & 10:15 p.m. ET - The opening rounds of this year’s tournament delivered enough upsets to overturn a lot of people’s office bracket pools, with two No. 2 seeds being sent packing by scrappy No. 15 seeds. And tonight, the action begins (at 9 p.m. ET on CBS) with Syracuse, which barely escaped elimination in its game against No. 16 UNC Asheville, facing Wisconsin (at left). The other CBS game in tonight’s Sweet 16 round, at 9:45 p.m. ET, i
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
22
 
 
French Stewart guest stars in this week’s episode, which is about a sudden obsession with “Celebrity Impressions.” Everyone seems to want to get into the act – and that makes for a lot of bad acting. But only from the TV characters, not the actors playing them.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
22
 
 
After last night’s Billy Joel competition, one of the contestants is being ousted after the latest audience voting round. And if, as Billy Joel has written, “Only the good die young,” even the best of them is at risk of elimination this evening. But remember – there’s one “judges’ save” that can come into play, making the ill-fated contestant a possible recipient of the American Idol equivalent of a reprieve from the governor.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
22
 
 
SERIES RETURN: Long after the series pilot was sneak previewed, this Fox drama returns. Kiefer Sutherland, as Martin, by now knows his mission: To follow the unspoken bidding of his non-speaking son, which this week takes him to the owner of a pawn shop. And this week, the mysteriously connecting plot threads revolve around that pawnbroker, a baseball, an urn of ashes, and a flight attendant. Follow the trail – and see if you like what you find.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
22
 
 
This is an interesting entry in this new series, one that suggests yet another variation on the storytelling techniques employed in its alternate-world scenarios. Tonight, Michael (Jason Isaacs) is investigating a murder at a party, when one of the party guests turns out to be a young woman named Kate (Brianna Brown), who used to babysit Max when he was younger. Later, Michael encounters Kate in his other reality, too – but there, she’s almost unrecognizable, a wasted shadow of her &
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
20
 
 
Public TV (Check local listings), iTunes and DVD -- This new documentary, by MTV senior VP Benjamin Wagner and his brother Christofer, is a love letter to Fred Rogers – an exploration of the very personal ways the late public TV children’s host and educator influenced and affected those who watched and met him. I have my own stories about this (they’re in my 1992 book Teleliteracy, in which I interviewed, among others, Rogers himself) – and so do all the people in this fi
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
20
 
 
Cartoonist Jules Feiffer is the Guest Programmer for TCM tonight – and as you might guess from a mind this dark, even the comedies he selects to start his evening are a bit twisted, pointed and sarcastic. That’s certainly true of his leadoff entry, this 1933 musical that confronts the then-ongoing Depression by singing about it. That starts with the opening song, in which Ginger Rogers, dressed in a giant coin and not much else, sings “We’re in the Money.” And that&
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
20
 
 
Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan play a married couple in this character 2011 study, which has him coaching a high school wrestling team and finding a diamond in the rough with one new wrestler in particular. Alex Shaffer, who plays the new recruit, was a real-life high-school wrestler who had never acted in a film before. Giamatti should get partial credit for coaching him there, too: Their scenes together are quite good. And, at times, quite surprising.
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
20
 
 
“Man Walks Into a Bar” is the name of tonight’s hyper-charged episode – and the man is Quarles (Neal McDonough), who is seeing his dreams of a southern empire implode, and is on the prowl for people to blame, and hurt. By the time he walks into that bar and gets to Raylan (Timothy Olyphant), the camera circles them as they get in each other’s faces – a terrific directorial choice. They’re still as can be, the camera is swirling, an effect which makes the
 
 
 
  
 
 
2012
Mar
20
 
 
Here’s the second movie selected by Jules Feiffer to show tonight – a 1936 screwball comedy classic staring William Powell and Carole Lombard. He plays in the parlance of the time, a bum, hired by a socialite to serve as her butler and mix with high society, which he wastes no time in ridiculing, often to their faces. It’s a financial class warfare movie that was way, way ahead of its time. Think of the diners at the table as the “1 percenters,” and this movie seems