February 2008 Archives

1968 was a tumultuous year. It's hard not to look back forty years later and wonder how the America and the world would have been different if 1968 hadn't unfolded the way it did. What if Martin Luther King hadn't been shot or Bobby Kennedy hadn't been assassinated? Would the riots at the 1968 democratic convention have happened? Would the Vietnam War have turned out different? All of these questions will never really be answered but they seem to come up whenever 1968 is discussed.

8 Strangers. 8 Points of View. 1 Truth.

With a Rashomon narrative style, the attempted assassination of the president is told from five different perspectives.

Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen), falsely accused of murdering his wife, escapes custody while en route to Death Row and must elude police and Lt. Philip Gerard (Barry Morse), who is consumed with his capture. Kimble must perpetually relocate and change his name while he continues his mission to find the real killer, a one-armed man (Bill Raisch) he saw leave the scene of the crime.

The Fugitive debuted on September 17, 1963 and was an immediate hit in the ratings. It is widely believed that the character of Dr. Richard Kimble was based on Dr. Sam Sheppard, a young Cleveland, Ohio doctor convicted of killing his wife Marilyn in 1954, despite his claims of a “bushy haired intruder.” Sheppard served ten years in prison and was declared a free man by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 6, 1968. “The massive, pervasive and prejudicial publicity attending petitioner’s prosecution prevented him from receiving a fair trial consistent with the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.” When asked whether The Fugitive was based on the Sheppard case, series creator Roy Huggins said, I don’t care whether people say The Fugitive was based on the Sheppard case. The only reason I deny it is that it happens to be the truth”

Author Sophie Dahl's first book, a novella titled The Man With the Dancing Eyes was published back in 2003. The granddaughter of author Roald Dahl and actress Patricia Neal, Sophie has also had a successful career as a model with contracts with such fashion luminaries as Versace, Yves St. Laurent and Pringle.

Ms. Dahl has also done some acting, appearing in the films New York Stories and People I Know among others.

Beverly Hills, CA -- The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has launched a branded Oscars® channel on YouTube™ -www.YouTube.com/Oscars - featuring Academy Awards® show highlights and exclusive video interviews with members from each of the Academy's branches. Participants include Quincy Jones, Alfred Molina, Sidney Poitier and John Travolta.

Perfect Strangers, you remember it. Balki Bartokomous (Bronson Pinchot) from the island of Mypos shows up unexpectedly to live with his distant cousin Larry Appleton (Mark Linn-Baker) in Chicago. The two couldn't be more different. Balki is a wide-eyed fun loving guy (he sleeps with a stuffed lamb), while Larry is tense organized and methodical.

Frasier star Kelsey Grammer serves as an executive producer on Girlfriends, a show about the lives of four African-American women and their male friend. Joan Clayton (Tracee Ellis Ross) is a successful lawyer; her secretary Maya Denise Wilkes (Golden Brooks) is also her best friend. Lynn Ann Searcy (Persia White) a friend of Joan's since her college days, is the proverbial student. Lynn holds several degrees and is still in school, afraid to face the real world. Jill Marie Jones plays Antoinette Marie "Toni" Childs, is the egocentric girlfriend whose main goal in life to marry a rich man. Reggie Hayes plays William Dent, a colleague of Joan's at the law firm and an all around funny guy.

Debauchery, double-crossing, divorce, adultery, kidnapping, assassination attempts!

Dallas had it all. The Ewing family lived at the ostentatious Southfork ranch in Braddock County just outside Dallas. Miss Ellie, long played by veteran actress Barbara Bel Geddes, was the matriarch of the clan. J.R. (Larry Hagman) was the oldest Ewing son, married to the forever miserable Sue Ellen (Linda Gray). J.R's younger brother Bobby (Patrick Duffy) fell in love with a girl from a rival oil family, Pamela Barnes (Victoria Principal), whom he would later marry (a couple times).

The International trailer for Wild Child :A rebellious Malibu princess is shipped off to a strict English boarding school by her father.

Writer/director Noah Baumbach seems to enjoy exploring the dark underbelly of family dynamics and relationships. Baumbach wrote the 2005 film The Squid and the Whale, in which the father (Jeff Daniels) of an intellectual, if slightly eccentric Brooklyn family claims to have been a great novelist but has settled into a teaching job.

When his wife (Laura Linney) unveils a writing talent of her own, jealousy tears the family apart. The couple's two teenage sons are forced to rebuild their relationships with their parents. They must deal with a myriad of feelings when mom begins dating the younger son's tennis coach and their father has an affair with the girl his older son has been pursuing.

Films that center on greed are hardly new. Hollywood has long been fascinated by man's thirst for money and power. Often in these films, the spotlight shines on someone with one last shot at redemption. Sometimes the struggle is played out in the courtroom, sans Paul Newman's portrayal of Frank Galvin in 1982's The Verdict. Galvin, a down on his luck lawyer, gets involved in a medical malpractice suit that all parties are willing to settle out of court. Stumbling his way through the preliminaries, Galvin suddenly realizes that the case deserves its day in court; to punish the guilty and get a fair settlement for his clients.

Synopsis:

From his Academy Award-nominated "On the Ropes", to his singular blend of fact and legend in the Robert Evans portrait "The Kid Stays in the Picture," Brett Morgen has explored increasingly provocative ways to transform documentary materials into new and exhilarating kinds of movies. CHICAGO 10 tells the story of the buildup and unraveling of the Chicago Conspiracy trial not as "history," but as an electrifying experience felt with up-to-the-moment immediacy.

While ER can occasionally veer off into soap opera territory, the long running series about the medical staff and patients of Chicago's fictional County General Hospital remains one of the best written shows on television today. One of the reasons ER has been able to stay on the cutting edge is the writers and producers ability to adapt to change. Characters come and go, and storylines change on a dime. Season eight saw some of the series' most significant changes yet.

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Though Family Ties debuted in September of 1982, it wasn't until the series third season that the show really took off. Aided by its position behind The Cosby Show on Thursday nights, Family Ties reached #5 in the Nielsen ratings during the 1984-85 season.

Family Ties centers around the Keaton family. Steven (Michael Gross) and his wife Elyse (Meredith Baxter Birney) are liberal, flower children of the sixties. The couple has three children: Alex P. (Michael J. Fox) is the conservative, Reagan-worshiping, money-loving son who uses his middle initial whenever possible, Mallory (Justine Bateman), is a girl whose prime interests are fashion and boys and Jennifer (Tina Yothers), the tomboyish baby of the family. The Keaton's are a fairly typical suburban family of the 1980's. Steven manages a local PBS affiliate and Elyse is an architect.

Beauty and the Beast was one of those shows that never did that well in the ratings but had a loyal following. When the show premiered in 1987, Catherine (Linda Hamilton) was a wealthy Assistant District Attorney looking for meaning in her life. Vincent (Ron Pearlman) was a man-beast forced to live his life under the tunnels of the city. When the two first met, they knew almost instantaneously they had a bond between them that would never break.

During Beauty and the Beast's first two seasons the show began with Vincent saying in part: "Her name is Catherine. From the moment I saw her, she captured my heart with her beauty, her warmth, and her courage. I knew then, as I know now, she would change my life forever." As the final season began, Beauty and the Beast producers were faced with a difficult situation when Linda Hamilton decided to leave the series.

From Newsweek.com via Forbes.com 'Strike' One for the Web:

According to industry projections, video streaming revenue and video downloading revenue is expected to reach $3 billion and $1 billion by 2010 and 2011, respectively. And while that's a fraction of the revenue for entertainment as a whole, PricewaterhouseCoppers predicts that within the next five years nearly half of the total industry growth will be generated through Web and wireless technologies.

Watching a remake of the 2002 German film Mostly Martha, No Reservations is like getting up at midnight and raiding the fridge - it feels good while you're doing it, but you wouldn't dream of telling your friends about it the next day.

Kate (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is the master chef at the upscale New York Restaurant, 22 Bleecker. Her life revolves around food. She hasn't been in a personal relationship for years and even dreads communicating with co-workers and customers at the restaurant. Her attitude is so dismal that her boss Paula (Patricia Clarkson) has ordered her to go to see a therapist (Bob Balaban). Shortly after the film begins, Kate is awaiting the arrival of her sister Christine and young niece Zoë (Abigail Breslin), when tragedy strikes. Just minutes before arriving, Christine is killed in a car accident, leaving Zoë in Kate's care.

This letter was sent to all WGA members early Saturday morning.

Writers could be back to work by Monday.

"I believe it is a good deal. I am going to be recommending this deal to our membership," Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild of America, East, told reporters before the New York meeting at a Times Square hotel.

FACTBOX: Screenwriters strike by the numbers.

Recently, as part of Turner Classic Movies 31 Days of Oscar, I watched Hitchcock's Rear Window(1954). The film about a wheelchair bound photographer who spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder. Starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr, Judith Evelyn, Ross Bagdasarian and Georgine Darcy, Rear Window remains one of the best thrillers ever made and has a trailer that will suck you in.

Based on the 1997 film of the same name, Soul Food revolves around the lives of the Joseph sisters, three African American women trying to live their lives as best they can in Chicago.

As season three begins, Teri Joseph (Nicole Ari Parker) the type-A personality of the group and a labor lawyer, has accepted a job as head of the labor department at her old firm. Terri has also started a serious relationship with her old lover, sports agent Damon Carter (Boris Kodjoe). Maxine Chadway is in the midst of a separation from her husband Kenny (Rockmond Dunbar), who hopes they can eventually reconcile. Tracy "Bird" Van Adams the youngest and the feistiest of the sisters, owns a beauty salon and is married to ex-con Lem Van Adams (Darrin Dewitt Henson) who is in a constant struggle to keep his temper in check.

BURBANK - February 8, 2008 - Val Kilmer ("Comanche Moon," "Batman Forever," "The Doors") will assume the role of the voice of KITT -- America's favorite talking car -- in NBC's "Knight Rider" movie of the week which revs up on Sunday, February 17 (9-11 p.m. ET).

Kilmer will play the role of KITT after actor Will Arnett had to withdraw from the role due to a conflicting sponsorship deal.

Sex And The City: The Movie is scheduled for a May 30, 2008 release. Victoria Beckham was reportedly offered a cameo, but had to turn it down because of scheduling conflicts with The Spice Girls reunion tour.

JAG is a military drama about an elite legal wing of United States military officers, trained as lawyers who investigate and prosecute those accused of crimes in the United States Navy and Marine Corps. The crimes include espionage, homicide, terrorism, hostage situations, conspiracies and more. The investigations take the crew all over the world in search of the truth.

As the fifth season of JAG opens, Harmon "Harm" Rabb (David James Elliott) is no longer with JAG. During season four he had been cured of night blindness and resumed his career as a fighter pilot. However, he soon realizes that as good as he is, the time away from the cockpit has cost him any real meaningful career as a pilot--his place is with JAG. It should be noted that the first few episodes when Harm has resumed his flying carrier provide some standout moments during JAG's fifth season. In the season opener, "King of the Greenie Board" Harm does his level best to try to reign in a young hot-shot pilot. Unfortunately in the next episode, "Rules of Engagement" Harm is forced to defend the young flier after he mistakenly shoots down some Russian peace keepers.

Starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, Julie Walters, Amanda Seyfried, Dominic Cooper, Christine Baranski. Based on the smash hit musical. Coming Summer 2008! Featuring the music of '70's super group ABBA.

Terri Cheney seemed to have it all. She was a lawyer at a big law firm, lived in Beverly Hills and drove a Porsche. However, at times Ms. Cheney was crouched under her desk at her law firm unable to move. Other times she was deliriously happy, flying kites off the edge of a cliff in a massive thunderstorm.

Like 10 million fellow Americans, Terri Cheney suffers from bipolar disorder, characterized by deep depression and manic highs. Like many people who suffer from bipolar disorder, Terri kept her illness hidden from her co-workers and many friends. Manic: A Memoir is the story of Terri Cheney's horrifying yet hopeful fight against the disease that nearly took her life.

After Helio Sequence had toured through the United States and Europe in 2004 with Modest Mouse, Blonde Redhead, Kings of Leon and Secret Machines the duo of Brandon Summers and Benjamin Weikel was at a crossroads. According to Helio Sequence's record company bio, Brandon's vocal chords were completely shot. At one point, his doctor ordered him to stop singing for nearly two months. Summers recalls, "I really hit the wall, going into 2005 I actually had to think, 'If I lose my voice, what will I do?"