March 2008 Archives

This is the first TV Spot for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Does father know best? When Father Knows Best debuted as an NBC radio series on August 25, 1949, the question mark was part of the title; only after the series moved to CBS television on October 3, 1954 was the question mark removed. The concept of actor Robert Young and his friend and Eugene Rodney, Father Knows Best was based on experiences the two men had with their own wives and children.

Robert Young, the only member of the cast to make the transition from radio to television played Jim Anderson a mild mannered agent for the General Insurance Company in Springfield. Anderson lived there with his wife Margaret (Jane Wyatt), fifteen-year-old Betty (Elinor Donahue), fourteen-year-old son, James Jr. (Billy Gray) and Lauren Chapin as the baby of the family, nine year old Kathy. Father Knows Best was a typical 1950's sitcom. Margaret was a doting housewife always clad on the perfect dress and two or three strands of pearls. A majority of Ms. Wyatt's scenes as Margaret Anderson are filmed in the kitchen where she is cooking breakfast, lunch or dinner for the family with nary a hair out of place.

As a voracious reader, if a book is made into a film, chances are I've read it. Strangely, before seeing The Kite Runner I had not read the best selling novel by Khaled Hosseini. I don't quite know why, whether it was the serious subject matter or just timing, I never got to it. After seeing director Marc Forster's (Finding Neverland) sad but stunning adaptation, the novel now has a prominent place in my stack of bedside reading.

The story begins with young boys flying kites in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1978. Life is fairly peaceful; this is before the Russian invasion, the Taliban and the war that would turn the country into anarchy. The Kite Runner focuses on the friendship between a young boy named Amir (Zekeria Ebrahimi) and Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada), son of the family's servant, Ali (Nabi Tanha). The two boys are virtually inseparable and act like brothers. Though Hassan is the smaller of the two boys, he goes out of his way to protect Amir whenever he has to. Hassan regular protects Amir from a town bully, Assef (Elham Ehsas) who is jealous of Amir's kite and Hassan's skills as a kite runner. He is able to predict when a kite will return to earth and be there, ready to retrieve it. Hassan is also an easy target for derision because of his status as the son of a servant.

When I settled in to watch Bee Movie I really wasn't expecting much. Seinfeld, that long running show about nothing had never really been a favorite of mine, so the presence of Jerry Seinfeld didn't really pique my curiosity. However, I've enjoyed the ingenuity of Dreamworks Animation in the past in such projects as the Shrek film series, Madagascar and Antz, so I was curious to see what Bee Movie had to offer.

All Presidents of the United States are subject to a certain amount of ridicule. Actually, in this media driven world we live in, no politician is immune from possible scorn. Leave it to Comedy Central to figure out a way to razz current President Bush, his administration, former President Bush, his family and any other politicians of interest in one fell swoop. Created by Donick Cary, who has previously written for such shows as Just Shoot Me, The Simpsons and The Late Show With David Letterman. Lil' Bush: Resident Of The United States centers around grade school versions of the current administration raising Cain together during the administration of Bush Sr.

In 88 Minutes, Al Pacino stars as Dr. Jack Gramm, a college professor who moonlights as a forensic psychiatrist for the FBI. When Gramm receives a death threat claiming he has only 88 minutes to live, he must use all his skills and training to narrow down the possible suspects -- a disgruntled student, a jilted former lover, and a serial killer who is already on death row among them -- before his time runs out. Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, Amy Brenneman and Neal McDonough also star. (synopsis courtesy of imdb)

If you've seen those new Mac Air commercials you've heard the airy tune accompanying the ultra-thin laptops as they take their marketing now for the world. The song, "New Soul is sung by the 29-year-old Yael Naïm. Born in Paris (to Tunisian parents) and raised in Israel, Naïm brings her multilingual background to her music. Her second album, Tot ou Tard (Sooner or Later) was released in France to great acclaim in 2007. The album hit number 11 and broke the top forty in Switzerland.

March 19, 2008 (New York, NY) -- When the cast and crew of CBS' How I Met Your Mother were informed that Britney Spears was slated to do a guest stint on the show, no one knew what to expect.. "I kept saying, 'You're serious? She's going to do it? She's not going to back out?'" Mother costar Neil Patrick Harris (Barney) says in this week's cover story of TV Guide magazine (March 24 issue; on newsstands March 19). Spears not only showed up on time for her first day of work, but she was early--and by accounts a consummate professional; there were no outbursts or diva antics or outrageous demands.

I've always thought of Benicio del Toro as a bit of a sad sack looking actor. I sort of dismissed him as a disheveled rebel wannabe who needed to get some sleep already. Recently, after re-watching his brilliant turn as Javier Rodriquez in 2000's Traffic and his equally mesmerizing performance as Jerry Sunborne in 2007's Things We Lost in the Fire I was struck by his overpowering screen presence and obvious versatility as an actor. del Toro is able to convey more thoughts and emotions through his eyes than many actors can traject through pages of dialogue. You only have to look at del Toro's eyes to see the heavy strain his character is under, that of a drug addicted man who has just lost the one person in the world who never gave up on him.

Based on the best selling novel by Ian McEwen, Atonement is the story of 13-year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), an aspiring writer from an upper class English family who because of a mix of immaturity, misunderstanding and jealousy, tells a lie that changes her life and that of her family's forever. Briony's older sister Cecilia (Kiera Knightley) is currently attending Cambridge University, alongside Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) the son of the Tallis family housekeeper (Brenda Blethyn). Cecilia's father, for some unknown reason has been paying Robbie's way through school.

Get Smart is an upcoming 2008 film adaptation of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry's hit 1960s spy parody television show Get Smart. The film will star Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart and Anne Hathaway as Agent 99. Alan Arkin will play the Chief. Masi Oka, Terence Stamp, Dwayne Johnson and Dalip "The Great Khali" Singh will also star. Bill Murray and Patrick Warburton make cameos in the film, as does Bernie Kopell, who played Siegfried in the original series.

Paramount has recently released a three DVD set containing the remaining twelve episodes of the first season of Love American Style. The anthology series which usually consisted of three vignettes really broke the mold as far as what had been seen on television up to that point. Couples, married or unmarried were shown kissing in (or on a) bed, unmistakable double-entendres where used freely in the dialogue and some of the clothing worn by the young female guest stars on Love American Style didn't leave much to the imagination.

For centuries, literary figures including Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain Jack London and countless others have written about the importance of nature and the importance of living off the land. In turn, many people have taken these written works to heart and set off on their own journeys in search of a new way of life, in search of themselves.

With In to the Wild writer/director Sean Penn tells the poignant, if troubling story of Christopher Johnson McCandless. McCandless (Emile Hirsch) was a young man from Virginia who became so disenchanted by a life of material things and the rules of everyday society that he left it all behind to become a vagabond, in search of answers to questions that seemed to torment his soul. The film, based on the 1996 bestseller by journalist Jon Krakauer, tells a heroic, wistful tale of a young man fresh out of college who sent his life savings to OXFAM, cut off all communications with his family, swore off most material possessions and burnt all his money before setting off on a cross country trip to live in the wild of Alaska. McCandless used the alias 'Alexander Supertramp' as he crossed the country, darting in and out of people's lives, never staying long enough to get too attached; never losing sight of his goal of getting to Alaska. Though McCandless finally reached his destination, He never returned, dying on an abandon bus in the Alaskan wilderness near the Denali National Park.

A romantic comedy set against the backdrop of America's nascent pro-football league in 1925. Dodge Connolly, a charming, brash football hero, is determined to guide his team from bar brawls to packed stadiums. But after the players lose their sponsor and the entire league faces certain collapse, Dodge convinces a college football star to join his ragtag ranks. The captain hopes his latest move will help the struggling sport finally capture the country's attention.

101 Dalmatians is loosely based on the 1956 children's book The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. In Smith's book there are actually four main dalmatians, their "pets" are already married, Roger is a "financial wizard" who has been granted an exemption from income tax for life because he freed England of it's national debt, they have a nanny and a butler and Cruella De Vil is married to a furrier, and covets expensive fur and ridiculously high temperatures. I mention these details because Walt Disney removed or reworked several of these facts when he reworked the story for a film back in 1961.

"The Love Guru" (Mike Myers), Pitka is an American who was left at the gates of an ashram in India as a child and raised by gurus. He moves back to the U.S. to seek fame and fortune in the world of self-help and spirituality. His unorthodox methods are put to the test when he must settle a rift between Toronto Maple Leafs star hockey player Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) and his estranged wife. After the split, Roanoke's wife starts dating L.A. Kings star Jacques Grande (Justin Timberlake) out of revenge, sending her husband into a major professional skid -- to the horror of the teams' owner Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) and Coach Cherkov (Verne Troyer). Pitka must return the couple to marital nirvana and get Roanoke back on his game so the team can break the 40-year-old "Bullard Curse" and win the Stanley Cup.

As almost everyone who knows me will tell you, I am a bona fide television junkie. I watch old shows, new shows and everything in between. Oddly enough, in my more than thirty years on this earth I had never watched a single episode of Walker, Texas Ranger until June of 2007 when Walker, Texas Ranger: The Complete Third Season was released on DVD and I had a chance to watch a number of episodes. After that, I went back to some of the earlier episodes of the show to find out what I had missed; as it turns out, not much.

Beowulf is the oldest surviving poem in the English language. The epic work was written sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries. In the poem, Beowulf battles three rivals: Grendel who is attacking the Danish mead hall known as Heorot and its citizenry; Grendel's mother; and later in life after returning to Geatland and being crowned a king, a dragon. I think I had to read the book for the first sometime in junior high and later as a college student. Though the goal of reading it was different each time, I remember being suitably unimpressed.

During the 1970's and 80's Aaron Spelling produced shows dominated the television landscape. At one point during the 1984 season, Spelling had seven series running on the ABC network, which generated more than one-third of the networks revenues. Some critics dubbed ABC "Aaron's Broadcasting Company." One of those series, The Love Boat, became a solid top 15 hit in the Nielsen ratings when it debuted on September 24, 1977.

Hurtling down the track, careening around, over and through the competition, Speed Racer is a natural behind the wheel. Born to race cars, Speed is aggressive, instinctive and, most of all, fearless. His only real competition is the memory of the brother he idolized-the legendary Rex Racer - whose death in a race has left behind a legacy that Speed is driven to fulfill. Speed is loyal to the family racing business, led by his father, Pops Racer, the designer of Speed's thundering Mach 5. When Speed turns down a lucrative and tempting offer from Royalton Industries, he not only infuriates the company's maniacal owner but uncovers a terrible secret-some of the biggest races are being fixed by a handful of ruthless moguls who manipulate the top drivers to boost profits. If Speed won't drive for Royalton, Royalton will see to it that the Mach 5 never crosses another finish line. The only way for Speed to save his family's business and the sport he loves is to beat Royalton at his own game.