News from The AV Club

1-20 of 48 articles   « Prev | Next »

10 October 2008 12:34 PM, PDT

It's fall, a season marked by changing leaves, chilly weather, and many, many superfluous ads reminding you to watch TV. Here's a quick rundown of some ads for both new and returning TV shows, complete with alternate eye-catching taglines. NBC's unfortunate Knight Rider re-do: Actual Tagline: "Wife begins again." Alternate Tagline: "Get a wife." Alternate Tagline 2: "When I hold my neck like this it means I'm happy." ...

10 October 2008 8:41 AM, PDT

On paper, Kath & Kim sounds like a good idea, or at least one that has the potential to be funny: It stars two capable comic actresses, Molly Shannon and Selma Blair, as a hopelessly tacky, thoroughly empty-headed mother and daughter pair. Frequent Christopher Guest player, John Michael Higgins, is Shannon's fiancé, and he's always funny. And the show is based on a highly successful (read: funny) Australian sitcom. What could go wrong? As it turns out, a lot. Kath & Kim has nearly all the elements for a good sitcom--funny cast, a funny model to work from, and judging by the attention to detail in the costume and set design, a more than adequate budget (Never has cheapness looked so expensive). What it doesn't have, however, is a decent script and, surprise surprise, that's a key element in a funny sitcom. When one of...

10 October 2008 8:04 AM, PDT

Sarah and Laura Silverman, they’re a funny duo. They probably have all sorts of inside jokes from the nearly 38 years they’ve spent together. You know, like how Laura looks vaguely Asian and Sarah doesn’t? Wait a second… what if there was a whole episode built around that premise? That’s how the second part of the The Sarah Silverman Program’s “special 2 night Premiere Event” felt: like an inside joke between the Silverman sisters stretched to episode length. I didn’t say it wasn’t funny, but it felt especially fast and loose for a show that already operates with minimal logical cohesion. In its own way, though, it only makes sense that an episode that begins with a stranger speaking Chinese to Laura would end with a lawsuit by the “Mongolian Board Of Tourism” and a rockin’ party straight out of an ’80s teen movie. Fast and loose,

9 October 2008 9:08 PM, PDT

Sam Tyler (Jason O'Mara) is a New York City police detective, and like apparently every New York City detective, he's hunting a serial killer. He thinks he's found his man, but the guy's lawyer comes up with an airtight alibi; at least, that's what it looks like. Maya (Lisa Bonet), another cop who happens to be Sam's girlfriend, isn't convinced. She follows their suspect to a park, and just as Sam finds evidence that the suspect's alibi wasn't quite so perfect after all, Maya disappears, leaving behind nothing but a bloody shirt on a playground ride. Sam rushes to the suspect's last known address—but before he can get inside, he's run down in the middle of the street. When he comes to, he's wearing a leather jacket and wide lapels, he's lying in a vacant lot, and off in the New York city skyline, the Twin Towers are standing.

9 October 2008 8:27 PM, PDT

My four-year-old daughter was entertaining me tonight at my swanky birthday dinner at the local Chick-Fil-a. "Mom, I'll tell you a joke," she said. "Why was 6 afraid of 7?" "I don't know, sweetie, why?" I answered. "Because 7 ate 9!" she crowed, and we all enjoyed a good laugh. "Hey Mom, I'm going to tell you another joke," she continued. "Why was the poop in the grass?" "I don't know, sweetie, why?" "Because the grass was covered with poop and it was all poopy!" That was the last poop joke of the dinner -- because you don't really want to be thinking about poop when you're eating fast food. But it wasn't the last poop joke of the night. Because as Frank points out at the end of this week's episode, "poop is funny." My four-year-old...

9 October 2008 3:37 PM, PDT

City Of Ember takes place in Ember, a dystopian city of the future constructed deep underground as a safe haven after an apocalyptic disaster renders the surface of the Earth uninhabitable. To remain sane in the absence of sun and fresh air, the non-cannibalistic human underground dwellers immerse themselves in silly rituals and hope against hope that the faltering generator which drives their world won't break down completely and throw their ever-suffering society into chaos. In other words, Ember is eight million miles away from the pandering, shiny likes of Shrek. If it wasn't based on a bestselling children's book, it's doubtful a story this unrelentingly bleak would ever have made it to the big screen. Atonement's Saoirse Ronan stars as a plucky orphan whose job as a messenger leads her to question the underlying power structure of her community and the rule of genially corrupt mayor Bill Murray,

Nathan Rabin

9 October 2008 3:07 PM, PDT

The Box Of Paperbacks Book Club: Thunderball by Ian Fleming (Not long ago, A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps purchased a large box containing over 75 vintage science fiction, crime, and adventure paperbacks. He is reading all of them. This is book number 48.) Post foreword number one: Sorry it’s been so long between posts. I’ll try not to let that happen again. I’ve been trying to keep to a three-weeks-on/one-week-off schedule but that fell by the wayside. There are projects in the works that have been eating into the time I usually use for Box Of Paperbacks. One will be unveiled very soon. One not so soon. Post foreword number two: Obligatory passage for all James Bond posts suggesting that Ian Fleming might not have had the most progressive views on race, ethnicity, other cultures… basically anything outside the life of a...

9 October 2008 3:01 PM, PDT

The debut episode of Eleventh Hour, a new CBS procedural produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, is about cloning. It comes out strongly against it. This is what we in the word-slinging business call “irony.” Based on a four-part British TV series of the same name, Eleventh Hour has been put through the network’s CSI-procedur-o-matic, with a generous dash of House and The X-Files thrown in for good measure. It appears as if Bruckheimer and CBS are convinced—and probably with cause—that viewers are happy to watch essentially the same show several times a week, with only slightest variations to distinguish one from another. If you were to map their DNA patterns, as the show’s super-duper-genius biophysicist hero does to 19 buried fetuses, they’d be similarly difficult to tell apart. It would be unholy if it weren’t so damned boring. Still, the one thing Eleventh Hour has going for it is.

9 October 2008 2:16 PM, PDT

There's a huge typo on the following magazine cover. See if you can find it: I'm pretty sure they meant to take out the "private" before they printed the cover. How embarrassing for everyone involved! Unless "private" now means "widely broadcast to the general population of the world" and/or "commissioned by a magazine as part of a promo deal for an upcoming movie." True, these photos of Mother Angelina With Child taken by Brad Pitt may have started out private, but the second all parties involved (except the kids, of course, but exploited people don't usually have a hand in their own exploitation) agreed to sell them for public use, the photos became very much post-private, highly public artifacts. And this cover image is just part of the exceedingly "private" stash of photos Jolie and Pitt sold to the magazine: Inside the magazine, there...

9 October 2008 1:47 PM, PDT

Hey you guys, Things have been a little slow here on the A.V Club blog as of late so I figured I'd throw a question out to the group and see what you beautiful people have to say. When I was in college I once rented American Graffiti for my girlfriend. She was underwhelmed. To her it was neither good nor bad, just kinda average and forgettable. I remember thinking very vividly, "Christ, I don't know if I can have any kind of a future with somebody who thinks American Graffiti is at best affably mediocre." To cite another example, I have another ex-girlfriend who realized a guy she was seeing probably wasn't the one for her when he took her to see Armageddon on their first date. For some reason, not liking American Graffiti was something of a deal-breaker relationship-wise. I don't exactly know why. There are some things.

9 October 2008 1:06 PM, PDT

Has any other great director seemed as content to make merely good movies as Ridley Scott? Visionary at his best, workmanlike at his worst, Scott has a bad habit of making films whose handsomeness almost, but doesn't quite, hide their shortcomings. Like last year's American Gangster, Body Of Lies has elements of greatness in it but never quite performs the alchemy needed to convert them, settling instead for mere goodness. Still, it's not like the screens are so flooded with decent movies that we couldn't use another, particularly a timely, clear-eyed thriller about the Middle East and the role of the U.S. therein. Screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed) adapts a novel by journalist/novelist David Ignatius and the results play like a more comprehensible and explosion-filled Syriana. Body Of Lies opens with a terrorist incident in Manchester, shifts to Iraq, then expands to reveal a web of decisions and deceptions.

Keith Phipps

9 October 2008 1:03 PM, PDT

Based on the life of Ernie Davis, the Syracuse running back who became the first African-American to win the Heisman Trophy, The Express raises the following rhetorical question: Was Davis' life really that by-the-numbers bland or have the filmmakers airbrushed out all the prickly, complicated details? The answer doesn't matter, of course, since the film is dull and generic any way you slice the pie, but it's hard to believe that the struggles of a black running back prior to the Civil Rights movement could rendered as such a PG-rated gloss, like the pages of a children's storybook. But then, that's become the formula of other sports movies on overcoming segregation, such as Remember The Titans or Glory Road: Long on inspiration, short on specifics. Then again, it's possible that Davis was in fact the straight-shooting hero and graceful martyr as played here by Finding Forrester's Rob Brown

Scott Tobias

9 October 2008 1:02 PM, PDT

Guy Ritchie hasn't made a good film since. wait, has Guy Ritchie ever made a good film? Ritchie's debut feature Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels was an entertaining-enough post-modern gangster picture, albeit too full of itself, and Snatch had its moments, though they were obscured by meaningless flash. But perhaps Ritchie has improved over the past 10 years—or perhaps any movie would look good after the execrable Swept Away and Revolver—because Ritchie's latest gangland comedy RocknRolla is far and away his best work. (Though that's a designation that some might call "faint praise.") RocknRolla starts strong, introducing Tom Wilkinson as a shrewd criminal mastermind who thrives by pitting his minions against each other. One of those minions is Gerard Butler, an enterprising thief and hitman who's forced by Wilkinson's stinginess to come up with his own jobs, and inadvertently ends up working at cross-purposes from his boss. In.

Noel Murray

9 October 2008 1:01 PM, PDT

The opening scenes of Mike Leigh's latest slice-of-life dramedy Happy-Go-Lucky introduce a protagonist who appears psychologically disordered at worst, and highly annoying at best. Sally Hawkins plays an incessant chatterbox with no apparent understanding of how her attempts to spread sunshine are being received by the shopkeepers and passersby who suffer through them. We later learn that Hawkins is a primary school teacher, which is no surprise, since she's the kind of childlike free spirit who relates well to kids. But it is surprising to learn that she's such a conscientious teacher, who goes the extra mile to figure out what's wrong with one of her more violent pupils. And it's reassuring to discover that she has such close friends, including a cynical roommate who rolls her eyes at Hawkins' optimism, but obviously prefers Hawkins just as she is. Much of Happy-Go-Lucky is dedicated to alternately confirming or defying.

Noel Murray

9 October 2008 12:04 PM, PDT

In the filmography of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, 1994's Ashes Of Time looks like the odd film out. An expensive martial arts movie with a cast of all-star Hong Kong actors, Ashes Of Time was so long-in-the-making that Wong shot Chungking Express during an editing break. That film—with its brisk pace, found visual poetry, alienated urbanites, and odd-angled love stories—would let him take center stage in world cinema and lay out the boundaries of his subsequent films. And while In The Mood For Love features characters who write martial arts serials, after Ashes, Wong left the kung-fu to others. He's now returned, however temporarily, to offer a new, shorter cut of the movie for a re-release. (Or, in the case of American markets, a theatrical premiere.) Looked at again, it's not that odd a fit. For starters, Ashes remains a doggedly unusual kung-fu movie. Officially an adaptation.

Keith Phipps

9 October 2008 11:05 AM, PDT

The Hills, MTV's thoroughly successful attempt to make emptiness shiny, watchable, and somehow more empty, is currently in its fourth season. Since its inception the show has been parodied relentlessly, which is understandable. It's a ridiculous show presented with stone-faced seriousness. Ultimately though parodying The Hills is an exercise in futility since the show itself requires almost no comedic exaggeration whatsoever to be funny—a fact hammered home in one of the better Hills parodies, featuring James Franco and Mila Kunis delivering Hills dialogue nearly verbatim. But apparently MTV just found out that the entire populace of the United States either had uploaded or was currently uploading their lukewarm Hills parodies to YouTube, because they've decided to air a Hills parody of their own starring one man, old footage, and lots of wigs. (via Bwe.tv) So if Hills parodies are...

8 October 2008 9:05 PM, PDT

The American version of The Office has arguably the best and deepest supporting cast of any sitcom in history. Beyond stars Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, Jenna Fischer, and John Krasinski there's an entire galaxy of rich secondary players, from Eeyore-like human resources guy Paul Lieberstein to moon man Creed Bratton to gay accountant Oscar Nuñez. An alumnus of the seminal Los Angeles improv troupe the Groundlings, Nuñez scored guest spots on Curb Your Enthusiasm and Reno 911! before landing the role of the uptight accountant Oscar in 2005. Nuñez picked up a Daytime Emmy when the online spin-off The Office: The Accountants scored the first-ever Emmy for Outstanding Broadband Program. In 2007, Nuñez executive-produced and starred in Halfway Home, an improvised Comedy Central comedy about the wacky denizens of a halfway home. The A.V Club recently spoke with Nuñez about his ribald past as a game-show contestant, his infamous kiss...

Nathan Rabin

8 October 2008 9:04 PM, PDT

As demonstrated by her 2005 historical travelogue Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell has a gift for approaching the dusty corners of Americana with a pop-cultural sensibility that treats her long-dead subjects with the same mix of scrutiny and admiration that most Americans lavish on modern celebrities. While that book's focus on presidential assassination and political conspiracy gave Vowell a sexy jumping-off point, the topic of her new The Wordy Shipmates is downright dour in comparison. So it speaks to Vowell's talents as a researcher and storyteller that she's able to lend her exploration of the Biblically motivated dealings of the Massachusetts Bay Puritans a similar air of intrigue. The Wordy Shipmates attempts to suss out the foundations of this country's modern Christian preoccupations. Early in the book, Vowell traces the lineage of American exceptionalism from its origins in John Winthrop's sermon "A Model Of Christian Charity," in which Winthrop...

Genevieve Koski

8 October 2008 9:02 PM, PDT

Here's a reliable, though overworked, story idea: A good kid moves from a small town to the big city and is overwhelmed, and possibly undone, by his new environment. Indignation, the latest in Philip Roth's recent shower of short novels, convincingly reverses that plot's traditional course. Set in 1951—at the height of the brief, bloody Korean War—it follows Marcus Messner, a Newark butcher's kid, from a happy stint at community college near his parents' home to Winesburg College, a small Ohio school governed by codes and mores alien to him. Roth never reveals what, if any, relationship his Winesburg has with the blighted town of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, but for Marcus, it similarly becomes a place of thwarted hopes. For him, it takes far less than a lifetime. Transferring to Winesburg to escape his father's toxic overprotectiveness, Marcus soon finds a different kind of paternalism at work.

Keith Phipps

8 October 2008 9:01 PM, PDT

These days, every young-adult novel has to be part of a series. A story can't just exist to be enjoyed; it has to be stretched, re-stretched, and dragged endlessly onward, stringing readers along from one cliffhanger to the next, just to get the full market value on all merchandising possibilities. So right from the start, Neil Gaiman's new novel, The Graveyard Book, has an edge. It isn't "part one" of anything; while the funereal world Gaiman introduces is as rich as anything he's worked on before, Graveyard comes to a satisfactory conclusion by its final page. For once, the hero gets the job done without needing a movie deal or a set of calendars. It's the least of the book's considerable strengths. When Nobody Owens is just a baby, a man named Jack murders his entire family. Nobody manages to escape to the graveyard at the top of the.

Zack Handlen

1-20 of 48 articles   « Prev | Next »