Watching Tom Cruise appear on Oprah last week, I was surprised at how authentic he appeared. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend who did the makeup FX for Cruise on Collateral. We’ve all heard the tales of how Scientologists try to convert everyone they come in contact with, and I was prepared to hear horror stories of a whack job superstar trying to change my artistic friend into an L. Ron Hubbard clone. Instead, my friend told me that Cruise was really down to earth, and spent most of his time in the makeup chair discussing his kids and parenting. I was pleasantly surprised. This was also the impression I got from the intimate interview that took place between Winfrey and Cruise at his Colorado mansion.

The show began with the typical setups. Wife Katie Holmes just “happened” to be there to say hello, and then took off with the kids. Cruise gave Oprah a tour of the house. To that point, it felt like just another typical celebrity interview. Then they sat down in his living room (which looks out on the Colorado wilderness) and Winfrey began to ask him direct questions about the past three years. His crazy couch-jumping, his rants on television about Brooke Shields and antidepressants, his notorious interview with Matt Lauer, and that bizarre Scientology video that hit YouTube last year.

One has to presume that Cruise knew these questions were coming, but I was impressed that Winfrey did not let up when he merely gave answers like he was “misunderstood” and that his quotes about anti-depressants were actually aimed toward medicating children. Still, Cruise was humble, and for the first time in recent memory, he was not “on.” He spoke endearingly about his wife and especially his children and made a point to always include his older children, Isabella and Connor, in the conversation, even though Winfrey continually veered the discussion back to his two-year-old daughter, Suri. As a parent watching this, I was impressed with Cruise’s devotion to his family and his protectiveness.

We’ve all seen in the past couple years how the paparazzi can act like vultures, circling and waiting for something dreadful to happen. Over the years, with the Internet and channels like “E!” thriving on gossip, stars don’t have the luxury of calling off the attack dogs on certain nights. In fact, Cruise explained that he used to be able to actually have human conversations with photographers, asking them to ease off every now and then in exchange for pics the next night. Obviously that is not the case anymore. Still, he seems to have done a decent job of shielding his children from the spotlight and allowing them to grow up in a relatively normal way (if being the child of an international superstar spokesman for a little-understood religion can ever be normal). Furthermore, his protectiveness of his family, basically stating “come after me, but leave my kids alone,” was admirable. (more…)

Mention the words “silent movie” and most people will become glassy-eyed or chuckle some comment like “You know they make movies with sound now, don’t you?” It’s not that these people are elitist or snobs about movies. It’s just that the average moviegoer has only seen the occasional silent-film clip that makes it look like people in the early 20th century moved at a very fast pace (films in the silent era were shot at a different speed than modern films), or they expect to hear clunky piano music playing over slapstick-comedy one-reelers. Most people are unfamiliar with the history of motion pictures and fail to realize that many of the techniques we see in films today were originally incubated during that time; they don’t realize that while there were films made for the masses, there were also grand epics shown in glamorous movie palaces with live orchestras accompanying the wonderful images flickering on the screen.

Thankfully, archivists like film historian Kevin Brownlow and director Martin Scorsese continue to educate and inform people about the glorious art made during the birth of cinema. Additionally, Turner Classic Movies continues to air silent films on Sunday nights, and it’s led the way in film preservation by restoring many of the groundbreaking and influential films that have been lost to years of deteriorating film stock. TCM continues its work tonight by airing two epic movies from innovative French director Abel Gance: the pacifist war film J’accuse (8 PM Eastern) and the railroad tragedy La Roue (11 PM).

Gance is considered by many to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, but like his contemporaries D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein, his name is unrecognizable to almost everyone. Gance’s crowning achievement as a director is 1927’s Napoleon, which utilized Polyvision, a three-screen method of film projection. Napoleon was restored in the early ’80s just before Gance died, but his reputation as France’s most important filmmaker grew out of the success of his two earlier masterpieces, J’accuse (1919) and La Roue (1923).

(more…)

Brothers & Sisters, ABC’s latest hit family drama (Sundays at 10 pm), came back to the airwaves last night, and for some of us, it was a welcome return of quality television. It is rare that an adult drama like this one has managed to remain all-inclusive of its male and female characters. With strong, female leads like Rachel Griffiths (formerly of Six Feet Under), Calista Flockhart (Ally McBeal) and the incomparable Sally Field, it would have been quite easy for Brothers & Sisters to cater strictly to ABC’s female viewers (especially coming off Desperate Housewives). However, the producers have stayed true to the show’s original premise: a series centering on a large family as each member deals with the big family issues, as well as their own individual trials and tribulations.

For the most part, the show is not groundbreaking. Though thought-provoking on many levels, what we’re dealing with is the human heart and how people cope with the good times and bad. That said, the show has been brave in its honest portrayal of sibling Kevin’s slow emergence from the closet and his search for love and happiness. In fact, there’s more male kissing and bed-rolling on this show than any I can think of. Yet, the kissing and lovemaking is done in the same casual manner as you’d expect Flockhart and her onscreen beau, Rob Lowe, to hit the sack. In other words, the producers have wisely decided not to make it a BIG DEAL, and by doing so, allow each story to flow organically.

When it began airing back in the fall of 2006, Brothers & Sisters nearly failed the three strike rule. Its early episodes were downright painful to watch and the plots were so contrived, the writing so clichéd and full of holes, I often found myself yelling at the television when I wasn’t rolling my eyes and punching the couch in frustration. My thoughts were, “How can a show with much talent behind it suck so damn bad?” What kept me hoping would give this show life was the executive producer, Greg Berlanti. Berlanti is a television genius. (more…)

Hey, all. This week I learned what they mean by “chasing down an interview.” I had been planning to post a conversation with one of the actors from October Road, and the two of us have been playing phone tag for days. My backup plan for this week, a write up of the Gene Wilder special on Turner Classic Movies that premieres Tuesday, fell through when the network failed to get me a screener. Bummer. I love Wilder. Anyway, at the last minute (i.e. Sunday morning) I was hanging with my son on the living room couch when I was inspired to write the following. I hope you enjoy it. Aloha.

One of the drawbacks of my son Jacob’s breathing treatments for cystic fibrosis is the amount of television he and his sister, Sophie, end up watching. While we try to curb the level of crap they end up seeing, some things slip thought the cracks. Unfortunately, once an adventure show like Power Rangers kicks down your front door with its level of “fantasy” violence, as a parent you wind up sitting with he kids making sure what’s on the screen is not too inappropriate (this also goes for those teen shows on Nick and Disney which deal with complex emotional issues that I find a little much for my nine-year-old). When Jacob was younger, watching television with him was a mixed bag. The Wiggles were tolerable, Sesame Street educational, but Barney made me want to rip my hair out. My son’s interests have now shifted to comic books and action figures (”guys,” as he calls them, even the female superheroes) and for a thirtysomething fanboy like myself, it’s an opportunity to relive a bit of my childhood.

The most memorable television shows from my youth were Battle of the Planets and Star Blazers (the latter’s theme song is still embedded in my memory). Both series were originally Japanese animated shows produced in the early ’70s (Gatchaman and Space Battleship Yamato, respectively) and imported into U.S. syndication during the latter half of the decade with English-dubbed voices and some of the adult content sliced out for the target audience of prepubescent boys. What made them so enjoyable to tune into was the continuing drama that unfolded in each episode. Battle of the Planets may have been about the struggle between a group of teen warriors taking on an evil alien nemesis, but there was always the mystery surrounding the identity of the villain Zoltar and the question of hero Mark’s family lineage that carried on from episode to episode. Likewise, Star Blazers was the ongoing saga of a space battleship (modeled after a WWII battleship) on a a yearlong mission to save Earth. Each episode concluded with a countdown to the number of days remaining for the Star Force (as the crew was called) to complete their mission and save humanity. Good stuff.

Looking back, these animated TV shows, along with the chapter-like structure of classic X-Men and Teen Titans comics I was reading at age 11, influenced the type of writer I would become one day. I was not alone, as most of the animated series that are popular today use continuing storyline structures, like nighttime dramas and the comic books from which they are drawing stories and inspiration. Although superheroes have broad appeal (e.g. The Incredibles, the Spider-Man films, 300, and Batman Begins), television animation is treated like the bastard child of entertainment, as if its sole purpose is to sell toys and cereal. Fortunately, the writers and artists that work on most of these series don’t think that way. Here are four of the best action/adventure animated shows currently running on television. Now, if you’re not into this type of thing, I ask you to still read on. Being familiar with them may some day make you a very cool uncle or aunt. (more…)

Beginning this week, the major television networks will begin rolling out new episodes of regular series that have been on extended hiatus since the writers strike began last winter. TV fans can rejoice because this week, the 1-2 punch of The Office and 30 Rock returns to the air. I was not a fan from the get go of either show, but since the middle of both first seasons, I believe The Office and 30 Rock have become the standard of television comedy. Here’s why…

WE INTERRUPT OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED COLUMN FOR THE FOLLOWING PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.

Dear Screen Actors Guild,

As you prepare to open negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on April 15^th, I offer my humble plea as you consider the possibility of a strike: Don’t. Don’t do it, dudes. Going on strike will bring the film and television industry to another grinding halt and will cripple the economy in Los Angeles (which is still trying to recover from the writers strike). Pilot season, that time of the year when most actors are lining up for gigs on pilots, is pretty much been scrapped. The networks are going to be more selective about what they’re going to greenlight, and in the case of NBC, they aren’t even ordering pilots for next year, instead going straight to series with their new schedule.

The economics are something I don’t fully understand. I do get that you’re being ripped off over residuals from digital formats. It’s bullshit and the producers know it. When the writers went on strike, they had a list of demands that they eventually whittled down (resulting in animation writers STILL not getting the respect that they deserve) in order to get what they were asking for regarding digital media. The truth is, no matter how “hardline” you claim to be, the AMPTP isn’t going to give you everything you want. So I hope you keep that in mind when you sit down and begin your talks. Seriously, figure out what’s really important… based on what they gave to the writers and directors guilds, go in expecting the same and work something out fast. (more…)

In honor of the Three Strike Rule’s move to Mondays, I want to highlight the best series airing on Monday nights. No, I’m not talking about Heroes, which pretty much blew for the duration of its 13-episode run in the fall. That they managed to make Kristen Bell seem like a mediocre actress only drives home how badly the producers of Heroes need to get their act together or risk losing even more viewers next year. Instead, I am speaking of CBS’s How I Met Your Mother, the funny, smart sitcom on CBS that has just switched to a new timeslot (8:30 PM Mondays). I own a TiVo, but I still manage to watch this series within 15 minutes of its airing. Why? Plain and simple: Character development. I’ve grown to love the characters on How I Met Your Mother and look forward to their exploits each week — and the mystery of just who Ted will end up with as his future wife (and the “mother” of the show’s name) has kept me tuned in for three years.

Wait, rewind — let’s go over a few things for those of you who aren’t familiar with the show. How I Met Your Mother is the ongoing story of five friends living in New York. They are likable, sincere Ted (Josh Radnor); his roommate, Marshall (Jason Segel) a goofy, but intelligent lawyer; Marshall’s bride, the bubbly Lily (former vampire slayer, Alyson Hannigan); their swinging bachelor friend, Barney (the scene-stealing Neil Patrick Harris); and Robin (Cobie Smulders), the girl who appeared to be the love of Ted’s life, but, as we learned in the very first episode, is not. How do we now this? Because Ted (from some yet-to-be-determined point in the future) is narrating each episode to his teenage children, detailing to them exactly how he met their mother. Future Ted is always off screen, which is convenient because future Ted, the narrator, is voiced by Bob Saget. (more…)

Hey everybody! It’s Easter Sunday! What better day to talk about the devil, huh? In Martin Scorsese’s controversial film The Last Temptation of Christ, the devil appears before Jesus in the guise of a lion, a flame, and in the last temptation, an innocent looking cherub. In the CW series Reaper, we only get Ray Wise. Scorsese’s movie may be the more important work, but I’ll take Ray Wise over any of those other Satans any day of the week.

Wise, most famous as the lecherous Leland Palmer in the early ’90s surreal nighttime drama, Twin Peaks, is having so much fun playing the dark lord; it’s a shame that more people aren’t watching Reaper. The show is closing out its first season “on the bubble” for renewal. That means the network executives in charge are unsure if they’ll pick up the show for a second season, and are waiting to see how Reaper does ratings-wise over the course of the next few weeks before making their decision.

Come on, people! Don’t let them cancel one of the best shows on TV! The CW even moved it off Tuesday night to give it a fair shot (because Tuesdays are owned by the American Idol juggernaut). The show now airs Thursdays at 9:00 pm. So instead of worrying about Idol, Reaper has to deal with CSI, Grey’s Anatomy and the two most respected comedies on television, The Office and 30 Rock.

On second thought, maybe the CW has already given up on the show. (more…)

I consider myself a guy. I dig football, action movies, Aerosmith and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. You know, guy things. So when I heard that The History Channel was premiering a new non-fiction series, Ax Men (Sundays at 10 pm), about the lumber industry, my interest was piqued. What could be more masculine than a bunch of men risking life and limb as they saw down tall trees in the Pacific Northwest? Not much, I say. In the tradition of Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch and The History Channel’s Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men promises a show for guys — and it doesn’t disappoint.

If you’re familiar with the aforementioned series, you know the format. Over the course of a season, we, the viewers, will follow four logging crews in various locations of Oregon during the timber-cutting season. In each episode (I assume — I only saw the premiere episode) the action cuts between the four crews throughout the hour. We meet the Pihl Logging crew, the lifeblood of small town, Vernonia, Oregon. Everyone in Vernonia knows someone who relies on the company’s owner, Mike Pihl, to keep food on the table. Then there’s JM Browning Logging, whose owner sets the no-nonsense tone. Jay Browning lost a hand in a logging accident and wears a prosthetic. He refused any handouts during his recovery and demands the same kind of balls-out attitude from his crew. We also meet the guys from Stump Branch Logging, run by 32 -year-old Melvin Lardy (considered a young guy in the business). Melvin’s been in the trade for a decade, but his equipment is breaking down. When the series begins, his company has taken on a monstrous job that just may break him, too. Finally, we also follow Darnell Holthusen of Gustafson Logging. Gustafson is one of the largest companies in Astoria, Oregon, and Holthusen oversees multiple job sites. As busy as he is, he’s a devoted family man and still finds time to coach pee wee football and counsel underprivileged youth.

What I like about the show is the utter lack of pretense all of these men display. These guys don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about the cameras following their exploits; they have a difficult job to do, and if they get caught up int the “glamor” of being on television, they run the risk or injury or worse. All of these guys have seen or known men who have died on the job, and TV means nothing if you’re screwing around and wind up in a casket. The screener I watched was unedited (trust me, the sound editors are going to have a lot of fun placing “bleeps” in this show) and these loggers kept it real throughout the entire hour. While each episode will provide educational information about the nature of the logging industry, The History Channel has created a comprehensive minisite to accompany the series. There, you will be able to learn more about the history of the logging industry (imagine that) and watch more than 50 shortform pieces, among other interactive activities.

Ax Men is definitely aimed at a specific audience (in particular, the guys who aren’t watching Brothers and Sisters at 10:00 on Sunday nights). I’m not sure how much appeal a series like this will have for women who aren’t interested in a bunch of sweaty guys hiking up their grungy jeans, smoking their Marlboros, and flexing their tired muscles (hold on, I just described a night of clubbing). Anyway, if these type of non-fiction shows are your shot of Jim Beam, Ax Men will definitely entertain you. Check it out tonight. You could do worse; you could be watching The Moment of Truth.

Quarterlife, a show I praised back in January, premiered on NBC this past Tuesday. It was anything but a success for the network or the show’s producers; in fact, NBC experienced its worst ratings in 20 years for that Tuesday night timeslot. The ratings were so abysmal, Quarterlife was canceled after one airing. It didn’t even make it to its scheduled night, Sunday. This is a rare case in which you can’t really blame the network. The marketing department had every entertainment magazine covering the premiere. Even Newsweek gave it exposure, dedicating a full page to an interview with the show’s creators. So what the hell went wrong?

First of all, Quarterlife had the misfortune of airing opposite the final debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The target audience for Quarterlife (and I’m just going out on a limb here) consists of primarily the same people who will be deciding between Obama and Clinton. I’d wager to say that most of the tech-savvy twentysomethings who would be interested in Quarterlife are more focused in how their candidate did on Tuesday night than the navel-gazing of he characters on Quarterlife.

Another factor I fear may have hurt Quarterlife’s chances is the demographics the creators are aiming for. If they wanted to attract young adults in their early-to-mid 20’s, I have news for them: those people aren’t watching television. Hell, all they have to do is watch one episode of Quarterlife to realize that people of this age are active professionally, politically and socially. Who has time for TV when there are drinks to be drunk, rallies to carry signs at, and hours to be spent at the office? That leaves people thirty and older (or teenagers, ha!) to watch the show. Unlike previous efforts from Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, this series does not feature a wide range of characters. And unlike the guilty, soap opera aspect of, say, a Melrose Place, Quarterlife is a damn serious show. It basically is thirtysomething for gen X, or Y, or whatever that generation is labeled. I’d bet that even if Quarterlife had aired on a youth-oriented network like the CW, it would have failed (though the CW would have given it a couple more airings… come on, NBC).

Unfortunately for Quarterlife, the general public will never have a chance to see the characters grow past their whiny selves in the pilot. Then again, anyone can watch new episodes every Thursday and Sunday, when original 11-15 minute segments premiere online. Personally, I have gotten used to seeing the show in these small chapters. As I sat and watched the network version of Quarterlife, I kept waiting for the show to end. This went on for the entire hour – I was actually thrown when watching it. Since this was a series about the computer generation, shows on the Internet, I believe the true audience for the show was always going to be online. I fear now that the show has tanked on the network, the prospects of it continuing online are dim. I hope I’m wrong, because I still believe in it, and Lord knows Herskovitz and Zwick are geniuses.

What does this mean for the future of shows moving from the Internet to television? Most likely it’s a setback. I think the networks are going to be wary of experimenting so soon after this letdown. But when another show backed by A-list talent comes along, something with broader appeal (probably a comedy or another damn procedural) I think we’ll see a network take a chance.

Try as I may, I’m not feeling the love that so many other critics have for Breaking Bad, AMC’s latest original dramatic series. In it, Bryan Cranston portrays Walter White, the mildest of mild-mannered high school chemistry teachers. Walter has a teenage son, a pregnant wife, and has recently learned he has lung cancer that will likely kill him within a year. The White family is far from wealthy; let’s face it, the guy’s a teacher. In the pilot, he’s also pulling down a second job at a shitty car wash (where he’s easily manipulated by his sleazebag boss) and the family is just making ends meet. Like I said, Walter’s wife, Skyler is expecting, and their teenage son, Walter, Jr. has cerebral palsy. Realizing that he has no money to leave to his family, Walter schemes to score a truckload of money by making crystal meth. Using his chemistry know-how, he teams up with a local dealer, Jesse (who used to be one of his students) and winds up cooking the purest meth crystals their small New Mexico city has ever seen. (more…)