Lupe Ontiveros. known for her many film and TV roles (“Desperate Housewives”, most recently Rob Schneider’s “Rob!”) died on July 26, 2012, after a battle with liver cancer, at age of 69.
Here’s my list of most interesting film premieres still to open in cinemas across English speaking countries in August 2012. Few titles to see with your mates, few titles to see with your dates. List is completely subjective and skewed by my personal likes and dislikes and if you think something should be included, just use comments form to submit full description of films you think should be on this list and justification for your submission and I’ll happily add it and you’ll be fully credited on the page.
No memory at all. Total Recall remake. Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel
Plot: Remake of the 1990ies film with Arnold Schwarzenegger losely based on novel by Philip K. Dick.
Why watch: Anything and everything based on Philip K. Dick novels is always worth checking.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Production: USA $200 million
Director: Len Wiseman
Script: Mark Bomback, Kurt Wimmer, Philip K. Dick (novel)
Starring: Colin Farrell, Bokeem Woodbine, Bryan Cranston, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Ethan Hawke, John Cho, Bill Nightly
Cinemas: Friday August 3, 2012
Premiere: Thursday 16th August 2012 Cinemas: Wednesday 29th August 2012
Cinemas: Thursday 6th September 2012
She was Iron Lady, he was Man In Black. It was love from the first sight.
Plot: After 30 years of marriage, Kay and Arnold Soames attend intense marriage counseling.
Why watch: Solid cast. I wouldn’t expect Oscars though.
Notes: Blatant ignorance to the movie starring Colin Firth, Heather Graham and Minnie Driver of the same title just 9 years ago.
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Production: USA $30 million
Director: David Frankel
Script: Vanessa Taylor
Starring: Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Steve Carell, Elisabeth Shue, Mimi Rogers
Cinemas: Friday August 10, 2012
Cinemas: Thursday 23rd August 2012
Cinemas: Friday 13th September 2012
R.I.P. Chad Everett
Chad Everett, “Golden Globe” nominated star of 1970ies “Medical Center”, known from appearances in “Airplane II”, “Mulholland Dr.,” and Gus Van Sant’s remake of “Psycho” and most recently from guest roles in “Castle” and starring as aged version of Dean Winchester in “Supernatural” died on Tuesday, July 24 aged 76 after battle with lung cancer.
“.. and you will get your crew to go online, watch ‘Chicago Fire’ and press 5 stars…”
In unprecedented move NBC announced on Tuesday that pilots for most of their upcoming TV shows will be made available online for sampling purposes. The shows will be available through cable, satellite and telco on-demand service providers, NBC.com, several NBC owned local affiliate TV station websites, Hulu, Hulu Plus, iTunes, Amazon and Xbox. Samplers for the following show selection are expected:
“Go On” – Sampling starts Wednesday August 9, show expected to premiere on Tuesday September 11 at 9:00/8:00c
“The New Normal” – Sampling starts Wednesday August 29 – Show expected to Premiere Tuesday September 11 at 9:30/8:30c (keep in mind it remains highly unlikely for any comedy shows to premiere on 9/11 anniversary)
“RevolutiON” Sampling starts Tuesday September 4, show premieres Monday September 17 at 10:00/9:00c
“Guys With Kids” Sampling starts Thursday September 13, show premieres Wednesday September 26 at 8:30/7:30c
“Animal Practice” Sampling starts Monday August 13, show premieres Wednesday September 26 at 8:00/7:00c
“Chicago Fire” Sampling starts Thursday September 27, show premieres Wednesday October 10 at 10:00/9:00c
NBC is set to provide a full-episode and commercial-free network preview of the new comedies during London Olympics coverage – “Go On” pilot will air on August 8 and “Animal Practice” on August 12. NBC will also air six-minute teaser for “RevolutiON” on Saturday, August 4 at approximately 10:54 p.m.
Nominations to 64th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards for the best television programming between June 2011 and June 2012 were announced earlier today. Shows and artists will be awarded during ceremony hosted by Jimmy Kimmel in L.A on September 23, 2012 and televised live by ABC. Nominations as usual have several baffling classifications, for example the cast of “Nurse Jackie” is nominated in “comedy series” groups (Ef me sideways, that’s a drama, if I ever saw one!), entire series “Sherlock” received nomination for seemingly just the first episode of season two while “Luther” currently in pre-production of 3rd season and regular 13 piece TV series “American Horror Story” currently awaiting second season have been nominated as “mini series”. HBO leads the list with 81 nominations in total, followed by CBS with 60 nominees and PBS, listed 58 times. Among series, “American Horror Story” and “Mad Men” stay up top with 17 nominations each, closely trailed by “Downton Abbey” and “Hatfields & Mccoys” both with 16 nominations and “Hemingway & Gellhorn” with 15.
The nominees in main categories are (little flags indicate mainly British productions or actors):
Playing chicken. Giancarlo Esposito as Gus vs Bryan Cranston as Walter in AMC’s “Breaking Bad”
Outstanding Drama Series
Boardwalk Empire
Breaking Bad
Downton Abbey
Game of Thrones
Homeland
Mad Men
All the vice-president’s men. The cast of HBO’s “Veep”
Outstanding Comedy Series
30 Rock
The Big Bang Theory
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Girls
Modern Family
Veep
Continue reading »64th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards 2012 nominations… «
Secretary Of State Elaine Barrish with Tweedledum and Twiddledumber
USA’s “Political Animals” is the only large profile, big names, known faces, high budget TV series to be premiered on American TV this summer. And it’s packaged in self-contained, mini format, six installment package.
Meet Elaine Barrish (Sigourney Weaver), former First Lady and Democratic presidential hopeful who lost her primary bid to become party nominee. To the guy who later offered her position of Secretary Of State in his new office. Elaine recently divorced Bud Hammond (Ireland’s own Ciarán Hinds), ex governor, former President Of US of A, self-appointed “most popular Democrat since Kennedy had his brain splattered against Dallas concrete” and a man known by the whole world as inappropriate womanizer with long record of extramarital affairs. If you are still not getting the hint who the writers pointed their pen at don’t worry, it won’t be more than 10 minutes before Bud will spell it out for you and introduce himself as “42nd President of USA”. This however, is as far as the authors of “Political Animals” venture into “based on true facts” territory.
Continue reading »“Political Animals” – more “Dynasty” than “West… «
During San Diego Comic Con show on Saturday Marvel announced few more sequels and full set of brand new characters to be introduced to cinema screens in the near future. Codenamed “Phase Two” the plan includes two new movies based on comic book characters and three sequels to already existing franchises. Movies with new characters are:
Ant-Man logo from San Diego Comic Con
The character was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and is alter ago of Henry Pym, a brilliant scientist who invented a substance that allowed him to change his size. This announcement is no surprise, Edgar Wright (“Hot Fuzz”, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World”) has been courting Marvel for at least five years to direct Ant-Man and Marvel finally decided to green light it.
“Hey guys, let’s back away slowly before they make us sign anything”
A notorious gossip started by Kate Kotler in a “Bleeding Cool” article (based on a random one liner during comic con 10th anniversary press conference) has it that Joss Whedon and The Science Channel’s Debbie Myers are planning to reboot “Firefly” (with original cast at that) in the near future. I decided that instead of spending 10 minutes on sending my linguistic abilities into overdrive (if you read any of the previous rants of mine you probably quickly discovered I’m a foreigner myself, and as such English is not my first language) on disparaging investigative skills of the Bleeding Cool columnist without making swear word filter in google search engine blush tomato red, I’d rather explore the actual possibility of such reboot happening.
Firefly is one of the best examples of an internet spawned post-mortem legend. When the original broadcast started on Fox in September 2002, everything that could go wrong, had go wrong. It was given the “Friday night death slot”, which is traditionally impossible to defend in ratings. It then aired with a different pilot than writers intended (“The Train Job” instead of two hour “Serenity”). The Pilot was a bit of a train wreck in ratings, Nielsen given it 4.1/8. Which to all of us outside of US newspeak means that only approximately 4.3 million viewers out of 105.5 million households that owned TV in US at the time had their sets tuned to Firefly premiere. And at the time it had absolutely nothing to compete with. The series broadcasted on Fox at 8:00/07:00c before “John Doe” . The only scheduled scripted programming in its time slot was Providence and Sabrina The Teenage Witch. “John Doe”, a show with Dominic Purcell (“Prison Break”) which noone remembers now, had at least 2 million plus more viewers every time (which also means 2 million people simply didn’t bother turning their TV on to Fox an hour before favorite show in 9 o clock slot on Friday, circa autumn 2002) while “Providence” would regularly attract twice as many viewers as “Firefly” ever reached. Continue reading »“Firefly” reboot gossip spreads across interwebs like… «
“I have it on good authority that we’ll have to stay on this dilapidated parking lot for at least another season”
Following what has got to be the slowest season start in history of Sci Fi TV shows, Steven Spielberg’s exec produced “Falling Skies” reportedly received full order of 10 episode season 3 of the series. This is, of course good news, Sci Fi TV series are dying breed and as rare as hens teeth these days, especially in summer slot, but I absolutely love a good whinge about this particular show because it serves as a prime example of just how odd viewer rating and ordering system of US television series is. Where less that 6 million viewers is enough to secure another year worth of lifeline to this quite expensive to produce show, we could stay all night long reading out loud long list of titles that had their plug pulled often with twice the viewer numbers and fraction of the budget.
“Falling Skies” is rumored to cost absolute fortune in production ($2.5mil+ budget per episode if you are to believe blogosphere), considering the beating and slagging it regularly receives on forums and in blog, just how low budget it looks in some episodes (last years season finale battle, you could almost literally count the same two handful of extras running around in circles behind camera to create skirmish crowd around barricade made of few classroom desks and pile of milk crates) plus a story arc that sometimes slows down and flat lines so much it’s feels even slower than pace of recovery from Greek recession, you would imagine it would be taken off air in a heartbeat. But against all odds, this show so far remains absolutely unsinkable.
Thank you TNT I’m looking forward to complaining about this show next summer.
Watching George W. lie. Eric McCormack as Dr. Daniel Pierce and Rachel Leigh Cook as Special Agent Kate Moretti in TNT’s “Perception”
The idea of a cop/agent/detective bouncing their investigative skills off some unusually skilled, genius, specialist “consultant” with troubled past, impaired social skills, substance abuse or highly awkward persona in order to wrap up any crime investigation under 40 minutes flat is nothing new in the world of prime time television. One would imagine that after decades of Monks, Bones, Lightmans, Houses, Psychs, Castles, Numb3rs and other Mentalists helping to save lives or put bad people behind bars on our screens on weekly basis, the pool of diplomaed specialists and fringe science doctorate holders overlooked by crime story tv scribes could be counted on one hand. But while by now most of the series and characters mentioned above either byte the dust or struggle to keep viewers awake, TNT decided it’s better late than never and last night decided to roll out their own investigator plus eccentric sidekick extraordinaire summer series – “Perception”.
The series focus on a recently demoted FBI Special Agent Kate Moretti portrayed by Canadian teen romcom actress of yesteryear Rachael Leigh Cook (“She’s All That”, “Josie and the Pussycats”), returning to enlist help of her ex. teacher, a neuroscientist, university professor and avid crossword enthusiast Dr. Daniel Pierce, played by a fellow Canadian Eric McCormack (“Will & Grace”). Within minutes we discover Dr. Pierce is a brilliant scholar, author of countless volumes of acclaimed reading material in his field, with cognitive skills of a compulsive apopheniac and large enough portfolio of real life cases ready and waiting in nearby neurological ward to just pull them out of his sleeve for illustrative purposes on per case basis. Continue reading »“Perception” series premiere «
Ernest Borgnine with Kurt Russel in Escape from New York
1955 Academy Award winner Ernest Borgnine (“Marty”, “Airwolf”, “Escape from New York”), died on Sunday July 8 of renal failure surrounded by friends and family. He was 95.
“I know the script doesn’t make sense Noomi, but this Lindelof guy over there says we are going to have 22 episodes to bridge it with the original Alien”
Blu-Ray.com reports preliminary details about French triple disc “Prometheus” BluRay release planned for October 3rd. The list of extras includes 18 minutes of viral videos, 120 minute long “Making of” collection and 15 minutes (yes, just 15 minutes) of deleted and alternate scenes. Link to page and details – http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=9076
Our own exclusive, unofficial info hints that the US version will include 4th disk with recorded audio message from script writer Damon Lindelof repeatedly asking Alien fans for forgiveness in form of “Lost” distress radio call, every minute until media runs out of space.
..”and in other news, HBO renewed our show for second season…”
In surprising decision on July 2nd HBO renewed Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom” (with Jeff Daniels and Emily Mortimer) for the second season despite falling viewer numbers in US.
At the moment the show enjoys very good reception and unprecedented broadcast syndication abroad. It airs simultaneously on HBO Canada, with just one day delay on HBO Hungary and HBO Poland as well as pay per view Sky Go in Germany and Austria. The show also premiered in Israel on June 30th and last night on July 2nd on HBO Netherlands. Sky Atlantic in the United Kingdom and Ireland will begin broadcasting on July 10, 2012.
It’s good to know to know we are going to enjoy at least 20 episodes even if viewer numbers in US don’t give it justice. Thumbs up HBO.