Monday: Men of a Certain Age When it comes to original programming, TNT hasn't fared nearly as well as fellow cable netlet USA. That's because whereas the latter channel has succeeded by matching high concept fluffiness (Burn Notice, Royal Pains, White Collar) with up and coming actors (Jeffrey Donovan, Mark Feuerstein and Matthew Bomer), TNT Read More
As much as we loved seeing the inauguration of Barack Obama yesterday, our long national nightmare doesn't officially end until tomorrow morning. After what feels like eight years, the Academy Award nominations will finally (finally!) be announced, putting an end to the endless season of speculation. In lieu of any predictions--be honest, how many times Read More
We might have to start calling this "Old Timers Weekend." Last year at this time, the Jack Nicholson/Morgan Freeman weepy The Bucket List topped the box office with close to $20 million in receipts. This weekend, it's expected that the national rollout of Clint Eastwood's grandpa vigilante saga, Gran Torino, could very well take Read More
It suddenly occurred to me just before I started grinding out my year-end summaries and 10-best lists that I have been engaged in this activity for a very long time. If my increasingly faulty memory is correct, this marks the 50th anniversary of my published 10-best lists, dating back to Jonas Mekas’ Movie Journal in Read More
Today, The Huffington Post's Media Vertical has a huge, attention-grabbing above-the-scroll headline about The New York Times' announcement that the paper is now selling ads on A1, which reads, FRONT PAGE FOR SALE.
It should be noted that the Huffington Post, which was the subject of Simon Dumenco's Ad Age column today in Read More
To quote The Joker: "And here... we... go." Including the one-week qualifying run of Steven Soderbergh's four-hour epic Che at the Ziegfeld Theater, four films with Oscar hopes hit theaters this weekend. Stars like Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Kate Winslet will all fight for the highfalutin ticket buyers' heart. Read More
Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, from a screenplay by Nick Schenk, based on a story by Dave Johannson and Mr. Schenk, caps his career as both a director and an actor with Read More
Normally, the Best Original Song category at the Academy Awards is the bane of our existence: an overloaded mess of badness that extends an already unending night into ass numbing proportions. No matter how the producers try to gussy up the presentation--"let's have Beyonce sing all the songs!"--the performances invariably stink. Of course the exception Read More
We only needed to see the kick-ass trailer for Milk to slot this Gus Van Sant film straight into Best Picture contention. After all, it has all of those gold statuette elements: a true story—of California’s first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk, who was murdered alongside San Francisco Read More
Clint Eastwood is the hardest working septuagenarian this side of John McCain. Fresh off the release of his first Oscar hopeful, Changeling, comes the trailer for his next Oscar hopeful, Gran Torino. Someone tell the man to take it easy! In the film, the 78-year-old Mr. Eastwood stars as a tough and grizzled widower Read More
