Advice to a Would-Be Film Critic
Lisa Nesselson, a Variety critic based in Paris, shared with us this "reply to a Northwestern roommate of mine in search of words of wisdom about our chosen profession."
James Morris: My Favorite Wasteland (.wilsoncenter.org)
There are snobs about TV who won't admit that it's ever worth their time; they have a set but can't remember where they keep it. And there are the hooked, for whom the lit screen is the glow to their lives. Mostly, there are in-betweeners, who pick and choose. Can you join their ranks and still respect yourself in the morning? I think you can, though you may find yourself razzed by skeptics. Make no mistake: The faith of the TV sympathist will be tested, even by friends ...
CBS starts the night with '60 Minutes', followed by a FRESH'Cold Case', then the made-for-TV-movie 'Robert Ludlum's Covert One: The Hades Factor'.
NBC opens the night with 'Dateline', followed by a FRESH'West Wing', then a FRESH'Law & Order: Criminal Intent', followed by a FRESH'Crossing Jordan'.
ABC begins the night with a FRESH'America's So-Called Funniest Home Videos', followed by a FRESH'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition', then a FRESH'Desperate Housewives', followed by the SERIES PREMIERE'What About Brian'.
The WB offers an hourlong RERUN'Reba', followed by a FRESH'Charmed', then a FRESH'Pepper Dennis'.
Faux has a FRESH'Malcolm', followed by a RERUN'King Of The Hill', then a RERUN'Simpsons', followed by a FRESH'War At Home', then a RERUN'Family Guy', followed by another FRESH'War At Home'.
UPN has an old 'Alias', followed by an old 'Fear Factor'.
A&E has 'Flip This House', 'Mysteries Of The Bible', followed by the SERIES PREMIERE'God Or The Girl', then another FRESH'God Or The Girl'.
AMC offers the movie 'Beaches', followed by the movie 'Love Affair', then the movie 'When A Man Loves A Woman'.
BBC -
[1pm] 'Kumars at No. 42' - Donny Osmond;
[1:40pm] 'Kumars at No. 42' - Boy George;
[2:20pm] 'Kumars at No. 42' - Tom Jones;
[6pm] 'Bargain Hunt' - Peterborough 35;
[6:30pm] 'Bargain Hunt '- Detling 26;
[7pm] 'Cash in the Attic' - Episode 6;
[8pm] 'Cash in the Attic' - Episode 7;
[9pm] 'What Not To Wear' - Episode 1;
[10pm] 'Footballers Wives' - Episode 9;
[11pm] 'Mile High' - Episode 9;
[12am] 'What Not to Wear' - Episode 1;
[1am] 'Footballers Wives' - Episode 9;
[2am] 'Mile High' - Episode 9;
[3am] 'Worst Week of My Life' - Episode 1;
[3:40am] 'Worst Week of My Life' - Episode 2;
[4:20am] 'Worst Week of My Life' - Episode 3;
[5am] 'Without Prejudice' - Episode 6;
[6am] 'BBC World News'. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent', another 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent', 'Inside The Actors Studio' (Hugh Grant), and yet another 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent'.
Comedy Central has has the movie 'Clueless', followed by the movie 'Malibu's Most Wanted', then the hourlong 'Carlos Mencia: No Strings Attached'.
History has has 'The Ten Commandments', 'Mega Disasters: San Francisco Earthquake', and '10 Days That Changed America'.
IFC -
[6AM] Buffalo Soldiers (2001);
[7:45AM] East is East (1998);
[9:30AM] At The IFC Center #12 (2006);
[10AM] Happy Times (2001);
[12PM] Seven and a Match (2001);
[1:45PM] Short: Blue City (1996);
[2PM] Critical Care (1997);
[4PM] son of the bride;
[6:15PM] Seven and a Match (2001);
[8PM] Only the Strong Survive (2002);
[9:45PM] Jet Lag (2002);
[11:30PM] Only the Strong Survive (2002);
[1:15AM] Critical Care (1997);
[3:05AM] Jet Lag (2002);
[4:30AM] Chop Socky: Cinema Hong Kong (2004);
[5:30AM] Short: Foster Stories. (ALL TIMES EDT)
SciFi has has the movie 'Jason And The Argonauts', followed by the movie 'Jason And The Argonauts', again.
Sundance -
[6:40AM] Broken Column;
[7:30AM] Under Milk Wood;
[9AM] Rick;
[10:35AM] Seventeen;
[12PM] Comfort and Joy;
[1:45PM] In the Sun;
[2PM] Ladette to Lady: Episode 1;
[3PM] Kath & Kim: Kath & Kim: Gay;
[3:30PM] Under Milk Wood;
[5PM] Celestial Clockwork;
[6:30PM] Hermitage-niks: A Passion for the Hermitage: Episode 3 - Empty Frames;
[7PM] Ladette to Lady: Episode 1;
[8PM] Slings and Arrows: Episode 3: Rarer Monsters;
[8:50PM] Eat;
[9PM] Monkey Dust: Episode 6;
[9:30PM] Kath & Kim: Kath & Kim: Gay;
[10PM] Rick;
[11:45PM] In the Sun;
[12AM] H;
[2AM] Slings and Arrows: Episode 3: Rarer Monsters;
[3AM] Monkey Dust: Episode 6;
[3:30AM] Mutant Aliens;
[5AM] Celestial Clockwork. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Carly Sheehan, left, begins to read a poem as her mother, Cindy Sheehan, looks on near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, Saturday, April 15, 2006.
Photo by LM Otero
Donald Trump is a fan of Wyclef Jean. Trump invited the hip-hop artist to perform at a concert Friday night for about 200 business associates.
"I'm very into music, and Clef is a great guy," Trump told The Associated Press.
Jean took the stage neatly dressed in a suit and sang more than a dozen songs. By the time his hour-long performance was over, the Grammy-award winning artist was stripped to his bare feet, pants and undershirt.
U.S. singer Lionel Richie sings in front of the ruined home of Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi in the Libyan capital of Tripoli April 14, 2006. With Gaddafi's home as a backdrop, Richie jived and rocked for an adoring Libyan audience in a concert to mark the 20th anniversary of a U.S. raid on the North African country.
Photo by Ahmed Jadallah
A San Francisco radio talk show team was fired over the weekend after offering on air a reward to have Penn Jillette killed for making inflammatory comments about Mother Teresa.
CBS affiliate KIFR-FM 106.9 fired host John London, his producer Dennis Cruz and sports reporter Chris Townsend for comments during a two-hour rant April 4, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
London, responding to remarks Jillette said on his syndicated CBS radio show the day before, said "$5,000 to the person that kills Penn Jillette. If he suffers, I'll make it $7,000."
Jillette said Mother Teresa, the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner, "is a bad person," a fraud, adding Paris Hilton was "much too moral" to play the deceased nun in an upcoming movie, the newspaper said.
London told the Mercury News his reward offer was "obviously sarcastic" and that he was "sickened" by Jillette's remarks.
Three members of a video team for The Weather Channel have been charged with trespassing for allegedly refusing to leave the property of a woman who was killed by a tornado.
Edward John Lazano Jr., Bradley Reynolds and Jorma Brandon Duran were freed on $500 bail each after their arrests Wednesday, The Southern Standard reported. Calls seeking comment Saturday from the Warren County sheriff's office were not immediately returned.
They allegedly were videotaping on the property of Sherry Bruce, who was killed when storms struck the area on April 7.
Bruce Dern turned to his grandfather for inspiration when preparing for his role on HBO's "Big Love," a polygamy drama set in Utah.
Dern's grandfather, George Henry Dern, was Utah's 21st governor. He served two terms from 1925 to 1933 as the second non-Mormon and Democrat to lead the state.
"I drove to my sister's house in Phoenix where she has all the family scrapbooks, and I pored over all of them, just looking at the Salt Lake City years," Dern said.
Taini, a 43-day-old cheetah cub, takes a sip from a bottle filled with a milk supplement Saturday, April 15, 2006, at Six Flags Marine Worlds veterinary clinic in Vallejo, Calif. Taini, which means returning moon in Native American dialect, was born at Wildlife Safari in Oregon and has joined Six Flags Marine Worlds animal ambassador program to be cared for by the Parks trainers after the cubs mom show inadequate maternal care. Taini weighs a little more than four pounds.
Photo by Dale Arnold
Some rare family photos and a collection of Truman Capote's letters to his favorite aunt in Alabama - on topics ranging from Harper Lee to Tallulah Bankhead to his longing for down-home butter beans - are going on permanent display in the state's literary capital, where the writer spent some of his boyhood.
The collection, while apparently containing no riveting new material on his life and times, is a coup for the town that was spun into memorable works by Capote and Lee, his childhood friend and neighbor. It was assembled by Capote's cousin, Jennings Faulk Carter, who donated it to the Monroe County Heritage Museums for an exhibit that opens April 27 in Monroeville's Old Courthouse on town square.
Carter said there has been a "lot of static" in his family about turning over the family memorabilia, but he said he's making it public so people will learn more about his famous cousin.
Take a novelty record, infuse it with the perfect holiday timing, toss in a bit of "Fresh Air" and, voila, What I Like About Jew has its first hit.
The duo -- Rockapella founder/former leader Sean Altman and Blender magazine music editor Rob Tannenbaum -- self-released its debut album, "Unorthodox," April 10. The next day, it ranked a pitiful 34,598 on the Amazon sales chart.
But later that day, after Terry Gross played the pair's Passover song, "They Tried to Kill Us (We Survived, Let's Eat)," on her NPR program, "Fresh Air," sales at Amazon started to soar. By April 12, the album was ranked No. 45 -- ahead of such acts as Coldplay, the Black Eyed Peas and Morrissey.
The conservative religious group Opus Dei has asked for a disclaimer on the upcoming film based on the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code."
Opus Dei, portrayed as a murderous, power-hungry sect in the novel by Dan Brown, wrote in an April 6 letter to Sony Corp. that a disclaimer would show respect to Jesus and to the Catholic Church.
"Any such decision by Sony would be a gesture of respect toward the figure of Jesus, to the history of the Church and to the religious beliefs of viewers," Opus Dei wrote in the letter, which was posted on its Italian Web site.
Dancer Yang Liping, from southwest China's Yunnan province, performs her peacock dance during a musical drama entitled 'Dynamic Yunnan', in Chengdu, in Sichuan province Friday, April 14, 2006. Yang, one of China's best known dancers and a member of the Bai ethnic group, spent more than two years choreographing 'Dynamic Yunnan' to create a dance which depicts the life of the ethnic people in her native Yunnan.
Grammy-winning singer-producer Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds has filed a breach of contract lawsuit against singer Anita Baker, claiming she owes him more than $250,000.
According to the lawsuit, filed Thursday in Superior Court, Baker broke two oral agreements with Edmonds, who co-wrote, produced and performed on the song "Like You Used to Do" on Baker's 2004 album "My Everything."
The lawsuit claims Baker refused to pay Edmonds producer's royalties equaling at least $100,000 from an estimated more than 500,000 albums sold.
Edmonds, 47, also alleges that he and Baker had an agreement to play four concerts together, but that Baker canceled two shows and refused to pay $150,000 for those dates.
A Japanese archer of ancient yabusame archery, dressed as a samurai warrior, aims his bow and arrow at a target as he rides a horse at full gallop during the Yabusame festival in Tokyo April 15, 2006. Yabusame was encouraged by the ancient shogun as a necessary accomplishment for a samurai in a strict ceremony.
Photo by Issei Kato
A controversial Texas program to send undercover agents into bars to arrest drunks has been halted after a firestorm of protest from the public.
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has "temporarily suspended" what it called "Operation Last Call" even though it still believes it was worthwhile, commission spokeswoman Carolyn Beck said on Thursday.
She said most of those arrested in the sting operations had been "dangerously drunk" and might have tried to drive if TABC agents had not busted them.
A Varig airlines cargo plane from Brazil sits parked at the Mexico City airport with its nose up in the air after the cargo was unevenly distributed on Wednesday April 12, 2006. Brazil's troubled flagship airline Varig, is reeling under an estimated US$3.3 billion (euro2.7 billion) in debt and is currently in the restructuring phase of bankruptcy proceedings and last April 12, some 300 Varig employees boarded a chartered jet to Brasilia, the nation's capital, to call on the federal government to bail out the company, which employs 11,000 people.
Photo by Adrian Roque
A theatre audience in Japan will be sniffing their noses - literally - at a new Hollywood adventure film when it opens later this month.
A new service from a major telecommunications company, NTT Communications Corp., will synchronize seven different smells to parts of The New World, starring Colin Farrell.
A floral scent accompanies a love scene, while a mix of peppermint and rosemary is emitted during a tear-jerking scene. Joy is a citrus mix of orange and grapefruit, while anger is enhanced by a herb-like concoction with a hint of eucalyptus and tea tree.
The smells waft from special machines under the seats in the back rows of two movie theatres, which create different fragrances by controlling the mix of oils stored in the machines, company spokeswoman Akiko Suzaki said Wednesday.
Dame Muriel Spark, whose spare and humorous novels made her one of the most admired British writers of the postwar years, has died in Tuscany, Italian officials said Saturday. She was 88.
Spark had lived in Italy since the late 1960s, first in Rome and later in a converted 13th-century church in Tuscany with her friend of many years, painter and sculptor Penelope Jardine.
But she retained the accent of her birth and youth in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she attended James Gillespie's High School for Girls and was taught by the prototype for her most famous character - Miss Jean Brodie.
While the 1961 book "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" made her famous internationally, she already had written seven novels, three volumes of poetry and respected biographical and critical work about the Bronte family, Mary Shelley and John Masefield.
Novelist Graham Greene gave her a monthly allowance and some wine when she was poverty-stricken, on condition that she did not thank him or pray for him.
Born Muriel Sarah Camberg in Edinburgh in 1918, Spark was married at 19 to Sidney Oswald Spark, a teacher, and had a son, Robin.
They settled in Rhodesia - now Zimbabwe - but divorced after six years.
Muriel Spark returned to London in 1944 and worked in intelligence for the Foreign Office before entering the literary world as a publisher's copy editor, poet and literary critic.
Spark had quirky writing habits. She wrote longhand, with little if any revision, in spiral-bound notebooks she got from a stationer in Edinburgh. She never used a pen anyone else had touched.
She was made a dame in 1993, the female equivalent of a knight. In 1963, she became a fellow of The Royal Society of Literature, and in 1978 an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Orangutans stay in a cage in a wildlife protection centre in Ratchaburi province, about 125 km (78 miles) west of Bangkok April 15, 2006. Wildlife officials from Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia are scheduled to meet on April 21 to decide the fate of dozens of orangutans which were smuggled into Thailand nearly two years ago. Thai authorities in 2004 confiscated more than 100 orangutans from the private Safari World zoo near Bangkok, where they were forced to perform in daily boxing matches.
Photo by Sukree Sukplang
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