Posted on October 25, 2016 at 4:13 pm
There’s something fitting, in this 75th anniversary year for Wonder Woman, that the character’s iconic portrayer, Lynda Carter, has returned to television as the President of the United States in the “Supergirl” series. Spoiler Alert: Cinemablend discusses the twist that reveals something provocative and unexpected about the character, information that raises some telling and contemporary concerns.
Posted on October 22, 2016 at 8:00 am
Carol Burnett has announced a return to series television. And it gets better — she will appear in a sitcom created by Amy Poehler. In presenting Burnett with a SAG award, Poehler and Tina Fey were speaking from the heart when they explained how much she had influenced and inspired them both. We don’t know anything about the show’s premise or other cast members, but we do know it has a contractual guarantee to be aired (rare for a pilot). Can’t wait.
Posted on October 19, 2016 at 10:56 am
Michael Cavna, who covers comics, graphic novels, and animation for the Washington Post writes about Peanuts’ classic Halloween special, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” The family favorite celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
Their swift narrative certainty for “Great Pumpkin” freed Melendez (who also voiced Snoopy) and his crew — including gifted animator Bill Littlejohn — to create stunning watercolor skies and rich autumn hues that provide every scene with its own mood, apart from the characters. Melendez brilliantly painted both motion and emotion.
“It is by far the most colorful of the shows,” Mendelson says, “as Bill and his team captured the vibrancy of the fall season.”
And the camera, often so static in “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” zooms in for facial close-ups in the follow-up that provide the viewer with a poignant intimacy.
Posted on October 11, 2016 at 10:51 am
One of the year’s best television series is “Speechless,” about a family with three children, one in a wheelchair. Minnie Driver stars as the fiercely protective mother, John Ross Bowie (Kripke from “Big Bang Theory”) as the more quietly supportive father, and Micah Fowler, who like the character he plays, has cerebral palsy. He also has impeccable comic timing.
And I like the way it matter-of-factly presents the way life reorders your priorities.
I like the series’ frankness about the impact that a disabled sibling can have on the other children.
Highly recommended.
Posted on October 9, 2016 at 4:21 pm
An article in The Verge discusses two television comedies about, well, death. I’m a fan of “The Good Place,” with Kristen Bell and Ted Danson in the story of a young woman who mistakenly ends up in heaven. It has some complex and thoughtful things to say about life, death, the afterlife, and the overall existential questions of purpose and meaning. One of the characters is even a former professor of ethics and philosophy. The Verge correctly calls it “conceptually ambitious.”
I am not a fan of the other show, “The Last Man on Earth,” which the Verge describes as “the high watermark of gallows humor, a release valve for our end-times anxieties.”
The end of the world scenarios are explored in dramas and comedies and mixtures of both from “The Leftovers” to “The Walking Dead” and “You, Me, and the Apocalypse.” And premiering this week, “No Tomorrow.”
What does this say about the state of the world? Are we terrified or evolving?
