Jeffrey Donovan by Glenn Watson/USA Network
Posted by Eric2542...Cheers to Burn Notice for being one of the flashiest, smartest, most exciting and best shows on TV. Jeffrey Donovan’s excellent turn as former spy Michael Weston, combined with snappy dialogue and edge-of-your-seat stories, makes this show the James Bond of television. Plus, when you have costars like Gabrielle Anwar and Bruce Campbell, you can’t go wrong. • Share your own raves and rants about other shows on the Reader Cheers & Jeers discussion board.• We may feature your Cheer or Jeer on TVGuide.com or in TV Guide magazine!
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Burn Notice returned tonight on the USA cable channel, at 10p and 1a...but we, and protagonist Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan), aren't too much further along in figuring out how or exactly why he was given his burn notice, or identity- and asset-destroying walking papers (or lack of papers), from the espionage agency for which he was working. After luring him into trailer of a semi with the promise of a face-to-face meeting and answers, the mysterious voice over his buddy Sam's car's emergency radio tells him to call her "Carla," and is eventually revealed to belong to actress Tricia Helfer...a fact you'd have to work pretty hard to avoid hearing about in advance.But before we see Carla, we learn that Michael's trip in the back of the tractor-trailer was just a means of getting him on site, so that he could be blackmailed into a task for Carla and whomever she might be working with, or for. Michael emerges from the trailer to see a computer security expert lying bound, gagged an...
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Burn Notice Season One courtesy 20th Century Fox
Michael Westen, a contractor with the CIA, has received a "Burn Notice" - he's been blacklisted. He has to track down the person responsible while avoiding people he's crossed paths with in the past, and calls from his mother. Yup, mom is thrilled her son is back in Miami, and now she wants to spend time with her son. His ex-girlfriend, a deadly IRA-trained beauty, wants to talk about why their relationship failed (spy... IRA operative, gee, I wonder?), and how they can get things back on track. Michael is forced to become a private investigator, aided by his friend Sam (Bruce Campbell) so he can put food on the table, and bullets in his gun. The set includes all 11 episodes, including the double-length finale, audition footage, various montages, and commentary with the cast and crew on selected scenes from each episode. It's a fun, action-filled show. — Gord LaceyBurn Notice Season 1 on Amazon.com.
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I've been looking forward to this season finale all week. We finally got to meet the mysterious Philip Cowan; that definitely didn't go as planned. Sam's double blackmail case gets more and more complex until ultimately it puts him in mortal danger. Michael finally understands why his mother is so needy and learns that in a crunch he can count on family. And lastly, I think we finally understand why Michael needs to find out why he was burned: His job was his family. He could count on them to have his back and be there when he needed them.Let's start at the beginning. Michael's feeling a little jumpy, as evidenced by him pulling a gun on Sam while he's working out. Cowan burned him, sent someone to kill him and is now off the grid. When Cowan calls him to meet, they start a kind of high-stakes scavenger hunt — Cowan leaves sophisticated clues that Michael must interpret and follow to get a face-to-face meeting. Michael's first mistake is taking Sam as backup. Cowan spots Sam an...
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Lucy Lawless sports a shiner on Burn Notice.
Lucy Lawless as a damsel in distress? Say it ain't so! In a wild departure from her usual badass roles, the former Xena: Warrior Princess star will appear on USA Network's Burn Notice (tonight, 10 pm/ET) as a weepy, needy, emotionally frazzled mom who hires Michael (Jeffrey Donovan) to track down her missing husband and son. A much ballsier Lawless plays herself on Curb Your Enthusiasm in an episode airing Oct. 21. We gave the actress a call to discuss both gigs, plus the one that got away — the disastrous American version of Footballers' Wives.
TVGuide.com: It's downright surreal seeing you — a fem
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Question: A TV show that (almost) fills the void left by my dearly departed Alias, USA's Burn Notice has become my new favorite show. While it's not as flashy as Alias, and the twists and turns not nearly as breathtaking, it does manage to seamlessly blend the best of all worlds: action, comedy, espionage, sexual tension, family dramedy, escapade-of-the week storylines and a series-spanning mystery to solve (who put out the "burn notice" on Michael and why). It's as if someone threw Alias, Moonlighting, CSI: Miami and MacGyver into the spin cycle and out popped Burn Notice. Jeffrey Donovan, whom I only remembered as the smarmy client in Hitch, delivers such a charmingly witty performance as burned CIA operative Michael Weston. The spectacular casting of his cohorts — bold-n-brassy yet sexy former-IRA assassin (Gabrielle Anwar), washed-up alcoholic ex-spook with uncertain loyalties (Bruce Campbell), not to mention his formerly estranged, not-as-helpless-as-she-seems mother (the ...
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I know this blog is coming a little late in the game, but I’ve been watching this show since the beginning. So whether you’ve been a fan from the first episode or a Johnny-come-lately, welcome to the party.The PlayersMichael Westen: a former spook who’s been burned. He's deposited in Miami without any money, credit or job references. He takes on local cases to make money while he tries to find out who burned him.Fiona: Michael’s former flame, who still carries a torch. Her accent in the first episode (and her name) might have us believe she’s Irish, but she can fake an American accent pretty well. She’s former IRA and met Michael on the job.Sam: a spy buddy of Michael’s forced to keep tabs on him. Sam’s living comfortably off his pension and can’t have his friendship with Michael interfere with that. When Michael discovers his duplicity, the agency sends in new surveillance.Jason Bly: the new guy. He works for a branch of the NSA and isn&...
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Bill Nighy in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest courtesy Walt Disney Pictures
Questions about motion capture animation -- is it cheating -- John Wayne PJ Soles and more Send your movie questions to FlickChickSee Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this weeks new flicks in Movie TalkQuestion Ive been reading a lot about the behind-the-scenes technology used to created the tentacle-faced Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Mans Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean At Worlds End and keep seeing the term motion capture But none of the articles have explained how its different from old-fashioned rotoscoping Can you enlighten me oh FlickChick -- BradFlickChick The difference is computers Rotoscoping is a process invented by animation pioneer Max Fleischer -- creator of Betty Boop -- in 1914 It allowed artists to hand-draw over motion picture footage of real subjects frame-by-frame so that the instantly recognizable weight and flow of real human motion was maintained while the specifics of the image could be changed to the animators
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Question: I don't know about you, but after watching the premiere of Night Stalker, I really miss Darren McGavin and Simon Oakland (not to mention Carol Lynley). The cast of the updated show is just so blah thus far. Stuart Townsend is miscast. (Bruce Campbell would have been a much better choice.)
Answer: "Blah" pretty much sums up my feelings about this unnecessary remake, which would be the low man on this season's sci-fi/horror totem pole if not for the unwatchable Surface. And you are so right that Bruce Campbell would have made a perfect Kolchak: appropriate in age, demeanor and, most important, humor ...
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