Question: Recently you've been letting the world know how great a show Dexter is. I think Hugh Laurie is incredible in House, but if Michael C. Hall doesn't win an Emmy for dramatic male performance, I have to believe that Emmy voters have never themselves acted. The man is a revelation. What I want to talk about, though, is Brotherhood, the show that follows Dexter. No one ever talks about it, even though it is better than 98 percent of all other television shows, from Annabeth Gish's powerful performance in Season 1 to Ethan Embry's hometown cop who is spiraling out of control this season. Please, please give Brotherhood some much needed publicity.
Answer: Consider it done. And to be fair, I did include Brotherhood in my recent roundup of pay-cable dramas, but it's kind of hard not to lead with Dexter, which is what Showtime is doing in its promotions as well. Brotherhood is a great show that somehow has become as marginalized as The Wire is over on HBO. Like The Wire, it has a
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Question: Help me, FlickChick — what's the name of this movie? What I think I remember is from the trailer: Four guys from a small Texas town graduate and want to get out of their aforementioned dead-end burg. The old guys in town (probably sitting in front of the barbershop) are laughing and setting odds against them. At the time the lead actors were up-and-coming, but by now they could be stars or orthodontists.
Answer: That sounds to me like the awkwardly named Dancer, Texas Pop. 81 (1998). Of the four up-and-comers — Ethan Embry, now 27; Breckin Meyer, 31; Peter Facinelli, 32; and Eddie Mills, 33 — the first three are working regularly on TV and in movies. Mills has done a little less well, but he's appeared on a bunch of television shows and to the best of my knowledge is not yet looking into dental school.
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Wide-eyed actor Ethan Embry — who played Reese Witherspoon's gay best pal in Sweet Home Alabama — is back fighting crime on TV. On his last (short-lived) series, Fox's Freakylinks, he solved paranormal mysteries. Now, he's going back to basics, playing Det. Frank Smith on ABC's Dragnet remake (debuting Sunday at 10 pm/ET).
As exec producer Dick Wolf pointed out to reporters at the Television Critics Assoc. press tour in Hollywood: "Nobody under 35 has seen the original show, unless they're up at 3 in the morning, stoned or drinking, watching TV Land."
"Which is a surprise that I haven't seen it!" quipped the 24-year-old Embry.
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