Cheers to John Hurt for reminding us of his talent with a pair of Memorial Day weekend roles. The versatile British actor can be seen as demented professor "Ox" Oxley in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and as buttoned-down ex-Secretary of State Warren Christopher in HBO's Recount (opposite another gifted Englishman, Tom Wilkinson, as Republican counterpart James Baker). Hurt has always moved easily between small and big screens, making his name on TV as Quentin Crisip in The Naked Civil Servant and Caligula in I, Claudius before earning Oscar nominations for Midnight Express and The Elephant Man. If he wins an Emmy for his stellar HBO work, there'll be no need for a recount.• 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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Tonight's episode is the fourth and last of the six that were produced that ABC intends to run. (All six will be seen in Canada, at least, on the cable channel Space, starting in November). And it was the episode a number of viewers were most eager to see, I suspect, since it was based on a short story by Harlan Ellison, who has established himself as a major figure in both fantastic fiction (among other sorts of prose) and in screenwriting, as well as being responsible for some notable comics scripting and work in other media. Apparently Ellison gave executive producer Keith Addis strong support when they resisted the attempts by ABC to call the series "Masters of Sci-Fi," which would be comparable to calling its Showtime sibling series Masters of Horror something like "Masters of Spookiness" (ABC chose to slip "scifi" into the URL for the series' pages on abc.go.com, anyway... perhaps the smallest of many hostilities the network has shown toward this project). And the story was ad...
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Anne Heche and Russell Porter by Bob Akester/ABC
ABC's Masters of Science Fiction anthology series, announced what seems like light-years ago, will finally hit the airwaves during the dog days of August. The lineup — slashed from six installments to four — is as follows:August 4: "A Clean Escape," based on Nebula Award-winning author John Kessel's short story about a postapocalyptic psychiatrist (Judy Davis) determined to solve a man's (Sam Waterston) apparent memory lapse.August 11: "The Awakening," based on a short story by Howard Fast, starring Terry O'Quinn, Elisabeth Rohm and William B. Davis, and concerning Baghdad-based soldiers' discovery of a "mysterious casualty."August 18: "Jerry Was a Man," based on the Robert Heinlein story about an affluent couple (Anne Heche and Malcolm McDowell) who acquire an anthropoid.August 25: "The Discarded," based on the short story by seven-time Hugo Award winner, three-time Nebula Award winner, and Science Fiction Grand Master Laureate Harlan Ellison, directed by Jonathan Frakes,...
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Per the Hollywood Reporter, country icon Willie Nelson will reunite with his Dukes of Hazzard costar when he plays grandpa to Jessica Simpson in Blonde Ambition, the bombshell's Working Girl redo. Also joining the cast is Larry Miller, as the CEO of a conglomerate.... The Lord of the Rings' Elijah Wood will head the international cast of Oxford Murders, a whodunit in which a university student (Wood) delves into a murder mystery with a Sherlock Holmes-style mentor (John Hurt).
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