Question: Did anyone out there in TV land watch the Spike TV miniseries The Kill Point? I loved it and was hoping there would be talk about it but can't find anything. I guess I'm the only one who saw it!
Answer: Blame the busiest summer in TV history for this enjoyable thriller getting lost in the shuffle. If it helps ease your mind, it didn't go entirely unnoticed: I gave it a short rave review upon its premiere and included it in a recent Dispatch roundup of summer finales. If it's released on DVD, which I imagine it will be, I highly recommend it, despite a little sagging in the middle. John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg were terrific as the lead hostage-taker and lead negotiator in this bank-robbery standoff, which almost make up for what happened to The Nine ...
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Bill Paxton and Jeanne Tripplehorn in Big Love by Lacey Terrell/HBO
Sundays are seldom as busy during the regular TV season as was the case this weekend, with season and series finales all over cable. So much for summer being the sleepy season. If you'd been watching any of these shows this summer, you wouldn't have wanted to miss the payoffs.Big Love: So much drama and trauma on HBO's increasingly addictive domestic melodrama about a family man and the three wives who alternately adore and tolerate his whims, schemes and transgressions. One reason I love the show is that it has lines of dialogue you could never hear anywhere else. Here’s Nicky: “Our husband’s dating life is none of our business.” Bill to Barb: “There are two other people in this marriage.” Bill to Margene: “You are not having the neighbor’s baby!” Barb to Bill: “I don’t want a fourth [wife].” Margene: “Boss lady outed us to the neighbors!”So twisted, and yet presented in such a way that it almost seems normal. Th...
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The Kill Point's Tobin Bell
Horror-film buffs know him best as the Saw films' John "Jigsaw" Cramer, but Tobin Bell is the one facing a nightmare this time around in The Kill Point, an eight-hour miniseries premiering Sunday at 9 pm/ET on Spike TV. TVGuide.com spoke with the actor about his role in this bank-heist thriller and raised a big question about Saw IV, due out just before Halloween. (Sorry, Michael Myers.)
TVGuide.com: The Kill Point has John Leguizamo as the mastermind behind a bank heist gone awry, Donnie Wahlberg as the chief police negotiator.... Where do you
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Per Variety, DreamWorks Animation has moved up the release of Monsters vs. Aliens, its first pic produced in stereoscopic 3-D, to May 15, 2009 — a week before James Cameron's 3-D Avatar is set to bow.... John Leguizamo has joined M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, playing Mark Wahlberg's best friend.... Ron Howard is set to direct an adaptation of The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud's novel about Ivy League grads snobbing up Manhattan.... Oscar-nominated screenwriter Michael Tolkin is penning Rob Marshall's big-screen take on Nine.
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Not so many summers ago, you'd have been lucky to find five new series to watch during the entire off-season. This summer, you can find at least that many premiering nearly every week. (Shameless plug alert: As part of next week's new wave of shows, I make my debut as a reality-TV judge Wednesday, July 18, on TV Guide Network's America's Next Producer.) For cable networks, it's all about finding new signature shows to redefine the brand. (Think Lifetime's Army Wives.) Here are some first impressions of five new scripted contenders.
Mad MenThursdays, 10 pm/ET, AMCThe pitch: Ad men in 1960, oozing ego and raw sexism.First impression: Wow. The period look is dazzling: the women's tight skirts, the men's slicked hair. If iconic director Douglas Sirk (Writt
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My Name Is Earl
This week's My Name Is Earl (Thursdays at 8 pm/ET, on NBC) isn't just super-sized, at 40 minutes long, and it doesn't just guest-star film vet Christian Slater. No, on top of all that, the outing presents Earl, Joy, et al, like you've never seen them before, when a visit to an earthy commune sends Randy trippin' into a foam-animated alternate Earliverse. Ethan Suplee, who plays Earl's bro, offered TVGuide.com a sneak peek.
TVGuide.com: What was your reaction when you first heard about this "foamation" technique they'd be using for the Nov. 16 episode?Ethan Suplee: [Series creator] Greg Garcia had actually talked to me about it around the beginning of
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Question: I'm so excited! John Stamos is returning to ER next season as a series regular!
Answer: Now are you ready for the bad news?! There are rumblings that a (SPOILER ALERT) major character will be leaving early next season to make room in the budget for Stamos' sizable paycheck. The leading candidates are Kovac or Weaver, one of whom may end up taking the fall for hiring Clemente. But at this point, that's pure speculation. The only thing I'm (90 percent) sure of is that John Leguizamo is history. (And no, his is not the big death I've been referring to.)
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ERI was really looking forward to the episode originally scheduled for tonight — a new Kerry-centric one — because there hasn't been an episode that focuses on Kerry Weaver in ages. But, alas, no. NBC got cold feet and decided to substitute with all reruns tonight since Fox aired the final Thursday Idol and the return of The O.C. Remember the days when NBC owned Thursdays instead of CBS, Fox and ABC? Tonight's entire NBC lineup was postponed until next week. At least it was a good repeat — Kristen Johnston's first appearance as County General's new nurse manager/beeyotch Eve. I recall having mixed feelings about her at first, but the way they wrote Eve was such that the hateful parts of her character way outweighed the likable parts. So I was glad
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ER I don't know about you, but I really wish one of these rare "special appearances" by Noah Wyle would involve Carter actually showing up at County General rather than just these far-away places. I'd be satisfied with even one Chicago visit, like the recent episode where Sharif Atkins briefly appeared in town. Well, I guess a Sudanese desert-based Carter is better than no Carter at all, eh? I did enjoy seeing him do scenes with Mary McCormack and Eamonn Walker. How horrible for that Lwendo guy to abandon his wife after he found out she was raped. Speaking of Eamonn, I love seeing yet another former Oz cast member get work. I keep waiting for Harold Perrineau and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje to walk by each other on Lost and do a "Wher
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Question: Your constant bashing of ER and its "mediocrity" gives me the impression that you really haven't even given yourself the possibility of liking the show this season, maybe due to disillusionment with the last couple of seasons. John Leguizamo's Doctor Clemente has been one of the best (or at least most enjoyable) new characters on TV this season, bringing comedic relief to a cast clearly in need of it. You can cynically brush off Cynthia Nixon's and James Woods's guest roles as stunt casting, but the respective episodes have been high-quality drama, especially last week's ALS-themed outing. I agree that the show is very different from its first seasons (I've been rewatching Seasons 1 through 4 on DVD), but in my mind it still delivers the goods drama-wise. So what do you say, Matt? Give ER one more chance?
Answer: I tuned in to the beginning of the season with an open mind. But from the torpor of the opening episode, with Luka and Sam going in search of her brat, to the numbing
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