January Jones in Mad Men courtesy AMC
Favorite line on any show I've seen all week: "Peggy, this isn't China. There's no money in virginity." That's Joan talking, the sexiest secretary in all of '60s New York advertising, once again stealing a scene in AMC's dazzling Mad Men with aplomb. Christina Hendricks, I salute you.It was another intensely enjoyable episode this week, which also grew my estimation for the performance of January Jones (what a name) as Don Draper’s quietly simmering, drop-dead-gorgeous Grace Kelly look-alike wife, Betty. How happy was she when, at intermission at Broadway’s Fiorello!, the ad guy wooing Don to jump agencies to the big time offered her a chance to get back into modeling (with the pause that refreshes). How fooled were we that this was just another ploy to lure Don away from “the tiny store” of Sterling Cooper? Not very. And neither was Don fooled. Betty, however? Very fooled. And very crushed when the opportunity vanishes once Don turns them down.Who can blame her ...
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The Seventh Seal courtesy The Criterion Collection
Ask FlickChick The difference between movies and films songs in movies and moreSend your movie questions to FlickChickSee Maitland McDonagh and Ken Fox review this weeks new flicks on the Movie Talk vodcastHear Maitland on the weekly podcast TV Guide TalkQuestion I was wondering Whats the difference between a movie and a film I know that if anybody can tell me it will be you Thank you for your response JayFlickChick Strictly speaking theres no difference Movie and film are literally synonymous But nuance and implication are everything and the word movie the shortened form of moving picture usually implies an entertainment Pirates of the Caribbean 2003 Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981 Charade 1963 Film which curiously is the more literal word coming as it does from the physical material of the medium has come to suggest art The Seventh Seal 1957 LAvventura 1960 The Passion of Joan of Arc 1928 Picture has alw
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The American Film Institute on Wednesday detailed what it is calling the year's Moments of Significance, eight developments that impacted the worlds of TV and film. And they are:— Clint Eastwood's double whammy of Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima— The passing of filmmaker Robert Altman— The influence of documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth and Iraq in Fragments— The rise of YouTube— The migration of TV news to this "Internet" thing— The death of VHS— The reaffirmation of a moral standard for television, as evidenced by Fox's decision to snuff the O.J. Simpson special— The Big Four networks fighting the FCC's indecency crackdownNo mention of Gwen Stefani's "Wind It Up" video.
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Born on Feb. 20, 1925, Kansas City, Missouri, native Robert Altman died on Nov. 20 — less than a year after accepting an Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement, and a few months after the release of his last film, an affectionate adaptation of Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion. Altman had a heart transplant in 1995, keeping the surgery quiet while continuing to undertake demanding projects such as Dr T and the Women, Gosford Park and The Company. Altman began his long career directing industrial films on the order of "How to Run a Filling Station," graduated to episodic television (where his credits included Peter Gunn, The Millionaire and Alfred Hitchcock Presents), and then forged a feature directing career that produced some of the finest films of the 1970s, notably MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Nashville. Altman was famous for his deft use of large ensemble casts, overlapping dialogue and an intricate network of overlapping story lines that come togeth...
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Gina Gershon
What is it about Gina Gershon? I mean she just oozes sensuality... edginess... all kinds of things that can be wicked in excess. Even the press notes for her new film, One Last Thing (in theaters now), peg the actress as possessing "uncommon presence" — a boast that stymies even Gershon.
"I have no idea what that means. Like, I'm an alien or something?" she laughs as TVGuide.com points out her "uncommon" classification. Or, she suggests while motioning to an imaginary appendage, "It's my 'tail' that makes me different?"
Working to take an introspective look at herself, Gershon later cops to filling "uncommon" roles. "Listen, I definitely
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Jon Stewart did his best, but it wasn't good enough. There are limitations in being a clever, self-deprecating master of irony, when what the job of Oscar host truly demands is being a showman. Which Stewart would probably be the first to admit he's not.
His humor, politically barbed but never obnoxious, was possibly a bit too sophisticated for that cavernous room. But what really defeated him, as it has almost every modern-day Oscar host except for Billy Crystal, is the deadly monotony of the Oscar show itself. What a fossiled relic. The Oscar broadcast is a classy but inert dinosaur, and this year's was more forgettable than most.
Stewart gamely tried to deflate the evening's pomposity whenever he could — after a montage on message movies, he quipped, "and none of these issues were ever a problem again" — but still, we had to sit through it all anyway.
Even with a last-minute shocker, as Crash
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Jon Stewart
The 78th Annual Academy Awards 8:01: The opening scene just demonstrates why we love Jon Stewart: No one does self-deprecation so funny. Not even George Clooney. I think my dog would look great in a Steve Martin wig.
8:05: At first, the Hollywood royalty aren't laughing quite as hard as I am at Jon's jokes — especially not at the one about the suffering caused by movie piracy. But nothing brings people together like a Bjork joke. (She was trying on her gown and Cheney shot her!) And then the gay Western montage. Not even Stewart knows how to follow up that hilarity, so I'm not even gonna try. Brilliant.
8:16: Nicole Kidman's weird intro for the best-supporting-actor nominees has me thinking right away that Clooney will win. And then he does; self-deprecation keeps working wonders. "So I'm not winning director." The music starts after about 10 sec
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Question: It seems like every other movie I see advertised is based on a TV show, like The Dukes of Hazzard. But what about the other way around? I know there was a series based on My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but what other TV series have been based on a movie, and were any of them good?
Answer: There have been a handful of top-notch TV shows based on movies. The flop Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) was revived as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003); Robert Altman's acerbic M*A*S*H* (1970) became the long-running M*A*S*H (1972-1983); Neil Simon
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We're all connected: Matt Dillon
Question: I recently saw and loved the movie Crash, and was especially intrigued by the way all the stories intersected and converged. Could you possibly give me a list of some other films whose stories are structured in the same way? Answer: I certainly can: First, for the benefit of readers who haven't seen Crash (2005), its structure is one in which multiple narratives are developed simultaneously and overlay or intersect at key points before converging at the end. Unlike ensemble movies in which there's a main plot and a series of subplots, films like this give more or less equal weight to all the story strands and derive a significant part of their thematic power from the apparently random way in which different characters' destinies come together. To my mind, the greatest of all multiple-story narratives is
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Back in the '60s, Lily Tomlin burst on the scene in the flower-powered series Laugh-In, where she created classic characters like the precocious Edith Ann and phone-operator-with-attitude Ernestine. But the quirky Tomlin has never been just a comedian. Her performance in Roger Altman's 1975 film Nashville made it clear she had more than sketch comedy on her mind. With I Heart Huckabees (out this week on DVD), Tomlin again shows off her crafty acting and takes on some serious existential questions. Here, the ex-hippie treats TVGuide.com to some groovy gossip.
TVGuide.com: Huckabees looked fun to make. Had you and Dustin Hoffman worked together before?Lily Tomlin: No, but we came close one time, back when Robert Evans was producing Popeye. They wanted Dustin as Popeye and me as Olive Oyl, but that never happened. Dusti
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