The Playboy Mansion is generally known for good times, not crime, but tonight's episode of CBS's Shark will delve into a fictional account of the latter. Tune in at 9PM ET/PT to watch our Hef make a special appearance.
To whet your appetite for the long-awaited return of our favorite bullwhip-cracking archaeologist/adventurer, Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing new special-edition DVDs of the first three Indiana Jones movies on May 13. Not only will you be able to pick up Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade individually for the first time (they also come bundled together in shelve-saving skinny cases), but each remastered adventure contains new special features and hints about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which opens on May 23.
Our favorite extras include “Indiana Jones: An Appreciation,” in which the cast and crew of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull pay tribute to the original trilogy; “The Melting Face,” which includes a re-creation of the Nazi’s melting face in Raiders of the Lost Ark that freaked you out when you were a kid; “The Women: The American Film Institute Tribute,” in which the actresses who played Indy’s women (Karen Allen, Kate Capeshaw and Alison Doody) reunite for a discussion; and “Friends and Enemies” with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas talking about how they created this iconic character and the new ones in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. If you already have the 2003 box set of all the movies, this well-timed double dip probably won’t tempt you unless you frequently don a fedora yourself and hunt for priceless historical artifacts, or you’re just a completist. If you’re the latter, this is still the Holy Grail of Indiana Jones collections—at least until the Blu-ray version is excavated at some as-yet-undetermined future date.
When not occupied following Hef, Holly, Bridget and Kendra around the world and filming their antics for The Girls Next Door, four crew members turned the cameras on themselves to create the documentary Livin Free: The Heart of Longboarding. Directed by The Girls Next Door DP Marc McCrudden, the film has been described as a “skateboard odyssey of the mind, body and soul.” What’s most interesting about Livin Free is how relatively serene it is. You might expect a typical doc on skateboarding to feature quick edits, bombastic punk and rap tunes and crazed fans. What we get instead is stunning footage of four guys finding their own personal Zen zones in longboarding as they travel to places like Boston, Chicago, New Mexico, California, Morocco, Australia, South Africa and more for the TV show. “It’s like surfing, but you’re on pavement,” says one of the skaters. “You move across all this hard shit we’ve laid out all over the place. I love skateboarding, especially when you have some other guys you’re riding with. There’s nothing like it.” Along the way the foursome mix with the locals and sometimes get static for doing what this documentary makes seem is such a personal, almost spiritual, experience for the guys. One scene that really makes an impression is a lengthy tracking shot of one of the guys skateboarding down a long, lonely desert highway with no one around for miles. While it has to be fun for these four to film the Girls Next Door at play, Livin Free highlights some surprisingly soulful behind-the-scenes action.
Perhaps you’re a horror enthusiast tired of the pointless remakes Hollywood is churning out (Was anyone clamoring for a redo of Prom Night?) Or perhaps you loved Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning Pan’s Labyrinth. Either way, you’ve got to check out The Orphanage. Available now on DVD and Blu-ray, this Spanish-language blockbuster produced by del Toro and directed by J.A. Bayona proves to be the ultra-rare genre picture that is simultaneously chilling and genuinely heartbreaking. After returning to the seaside orphanage where she grew up with the intention of opening a home for handicapped children, Laura and her family stir up the angry spirit of a disfigured boy, Tomás (pictured). When Laura’s young son vanishes without a trace after talking to his new “imaginary” friends, the distraught mother must confront her past memories and the lost souls haunting the orphanage to unravel the mystery of her son’s disappearance.
You saw the movie billboards everywhere in January featuring a headless Statue of Liberty facing a smoldering New York. The trailer had a shot of Liberty’s head skidding down a street and smashing into some cars (pictured). Was this a film about another terrorist attack? A new Godzilla? The long-awaited return of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man? Turns out Cloverfield is a monster movie, just a much better one than anyone expected. Told from the perspective of a handheld camera (grab the Dramamine), Cloverfield follows a group of young adults having a going-away party for their pal when a giant monster attacks Manhattan. The shaky camera footage of the ensuing chaos in the streets seems eerily authentic and all too familiar as a small group tries to rescue their friend trapped high in a building.
CIA agent Stan Smith and his wacky family are back in American Dad Volume 3, coming to DVD on April 15th from Fox Home Entertainment. Like the first two volumes, this 18-episode, three-disc set is pure comedic gold and a must have for any fan.
For those not familiar with the show, American Dad follows the antics of high-strung, über-Republican father Stan Smith and his eccentric family, including his bubbly trophy wife, Francine, ultra-liberal and rebellious daughter Hayley, geeky and socially awkward son Steve, the flamboyant alcoholic alien Roger, and their German-speaking goldfish, Klaus.
This volume tackles myriad taboo issues and finds the family getting into all sorts of hysterical and messy situations. Whether they’re eating a dead human á la the Donner party to stay alive or spitting out racial and sexist stereotypes, you’ll find yourself cackling to the meanest of mean-spirited jokes thanks to brilliant writing and voice acting.
If you usually steer clear of musicals like you do fresh roadkill, don’t let that scare you away from Tim Burton’s bloody good Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a re-imagining of Stephen Sondheim’s Tony Award-winning Broadway hit. Starring Johnny Depp as the throat-slashing titular barber out for revenge, and Helena Bonham Carter as the inventive London shop owner who recycles his victims for her meat pies, the Oscar-winning Sweeney Todd sings a different tune altogether. Not only is it morbidly funny, violent and gleefully Gothic, the film features two lead actors who have never sung on film before, yet do so brilliantly. Rounding out the impressive cast are Timothy Spall, Alan Rickman and Sacha Baron Cohen, who steals scenes as Sweeney’s rival barber and proves that he’s no one-trick pony with Borat.
It’s been too frakking long since Battlestar Galactica: Season 3 last aired with an explosive season finale featuring the return of Starbuck and her revelation that she has been to Earth. Universal knocks another one into the stratosphere with the Season 3 DVD set released on March 18, which solidifies the argument that BSG is one of the finest dramas on TV. Highlights include the two-part “Exodus” featuring a heart-pounding rescue of the colonists from Cylon rule on New Caprica, and an extended cut (25 extra minutes) of the “Unfinished Business” episode. During this key chapter we learn about the missing year on New Caprica and the events that shaped the entire season, leading to the revelation that several major characters are, unbeknownst to even themselves, Cylons. The six discs are packed with extras, including a slew of deleted scenes, video blogs and webisodes (our only complaint is that the show isn’t available in high-def on Blu-ray…yet). Plus we just can’t get enough of sexy Cylon Tricia Helfer, who appeared on our February 2007 cover. Catch her and the rest of the Galactica gang on the Sci-fi Channel at 10 PM ET/PT on April 4 for the premiere of the fourth, and supposedly final, season.
Being the world’s most reliable consumer of historical dramas, I obligingly clicked on HBO for the first two episodes of its seven part series on John Adams, which was titled, with no-frills certitude, John Adams. The show was as dutiful, as earnest and as joyless (and ultimately less moving) as a big bowl of All-Bran.
And I think I know why.
Eight years ago, when the Mel Gibson blockbuster The Patriot came out, I wrote an article wondering why there weren’t more movies about the Revolutionary War. One person I asked to comment was the historian David McCullough, who was still a year away from publishing his masterful biography of John Adams, which he titled, with no-frills certitude, "John Adams." He said, "A lot of us have trouble at first perceiving those people as real, because of their clothing, and the wigs, and their mannered way of speaking, they are like characters in a costume pageant.’’
After watching almost three hours of last night’s late eighteenth century pageant, I am convinced McCullough was onto something. But it’s not so much the clothing or the way of speaking. It’s the wigs.
Was The Wire the most existential drama in the history of television?
Episode in and episode out, all those with dreams or standards, no matter which side of the law stood on, were brought low if not destroyed in a world in which cynicism, corruption and indifference governed human affairs the way gravity governs the physical universe. Again and again, The Wire emphasized that there is no escape, that whether you are trying to convert you narcotic millions into legitimate business, or trying to build a new container port, or trying to roll up an insidious drug ring and all its tentacles, or anything great and ultimate, you will be thwarted, if not by man’s corrupt institutions, than by man’s corrupt nature.
The only redemption that The Wire allows is individual, and the only enduring satisfaction is the quiet honor that can be taken by going out every day and stoically grinding out an honest day. There have been grimmer series on TV—Oz, for one—but none that so disdainfully dismissed our naive conceits about order, progress and virtue. All in all, the five seasons of this show constituted an incredible piece of art, but one that more than anything else makes me want to buy a gun.
She’s baaa-ack. By she we mean Lucy Spiller, the cutthroat, merciless editrix played by Courteney Cox on FX’s Dirt, which returns for a second season this Sunday. When we last saw Spiller, she was stabbed and left for dead outside her home after a jaded junkie actress decided to, er, make some cuts to Spiller’s tabloid story that trashed her. We weren’t sure if FX would bring Spiller and the show itself back after a debut season of so-so ratings and largely lackluster reviews. We’re glad the powers that be decided to allow the actors grow into their roles a bit and let the tension build because, from what we’ve seen, the second season sinks its barbs into all the right celebutards in inventive, amusing ways.
Although real-life counterparts are not directly identified by name, when you see a rich, club-hopping, pooch-toting starlet named “Milan Carlton” get publicly whipped in a small foreign country for being busted with cocaine, we all know which heiress the writers are gunning for. Other pulled-from-the-headlines references include David Hasselhoff’s drunken burger-feast on the floor, Nicole Richie’s wrong turn onto a California freeway, and Alec Baldwin’s irate and profanity-laden voice message to his young daughter.
Some people have questioned whether Cox, who also serves as executive producer of the show along with husband David Arquette, should ridicule someone as unstable as Britney Spears, who is poked fun of in future episodes. “I am not out to offend anyone,” Cox has said.
Her show’s alter ego would laugh it all off, and so should you. Dirt airs on March 2 and every Sunday at 10PM ET/PT on FX.
A couple of weeks ago. we mentioned Sarah Silverman’s hilarious video "I’m Fucking Matt Damon." After the Oscars Sunday night, boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel had his revenge.
Once a form that contained television’s most creative work, the mini-series is a dying breed on American television. After all, why take a six-hour movie and show it over three nights—playing havoc with your schedule in the process—when you can pad the show with four, or seven, or even eighteen hours of additional material, and have a nice series that could become appointment programming? Whether it’s The Wire or Dirt or The Tudors, the short series is the creative and economic model everyone is embracing.
However, to get a look at how appealing a good miniseries can be, take a look at State of Play, a British drama from a couple years back that arrives on DVD in stores today. State of Play is a twisty tale about journalism and politics and scandal and murder, and even if our scruffy reporter protagonist is up to his earlobes in squishy conflicts-of-interest, and even if our earnest politician seems too obviously a golden boy from the start, there are enough surprises to keep things lively. The leads are a little uni-dimensional, but there’s very good acting in the secondary roles, including before-we-knew-them appearances by Kelly MacDonald (No Country for Old Men), James McAvoy (Atonement), Polly Walker (Rome), and, in a deliciously nudgy-winky performance as the paper’s editor-in-chief, Bill Nighy (Pirates of the Caribbean.) Catch the series now—next year, Hollywood remakes State of Play as a conventional two-hour movie, with Russell Crowe as the reporter, Ben Affleck as the politician, and Helen Mirren as the editor, no doubt with a lot fewer nudges and winks.
Warner Bros. sits atop the fattest movie vault of all the studios—one that contains thousands of titles still not yet available on DVD. To celebrate the 85th anniversary of the four Warner brothers incorporating their motion-picture company in 1923, the studio unveiled its 2008 release plans Tuesday night at a special press event on the lot in Burbank, California. More than 50 library titles are being restored for release, including Black Legion, Gold Diggers of 1937, None But the Brave, and San Antonio. The centerpiece of its yearlong celebration is the upcoming five-hour documentary You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story, which was produced, written and directed by Time film critic Richard Schickel with Clint Eastwood as narrator. The ambitious doc features clips from hundreds of Warner Bros. films to show how they mirrored the values, mores and prejudices of the movies’ respective eras. It will be broadcast nationally as a three-part special in September.
The Playboy Mansion is generally known for good times, not crime, but tonight's episode of CBS's 
To whet your appetite for the long-awaited return of our favorite bullwhip-cracking archaeologist/adventurer, Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing new special-edition DVDs of the first three 
When not occupied following Hef, Holly, Bridget and Kendra around the world and filming their antics for The Girls Next Door, four crew members turned the cameras on themselves to create the documentary 
Perhaps you’re a horror enthusiast tired of the pointless remakes Hollywood is churning out (Was anyone clamoring for a redo of Prom Night?) Or perhaps you loved Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning Pan’s Labyrinth. Either way, you’ve got to check out 
You saw the movie billboards everywhere in January featuring a headless Statue of Liberty facing a smoldering New York. The trailer had a shot of Liberty’s head skidding down a street and smashing into some cars (pictured). Was this a film about another terrorist attack? A new Godzilla? The long-awaited return of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man? Turns out 
CIA agent Stan Smith and his wacky family are back in 
If you usually steer clear of musicals like you do fresh roadkill, don’t let that scare you away from Tim Burton’s bloody good 
It’s been too frakking long since 
Being the world’s most reliable consumer of historical dramas, I obligingly clicked on HBO for the first two episodes of its seven part series on John Adams, which was titled, with no-frills certitude, John Adams. The show was as dutiful, as earnest and as joyless (and ultimately less moving) as a big bowl of All-Bran. 
Was The Wire the most existential drama in the history of television? 
She’s baaa-ack. By she we mean Lucy Spiller, the cutthroat, merciless editrix played by Courteney Cox on FX’s 
Once a form that contained television’s most creative work, the mini-series is a dying breed on American television. After all, why take a six-hour movie and show it over three nights—playing havoc with your schedule in the process—when you can pad the show with four, or seven, or even eighteen hours of additional material, and have a nice series that could become appointment programming? Whether it’s The Wire or Dirt or The Tudors, the short series is the creative and economic model everyone is embracing.