Results tagged “tcm”

KCRW has plenty of excellent original programming, but among the best is "The Treatment", a weekly film-heavy pop culture show that airs on Wednesdays at 2:30pm. We suggest that you crawl through the archives and grab podcasts to play during long drives or other such travel. Mitchell has been a film critic for many newspapers, most notably and recently, the New York Times. He has taught at Harvard, is the host of Turner Classic Movie's "Elvis Mitchell: Under the Influence", and has produced two excellent documentaries about the experiences of being black in this country: The Black List: Volume One and The Black List: Volume Two.

The TV Junkie Plan: "Better Off Ted", "Lost" (maybe), "MythBusters" (if not "Lost"), "South Park", "Reno 911!", Letterman, Fallon.

Unless you are a basketball or baseball fan, this weekend's options are kind of slim - feel free to sift through our picks - what are you going to watch? If it's not on our list, let us know and we'll talk about it.

Our friends over at BBC America's "Top Gear" have really done it - they have achieved unprecedented success with "Project Sipster": the creation of a car that gets 84mpg , goes from 0-60mph in 7 seconds, and whose cost was to be $7000 or less. You can see more in this video. Suck it Tesla and watch "Top Gear" on BBC America tonight at 8pm.

"American Idol" fans can now shell out $1.99 for an iPhone app that will provide them with a weekly update them on the vital statistics of the remaining contenders for the rest of this season. What isn't clear from the press release is if there will be geosynchronous Ryan Seacrest hair gel monitoring.

Today NBC launched a 24-hour cable channel in New York called "New York Non-Stop", replete with expanded news coverage, on-location stories, and interactive elements. When can LA expect the same investment?

Sunday @ 10pm features the return of AMC's incredible series, "Breaking Bad", with Bryan Cranston (pictured, right) as Walt White, the terminally-ill high school science teacher-turned meth cooker. We've been eagerly waiting for this show to resume and AMC has done a great job whetting our appetite with their sneak webisodes and other promos. Since the other stuff we like to watch on Sunday's @ 10pm are available on-demand, this is one of our prime picks of the weekend.

Tonight marks a big debut in late night TV with the start of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon". While we were concerned with the departure of Conan O'Brien from "Late Night", we think he can be very successful in the earlier slot. Jimmy Fallon, at 34 years-old, will be bringing some youth to the time slot, although both Carson Daly and Conan O'Brien were younger when they started their stints on late night television.

Jerry Seinfeld will be returning to TV as the producer and creator of "The Marriage Ref", a new series for NBC. No premiere date or time slot has been selected.

While we still don't believe that Joaquin Phoenix's schtick on Letterman last night isn't anything other than a stunt, it doesn't mean that show's like "Late Night" need to go along with it. Do the producers of his latest movie, we don't even remember what it's called, think that this has helped them? What's your take - is Phoenix faking or tripping?

The Sundance Film Festival starts today which not only means cool movies being screened and attended by celebrities in their hippest Dumb & Dumber apres-skiwear but it means a lot more content for the Sundance Channel for the year. There will be live blogging of the festival's events at the Sundance Channel's (really cool!) website and head on over to iTunes to pick up a free short film from Sundance every day from now to January 25th.

There's only three weeks to go until the Super Bowl and NBC still has to sell some ads so they're looking to the movie studios to fill up the remaining (10%) of slots. So what we're saying is that at least 1 out of 10 ads will be for a movie, with all the ads adding up to over $200 million for NBC.

Oops, she did it again: Were you one of the 3.7 million people who watched Britney on Sunday? That "documentary" blew all of MTV's other shows out of the water, viewershipwise, other than their Video Music Awards broadcasts. Happy Birthday Britney.

This Sunday night at 8pm brings the premiere of "Britz" (pictured, right) on BBC America. "Britz" is a thriller featuring two young British Muslims, each pulled in different directions by personal experiences in post 9/11 Britain. This drama asks (perhaps a year or two late) whether the laws we think are making us safer, are actually putting us in greater danger.

President-elect Barack Obama's interview on Sunday's "60 Minutes" garnered the venerable news magazine its highest ratings in nearly a decade. NBC should have got him to do a cameo on "My Own Worst Enemy".

Looks like "60 Minutes" scored the first post-election interview with President-elect Barack Obama - it will air on Sunday at 7:00pm on CBS.

In case you've been in a coma for the last two years, here's some breaking news: today is Election Day. Even Palestinian terrorists/freedom fighters are watching coverage (see right) so get locked and loaded "my friends".

The hugely overhyped premiere of "90210" happens tonight - when NPR covers it, you know that the saturation level has been reached.

This weekend concludes NBC's broadcast of the XXIX Summer Olympics which has had some very enjoyable moments, not necessarily enjoyable because of NBC, but it's not like we had a lot of choice. Who knows what moments we missed in the countless events that were not broadcast, who knows what sports would have piqued the interest of Americans, if only they had exposure to them.

NPR's Monday Morning Edition broadcast had quite a profile on Bonnie Hammer, head of the USA network. Listen to it and it'll become pretty obvious how they come up with such predictable milquetoast programming - that's the secret to their success, American's just eat that crap up.

This weekend presents a dilemma. The big deal this weekend is the season premiere of "Mad Men" on Sunday at 10:00pm but this puts it in conflict with HBO's excellent "Generation Kill" which runs until 10:30pm but it repeats again at Midnight so that's probably the way out of this mess.

The Screen Actors Guild has officially rejected the June 30th offer from the studios. Cited among the reasons for the rejection was the fact that the major studios and networks have invested large amounts of money and/or have inked deals to distribute their content online or via video-on-demand but the contract offered actors does not account for this increased distribution. Considering that the contract would be for four years, to be locked out of that revenue was considered unreasonable.

Tim Roth is set to star in a drama on Foxthat will be broadcast early in 2009 going along the lines of other film stars who are making forays into television (Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, etc.) - the drama, titled "Lie to Me", is based on the work of a real-life scientist who is able to read the human body and voice to determine if someone is being truthful. Fox is so behind this project that they've ordered a complete set of 13 episodes, if it flops there will still be a DVD.

AdWeek reports that the most recent comCast data shows that while the flow of people who go online to watch video has slowed down somewhat, the amount of video they watch online has exploded (like a Jerry Bruckheimer film).

- Unless you've got some specific sports events you want to watch this weekend, things are pretty slow on the tube - you'd better hope your Netflix came in.

Tomorrow the 10 day countdown of the SAG contract expiration begins. Reuters reports that the TV studios are already bracing for a strike even though the SAG has yet to vote to strike. Some TV shows have 2 or 3 shows for the upcoming season in the bag already but most do not. Even if the SAG chooses not to strike, because there is no contract signed as of today, there will be some effect on production which means the doldrums of summer will linger into fall to some point.

As we reported yesterday, Jon Voight is going to be on "24" and now we learn from THR that William Hurt will be joining his The Big Chill co-star, Glenn Close, on FX's "Damages" this Fall. "Damages" was easily one of the top three programs of the year in 2007 and the addition of Hurt is beginning to solidify a picture of how the second season will function - Hurt will have regular role for the entire season on the show, playing a character that will be both a client as well as a personal acquaintance to Glenn Close's Patty Hewes.

Variety is reporting that the upcoming NBC "The Office" spinoff has made its first hire: Aziz Ansari from MTV's "Human Giant" whom LAist interviewed a couple months ago and whom the TV Junkie met at the Ashton Kutcher SNL post-party in April). While the show title, other cast members, and method of launch is unknown to the general public, it is known that the show will debut this winter in the 9:30pm timeslot, right after it's progenitor.

The SAG and producers meet again today for the 18th time, yeah, the 18th.

How dope was it that Jack was listening to the Pixies on the "Lost" season finale last night?