Category: TV
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Semper Gumby: HBO’s Generation Kill
The HBO miniseries Generation Kill comes from David Simon and Ed Burns, the masterminds behind the superlative series The Wire. Simon himself is a former journalist, the state of the industry thereof being a primary preoccupation of the fifth season of the The Wire. So it makes sense that he would be drawn to a […]
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Cool Britannia: David Yates’ BBC Miniseries State of Play
The 2003 BBC miniseries State of Play is nothing less than six straight hours of intelligent drama, liberally spiced with suspense, action, and tasty plot twists. The entire epic tale is delivered by a veritable plethora of British Isles telly & film who’s who: writer Paul Abbot, director David Yates, and actors David Morrissey, John […]
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The plural of chad is chad in HBO’s Recount
The 2008 HBO television movie Recount dramatizes the traumatic few weeks at the close of the 2000 Presidential election. That hectic time brings back three distinct feelings for this blogger: bewilderment at the founding fathers’ purpose for the Electoral College (as everyone no doubt remembers, it was never in doubt that Al Gore won the […]
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Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney are the second first couple in Tom Hooper’s John Adams
This blog celebrates Independence Day 2008 in a New York City Starbucks, tapping out a review of the HBO miniseries John Adams. Believe it or not, the timing is accidental, but July 4th has proven to be an auspicious date in American History. On-and-off-again friends and foes Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on […]
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It’s the end of the world in Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain
Michael Crichton’s novel The Andromeda Strain was first adapted into a feature film in 1971, and now into a television miniseries from executive producers Tony and Ridley Scott. This 2008 incarnation is part feel-bad thriller, part wish fulfillment. As we thrill to the speculative illustration of how civilization might suddenly come to an end, we […]
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Kelly Macdonald and Bill Nighy bond over extreme poverty in The Girl in the Café
Richard Curtis and David Yates’ The Girl in the Café, a BBC movie aired in the US on HBO, was incredibly cute, and my heartstrings were indeed pulled, but I couldn’t shake the sense the love story was mere dressing for the real purpose of the film: explicating the issue of extreme poverty to help […]
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My Eyes Bleed
After an entire summer of no TV at all (Netflix, like Ben & Jerry’s, doesn’t count), I watched three hours in a row tonight and my eyes are still uncrossing. Everybody knows the old saw about television being the opiate of the masses (opium must flourish in vast wastelands). But when exactly did TV’s drug […]