Smart self-awareness and a charming cast help Grandfathered stand out despite being a very standard formula network sitcom. Paired with the far-funnier Grinder in the new FOX Tuesday lineup (remember the 2012 FOX Tuesday lineup? Those were the days), the two shows form a strange 90s heartthrob-fuelled nostalgia block with both Rob Lowe and John […]
The Duplass Brothers and their unparalleled taste as producers have facilitated yet another extraordinary cinematic moment by partnering with an up-and-coming writer/director in the form of Hannah Fidell. According to Wikipedia, Mark Duplass approached Fidell about writing a film that touched on domestic abuse and, rather than give us a horror show cautionary tale or […]
Quite unusually, I was handed an audiobook before sitting down to watch this show—I believe it was an audiobook of the show, or it may have been one of Sons and Lovers or The Rainbow which Phoenix Rising’s Paul Slack has found success in narrating. Regardless, it gives gives clues as to quality of the […]
It took me a while to get into “Heavy is the Head”, the premiere episode of Scandal’s season 5. In all honesty, I should have re-watched season 4’s finale but remembered being fairly disappointed by it. But to summarize: we left off with Millie winning the senate election after giving up the names of a […]
Meredith’s voiceover brings us right into season twelve of Grey’s Anatomy. She sets us up for a new McDreamy-less life by saying, “I’ve been here before, this is old hat…but everything has changed.” As the episodes progresses, I’m realizing that really nothing actually has changed. Right away, we see the same tension between Meredith and […]
In his director’s note for The Alchemist, Stratford Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino makes a preemptive strike against the argument that he should have set the early seventeenth century play in “our own era”, saying that it adds “a needless layer of complexity to an already challenging text”. Intriguing defensiveness aside, the problem with this statement […]
CBS’s new sitcom Life in Pieces is just Modern Family without the diversity. They really really don’t want you to think that, but it’s true. It’s derivative and palatable and simple and sometimes very and sometimes very not funny… just like Modern Family. And, just like Modern Family, it’s about an extended family and their […]
Director Michael Almereyda’s thrilling new film adaptation of the strange and semi-obscure Shakespeare play Cymbeline begins with three words on the screen- “Keep Your Head”. It’s the name of the production company and a reference to the eventual demise of one of the characters (a brutal death that, because Cymbeline is all over the place […]