BilmBlog500

I am a big fan of The Middle, which I think is an under-rated and under-appreciated part of ABC's Wednesday comedy line-up. But as much as I enjoyed the episode that aired on October 1, I was also kind of down on it, because the main story-line deals with college admissions and financial aid in a way that perpetuates the worst kind of thinking, the kind of thinking that keeps people in the middle down rather than helping them up. Basic premise of the show:  working class family with two parents who work hard and never get ahead, with three kids to feed and a house and a mortgage and bills.  The middle kid is Sue, who's surrounded by two brothers and who is a font of sometimes misplaced enthusiasm.  She's tried out for every club or sport in the school, usually to very bad results, but she's slowly been getting her act a little more together, starting to find boys and a little more common sense and a little more assertiveness in the right places. In this episode, Sue ann...

Watching the premiere of 24: Live Another Day earlier in the week gets me to thinking where it is that I have heard the name of William Devane before... Once Upon a Time, 24 years ago strangely enough, in September 1990, a client of mine named Barbara Paul called to say that there was a TV movie on NBC by the name of Murder COD being previewed in TV Guide that sounded a lot like her book Kill Fee. The TV movie and a perfectly respectable cast.  Patrick Duffy, still on Dallas, starred as a police detective, and one William Devane was the bad guy.  Devane was on Knots Landing. And if it sounded a lot like Barbara Paul's novel Kill Fee -- well, that's because it was. The book had been under option for a while.  The option had, if memory serves, expired on September 10, which was now a few days in the past.  The producers of the TV movie had not quite forgotten to pay the purchase price for the TV movie, which they should have done months before when the started filming ...

With both 24 and Friday Night Lights going off the air the past couple of years, two shows that were appointment viewing for me, I've been willing to cautiously explore finding replacements. Glee never quite cut it, too inconsistent. I've been trying Smash. The first three episodes were enh. The 4th episode the show seemed to have found its footing. The next two were OK, the 7th episode that aired this past Sunday was the best so far. I'm willing to keep going with it a bit, I'm a NYer and a theatregoer. But the show I've taken to wholeheartedly after watching a few episodes tonight is The Good Wife. I've heard a lot over the years about how good this is, and they are frequently filming at the courthouse across the street from my apartment (yes, New York City doubles for Chicago in The Good Wife). And a few minutes in to an episode I still had on the DVR from the end of January, I was totally hooked. What's not to like? The writing is excellent. Sharp c...

Well, most of the obituaries I've read have neglected to mention Cliff Robertson's finest role, as Shame on the Batman TV show in the 1960s. I loved this show, it always saddens me when a Special Guest Villain passes the scene.

Shortly after my last funny book roundup I sat down with Wonder Woman 700 and the latest issue of Simpsons Super Spectacular. I would've gotten more pleasure flushing myoney down the toilet. Wonder Woman was a disaster. It wasn't that I couldn't finish any of the three stories. No, they were so bad I couldn't start them. When that happens with the fiction in The New Yorker -- well, tastes differ. But in Wonder Woman? I missed Batman 700 the week it came out, leafed through at the store, and after my experiences with WW600 and Superman 700 decided to leave on the shelf. Simpsons Super Spectacular is the weak link in the Bongo line. Like an all-star film comedy whose creativity stops with the casting this book often thinks the very idea of it is so fun that there's no need to take it further. But this issue is bad on an entirely different level. I keep buying the book because I like the idea, but I think after this issue it might seriously be time to do The Simpson...

First, I am so happy to hear that Breaking Dawn will be split into two movies, like the last Harry Potter movie. I was so worried that I would be able to skip only three Twilight movies, and now I know I can skip a fourth. Phew! Let me suggest The Dawner Party and Dawn & Dawner as two possible titles for the added movie in the series. I watched some TV on the plane rides to/from LA for the Season 3 premiere of True Blood on Tuesday night. I'd watched one episode of The Middle in November, and two more including the pilot/first episode on the aeroplano. This is a really good show, and it's all there pretty much from minute one of the pilot. The closest in ancestry might be Malcolm in the Middle, and it will be interesting to see if The Middle can hold up a little longer than Malcolm did. I think it has a couple advantages. The family in Malcolm in the Middle wasn't a real family. It was very close to one, but the exaggeration was just a little too much. The fam...

This is the week when the TV networks are announcing their fall schedules, and it's always interesting to see what does and doesn't get picked up. Like, over on Fox, the Simpsons gets 6.3 million viewers last week, 24 gets 8+ million. The Simpsons is coming back next year, and 24 is not. And you could find conundrums like that up and down the scheduling announcements. Well, it's a lot like that in book publishing sometimes. There are the numbers where nobody will want you and the numbers where everyone will want you, and then there are the numbers in between where life isn't fair. Where this author selling 12,000 copies in paperback gets dumped while that author who is selling 9,000 copies gets to return for another day. There's one big difference in publishing, which is that demographics aren't as important to we book people, while in TV it can be much nicer to have 3 million views of 8 that are those hard to find younger viewers than to have 1.2 million yo...

I just finished catching up on the last two weeks of The Simpsons. This season is shaping up to be a very good one. Earlier in the season , there was "I was one Uday who didn't need a Qusay." This past Sunday, Homer pays a visit to Israel, and the episode is wonderful. There's Homer ordering a falafel with extra cheese, being asked to say that latkes are better than American pancakes in order to enter the country, a teaching opportunity if you watch with your family to tell your children what a tagine is, and more. Some of it, I assure you, is in quite bad taste. The week before that, there was an extended sequence called Koyani-Scratchy, which is classic Simpsons. If you're at all familiar with the movie Koyaanisqatsi it's hilarious on one level, and if you are 14 and can't tell the difference between Glass, Philip and Glass Plus -- well, it is Itchy and Scratchy and works on another level entirely. That episode also has a montage of great kiss s...

Oh those Simpsons! I've probably watched the lion's share of episodes, and certainly pretty much all from the last 12 or 15 seasons. As the show's gotten on in years, there are the occasional weeks, and sometimes stretches of weeks, when the series shows its age. There are some ideas like the historical reenactments or fairy tale retellings that I can't stand at all. The show is a lesson in TV credits. The longer a show is on the air, the more and more people manage to get contractual producer credits of some sort or another. The roster that appears on air is now pushing 30 producers of various shapes and sizes in the opening credits. Most weeks, though, the show is pleasant enough, that it's worth watching because the only way to find the great episodes like this past week's is to keep plugging away, and then lo and behold once or three times a season there's something that works so wonderfully on so many levels that you just sit and marvel. This week...

With Van Johnson, aka The Minstrel, and Earth Kitt, aka Catwoman, having sadly passed in this season, is there a third to come...  The old saying is that things like this will happen in threes.

One of my pet peeves in movies and TV shows has to do with funeral scenes.  I don't have a "funeral suit" in my closet, some black suit with a black tie and a white shirt that I can drag out on a day's notice in the unfortunate and unwanted event that I need to mark someone's passing. Do you?  Yet it's this awful cliche in Hollywood that the real world is full of people young and old who either have that special suit in their closet or run out and buy.  You look at a group of mourners, and they're all there in a funeral suit.  I'm not going to go to a funeral in my gaudiest ensemble, but nor am I going to go in a black suit with a white shirt and a black tie. So three cheers for Episode #6 of True Blood.  There's a funeral in this episode, and the characters are dressed like actual real people at most of the actual funerals of real people I've attended in my life.  One of the relatives is in a suit, but it's a blue suit with a loose tie.  A...

So I confess that I've been a little jealous of Peter V. Brett , who had some wonderful experiences the past week going to London for the British launch of his excellent debut fantasy THE PAINTED MAN (US, THE WARDED MAN, March 2009).  I love the picture here , and would loved to have been there. But I've also got to confess that I had a pretty cool time myself at the gala premiere of True Blood on Thursday night, and I can't really think what experience I'd possibly trade for that very very special evening. Now, for those of you who don't know, True Blood is the new HBO series  based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris .  It is created by Alan Ball, the award-winning creator of Six Feet Under and screenwriter for American Beauty.  It has the biggest-ever marketing campaign for HBO , and it is a big thing.   Getting invited to the premiere is no sure thing.  The first draft of a film agreement will rarely contain anything about the author being invite...