John Valadez had become an expert on subjects of bias, law and Mexican-Americans.
Still, this was new to him: Two brothers (shown here), both U.S. war veterans, said they were fighting deportation.
“I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him,” Valadez recalled. “It seemed really weird.”
But it turned out to be true. The result – almost a decade later – is “American Exile,” at 10 p.m. Tuesday (Nov. 16), on PBS. Read more…
John Williams has been writing music for 80 years now, so this must be easy for him.
Or not. “There’s rarely a moment (when) I have said, ‘Eureka, this is exactly right,’” he said.
Consider the five “Close Encounters” notes, which seemed just right for communicating with aliens: “I wrote about 300 examples,” Williams (shown here) told the Television Critics Association.
His Zoom call was to promote a big-deal classical-music event: At 9 p.m. Friday (Nov. 12), PBS’ has Anne-Sophie Mutter and the Boston Symphony with, as “Great Performances” producer David Horn put it, “the debut of a violin concerto by legendary composer John Williams.” Read more…
Robert Langdon could be the patron saint of anyone who’s ever tackled a crossword, a sudoku or just a bewildering set of Ikea instructions.
He’s a puzzle-solver, one who ponders ancient riddles. He’s fictional, residing in Dan Brown novels … in three Tom Hanks movies … and in “The Lost Symbol” (shown here), a prequel series that shows how this began. Viewers can catch it:
– At the start. The first episode reruns at 10 p.m. Monday (Nov. 8) on NBC.
– At the end of the first season. The ninth and final episode streams Thursday on Peacock. Read more…
Dexter Morgan has never been your standard serial killer. For one thing, he tries to only kill bad people; he considers himself a hero … albeit a pained one.
For another, he’s been doing that in the blue-sky beauty of Miami. All of that changes, however, with “Dexter: New Blood,” the 10 week mini-series that debuts at 9 p.m. Sunday (Nov. 7) on Showtime.
The new setting (Shelburne Falls, Mass., posing as upstate New York) is “undeniably beautiful,” said producer Clyde Phillips. It also has lots of trees and space … the standard serial-killer turf. Read more…
A quarter-century ago Kate Mulgrew strode into TV history, shielded by semi-ignorance.
Yes, she knew that her character, Kathryn Janeway, would be the first female “Star Trek” captain. There was a fuss about that; the producers even lured Sally Ride (the first woman in space) to the premiere.
But what she didn’t know about was “Star Trek” itself. “I didn’t watch it …. My introduction was when I walked onto that bridge at about 7 o’clock in the morning.”
Hey, a lot of people don’t know “Trek” – including the young actors who star with Mulgrew in “Star Trek: Prodigy” (shown here), the computer-animated series that debuts Thursday (Oct. 28) on Paramount+. The actors had a virtual press conference with the Television Critics Association. Read more…
These two military veterans had opposite careers.
Angela Salinas’ tenure lasted 39 years. She started as an office worker, left as the first Latina to be a general in the Marine Corps.
J.R. Martinez had barely been in the Army for a half-year, when an explosion put him near death. He would spend almost three years in hospitals, undergo at least 33 surgeries … then go on to be an actor, a motivational speaker and a “Dancing With the Stars” champion.
They’re both part of the vast expanse of American military vets. It’s a sprawling subject, tackled by PBS’ “American Veteran,” at 9 p.m. on four Tuesdays, starting Oct. 26. Read more…
Sometime, try to name the old-time movie moguls.
You might come up with the guys who put their names on studios – Disney, Warner, Goldwyn, Mayer. You probably wouldn’t say Darryl Zanuck, who may have topped them all in quantity and quality.
“He wasn’t a one-trick pony,” author/historian Scott Eyman said by phone. “The others found a groove and couldn’t get out of it.”
Eyman’s previous 15 books have ranged from John Wayne to Cecil B. DeMille. Now comes “20th Century-Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio” (Running Press). It traces Zanuck from gritty gangster films to the CinemaScope sprawl of “The Robe,” “The Sound of Music” (shown here) and beyond. “He sensed what the public was going to like before the public got there.” Read more…
By now, we’ve seen lots of TV cops.
We’ve met cops with attitudes, cops with quips, cops with guns or lollipops. Now meet Colin Sutton – the real-life Englishman at the core of two “Manhunt” stories (shown here with Martin Clunes as Sutton), the second arriving on www.acorn.tv.
Calm and quiet, Sutton is like no TV cop, with one exception: “There’s a faint element of Columbo,” said Ed Whitmore, the series’ writer and producer. He “invites people to underestimate him.” Read more…
HBO fans are used to long waits.
That’s the thing about networks that want quality; they take their time and get it right.
“Game of Thrones” once went 20 months between the end of one season and the start of another. “The Sopranos” had gaps of 16 months one year, 15 the next and 22 months before the final season.
But all of that was without a COVID shutdown. Now “Succession” (shown here) returns at 9 p.m. Sunday (Oct. 17, rerunning at 10 and 11:35 p.m.) … a full two years after the last season ended. Read more…
There are limits, it seems, to the “take your daughter to work” idea.
Just ask Brad Dourif about the time his daughter Fiona visited, when he was voicing Chucky (the killer doll) for a “Child’s Play” movie.
“When she was very young, she came to the studio,” he told the Television Critics Association. That day, he was “screaming and yelling as I was being burned to death. And you can’t do that halfway …. So I was screaming in agony. And she heard this and went white as a sheet and ran out of the studio.”
It was one of many strange moments in a horror tale that has persisted for 33 years, eight movies and now an eight-week “Chucky” series — 10 p.m. Tuesdays on cable’s USA and Syfy channels, starting Oct. 12 — with Fiona (shown here) in some of the episodes. Read more…
