EMMY Awards Tonight With the Brilliant Neil Patrick Harris Presiding

'The Hollow Crown' on PBS

"The Hollow Crown," the Sam Mendes-produced BBC series of four Shakespeare adaptations, "Richard II," "Henry IV Part 1" and "Part 2," and "Henry V," begins its stateside airings this weekend on PBS. It features a star-studded cast including Tom Hiddleston, Patrick Stewart, Jeremy Irons and Michelle Dockery. 

check your local listings for showtimes

'Falling': A Video Montage

with 'gravity' just around the corner 'falling' is timely

'Great Expectations'

i feel in love with holliday grainger in 'the borgias'. glad to see her hitting the big screen 11/8 in this charles dickens remake.

'American Horror Story: Coven' Coming 10/9

We've All Been There

'Sleepy Hollow' Premier Gets an A

the pilot was great. now let's hope they can keep it going. the leads, tom mison and nicole beharie, are both charmers and have great chemistry. 

if you missed the first episode fox is repeating it friday night, yes tomorrow, at 9pm. set your dvr's now if you missed it.

This Season 3 Trailer for 'Once Upon a Time' is Epic in and of Itself

'Burton and Taylor' on BBC America Oct.16

i presume this may already be airing in the uk. thank the gods for bbc america. this summer they gave us the brilliant mystery 'broadchurch'. and this past winter and winter next the terrific 'orphan blaack. these are but two of many shows they have shipped across the pond.

now we have this taylor-burton film that can hopefully eradicate the lindsay lohan debacle this past year.

watching this clip i'd say helena bonham carter's taylor might be a great companion for ms taylor's martha in 'who's afraid of 'virginia wolff'.

Audra Mcdonald and Laura Benanti Join 'Sound of Music' Live NBC Production

audra mcdonald, laura benanti and christian borle, tony winners all, join carrie underwood and stephen moyer in the nbc live production of the original stage version of 'the sound of music' this coming december. 
(the film tweaked the original production by cutting and rearranging musical numbers)

audra will play the mother abbess once again breaking the 'color barrier' that she first did in the lincoln center production of 'carousel' that sent her career soaring. bravo to the network and producers for this brave casting. i am almost certain there were no black abbesses in austria in 1939. she will get to sing 'climb every mountain' and 'my favorite things' with carrie underwood's maria. this is how it was originally played but changed for the film.

laura benanti and christian borle will get to perform two songs that were unfortunately cut from the 1965 oscar winner: 'no way to stop it' and 'how can love survive'. they are two of my favorites from the score.

i don't know much about carrie underwood except that she has huge shoes to fill taking on the julie andrews role. i wish her well. 

but with audra and laura onboard there is no doubt i will be there.

stephen moyer will portray capt. von trapp and ms underwood the novice turned governess maria.

audra, laura and christian will portray the mother abbess, baroness schrader and uncle max respectively. they all fit these roles perfectly.

Ben Allleck Addresses the Backlash on His Becoming Batman

stop the damn chatter he'll be fine.

Mary-Louise Parker Is Back Where She Belongs

ms parker had a great run on the tv series 'weeds'. but now at long last she is back where she belongs. the theater. this is cause for celebration.

Happy Birthday Lauren Bacall

ms bacall turns 89 today. happy birthday betty.

'Grace of Monaco' Trailer

it opens stateside on 11/27 and on the 29th in the uk

'Glee' Sneak Peek: The Beetles

The "Glee" Beatles tribute will be a two-part celebration of the famous music of the Fab Four. The songs "Glee" will cover:

1. "Yesterday"

2. "Drive My Car"

3. "Got To Get You Into My Life"

4. "You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away"

5. "Help"

6. "A Hard Day’s Night"

7. "I Saw Her Standing There"

8. "All You Need Is Love"

9. "Get Back"

10. "Here Comes The Sun"

11. "Something"

12. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"

13. "Hey Jude"

14. "Let It Be"

Carrie Preston Finally Gets Her EMMY

carrie preston finally won her emmy for 'the good wife'. but why the hell is this award given early at the 'creative emmy award show'. it's kind of insulting. the fabulous ms preston nabbed 'guest actress in a drama'. if you've missed her on 'the good wife' you are missing one of tv's best ever performances!
 the male counterpart went to the more than deserving dan bucatinsky in 'scandal'.

'Sleepy Hallow' Debuts Tonight

so this marks the official beginning of the fall season. it is followed by the new season of 'bones' on the fox network.

Keira Knightley

with a new film coming out of toronto with good buzz it's just time for keira

From Toronto Film Fest: 'Blood Ties' Press Conference

From Toronto Film Fest: 'Labor Day' Press Conference

From Toronto Film Fest: '12 Years a Slave' Press Conference

Keira at Toronto Fest

From the Toronto Film Fest: 'Gravity' Q and A and Press Conference

Keith Olbermann Is Back in Form As He Blasts Russian Leaders Over Anti-Gay Laws

welcome back buddy

'The Railway Man' First Trailer

colin firth is one of my faves. the film itself is not generating buzz on the festival circuit. i don't care. if colin's in it it is a must see.

it is based on a bestselling memoir by eric lomax. Firth plays Lomax, a man who was captured in Signapore and forced into a Japanese POW camp, where he was made to work on the Thai-Burma Railway. Kidman plays his wife, who wants to get to the bottom of her husband's suffering and Skarsgard is a fellow survivor of the ordeal.

Downton Abbey' Season 4 Teaser

MarionL.A.dy Dior Commercial

just let marion be marion!

A First Look at 'Labor Day'

a sneak peak at kate's new film due christmas day.

'Morning' Trailer

also coming out of toronto is 'morning' starring jeanne tripplehorn as the grieving mother dealing with ehe accidental loss of her child. kyle chandler, jason ritter and laura linney also star. it is set for a 9/27 opening. looks like a sleeper that could to me. i'll keep an eye on this one.
here is the haunting trailer.

John Barrowman on Being Gay and Gay Marriage

i love this guy more and more every day. you can catch him on 'arrow' and don't forget he's a terrific singer. more than terrific. yeah i love this guy.

Toronto: Your Best Picture Winner Will Be '12 Years a Slave'

i am reprinting this 'new york' magazine article without permission. why? because it states what every critic i've read coming out of thr toronto film fest is saying" 12 years a slave will be hard to beat this coming awards season. 

(i will remove if requested)

Suspend the betting, close the books, and notify the engraver: I've just seen what will surely be this year's Best Picture winner, and it's 12 Years a Slave. There's no question in my mind that this will be our ultimate awards season victor, and the fact that there's still any room for debate at all means that Oscar bloggers were high on more than mountain air last week at the Telluride Film Festival, where the film first sneaked before tonight's official Toronto Film Festival premiere. In fact, I'll go one further … no, two further: Not only will 12 Years triumph in the Best Picture category, but I'd put my money on a historic Best Director win for Steve McQueen, and I'd mark Chiwetel Ejiofor as the frontrunner for Best Actor. Like, what's gonna beat this movie? Freakin'Monuments Men?

To bring you up to speed — though if you're unfamiliar with 12 Years a Slave, that won't last long — the fact-based film stars Ejiofor as Solomon Northup, a free violinist living in 1841 New York who is drugged by two shady employers (one of whom, randomly, is Saturday Night Live's Taran Killam), then kidnapped from his family, transported to Louisiana, and sold into slavery. Renamed Platt, the badly beaten Northup struggles to sublimate his personality in order to survive, a task that is already dehumanizing but becomes downright untenable when he is sold to the sadistic plantation owner Edwin Epps (played by Michael Fassbender, who previously starred for McQueen in Hunger andShame).

I'll leave the eventual review of 12 Years a Slave to my colleague David Edelstein; all I can tell you about is the audience reaction, plus my gut instincts. On the first count, the movie was simply shattering. It wasn't just that people broke down crying throughout — though plenty in my audience did — it's that during the closing credits, when I finally found it in me to stand and turn around, I looked back at faces that were shell-shocked to the core. One writer friend of mine was inconsolable, speechless; I took him to get a drink, and for a while at the bar, we just sat and said nothing. At a film festival, you're often expected to move on to the next screening or assignment, but this movie had knocked us flat, and two people normally quick with words not only couldn't find them, but didn't need to. Later, I had that same, silent "holy shit" moment with several other colleagues who'd seen the movie; when my roommate came home from her 12 Years screening as I was writing this article, she said simply, "There it is, we're done. Game over."

I expect the Academy will agree with her. There are still many movies yet to screen here at Toronto — August: Osage County, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, could be a contender — and Oscar blogger Jeff Wells told me he thinks that David O. Russell is due for an Academy Award and that the forthcoming American Hustle could be his ticket. But could even the best versions of those movies feel seminal the same way 12 Years a Slaveimmediately does? There hasn't been a filmed project that engages this galvanically with the subject of slavery since the television miniseries Roots; yes, we got Django Unchained last year, but compared to the hard truths of 12 Years, that jape-filled Best Picture nominee is from another dimension. It helps, too, that the movie is an across-the-board formal triumph. McQueen makes not a single misstep with the camera, many of the actors are turning in career-best work (or, in the case of surefire Supporting Actress nominee Lupita Nyong'o as a sympathetic fellow slave, building a career on the spot), and behind-the-scenes contributions from writer John Ridley and compose Hans Zimmer are simply sterling.

Should another film come along that's capable of equalling 12 Years a Slave, I'd be happy for my awards predictions to be proven wrong, but let's get real: That isn't going to happen. It's the capstone to a remarkable year for black cinema that also includes success stories Fruitvale Station and The Butler, and it could reign supreme in a night destined to make Oscar history, especially if McQueen becomes the first black filmmaker to take home Best Director. As I sat in the bar with that shattered writer tonight and we struggled to speak, I said, "A century from now, when they put together a montage about the history of movies? They'll put the film we just saw in the first ten seconds of that montage." He didn't even question it; he just nodded, a lump rising in his throat. Normally, I'd feel like I was sticking my neck out to engage in that sort of hyperbole, but this is as easy a call as I've ever made. Beat that, kids.

• By Kyle Buchanan

'Stay' Steve Grand's Follow-Up to 'All American Boy'

mr grand is fulfilling the need: young men in love in the summer,  music and on video. i happily support him and his music.

'Come Together' Promo 'Glee'

two part fifth season premier thursday 9/26

'Defined Lines' Is 'Blurred Lines' Parody That Trumps All Others

Happy New Year from My Tribe to Yours

'Gravity' UK Trailer

'12 Years a Slave' Featurette

coming out of the festivals at toronto and telluride '12 years a slave' heads to the top of the oscar frontrunners this year. it's been getting rave reviews from the sources and persons i admire most in film critique.

Funny or Die: 'Christian Mingle'

The Gay Christian Mingle from Cheyenne Jackson

The MTM Reunion Tonight on 'Hot in Cleveland'*

*i posted yesterday in error. it is tonight.

Idiot!

The Guests

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Happy Birthday to Me

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

"Downton Abbey" Season 4 Trailer Is Here!

oh how we have missed you!

now i just have to avoid the spoilers that will inevitably fly across the pond before january.
but how to stop them?

Sandra and George Hit Venice for 'Gravity' Premier

it is by the way getting brilliant reviews.

'Divergent' Stars Shailene Woodley, Kate Winslet, Theo James Explain the 'Factions'

it doesn't open till march 2014 but the push is on. the next 'hunger games'? that's the hope of the studio and the producers. and possibly the stars who might find themselves in a successful, thus lucrative, franchise.

at least i have kate's 'labor day' to look forward to on christmas day.

Washington 1963

peter, paul and mary sand 'if i had a hammer'. peter and paul sang it together yesterday. mary has passed on. so here we go 50 tears back to the future. it was all  about the future!

Darren Criss Previews First New Episode of “Glee”

Nature

'The Butler' ***1/2

the oscar season truly has begun. 'the butler' is a contender. it's american history from the perspective of afro-americans. finally! well yes you can argue that it has been done before by let's say spike lee. it just has not been universally accessible before. mr lee was just to angry for mass audiences. lee daniels has made an honest, tragic at times yet heartwarming film from the black man's perspective. it has dignity and that dignity comes from the heart and soul of the forest whitaker character cecil gaines. the real life white house butler's story takes us through five or so presidents (mr truman seems to have been left out) and the civil rights struggles and triumphs during their tenure. 

along with mr whitaker's cecil david oyelowo and oprah winfrey shine as son louis and wife gloria respectively. make no mistake i am not a big fan of ms winfrey but her performance here is oscar nom noteworthy as is mr whitaker's and mr oyelowo's. the rest of the cast which is large adds dimension and depth to both the black and white characters. this really is a must see. in the theater. now.

so you may ask why only ***1/2's? well there was a bit of stunt casting in the case of the president's depicted. they did not work. in fact they were a distraction in an otherwise flawless ensemble. and having two of hollywood's biggest liberals, john cuzak and jane fonda, portray richard nixon and nancy regan was just gimmicky. i admire both actors and i am a liberal but it ruined the flow of the film. nitpicking? not really. it just 'hurt' the film and knocked it off it's pace. that being said it is still a must see. now. today. this coming weekend. just go to a theater and support this film. it's a very welcome relief from the summer crap we are subjected to.

'Divergent' First Look

kate winslet hits a franchise film vs shailene woodley.

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