A.V. Club

Coming Distractions: Trailer: Anger Management

Sean O'Neal — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:35:00 -0500

Should you still have any doubt that FX's Anger Management will function primarily as self-referential commentary on Charlie Sheen's already incredibly self-referential flame-out—even after knowing that he's playing a recovering disgraced guy named "Charlie," starring opposite real-life ex-wife Denise Richards as his love interest, and even bringing in a fellow sworn enemy of Chuck Lorre, Brett Butler, to play a commiserating pal named "Brett"—this new network promo should hammer that home. See, Sheen is walking away unscathed from a total trainwreck, which is like a metaphor for some things! And he is humorously acknowledging that he keeps getting dozens of opportunities to redeem himself, including this new sitcom! Still, you have to admire the network's restraint in not taking Sheen to the zoo so he can smirk outside a tiger cage… yet.

Film: Newswire: The Anchorman 2 poster extends to you an invitation to the pants party

Sean O'Neal — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:12:00 -0500

Timed to coincide with the preview to the teaser to the trailer to the yet-to-be-completed script to the still-in-pre-pre-production sequel to Anchorman, here is another piece of promotional ephemera to get you interested in Anchorman 2. Although it seems to confirm that the movie really is subtitled The Legend Continues, so that's something new, as with everything else about the campaign so far, this is just a tiny, tantalizing little glimpse at what's to come, like a hint of far-off, alluring musk that stings the nostrils, in a good way. And of course, it's just another excuse to post a bunch of Anchorman quotes, with the reminder that this movie still isn't due until 2014, so pace yourselves.

TV: Newswire: Adult Swim picks up Childrens Hospital spinoff Newsreaders

Sean O'Neal — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:59:00 -0500

Childrens Hospital continues to yield actual spinoffs in addition to the myriad fake ones it's promised over the years, and while Locked In Doctorin' and Doctor Mole People Doctor still refuse to be real things, Adult Swim really has picked up a series based on the show-within-the-show Newsreaders to go with NTSF:SD:SUV. Production begins this summer on the newsmagazine that allowed a behind-the-scenes glimpse at Childrens Hospital while also asking the tough questions about whether "gray whales" were really just gay whales, and other examples of hard-hitting, heartwarming fake journalism. Fittingly, former Daily Show co-executive producer Jim Margolis will oversee the series alongside Rob Corddry, David Wain, and Jonathan Stern, using his experience with news both fake and real from his past tenure on 60 Minutes, which didn't have the guts to even touch the gay whales controversy. (Here's last season's "Newsreaders" episode, if ...

Film: Newswire: Here's who's starring in David Gordon Green's Suspiria remake

Sean O'Neal — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:16:00 -0500

David Gordon Green is making good on—or perhaps in this case, stubbornly sticking to—his recent promises to create a younger-skewing remake of Dario Argento's Suspiria, hiring Isabelle Fuhrman to play the lead in his revised version of the classic horror film. Fuhrman is best known for playing the creepy title character in Orphan, as well as the gleefully homicidal, knife-throwing Clove in The Hunger Games, so she's certainly no stranger to bloodbaths. As recently attested by Eva Green in Dark Shadows, she also has the requisite eyebrows for starring in witch movies.

Film: Newswire: Superbad's Greg Mottola might adapt Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot

Sean O'Neal — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:00:00 -0500

Greg Mottola is known for coming-of-age stories involving both actual adolescents and people who just behave like them in Superbad, Adventureland, and Paul, and now he's considering taking on another story of childish types forced to grow up. Variety reports that Mottola in talks to adapt The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides' novel about three early-'80s college grads and their long, frustrating love triangle—a romantic melodrama that mirrors its female protagonist's obsession with Jane Austen and the like, albeit filtered through a postmodern academic remove that makes sense with the benefit of Eugenides' prose, but seems like it would be really difficult to translate to film without revealing the actual storyline to be lightweight and its characters to be kind of annoying. So, good luck with that, Greg Mottola.

TV: Tolerability Index: This week we're barely putting up with True Blood

Amelie Gillette — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:00:00 -0500

TV: TV Club: The Sopranos, “Mr. & Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request...”

Todd VanDerWerff — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:00:00 -0500

“Mr. & Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request…” (season 6, episode 5; originally aired 4/9/2006)

In which there is a wedding, and the show circles back to its roots

When The Sopranos began, it was a show about a man who did not want his secret getting out so he would appear weak to his co-workers. That secret was that he was seeing a therapist, and his co-workers were mobsters, but it was a very basic, masculine impulse he had, and it was very relatable. Few men want to appear weak. Most men at least want to appear to be somewhere in the primate power rankings, even if they know they’re in the middle somewhere. Nobody wants to be the guy at the bottom, and fantasies about being the guy at the top are common. Tony Soprano actually was the guy at the top, except when his uncle and mother ...

Film: Random Roles: Dick Miller talks working with Corman, Scorsese, and getting peed on by a monkey

Caelum Vatnsdal — Wed, 16 May 2012 12:00:00 -0500

Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what roles we’ll ask them to talk about.

The actor: Dick Miller has been called “The best actor in Hollywood” by no less an authority than his frequent director Roger Corman. Miller’s debut in Corman’s cheapie Western Apache Woman signaled the beginning of a working relationship that would last for decades. He’s since worked repeatedly for directors such as Joe Dante, Jonathan Kaplan, and Allan Arkush, who seem to regard Miller as a sort of good-luck token. He’s also been directed by the likes of Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Fuller, Zemeckis, Cameron, and Tarantino; been roughed up by Jack Nicholson in the famously confused production The Terror and shot by Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator; and fought Gremlins, giant cucumbers, and Ramones. He ...

Film: Newswire: Nick Stahl, star of Carnivale and Terminator 3, is missing

Sean O'Neal — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:07:00 -0500

Actor Nick Stahl—perhaps best known for his roles in Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines, Bully, and the HBO series Carnivale—has gone missing, according to a police report filed by his wife, who contacted the LAPD after not hearing from him in five days. In addition to seeing Fox pass on his much-hyped small-screen comeback in Locke And Key, Stahl has personally had a rough go of it lately: After he and his wife separated in January, she reportedly asked a court to require monitored visitation between Stahl and his 2-year-old daughter, as well as mandatory drug tests 24 hours before he was allowed to see her. That same month, Stahl was arrested for "defrauding a taxi operator" after stiffing a cab driver on an $84 fare, spending at least a day in jail. TMZ says that Stahl's wife has expressed concern that his drug addiction may ...

Film: Newswire: Aaron Sorkin agrees to write the other, Ashton Kutcher-less Steve Jobs biopic

Sean O'Neal — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:42:00 -0500

After months of being theatrically "courted," marked by coy flutters of a lace kerchief and goose chases 'round the mulberry bush, we guess, Aaron Sorkin has finally agreed to write the Steve Jobs biopic that everyone already assumed he would when it was announced. Sorkin seemed like an obvious candidate from the get-go, given that his Social Network producer Scott Rudin is developing the adaptation of Walter Isaacson's biography, Jobs himself was a professed fan who always wanted to work with Sorkin, and the fact that anytime there is a story to be told of a ruthless iconoclast whose achievements are muddied by a controversial personality and accusations of exploitation, a big red phone rings in Sorkin's study. Anyway, so there are now two Steve Jobs biopics: The one based on an authorized, definitive account with a multi-award-winning team behind it, and the one based on what Ashton ...

Games: The Gameological Society: John Hodgman strips and Peter Dinklage fumes in a tournament for Scrabble cheaters

Drew Toal — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:30:00 -0500

“I don’t know. I think if I were you, I’d probably challenge the word ‘jomama.’ That’s just me.” Such was the conversation wafting over from the table behind us at the 2012 Scrabble For Cheaters tournament. Held at the headquarters of 826NYC in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, this event is in its fifth year of raising money to foster the creative writing talents of area youngsters. It’s a single-elimination team tournament, and normal Scrabble rules apply. Except when they don’t.

Scrabble For Cheaters codifies the mantra of the late, great professional wrestler, Eddie Guerrero—“Cheat 2 Win.” Cheating—like art forgery or, say, cat burglary—is generally frowned upon. When skillfully executed, however, these shady pastimes can elicit a grudging admiration, even in their victims. For years, Dutch art forger Hans van Meergeren enjoyed a heroic reputation for having fleeced Nazi official Hermann Goering ...

TV: Newswire: Fall schedule announcements: Look on CBS' works, ye mighty, and despair

Todd VanDerWerff — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:25:00 -0500

At this point, CBS is literally just toying with the other networks, like a bored cat, waiting to decide if it will eat ABC or NBC first to fatten up in order for its fight to the death with Fox. The network’s audience is getting younger, sure, but it’s also perfectly content to program stuff that does much, much better with the older set than their kids and grandkids because the network knows it’s much easier to program to those who don’t know where the remote is. (We’re kidding, we think.) CBS will once again win the ratings crown for total viewers, though it has yet to catch up to Fox in the demo (despite impressive gains). When the network’s promos say “America is watching CBS,” what they mean is, “Most of America is, and we’ll get the rest of you sooner or ...

TV: TV Club: Glee, “Props”/“Nationals”

Todd VanDerWerff — Wed, 16 May 2012 03:00:00 -0500

I’ve been watching a lot of Smash lately because I have to stay up late to make sure I’m awake to write up the network upfronts, and if anything, that show’s utter, drab clumsiness makes me appreciate Glee a lot more. Smash is certainly a more competent show than Glee in almost every way. It looks like we expect television to look, and it has recognizable character arcs (even if the characters within them don’t behave like any human beings to ever have lived). It follows a plot from beginning to end without taking a bunch of weird detours, and it knows the value of using a musical number as something more than a way to prop up the show’s budget with iTunes sales. (Seriously, Rachel had to sing a song to psych herself up to call Carmen tonight? What?) It’s a very disappointing ...

TV: TV Club: NCIS: Los Angeles — “Sans Voir (Parts 1 & 2)”

Phil Dyess-Nugent — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:30:00 -0500

In an interview promoting the two-hour season finale of NCIS: LA, the show’s executive producer, Shane Brennan, left no doubt that, when it comes to explosions, he’s a size freak. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” he told Entertainment Weekly, describing the big fireball that goes off in the finale’s second half, “and that explosion—in the world of blowing things up—is a triple A+. And that explosion, that hasn’t been enhanced with any computer graphics at all, and when you see it on the air we have not touched it.” It’s nice that Pop loves his work, but does someone as smart as Brennan—the driving force behind two of CBS’ biggest hit procedurals, the other one being the other show with NCIS in its title—really think he has to talk like one of the hosts of Farm Film Celebrity ...

DVD: HomeVideo Review: Being John Malkovich

Scott Tobias — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:03:00 -0500

When Being John Malkovich hit theaters in 1999, many critics considered it, rightly, as the most original American comedy in years. Spike Jonze’s insistently surreal headtrip featured, among other odd flourishes, an office designed to accommodate miniature ladies (“The overhead is low!”), a production of The Belle Of Amherst featuring a 60-foot-tall Emily Dickinson puppet, and, of course, a portal into the consciousness of respected character actor John Malkovich. And while it’s as uproarious now as it ever was, the film’s themes about identity and desire have only deepened with time, as the Internet has grown into a place where personae are fluid and sometimes false, and the fantasy of accessing the minds of celebrities—or anyone’s mind, for that matter—is just a Twitter feed away. What technology hasn’t changed, however, is the impulse to transcend who we are and experience the world through ...

DVD: HomeVideo Review: Diana Ross: Live In Central Park

Noel Murray — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:02:00 -0500

Television director Steve Binder was behind the camera for some of the most momentous musical events in TV and movie history, including The T.A.M.I. Show, Elvis Presley’s 1968 comeback special, and the series Hullabaloo (as well as the Star Wars Holiday Special and Chevy Chase’s talk show, but the less said about those, the better). One of Binder’s most significant achievements—his Cable ACE-award-winning direction of the 1983 Showtime special Diana Ross Worldwide From New York: For One And All—has gone largely unseen since it originally aired, live, on two consecutive nights in July. The circumstances surrounding the special have become show business legend, though: How Ross stepped on to a bare Central Park stage on July 21, 1983 under threatening skies and tried gamely for 40 minutes to sing her ’60s Motown hits, ’70s ballads, and ’80s disco anthems to a crowd ...

DVD: HomeVideo Review: Films Of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Movie

Noel Murray — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:01:00 -0500

Anyone who’s ever had the pleasure of listening to a Ric Meyers commentary track on a martial-arts DVD knows how entertaining and informative the man can be, relating anecdotes, analysis, observation, and historical context in the voice of an enthusiast, not a pedant. It’s too bad, then, that Meyers’ literal voice is missing from Andrew Corvey and Andrew Robinson’s documentary adaptation of Meyers’ book Films Of Fury: The Kung Fu Movie Book. The film uses Meyers’ words, but they’re read by voice actor Yuri Lowenthal in an animated framing device that has a laid-back martial-arts expert indoctrinating a young know-nothing into the world of Hong Kong action cinema. Corvey and Robinson’s breezy approach is admirably different from the usual talking-head interviews, granted; but if the main talking head had been Meyers, then conventional doc-style wouldn’t have been such a bad way to go.

No ...

TV: Interview: Bob Newhart talks about stand-up, sitcoms, and why he stays busy

Jesse Thorn — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

An audio version of this interview originally appeared on Bullseye, a weekly radio show and podcast hosted by Jesse Thorn. You can listen to it on select public radio stations, at the Maximum Fun website, and via iTunes.

Bob Newhart is an actor, stand-up comedian, and legend of American comedy. He began his comedy career when he and a friend improvised over-the-phone comedy routines to kill boredom at work, and subsequently sold the recorded bits to radio stations. The “phone sketch” had endured throughout Newhart’s career, and featured in the release of his Grammy-winning 1960 EP The Button-Down Mind Of Bob Newhart. The album’s success eventually led Newhart to television, first with a variety sketch show in the early ’60s, and then three sitcoms: The Bob Newhart Show in the ’70s, Newhart in the ’80s, and Bob, which has just been released on DVD, in the early ’90s ...

Wondermark: May 16, 2012

David Malki ! — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

TV: What's On Tonight?: The TV season ends in a week, so take this chance to catch up with the antics of the B---- In Apartment 23

Todd VanDerWerff — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Wednesday, May 16. All times are Eastern.

TOP PICK
Don’t Trust The B---- In Apartment 23 (ABC, 9:30 p.m.): So many ways we could go with this, the last Wednesday before the last Wednesday of the TV season (which is next week). That day, we’ll be contractually obligated to put the bloated, awful American Idol finale as the top pick, so this is our last chance to exercise some free will. Will we pick the greatness that is Suburgatory? Or the next-to-last Revenge of the season? Or perhaps America’s Next Top Model because we feel bad for it never being in this spot? No, we’re going to pick this fun little sitcom, which has built up a nice head of steam in its first, abbreviated season and got a second season pickup late ...

DVD: HomeVideo Review: DVDs In Brief: May 14, 2012

The A.V. Club Staff — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

It’s tempting to say that Katherine Heigl’s career has hit rock bottom with One For The Money (Lionsgate), because unlike the other times when her career hit bottom—the unctuous Gerard Butler rom-com The Ugly Truth, say, or the Ashton Kutcher team-up Killers—nobody seemed that interested in seeing it. Though based on a respected Janet Evanovich series about bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, One For The Money miscasts Heigl as a blue-collar tough gal, but a bigger problem is the utter indifference behind the camera…

After squandering his reserves of critical respectability with his big-screen version of The A-Team, director Joe Carnahan redeemed himself a little with The Grey (Open Road), a no less aggressively masculine and overwrought action movie that at least gets more thoughtful about it. The noir-like voiceover narration and campfire discussions about the existence of God get a bit much, but Liam Neeson anchors ...

Savage Love: May 16, 2012

Dan Savage — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

I work in an office tower in downtown Seattle. From time to time, I go to a bathroom on a mostly deserted floor, go into a stall, and rub out a quick one. Usually, no one comes in.

Today, just as I was blowing a load into a handful of TP, someone came into the bathroom. This person walked up to the stall and stared through the door crack. This person stood there for a second before walking over to the urinal. He finished and left. I flushed and washed my hands and left. A security guard came around the corner while I was waiting for the elevator. He rode the elevator down with me but said nothing. At the lobby, I got in the elevator that takes me back to my floor. As the door closed, I heard someone say, “See that guy?”

I am paranoid that security is ...

TV: For Our Consideration: What do we want from a TV finale?

Noel Murray — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Warning: This article contains spoilers for already-aired episodes of Fringe, Lost, and The Shield. DVD marathoners beware.

The creative team behind the Fox sci-fi series Fringe wrote and shot the show’s fourth-season finale before they knew for sure that Fringe would be picked up for a fifth season, so they designed the episode to function as an ending to their entire story, just in case. I knew this when I watched the episode this past Friday, which meant that when a key Fringe character appeared to die at one point, I had to ask myself: Would they really do this? Would the Fringe writers end the series with the death of one of its heroes? If so, it wouldn’t have been entirely unexpected. The character in question—super-powered FBI agent Olivia Dunham—has been prophesied to die multiple times over the run of the series. And Fringe has ...

Music: Playlisted: Archie Powell & The Exports

Marcus Gilmer — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:55:00 -0500

We get a lot of records sent to us here at The A.V. Club. Fortunately, we end up liking some of them. In Playlisted, we share our latest recommendations.

Album: Great Ideas In Action by Archie Powell & The Exports (out now on Good Land Records)

Press play if you like: The Features, Elvis Costello And The Attractions, guitar-driven power-pop

Some background: With an EP and now two LPs under their belts, Chicago’s Archie Powell & The Exports are taking grander strides to achieve success on a larger stage. While the band’s previous LP, 2010’s Skip Work, felt featherweight at times, Great Ideas sounds powerful, with cranked-up electric guitars and heftier production courtesy of Milwaukee-based producer Justin Perkins. “I Need Supervision” starts quietly before a swirling organ and shimmering guitars send the song soaring into a classic pop “na na na” refrain. “Job Fair” begins life as a ...

TV: TV Club: Cougar Town, “Square One”/“It'll All Work Out”

Ryan McGee — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:11:00 -0500

When last we conversed in this space, the fate of Cougar Town was unknown. I noted that I would love the show to run much longer past this season, but could imagine a scenario in which the finale few episodes this month might bring some amount of closure to the proceedings. Now? Eff that noise. I’m happy TBS is going to be airing the show for its fourth (and mostly likely fifth) season starting this Fall. The time to worry about what future seasons may hold can wait for another day. For now, let’s be happy that we don’t have to form a series of sad two-person zipline tandems to mourn the loss of the show. After all, ABC seemingly can’t burn episodes off fast enough at this point. Instead of seeing this as the unceremoniously rushed end, we can view tonight’s two-fer as a ...

TV: TV Club: Pregnant In Heels

Claire Zulkey — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:00:00 -0500

Women are so lucky. There is a reality show for us to humiliate ourselves on for every stage of life: our Sweet Sixteens, our courtships, our weddings, our high-profile divorces and of course our pregnancies and births.

Pre-pregnancy, I saw Bravo’s Pregnant In Heels as a combination of Real Housewives and Bridezillas: a way for wealthy, self-centered women to waste money on a “pregnancy concierge” and ultimately worry about frivolous Manhattanite problems that don’t exist in the real world: The women in TLC’s dramatic-yet-formulaic A Baby Story rarely seem to feature the blowouts and Louboutins the dames in PIH do.

But then I got knocked up and started thinking differently about a lot of pre-natal issues than I did when my womb was blissfully ignorant. Both the blessing and the curse of giving birth in the modern age is that there is an answer for almost every ...

TV: Newswire: Adult Swim picks up Dan Harmon show, animated Harold And Kumar, other things

Sean O'Neal — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:56:00 -0500

Although Dan Harmon has still yet to sign on officially for Community's future, and thus its fans continue to wonder whether they should be freaking out a lot or just the usual amount, he did get some good news today. Harmon's co-created animated series Rick & Morty is one of seven new pilots that were just given the green light on Adult Swim, which is home to equally rabid fans of cult shows with idiosyncratic humor that not everyone enjoys. The half-hour cartoon about a genius inventor grandfather and his dimwit grandson joins a new development slate that includes: an animated version of Harold And Kumar; a 15-minute cartoon about a crazy fried chicken mogul called Colonel Wallace; Coffin Dodgers, a half-hour animated series from the creators of Drawn Together about a rowdy bunch of retirement home residents; a live-action series from sketch comedy group Green Bench about a ...

TV: Newswire: See the Greendale Seven as video game characters in these exclusive Community finale images

Sean O'Neal — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:09:00 -0500

The recent renewal of Community assured that any goodbye would be only temporary, but still, there is a note of finality to Thursday's wrap-up of the season, not least because one of the three episodes airing that night is titled "Introduction To Finality." But even though the final three chapters of the third season thankfully don't have to double as the last you'll ever see of the series, we do have to say farewell for at least a little while—to the show, yes, but more importantly, to the "exclusive" previews we have so cynically mined to milk pageviews from fans.

So with a heavy heart, here is what will likely prove to be our last Community-related Newswire for a little while, at least until all our worst fears about Dan Harmon possibly leaving the show come true or Chevy Chase runs over someone with his ...

TV: Great Job, Internet!: In search of the first “First!”

Marcus Gilmer — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:30:00 -0500

“First!” You know what it is. We all do. But who was the first first in Internet history? That’s the question at the heart of this piercing short documentary. While we’re ultimately left hanging as to an answer, there’s still the promise that this mystery might one day be uncovered, that we will finally know the first first. See what I did there? Also, canceraids.

TV: Newswire: The Hulk will still get his own TV show, but The Punisher won't

Sean O'Neal — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:27:00 -0500

With his future promising a possible new solo movie and life as a spokesman for not responding to lackluster PowerPoint presentations with animalistic rage, The Incredible Hulk continues to take all assumed obstacles about his limited viability of the character and destroy them with brutish dismantling, so to speak, with ABC confirming today that it's still planning on airing Guillermo del Toro's Hulk TV show, perhaps as soon as next year. The news came amid various other comic-book-related questions inspired by the Disney-Marvel-ABC synergy, as the company avowed that it plans to think really hard and come up with a way to make some money off The Avengers.

A couple of those proposed projects have already been delayed or abandoned entirely, including the adaptation of AKA Jessica Jones that's not quite dead but not a top priority either, and the warily eyed, watered-down rehash of The ...