ENTERTAINMENT
May 4, 2012 | By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
For those in preemptive mourning for Fox's Sherlock Holmes-inspired "House,"which comes to an end later this month, a bit of comfort: Season 2 of "Sherlock,"the BBC's flirty but still faithful contemporary rendition of the unforgettable detective, begins on PBS' "Masterpiece Mystery" Sunday night. As reimagined by British TV maestro Steven Moffat ("Doctor Who," "Jekyll") and Mark Gatiss ("Doctor Who"), this Sherlock, played with aquamarine and alabaster radiance by Benedict Cumberbatch, is a London consulting detective as brilliant, icy and occasionally preening as the original.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 20, 2012
Mel Gibson's new movie, "Get the Gringo," rolled into a handful of theaters Wednesday night for what is certain to be the shortest theatrical run in the actor's history: one night. That's because Gibson's latest self-financed film, a $20-million, south-of-the-border crime drama set in a Mexican prison, won't appear in theaters beyond Wednesday's premiere in Austin, Texas, which was simulcast into a few auditoriums around the country. Instead, "Get the Gringo" will skip a theatrical run and become available on the satellite service DirecTV on May 1 in one of the boldest bets on video-on-demand programming.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 19, 2012 | By James Rainey, Los Angeles Times
KCET-TV pushes into its second year of independence from PBS with a new headquarters, a new slogan and new pledges about the thoughtful and provocative shows it will produce about Southern California. "Where the story really gets good," the fresh tag line declares. Management hopes it also applies to KCET's attempts to go it alone as one of the nation's handful of independent public television stations. Chief Executive Al Jerome said in a recent interview that KCET was making "really good progress" in its three-year plan to create a winning destination without public TV name brands such as "Sesame Street," "NewsHour" and the hit"Downton Abbey.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 2, 2012 | By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
They were Southern women who wrote novels about race, family and the destructive mores of their native land — so it makes sense that the "American Masters" documentaries about Margaret Mitchell and Harper Lee would run back to back Monday night. It also makes sense that neither of these films would break the two-hour mark — "Margaret Mitchell: An American Rebel" is 55 minutes, "Harper Lee: Hey, Boo" is 90 minutes — because these women shared another characteristic: Each wrote just one book.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 1, 2012 | Scott Timberg
Julian Fellowes recalls his first Titanic moment, decades before a young Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet climbed onto James Cameron's set. "It haunted me," he says of a childhood viewing of "A Night to Remember," the 1958 British film about the ocean liner's crash into an iceberg and the ensuing race for the lifeboats. "Somehow the disaster of the Titanic embraces so much of that world -- high and low, working men and aristocrats, entrepreneurs and movie stars, immigrants hoping to start a new life in America.
ENTERTAINMENT
March 7, 2012 | By Susan King, Los Angeles Times
Oscar Hammerstein II's lyrics reflected his personality and belief system, making him one of the first to transform the genre of the Broadway musical from lighthearted boy-meets-girl frivolities to more substantial intellectual shows. The lyricist-librettist-producer explored the subject of miscegenation in the seminal 1927 musical "Show Boat," which he wrote with composer Jerome Kern. In 1945's "Carousel," his second collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers, Hammerstein presented a romantic drama fantasy that dealt with death, heaven and forgiveness.