Year: 2024

Stories

It’s time for size-and-spectacle, season two

This is a question many of us might ponder: What is it like to ride one of Hollywood’s make-believe dragons?
“It’s just like riding a dragon in real life,” Eve Best semi-explained. “It’s deeply uncomfortable.”
She should know. She’s Princess Rhaenys in “House of the Dragon” (shown here), the “Game of Thrones” prequel that starts its second at 9 p.m. Sunday (June 16) on HBO and Max. Late in the first season, she had a dragon-riding escape that fans considered spectacular.
Best will have to take their word for it. “I’ve never seen it (the show),” she claimed, in that dry, British way. “I heard it’s fantastic.”
And the new season could be bigger. It has “two sequences that outstrip the size and spectacle of anything in Season One,” said producer Ryan Condal, Read more…

By Mike Hughes / June 12, 2024
Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for June 13: a journey to the ’80s

1) ‘80s journey. Cable keeps offering fun films from the 1980s. Fitting into that trend is the debut of Hulu’s “Brats”: Andrew McCarthy visits former colleagues, who were smudged by a 1985 article calling them the “brat pack.” As it happens, two of their films are on AMC – “Sixteen Candles” (1984) at 9:30 and “Breakfast Club” (snown here, 1985) at 11:30. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / June 11, 2024
News and Quick Comments

TCA nominations: “Dogs,” “Bear,” “Hacks” and newcomers

Some new– or almost-new — titles are up for the top prize in the Television Critics Association awards.
“Baby Reindeer,” “Ripley” and “Shogun” – each in its first (or only) year – are nominated for program of the year. They’re jpined by three returning shows – “Hacks,” “The Bear” and “Reservations Dogs” (shown here) … which is seeking some belated awards glory, after its third and final season. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / June 10, 2024
News and Quick Comments

Presume this one is compelling

Many of us like writers a lot and lawyers a lot less.
But lawyers who become writers? That can be John Grisham or Erle Stanley Gardner or Scott Turow or David E. Kelley; it can sometimes be wonderful.
And now two of the best have combined: Kelley has adapted Turow’s novel, “Presumed Innocent” (shown here), into an eight-part mini-series that starts Wednesday (June 12) on Apple TV+. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / June 10, 2024
Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for June 12: Choose your mystery, light or heavy

1) “Wild Cards” return, 9 p.m., CW. The CW’s new owners jettisoned most shows, sometimes replacing them with ones that are co-produced in other countries. Some of those failed, but not “Wild Cards.” It has a clever concept (demoted cop working with a gorgeous grifter), likable stars (Giacomo Gianniotti and Vanessa Morgan, sown ere) and solid mysteries. Now it reruns from the start. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / June 10, 2024
Stories

This “brat pack” gave Hollywood a youth makeover

In the early ‘80s, people were still making movies for folks who rarely went to movies.
Then, Andrew McCarthy recalls, logic intervened: “Hollywood discovered that: ‘Wait a minute, kids go to see a movie five, six, seven times. Grown-ups see a movie once.’”
What followed was dubbed the “Brat Pack” era; McCarthy’s documentary – arriving Thursday (June 13) on Hulu – is simply called “Brats.”.
That “brat pack” phrase – a variation on Frank Sinatra’s “rat pack” — may be unfair. It was fueled by a toxic article David Blum wrote for New York magazine in 1985, shortly before “St. Elmo’s Fire” (shown here) came out. Still, some of the people involved gradually absorbed it. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / June 9, 2024
Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for June 11: True basketball tales bring fun, despair

1) “Air” (2023), 8-10 p.m..Tuesday, ABC. As a director and star, Ben Affleck has a neat touch with real-life stories that take quirky twists. His “Argo” won the best-picture Oscar; now “Air” has drawn praise in theaters and streaming. Affleck (shown here in a re-created Nike ad) plays Nike owner Phil Knight, with Matt Damon as Knight’s key man in landing Michael Jordan. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / June 9, 2024
Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for June 10: hockey, Harry and a fun game

1) “The 1% Club,” 9 p.m., Fox. Amid a summer surge of noisy game shows, this one stands out. It has clever questions, slick exchanges between host Patton Oswalt (shown here) and contestants, and a good concept: This starts with 100 people, then drops them as the questions get increasingly difficult. It’s a bit vague at times, but mostly just fun. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / June 8, 2024
Stories

Canceled quickly, this turned into forever-TV

Long ago, Stefan Dennis showed his limited ability to prophesize the future.
He had been cast in a new soap opera, he recalled. “I said it probably wouldn’t last six months …. I pretty much got that right; it lasted seven months.”
Dennis paused, then added: “Or 40 years.”
The show is “Neighbours” (shown here with Dennis), now a rare examples of forever TV. Canceled after seven months in Australia, it was soon revived by adding a British connection. Canceled again after 37 years, it was revived by adding an American connection.
That’s where it is now, almost 39 years after its Australian debut. Its U.S. home is Amazon Freevee, a streaming service that uses ads rather than subscription. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / June 7, 2024
Daily Best Bets

Best-bets for June 9: two Elsbeths, endless athletes

1) “Elsbeth,” 9 and 10 p.m., CBS. In between Sunday specials – Dick Van Dyke last week, the Tony Awards next week – CBS has a chance to rerun a couple of clever mysteries. First, Elizabeth Lail (shown here), from “You” and “Ordinary Joe,” plays a schemer who uses beauty, charm and sympathy. Then a bar’s patrons receive empathy and much more. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / June 6, 2024