Cast: Carol Burnett, Cristina Raines, Dina Merrill, Keith Michell, Martine Beswick, Melissa Converse, Richard Venture
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Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Tenth Month, The (1979) TV Movie
Cast: Carol Burnett, Cristina Raines, Dina Merrill, Keith Michell, Martine Beswick, Melissa Converse, Richard Venture
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Harmony: A New Way of Looking At Our World (2010) (TV)
Prince Charles' new documentary “Harmony: A New Way of Looking At Our World” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in London on April 28. The movie is a companion to the Prince of Wales' book of the same title, and makes a case for living in harmony with the environment, going small and local instead of global.Prince Charles was there to watch his film premiere and said that he simply hoped most would stay awake for it, according to “The Guardian.” He need not have worried. Robert Redford said afterwards that the “Harmony” movie was “incredible.”
Redford was trying out a "premiere" of his own; “Sundance London” marks the first time the Sundance Film Festival has taken place anywhere other than the United States.
“Harmony” highlights Prince Charles' efforts in the environmental field and his hopes for a sustainable future. Stuart Sender and Julie Bergman Sender made the film, but Prince Charles narrates.
Host: HRH Prince Charles
Labels:
ecology,
environment,
nature,
Prince Charles,
Royal Family,
www.tvrepeater.com
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time (2011) (TV)
The top five films are counted down in various genres, as determined by an online poll and selected from lists of nominees chosen by film industry experts.A most comprehensive collection of clips from decades of feature films deemed to be "the greatest movies of our time" by the ABC television network. Ultimately boring and redundantly superfluous, hosted by the two great film historians, Tom Bergeron and Cynthia McFadden. He of the "funny videos" show and she of the severely compromised late night newsish program. One big Hollywood ass kiss from the most liberal of networks.
Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time (2011) (TV)
Hosts: Tom Bergeron, Cynthia McFadden
Labels:
ABC,
Cynthia McFadden,
Tom Bergeron,
www.tvrepeater.com
Friday, July 5, 2013
100 Years of the Hollywood Western (1994) (TV)
November 25, 1994|KEVIN THOMAS
Jack Haley Jr.'s "100 Years of the Hollywood Western" manages to survey with some insight and admirable comprehensiveness a genre with more than 20,000 titles, spanning footage taken of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show a century ago to a spate of Westerns currently in production.
Sure-fire entertainment, it's deeper on research--the clips are terrific--than on thought. The special's hosts are Charles Bronson, James Coburn, James Garner, Gene Hackman, Robert Mitchum, Kurt Russell and Jane Seymour.
Haley points out that the "Old West" lasted only a few decades but captured the popular imagination enduringly with its endless possibilities for tales of high adventure. He and co-writers Aubrey Soloman and Phil Savenick touch many bases, and they constantly keep us aware of the movies' peerless capacity to turn sometimes sketchy history into potent myth; in doing so, they also manage a tip of the hat to the most famous Westerns.
What they might have made clearer is that the Western became America's morality play, and that the difference between John Wayne and Clint Eastwood is that, in the 1960s, Sergio Leone and the spaghetti Western injected an existential quality to Westerns, blurring the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys.
Once past a nod to pioneer Bronco Billy Anderson, William S. Hart, who brought realism to the Western, and Tom Mix, who brought glamour to it, Haley gives the silent era short shrift; surely, "Covered Wagon" and "The Iron Horse" rate at least mentions. (Serials--silent and talkie--aren't dealt with at all.)
There are apt discussions of the treatment of legendary historical figures, and there are entire sequences devoted to cliche expressions, lawmen, gunslingers, saloons, singing cowboys, Native Americans, frontier women and the eradication of the buffalo.
John Ford and John Wayne were so inextricably linked that Haley is able to deal with Ford's career in the context of the Wayne homage. Most other major directors of Westerns barely rate a mention, however, even though their films are glimpsed. You'll not hear the names of Budd Boetticher, Raoul Walsh, Michael Curtiz or Anthony Mann; perversely, Haley credits the direction of Mann's 1960 remake of "Cimarron" to his former father-in-law, Vincente Minnelli.
100 Years of the Hollywood Western (1994) (TV)
Hosts: Charles Bronson, James Coburn, James Garner, Gene Hackman, Robert Mitchum, Kurt Russell and Jane Seymour
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
20 Years of Must See TV (2002) (TV)
By CARYN JAMES
Published: May 8, 2002
Try not to weep if you missed ''CBS: 50 Years From Television City,'' the network's loving tribute to (get out your handkerchiefs) its studio building. There are plenty more chances to get choked up during this emotional television month. In ''20 Years of Must-See TV,'' NBC will celebrate something dear to the hearts of all viewers, the network's ratings dominance on Thursday nights. (The program doesn't flinch from the traumatic moment when ''Frasier'' moved to Tuesdays.) ABC will look back at ''That's Incredible!'' letting us relive those exhilarating moments that disappeared from our lives back in 1984 along with the show's believe-it-or-not tidbits. We're promised another look at a 2,000-person human domino chain.
Maybe the networks think we all own stock in them and care, but one thing's for sure: Carol Burnett has a lot to answer for.
It was ''The Carol Burnett Show: Show Stoppers,'' a cast reunion and compilation of clips from her old variety show, that became a surprise ratings hit in November and set off this ludicrous deluge of nostalgia. NBC had already been planning specials to celebrate its 75th anniversary (if you count back to radio days), but the Burnett show made the networks act more sheeplike than ever, offering at least 17 clip shows and 4 cast reunions during the May sweeps. A recent Fox special celebrated four whole years of ''That 70's Show,'' which amounts to nostalgia about nostalgia.
These shows serve a purpose: they offer an irresistible opportunity to keep up with celebrity surgery. So many unnaturally wide eyes are on screen this month that it looks like E.T.'s relatives have taken over television. But there are more practical reasons for the overload of clips and reunions. The recycled shows are cheap to produce and presumably foolproof, offering entertainment that audiences have already embraced. And as many people in and outside the networks have observed, they are comfort food for a nerve-racking time.
But the soothing appeal of the shows is not assured; most of the ratings have been middling. And their place in the television landscape is more complicated than it might seem. These televised security blankets offer a counterpoint to the cutthroat reality shows that are still thriving and moving to further extremes, like the recent naked edition of ''Fear Factor.'' When Ralph Kramden ate dog food on ''The Honeymooners,'' it was by accident; now worms are a delicacy on reality shows. Clips and reunions function as extreme unreality shows.
The most surprising recent hits, ''The Bachelor'' and ''The Osbournes,'' work because they satisfy both extremes at once. ''The Bachelor,'' with two dozen women competing for a marriage proposal from one man, has a retro soul. Yet, its up-to-the-minute veneer features ruthless competition and sexual freedom. And beyond all the bleeping on ''The Osbournes'' there is a tight family in which Ozzy Osbourne warns his children about the evils of drugs. (''Just look at me,'' he says, his hands perpetually shaking.) When he goes on tour and the family shows up to surprise him on his birthday, he asks his wife, the now-famous Sharon, if ''the babies'' (their teenage children) have come along. What could be sweeter? It's that tension between the manners of today and the longing for a simpler past that best captures the present moment, when so much seems askew. Few shows pull that off.
No wonder the nostalgia shows, looking backward in such a blinkered way, fail to generate much excitement. Most are triumphs of packaging, with bogus claims of something new. A reunion of the ''Cheers'' cast playing their old characters on that show's spinoff, ''Frasier,'' was a lamely written partial reunion. (Ted Danson wasn't there; he was competing against ''Frasier'' in the dreadful but successful CBS mini-series ''Living With the Dead.'') A ''St. Elsewhere'' reunion on ''Scrubs'' meant a couple of scenes in which actors from the old hospital series turned up as doctors, though not their old characters.
Even the fresh material seems old, like Michael Jackson's performance on the ''American Bandstand'' 50th anniversary special or Cher's on the 10th anniversary celebration of ''The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.''
The promised glimpses of long-unseen moments from ''The Honeymooners'' on its 50th anniversary special on Monday included a horrible musical number; it was kind to keep the clip short. Otherwise, there were classic scenes we can catch every night on reruns. And if we don't need a ''Honeymooners'' retrospective, there's no excuse for ''Everybody Loves Raymond: The First Six Years,'' a recent tribute to a show available six times a week.
So far, the one major ratings success for a nostalgia show this month almost deserved it. Sunday's three-hour extravaganza, ''NBC 75th Anniversary Special,'' was a mix of live appearances and clips that until its floundering final hour was funny and brisk. Produced by Lorne Michaels, it included a touch of the irreverence of his ''Saturday Night Live.'' As Jerry Seinfeld said opening the show, ''Our mood is festive, our tone is self-aggrandizing."
More typically, NBC and the other networks take themselves and their branding more seriously than any viewer ever would. When you see a promo for this Thursday's ''E.R.,'' a flashback to Dr. Green's last days, and hear the solemn announcer promise ''an 'E.R.' to cherish,'' what can you do except laugh, even if you're sorry to lose the guy? When is the last time you heard anyone in real life say, ''I think I'll watch a little must-see TV''?
You will hear plenty of platitudes from the other side of the screen, though. ''I loved going to work,'' Phylicia Rashad, who played Bill Cosby's wife, recalls at the start of the two-hour ''Cosby Show: A Look Back'' (one of the few available in advance for review). We can make a reckless assumption that the same will be true when the cast reminisces on ''M*A*S*H: 30th Anniversary Reunion Special'' and ''Mary Tyler Moore Reunion.''
''L.A. Law: The Movie'' is the only genuine, fully original reunion in sight, and it's a perfectly pleasant if unexciting diversion. Harry Hamlin holds the film together and demonstrates that he can still charm as Michael Kuzak, who has stopped practicing law but goes back to help a man he unsuccessfully defended for murder a decade before. Nearly every actor from the old series is worked into the plot (except Jimmy Smits), and they spend a lot of time on dialogue like this:
''Michael!''
''Roxanne!''
And, ''Hey, Douglas.''
''Michael Kuzak!''
Or, ''Hey, Leland.''
''Abby!''
Like ''Hill St. Blues,'' ''L.A. Law'' was fast, tough and groundbreaking, but this mild, efficient movie reveals how much those qualities have been overtaken by series like ''The Practice.'' Before he created ''The Practice,'' David E. Kelley was an ''L.A. Law'' writer; he had nothing to do with this reunion. More important, Steven Bochco, a creator of both ''Hill St.'' and ''L.A. Law,'' was not directly involved with the movie and is called ''an unseen cheerleader'' in the production notes. The truly creative people in television have better things to do than look back.
But as programmers search for sure things, that's exactly where they're looking. The so-called new shows being considered for the fall include remakes of ''The Twilight Zone,'' ''The Lone Ranger,'' ''Family Affair'' and ''The Time Tunnel.'' If we did land in a time tunnel, who could tell the difference?
More Nostalgia Coming Soon
''L.A. Law: The Movie,'' Sunday on NBC
''Mary Tyler Moore Reunion,'' Monday on CBS
''NBC's Funniest Outtakes,'' Tuesday on NBC
''M*A*S*H: 30th Anniversary Reunion Special,'' May 17 on Fox
''The Cosby Show: A Look Back,'' May 19 on NBC
''20 Years of Must-See TV,'' May 20 on NBC
''That's Incredible: The Reunion,'' May 21 on ABC
''The Most Outrageous Game Show Moments,'' May 22 on NBC
20 Years of Must See TV (2002) (TV)
Host: Eric McCormack
Labels:
anthology,
documentary,
Eric McCormack,
NBC,
www.tvrepeater.com
Monday, July 1, 2013
Funniest Comedy Duos (1996) (TV)
Host: Jeff Foxworthy
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Spy Magazine Hit List: The 100 Most Annoying and Alarming People and Events of 1992 (1992) (TV)
Host: Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Labels:
1992,
anthology,
Julia Louis-Dreyfus,
Rush Limbaugh,
www.tvrepeater.com
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Best TV Shows That Never Were, The (2004) (TV)
Best TV Shows, based on the book Unsold Television Pilot by co-executive producer Lee Goldberg, is a breezy hour of clips from sample episodes of series that the networks decided against ordering. Not surprisingly, most of them stink—which is why the special is such a good time.
You'll slap your head in disbelief—try not to hurt yourself—at the idea of John Denver as a singing FBI agent. You'll wonder whether Joe Penny as a samurai district attorney would have been funnier—unintentionally—than John Belushi's samurai character on Saturday Night Live. And you'll think Scott Bakula is pretty down-to-earth in Star Trek: Enterprise after you see him in a busted pilot as a wacky scientist who accidentally merges with a satellite. For tube historians, this is a must-see.
Cast: Craig Bierko, Jane Leeves, Rome Romanne
Labels:
Craig Bierko,
documentary,
Jane Leeves,
pilot,
Rome Romanne,
www.tvrepeater.com
Good, the Bad & the Beautiful, The (1996) (TV)
Documentary celebrating the history of women in film -- using film clips, historical footage, contemporary interviews and the fictional journey of a woman from the inception of the film (1895) to the current movie world.Film clips and interviews show how female stars have helped shape the dreams Hollywood sells to movie fans.
The Good, the Bad & the Beautiful (1996) (TV)
Cast: Laura San Giacomo, Kathy Bates, Nora Ephron, Rosie O'Donnell, Natasha Richardson, Sharon Stone, Kathleen Turner, Glenn Close, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sally Field, Whoopi Goldberg, Daryl Hannah
Friday, June 28, 2013
1968: 25th Anniversary (1993) (TV)
Host: Martin Sheen
Labels:
1968,
20th century,
documentary,
Martin Sheen,
www.tvrepeater.com
Thursday, June 27, 2013
50 Years of NBC Late Night (2001) (TV)
Host: Conan O'Brien
Labels:
Conan O'Brien,
late night,
NBC,
www.tvrepeater.com
Saturday, June 22, 2013
60 Minutes, 25 Years (1993) (TV)
November 12, 1993|JANE HALL | TIMES STAFF WRITER
NEW YORK — "This is so much better than the 'wrap' party for 'South of Sunset,' " quipped Howard Stringer, president of the CBS Broadcast Group.
No fooling. The CBS detective series was canceled after one episode last month. The party Stringer was attending here Wednesday night was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of "60 Minutes."
Some 600 New York notables, from Beverly Sills to Mayor-elect Rudolph Guiliani, ate dinner in the halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and heard David Letterman offer a special Top 10 list ("No. 2: Like Lassie, there have been three different Mike Wallaces") at the event thrown by CBS Chairman Laurence Tisch to celebrate the longevity (and the ratings and profits) of "60 Minutes," the Daddy Warbucks of TV newsmagazines.
The stars of the evening were the stars of "60 Minutes": Mike Wallace, who was shown in a recent film clip hiking up a hill after a story at age 75; the show's 70-year-old creator and executive producer, Don Hewitt; Andy Rooney; Morley Safer; Ed Bradley; Lesley Stahl and Steve Kroft, at 48 the youngest of the "60 Minutes" correspondents.
"My voice hadn't changed when I started watching '60 Minutes,' " Kroft joked before dinner. "I'm celebrating 25 years of '60 Minutes' after having worked only five years here--and Mike and Don aren't letting me forget that."
The correspondents were "sound-bited" by TV crews and photographed together by a clamor of still photographers before they went into the party. In a medium that has few national institutions among its current programs, "60 Minutes"--still going strong as TV's third most popular program this season--is practically the news equivalent of Johnny Carson.
Hewitt, who based "60 Minutes" on Life magazine, said the program was less dependent on ratings-grabbing subjects than many of the prime-time newsmagazines that have sought to imitate its success.
"I really think that we could have Michael Jackson on one week and it might not make that much difference in the weekly ratings," Hewitt said in an interview.
"A '60 Minutes' story can be an essay, a profile or an investigation. It's the stories and the mix that people tune in for."
Wallace, who said he intends to keep working on "60 Minutes" "till my toes turn up," paid tribute to the producers who work in the shadows of the correspondents. "This is a producer's broadcast," he said.
"It's the producers in the field who are out there working before we get there."
Diane Sawyer, who left "60 Minutes" to join ABC's "PrimeTime Live," recalled that competition there for high-profile stories was intense.
"It was like waking up and finding yourself in the middle of an Olympic relay," Sawyer said. "All of these other people were running past, with their Olympic medals flying, while you'd barely had time to (suit up.)"
Viewers will be invited to join in the anniversary celebration Sunday night when "60 Minutes" serves up a two-hour collection of highlights from its 25-year run at 7 p.m.
Host: Charles Kuralt
Friday, June 21, 2013
Freedom Festival '89 (1989) (TV)
Cast: The Oak Ridge Boys, Nell Carter, Frankie Avalon, Ann Jillian, Patrick Duffy
Everyday with Joan Lunden (1989–1990) (TV Series)
AVAILABLE EPISODES
Joan Collins, Vanessa Redgrave, Will Smith
June 1989
Host: Joan Lunden
Labels:
daytime TV,
Joan Lunden,
talk shows,
www.tvrepeater.com
Sixty Years of Seduction (1981) (TV)
It is a ''cozy, lighthearted look'' at sex symbols created by the movie business. Mr. Garner notes that while the East Coast may have its Statue of Liberty, the West Coast has its Hollywood, urging the world to ''give me your young, your fresh, your wide-eyed beauties yearning to be stars.''
The film clips are arranged in neat categories. Set to the sound of Dooley Wilson singing ''As Time Goes By,'' one sequence explores the kiss, going from torrid contemporary scenes back to coy beginnings. Then, as Marlene Dietrich sings ''What Am I Bid for My Apples?'' another sequence looks at the concept of sex as forbidden fruit.
There is the male star, a category including exotic Rudolph Valentino, macho Marlon Brando and gentle Gary Cooper. The female star list encompasses such types as Mae West, Katharine Hepburn, Doris Day and Marilyn Monroe. Arguing that, despite surface differences, Hollywood themes do remain remarkably the same, the program points up the similarity between a Valentino tango and John Travolta's famous dance scene in ''Saturday Night Fever.''
Surrounding these glimpses of the superstars is a good deal of ''special material'' that has the hosts strutting about in assorted costumes for sketches loosely related to the film sequences.
Hosts: James Garner, Angie Dickinson, Robert Urich, Victoria Principal, Sandahl Bergman
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Being With John F. Kennedy (1983) (TV)
Host: Nancy Dickerson
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Glenn Miller: A Moonlight Serenade (1984) (TV)
Glenn Miller and his music on the 40th anniversary of his death, shot at Glen Island Casino and narrated by Van Johnson, with guests Johnny Desmond, Tex Beneke, Marion Hutton, Julius La Rosa, Anita Gillette, and Sylvia Syms.Songs include: "In the mood" by Andy Razaf, Joe Garland (TB); "Chattanooga choo choo", "I’ve got a girl in Kalamazoo" (MH, TB), "At last", "Serenade in blue" by Mack Gordon, Harry Warren (JD); "Elmer’s tune" by Elmer Albrecht, Sammy Gallop, Dick Jurgens (JLaR); "Skylark" by Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael (AG); "Little brown jug" by Joseph E. Winner, arr Bill Finegan (JD); "A string of pearls" by Eddie De Lange, Jerry Gray (TB); "The anvil chorus" by Giuseppe Verdi, arr Jerry Gray (JD); "Fools rush in" by Johnny Mercer, Rube Bloom (JD); "Long ago and far away" by Leo Robin, Ralph Rainger (JLaR); "Perfidia" by Milton Leeds, Alberto Dominguez (SS); "Stairway to the stars" by Mitchell Parish, Matty Malneck, Frank Signorelli (SS, JD); "St. Louis blues march" by W. C. Handy (MH, TB); "Pennsylvania 6-5000" by Carl Sigman, Jerry Gray; "Moonlight cocktail" by Kim Gannon, C. Luckey Roberts (JD); "I’ll be seeing you" by Irving Kahal, Sammy Fain (MH); "Don’t sit under the apple tree" by Lew Brown, Charles Tobias, Sam H. Stept (TB, MH); "Moonlight serenade" by Mitchell Parish, Glenn Miller.
Host: Van Johnson
Labels:
Anita Gillette,
big bands,
Glenn Miller,
Van Johnson,
www.tvrepeater.com
James Stewart: A Wonderful Life (1987) (TV)
This is episode number 309 of "The Great Performances" anthology series.
Host: Johnny Carson
Off Ramps: L. A. STORIES - The Second City - Inside the World's Largest Jail (1996) (TV)
As we take a visit to Los Angeles' Twin Towers Correctional Facility, also referred to in the media as Twin Towers Jail, Lisa Ling is front and center ably assisted by Mitchell Koss and together they bite off quite a bit for a simple two man crew in "The Second City - Inside the World's Largest Jail" or what most would consider a day in hell. The amount of scary access given and taken is surprising, I'm not sure if I would be willing to go and do as these two. As this is a production from 1996 it needs to be updated if for no other reason than contrast. Very eyeopening watching 3 unarmed correctional guards (sheriffs) walk amongst the population and keep order in a crowded lunchroom with 100 of the baddest types. This is the best way to take the tour when the alternatives are considered.Cast: Lisa Ling, Mitchell Koss
Labels:
documentary,
jail,
Lisa Ling,
Los Angeles,
Mitchell Koss,
sheriffs,
twin towers,
www.tvrepeater.com
The Century (1999) TV Mini-Series
AVAILABLE EPISODES
Heaven and Earth
Season 1, Episode 1
29 March 1999
Ultimate Power
Season 1, Episode 2
April 1999
No Man's Land
Season 1, Episode 3
April 1999
The Fall
Season 1, Episode 6
3 April 1999
Nothing to Fear
Season 1, Episode 7
8 April 1999
Picture This
Season 1, Episode 8
8 April 1999
The Race
Season 1, Episode 9
April 1999
The Evolution of Revolution
Season 1, Episode 10
April 1999
Host: Peter Jennings
Labels:
20th century,
ABC,
news show,
Peter Jennings,
www.tvrepeater.com
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