RIP Eileen Brennan

I just heard Eileen Brennan passed away Sunday. She was such an amazing actress and comedian. My two favorite roles, she played, were in The Sting and Murder By Death (Clips below). I hope she, Peter Falk and Paul Newman are working together in the big studio in the sky.

TCM Summer Under The Stars

August is just days away and that means TCM's Summer Under The Stars is almost here! Each day in August will feature films of a particular star. It is always interesting to see the span of an actors career all in one day.

This year 16 stars will be spotlighted for the first time. They include Joan Fontaine (Aug. 6), Mickey Rooney (Aug. 13), Wallace Beery (Aug. 17), Hattie McDaniel (Aug. 20),  Maggie Smith (Aug. 22), Charles Coburn (Aug. 24), Martin Balsam (Aug. 27), Shirley Jones (Aug. 28), Rex Harrison (Aug. 31), Ramón Novarro (Aug. 8), Catherine Deneuve (Aug. 12), Ann Blyth (Aug. 16), Mary Boland (Aug. 4), and Glenda Farrell (Aug. 29). For the complete listing of star and dates check out TCM's Summer Under The Stars site.

Broadchurch on BBCAmerica

BBC America premieres Broadchurch Wednesday August 7th. This show was a smash hit in England, receiving several BAFTA nominations and blowing up twitter every week.

Starring David Tennant and Olivia Colman as detectives investigating the murder of a boy. Broadchurch is a seaside vacation town, where everyone keeps saying nothing like "this" ever happens. The more the two detectives dig the more they find all sorts of unsavory things are happening in Broadchurch and right under their noses.

There are definitely shades of Twin Peaks and The Killing in this show. Unlike, those American shows you will find out who the killer is in the final episode. The series runs 8 episodes on Wednesday nights on BBC America.

Another season is expected to start shooting in the near future.

A Young Doctor's Notebook with Jon Hamm

Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliff star as the same man in A Young Doctor's Notebook series coming to Ovation Wednesday,October 2nd.

Ovation describes the show " Renowned Russian writer and playwright Mikhail Bulgakov’s book A Young Doctor’s Notebook was adapted into a television series by writers Mark Chappell, Shaun Pye and Alan Connor (The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret). It is a darkly humorous account of the turbulent experiences of a newly graduated young doctor (Daniel Radcliffe), artfully told through the eyes of his older, opiate-addicted self (Jon Hamm), who narrates the action from his own notebooks. The young doctor lands a post at a small hospital in a remote village during the Russian Revolution.  Dealing with superstitious and poorly educated patients creates for the doctor a brutal, panic-inducing introduction to his medical practice, causing the young doctor to struggle with doubts about his own competence."

The series was previously released in England and was critically acclaimed and  was the highest rated program for that network (Sky Art).

I've been dying to see this ever since I heard it mentioned on The Graham Norton Show earlier this year. Sadly my cable provider doesn't carry Ovation. Check to see if you get Ovation here. I put in a request with Time Warner here in LA to add it to their listings. We have a few months so if you're not getting Ovation get your requests in soon.

A Parallelogram at The Mark Taper

Last night I was invited to review the opening night of A Parallelogram at The Mark Taper Forum. Written by the Pulitzer prize and Tony winning author Bruce Norris (Clybourne Park) and directed by Tony winning director Anne D. Shapiro (Osage County).

The story centers around Bee, a woman who seems to be bouncing through time, trying to rearrange her life as it unravels. It's a bizarre premise, but intriguing. Is it really possible to change your future? Bee's gonna give it a try.

The play is very well acted, and the audience I saw it with were laughing quite a bit. Though the subject matter is serious it is humorously delivered. It could easily be an episode of The Twilight Zone. It has that same quality of realism and the other worldly, and what would you do if the two collided.

A Parallelogram runs through August 18