From: LindyBill | 10/22/2011 2:28:10 PM | | | | These should be good:
"TNT Unveils Promo and Photos from "The TNT Mystery Movie Night" The six film stunt begins with "Scott Turow's Innocent" on Tuesday, November 29 at 9:00/8:00c. [via press release from TNT]
TNT Unveils Promo and Photos from THE TNT MYSTERY MOVIE NIGHT
TNT has released a promo from The TNT Mystery Movie Night, an all-new original movie showcase of six contemporary crime dramas set to launch Tuesday, Nov. 29, at 9 p.m. (ET/PT). The showcase will kick off with Scott Turow's Innocent, starring Bill Pullman, Marcia Gay Harden, Alfred Molina, Richard Schiff and Tahmoh Penikett. The TNT Mystery Movie Night will also star John Corbett, Julie Benz, Kelly Overton and Gary Cole in Ricochet, based on the bestseller by Sandra Brown.
The TNT Mystery Movie Night will continue in December with Carla Gugino, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Kevin Alejandro and Bridget Regan in Hide, based on a book by Lisa Gardner; Dermot Mulroney, Michael Cudlitz, Anne Heche and Judd Hirsch in Silent Witness, based on the book by Richard North Patterson; Catherine Bell, Cole Hauser, William Devane, Titus Welliver and Suleka Mathew in Good Morning, Killer, adapted by April Smith from her own novel; and Kathy Najimy, Scottie Thompson and Jane Alexander in Deck the Halls, based on the book by Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark.
Below is a full schedule for The TNT Mystery Movie Night.
Scott Turow's Innocent - Tuesday, Nov. 29 at 9 p.m. (ET/PT)
Bill Pullman (Independence Day, Torchwood) stars as Rusty Sabich, a judge charged with the murder of his wife, a situation that comes 20 years after he was cleared in the death of his mistress. During this latest trial, a secret affair from Rusty's recent past threatens to hamper his defense and fracture his relationship with his son. Oscar(R) winner Marcia Gay Harden (Pollack, Damages) plays Rusty's wife, while Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2, Law & Order: LA) is his friend and defense attorney. Tahmoh Penikett (Battlestar Galactica, Dollhouse) is hot-headed prosecutor Jim Brand. Emmy(R) winner Richard Schiff (The West Wing, The Lost World: Jurassic Park), Callard Harris (Glory Daze, Intermedio) and Mariana Klaveno (True Blood, While the Children Sleep) also star. Scott Turow's Innocent is a sequel to Turow's bestseller Presumed Innocent. The movie is written and directed by Mike Robe (TNT's HawthoRNe, Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King), with Robe and Frank von Zerneck (We Were the Mulvaneys, Miracle on Ice) serving as executive producers.
Ricochet - Wednesday, Nov. 30 at 9 p.m. (ET/PT)
Two homicide detectives find their careers - and lives - on the line when they get caught up in a case of murder and betrayal in high-society Savannah. Emmy nominee John Corbett (Sex and the City, Northern Exposure) is set to star in this atmospheric tale based on the book by #1 New York Times best-selling author Sandra Brown. He plays Det. Sgt. Duncan Hunter, who is investigating a corrupt judge, played by Gary Cole (Midnight Caller, TNT's Wanted), while also becoming romantically involved with his wife, played by Julie Benz (Dexter). Kelly Overton (The Ring Two) plays Det. Deedee Bowen, Hatcher's blue-collar partner; Kadeem Hardison (Panther, Made of Honor) is Detective Bob Worley; and Haaz Sleiman (The Visitor, Nurse Jackie) is drug dealer Robert Savich. Nick Gomez (Dexter, Drowning Mona) is directing Ricochet from a script by Donald Martin (The Craigslist Killer). Howard Braunstein (The Informant!) and Jim Head (On Strike for Christmas) serve as executive producers.
Hide - Tuesday, Dec. 6, at 9 p.m. (ET/PT)
In this movie based on Lisa Gardner's book, Carla Gugino (Californication, Entourage) plays Boston Police Detective D.D. Warren, who is called to the grounds of an abandoned mental hospital where a buried chamber is discovered. Inside are the mummified remains of six young women, who have all been missing for years. The case leads D.D. to Annabelle, played by Bridget Regan (Legend of the Seeker). Annabelle is a young woman who spent her childhood moving from city to city, from identity to identity, hiding from someone or something totally unknown to her. D.D. uses clues from Annabelle's secret past to unravel the mystery behind her twisted family history. Mark-Paul Gosselaar (TNT's Franklin & Bash, NYPD Blue) and Kevin Alejandro (True Blood, TNT's Southland) also star. Hide is written by Janet Brownell (Eloise at the Plaza), directed by John Gray (Ghost Whisperer, Helter Skelter) and executive-produced by Stephanie Germain (The Day After Tomorrow).
Silent Witness - Wednesday, Dec. 7, at 9 p.m. (ET/PT)
This legal drama based on Richard North Patterson's novel stars Dermot Mulroney (Zodiak, Copycat) as prominent defense attorney Tony Lord, who returns to his hometown to defend an old friend, played by Michael Cudlitz (TNT's Southland). The friend is a teacher accused of murdering one of his students, and the case re-opens the heartache from Tony's own high school days, when he was a student falsely accused of murdering his first love. Silent Witness also stars Anne Heche (Hung, Men in Trees) as Sue Robb, the wife of the accused teacher, and Judd Hirsch (Damages, Taxi) as Saul Ruben, Tony Lord's close friend and associate. Lizzie Friedman and Greg Little, the team behind One Lucky Elephant, Whiz Kids and Sex and Death 101, serve as executive producers along with Howard Braunstein (The Informant!). Peter Markle (Bat*21, Flight 93) is set to direct from a script by Thomas Michael Donnelly (Our Fathers).
Good Morning, Killer - Tuesday, Dec. 13 at 9 p.m. (ET/PT)
Adapted by April Smith from her own novel, this thriller stars Catherine Bell (JAG, Army Wives) as FBI Special Agent Ana Gray, an undercover operative tracking down a serial kidnapper. As Ana develops a rapport with the kidnapper's latest victim, the suspect suddenly changes his pattern. Now Ana must race to find him before he strikes again. Good Morning, Killer co-stars Cole Hauser (Chase, K-Ville) as Detective Andrew Berringer; William Devane (Knots Landing, 24) as Everett Morgan "Poppy" Grey, Ana's grandfather; Titus Welliver (The Good Wife, Lost) as FBI Special Agent Mike Donnato, Ana's partner; and Suleka Mathew (TNT's HawthoRNe) as FBI Agent Barbara Sullivan, Ana's best friend at the bureau. In addition to writing the screenplay, Smith is set to executive-produce Good Morning, Killer with Frank von Zerneck (We Were the Mulvaneys, Miracle on Ice). Maggie Greenwald (Songcatcher, The Ballad of Little Jo) will direct.
Deck the Halls - Tuesday, Dec. 20 at 9 p.m. (ET/PT)
Based on the first book in Mary Higgins Clark and daughter Carol Higgins Clark's series of holiday mystery novels, this warm-hearted story brings together two of the authors' most popular characters: Cleaning-woman-turned-private-eye Alvirah Meegan, played by Kathy Najimy (Sister Act, Franklin & Bash) and Detective Regan Reilly, played by Scottie Thompson (Star Trek, Skyline). The women investigate the kidnapping of Regan's father and a young female driver just before the holidays. The race is on to rescue the pair and get them home in time for Christmas. Two-time Emmy(R) winner Jane Alexander (Testament, Warm Springs) plays Regan's mother, famed mystery writer Nora Regan Reilly. Ron Underwood (Tremors, City Slickers) will direct from a script by Howard Burkons (John Q, TNT's The Ron Clark Story), who also serves as executive producer with Brenda Friend (Joan of Arc, TNT's The Ron Clark Story) and Frank von Zerneck (We Were the Mulvaneys, Miracle on Ice)."
thefutoncritic.com
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From: Stan | 10/22/2011 11:48:56 PM | | | | Joe Sobran's analysis of The Third Man, starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton, which he considers the greatest movie ever made. (Article contains spoilers.)
sobran.com |
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From: LindyBill | 10/24/2011 12:32:00 PM | | | | BEN AFFLECK TO DIRECT NEW ADAPTATION OF STEPHEN KING’S ‘THE STAND‘?
Awfully hard to believe the terrific television miniseries starring Gary Sinise and Molly Ringwald is already 18 years old. As a huge, huge fan of the novel, there was nothing lacking for me in the six-hour television movie. In fact, I still think it’s something of a miracle that such a beloved novel with such a large and expansive scope and with so many characters could be adapted so beautifully.
Prior to the ‘94 miniseries there was also a lot talk of a theatrical film. If memory serves, my paperback edition of the novel announced George Romero as the director. But even then it was impossible to imagine the story being told in a single two or three hour feature film.
But in this era of franchises, “The Stand” could be a huge blockbuster but also a risky venture. Many, many films are released with the idea to create a franchise behind them, but if they flop that’s not the story because many of those films work just fine as standalones. Announcing King’s novel as a trilogy would mean that if the first chapter failed to find an audience the studio would be left with a mess. Either they can invest another $200 million to complete a story no one wants to see or have the first chapter of an unfinished trilogy forever hanging out there as an embarrassment. It would also be hard to market part one on home video if the others aren’t coming.
Even “Lord of the Rings” didn’t face the same risk. At least “Fellowship” represented a completed novel in a trilogy. “The Stand” would be an incomplete novel.
As far as Affleck goes, he’d be an excellent choice to direct. With “The Town” and “Gone Baby Gone” he’s already proven plenty capable of holding tight to his characters without losing sight of the action necessary to create an exciting story. And characters are everything in “The Stand.” |
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From: LindyBill | 10/24/2011 1:37:13 PM | | | | NBC In Ratings Free Fall by Hollywoodland
2 people liked this
WSJ:
NBC’s downward slide is getting steeper.
Long a ratings laggard, the network has fallen further behind its competitors this fall, heightening the challenge facing its new owner Comcast Corp. as it works to mount a turnaround.

Through the first four weeks of the TV season ending Oct. 16, about 3.3 million adults under 50 years old have been watching prime-time TV shows on NBC, according to the latest figures from Nielsen Holdings NV. That is down 9.3% from the same period a year earlier. Much of the decline is concentrated in NBC’s entertainment shows.
Leaving out National Football League games, which NBC airs on Sunday nights, the network’s 18-to-49-year-old audience is 2.2 million—down 16% from a year earlier. That demographic is the audience group most valued by advertisers.
Among the shows demonstrating particularly severe declines are long-running programs like “Law & Order: SVU” and “The Biggest Loser,” each of which lost one of its stars. The 18-to-49-year-old audiences for those shows have fallen 20% to 3.4 million and 23% to 3 million, respectively, this season compared to last season, according to Nielsen.
Competitors are faring better. Through four weeks, Walt Disney Co.’s ABC is down 5.8% among viewers 18-to-49 in prime-time, CBS Corp.’s eponymous network is down 2.3% and News Corp.’s Fox Broadcasting is up 11%, according to the latest Nielsen data. (News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal.)
Full story here. |
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To: LindyBill who wrote (6345) | 10/25/2011 1:38:20 AM | From: Brian Sullivan | | | This is going to be one of those "TWT" decisions by a company. They really don't have any competition.
Well they currently have Amazon as a competitor amazon.com and I expect to see on-demand streaming to one million Kindle Fire devices that Amazon will sell over the next months.
Apple also may launch something pretty soon.
And NetFlix stock cratered after hours today down another 30% to around 85, they were trading over 200 just a few months ago. |
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To: Uncle Frank who wrote (6336) | 10/25/2011 2:19:14 AM | From: LindyBill | | | MY MELANCHOLY BABY by Ernie Burnett and George A Norton Song of the Week #202 24 Oct 2011
http://www.steynonline.com/4600/my-melancholy-baby
One hundred years ago this month - October 31st 1911 - a husband and wife from Denver, Colorado registered a song with the US Copyright Office. A century on, we still sing the husband's tune, but not (quite) the wife's lyric. Oh, and the title has gotten a little extended since it was initially copyrighted under the single word "Melancholy". Just melancholy in general? No,in this case highly specific: a melancholy baby. More to the point, " My Melancholy Baby":
Come to me, My Melancholy Baby Cuddle up and don't be blue All your fears are foolish fancy, maybe You know, dear, that I'm in love with you...
The story of how "Melancholy" by Ernie Burnett and Maybelle Watson became "My Melancholy Baby" by Ernie Burnett and George A Norton is a convoluted one that's wound up in court a couple of times over the years and has been further confused by divorce, post-combat amnesia, and various bouts of melancholy for those on the wrong end of the royalty disputes. But the Copyright Office deals only in facts and so we can say for certain that this month is the official one hundredth birthday of one of the earliest enduring standards in the 20th century American Songbook - and of the origin of the maudlin barfly's perennial call to the pianist, "Play 'Melancholy Baby'..."
Ernie Burnett was born Ernest Mario Bernaditto in Cincinnatti in 1884, and had a formal conservatory music education in Germany and Italy. Big deal. He came back to America in 1901, and the only gainful employment he could find was as a vaudeville pianist. After a few years on the road, he and his wife Maybelle settled in Denver, and one day in 1911 he wrote the tune and she wrote the words for a verse-and-chorus number called "Melancholy". After registering it for copyright, Burnett pushed it hard, but nobody was interested. The following year, 1912, Burnett took it to his friend, a Denver music publisher called Theron Bennett. Bennett liked the tune, but not the words. With the agreement of Ernie Burnett and (apparently) his missus, Bennett took it to his own frequent collaborator, George A Norton, who turned "Melancholy" into...
Come to me, My Melancholy Baby...
He kept the original title, however, and the new song was published under the old label, "Melancholy", in 1912, credited to Ernie Burnett and Geo A Norton. As for Maybelle Watson, she was not only on her way out as co-author but also as Burnett's missus, headed for the divorce courts and a new life on the west coast. Lest she be disappointed at the elimination of both her lyric and her credit, the revised version was respectfully "dedicated to Miss Maybelle Watson of Berkeley, California".
So Burnett and Norton had a song, and now all they needed was someone to sing it. According to legend, the number we now know as "Melancholy Baby" was first sung in public by William Frawley - better known as Fred Mertz, Lucy and Ricky's landlord on "I Love Lucy". The young Frawley was in vaudeville, touring a double-act with the pianist Franz Rath under the billing "A Man, A Piano And A Nut" (Rath was the man, the venue's piano was the piano, and Frawley was the nut). In 1912, they were booked into the Mozart Cafe in Denver. One lunchtime Frawley visited a bar on Curtis Street run by a friend of his. "When the bartender passed me the word that Ernie Burnett and George Norton had been working on something pretty good in the back room, I got myself in there to have a listen," said Frawley. He liked what he heard, all the more so since a couple of hard-drinking newspaper pals, Gene Fowler and Damon Runyon, had been ragging him to come up with something new. That night at the Mozart Cafe Fowler and Runyon started heckling Frawley. He told them, "If you two will be quiet, I'll sing you something so new it hasn't even been published." And, with that, he pulled out "a yellow piece of paper" with some notes scribbled on it and gave it to his accompanist. And so Franz Rath played Ernie Burnett's famous tune in public for the first time, and William Frawley became the first man on the planet to sing:
Ev'ry cloud must have a silver lining Wait until the sun shines through Smile, my honey dear While I kiss away each tear Or else I shall be melancholy, too.
Well, that's the way Bill Frawley told it in newspaper interviews, and when he appeared on "I've Got A Secret" in 1965. It seems to me highly unlikely that Burnett and Norton had been finishing off the song in a bar on Curtis Street, as Burnett had finished off his tune the previous year and Norton fixed a new set of words to it well after the fact. But Frawley's account of the birth of "Melancholy Baby" certainly doesn't want for detail. Gene Fowler was with The Denver Post at the time, and Damon Runyon was working at The Rocky Mountain News (this was long before his Guys & Dolls New York heyday). So it could have happened - and, according to Frawley, the Mozart Cafe didn't just witness the first performance of the song but the first performance of the maudlin drunk's injuction to perform it. A well-lubricated Runyon was so moved by Frawley's performance that he spent the rest of the show calling out, "Sing 'Melancholy Baby'!"
Hmm. I like showbiz anecdotage as much as the next chap, but he may be stretching credulity a smidgeonette too far with that. "Years later, Runyon was still telling me it was the best song he had ever heard," Frawley insisted - and he continued to sing the song, very agreeably, whenever asked, by Lucille Ball or anybody else. Aside from his studio recording for the album Bill Frawley Sings The Old Ones, he warbled it on the 1958 episode " Lucy Goes To Sun Valley". But a drunken (celebrity) patron yelling "Sing 'Melancholy Baby"!" on the very first performance? Just like an offstage drunk does to Judy Garland in the " Born In A Trunk" sequence in A Star Is Born (1954)? And as innumerable barroom hecklers did in "The Monkees" and "Hogan's Heroes" and a thousand variety-show sketches in the two decades after that movie?
Whatever the truth of Frawley's claim, the man who did the hard work of making the song a hit was a vaudevillian called Jack O'Leary, who was rewarded with his picture on the front of the first sheet music. The song was still called "Melancholy" for its first two years, until it was re-copyrighted in 1914 under the title "My Melancholy Baby". For the record, the phrase "my melancholy baby" occurs only once, in the very first line - whereas the word "melancholy" appears twice, in the first and last lines. Whether under its one-word title or in its revised form, it's a rare adjective for Tin Pan Alley. "We've all heard this song so many times I think we may have forgotten a few salient facts about it," wrote the musicologist Alec Wilder in his survey of American Popular Song. "First, its title is most unusual, the seldom-used and dignified 'melancholy' qualifying the colloquial term of endearment, 'baby'." As for the tune, Wilder called it a "good, well-written melody, highly unusual for the time, and certainly not a piece of hack work. Furthermore, it's unlike any other melody." He suggested it might be "the first torch song". If so, it was news to Ernie Burnett. The 1914 version includes a march chorus, which is apparently how he originally conceived the song. Like many composers, he didn't know what he had.
Still, at least he knew he'd written it - for a while. In 1917, America entered the Great War, and Burnett signed on with the 89th Division of the Allied Expeditionary Forces. He was wounded in France, fell among a heap of bodies, and, in the course of so doing, parted company with his dog tags. They were assumed to belong to one of the corpses's. So Burnett was taken to a field hospital suffering from total amnesia, and with no identifying paperwork to help the staff figure out who he was. Some time thereafter, a variety troupe came through the ward to cheer up the wounded. One of the showgirls sang "Melancholy Baby", prefacing it with the sad announcement that among those killed in this tragic conflict had been the composer of this beautiful ballad. As she began to sing, Patient X sat bolt upright in bed. "I wrote that tune!" he declared. The nurses tried to slough him off with sympathetic murmurings about how, yes, they were sure he had, just like that guy two wards down had once been Emperor of France, but Patient X insisted and was able to piece together his life and return to being Ernie Burnett.
Maybe Patient X should have sued himself for plagiarizing himself. After all, pretty much everybody else associated with "Melancholy Baby" wound up feeling aggrieved enough for legal action. By 1938, Burnett was composing "I Married My Melancholy Baby". Yes, he had, and then he'd divorced her. And by 1938 Maybelle Watson had far more reason to be melancholy than her ex-husband. As "Melancholy Baby"'s beautiful verse puts it:
Come, sweetheart mine Don't sit and pine. Tell me of the cares that make you feel so blue What have I done? Answer me, hon'...
What had he done? Only deprive his ex-wife of 50 per cent of one of the biggest hits of the previous quarter-century. In 1938, Maybelle Watson registered a copyright claim to the 1912 edition of "Melancholy Baby" - ie, the hit version. She could have made a lot of money as the credited co-author of the song. If it was any consolation to her, George Norton, the fellow who'd supplanted her as lyricist, had nothing to show for it, either. He'd written his share of the song as a work for hire, taking a salary of $20 per week for 12 weeks and then signing a bill of sale with the publisher, Theron Bennett. Norton had died in 1923 but his son was eager to assert his father's rights. By 1940, the former Mrs Burnett, now Mrs Bergmann, had a credit on the sheet music - and had even written a three-act play called My Melancholy Baby, and based on the song. It took Norton's son till 1945 to get his father's rights recognized in court. A decade later, the dispute over the lyrics expanded to the melody when a chap named Ben Light (of Ben Light and his Surf Club Boys) claimed he'd written the tune as a teenager in 1909, and that Ernie Burnett had been living off eine kleine Light musik all these years.
Burnett never wrote another piece of music of any interest whatsoever. But he didn't need to. "Melancholy Baby" was ubiquitous for half-a-century. Hence, the "Play 'Melancholy Baby'!" gag: Barroom drunks were supposedly so sentimental and maudlin that, no matter how gifted or inventive the pianist, the regulars just wanted to hear the same things over and over. Au contraire, musicians love "Melancholy Baby" - Sidney Bechet and Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and Dizzy Gillespie. And singers love it, too - although Dinah Shore's take with Andre Previn is hard to beat. And, if the lyric gets a bit too wearily familiar, you could always do what Vikki Carr did and sing that lovely, sweetly antiquated verse as a stand-alone song. I believe that's the only instance since Sinatra's recording of the verse from "Star Dust" in which a singer has eschewed the well-known chorus and sung only the obscure intro. It's a neat little record. I like to think that, somewhere on the road over her long career, Miss Carr was heckled Judy Garland-like with "Sing 'Melancholy Baby'!" and launched into her idiosyncratic version only to be heckled anew: "Thash not the 'Melancholy Baby' I wanted to hear. Hic."
But here it is: "My Melancholy Baby" is now a melancholy centenarian, having survived divorce, trench warfare, amnesia, lawsuits, hecklers and Fred Mertz. What better way to launch the song on its second century than with this moving introduction by the Dapper Dans? The Dans are the barbershop quartet on DisneyWorld's Main Street USA and they like to put it this way:
Here's a beautiful ballad entitled, 'She Had a Head Like a Cantaloupe and a Face like a Dog So I Called Her My Melancholy Baby.' |
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