May 2008

If anyone somehow had any remaining notions about CBS being the “old people’s network,” as the cliche had it, those ideas will quickly dissipate with the premiere of Swingtown on June 5. The series, airing Thursdays, is set in the Chicago suburbs in 1976, and follows several couples and their children as they experience and experiment with the changing mores and culture of the era, which, as the title suggests, includes activities such as “swinging.” The cast includes Jack Davenport (Pirates of the Caribbean) and Molly Parker (Deadwood) as Bruce and Susan Miller, newcomers to the neighborhood who become increasingly […]

Denis Leary loves “The Business,” the Big Apple and his family and friends. And that’s about all you need to know to determine how he likes to spend his days. “It’s hard to get me to go to work, in some regards,” the multitalented movie, television and comedy-circuit star chuckles during a phone interview from the set of his F/X hit, Rescue Me. “I produce a lot of my own stuff, and I write and star in this TV show which I do here in New York, and the only movies I’ve done — with very few exceptions — I’ve […]

In many of his roles — often as a cop, in shows like Law & Order and movies like Abandon and Miss Congeniality — Benjamin Bratt is called on to catch the bad guy. But for his role in the new A&E miniseries adaptation of Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain (May 26 and 27), his prey is much more elusive. As Dr. Jeremy Stone, Bratt leads an elite team of government scientists — dubbed Wildfire — trying to stop a deadly virus that came to Earth aboard a fallen military satellite from spreading beyond the remote desert town it has […]

You know their world, if only by instinct. It’s there all of the time, but it’s in between the cracks. You spy a shadow underneath peeling paint on a wall and are tempted to peel it back. A fissure between the bricks of a building on a worn city street beckons. You open to a page in an aged, dusty book found in a dark, forgotten corner of a great library. OK, the library example is their own suggestion, but the Quay Brothers know the terrain of arcana better than almost anybody. Master animators and filmmakers who seem to distill […]

On a blustery March evening, cast members of Showtime‘s sumptuous ratings hit The Tudors held court in a midtown Manhattan hotel, surrounded by network execs, industry insiders and media critics nursing “Off With Her Head” martinis in a room gilded with portraits of the actors in costume and replicas of the exquisite garb. After everyone had an opportunity to confirm that Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ pout really is that pillowy, Natalie Dormer’s waistline really is that wispy and the show’s legendary new pope Peter O’Toole’s presence really is that papal, the party moved to a nearby theater for a first look […]