November 2009

George Lopez is having a very good year. The presidential candidate for whom he spent much of 2008 tirelessly campaigning is now in office. His self-titled sitcom is a smash in syndication. His live comedy act sells out arenas. And he was among the first actors signed to Garry Marshall’s upcoming Valentine’s Day, an ensemble comedy starring a multigenerational who’s who of talent from Taylor Swift to Ashton Kutcher to Shirley MacLaine. So how is he celebrating this string of successes? By hosting a show in which everyone else gets to gab about theirs. Beginning Nov. 9, Lopez plans to […]

Jeff Leatham is a busy man. The day we spoke, he’d recently finished doing a floral display around a line of jewelry at Tiffany’s, then scattered 7,000 roses on the streets of New York City for Fashion’s Night Out. After he spoke with me, he was scheduled to fly to Europe to confer on the floral arrangements for the first ever party to be held in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles. His clientele includes the Dalai Lama, Tina Turner, Eva Longoria Parker and former President Clinton. But he wasn’t too busy to take a bit of […]

World War II is likely thought of by the average person literally in “black and white” terms, and not just because of the reasons for the conflict. Most of the images and film we’ve seen from that period are in black and white, and over time that has given the events and people portrayed in them a sense of not being real, as if they existed in some other world — or that it all took place so long ago that it has no bearing on us. The lack of color, to our modern and sometimes jaded eye, may also […]

It’s one of those ideas that comes along and makes everyone wonder how no one else thought of it before. The League, which airs Thursdays on FX, follows a group of five otherwise well-adjusted men in their early 30s who live and breathe fantasy football, to the point that it often gets in the way of their jobs, their relationships and generally makes their lives a fractured mess. With a pedigree including a producer from Curb Your Enthusiasm, the semi-improvised comedy takes a deeper look into a hugely popular hobby that has inspired a rabid following and is a staple […]

Just call Kelly Blatz the go-to guy for Disney XD. When the Mouse repackaged its Toon Disney channel as a one-stop shop for tween and teen boys earlier this year, its first effort was the techno-laden adventure series Aaron Stone, which stars Blatz as a teen who divides his time between being a mild-mannered student and the titular planetary defender, equipped with the latest high-tech gadgets to fight off evil. After Stone became a rock-solid hit, Disney XD tapped Blatz to help it break into the realm of original movies with Skyrunners, premiering Nov. 27. Blatz plays Nick, who along […]