It was about 15 minutes into "Chamber of Secrets" that I decided I had had enough Potter onscreen for one day …

(more…)

The movie reviewer for ABC has died. The ABC news story is after the jump …

I'm adding a link to Roger Ebert's tribute, since Ebert knew Siegel and knows something about illness, too. Also, Ebert quotes a line from Siegel that, even when you're not fighting death, says something about how a critic operates in the middle of real life:

How do we do it? We work. We write. We see a movie. Sometimes we think about what we've seen. I'm amazed at my ability to go on the air, a pouch in my right hand pumping chemo into a port in my chest, and I go on.

Which brings to mind Samuel Beckett: Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.

And so we go on the jump …

(more…)

Are we done? Please, please, tell me that's it. …

(more…)

(Because studios get hinky about movies being reviewed too soon, this is not a review. More like notes from a viewing of what could well be the summer's biggest movie. To the notes, then:)

One of the smartest things about "Transformers" is that it knows that the basic idea is pretty ridiculous …

(more…)

If you haven't watched this week's episode, don't go to the jump. …

(more…)

Only so many hours in the day, right? Some things have to be put off. For instance, I have never sat and watched "Titanic" from beginning to end. And, until recently, I had never read a Harry Potter book — a situation I rather aggressively remedied …

(more…)

I think that I have written before about the way watching TV has come to require watching TV. But the evidence keeps piling up, as in this announcement today:

ESPN, ABC and the National Basketball Association (NBA) will significantly expand their global relationship with ESPN’s most comprehensive digital rights package negotiated with any major professional sports league and enhanced television coverage in an eight-year extension beginning in 2008-09, it was announced today. … Under the terms of the new deal, the NBA will deliver content for 17 ESPN platforms, including: ABC, ABC HD, ESPN, ESPN HD, ESPN2, ESPN2 HD, ESPNEWS, ESPN Classic, ESPN Deportes, ESPN International, ESPN Radio, ESPN.com, ESPN360.com, ESPN Mobile Publishing, ESPN Mobile TV, ESPNU and ESPN podcasts. The deal will also cover all new platforms ESPN creates or develops relationships with through the end of the agreement in 2016.

That ties in with the announcement a couple of weeks ago from CBS about "Big Brother" (continued after the jump) …

(more…)

A new project for Lifetime, which sounds highly reminiscent of Michael Keaton's 1996 movie "Multiplicity." Details after the jump …

(more…)

Discovery Channel says it has found Hatshepsut, a female pharoah. (But shouldn't we be cautious? As B.B. King once said, "Nobody loves me but my mummy. And she may be jivin' too.")

Released details after the jump…

(more…)

Oxygen may want to exploit you…

(more…)