BuzzSugar

TV Tonight: The Series Premiere of TNT's HawthoRNe

BuzzSugar — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:45:27 -0700

Tonight Jada Pinkett Smith returns to the small screen for the first time in years. She stars in the new TNT drama, HawthoRNe. Like another new show, Showtime's Nurse Jackie, HawthoRNe follows the personal and professional tribulations of a nurse.

Christina Hawthorne (Smith) may be small, but when it comes to fighting for her patients and their families, she's a force to be reckoned with. By the looks of preview clips and the scene I've included below, this is one TV nurse who is bound to make a lasting impression.

In addition to fighting for her patients at work, Hawthorne fights to remain sane at home. The show takes place one year after her husband's death and we watch the tough nurse struggle to manage her own grief while also trying to be there for her rebellious daughter, Camille. The show also stars Michael Vartan as chief of surgery and Suleka Mathew, among others. Her personal life aside, Hawthorne seems like the kind of flawed but dedicated nurse people might look up to.

After the jump I have a preview clip from tonight's premiere, so read more.

Photo courtesy of TNT

First Look: Hawthorne

BuzzSugar — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:30:53 -0700

Nurses: so hot on TV right now? That seems to be the case. In addition to the nursing series called Mercy that NBC just picked up, this June will bring two new tough nurses to the TV scene: Nurse Jackie (Edie Falco) on Showtime and Christina Hawthorne (Jada Pinkett Smith) of TNT's Hawthorne.

In Hawthorne, which premieres June 16, Smith plays the head nurse at Richmond Trinity Hospital. She's the kind of person who doesn't back down from protecting her patients - and that can leave her on the wrong side of her colleagues (or even the law), as we glimpse in the promo below. The show also stars Michael Vartan and Suleka Mathew, among others.

If you know any real-life nurses, TNT's running a fun sweepstakes that will end with one lucky nurse winning a Los Angeles spa vacation. Pass that link on to them by May 27, and in the meantime, check out the Hawthorne promo when you read more.

Photo courtesy of TNT

TV News Tidbits: Amy Sedaris, Jada Pinkett Smith, and More

BuzzSugar — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:29:18 -0800

It's that time again! The twice-yearly Television Critics Association press tour kicked off in Los Angeles this week, which means the TV news is going to flow fast and furious for the next week or so. PBS and cable take the stage this week, and then the network portion kicks in early next week, when Molly and I will be flying down to LA to blog and Twitter this tour ourselves!

Until then, I'm keeping an eye on some of the TV news coming out, both from the networks that are presenting and the others that are just making announcements. Some of the highlights so far:

TNT has picked up two new drama series, including Jada Pinkett Smith's project, Time Heals. The other series is The Line, a cop drama starring Dylan McDermott.
Unsurprisingly, Amy Sedaris had the crowd in stitches at the PBS panel yesterday. She's narrating a new PBS miniseries called Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America, which airs starting Jan. 14. Oh, and apparently Amy does not like the internet very much, but the internet still loves her.
If you like Discovery Channel shows, then get a load of this: The network has at least seven new shows coming soon, including Out of the Wild, in which suburbanites are dropped into the Alaskan wilderness and have to find their way back to civilization. (I'm not kidding - I'd totally watch that.)
Ian McKellen will not be nude for the PBS version of King Lear. So uh, you can cross that off your calendar, I guess.

Source

Jada Pinkett Smith Makes Time For TNT Series

BuzzSugar — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:31:58 -0700

More proof that TNT is the official network of strong women: it's lured Jada Pinkett Smith back to television. She'll be starring in - and executive-producing - the network's new drama pilot called Time Heals.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the show "centers on Nancy Hawthorne (Pinkett Smith), a strong but caring director of nursing at Charlotte Mercy Hospital in North Carolina, a single mother who always puts the pain of others first." That sounds like it could be a meaty role - and a show that will fit well on the network that also recruited Holly Hunter for Saving Grace and Kyra Sedgwick for The Closer.

Frankly, I'm happy anytime a TV network turns out a show with a powerful woman at its core, and it's about time we had another show with a woman of color in the lead. I'll be interested to hear more about this show as it moves forward. How about you?

Source

The Women: Not Fizzy, Just Empty

BuzzSugar — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:34:00 -0700

Philosophically, the very existence of The Women is something that makes me cheer. As its title suggests, it's a movie full of only women - and many of them "women of a certain age," at that. Director and screenwriter Diane English spent years trying to steer her remake of George Cukor's 1939 classic to the screen, and I respect and admire her determination. A powerful remake of The Women could have sent yet another signal that moviegoers want to see women on screen in all their beautiful, imperfect, daffy, lovable, clueless, fantastic glory.

On screen, though, The Women disappoints to an almost depressing degree. It's not an outright disaster; there are good moments from nearly everyone in the gigantic cast. But it's not screwball enough to honor its '30s movie heritage, not clever enough to make for a fun night out at the theater. And its own message on women is utterly conflicted, threatening to undermine the potential positive impact of bringing an all-female movie to the big screen.

Meg Ryan stars as Mary Haines, whose life comes complete with adorable daughter, fabulous luncheons, and blooming garden she planted herself. If there are cracks in that shiny veneer, she'd hardly notice; as a friend, Alex (Jada Pinkett Smith), points out, she's too busy filling them in. So it knocks her flat when she finds out - thanks to her gossipy manicurist (Debi Mazar) - that her husband is having an affair with the Saks perfume "spritzer girl" (Eva Mendes). That betrayal would be bad enough, but before long, there's another one, courtesy of her best friend Sylvie (Annette Bening), who sells out Mary to save her own floundering career. The Women does fine with that broad sketch of a plot. It's in the details that the movie loses its footing, so read more.

Some of the movie's issues lie in the direction, which isn't confident enough to pull off some of the more screwball elements. English also doesn't seem to know how to use Bette Midler, who has a brief cameo that is delightful to watch but doesn't contribute much to the story, and Debra Messing and Smith are hardly in the movie. The whole look of the film is flat - understandable given its relatively small budget, but far from engaging for a viewer.

What The Women gets right is Mary's devastation at Sylvie's betrayal; losing her husband wouldn't have been so bad if the whole mess hadn't taken her friend along with it. The few scenes with the friends together are a treat, especially when they're plotting their confrontation of (and revenge against) the spritzer girl. Mendes basically just has to act hot and stupid, and she does that well. And Candice Bergen is amusing as Mary's mother, who dispenses advice that seems to be from another era.

Or is it? The Women seems confused about its own thoughts on women's roles. And while I can live with the ultimate outcome of Mary's journey to find herself (though I thought it was far too easy and predictable), what I can't condone is the movie's treatment of Mary's daughter Molly, who is basically a living representation of Why Women Hate Themselves. In her first scene, she tells Mary she's on a diet because she's fat; Mary laughs it off . Over the course of the movie, she starts smoking to keep from eating, burns tampons because she hates being a girl, and laments that she doesn't understand why magazine editors like Sylvie send such mixed signals to women. Sylvie's ultimate response when confronted with all of Molly's baggage? "I'm a hypocrite. Life is complicated."

That's all?

Sadly, that empty, cop-out response is far too apt a metaphor for The Women as a whole.

Photos courtesy of Picturehouse

Movie Preview: The Women Starring. . . Lots of Women

BuzzSugar — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:30:48 -0700

I was interested in this remake of the 1939 film The Women when there was initial casting news about it (Debra Messing, Annette Bening, Meg Ryan, Jada Pinkett Smith, Eva Mendes, Candace Bergen, etc. etc.), but after the incredible success of the Sex and the City movie, I'm even more excited about the opportunities for movies directed at a female audience. If nothing else the SATC movie might have indicated to filmmakers and studios that (hello!) it's possible to actually have a female-centric film do well at the box office. In other words: women can be valuable audience members, too, you know.

Anyway, from the new trailer it looks like there's The Woman (Meg Ryan) and all her girlfriends discover that there's The Other Woman (Eva Mendes) but the women don't know how to tell her about this other woman. True to the original, there don't appear to be any men in the movie. This new trailer isn't phenomenal, but it still looks like a reasonably funny movie about female friendship (and rivalry).

The Women opens September 12. To check out the trailer and tell me what you think, read more.

Buzz News Roundup, 11/14

BuzzSugar — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:42:14 -0800

Variety has news on the sequel to the Thomas Crown Affair, which will again star Pierce Brosnan, though Rene Russo will not reprise her role.
The Los Angeles Times reports that Steven Spielberg will receive the Cecil B. DeMille award at this year's Golden Globes, while Rumer Willis has been named Miss Golden Globe.
ComingSoon reports that Kate Bush will write a song titled "Lyra" for the closing credits of The Golden Compass.
Jay-Z jumped over the Eagles and Britney to obtain the No. 1 spot with his American Gangster album, writes Billboard.
Variety reports that Jada Pinkett Smith will be making her directorial debut with the drama The Human Contract, which she also wrote.
Speaking of Star Trek today, according to ComingSoon, two more have joined the JJ Abrams project: Chris Hemsworth and Clifton Collins Jr.
According to NME, there will soon be a Gorillaz documentary called - what else? - Bananaz.
Rosemary's Baby writer Ira Levin has died at age 78, writes the Hollywood Reporter.
Bravo is planning a Top Chef holiday special; what few details there are can be found at The Futon Critic.

Look at All The Women!

BuzzSugar — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 05:29:00 -0700

In the second piece of recent movie news that features the year 1939, screenwriter Diane English is finally close to securing a large cast of ladies for a remake of the 1939 classic The Women after working for many years to get the project going. Variety has the scoop:

Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing and Candice Bergen have either signed or are near committing to star in a contemporized version of the George Cukor-directed film, which Picturehouse will distribute domestically next year.

The bitchy tone of the Clare Boothe Luce play lent itself perfectly to a 1939 original film that starred Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell and others.

[Diane English's] script maintains the arch spirit of the original, and the all-female cast, but the gals aren't as relentlessly catty this time around. Story follows a group of female friends when the one they envied most discovers her husband's cheating on her.

I am so looking forward to seeing all these fabulous women in one film, though the article also mentions that the movie's budget is $20 million, so I'm curious how that will be spread out among such a great-looking cast. Another peculiar tidbit: Mick Jagger is producing. Some bizarre details going on here, but I have faith this quirky project will turn out to be awesome.

Source and source

Reign Over Me: More Than Just A Buddy Movie

BuzzSugar — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 04:51:34 -0700

You may think Reign Over Me is a movie about a friendship between two men: one of whom has a flimsy grasp on reality after suffering great tragedy and the other needing to appreciate the fullness of his life. This is only partially true. At its core, Reign Over Me is about grief - how people grieve differently and how we deem only certain kinds of grief appropriate. The script is a little scattered, but it's ultimately a very touching film, in large part thanks to Don Cheadle.

Adam Sandler stars as Charlie Fineman, whose wife and three daughters (and poodle, of all things) perished in one of the planes on 9/11. Unable to process this, Charlie has blocked the tragedy almost entirely, living in a disconnected haze by clamping headphones on his ears and zooming through New York on his scooter. One day, however, an old college friend Alan Johnson (Cheadle) spots him on the street and decides to help him. This proves no easy task, what with Charlie's Rain Man-esque relationship to the world and his violent, unpredictable outbursts. Eventually, the great question becomes whether or not Charlie should be institutionalized, while in a weaker plot line, Alan examines his marriage to his "naggy" wife Janeane (Jada Pinkett Smith). To hear what I thought,

I feared that 9/11 would be used in an exploitative way, but instead, the focus is narrowed to one man's pain, hitting home with more potency. There is no gratuitous acting out of, say, the moment of Charlie's wife's death. In some ways I wonder if, because that would be too much for Charlie, it would also be too much for us. His behavior does seem off-kilter, but as the movie wears on, it starts to look achingly justified, until you’re tsk-tsking the characters who most resembled you earlier in the film – those who called him crazy for grieving the way he is.

Though Adam Sandler has some poignant moments, Don Cheadle is the heart of this film. In fact, I suspect that the moments when Sandler truly shines are due to the fact that he has to step it up playing alongside Don Cheadle. Liv Tyler makes a good therapist with her sweet trust-me eyes, while Donald Sutherland plays a judge, taking BJ Novak to task in a highly satisfying scene. Paula Newsome - familiar to "Heroes" fans as the psychologist who tried to help Niki - provides some much-needed comedic relief as Dr. Johnson’s office manager.

Yet while the cast is excellent, non-human elements that play equally important roles. Popular music is placed purposefully throughout the film, both in conversation and in the soundtrack. It’s so thoughtfully used, in fact, that I found myself frustrated by the movie's piano-and-strings score - pop songs alternated with silence would have been more evocative.

New York City, too, is important: We view the streets from the vantage point of Charlie’s scooter, and city shots are used often to establish time and place. Like Charlie and Alan - or like humans in general - the city has the potential for great success and great destruction; the city being our country’s economic epicenter and also the source of tremendous sorrow. In the cold winter light, New York seems especially good for examining one’s grief, along with the ever-present possibility for hope.

Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures