Mediola

An EXTRAORDINARY Oscar show!

Did you notice the exquistely sophisticated chartreuse eyelids of Beyonce? A beginning point, a small detail in an amazing, surprisingly exciting display of style and star power. So many beautiful women, and men!, brought to a point of absolute perfection of appearance by international wizards of fashion. This is the New Hollywood.

Never mind that it wasn't a year for great films. Watching the Academy Award broadcast, the films didn't seem to matter. It was like attending the Church of Celebrity. For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church sought out the greatest artists of the day to create places of worship that uplift and inspire. Today, we have a global devotion to the fame of random living humans alongside our religious faith, and we have found that artists can create icons of equal power to the paintings on the walls and ceilings of churches.

It is impossible to single out any of the women as being the most stylish. Cate, so elegant! Rene, what a stunningly perfect miniature. Hilary, Olympian.

The new Sunday 60 Minutes...

...is a piece of garbage. Having working in the news magazine field for much of my career, I feel well qualified to toss out such a seemingly outrageous comment.

Yesterday's show was about as close to Entertainment Tonight as it's possible to get.

Thanks, Mr. Moonves, for a glimpse of the new CBS News. We get it. Celebrity promotion. Wonderful. And replace Andy Rooney with Jon Stewart. I can't wait.

More on the demolition of CBS News in the next article.

American Idol: Better Than Ever

I watched the first group of 12 young male singers on American Idol tonight, and just when you thought "How can there be one decent signer left out there?", leave it to executive producer Simon Fuller to put together the most amazing group of competitors yet.

These guys were great, and it was the first time in the history of the series that the panel's reactions seemed deliberately harsh (don't believe for one second that their reactions to the performances aren't planned in advance).  The producers are clearly building what could well be a bravura season of dynamic singers, every one of them distinct and while clearly nervous at their first studio performance, each was simply terrific. Curiously this week's shows are pre-taped.  But I think it's all about packaging now, and the later live shows, if there are any, might just be let-downs, but I'd guess not. By then each performer will have been groomed, and they'll be doing the theme shows.

The ever adorable Ryan Seacrest has abandoned his chop chop haircut in favor of a blah nothing do, and has barely anything to say. No comforting yet. Randy, Paula and Simon are still drinking their poisonous looking Coke (what a bizarre shade of red those glasses are). God knows what's in them.

And praise be, they're already working with a sizable studio band instead of cheesy prerecorded backtracks.

It was a powerful hour, and Idol remains a killer combo with 24 as a leadout. Great entertainment and brilliant drama. As I've said, 24 is so good this season it's hard to believe we're in the first third of the episodes.

As to Idol, when we need fresh brilliant ideas, we always have to turn to Englishmen. Why? It's really simple. England has a class (a social class) of brilliantly educated people--they're just far brighter than Americans. Sorry. I find it amusing that Les Moonves is trying to figure out what to do with CBS News, and he hasn't surrounded himself with executives from the BBC and other British broadcast journalists. You should see the newscasts in England. You think Ted Koppel is good?

It's time to give the ultra-stupid, weak-kneed and pathetically insecure Andrew Heyward the comeuppance he deserves. He has done nothing for CBS News worth a shit since becoming president, and having known him for years, I can say he's petty, jealous and blatantly simple-minded. Dump him, Les. Don't give him a graceful way out. Humiliate him, the way other media barons I have known have ordered division presidents ousted. And get Rather off the air. He looks like he's about to vomit every night. And Bob Scheiffer? Are you jesting? There's only one broadcaster in America who deserves to front CBS News. Charlie Rose. I can't believe he'd ever do it; why work so hard? But Rose is the best broadcast journalist we have, and if CBS wants to compete, Rose has to sit on the throne.

Candance Bergen: Phooey

When I was in college, I thought Candace Bergen was one of the hottest things on two feet. She wasn't an actress yet. She was doing some acting in college at the time, but what she was was incredibly beautiful, brainy and sexy.

She emerged into the whirl of knockout, class act babes, but she couldn't find the right guy. She tried journalism, but failed. In the 1970's, she used to appear on a local TV talk show on Channel 7 in New York talking about getting old and not meeting anybody.

Then, of course, she got married, and whom did she marry but the French intellectual filmmaker Louis Malle. Being in the same room with a French intellectual is enough to nauseate anybody, but I'm sure his "philosophe" was just the thing for Candace. I think they were very happy, probably trashing American culture and sending out for cuisses de grenouilles.

Then Candace evolved into Murphy Brown. Boy, I hated that show. She could never make it as a film actress, but quips turned out to be up her alley. I think Vice President Potatoe Quayle was right to condemn the single mother storyline, and by that time I couldn't even imagine Candace having sex with anybody. She was drifting toward fossilized WASPdom. Then we all said bye-bye after 10 years. That's a great run, so somebody must have liked her. Or maybe, just maybe, Murphy Brown was about the late Bobby Pastorelli, and he was the star.

Until they let David Kelley out of his straight jacket again, and he cast her on Boston Legal as a partner with Bill Shatner and Rene Auborjonois.  Hello ABC, she's wrecking the show. Large. Her outfits, with collars up to her ears as though she were Kate Hepburn drive me crazy.

ATTENTION ABC: GET RID OF HER FAST.

You want a woman of a certain age?  Who can fit into the sexed-up environs of the world of Denny Crane? There are plenty. Jacqueline Bisset? Helen Mirren? So long, Candace, you're history.

Carlos Bernard returns to 24!

I can't wait, as usual, for the next 24 Monday night at 9.  But this week, there's an extra bit of excitement and happy memory.

Last week, at the end of the hour, Jack was in a major jam, surrounded by hostiles, clearly cornered and moments from the bullet. He made a cell call to "the only person I can trust".

Who, I thought, could that be?  We ALL wondered.  His allies are all gone.

Suddenly, running top speed guns blaring into the bunker where Jack was trapped, came Tony Almeida. TONY! Tony was back! I can't even tell you what a feeling of relief I felt, and affection, and joy that Tony was back to work with Jack.

Carlos Bernard has done such brilliant work in the first three seasons. Here was an instance where you don't fully comprehend the place an actor has created in your life until his character is gone, you accomodate the loss, and then he heroically re-enters your life. I don't want him to ever leave 24.

Carlos Bernard as Tony Almeida, left

The 2005 GarbageBowl

It was a total piece of television shit, another hyped-up Superbowl, more mistakes than points scored.  This is what makes me nauseous about football: it's a game for sadists in mental institutions and it's about crashes.  Break your bones, play injured, retire crippled, that's a hero player.  Compare it to baseball or soccer.  Totally pathetic.

The MVP is this game was the guy who directed it for Fox.  This was the best directed sport event I've ever seen.

During the game, the color guys pointed out so many stupid moves you'd think it was mentally challenged football. Then, the post-game analysis turns it into a symphony of genius.

But at halftime, Sir Paul McCartney was just plain all-American fabulous. These days, if you want  top tier entertainment for the event of the year, you have to hire a British Knight of the Realm.  And a senior citizen as well.  If you hire an American, they show their tit or ass or worse.  If only Jim Morrison were still alive.  I'd love to see a drugged-out halftime rendition of Light My Fire including Jim's typical unzipping his fly and popping out his dick.  It wouldn't be much of a dick these days, but I'd pay to see it.

McCartney's voice sounded youthful and vigorous.  How does he do it?  Doctors.  But who cares?  He still sounds like he did during the Is Paul Dead? craze.  He hits every note straight on, articulates his lyrics perfectly, and those songs are forever.  Do you think any of the zillion pretend singers watching learned one single thing watching him?  He played with a fabulous Beatles-size band.  I love Maroon 5, but do they sound like the Beatles?  Give me a break. 

The Golden Globes: Ya gotta love em! NOT

My notes on the Golden Globes:

• Wonderful black gown worn by Renee Zellwegger
• Clive Owen is the next James Bond, or else
• WONDERFUL! Bill Shatner wins again for Denny Crane! If you're not watching Boston Legal, you're missing some of the greatest characters ever created for television. I've raved about Shatner's creation of the Denny Crane character before, and I'll say it again...it's unforgettable

• Hand me the barf bag. Somebody named Moushkee Hargity or something from Law & Order beat Edie Falco. Mousky better look both ways when she crosses Sunset. Ya neva no when some nut is gonna drive crazy, ya know?

 

JACK IS BACK

Now that I've seen the first four episodes of 24, I'm thrilled to say the fourth season is even better than the first.

I'm going to begin with the one negative: the incredibly obvious steal of the Arab family from the film House of Sand and Fog, where they were Iranian. Father, mother and son, the identical characters, and amazingly, the mother and son are played by the same actors in both House and 24. The father on 24 is no Ben Kingsley by a long shot. Come on, guys.

Now then. Jack is at peace, and I feel a love for him that after these years of tragedy and trauma, he has found a world to live in, and a glorious girlfriend. And what casting for the girlfriend! She plays the daughter of the Secretary of State, and she looks so much the part it's uncanny. I lived most of my life among the very wealthy of Manhattan, although I am a working class Brooklyn boy made good. But I know many, and married one, of these privileged children of the ruling class. The private schools, finest colleges, sophistication and culture. And the look. Beauty and intellect. Class. That Jack found her, and that she loves him, and that he is struggling to allow himself to love again is supremely powerful.

The scripting and direction is the best of any television series, and I'd rather watch 24 than go to the movies. The ratings for the first four episodes were excellent, even without the former American Idol lead-in.

Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow fascinatingly have returned to their cult USA series La Femme Nikita for the wonderfully bitchy actress Alberta Watson, who has replaced Bauer as head of CTU. In fact, she fired him.

Scenically, the CTU interior has been modified to closely resemble the interior of the CTU-like facility on La Femme Nikita, allowing camera angles that heighten the intrigue.

The multi-screen boxes are back in frequent use. Damn it, this series is brilliant.

Jack, welcome back.

Desperate Housewives: What makes it work?

Teri Hatcher, in the years when she was every American man's fantasy.
___________________________________________

Here is a true programming phenomenon: an out-of-the-blue oddball formula that premieres and shoots right to the top of the ratings charts.

It has none of the tried-and-true (translate tedious and mind-numbing) formulae--not a procedural, not a sitcom, not a drama, no cops, doctors, lawyers or mafioso.  It's about a group of women, but it's not Baywatch.  These women are, after all, older desperate housewives.  What's going on here?

What we have here is a very clever translation of the work of one of our great film makers adapted for the small screen.  Without question, the inspiration for Desperate Housewives is Tim Burton's film Edward Scissorhands.  Think about it for a minute.  Take Edward (Johnny Depp) and his Maker out of Edward Scissorhands, and you have Wisteria Lane.  Far out?  No way.

The November 2004 sweep kicks off with a horrid OC

Huggies at the end, parents who worry themselves to death about their children, kids chomping to leave home but just really can't resist returning to mommie and daddy where everything is easy and paid for.

What a bunch of crap.  And in the middle of it, Peter Gallagher, a solid actor who was triumphant in the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls, co-starring with Nathan Lane.  Gallagher is doing the Bronx Irish accent Gary Sinise should be doing on CSI:NY.  And God blesses him with patience and empathy, while chaos reigns around him.  He can be happy eating dinner in a demolished house while desperate to bring home his runaway son, and keeping to himself an impending, and potentially financially devastating investigation into family business dealings.  BUT!  He's a lawyer!  So he'll figure it out!  Because the sun is shining in Orange County, which is largely a low rent outland of Los Angeles.  And to top it off, a pregnant girl lies to her boyfriend about her baby dying in utero because she thinks he doesn't love her, and she does this with her MOTHER'S SUPPORT!

You've heard of 3-hankie shows?  This one is a 5-toilet paper swipe bonanza.

The commercials were cool, though.  But the much-vaunted fashions looked like off-the-rack crap from Marshall's to me.  Did you catch the Old Skool Vans?  Man, I was wearing those 10 years ago.  Wow, trendulicious. 

This may be great entertainment for 14 year olds, but if Fox thinks this is Desperate Housewives (more crap I'll be getting into) or CSI or NCIS, give it up.