Get The Pillars Of The Earth On DVD @Amazon

Sweeping, historical miniseries and TV movies on cable television have mostly been in the domain of HBO. Starz’ attempt with its eight-episode miniseries adaptation of Ken Follett’s, The Pillars of the Earth is an intense, highly entertaining, if clunky piece of historical drama. The miniseries will naturally draw the ire of fans of Follett’s bestselling novel, but it’s more likely to create new fans who might not be familiar with Follett’s work. Produced by Ridley and Tony Scott, The Pillars of the Earth takes place during England’s 19-year Anarchy period of civil war and upheaval during the 12th century.

The political atmosphere is difficult to follow without historical understanding of the era especially since the Anarchy isn’t a regular historical period in pop culture. Set mainly in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, The Pillars of the Earth interconnects the lives of fictional, ordinary people with those of historical figures. The series immediately starts in 1120 with the royals. King Henry I of England’s (Clive Wood’s) only legitimate son and 17-year old male heir, William Adelin, is lost at sea after the White Ship sinks off the coast of Normandy. His death sends England into chaos. With the line of royal succession in doubt, Henry names his daughter Matilda, also known as Maud (Alison Phil) as his heir. Henry’s barons, including his favourite nephew Stephen (Tony Curran), swear allegiance to the crown princess. But Maud has enemies who would rather see an illegitimate male heir than a woman take the throne.

Amidst all this political upheaval, ordinary stonemason, Tom Builder (Rufus Sewell) suddenly loses his job after his enraged employer Lord William Hamleigh (David Oakes) dismisses him. Desperate, Tom takes his family across the forest to find work and lodging to keep them alive. On their journey they befriended healer and accused witch Ellen (Natalia Worner) and her silent, brilliant, red-haired son Jackson (Eddie Redmayne). After their perilous journey the Builder family and new friends settle in Kingsbridge where Prior Philip (Matthew Macfayden), needs help to build the town’s cathedral. Meanwhile, King Henry I has died and Stephen, despite his oath of allegiance to Maud, seizes the throne for himself.

The miniseries’ strength is ultimately the project’s downfall. There are no breakouts in the ensemble cast of The Pillars of the Earth. Each performance is as wonderfully overacted as the last, which creates a well-oiled machine of perfect casting, though some of the characters are boiled down to over-the-top archetypes. Veterans like Ian McShane, Donald Sutherland, and Rufus Sewell are matched by rising actors like Matthew Macfayden, Eddie Redmayne, and Hayley Atwell. Each actor attempts to draw uniqueness from the characters that reside in an era of faceless hordes and homogenous fealty. Macfayden’s Prior Philip is a trusting, devout monk in corrupt church, Tony Curran’s King Stephen is a murdering coward, while Rufus Sewell’s Tom is a much sensitive family man as he is ferocious fighter. As for Eddie Redmayne’s quiet Jack – there’s more said in Redmayne’s soulful doe eyes than in his dialogue. And that’s just the men.

In historical pieces where women are a little more than property, onscreen female characters surprisingly often, have more strength and individuality than their modern counterparts. Kate Dickie’s Agnes Builder gives birth in the middle of the forest. Hayley Atwell’s Aliena is a sword-swinging maiden. Natalia Worner’s sexy Ellen might very well be a witch. As for Alison Pill’s Maud – somewhere between her icy promise to fight for her son’s life and readying herself for battle in knight’s armour, you understand why men line up to go to the ends of the earth for her.

But this acting machine bogs down the action. There are too many characters to keep up with and considering the project spans lifetimes, the storylines are too difficult to remember. There are too many heroes and villains – each with their own agendas and alliances. There are doublecrossings, and alliances are reforged or unmade in a span of minutes. Everyone owes someone else something for some reason. Even the characters themselves have trouble remembering whose side they’re on. It’s as confusing as the Anarchy itself.

The Pillars of the Earth does attempt some semblance of historical accuracy even though it treats King Stephen as definitely evil. He engages in murders that history hasn’t proven. The sense of the era, though, is accurate. The show’s creators pay attention to detail. The miniseries presents the grimy, bloody, and dangerous chaos of the Middle Ages. England is going through a period of urbanization and men like Tom head to the market towns in droves. The architecture is transforming into Gothic style. Tom wants to improve stone cathedrals using arches, a modern marvel that stuns Prior Philip into awed silence. It’s a political age – the church throws its support behind the usurper Stephen, not out of loyalty, but because Stephen will be the church’s puppet prince.

The violence of The Pillars of the Earth isn’t for the squeamish – swords do most of the grisly damage, while the bows and arrows do the rest. And since the knights can’t fight the women in the open, they rape them behind locked doors.

The Pillars of the Earth, despite cat-and-mouse politics, double dealings, and alliances, never explicitly says that it’s relevant to a modern audience. It doesn’t have to. The creators respect the audience enough. Instead of taking you by the hand, or hammering you over the head, they invite you to follow, and to look, and to listen. Lessons on war, elitism, religion, gender, and class are the ones you make. Its gentle persuasion is enough to follow it to its conclusion.

S.I.

Get The Pillars Of The Earth On DVD @Amazon

Get it online (DVD/Video on Demand) @ Amazon

Despite all the advances in medicine, it’s still a scary word. Hearing that you have cancer, or being the friend or relative of someone who has it, these are clearly complicated experiences. The disease afflicts its sufferers both physically – masses, growths – and emotionally – tears, rage, depression. It is a very big deal, of literally life and death proportions, so when watching The Big C, Showtime’s new dramedy about cancer, it is easy to understand why Cathy Jamison (Laura Linney), the series school teacher protagonist, seems so unhinged and why her reactions are so extreme. Linney masterfully gives us an endearing character who becomes very earnest about the living she has left. Cathy seems to be realizing, sadly a little late, about the kind of person she wants to be. The Big C shows a woman who, face to face with her mortality, finds the freedom to speak her mind. Its sweet, engaging, and, well, funny. If it appears a little glib, a little too clever, a little too easy, it is perhaps because, up to episode five, at any rate, she hasn’t seemed desperately sad, only…desperate.

She’s perhaps most desperate about her teenage son Adam (Gabriel Basso). In Cathy’s opinion Adam at 14 is becoming too much like his father Paul (Oliver Platt) – selfish, self-absorbed, and uncaring. Her time is so limited, the prognosis is that she has in all probability less than five won’t learn all she has to teach him before she dies. This leads to some very funny scenes, such as when she catches him watching internet porn in his bedroom and she insists on using that as a moment to teach him about what women desire sexually from men. Her need to spend time with him also leads her to cancel his soccer camp plans and force him to spend the summer with her. Anxious to recreate the closeness they shared when he was younger, she evens sleeps on the floor of his bedroom, just to be close. Unfortunately, because she keeps her cancer a secret, he cannot understand what she is doing and grows completely exasperated with her.

She tells no one in her family that she is ill. The only person who know are her doctor, the neighbor’s basset hound who literally sniffed it out, the dog’s crotchety owner Marlene, who deduced it from the dog’s behavior, and members of a cancer support group that she abrupty abandoned after one meeting. Her brother Sean (John Benjamin Hickey), an environmental activist who chooses to be homeless and treats her and her middle-class lifestyle with contempt, also not know. In the support group she confessed that she didn’t think her loved ones could cope with the news, and one can understand that position given that she appears, prior to her illness anyway, to have been the most mature individual in her family. One can’t help but wonder, though, whether her inability to tell them isn’t more to do with her own unwillingness to face her impending death. It might be very simple: she wants to enjoy life in the time she has left and she can’t do that and be a wife, too. It seems like a deep desire to experience a life that she gave up by making the choices that she did, in fact, not only does she not tell husband, but she kicks him out of the house. We sympathies with Paul because he is more than a little confused.

Without her husband she seems to be, deliberately or unwittingly, on a path to becoming more daring sexually, a risk taker. At first she asks her doctor for his opinion on her breasts (he’s very complimentary). Next she pretends to be his very sexual fiancée while helping him to choose a house. Then she watches porn, fleshing (Sharon Stone-style) the black handyman at the school where she teaches (played by Idris Elda in a guest-starring role).

This self-exploration, though, is not only sexual; she generally becomes much more assertive in her personal life and uncaring about social conventions and boundaries. She takes the fat girl (Gabourey Sidibe) in her class under her wing and encourages her through a combination of bullying, bribery, and kindness to lose weight, and she tries to reconnect with her brother estranged from her since he set out on a life journey that is completely different from hers.

Cathy Jamison is a woman who has a little crazy instead of becoming really depressed. The mix of emotions is delivered ably by Laura Linney, who is supported by a strong cast. Worth mentioning, too, is the performance by John Benjamin Hickey as the self-righteous brother, Sean. He is irritating and yet lovable and Hickey does very well in this role. The first series has already proven to be popular with viewers and a second season has already been confirmed. No doubt Cathy’s entire journey will be an interesting one to watch and this is certainly recommended watching.

Get it online (DVD/Video on Demand) @ Amazon

Starring: Angie Harmon & Sasha Alexander

Rizzoli & Isles On DVD | Rizzoli & Isles On Demand (Streaming)

The idea of bright, complicated women as television crime solvers is not new – Kyra Sedgwick in The Closer comes immediately to mind – but this exploration has the potential to yield interesting plot lines. There are at least two love interests lining up for Rizzoli. Who will she choose? Or will she turn out to be so damaged that she won’t choose any?

Just before the summer season started, the long-running crime procedural Law and Order aired its final episode. The series had put in 20 solid seasons, seen several detectives and ADAs, and had given us numerous solved and unsolved murders. It was loved. Angie Harmon is an alumna of Law and Order, having played Assistant District Attorney Addie Carmichael. This summer she is back on Rizzoli and Isles, now on the side of Law, and plays Jane Rizzoli, a dedicated Boston-based detective who can solve cases, play baseball and basketball with the best of the guys. Her literal partner in crime is Maura Isles (Sasha Alexander), a forensic investigator whose Encyclopaedia Brown brain for detail makes up for her social awkwardness. Together (cue musical flourish) they solve crime. If these characters seems familiar it may be because you’ve read the novel by Tess Gerritsen, on which the characters are based. Or perhaps it’s because you’ve watched Bones, Monk, or even The Nutty Professor, in which a lack of social grace is the byproduct of a brilliant mind. But although it has all the making to be great hit show on paper, Rozzoli and Isles for most part feels like a blend of many shows that have already aired.

On paper, the cast for the television series is fantastic. Harmon and Alexander themselves are no newcomers to the small-screen world and they are backed up by a sound cast and impressive guest stars. Lorraine Bracco (The Sopranos) plays Rozzoli mother, Chazz Palminteri (The Usual Suspects) her father Donnie Wahlberg (screen, NKOTB fans!) her lieutenant, and Bruce McGill (ALI), her ex-partner and close friend. On episode two, the veteran actor Brian Dennehy, who is no slouch in the acting arena, guest stars. Thus it comes as no surprise that the acting is good. Some of the best moments in the pilot occur in the exchanges between Jane and her mother who can be, in the Morgenstern of Rhoda to Mrs Barone of Everybody Loves Raymond, overbearingly loving and a little too honest. Yet even that is a rehash of a stereotype. In episode two, Mama Rizzoli is particularly concerned. Her son (Jordon Bridges), who worships his sister become a police officer just like she did will probably not get married and have children (like Jane) if he continues down this path. And in episode one a serial killer has escaped prison and is now hunting for her daughter. Why won’t her children listen? Thus, while Rizzoli solves cases she wrangles with members of her family.

The crimes themselves are so-so. In episode one, she is captured by the aforementioned serial killer and his apprentice. She manages to escape but the manner in which she does so is a little convenient. Her one-liner, though, at the end, is memorable and makes foe another nice moment. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough such moments to make the show truly spectacular. What has the potential to be truly interesting for the patient viewer is the unveiling of Rozzoli character. Although it seems like Isles’s character should be more interesting (who is this lonely genius and fashionista?)

There are hints that Rozzoli will move past the obvious markers of the strong, independent female and turn out to be more layered than is now apparent, And that the revelation, if subtly done of bright, complicated women as television crime solvers is not new – Kyra Sedgwick in The Closer comes immediately to mind – but this exploration has the potential to yield interesting lining up for Rozzoli. Who will she choose? Or will she turn out to be so damaged that she won’t choose any?

Another interested thing about Rizzoli and Isles is the camera work. Scenes can be moody blue or fluorescent light-bright depending on the content. There are also interesting splices, quick clips inserted in scenes to series is not a trailblazer in this arena, Criminal Minds and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation have used many of these techniques already, to greater effect. On balance, what is left is an alright show with a good cast of actors. The books probably better.

Rizzoli & Isles airs: Mondays at 9pm on TNT Rated: TV-14
Watch it: Rizzoli & Isles On DVD | Rizzoli & Isles On Demand (Streaming)
Reviewed by: K.H.

Pretty Little Liars hits every teen soap cliché and then some in its pilot episode. Based on Sara Shepard’s popular young adult novels, the new ABC Family series focuses on a clique of four high school girls grieving after their Queen Bee Alison (Sasha Pieterse) goes missing. A year after Alison’s disappearance the girls start to get messages from a mysterious ‘A’ who threatens to reveal deep dark secrets only Alison could have known. The concept initially began as a television show, but it first morphed into an ongoing eight-novel series. Eventually, like a lot of women’s fiction, the series finally made its way to the small screen. There’s a rule in the entertainment industry: boy books become movies, and girl books become TV shows (Twighlight being a notable exception). While it’s no Gossip Girl, the pilot does manage to show promise that it’ll be better than most ABC Family’s other teen fare.

The pilot sets up the mysteries of the season’s 10-episode arc. Wild child Aria Montgomery (Lucy hale), insecure Hanna Marin (Ashley Benson), bookworm Spencer Hastings (Troian Bellisario), athletic Emily Fields (Shay Mitchell), and their Queen Bee Alison DiLaurentis spend the night at a sleep over in the woods, but Alison soon goes missing. Jump ahead to a year later with Aria returning to Rosewood, Pennsylvania after an extended trip to Iceland with her family. Things have changed and the girls have drifted apart. Hanna has now taken Alison’s place as Queen Bee and Spencer and Emily are dealing with their own personal lives. Soon, each girl gets a taunting message that threatens to unveil their dark secrets to the world: Aria’s new relationship with her English teacher Ezra Fitz (Ian Harding), Hanna’s shoplifting, Spencer’s crush on yet another of her sister’s boyfriends, and Emily’s same-sex kiss with new neighbour Maya St. Germain (Bianca Lawson). When Alison’s dead body turns up the girls get a creepy “I’m still here, bitches” text message at her funeral.

The pilot’s weakness and the show itself really, is that there are too many characters and storylines to keep up with. Adding to the confusion is the fact that many of the young actresses look alike, looking more like the Plastics than the real teens. When all the actresses are together it’s easy to confuse them, especially considering most of them look old enough to have graduated from college. It doesn’t matter if the actresses playing them are different ethnic groups, each girl looks like a petite, made-up, designer-wearing, manufactured clone of all the other – even Emily’s female love interest. Teens usually try to blend in, but what’s ridiculous is that all the students at the local high school looks like models. Even the male love interests look alike. Yes, these characters are eye candy, but to the point of near distraction. In addition to their confusing (and slightly disturbing) similarities, each character not only has to grapple with a secret, but various love interests, and family secrets as well. It’s likely that this works better in book format, but it doesn’t entirely translate onscreen. Typically these teen clique dramas have many characters, but they have less immediate back story information. There’s even less to be said about the acting, which is all forced and stiff. But the action keeps things moving along at a fast enough pace for all this to be bearable.

Pretty Little Liars’ real strength isn’t with the characters, but with the secrets and mysteries of the plot. Each secret, despite only adding to the confusion, is jucier than the last. It’s incredible that ABC Family is able to pull off some of the adult material (like the teacher/student relationship), but it manages to do so while somehow remaining family-friendly. Some of the secrets are contrived, as they pass certain clique-lit signposts. But the scandals, however contrived, are adult enough to hold your attention. The show isn’t to be taken seriously – it has more potential to be guilty pleasure than a mainstream hit. Some of the plot points are so rehashed they’re laughable (the cheating parents, the teen bitch), but it’s scandalous enough to work. The male teacher and female student affair is shocking, but the girl-on-girl kissing is old hat by now. It has all the trashy sex of a teen Sex and the City, the teen bitchery of Mean Girls (though decidedly less wit) all wrapped up in some sort of cheap Lifetime knock-off. Pretty Little Liars is part salacious murder mystery, part embarrassment. It’s hard to tell if all this stuff is subtle parody. Even if it isn’t, the self-seriousness of the show might just lend itself to some pretty twisted brilliance. It can’t lose either way. If it’s a parody, the parents will get it. If it isn’t their teens won’t care.

The pilot shows that Pretty Little Liars could go in a couple of directions. It could end up being just teen fluff or trashy fun. It all depends on whether the 10-episode season is filled with too much juice. Either way, if the subsequent episodes are as bearable as the pilot, Pretty Little Liars will be good enough to sustain itself through the summer.

NB: On June 28, 2010, following the successful ratings for show, ABC Family ordered an additional 12 episodes for season one of Pretty Little Liars, bringing the initial 10 episodes total to 22.

ABC’s V is a reboot of the 1983 two-part miniseries, about a race of technologically advanced race of aliens known as Visitors who come to Earth. The show chronicles how this event impacts the lives of FBI agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell), her rebellious son Tyler (Logan Huffman), businessman Ryan Nichols (Morris Chestnut), Father Jack Landry (Joel Gretsch), and television reporter Chad Decker (Sott Wolf). Mitchell and Gretsch are the sci-fi veterans of the cast, having appeared in hit shows Lost and The 4400 respectively. As the creator of The 4400, executive producer Scott Peters is no stranger to the alien invasion sub-genre of sci-fi either. Even if the series veers from its original source material, V’s pilot borrows heavily from other science fiction films and television shows. Not that each work is expected to reinvent its own genre, but it is troublesome and tiring to watch the pilot unfold with glaring similarities to current shows on its own network.

The pilot begins with a formulaic set-up — each major character reacts to what feels like an earthquake. Really the tremors herald the Visitors’ arrival to Earth in an armada of spaceships drifting over the world’s major cities. We’ve seen this collision of intergalactic civilizations in The Twilight Zone’s To Serve Man episode and more recently, Torchwood: Children of Earth, and District 9. The Visitors or V’s look human, though their leader Anna, ( played by Morena Baccarin, another sci-fi veteran from Firefly and Stargate SG-1) with her delicate elfin beauty looks more like one of Star Trek’s Vulcans than an actual human. She speaks calmly in a soft, syrupy monotone, and she’s never without scores of her fellow Visitors who stand eerily silent behind her.

When reporter Chad Decker asks Anna why all the Vs are so uncharacteristically good-looking, it’s easy for us to ask why all the humans are so good-looking as well. Do even the priests have to look like movie stars? After their landing, the Visitors attempt to win over mankind by pledging to cure diseases and clean up the planet in exchange for water, or minerals- it’s hard to remember what they claim to want. It’s difficult to believe that the majority of mankind could be so quickly and easily duped by the aliens, with their “we are of peace, always” sloganeering. But V barrels on with another genre cliché: the small group of skeptical humans arming themselves as a scrappy resistance to the Visitors. It’s been done before, and better, with everything from the Terminator franchise to Dune to even Lost.

The pilot attempts to grapple with the pressing issues of modern time. In post 9/11 America, the pilot explores themes of power. Who can the citizens have faith in after such a wide-scale event? Their secretive government? God, or those who claim to represent Him? Where V could have examined philosophical and political issues about blind trust in institutions with subtlety, it instead beats us over the head with a sledgehammer. When it addresses organized religion’s role, Father Landry expresses his doubts with V’s clunky dialogue after an older priest calls the aliens “God’s creatures”. Landry retorts, “Rattlesnakes are God’s creatures, too, but that doesn’t mean they’re good to us.” It’s all rather eye-roll-inducing and it only gets worse. Anna and her fellow Visitors promise to rescue mankind from its weary years of unnecessary war and economic meltdowns. Then she smiles sincerely promising universal health care. It’s not surprising that this forced moment has caused some to allege that V parallels President Barack Obama’s candidacy, especially considering the pilot aired on November 2. Where the Bush era is presented as tumultuous, here comes the smiling stoic Visitors promising mankind hope, change, and free health care. There may be another way to interpret the laughable healthcare reference. Perhaps this moment isn’t a ludicrous insinuation that sufficient health care will destroy us all, but an insinuation that the world is searching for a savior who will bring us back from the brink. Perhaps the brink is so disastrous that only an alien can save us.

It feels as if all these questions are crammed in to create meaning, when in truth, V’s problem is that underneath it all, the show is pure black and white – us vs them. V is more concept-driven, than character-driven. It’s difficult to say if V will improve over time. If it stays on the path of its human resistance and not its tense alien infiltration, the show will end up being a pointless cliché. In a show without much magic, perhaps a good mystery is all one can hope for.

BUY V: The Complete First Season (2009) DVD @Amazon

If you’re looking to get a Directv System, there’s now an excellent way to get genuine feedback from real people all over about DirecTV – simply search the social networking site Twitter, and see what people are saying about it. Below we’ve featured some recent comments about DirecTV by persons on Twitter:

honeybees7 said Get Directv We love it.

sassyradish said i never thought i’d say this but DirecTV’s picture is like eons superior to TWC – i mean, no comparison.

iphonefunaddict said DirecTV to offer live NFL games via the iPhone | Edible Apple

SySoni said DirecTV broadcasts in 1080p…cable in a million-80p…sign me up lol!

RPDuane said Enjoying the free preview of MLB Extra Innings on DirecTV…Worth checking out if you can.

There are lots of other people out there enjoying their Direct TV System. If you’re seriously looking to get one, do some looking and searching around to see the (mostly) good that people are saying about it.

In addition to that, as soon as our DirectTV was up and running, it was very obvious that it offers crisper sounds, brighter colors and sharper images than available through cable. Depending on the provider that you use in your state, you will have a number of packages to choose from, all dependent on your viewing preferences and pocket (what you can afford). Everything from the basic family entertainment package that’s under $30 to the ultimate high-definition (HD) package that’s just over $55 will be available for you.

Note too, there’s no need to worry about attaching a big ol’ dish to your house or in your backyard. Today’s Direct TV systems use reception antennas that are much smaller than the first generation services, as it uses more powerful modern-day satellite transmissions than previous satellites could produce. If having lots of channels at a low cost is your goal, then you definitely need to check out Direct TV.

Submitted by Lorie J., Los Angeles, CA.

Lovers of medical dramas have been pleasantly surprised by the show’s engaging quality, impressive writing and easy chemistry among main cast-mates. Kate Walsh (who originally appeared on Grey’s Anatomy), stars as Dr. Addison Montgomery. Sick of dealing with her ex-husband and ex-lover, she leaves Seattle Grace behind and heads to beautiful Los Angeles to join a private practice with her best friend and med school colleague, Naomi Bennett (Audra McDonald).

Rounding out the impressive cast are Tim Daly (as Dr. Peter Finch), Taye Diggs (as Dr. Sam Bennett), Paul Adelstein (As Dr. Cooper Freedman), Chris Lowell (as William Dell Cooper) and Amy Brenneman (as Dr. Violet Turner).

Will Addison finally find the proverbial true love she’s after and figure out a way to have a baby before it’s too late? Well, she’s not the only one seeking love, happiness and the good times. Everyone is, and the audience gets a front-row seat into their very private lives. What could be more interesting than watching some sexy MDs proving that, scrubs aside, they are just like the rest of us? These days, not much.

Private Practice is a stunning series and is quickly becoming one of my faves.

By Tyrone R., Miami, FL.