Monday, September 8, 2008

The Best In Fall Entertainment

Time.com has posted what they consider to be some of the highlights in entertainment this fall, from film, to television, from sports to books. 

Here is a look at just a few of the more interesting selections chosen by the critics of Time.

Having premiered last weekend on HBO, their first pick is a new show by Alan Ball, the creator behind the past hit "Six Feet Under", which dealt with the lives of a family that operated a funeral home.   Well, instead of dealing with the dead, as in that program, the new show deals with the undead (as in vampires) and is called "True Blood".

"True Blood" is what you might call a southern gothic vampire love story, most notable for starring the wonderful Academy Award winner Anna Paquin (The Piano) as a waitress named Sookie, who meets a handsome vampire and then becomes entangled in a murder mystery.

Having scanned several articles and reading quite a few newspapers, the initial reviews have been relatively mixed, but most agree that the show holds promise and could improve in future episodes.  I think however, that vampires, sex, and murder along with lots of blood is probably a perfect recipe for success.  You can watch "True Blood" Sundays at 9 on HBO.  Of course with HBO, if you check your TV listings, it will probably be playing at other times throughout the week.

 

In entertainment, it probably doesn't get any stranger than the next one.  Having it's premiere on September 7 at the Los Angeles Opera is filmaker David Cronenberg's 1986 sci-fi classic, "The Fly".

Hard to believe, but this film is now an opera, with a libretto by David Henry Hwang and a score by Oscar-winner Howard Shore, composer of the music for Lord of the Rings.  According to Time, Cronenberg says it is ""about something that happens to everybody, which is aging and ultimately death. So it has this universal potency underneath the sci-fi trappings."  I actually haven't read anything on this opera, but having originally opened in London, and arriving in Los Angeles, it must have some merit.  At the very least, it must be something that would maintain my interest, as long as the songs aren't sung in Italian.  If anyone knows more about this please post a comment or send me an email.

Over at Fox Studios, when you have a box office flop for what at one time was a very popular television show (The X Files: I Want To Believe), what do you do?  Well, to me it looks like they have updated the show, given it a new title and new characters, hired the hot right now J.J. Abrams (Lost, Alias) to create the show, and placed it on the fall network.  And surprisingly, this show, which is titled "Fringe",  is generating a lot of buzz on the internet, as well as in news articles, and could very well end up being the standout hit of the fall season. 

One of the main differences between this show and "The X Files", is that where the X Files centered on aliens, "Fringe" centers on government and corporate bioscience.  Time gives the following synopsis:

FBI agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) is called in to investigate a suspected instance of bioterrorism: an airliner has landed in Boston with everyone on board dead of a flesh-melting virus.  To assist her, she finds Walter Bishop (John Noble), an institutionalized scientist who once conducted military research in "fringe science" — bio warfare, teleportation and reanimation, with a side of parapsychology. Working with Walter and his black-sheep genius son Peter (Joshua Jackson), she discovers that the incident is part of a chain of events called "The Pattern." Someone is conducting massive, Frankensteinian experiments around the world — with us as the guinea pigs.

Sound interesting?  If it does you can catch it beginning September 9 at 8 p.m. on your local Fox television station.

From TV we move on to Broadway.  And what could be more interesting than seeing Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, strip on the stage in the revival of "Equus", which he played previously onstage in London.  Daniel Radcliffe, the fast-growing-up star of the Harry Potter movies, launches his post-Hogwarts career playing the stable boy who has committed a horrific crime of violence. Richard Griffiths (another Harry Potter alum and Tony winner for The History Boys) is the psychiatrist who tries to find out why.  Viewers of preview showings for "Equus", have given high praise to Radcliffe, both in performance and in his appearance.  Figure that one out for yourself.  The actual premiere of "Equus" is on September 25 on the Great White Way.

To see the other selections of fall entertainment highlights, you need to go to Time.com to read the full article.  And of course, to get there, just click here.

 

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