Fall TV 2010: What to watch for on 10 returning favorites (Commentary)
Here’s what I’ll be watching for on my top 10 returning fall shows, listed in order of airdate. All times are Central.
State of Television Address: Returning shows (Commentary)
With last week’s “Glee” season capper, we’ve come to the end of the TV year (more or less), and I’m ready for my State of Television Address. Usually it’s a three-parter, but I’ll skip the section on canceled shows, because I took individual looks at the four big ones last month. I’ll start with my
A boy named Boba: Bounty hunter’s origin story continues in ‘The Clone Wars’ (TV commentary)
When Boba Fett appeared 30 years ago in “The Empire Strikes Back” wearing Mandalorian armor (so named in the “Empire” novelization) that was associated with the Clone Wars (a vague concept mentioned by Obi-Wan in the first movie), the logical assumption was that he was a Mandalorian mercenary who fought in the Clone Wars.
John’s favorite entertainers of the Aughts (Commentary)
First, my top 10 entertainers. These are the people (and one fictional robot) who put a smile on my face in every project they tackled.
Fun with ‘The Clone Wars’: Guessing Ahsoka’s fate (TV commentary)
Don’t mix up “Clone Wars” and “The Clone Wars.” “Clone Wars” was the spin-off fiction produced from 2002-07; it included nine collected volumes of comic books (plus 10 volumes of the lighter “Clone Wars Adventures”) and several novels, and the centerpiece was the series of short episodes that aired on Cartoon Network. Key events included
Get even better, ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ does (TV review)
Watching “The Clone Wars” (7 p.m. Central Fridays on Cartoon Network), I wonder if the “Star Wars” prequels should’ve been animated all along. “Clone Wars” feels more like “Star Wars” than the live-action movies do. You would think the opposite would be true — that living, breathing actors would automatically deliver more immediacy and realism. But the
Fall TV 2009: 7 new developments on old shows (Commentary)
Here are seven plot developments I’m looking forward to on old favorites this fall season. (Technically, TV’s best show, “Friday Night Lights,” is a fall returnee — Oct. 28 on DirecTV — but I’ll be blogging about Season 4 next spring when I see the episodes on NBC. I’m very interested to see what Coach
Who’s your favorite Anakin? (Movie and TV commentary)
Jake Lloyd is now 10 years older than he was in “Star Wars: Episode I,” so he’s the same age Anakin Skywalker was in “Episode II,” when the role was taken over by the age-appropriate-at-the-time Hayden Christensen. We now see that Lloyd doesn’t look much like Christensen.
Is it just me, or is Comic-Con one giant commercial? (Commentary)
Entertainment Weekly, Zap2It, G4 and all the major entertainment news sources have jumped on the Comic-Con bandwagon in recent years — even the gossip-themed “Chelsea Lately” mentioned Comic-Con in a recent episode. Because there are a lot of producers, writers and actors at the annual San Diego convention, the theory goes that it’s a great source for new information on
So much for the Jedi Purge: In ‘No Prisoners,’ Traviss introduces more spin-off Jedi (and I’m not complaining) (Book review)
I’m not going to argue that the “Star Wars” prequel movies are as good as the original trilogy. They aren’t. However, the prequel era has added layers to “Star Wars” we couldn’t have dreamed of when it was a simple — albeit great — drama of good versus evil back in the early 1980s.