As much fun as it would be to pick on SOPA/PIPA some more and make some jokes about how “SOPA,” when said aloud, is Spanish for soup, this is something entirely different. Oh, it still has to deal with censorship, but this is some self-imposed completely idiotic and maddening censorship. On air, movies and television have to play by a set of rules. These rules aren’t totally set in stone, but basically there are some words you can say and some you can’t say. Then there are some you can sort of say, but mostly only in the right context. An example? Pretty much any show on at any time could say “bitch” meaning female dog, because that’s just the definition of the word. If you want to call someone a bitch, generally that’s kept to after 8pm. Cable gets a bigger break than network, as it’s a paid service, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune to fines and more importantly, advertiser backlash, so everyone kind of plays with kid gloves. Of course, it’s parents who should be responsible for policing the television. If a show wants to say bad words, let them. Put it on after 8pm, put a “Language” notice on it, and parents can set their TVs to block it. Easy cakes. I mean, I still don’t understand why HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax won’t show hardcore porn, because why not, amirite? But I’m getting distracted by the thoughts of boobies. This boiling point is specifically about language. [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Ah, the television midseason. By now, the public has decided which new shows they’ll stick with (Revenge, 2 Broke Girls, New Girl), which they’re unsure about (Pan Am, Prime Suspect, Once Upon a Time) and which aren’t even worth thinking about (The Playboy Club, Free Agents). There’s little chance that if something hasn’t become appointment viewing by now, it’s worth cancelling the DVR season pass. So while we’re all finally getting over the tragedy that was Charlie’s Angels, the network bigwigs are using their highly-representative sample (comprised, one can only imagine, of elderly people, religious zealots, and the entirety of the state of West Virginia) to determine just what they’ll throw at us next. Sure, some of the best shows have been birthed out of a midseason replacement (ahem, Happy Endings, ahem), but the pickings are often more than slim – shows the networks don’t often find strong enough to debut with their fellow newbies in the fall. So what will we have to look forward to (or to run away from) in our TV Guide in the coming weeks? Sure, PBS will kick off the second season of critical and ratings darling Downton Abbey January 8th, while NBC’s 30 Rock is back January 12th. Cee-Lo Green will once again be gracing our television screens with The Voice’s post-Superbowl premiere, and Timothy Olyphant will be emanating his rugged swagger on Justified once more, as the lawman drama kicks off its third season January 17th. But what of the newly minted [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

When HBO wanted to create an adaptation of the best-selling book “Game Change,” about the 2008 presidential race between John McCain and Barack Obama, they picked up the phone and called Jay Roach – the director behind Austin Powers and The Fockers who also delivered them the television movie Recount. Now, Roach has covered, semi-fictionally, politics in 2000 and in 2008. Slog through the dialogue between Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt (the Republican strategist) and Ed Harris as McCain, and you’ll be rewarded briefly with who will inevitably be the real star of the show, Julianne Moore slingin’ a down home twang as Sarah Palin. The question is this: with so much going on socially and economically, are we really interested in going back in time to examine a reality television star?

In today’s world of instant gratification and excess, enough is never enough. So if somebody makes two seasons of a TV show that you really enjoyed, it’s not a blessing that you got to experience the show at all, it’s a tragedy that the show didn’t last for six seasons and a movie. These days if a show gets cancelled or stops production the rumors of a feature film spin-off are inevitable and near-immediate. I blame Firefly for actually getting a post-cancellation movie made. Now TV shows can never rest in peace, we have to hear about the potential Deadwood movie and the potential Arrested Development movie ad nauseam. Today there’s a new show that you can add to the movie rumor pile, because Bret McKenzie just happened to make an offhand comment to a reporter about turning his HBO collaboration with co-star Jemaine Clement and director James Bobin, The Flight of the Conchords, into a feature. “We’re gonna try and do a movie,” he told THR, “We just need a story.”

Steven Soderbergh has been trying to get a movie about the life of Liberace off the ground for a while now. Or, more specifically, he’s trying to make an adaptation of a book called “Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace” that was written by Liberace’s long-time live-in lover Scott Thorson. Thorson’s book details his relationship with the famous singer, what their last meeting was like, and gives a little bit of insight into both men’s childhoods. Even though it won’t be coming to a theater near you, Soderbergh will still get his wish, as HBO Films has greenlit the project for production. Don’t think that because HBO is doing this and not one of the big studios that it’s going to be any sort of B-level affair though. Very A-list actors Michael Douglas and Matt Damon have already signed on to portray Liberace and Thorson, so this movie is set to be a big deal, no matter where audiences can find it. Of the HBO distribution model, Soderbergh had this to say, “From the inception of this project, we’ve had two priorities: getting it right creatively, and getting as many people as possible to see it. HBO’s fearless approach to original programming and their unparalleled ability to pull in viewers make them the perfect fit for us. Apart from my hair growing back, I couldn’t be happier.” Soderbergh himself will still direct the film from a screenplay by Richard LaGravenese. I’ll bet Douglas and Damon are off in a [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

I remember back in 2008 I had only heard of Entourage in passing. While growing up in Long Island, some of my High School classmates were obsessed with it, and when I got to college my roommate wouldn’t stop talking about it. So in December of 2008 I finally watched the series… I went through the first five seasons in one week, the third season in one day… I was almost immediately (minus that awful pilot) consumed by the show. Vinny’s strive to always provide, Johnny’s constant need for fame without understanding how good he has it compared to most actors in the business, Turtle’s drive to be his own man, E’s desire for a normal life and of course Ari’s need for total control. All these things, despite what some may snark at, served to make something that was more than the glamour-filled exterior that the show sat within.

Normally when you her the phrase “TV movie” images of poorly made, poorly funded schlock dance through your head. But when HBO makes a TV movie, what you get is name talent like John Adams’s Kirk Ellis writing the script and Hollywood veteran Barry Levinson sitting in the director’s chair. That’s exactly the case for the upcoming HBO biopic The Day the Laughter Stopped, which will be a look at the life of film star Fatty Arbuckle as based on a book by David A. Yallop. This one seems like it’s going to follow that classic rise and fall story that many biopics do, as it follows Arbuckle from being one of the most loved screen personalities on the planet, to becoming a pariah after getting accused of the rape and murder of Virginia Rappe. Ellis says of Arbuckle, “He was the biggest and most loved star of the time, bigger than Chaplin, especially with children.” But he then goes on to explain how the accusations against Arbuckle got out of hand and managed to sink his career, even though he was later acquitted of the crimes, “It was the first trial by media of the 20th century … [and] there was a call to clean [Hollywood] up. Arbuckle became the sacrificial lamb. They decided to kiss off his career rather than risk the government coming in.” Certainly Arbuckle’s life story is filled with enough intrigue to anchor a film, but that movie being successful is going to hinge largely [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

“The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.” These powerful words spoken by feminist icon Gloria Steinem belie both the sense of fervor she had for bringing about great change and the seemingly empty theater into which that fuel is poured three decades later. Steinem is the latest (after John, Bobby and Teddy Kennedy) in Director Peter Kunhardt‘s In His/Her Own Words series, and she strikes a sharp figure especially when grouped with those politicians. Kunhardt is more than capable of covering the subject after his experience with all things Americana, but the result (while completely fine) is a fairly flat, by-the-numbers documentary that seems only to educate even without presenting new information.

“What I’m doing is more important than who I am.” The words of a man wearing a cloth skeleton mask over his face, a fedora, and a full length trench coat that hides every inch of skin. He is inhuman. Completely anonymous. And yet, his words ring true. His actions speak louder than what he’s wearing and who he defines himself as. He’s a real-life superhero. In a cinema world saturated by them, Michael Barnett chose to turn the cameras on those among us who don a cape and cowl in order to patrol the streets. The documentary Superheroes gets to the very heart of noble intentions, dangerous work, and a complex sense of humanity that comes from trying to be something beyond human.

On a crisp day in 2009, following a beautiful vacation weekend in July, Diane Schuler drove her 1993 Windstar full of children going the wrong direction on the Taconic State Parkway in New York. She drove for 1.7 miles before the fatal crash that took her life, the lives of all but one of the children riding with her, and the three men in one of the vehicles she collided with. This is a tragedy to be sure, but director Liz Garbus‘s documentary on the subject is nothing short of a garbled mess.

They wouldn’t be there if they weren’t guilty. That’s the prevailing mindset of almost everyone in Love Crimes of Kabul, even the women who find themselves in jail in Afghanistan’s capital. In the documentary, director Tanaz Eshaghian gets out of the way to let the stories of three women in Badam Bagh Women’s Prison speak for themselves. The application of fly-on-the-wall style produces a small window into a world that’s almost completely open to interpretation and might serve as a Rorschach Test for its viewers.

A woman gets coffee from McDonald’s, spills it on herself, sues, and gets a bunch of money. That’s all there is to the story, right? We know it, and we can move on. Apparently not. Director Susan Saladoff wants to examine the human story behind an elderly woman who got third degree burns and needed skin grafts after a cup of coffee hot enough to give her third degree burns that required skin grafts spilled while she was sitting (idle) in the passenger seat of a car. In bypassing the Late Night Comedy Show butt of the joke story and heading straight for the facts of the case, Hot Coffee delivers a frustratingly compelling case for taking those kinds of lawsuits seriously. But more than that, the movie heads past what became the poster child for a corporate movement to protect large businesses from being culpable for any and all wrong doing, and explores the world that’s been created since. It’s not a pretty picture.

Proving that not even a public masturbation scandal can keep a good character down, Paul Reubens has once again been turning heads with his portrayal of pop culture icon Pee-Wee Herman. Recently, he’s been back on the stage portraying the character in a Broadway show. HBO even filmed a version of it, entitled The Pee-Wee Herman Show on Broadway, which is now looking to scoop up some Emmys. With all of this new excitement surrounding the Pee-Wee Herman character, one must begin to ask oneself, “What ever happened to that new Pee-Wee movie that Judd Apatow was supposed to be producing?” Luckily, when they recently caught up with Reubens, The Hollywood Reporter asked him just that. In response, Reubens had the exciting update that, “Paul Rust and I just turned in a draft to Judd last week.” Reubens, for his part, seemed to be confident in the work they had done. He finished off the interview by sending a shout out to his producer saying, “Judd, if you’re reading this, I think it’s ready to green light!”

For the first half hour, it’s difficult to tell whether Sex Crimes Unit will have the momentum to make it through to the credits, and an impatient director might have shoved some glossy speed and bass-heavy beats into the proceedings. Fortunately, Lisa F. Jackson was wise enough to let her subject matter do the talking. The result is a documentary that is as without frills as its title. It is, in many ways, an anti-Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. The television show may be injected with drama, but this documentary is far more impactful. With effortless timing, it weaves together four separate stories – retelling the history of a 16-year-old sex crime that was solved because of DNA, following 2 cases in real time, and giving a little history of a division of the New York District Attorney’s office that was the first of its kind (yet is only 40 years old).

A good number of months ago I made the plunge and cut the cable of having a traditional TV service. What I thought might be something that could take some getting used to, pretty much instantly turned into a freeing experience of paying far less money in my monthly bills and not spending so much time staring at time filler nonsense on the big, hypnotic screen in my living room. I didn’t miss dealing with companies like Comcast or Direct TV at all. Well, I missed one thing. I missed HBO’s original programming. And when I heard that they were debuting a new show based on those George R.R. Martin novels I read and liked a while back, well that sealed it; I needed to get myself some access to HBO. Luckily I frequent the services of a delightful bartender who has been letting me come over to her place and watch Game of Thrones off of her DVR. This is really the sort of show that makes having television worth it, and one of the last things that cable companies are desperately holding onto to try and keep subscribers. For the past few weeks I’ve had a number of things jump in the way of me keeping up with the show, first some illness, and then some tornado related power outages; so this week I found myself with the daunting task of catching up with three episodes. The thought crossed my mind that I might be too far behind, [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Recent culture has given us a view of chefs as either dainty elitists, screaming lunatics or rats voiced by Patton Oswalt. Paul Liebrandt is none of these things. He’s an accomplished artist that makes for an incredibly compelling subject matter. He’s bold and inventive, but he’s also shy and somewhat socially reserved. He demands perfection and has the sharp tongue to do so, but he also praises his employees when they do well and treats them mostly as equals. He’s a genius that is on the cusp of being celebrated, but he’s still hustling it out in the kitchen. A film about Liebrandt is undoubtedly a great idea, which is why it’s a shame that A Matter of Taste: Serving Up Paul Liebrandt fails in its execution. It’s a too-straightforward look at the duller parts of the chef’s life, leading up to an incompletely portrait of the most important moment of his career.

All this summer, HBO is featuring documentary films in its line up, so all this summer, we’ll be reviewing them. On one hand, it makes complete sense to create a documentary about Bobby Fischer; he was a child prodigy, the world chess champion, and an insane person. All of those elements can add up to remarkably compelling storytelling. On the other, Fischer is undoubtedly a relic of another time whose 15 minutes of fame seemed artificially stretched beyond their breaking point by a people as obsessed with him as he was with chess. In Bobby Fischer Against the World, director Liz Garbus pieces together a monumentally beautiful documentary that’s only slightly uninteresting.

At the end of the fourth episode of Game of Thrones I felt like the feeling out process was over and that the fifth would be the one in which characters finally started playing their cards and coming into direct conflict with one another; and boy was that true. This episode felt so much different than the previous four in the series. Fewer characters get face time, the focus is narrowed, and the war between the Starks and the Lannisters steps up to take center stage. The pacing has been pushed forward, there are fewer scenes of pondering and pontificating, and the violence has been amped up to gross levels. Awesomely gross levels, but gross levels nonetheless. With this episode it feels like the writers are taking a step back from explaining themselves so much, and from this point on the viewers are going to have to hold on and keep up. Most of the people who I talk to about this series have said that they really love it, but there have been a few holdouts that think it’s a little too sleepy. If you’re one of those bored naysayers, and this episode didn’t manage to wake you up, then I suggest you cut your losses and find yourself another series to watch. For the rest of us… did you see The Mountain cut off that horses head?!

After a series of unfortunate car troubles and power outages, I was finally able to make it over to my bartender’s house and catch my weekly viewing of Game of Thrones, and I’m glad I did, because episode four was my favorite of the series so far. We open with the dwarf Tyrion Lannister returning to Winterfell following his visit to The Wall. With him he has brought plans to help build the newly crippled Stark boy a saddle that will allow him to ride a horse. At this point in the series most of the interactions we’ve seen between the Lannister family and the Stark family have been antagonistic. When asked his motivation for helping the Stark boy, Tyrion quips, “I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples, bastards, and broken things.” And there we have it, our theme. For the next hour Game of Thrones explores the lives of the black sheep of their families, the weak ones, the weird ones, the ones who never live up to expectations.

Now that we’re three episodes into Game of Thrones we find ourselves with main characters that are firmly established and battle lines that are being drawn. Tension is rising, schemes are being hatched, and visions of power and influence are dancing through people’s heads. We get our first scenes set in the kingdom of Westeros’ throne room, and the first images of the iron throne that should become a central one to the story. This is called Game of Thrones after all. Despite the fact that Robert Baratheon is firmly implanted as the king of the realm, what this episode establishes is that positions of power are always tenuous, and everyone around you is always looking to usurp your place. Maybe even those closest to you. But most of what we get  is still a lot of talk, war stories and warnings. We get scenes of old veterans reminiscing about first kills, young whippersnappers boasting about future victories, and battle hardened warriors comparing weaponry and technique. There are plans to hold a big tournament of knightly battle. Boys train to become fighting men of the Night’s Watch. And Arya Stark tries to get strong enough just to swing a sword. Do you think there’s a fight coming in the Kingdom of Westeros? I do. What this show has been about so far is building tension and setting characters up like game pieces in position to come in conflict with one another. To what end isn’t quite clear, but it sure seems like [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]