Rosie O’Donnell is one of the most toxic, divisive, polarizing, and disliked celebrities on the planet. She’s also too dumb to know fire melts steel. In summation, Rosie’s not a lifesaver, she’s an anvil.

Oprah must really be desperate:

NY Post:

I won’t argue with a single one of the films you’ll be hearing about in the obituary pages and tributes to come. Network, Dog Day Afternoon, 12 Angry Men, Serpico and especially The Verdict are all standalone masterpieces brought to visceral life by a one-of-a-kind director who leaves behind a legacy that will live on for as long as there’s a civilization. Anyone with just one of those films on their resume could sit back in the satisfaction of knowing that they had achieved something very rare today – artistic perfection. “Fail Safe” and “The Pawnbroker” both come romantically close to that kind of perfection, as well.

But I’m a “deep cut” kind of movie lover, someone who likes to see absolutely everything in the hopes of digging up a gem everyone else appears to have missed. The only thing I love more than my secret stash of  cinematic gems, is the sharing of them. And the beauty of Lumet is that he had a number of sleepers, chief among them one of my wife’s all-time favorites, A Stranger Among Us with Melanie Griffith. The film was written by our own Robert Avrech and not only ranks as a terrific murder mystery/urban thriller, but also a delicately crafted love letter to both human dignity and the Jewish faith. Beneath all the drama and mystery, you’ll find a life-affirming subtext and thematic drive that tenderly examines the big issues of  fidelity, faith, and loyalty in ways movies then, and especially now, simply don’t anymore. For this reason it stands out in Lumet’s work, which is both a credit to the director and my friend Robert.  

Here are some others worth seeking out if you haven’t already…

Garbo Talks (1984): One of Lumet’s few escapist films with a perfectly cast Ron Silver as a Manhattan worker bee who drops everything to fulfill his dying mother’s (a never better Anne Bancroft) wish to meet the elusive Greta Garbo.

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Jeff Zucker is out as the President of NBC and the new owners, Comcast, will be taking full control of this legacy network very soon.  While NBC is one of the biggest names in broadcast history, buying this network is not like a billionaire buying the New England Patriots.  Thanks to years of mismanagement and decisions that seem to have been made after of a bender of Schlitz, pixie sticks, and PCP, the network is in shambles.  For a buyer, this is like sinking your money into the Detroit Lions and hoping for the best. 

There was a considerable span of time where NBC was the dominant force in television.  They were behind a long series of hit shows that included The Cosby Show, Cheers, Night Court, Will and Grace, Seinfeld, Hill Street Blues, etc.  NBC’s “Must See TV” lineup gave people reasons to stay conscious on a Thursday evening that didn’t involve preparing their livers for a Friday night of clubbing.  Something happened in 2004.  Maybe it was the re-election of George W.  Bush or maybe it was the ending of their last truly great series “Friends,” but at some point in time that year, something broke both NBC’s spirit and their brain.  

It started simply enough.  Then Network President, Jeff Zucker, tried to replace “Friends” with two sub standard shows, Coupling and Joey.  Coupling was a British show that NBC tried to bring to an American audience.  The problem was that this program was the Brits low rent version of Friends.  Replacing a popular show, with something that looks a little like it, but without the charm is sort of like trying to replace your first love with a latex based product bought at a Fredrick’s of Hollywood outlet.  It’s just not the same.  Coupling didn’t work out and neither did the show, Joey.  Building a spin-off around the least intriguing character of the Friends cast was a mistake on par with the New Coke, the show After M.A.S.H. and “Hope and Change.”  After that the bad decisions just kept on coming.  (more…)

Several weeks ago, two critically-acclaimed and extremely inventive television series aired their final episodes. With the new summer television season upon us and fall premieres just a few months away, we can only hope that these upcoming shows deliver in the same way that “24” and “Lost” did during their respective tenures, a way that maintained strong, loyal and passionate audiences that stuck for the long term. While many other programs focused on stories that resolved themselves in an hour’s time, both “Lost” and “24” presented topics that are not usually addressed on prime time, served their core audiences, kept them surprised, and will both be remembered for many years to come as strong examples of what prime-time television can accomplish.

In terms of their plots, “24” and “Lost” have very little in common. “24,” which ran for eight years on Fox, was about a counter-terrorism agent named Jack Bauer. Each episode detailed an hour in the life of Bauer and his work fighting against terrorists and threats to the United States. “Lost,” on the other hand, ran for six years on ABC and told the story of a group of plane crash survivors who land on a strange and mysterious island and had to learn to live on that island while dealing with a “smoke monster” and a group of mysterious individuals on the island’s other side.

Admittedly, I have not seen every episode of “Lost” (I recently watched the first few seasons  and the sixth season when it aired), and I likely missed a few random episodes of “24″ along the way, but it only takes an episode or two of each program for a viewer to realize that these shows are not typical network fare. Firstly, both addressed issues that are seldom brought up on network television. This USA Today article about “Lost” in mid-May noted: (more…)

Frankly, I’m beginning to feel a lot like Howard Beale, the character portrayed by Peter Finch in the 1976 release, “Network.”  He insisted that people get up right now and go to the window, open it, stick their heads out and yell, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” 

I’ve always heard that misery loves company.  If true, misery in America has more company these days than it knows what do with. 

I realize that conservatives have felt this way ever since the Democrats nominated the Chicago crony of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Rod Blagojevich and the assorted felons at ACORN, to be our president, but why aren’t millions of honest, decent, hard-working Democrats up in arms?  I can guarantee that if a Republican president had done half the things that Obama has pulled off in his first half year, most of us on the right would be calling for his head.  At the very least, none of us would be kissing his heinie.  (more…)