Last week’s “Spartacus: Vengeance” season opener began with exactly what we want: some good old-fashioned bloodshed.

Spartacus and his small band of runaway slaves defeat of group of Roman soldiers. The show still looks like it should. It’s got the “300″-style CGI blood flying everywhere and plenty of slow motion. It also has a new Spartacus, and his name is Liam McIntyre. And no offense to the man, who seems like a nice enough bloke, but he ain’t no Andy Whitfield.

The first season of “Spartacus,” dubbed “Blood and Sand,” began a bit slow, but once the show found its footing by the third or fourth episode, it became almost too good television. It openly exploited violence and sex to push forward its story of the slave who fights for freedom and for his wife who has been taken from him after he and a group of his villagers decide enough is enough and refuse to continue helping fight the Romans’ war (how Libertarian of them).

The show featured great performances from all, including John Hannah (who is sorely missed here). But Whitfield was the solid rock of the show. He was a young Clint Eastwood: charismatic, stoic, a great actor. He told the story through his eyes and face, which was quite an accomplishment considering he was either naked or half naked the entire season.

Then tragedy struck, and unfortunately, the great actor is no longer with us. The show continued with a six episode prequel with a brand new lead. It was different but still good, and it continued the “Spartacus” tradition of delving into the darker and more animal-like sides of human nature through its depictions of sex, seduction, bribery, violence, etc. Now the show is put to the real test. Now we have a new Spartacus. (more…)

NIRVANA’S “NEVERMIND” IS 20 YEARS OLD?

All I remember about this album is that it ushered in the grunge era which in turn forced me to stop wearing flannel shirts because I’d rather be dead than trendy. Yep, it’s been two decades since I wore flannel.

Is it safe now?

That music was so depressing, though. I used to call it “Songs to Kill Yourself By.” It seemed like all the fun went out of popular music as it became narcissistic and  angst-driven. Laugh all you want at the music of the 80s, the big-haired metal bands and all that, but at least thet music  was about living, about being young and in love and free. Rebellion is a much more attractive message than wallowing.

KIRSTEN DUNST: ‘PEOPLE WHO DON’T GET DEPRESSED ARE WEIRD’

Actually, people who think it’s weird to not get depressed are weird.

‘PEOPLE FLEE A POLLUTED EARTH BY GOING BACK 85 MILLION YEARS…’

We open in 2149 and things are going just as badly as ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ predicted.

This L.A. Times review of ‘Terra Nova’ lost me with that nonsense until…

…yes, there will be rampaging voracious dinosaurs….

Why didn’t you say so to begin with?

(more…)

No matter how famous he became, no matter how much money he earned, Tony Curtis was always Bernard Schwartz, an insecure and damaged Jewish kid from the Bronx.

As the son of Hungarian-Jewish immigrants, Curtis didn’t speak English until he was five or six years old.

His father was a tailor and the entire family lived in the back of the shop. His mother was schizophrenic who frequently abused young Curtis. His brother Robert was also mentally ill and was placed in an institution. As Curtis explains in his memoir, he was responsible for his younger brother Julius. But Julius was hit and killed by a truck and Curtis shouldered the guilt for his entire life.

Raised in grinding poverty, Curtis was a street urchin who ran with a gang of petty thieves. But a kindly neighbor enrolled Curtis in the Boy Scouts and it was this experience that, according to Curtis, saved his life.

Inspired by the Cary Grant film Destination Tokyo (1943), Curtis enlisted in the submarine service. After the war, using the GI Bill, Curtis studied acting and at age 23 made his way to Hollywood where his stunning good looks landed him a contract with Universal. (more…)

If you head South on the Hollywood Freeway, there’s a nice-sized mural of Tony Curtis to greet you as you pass under Sunset Boulevard. Why Tony Curtis? Who knows. With so many screen legends available for such an honor, why the man who was born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx in 1925? No doubt there’s a story behind it, but I was always glad this singular honor was there for an actor and movie star who was respected but never seemed appreciated quite enough.

I discovered Tony Curtis as a kid in the ’70s on the Saturday Afternoon Movies. My dad was a fan and everything in the house stopped cold whenever ”Houdini” or “The Great Imposter” aired. As for my sister and I, we loved the somewhat infamous Technicolor swashbuckler “The Black Shield of Falworth.” Back then there was no such thing as home video or cable television, so you watched what was on. One of the advantages of the Vacuum Tube Age was seeing films like these. Unlike the classics, these programmers were most likely cheaper for local television stations to rent so you were exposed to all kinds of terrific films you might not have normally bothered with had all of today’s choices been available.

Janet Leigh and husband Tony Curtis, holding Daughters Kelly Lee and Jamie Lee.

Which isn’t to say Tony Curtis didn’t star in classic films. He most certainly did, and a respectable number of them: “Sweet Smell of Success,” “The Defiant Ones” (incredibly, his only Oscar nomination), “Some Like it Hot,” “Operation Petticoat,” “Spartacus,” and “The Boston Strangler.”

It’s become cliche to make fun of Curtis’s New Yawk accent which popped up occasionally in period films like “Spartacus” and “The Vikings,” (and “Falworth”), but I’m biased and choose to blame the directors. Curtis himself had considerable chops and nowhere did he prove this more than in “Sweet Smell of Success,” where he more than holds his own on screen where many a lesser actor was blown away — next to The Mighty Burt Lancaster.

“Success” would make any list of mine naming the films I re-watch the most. As J.J. Hunsecker, a ruthless columnist who holds court in all the best Manhattan night clubs, Lancaster’s a marvel of passive aggressive evil, but the movie really belongs to Curtis’s Sidney Falco; a sniveling, needy little grasping press agent caught in a trap of his own making. Other than his stunning good looks, Curtis was also known for characters filled with boundless energy and can-do American optimism. Through Falco, Curtis showed us the dark side of those qualities, what can happen when they bump up against the reality of a harsh world. (more…)

Descending via u-haul from the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to live in this one-story ghetto some call Los Angeles was supposed to be only a three-year crisis of middle age, not eight and counting. And so here we are and we do try to make the best of things with some of the unique events only a Hollywood can offer.

As a matter of fact, just a few weeks ago my life peaked at the American Cinematheque after exchanging a few words with Pam Grier (male heterosexuals will want to click that link) before a big screen showing of “Foxy Brown.” To some, living with the knowledge that the best moment of your life has just passed and that you now have another forty years of all-downhill might be depressing … but not when you had zero expectations to begin with.

Prior to blushing and babbling before Ms. Grier, my life peaked in October of 2007 at a special screening of “Spartacus” in the Arclight Theatre’s world-famous Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard. Watching director Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece on the big screen was one thing, having the film introduced by none other than its star — The Mighty Kirk Douglas — was quite another. (more…)

Well, the wait is over. Every year I was sure the Academy would get their act together and award this underrated and under-appreciated actress who possessed the most beautiful speaking voice to ever grace a motion picture with a long overdue honorary Academy Award, and every year the Academy never failed to disappoint.

And now it’s too late.

Twice nominated for an Oscar, Jean Simmons brought an exquisite mix of regal bearing, accessible warmth, feminine strength and womanly eroticism to such timeless classics as “Black Narcissus,” “Hamlet,” “Great Expectations,” “Guys and Dolls,” “The Big Country,” “Elmer Gantry,” and “Spartacus.” There were also too many superb but lesser-known gems on her resume to count, but you can start with “Until They Sail” with Paul Newman and “Angel Face” with Robert Mitchum. To set your DVR using her name is to discover a treasure-trove.

So powerful and bewitching was her screen presence that we completely understood and believed that larger-than-life men – Brando, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster — would fall head-over-heels for her because we fell right along with them.  (more…)