Thursday, August 5, 2010

“Lonely Planet Launches Discover Ebook Series on the iPad: Interactive Text and Maps ... - StreetInsider.com” plus 2 more

“Lonely Planet Launches Discover Ebook Series on the iPad: Interactive Text and Maps ... - StreetInsider.com” plus 2 more

Lonely Planet Launches Discover Ebook Series on the iPad: Interactive Text and Maps ... - StreetInsider.com

Posted: 04 Aug 2010 12:09 AM PDT

Jonathan Storm: FX series "Justified" on target with audiences and critics - Philadelphia Daily News

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 12:01 AM PDT

Posted on Wed, Aug. 4, 2010

Inquirer television critic Jonathan Storm is reporting this week from the television critics' press tour in Beverly Hills. These items originally appeared in his blog, "Eye of the Storm," at www.philly.com/ philly/blogs/storm.

Justified hits the FX bull's-eyes - however many of them there might be.

"It's hard to hit both targets," FX chief John Landgraf told TV critics Tuesday morning at their summer meeting - and then listed three.

"We're always trying to make very commercial, very entertaining, very popular shows," he said. (One target.)

"We try to take familiar genres and treat them very differently, with our own style." (That's another.) "Justified is our try to do a Western," Landgraf said, citing Western heroes from Gary Cooper to John Wayne. "We want to deconstruct that hero over time."

Based on a character created by Elmore Leonard, Justified stars Timothy Olyphant as a decidedly unheroic U.S. marshal working in the back hollows of Kentucky (that's sure a different spot to have a Western), with a delightful cast of lowlife criminals. Olyphant is just super with his big white hat and distinctively self-assured gait.

"A lot of people really got what we were trying to do," Landgraf said. "It got the best premiere numbers we've ever done and held beautifully throughout the season."

And the show, like so much of the fare on FX, was embraced not only by the audience but by critics (third target), most of whom can't stop raving about the series.

More and more movie stars are gravitating to TV, Landgraf said. "I think it has become almost a status symbol for an actor to have a cable show."

A few minutes later Donal Logue, who stars in FX's newest drama, Terriers, politely agreed. "The best writing for actors exists in cable television," he told the critics. Terriers, premiering Sept. 8, follows a couple of loser, beach-bum P.I.'s who solve cases even as they have a very difficult time holding their own lives together.

Michael Imperioli, on the origin of crooks and cops. Cops and robbers. Do they come from the same place?

"I don't know if the motivations are the same," said Imperioli, five-time Emmy nominee (and one-time winner) for his role as callow mobster Christopher Moltisanti in The Sopranos. "I think, you know, the origins may be the same. Like . . . where I grew up in New York, which is very close to the Bronx, Mount Vernon, N.Y., people who lived in the same neighborhood could have gone in either direction."

Imperioli, who is first among equals in ABC's rough-and-ready Detroit 1-8-7, about homicide detectives in the Motor City, said he doesn't prefer to patrol one side of the fence or the other, criminal or crime-fighter. "I prefer to work on well-written and well-executed pieces of material," he said. "And that's why I'm happy to be here."

The show is shot in Detroit, which gave the producers strong tax incentives to go on location. But that's not why they did it.

"You're not thinking about tax incentives when you're sitting down to create something," said exec producer Jason Richman.

"I went to visit Detroit a couple years ago, and I just thought it was a really compelling place," he said. "It's a story, that city. It's a real quintessential American city with a very rich history. It's a city in transition . . . and it's a city that's trying to find itself on the rebound. And it's an underdog story. . . . And that's why the show is set in Detroit."

Contact television critic Jonathan Storm at 215-854-5618 or jstorm@ phillynews.com.

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In Consideration: 'Heroes' Miniseries - AceShowbiz

Posted: 05 Aug 2010 01:55 AM PDT

August 05, 2010 09:01:39 GMT

A proper send-off for the series, which was NBC's cannon once before it took a rating plunge, is being considered.

"" creator Tim Kring is "hopeful" the show will soon be back on the small screen - he's in ongoing talks with TV bosses to revive the hit as a mini-series. After four years on TV screens, bosses at America's NBC announced in May that the fourth season, which concluded in February, was the last.

Producers have been in negotiations to end the show, which starred , with a short mini-series or movie - and Kring reveals it's looking quite likely. He tells TV Guide magazine, "There's certainly talk about (a mini-series) right now and I am very hopeful. I strongly believe that the Heroes universe is a very big and very potent brand. It is for the fans that we feel that (the show) should continue."

"NBC has expressed an interest in finding a way to wrap it up in a way that honors the fans and the show, and I'm very interested in pursuing that."


 

 

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