How much do television executives lust for young viewers? Enough that they dared to ask Judy Sheindlin if she'd mind doing her famously cantankerous Judge Judy show from a Florida beach one spring break, laying down the law in a lush landscape of Jell-O shots and overstuffed bikinis.
RADIO
Playing a record about Joe DiMaggio to commemorate Major League Baseball's opening day? Sure. Babe Ruth? Of course. Dizzy Dean, Yogi Berra, Willie Mays, Stan Musial? No baseball fan is going to beef about any of those. But Dock Ellis? An obscure 1970s-era pitcher for the Pirates and Mets? Why would anybody write a song about him in the first place, much less give it airplay?
BIG SCREEN Shine a Light (PG-13) -- Martin Scorsese returns to Last Waltz territory with this concert documentary shot during the Rolling Stones' A Bigger Band tour.
TELEVISION
Growing up in in Medellín and Spanish Harlem, a single mom at 18, Paula Garces is not exactly unaccustomed to obstacles on the road to success. But this thing with The Shield really ticked her off. Nobody had ever before refused to give her a part because she was too pretty.
BIG SCREEN 21 (PG-13) -- An MIT professor (Kevin Spacey) trains a group of his most gifted students (including Across the Universe's Jim Sturgess and Superman Returns' Kate Bosworth) how to count cards and beat Vegas casinos at their own game. Laurence Fishburne is the casino owner who uncovers their scam. Based on a true story.
NBC
South Florida television station WTVJ was put up for sale by its corporate parent NBC on Wednesday in a move that startled other local broadcasters.
South Florida television station WTVJ was put up for sale by its corporate parent NBC Wednesday in a move that startled other local broadcasters.
TV REVIEW
FRONT JUMP John Adams, 8-9:15 p.m. Sunday, HBO John Adams, HBO's new historical miniseries, lasts 8 ½ hours spread over two months. But its signature moment occurs early in Sunday's debut episode. Adams, who in years to come will be among the most sizzling firebrands of the American Revolution -- and, eventually, the second U.S. president -- is glaring at a courtroom full of his baleful fellow Massachusetts colonists who want to hang the men he is defending: a squad of British soldiers...
BIG SCREEN Drillbit Taylor (PG-13): Tired of being picked on by bullies, two kids hire a former soldier (Owen Wilson) to serve as their personal bodyguard. Which only makes things worse.
The Return of Jezebel James, 8-8:30 Friday, WSVN-Fox 7 Yet another of life's little mysteries: the title of Fox's new sitcom, The Return of Jezebel James. Why not just call it what it is, The Return of The Odd Couple Except with Lots of Estrogen and Many Fewer Laughs?
TELEVISION REVIEWS
Canterbury's Law, 8-9 p.m. Monday, WSVN-Fox 7 High School Confidential, 9-10 p.m. Monday, WE Elizabeth Canterbury, the pitiless and implacable defense attorney at the center of Fox's new legal drama Canterbury's Law, is no Perry Mason. She wiretaps witnesses, coaches her clients to perjure themselves and taunts the parents of murder victims. It actually brightens her day when she's charged with jury-tampering. ''Even Clarence Darrow was accused of tampering with a jury,'' she boasts. ``It's like...
BIG SCREEN Funny Games (R) -- Director Michael Haneke's shot-for-shot remake of his harrowing 1997 German-language thriller, about a couple (Tim Roth and Naomi Watts) and their young son held hostage in their home by a pair of psychopathic punks (Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet). Just as punishing and relentless as the original, and the story is actually a better fit for U.S. audiences. Not for the squeamish.
TELEVISION REVIEW
New Amsterdam, 9-10 Tuesday, WSVN-Fox 7 Veteran homicide detective John Amsterdam knows every rat-trap bar and hotel back staircase in New York City, not to mention just about every way there is to murder another human being, from decapitation to disembowelment. He isn't impressed.
TELEVISION REVIEWS
Oprah's Big Give, 8-9 p.m. Sunday, WPLG-ABC 10 Unhitched, 9:30-10 p.m. Sunday, WSVN-Fox 7 I always hesitate to make grand historical claims about a new TV show. But even giving caution and forbearance their due, I think I'm on solid ground when I say that, for better or certainly in the opinion of a lot of people for much, much worse, Fox's new sitcom Unhitched breaks new ground. Broadcast television may have had shows that were more raunchy, more disgusting or more juvenile -- though not many, not...
BIG SCREEN 10,000 BC (PG-13) -- Disaster master Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla, Independence Day) travels back in time to wreak his havoc on prehistoric man in this special effects-intensive adventure epic about a group of hunters who must fend off attacks from rival tribes and hungry wild beasts.
TELEVISION | CORAL GABLES
The mystery guest was, as the producers of CNBC's Fast Money show had promised, a really big, big man in South Florida -- Miami Heat center Alonzo Mourning -- and he was willing to confide the show's audience of business-news junkies his own secret stock pick: McDonald's.
He's older but no wiser. Forty-one years after he debuted on Saturday-morning TV, George Of The Jungle is still slamming face-first into trees, being outwitted by his pet ape and generally being the world's most inept superhero -- not only in a just-released DVD of the original 1967 show, but a new version that airs Fridays at 7:30 p.m. on the Cartoon Network.
TELEVISION NEWS
Dwight Lauderdale, who started out as South Florida's first black TV news anchor and wound up as one of its longest-running and most-watched anchors, period, announced his retirement Monday night after 34 years on the local airwaves.
BIG SCREEN City of Men (R) -- Fernando Meirelles produced this sequel to his Oscar-nominated debut City of God, returning to the Brazilian slums to focus on two best friends caught on opposite sides of a gang war.
ON TV
Television -- you know, that big dusty thing in the living room you used to watch in the good old days of 2007, before everything turned into reruns and reality shows -- is slowly coming back to life. The first show to return with new material since the Hollywood writers strike was settled last week will be The CW's sitcom Aliens in America, which kicks off a run of eight original episodes on March 2. By April, most programs that are coming back this season will be on the air. The initial wave of...
Previous
