Severence DVD box art courtesy Magnolia Home Entertainment
DVD Tuesday Severance demonstrates that corporate team-building retreats arent just wastes of time and an excuse to squander money on high-priced consultants theyre honest-to-God murderHalloween is almost over and how could I let it pass without recommending just one more scary movie But non-horror buffs take heart Severance like three other recent favorites of mine Shaun of the Dead 2004 Slither 2006 and Black Sheep 2006 is both genuinely funny and genuinely scary Contrary to what many filmmakers seem to think its a tough mix to pull off but when you get it right its magic The setup is a horror-movie standard Strand a squabbling cross-section of humanity in the middle of nowhere old dark house uncharted island lost space scow desert shack unmapped cave complex et al and unleash hell on them And who better to unleash hell on than a pack of slick sales-and-marketing types say the seven-person team responsible for putting a kinder gentler
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Angela was great tonight. Maybe even the best guest star of the season so far. She was a nice addition to the show because she actually made me see the hostage norms that I have come to take for granted in the last several weeks in a different light. Now I think I’ve written “Poor hostage taker” nearly every week, but it was new to hear it coming from the negotiation end. I suppose it’s a necessity for negotiators to keep some amount of emotion distance from the HTs, though. They can’t sympathize to the levels that Angela did; of course they have to choose the safety of the innocent bystander first. That said, maybe it is important to understand both the bad and the good in a criminal. Angela seemed to have a special talent for that. Even Matt and Emily pointed that out.And while her ability to empathize was touching, my jaw hit the floor at the audacity of her call to bring in an armored truck. Now I’ve been told once or twice that I’m a ...
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Question: I normally really enjoy your column, but how could you label Standoff a loser? It's clearly one of the best new shows of the season so far. Ron Livingston proved himself worthy of leading-man status long ago with Office Space and Sex and the City, and he has great chemistry with Rosemarie DeWitt, who has already been labeled "the find of the season." The show is both funny and suspenseful with strong characters and an interesting premise. What's not to love?
Answer: Let's start with the premise, which pretty much exhausted itself in the pilot episode. Wouldn't it have been more interesting if their relationship hadn't been exposed in the very first scene? Then the situations, which get more ridiculous by the week. I won't argue that Livingston is a major star waiting to happen, but I can't imagine this will be the vehicle. Fox is getting off to a pretty rocky start again this fall, and I would imagine either Standoff or Justice will be gone before the new year. I'm sorry to
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Ron Livingston, Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King
Some actors possess an Everyman quality that gives them the versatility to take on any role. Ron Livingston is that type of guy. After gaining notoriety as a member of Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn's crew of Swingers, he went on to play a conflicted World War II captain in HBO's Band of Brothers. This fall the Iowa native gets his first opportunity to play a series lead on Fox's hostage-negotiator action-drama
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King of the Hill and creator Mike Judge
This Sunday (at 7:30 pm/ET) will mark the 200th episode and 10th season finale of Fox's King of the Hill. The achievement is yet another feather in the cap of series creator Mike Judge, who turned Beavis and Butt-head into household names and directed the oft-quoted cult hit Office Space. Known as
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Andrea Lake, The Apprentice
Actually, she was boated off the island (Ellis Island, that is). Or you could say that her "torch was snuffed", unlike Lady Liberty's. Whatever Survivor-like way you want to put it, NBC's The Apprentice (Mondays at 9 pm/ET) bid Andrea Lake adieu last week when Synergy churned out an Ellis Island brochure that was tired, poor and just shy of being wretched refuse. But why did the San Diego resident take the bullet for the bungling? In a chat with TVGuide.com, Andrea revealed the real reason her teammates loathed her so.
TVGuide.com: I've been doing these Apprentice interviews for years, and you're definitely the first sticker-company owner I've talked to.
Andrea Lake: Well, look at that! I actually ow
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ScrubsThis episode was just too much. I am sure that I am going to go to hell for giggling when J.D. ran around frantically shouting "abort the babies" (balloon babies, that is) in front of a priest. Good thing the priest was pro-choice... and possibly Jewish... and wacky enough to be associated with Turk and Carla in the first place. The other thing that cracked me up and could possibly have me sittin' someplace toasty in the afterlife was the grandparent kennel. The grandma and grandpa that they didn't want to separate, or J.D. wooing a potential grandpa with a hard candy in a shiny wrapper and a pat on the head. Seriously, this show is out of control, and thank goodness. It is my one guaranteed, albeit guilt-ridden, laugh each week. Loved that J.D. was able to LoJa
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Office Space
When Mike Judge unleashed his animated bad boys Beavis and Butt-Head on an unsuspecting MTV audience in the early ‘90s, he found that some people were missing the satire and just filing the show under “lowbrow humor.” But with his 1995 hip comedy, Office Space, about slackers forced into the rat race, Judge made it known that he had more on his mind than flatulence jokes. The 43-year-old comedic auteur keeps a low profile by spending much of his time at home with his family in Texas, but a new release of Office Space — subtitled the Special Edition with Flair — and a cool Judge-picked Beavis collection got the man (who still voices Hank on King of the Hill, which, did we forget to men
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Stephen Root and Chode (inset)
Familiar funny man Stephen Root is Tripping the Rift, as he has been on the animated Sci Fi Channel series (Wednesdays at 10 pm/ET), but this time Chode and the gang are in glorious DVD splendor. (Season 1 hits stores this week.) What is Tripping the Rift, you may ask? And what does it have in common with the 9/11 Commission report? TVGuide.com chatted with Root about that, his Office Space legacy and much more.
TVGuide.com: OK, so sum it up for people who haven't seen Tripping: Who are you, what are you and what are you doing?Stephen Root: [Laughs] I would have to say that Tripping the Rift is an R-rated Star Wars-type extravaganza. I'm a purple-tentacled ship captain who is a total reprobate,
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Nothing puts a damper on your workplace Halloween festivities quite like an imminent firing — although I do have a fun story about a woefully interrupted Chrismukkah luncheon I should probably save for another forum. It's a credit to this show that in the midst of all my chuckling over Dwight's costume and the unfortunately vacuumed-up party decorations, deep down I was pretty darn nervous about possibly losing one of these characters. Which is why that cliff-hanger of a commercial break that made it look like Jim was on the chopping block led to this living-room scene: me staring slack-jawed at the television and demanding aloud, "So help me, Michael Scott, if you fire Jim I will storm out of this office so fast it'll make your head swim." And then I remembered that I don't actually work at Dunder-Mifflin, got embarrassed, and went to the fridge for a composure-regaining soda. (While we're at it, let's just get all my humiliating Office-watching quirks out on the table.
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