Granted, it’s summer and the channel always brings out the original scripted programming from July to September; still, the lineup is the strongest it’s...
THE WORLD of “Mad Men.” Pictured (from left) are characters Lane Pryce (Jared Harris), Bertram Cooper (Robert Morse), Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), Roger Sterling (John Slattery) and Don Draper (Jon Hamm). – Photo by Frank Ockenfels 3 Whenever I watch a single frame of AMC's "Mad Men," I am immediately reminded of jazz orchestration. You know, the kind that Ellington built his reputation on. Sure, there's plenty of improvisation in works like "Ko-Ko," "Caravan," and others, but by and large, the core of Ellington's music is in what he wrote (as in music notation) and how he used the subtlties of each instrument to convey larger, moving ideas.
As HBO bid farewell to its brand-building classics such as "The Sopranos," "The Wire," "Sex and the City" and "Six Feet Under," Showtime slowly began lining up its own roster of "must see" programming.
‘WILD PALMS' was released on DVD in 2005. It has yet to be given the "special edition treatment." The year was 1993 and the landscape of television was very different than it is today. Controversial filmmaker Oliver Stone teamed up with novelist/screenwriter Bruce Wagner to create a miniseries for ABC called "Wild Palms." An interesting pairing to say the least. One was known for creating technically brilliant, though often "fictionalized" films surrounding the Vietnam era (he won an Oscar for "Platoon"). The other, an L.A.-based novelist, who wrote about the world of Hollywood, and up until that time, his most famous work for the screen was "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 Dream Warriors."
I recently had an opportunity to talk with Jamil Walker Smith about his new show, “Stargate Universe,” which premiers on Friday, Oct. 2 at 9 p.m. on SyFy.One of the first things you get from speaking to him is he has a great sense of humor and he has a lot of insight into the current state of Hollywood and TV. Of course, this comes from a long history in working in the medium (he was 9 when he worked on the animated series “Hey Arnold!”), and a keen intellect.
