OSCARS HOSTS GET YOUNGER…

What makes an Oscar host? The responses are as varied as the hosts themselves have been, and this year, there would appear to be a new answer: youth.
Past nominee Anne Hathaway and James Franco, also a best actor contender for “127 Hours,” preside over the 83rd Academy Awards as CTV televises the industry’s top event Sunday, Feb. 27, from the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.  Surprise was the frequent reaction to the choices when they were first announced, and the selections would seem a clear nod to drawing younger viewers to this year’s Oscars (in which
“The King’s Speech” leads the nominated films with 12 bids). Tradition has dictated the job go to someone with years of stardom, or someone proven to be funny, or better yet, someone who represents both.
There’s no question Oscar night is one of the biggest gigs Hathaway or Franco ever could land, especially at the current stages of their careers.
Here’s a trip down memory lane with previous Oscar hosts, some of whom ended up memorable for reasons they’d prefer not to have been.
Bob Hope (1940-41, 1943, 1945-46, 1953, 1955, 1958-62, 1965-68, 1975, 1978): Sometimes by himself, other times in tandem with co-hosts ranging from Sir Laurence Olivier to Donald Duck (we’re not kidding),
self- deprecating comedy legend Hope made his theme “Thanks for the Memories” the most-heard song in the history of Academy Award ceremonies with his many stints at the podium. Hope also was perhaps the ultimate Oscar insider, so familiar with many of the nominees and guests that he could get away with virtually any jab he wanted to take at anyone, then be found later in the evening with a target’s arm cozily around him – signaling it was all in jest and taken that way.
David Niven (1958-59, 1974): The ever-suave British star had three shots as an Oscar co-host, with the last one the most memorable by far. After a streaker ran behind him, Niven let the shock subside before chiding the naked runner for his “shortcomings.” The resulting laughter was thunderous.
Johnny Carson (1979-82, 1984): In many ways, Carson was the ideal successor to Hope, sharing many of the same qualities … particularly the willingness to make fun of himself and the inside knowledge of many celebrities through an extensive network of  Hollywood friends. His “Tonight Show” expertise honed Carson’s ability to react quickly to anything that occurred with an appropriate and hilarious quip, making him an Oscar producer’s dream. And clotheshorse that he was, he sure wore a tuxedo well.
Billy Crystal (1990-93, 1997-98, 2000, 2004): A new era of Oscar hosting began with the creativity of actor-comedian Crystal, who didn’t settle just for telling one-liners about the nominated movies. He inserted himself into them, hitting a high point early by donning the Hannibal Lecter face mask from “The Silence of the Lambs.” An opening song that incorporated the names of many of the year’s nominees also became a Crystal trademark.
Whoopi Goldberg (1994, 1996, 1999, 2002): By the time she became a host of the event, Goldberg had her own Oscar cred from her supporting-actress win for “Ghost.” She gave a definite edginess to the job that earned her mixed notices, but the Motion Picture Academy was sold enough to bring her back not just once but three more times.
Steve Martin (2001, 2003, 2010): The most droll host the Oscars have had, Martin fell back on his cerebral clowning and careful pauses to drive his appearances … the last one shared with Alec Baldwin, with whom he had just co-starred in “It’s Complicated.”
David Letterman (1995): For all the Hollywood insiders who have hosted the Academy Awards, here was the ultimate outsider. Letterman still jokes about what a wet blanket he was to that year’s Oscar audience, poking meant-to-be-ironic humor to a Hollywood crowd that didn’t exactly welcome him warmly.
Chris Rock (2005): On the subject of edginess, there also was shoot-from-the-hip comic Rock’s turn as Oscar host. His mocking of actor Jude Law, who’d had a big run in the previous year’s movies, brought Rock an on-air rebuke from Oscar presenter Sean Penn.
Jon Stewart (2006): Along the Letterman lines but not quite as abrasive, “Daily Show” host Stewart also tried for an outsider’s wit in a big way at the Oscars. Though he hasn’t been back since, he recently advised Franco to perform the job with “ironic detachment bordering on
contempt.”
Ellen DeGeneres (2007): After hosting the Grammys and the Emmys, the Oscars became the next logical stop for DeGeneres. She was typically, somewhat refreshingly casual, going into the audience and chatting with the likes of Clint Eastwood and director Martin Scorsese as if
they were sitting in a diner instead.
Hugh Jackman (2009): Free of his Wolverine makeup, Jackman seemed to have the Oscar-host checklist completed: affable, handsome, even musically adept. But he has resisted offers for a repeat engagement, though he’s scheduled to be a presenter this year. Maybe that means a rematch with Hathaway, who was his song-and-dance partner for a few moments on his Oscar-show opening.
However Hathaway and Franco fare at this year’s Academy Awards, many other talents have put their own stamps on the occasion as hosts. The good news is that it’s only one night, but admittedly, it’s one of the biggest nights any performer can have … as nominee, winner or host.

BIONIC BUILDERS

On Discovery Science, March 3. Stuntman and amputee Casey Pieretti, and inventor Bill Spracher design, build and test one-of-a-kind, extreme limbs that make their amputee clients “better than new, better than you.”
Blurring the line between man and machine, “Bionic Builders” is a captivating one-hour special show-casing Casey Pieretti (“the perfect guinea pig”) and Bill Spracher (“the mad scientist -inventor”) as they attempt to merge radical prosthetic design and the human body.
Premiering Thursday, March 3 at 8pm on Discovery Science, this
innovative special thrills as the team tries to turn a former Navy
diver into a human torpedo and give a one-handed martial arts instructor his very own powerful bionic punching arm.

OPRAH’S OWN

It looks as if Oprah really is out to conquer the planet. As of this
week, the cable lifestyle channel Viva is dead, replaced, or
rebra-nded by OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network.
The transition takes place Tuesday, March 1, with a lineup that includes
“Oprah Presents Master Class” (a look inside the personal lives of such
famous people as Simon Cowell, Sidney Poitier, Diane Sawyer and
Winfrey herself) and “Season 25: Oprah Behind the Scenes” (the making
of the last season of Winfrey’s talk show).
On paper it looks as if, for now, the Canadian version of OWN will be
a lot like the U.S. one, but as time goes on, it will develop a
separate personality, says Renee Skea, vice president of programming at OWN and W Network. “OWN will offer Canadians the best of both worlds. They
will have access to OWN program-ming with a slate of strong Canadian
programming.
“It is too early to confirm our original programming strategy at this time, but we will be producing original Canadian shows for OWN in Canada.”
Other shows on OWN’s schedule include “Mystery Diagnosis,” featuring
stories of people who have to persevere, sometimes for years, with
doctors who can’t find a cause for their suffering, and the cooking
show “Cristina Ferrare’s
Big Bowl of Love,” hosted by the author and talk show host. As Skea
says, the unifying force of the network is Winfrey, and as a TV draw
for women, she’s unmatched in the world. “Her impact is far-reaching,
and she has a strong and engaged Canadian following.”

CONNICK ON BROADWAY

Partway through one of the two shows taped for “Great Performances:
Harry Connick Jr. in Concert on Broadway,” airing Wed , March 2, on
KCTS, a woman in the audience yells out, “Kick the tires and light the
fires!” It’s a reminder that for people who don’t follow jazz or New
Orleans music in general, Connick just might be the guy who said that,
as wisecracking fighter pilot Jimmy Wilder in the sci-fi film
“Independence Day.” Or he might be a WWII tail gunner in “Memphis
Belle,” a serial killer in “Copycat”
or Grace’s husband in TV’s “Will & Grace.” These are only a few of his
20-plus film and voice roles, the most recent being in the upcoming
feature “Dolphin Tale,” the inspirational story of a handicapped
dolphin. When he’s not acting, or appearing in or composing a Broadway musical, Connick is one of the leading figures in modern jazz, as a pianist,
singer and bandleader.  It’s his purely musical side that’s on display
in the PBS special, taped July 30 and 31, 2010, at the Neil Simon
Theatre on Broadway in New York.
“It’s not a Broadway show,” says Connick, taking a few minutes to talk
in a hotel meeting room before performing for a roomful of reporters
at the January edition of the biannual TV Critics Association Press
Tour. “It’s more of a concert. It’s not like I had prepared dialogue
or even a prepared set.  There were a group of songs that we chose
from, but I was up there for two weeks, and we filmed the last two
nights. It’s a relatively small room; there’s a sense of intimacy.
“More than that, we never play a
place for two weeks, so the familiarity of going to the same place
every night just gives a different dynamic.  Everybody was carefree.
It was really just about doc-umenting what the band was doing at the time.
“So we probably could have filmed any show on the tour; we just
thought it would be special to do something on Broadway. Playing New
York is in some ways a bigger deal, because it’s New York. Playing at
the Neil Simon, there’s a lot of history there. I didn’t feel like I
had to live up to anything, but it’s just a sense of ‘this is pretty
cool.’”
Of course, being part of something called “Great Performances” carries
expectations of its own.  “Well,” Connick says,
“I don’t really think of it like that. I was really excited to know
that I’d be a part of it. I guess, at my stage of my career, as
somebody who’s done it for a long time, I don’t know if I’d put the
word ‘great.’ I don’t think about that, and I don’t think of myself in
those terms, but to be part of an established series like that is
pretty cool. We’re thrilled about it.”
Not being a performer known for hit singles, Connick says he doesn’t
feel required to play certain tunes, but admits, “Probably the song
I’m most known for is ‘It Had to Be You,’ so I played that just
Because I think it’s nice, because people associate me with that song, at
least some people do. But I certainly have done an infinite amount of
shows where I haven’t played it. So I can be a little bit below the
radar with song choices.”
Other songs on the special’s roster include “The Way You Look
Tonight,” “Besame Mucho,” and “Mardi Gras in New Orleans.”
While Connick knows he’s not the sort of performer who will go on
worldwide sports-arena tours or burn up the Top 40, he says, “I know
who I am; I know what I do.  I’m 43; I’m not chasing rainbows. I love
what I do, and I’ll keep trying to find avenues to do it. This was an
opportunity for me to be on this ‘Great Performances’ thing. So I
don’t really care, is the bottom line. I think it’s great that new
music is coming along, and music changes, but there’s no bitterness
there. It is what it is. You have your time; you do what you do. Like
my manager always says, she’s been with me since I was 18, just focus
on your work, and eventually your body of work will speak for itself.
That’s what I’ve always done.”
As for his beloved home-town, still emerging from the shadow of Hurricane Katrina, Connick says, “I think we’re headed in the right direction.  As tragic as that was, I think there’s a lot of good that came out of it.”

THE CONSPIRACY SHOW

Sometimes a conspiracy is just … a conspiracy. Have you been feeling mellow?  Happy? At peace with the world around you?  Well, Vision Television has got the cure. “The Conspiracy Show,” debuting Friday, Feb. 18, wants to make your fl esh crawl, your stomach rumble and the hair stand up on the back of your neck.
Or, at least, it aims to give you a close-up view of the people who think we should spend more time freaking out over the things that lurk Out There.
Hosted by Richard Syrett – who has made a name for himself on Toronto radio over the past decade as the resident conspiracy guy, the show patrols the frontiers of current affairs, with such topics as UFOs, world government, the “central banking conspiracy,” vampires, demonic possession, time travel and past-life regression. As Syrett says, the topics present a gallery of intriguing what-ifs that range from the truly creepy and unsettling to just fun yarns.
“I don’t consider myself a conspiracy theorist per se,” he says. “A conspiracy isn’t just a theory.  Sometimes it’s a crime and needs to be investigated. You follow the truth wherever it leads and pull on loose threads.  Sometimes it goes nowhere, but sometimes it leads to another loose thread.”
Syrett has a regular show on Toronto’s AM 740, known as “Zoomer Radio,” and Vision TV belongs to Zoomer Media. The outfit is headed by one-time Citytv guru-in-chief Moses Znaimer, who has targeted as his core audience “baby boomers with zip” (read: aging hipsters with no interest in reverse mortgages or walk-in tubs).  That might imply that Syrett’s audience consists of people raised on “Chariots of the Gods,” Watergate and the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. In other words: a demographic that grew up mistrusting everyone and tends to be extraordinarily suspicious of anything resembling an official line.  ”Obviously the people who are listening to AM radio are decidedly older,” Syrett says. “Anyone younger than 30 doesn’t know about AM radio.
“I think it’s well placed on Zoomer Radio. What’s the line? When you ask kids today, ‘Where were you when JFK was shot?’ they think you mean the Oliver Stone movie.” The series is produced and directed by Ron Craig and Jalal Merhi.
For the past 25 years, Craig has been a special effects and explosives expert, mostly for movies. He also has been active in debunking one popular conspiracy theory: that the demolition of the World Trade Center was an inside job. He met Syrett when he appeared on the radio show.
“I indicated that, as an explosives and fire investigator, I felt there was no scientific evidence that explosives were used in the buildings,” Craig says. “I went on as a debunker, but I’ve long believed that every argument should have two points of view and let the people decide what they believe in.”
Merhi is a Brazilian-born actor, writer, director and producer who has made a couple of dozen action films,  often with Craig, as well as the recent documentary “Soccer Dreams.”
He couldn’t be less interested in conspiracies, he says. What intrigued him was the challenge of taking a radio show and making it work on TV. And to do that, he says, you have to build a narrative into each episode. This involves interviews with believers and debunkers drawn from the extensive contact list Syrett has built up over the years, married to film, photos and documents, much of it provided by the experts and investigators.
“I did not want to have just one point of view,” he says. “The main thing is I wanted to show everybody and give them enough time, enough room. I didn’t want people in a room yelling at each other.”
That is exactly what “The Conspiracy Show” started out to be, Mehri says.
But since Vision became Zoomer (at least behind the scenes) in 2009, the programming philosophy has changed to reflect Znaimer’s “flow-before-show”
ideology – that TV needs to be strongly branded, and it needs to move, constantly.
“Initially they had people in one studio, and I looked at the footage, and everyone was just yelling at each other, and in the end, the audience would just get tired and walk away,” he says. “I said, ‘No, we have to get out of the studio,’ and use the studio as an anchor, so I could build the story and have a story arc and have drama – and I could have resolution at the end.”
As for the subject matter, Syrett points out that you don’t have to believe to respect the amount of time and energy some people put into researching their theories.  ”The people I talk to on radio and television have dedicated their lives to pursuing what they perceive as the truth,” he says.
“And I think that, by and large, is worthy of respect.” One thing he says he has no intention of doing is following his subjects down the rabbit hole.
“I talk about more than conspiracy on the show,” he says. “I talk about paranormal and supernatural phenomena, and UFOs and alternative energy, a lot of which has a potentially hopeful message.
“The conspiracy stuff is by and large doom and gloom. So to protect my sanity and my outlook, I’ve made the decision that I’m not going to dwell on it or bring it home and live it.”

REMOTE CONTROL WAR

It’s not often that a documentary delivers chill-a-minute horror, but “Remote Control War” seems to get creepier every time you come back from a commercial. The hour long documentary, Thurs, Feb. 24, on CBUT’s “Doc Zone” – began with a humble household device, the robot vacuum cleaner, says Leslea Mair, who produced and co-wrote the film with director Leif Kaldor.
Watching the thing scooting around her house, she says, she began to wonder about the technology begat by the apparently humble aerial drone. So she and Kaldor started poking around trade shows and, to their surprise and growing horror, a whole industry opened itself up to them. “They are wanting to promote what they’ve got,” Kaldor says. “So we found that there were very few places that gave us much resistance to demonstrating what they have and also what they’re working on.”
As a result, the film has interviews not only with academics and activists who are concerned about the development of robot warriors, but with members of the military and industry who are excited about the technology.
Kaldor was even able to tour an Israeli Aerospace Industries factory.  ”They were very friendly, but they were all armed,” Kaldor says.  The pair look at everything from the flying drones we know so well from the Afghanistan war to big steel teddy bears that defuse bombs and retrieve wounded soldiers, to small, unmanned flying bombs that can pilot themselves and attack in swarms.
“We started going to trade shows,” Kaldor says, “which dropped us right into the middle of it. And everybody’s all excited and happy about robots, and how robots save lives.
“And progressively, as we did more interviews and got deeper and deeper into it, the dark side emerged.”
The film begins with the growth of air and land-based unmanned war machines over the past decade.  This has gone from a few aerial drones used mainly for reconnaissance to hundreds of flying war machines that can circle for hours over a target and unleash a flock of missiles on anything that shows its face. At the same time, the U.S. went into Iraq in 2003 with no unmanned ground vehicles.  Now the U.S. military has 12,000 of them.
The film plots the path from unmanned aerial drones and bomb disposal machines to some of the fascinating devices that are under development, and on into things that will give you the willies. “It’s all moving so fast,”
Mair says.  ”And you toy with the idea of, ‘Well do I get really alarmist with this, or do I try to remain kind of levelheaded.  ”And I think there is some reason for alarm, and reasons for us to be really nervous.”
For example, the U.S. armed forces are developing a machine with tractor tires, arms with claws and a cute little teddy-bear head, appropriately called The Bear (for Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot).  Its purpose is to handle hazardous materials and to rescue wounded soldiers. But it’s easy to see how the addition of a couple of machine guns could turn it into Boo Boo from Hell.
On another level, some of the most riveting footage in the film is a series of computer-generated depictions of tiny insect- and sparrow-like things flitting about an urban landscape, spying on people.  That, Kaldor says, was provided by the U.S. military and, “they thought it was really neat.”
“We got very quickly to the realization that all the military forces really are focused on moving to robots, from humans. “They’ve embraced it completely and that what they want to see; robots on the battlefield.”
And that comes closer to murder than war, Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jody Williams argues in the film.  Wars of the future, the Vermont school teacher and activist points out, will be video games for combatants and carnage for civilians.
But the most immediately menacing aspect of the story may be a group of amateurs we see holding a competition to create unmanned miniature vehicles
- like remote control planes and cars re-engineered to drive themselves. The implication is that if engineering students can make unmanned vehicles that can drive or fly themselves, what’s to stop terrorists from doing the same – and using them to swarm a target and explode themselves. “Will the next Timothy McVeigh be driving a truckload of fertilizer bombs?” Mair asks, invoking the man who blew up the Murrah building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
“Probably not. Might he have a bunch of components he can pick up at Walmart and put together into something scary? Possibly.”

From St. Lawrence to surf with Caroline Dhavernas

If the twin Canadian dreams are to succeed in America and escape winter, Montrealer Caroline Dhavernas has hit the daily double. The co-star of the drama series “Off the Map,” Wednesdays on Global, may portray a stressed physician practicing medicine in the jungle. But in real life, Dhavernas is a not-so-stressed regular in a network show that is shot in Hawaii. Life, she admits, could be worse.  ”It’s a tough life I’m living right now, ” she says, dripping irony.  ”Off the Map” deals with a group of U.S. doctors who have left the luxuries and wealth of America to practice medicine in a South American jungle.
Dhavernas plays the idealistic Dr. Lily Brenner – her first regular series role since the short-lived “Wonderfalls” in 2004, when she was Jaye Tyler, the gift-shop clerk who could talk to toy animals.  ”I never thought I would be part of a doctor show, honestly” she says. “But this one is very different, because of the setting, because of the visuals: the greens, instead of hospital walls. The setting was definitely one of the reasons I signed on.”
The show is something of a departure from the average U.S.  drama series, in that it takes place far outside the territorial limits of the U.S. – without dealing with security threats to the nation.
“That’s what caught my eye,” Dhavernas says. “I had done ‘Wonderfalls’ years ago, and I wasn’t really sure about getting back into the whole, crazy series thing. It is a huge life choice to make that decision, because they make you sign your life away for seven years.  So you really have to love what you auditioned for.
“We’re an ensemble cast, and that’s also why I joined. I never wanted to be the lead of a show like ‘Wonderfalls’ again, because it’s 16-hour days, every day. I was in every scene and, by the end of those seven months, my health was not good. ”
“Off the Map” is shot in dense rain forest in the middle of the island of Oahu, north of Honolulu and its famous beaches.
“It’s so different from what I imagined,” Dhavernas says. “Because it’s an American state, I imagined it would be so much more Americanized.  But the culture has survived.
“They’re survivors and they’re beautiful, generous, welcoming people. And they’re keeping their culture very much alive, and their language, too.”
A lot like her native Quebec. “There are comparisons to be made, for sure,”
she says.
Though she gets to live part of the year in Hawaii, Dhavernas says she still calls Montreal home. “I go to L.A. only when I have to, for press or an audition,” she says.  She still keeps her hand in the Canadian and Quebecois TV and fi lm businesses – of which she has been a part since she was 8, when she began doing dubbing work for such TV series as “Babar” and “Mount Royal.”
“I still live here and I still work here,” she says over the phone from Montreal. “Not as much as I used to, because I’m not as available as I used to be. But, for me, it’s very important to keep working here, in the culture and language, in Canada.” Her parents are Quebecois actors Sebastien Dhavernas (perhaps best known for playing Robert Bourassa in the Rene Levesque miniseries that ran on CBC in 2008) and Michele Deslauriers.
(Sister, Gabrielle Dhavernas, is a voice actor in Quebec.)
Raised to be perfectly bilingual, Dhavernas started her career in the Quebec fi lm “Comme un Voleur” (”Like a Thief”) when she was just 12. After that, came a string of Canadian movie and TV roles, including a regular role in the Quebec series “Marilyn” with her mother. “I’m so lucky to have the luxury of being able to speak both languages and work in both,” she says.
“It gives me opportunities to explore different stories and work with different people and different characters.” Since then, she has worked both sides of the border, and the linguistic divide, in such productions as “La Belle Bete,” “Hollywoodland,” “Passchendaele” and the miniseries “The Pacific.”
English Canadian audiences were introduced to her when she played the famous 1950s marathon swimmer in the 2001 CBC movie of the week, “Heart: The Marilyn Bell Story.”
She had never heard of Bell when she accepted the part, and admits that she wasn’t much of a swimmer. But she trained by doing laps for two months before shooting began, and had to spend long hours swimming in the St.
Lawrence River near Montreal. It turns out that this was good preparation for the South Pacific lifestyle into which she is settling, while, on screen, she copes with the demands of a playing a doctor whose house calls involve trips through the jungle. “There’s a lot of action, and for some reason I seem to be part of a lot of those moments,” she says with a laugh.
“I recently spent 13 hours in a hot water tank pretending to drown. It’s physically demanding, but I love that stuff.”
And, being part of an ensemble, she says, she gets enough time off that she can appreciate Hawaii.  ”It’s great,” she says. “I’m learning how to surf.
And I love it.”

MAD LOVE: GREAT CAST, ZIPPY DIALOGUE!

It’s a time-proven format for romantic comedy: Balance the more or less conventional love story between one couple with a more volatile relationship between their best friends.
Shakespeare used it brilliantly in “Much Ado About Nothing,” where lovebirds Hero and Claudio watched their best buds Beatrice and Benedick banter their way into love. In “La Boheme,” Puccini juxtaposed the doomed love affair of Roldolfo and Mimi against the hilariously explosive relationship between their friends Marcello and Musetta. And, far more recently, the international hit “Gavin & Stacey” gave as much weight to the love/hate relationship between best friends Smithy and Nessa (James Corden, Ruth Jones) as it did to the title couple (Mathew Horne, Joanna Page).
Now, executive producer Matt Tarses (“Scrubs”) goes back to that well with happy results in “Mad Love,” the breezy new comedy series airing Mondays on CBS.
Last week’s pilot set up the basic premise, as New York attorney Ben Parr (Jason Biggs, “American Pie”) bumped into the woman who just might be the love of his life — beautiful but battle-scarred and romantically wary Kate Swanson (Sarah Chalke, “Scrubs”) — in an iconic setting, the top of the Empire State Building. It was pretty much love at first sight for both of them, but the relationship hit a speed bump almost immediately in the form of the girlfriend with whom Ben was in the process of breaking up.
Meanwhile, their best friends — Larry Munsch (Tyler Labine, “Reaper”), an acerbic lawyer, and Connie (Judy Greer, “Miss Guided”), a surly nanny — took an instant dislike to each other, engaging in a non-stop barrage of insults. But wait: Are they protesting a little too much?
“There’s this attraction (between Larry and Connie) that will play out over the course of the show,” Tarses explains. “Obviously they’re grown-ups, and they don’t have to hang out with each other if there weren’t something deep down that they wanted to a little bit. So they kind of enjoy that combative thing they have, and over time, hopefully, they’ll come to realize that.”
As all of that suggests, while Larry and Connie may look like second bananas in the pilot, their story quickly takes on just as much importance as the romance between Ben and Kate, which is very good news for the many fans of comedy pros Greer and Labine.
“I think this show is very much an ensemble, but in order to build the world that we are asking viewers to be a part of, we had to make the pilot very Ben-and-Kate-heavy,” Greer explains. “But once you get past the pilot, it’s obviously a four-hander. The second episode is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.”
Labine agrees that viewers may find the will-they-or-won’t-they dynamic of Larry and Connie’s relationship more intriguing than the more straightforward romance between Ben and Kate, but it’s a mistake to assume the latter couple is going to enjoy smooth sailing in their relationship, either.
“We want to be the couple that maybe the audience starts rooting for”
he says. “That’s a smart television tool to use, juxtaposing this relationship against a fairy-tale love story. I think we can all relate a little more about how you kind of stumble through falling in love, and it’s kind of messy, and you don’t recognize the person you are meant to spend the rest of your life with even though they’re standing right in front of you, insulting you and calling you fat.
“That’s the way it is. You have a lot of your friends going ‘I think you ought to look a little bit closer at so-and-so. You guys would be a great couple,’ whereas you have that playground reaction of ‘Eww, gross!’ That’s kind of what the show is going to evolve into for Connie and Larry, I think, but as for the ‘fairy-tale couple,’ Sarah and Ben, who knows? Maybe it will turn out that it’s tougher for them to stay together than us.”
There’s something of a lovefest going on off-camera as well. Labine and Chalke have known each other for years, having starred in the Canadian Robin Hood takeoff “Robin of Locksley” while they were teenagers, and Chalke is a longtime close friend of Greer, which makes it easy to play their on-camera friendship.
“Oh, yeah, that totally saves so much time, because we have a history together that we can call upon just in our heads in our scenes,” Greer says. “I know Sarah. I understand her timing, her sense of humor. She is one of my closest girlfriends, so I have a genuine love for her. That helps immensely.
“When ‘Mad Love’ came about, once Sarah was involved, I was like a dragon with my agent: ‘Get me this job!’ ”

JACKSON & JONES SPAR IN ‘SUNSET LIMITED’

“The Sunset Limited” is drama stripped bare, with two actors in their prime tackling life’s major issues. As such, it needs to be incredibly strong. And HBO’s movie, airing Saturday, Feb. 12, is. Why are we here? Is there a God? Is life worth living? Ultimately there are no answers, pat or otherwise.  “The questions (playwright) Cormac McCarthy raises are always more interesting than the answers,” says Tommy Lee Jones.
The movie is set in a grimy room in Harlem. The film, a completely accurate and respectful version of McCarthy’s play, requires viewers to listen because there is no fl ashy action taking place other than two very different men conversing.  Life is distilled between the two men, who don’t bother with trivialities and cut to the essence the way strangers on a plane often do.  Even their names are minimalist yet representative. Samuel L. Jackson is Black. Jones, who stars, directs and produces, is White.
From the beginning, Jones envisioned Jackson in the role. “I didn’t send it to any other actor,” he says, sipping a Corona after a press conference. The difficult task of this film is that it must engage viewers strictly through words. There are no car chases, sex, explosions or special effects, “aside from having two interesting actors that can make you kind of listen to them talk,” Jackson says at a press conference via satellite.
Before the movie opens, White had thrown himself on a train track to commit suicide. He had hoped the Sunset Limited, a cross-country train, would run over him. Black jumped onto the tracks and saved him.
They return to Black’s apartment, where Black, an ex-con who has found God, wants to help White.  White does not want to be helped.  “So what am I supposed to do with you, professor?” Black asks.  “What are you supposed to do to anything?” White answers.
One of the challenges of a movie that is adapted from a play that relies strictly on dialogue is to not let it feel static.
“This play is two guys sitting in a room, talking,” Jones says. “The first thing is to realize that this play has a dialectic construction, so you can’t shoot exteriors. That would simply kill it. But you do have to make it visually interesting, so we moved the camera a great deal.“ While the entire movie unfolds in a room with a 1960s kitchen, a worn table, a couple of chairs and a couch, New York still looms, and the urban landscape can be glimpsed through the window. Noises of the inner city — neighbors screaming, car alarms and sirens — seep through.
“Anybody who’s been to a city knows the city makes noise,” Jones says.
“Let’s just create the city and use it.”
Though the film was shot in 14 days, the actors rehearsed intensely for a week before filming. Jones explains that they shot 11 to 14 pages of script a day, far more than typical feature films. Throughout the play, Black, an uneducated ex-con who found God, tests White. He asks him why he doesn’t believe in God and how anyone who has read some 4,000 books has never read the Bible cover to cover.
The best White can do to explain his misery is that everything he believes in has rotted away. White, an erudite man, tried to explain he believes “in the value of things” and culture — books, music and art — which are devalued in current society. That may well be a metaphor for pieces like this. This is the sort of play found in early television and still on PBS. It requires viewers to devote their attention to two actors at the top of their game. “It’s always a really amazing chance to do speeches,” Jackson says. “And to have ideas that are challenging to the actor, and for an audience to listen to, for us to make sense of, for Tommy Lee and I to be able to sit there and look each other in the eye and grasp, and to sort of take the pauses that people take when they have conversations, to take the time to ruminate over what one person said and keep that rumination active so that we can energize the thought that Cormac is trying to express.”
A few times White stops that conversation. He wants to leave, and Black persuades him to stay. “He’s drawn back by Black’s argument,”
Jones says. “It’s just a little more fun to stay and argue rather than go about his macabre business.  Then he argues with Black. He does stay to hear the jailhouse story, and he develops a respect for Black.”
Ultimately, we’re never sure if White eventually jumps in front of a train. That’s just another unanswered question. “I hope they come away with really good questions for themselves,” Jones says of the audience. “And I hope they’re highly entertained by this collection of the biggest ideas in the history of mankind.”

KATY PERRY AIMS FOR GRAMMY FIREWORKS

It’s hard to top the musical year Katy Perry has had, but winning a Grammy — or four — could help her do just that. The energetic, rule-bending superstar has a quartet of nominations in the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards, which CBS televises from Los Angeles’ Staples Center on Sunday, Feb. 13. Perry’s bids all stem from “Teenage Dream,” up for album of the year; she says her Grammy performance is likely to incorporate a medley of her hits from that release, including the title track plus “California Gurls”
and “Firework.”
“I’m so grateful to be nominated anytime,”
Perry says. “I’ve never won a Grammy, but I feel like, ‘Oh, they know that I exist’ … and that’s a really great feeling. This year has been a bit different. With the nomination for album of the year, it feels like they’re recognizing my whole body of work and recognizing me as a whole person, and not just for my face. It’s nice.
“I love all the love I’ve gotten from the different award shows,” adds Perry, “but with the Grammys, it’s such a different situation, The people voting for you are other artists and producers and songwriters, people who are in the grind of this industry and understand its ins and outs and successes and failures. It’s like your friends picking the team captain in dodgeball, and they pick you first.”
Eminem leads the nominees in this year’s Grammys with 10 nods, followed by Bruno Mars (who has recorded his own take on Perry’s “California Gurls”) with seven, then several other acts with six each:
Jay-Z, Lady Antebellum and Lady Gaga.
Perry’s other nominations — “the filet mignon of nominations,” she enthuses — are for best pop vocal album of the year (“Teenage Dream”), best female pop vocal performance (“Teenage Dream”) and best pop collaboration with vocals (“California Gurls,” with Snoop Dogg).
“What I set out to do in making this second record was to reconnect with the reason I made the first,” Perry explains of her follow-up to the album “One of the Boys,” which put the singles “I Kissed a Girl”
and “Hot n Cold” on the charts.
“That was me going to Santa Barbara (Perry’s California hometown), shedding the skin of celebrity and going to the root of my feelings.
I tried to reach deep inside and say some things that I thought would relate to other people on a mainstream level.”
Indeed, Perry stresses, “I really enjoy being on the same level as other people. I never want to be above anyone, and I don’t think I am.
I feel like people can come up to me and think of me as somewhat a girl-next-door type. I always want to be approachable.”
That certainly will be what Perry aims to achieve for much of the remainder of 2011, since touring will be foremost in her career. She launches her “California Dreams” concerts in Europe the week after the Grammys, with the North American leg set to begin in early June in Atlanta; designed to be as interactive with the audience as a concert can get, the bill also will include Robyn and Marina & the Diamonds.
Thanks to that itinerary, Russell Brand can expect to do a lot of flying, too. The British actor-comedian (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall,”
“Get Him to the Greek”) became Perry’s husband in October, and she believes her work schedule serves her personal life completely.
“I always plan things maybe eight months to a year in advance,” she says. “You have to have something like a summit to plan the next year, so that you can avoid a lot of non-planning. “I really believe that if talent meets timing, it can breed success, but you always have to be prepared. When I was searching for that big break, I would go out to dinner or be with my friends, and someone would call and say a producer wanted me to come and meet with him. I’d be like, ‘Well, I guess I’ll just leave.’ I was always prepared for that moment.”
On the heels of a week when she made a guest appearance on the CBS sitcom “How I Met Your Mother” and contributed “Firework” (as sung by Lea Michele) to Fox’s “Glee,” Perry clearly has attained wide acceptance that she’s enjoying. She recognizes that her current Grammy nominations are additional symbols of it.
“It’s been a long road to this place, and I knew I was going to have to take it,” reflects Perry, who was dropped by two major labels before scoring success. “If you put out a song like ‘I Kissed a Girl,’
you have to know that you’re not always going to be everyone’s favorite. People are going to consider you a one-trick pony, but I knew I had other aces in my deck of cards that I could play later on.
It was just about showing people the different dimensions of me.
“Many of those who used to be critics are now fans,” Perry concludes.
“That feels good.”
This year has been a bit different. With the nomination for album of the year, it feels like they’re recognizing my whole body of work and recognizing me as a whole person, and not just for my face. It’s nice.
“I love all the love I’ve gotten from the different award shows,” adds Perry, “but with the Grammys, it’s such a different situation, The people voting for you are other artists and producers and songwriters, people who are in the grind of this industry and understand its ins and outs and successes and failures. It’s like your friends picking the team captain in dodgeball, and they pick you first.”
Eminem leads the nominees in this year’s Grammys with 10 nods, followed by Bruno Mars (who has recorded his own take on Perry’s “California Gurls”) with seven, then several other acts with six each:
Jay-Z, Lady Antebellum and Lady Gaga. Perry’s other nominations — “the filet mignon of nominations,” she enthuses — are for best pop vocal album of the year (“Teenage Dream”), best female pop vocal performance (“Teenage Dream”) and best pop collaboration with vocals (“California Gurls,” with Snoop Dogg). “What I set out to do in making this second record was to reconnect with the reason I made the first,” Perry explains of her follow-up to the album “One of the Boys,” which put the singles “I Kissed a Girl” and “Hot n Cold” on the charts.
“That was me going to Santa Barbara (Perry’s California hometown), shedding the skin of celebrity and going to the root of my feelings. I tried to reach deep inside and say some things that I thought would relate to other people on a mainstream level.”
Indeed, Perry stresses, “I really enjoy being on the same level as other people. I never want to be above anyone, and I don’t think I am.
I feel like people can come up to me and think of me as somewhat a girl-next-door type. I always want to be approachable.”
That certainly will be what Perry aims to achieve for much of the remainder of 2011, since touring will be foremost in her career. She launches her “California Dreams” concerts in Europe the week after the Grammys, with the North American leg set to begin in early June in Atlanta; designed to be as interactive with the audience as a concert can get, the bill also will include Robyn and Marina & the Diamonds.
Thanks to that itinerary, Russell Brand can expect to do a lot of flying, too. The British actor-comedian (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall,”
“Get Him to the Greek”) became Perry’s husband in October, and she believes her work schedule serves her personal life completely.
“I always plan things maybe eight months to a year in advance,” she says. “You have to have something like a summit to plan the next year, so that you can avoid a lot of non-planning. “I really believe that if talent meets timing, it can breed success, but you always have to be prepared. When I was searching for that big break, I would go out to dinner or be with my friends, and someone would call and say a producer wanted me to come and meet with him. I’d be like, ‘Well, I guess I’ll just leave.’ I was always prepared for that moment.”
On the heels of a week when she made a guest appearance on the CBS sitcom “How I Met Your Mother” and contributed “Firework” (as sung by Lea Michele) to Fox’s “Glee,” Perry clearly has attained wide acceptance that she’s enjoying. She recognizes that her current Grammy nominations are additional symbols of it.
“It’s been a long road to this place, and I knew I was going to have to take it,” reflects Perry, who was dropped by two major labels before scoring success. “If you put out a song like ‘I Kissed a Girl,’
you have to know that you’re not always going to be everyone’s favorite. People are going to consider you a one-trick pony, but I knew I had other aces in my deck of cards that I could play later on.
It was just about showing people the different dimensions of me. “Many of those who used to be critics are now fans,” Perry concludes. “That feels good.”

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