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Brad Oswald
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He's been taking funny seriously for 60 years
There's funny, and then there's FUNNY. And then there's Mel Brooks.View Full Column | 1:00 AM | 0
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What's new on CBS? Not much
In the TV business, having the most-watched network means having the least-broken schedule. And in TV, as in life, the simple rule is that if it ain't all that broke, don't fix it all that much. CBS, the top-rated U.S. network for several years, unveiled a fall lineup that includes just five new titles -- four comedies and one drama -- and new time-slot homes for three of its returning series. Twenty of the network's prime-time shows have been renewed for the coming season.View Full Column | 05/16/2013 10:03 AM | 0
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Tune in Tuesdays to see new look of ABC
More fantasy. More scandalous misbehaviour. More superheroics. More sitcom laughs. And a lot less dancing. ABC's schedule for the 2013-14 TV season, which was unveiled Tuesday in New York, includes eight new titles -- four dramas, four comedies -- half of which will be used to construct an all-rookie lineup on Tuesday nights.View Full Column | 05/15/2013 7:32 AM | 0
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Get ready to re-program your PVRs, TV fans
The pieces of the prime-time puzzle are falling into place. NBC and Fox have unveiled their schedules for the 2013-14 television season, bringing more than a dozen new titles to prime time this fall and introducing almost as many rookie shows at midseason. The announcements are part the annual upfront ad-sales presentations in New York, a frenzied, week-long TV marketplace in which U.S. networks and advertisers lay the economic groundwork for the upcoming season.View Full Column | 05/14/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Granddaddy of the mock doc takes to TV
Long before there was The Office, or Modern Family or Parks and Recreation or Trailer Park Boys or any of the recent wave of TV comedies that employ a mock-documentary format to allow their characters to directly address the camera, there was Christopher Guest. Guest, an American-born actor/writer/musician with a British-aristocratic pedigree (by lineage, his UN-diplomat father was the 4th Baron Haden-Guest), is best known as the creator of a unique big-screen comedy sub-genre that includes This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003) and For Your Consideration (2006).View Full Column | 05/11/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Successful adaptation of U.K. comedy series finally gets pink slip
At first glance, it seemed like a pretty bad idea. Making a U.S.-network adaptation of the beloved BBC comedy The Office -- a short-run series (only 15 episodes were produced) whose squirm-inducing brilliance was the product of the unique comic vision of creators Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant -- was an endeavour with very limited chance of succeeding.View Full Column | 05/11/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Emotional roller-coaster
WELL, Winnipeg, you've certainly given yourself a tough act to follow. When the youth-focused YTV talent-competition series The Next Star visited Winnipeg last year, the open auditions for the show's fifth season resulted in two local singers being selected to join the Toronto-bound field of contestants.View Full Column | 05/9/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Not Howe... why?: Winnipeg-shot story about beloved hockey legend misses the net by a mile
Among Canadians of a certain vintage, it would be considered nigh on sacrilegious to say anything bad about Gordie Howe. He was -- and still is, for many -- Mr. Hockey, after all. The best of his generation, blessed with a combination of size, skill, strength, sharp-elbowed nastiness and Saskatchewan-bred humility. An ambassador for his sport, and an eternal hero in his homeland.View Full Column | 04/27/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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These aren't the funny pages
Some comic books are funny, like Scrooge McDuck is to a nine-year-old. Some comic books are thrilling, like a classic Batman or Spider-Man edition. Some comic books are extremely valuable, like Action Comics #1, the June, 1938 publication that introduced Superman to the masses. And some comic books, it turns out, are deadly.View Full Column | 04/25/2013 9:52 AM | 0
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A scandal that became part of pop culture
Watergate. It's a single word that describes a scandal that turned a nation's politics upside down, a story that redefined the nature of investigative reporting and inspired a generation of journalists, and a movie that defied Hollywood convention by making onscreen heroes of guys in wrinkled shirts and ties who spent their time hunkered down behind typewriters.View Full Column | 04/20/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Financial disciplinarian Gail Vaz-Oxlade doesn't pull any punches in new half-hour of humiliation
"You're a moron." As conversational ice-breakers go, you wouldn't expect this one to result in anything resembling an prolonged, productive exchange of ideas. A few traded head-slaps, maybe, or at least a flurry of escalating insults, but probably not a constructive dialogue in which the alleged "moron" is a fully invested party.View Full Column | 04/18/2013 9:53 AM | 0
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She inherited passion for purveying the truth
Like father, like daughter. And in this case, it's a very good thing. When Sarah Burns was seven years old, she accompanied her father -- filmmaker Ken Burns -- to the semi-annual TV critics press tour in Los Angeles, where he was doing interviews to promote an ambitious historical-documentary project called The Civil War.View Full Column | 04/16/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Romance, mystery? Must be new SF series
If you don't like the version of Earth's future being proposed by prime-time TV shows, just wait a couple of weeks -- an alternative future view is bound to come along. The latest science-fictional reimagining of what lies ahead arrives this week in the form of Defiance, a near-future but relatively far-fetched drama that premieres Monday at midnight on Showcase (though at first glance, this looks to be a series that would feel much more at home on Space).View Full Column | 04/13/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Lotsa laughs from locals at comedy festival
The weekend's upon us, which means the Winnipeg Comedy Festival is in its home stretch, and it's time to clean out the early-week portion of the comedy-fest notebook. Here are some random observations from a few funny-filled weeknights at the 2013 event: Tuesday's fest-opening Comedy Aces show at the McPhillips Station Casino boasted a solid lineup of imports and local favourites in a show that proved once again -- and, hopefully, for the last time -- that if the local gaming house is to remain a fixture on the fest schedule, the provincially run casinos simply can't get their big-budget showroom construction project finished soon enough.View Full Column | 04/13/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Confused and happy about it
Ask comedian Tommy Tiernan what the name of his latest tour -- Stray Sod -- means, and he'll offer a half-hearted explanation about a mythological patch of enchanted grass that causes anyone who steps on it to feel disoriented and lost. And then he'll tell you he really isn't exactly sure what it means.View Full Column | 04/11/2013 8:24 AM | 0
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He talks a blue streak... and we do mean blue
Well, nobody can say they weren't warned. When former Winnipegger Kenny Robinson and his comedy cohort Darren Frost bring their double-headliner act to the Winnipeg Comedy Festival this week, the show's title will tell ticket-buyers everything they need to know:View Full Column | 04/10/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Canadian comic's career headed in the right direction
It's one of those odd circumstances when a person's last name also describes his career momentum. Mark Forward.View Full Column | 04/4/2013 9:28 AM | 0
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Ontario comedian brings a cavalcade of characters to comedy fest debut
Blame it all on the parents. And Carol Burnett. When asked how she ended up pursuing a comedy career as a performer who does impressions and off-kilter character pieces, Emma Hunter points to her parents' abiding love for Burnett's long-running (1967-78) comedy-variety TV series.View Full Column | 04/4/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Quarter-century comic
Twenty-five years is a long time to be doing anything. But working in show business? Steadily and successfully? In Canada?View Full Column | 04/4/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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A case of 'things that make you go: hmmm'
Sometimes, all you can do is shake your head and wonder. TV will do that to you -- for many different reasons. Take today's two-part column, for example -- the first half deals with a new drama that leaves the intrigued viewer thinking, "I didn't think they could pull it off, but they did," and the second focuses on a show that raises the question, "Can it really be that bad?"View Full Column | 04/3/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Viewers might not be wild about Harry
Jeremy Piven has something new to sell. The big question, of course, is this: will anybody buy it? Piven, who toiled for years as an underappreciated commodity -- in the likes of The Larry Sanders Show, Ellen (the ABC sitcom, not the daytime talk show) and Cupid -- got a career-defining break when he landed the role of super-agent Ari Gold in the HBO comedy Entourage.View Full Column | 03/31/2013 12:16 PM | 0
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Gimmick-free doc reveals reticent writer
2It's unfortunate, perhaps, for author Philip Roth, but decidedly fortunate for the rest of us that it turns out that the latter has arrived before the former. In the wake of his 80th birthday (March 19), PBS's American Masters will profile the acclaimed novelist in a frank and revealing documentary. It's as simple and unadorned as biographical filmmaking gets -- extended interviews with the subject, supported by commentary from friends, literary contemporaries and journalistic observers and punctuated with archival photos and film clips.View Full Column | 03/28/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Familiar feeling
Poor Sarah just isn't herself today. In fact, she's someone else altogether. Or perhaps several someone elses, all rolled into one.View Full Column | 03/28/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Acting great in 'not based on a true story'
Is it unreasonable to expect greatness from the great? That's a key question when considering a TV movie that stars Oscar winners Al Pacino and Helen Mirren, and was written and directed by acclaimed playwright and screenwriter David Mamet.View Full Column | 03/23/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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Revolution reactivated
This is the week when the producers and stars of the rookie hit drama Revolution find out which piece of well-worn folk wisdom applies to their show: Is it true that absence makes the heart grow fonder, or is viewer loyalty a simple case of out of sight, out of mind?View Full Column | 03/21/2013 1:00 AM | 0
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