... Stephen Colbert, and the swan song of The Late Show, including the return of Strike Force Five.
I’m not taking stock of the wider state of late-night TV, at least directly, right now.
My aim is to gather some of the most interesting coverage of and content related to Colbert’s exit from the 11 o’clock hour after nearly 30 years, dating back to his days as
a Daily Show correspondent, over 20 of them as a host and 10+ broadcasting from the Ed Sullivan Theater.
Hey! Stephen recently led a tour of the Sullivan’s auditorium for Architectural Digest [14:29]. Known as CBS Studio 50 when it housed Ed’s “rilly big shew” and built a century ago as Hammerstein’s Temple of Music by Arthur Hammerstein in honor of his father, it’s possessed — as Late Show viewers have seen — of such remarkable features as a majestic dome refurbished and retrofitted with deft, modern graphic elements by Colbert’s staff.
The above, like all further video links in this post, goes to YouTube.
This post is currently down for maintenance.
Whether you’re fortunate enough to still be in touch with your sense of wonder or
have lost it and thought it never to be regained, I beseech you: See Hugo.
Directed by Martin Scorsese from John Logan’s screenplay, based on Brian Selznick’s acclaimed book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Hugo runs 126 minutes. About 120 of those minutes are pure cinematic nirvana. I’m almost mad, yet also strangely relieved, that no matter how many films I see as this stacked season progresses — and no matter that it’s difficult to compare movies of wildly different styles, aims, and approaches — I’ve clearly seen the most fascinating, most captivating movie of the year... unless, almost ironically given their subject matter, The Artist ends up matching it.
At some point, Super 8 went from being a top-secret J.J. Abrams movie to being
the J.J. Abrams / Steven Spielberg project.
Photo: François Duhamel © 2011 Paramount Pictures.
I’d say it’s an apt descriptor even though Spielberg “only” served as a producer on
the film, which Abrams wrote and directed. Much as Cloverfield — a previous “top-secret J.J. Abrams movie” — was “only” produced by Abrams yet has Abrams’ fingerprints all over it, Super 8 is so redolent of what you think of when you think of
A Steven Spielberg Film that if Abrams and Spielberg weren’t known to have kicked around the project together for years it would fall almost unnervingly between homage and thematic plagiarism. The movie features precocious kids with deep bonds, distracted but ultimately devoted parents, the government stepping in to contain a mysterious alien phenomenon…
I’m behind on moviegoing, let alone writing up reviews, but I saw True Grit on Saturday and like everyone else I was blown away by Hailee Steinfeld.
J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek was released on home video this past Tuesday.
I look forward to sitting down on a cold, dark night during the post-sweeps/holiday
lull in new television and digging into its special features. The Abrams commentaries
on the pilot episodes of Lost and Fringe — the latter with Trek screenwriting duo Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci — were top-notch. I’m almost glad that I don’t have a Blu-Ray player since the regular 2-disc edition looks just right in terms of my level of interest in extras.
Here at last, on the heels of the brief Star Trek review I put up the other day, are
some expanded thoughts on the franchise and the film...
I suppose I’m a Trekkie.
Or at least a solid B, if not B+.
I’m talking about the new Star Trek film, of course.
