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Saturday, January 13, 2007
Jack Bauer 24-Ever!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
BUHM-bum! BUHM-bum! BUHM-bum!
Sorry, that’s the best the Serf can do when it comes to imitating the ticking “24” clock. There’s nothing like the original, and fortunately, there are only (check your watch and insert correct number here) hours left till Season 6 kicks off Sunday night at 8 on Fox.
Not to sound ghoulish, but one of the things that makes “24” so good is its willingness to kill off key characters in order to keep the storyline moving and believable (well, in the let’s-face-it fairly unbelievable universe that is “24”). Jack Bauer’s not going anywhere (see our “24” story online to hear the show’s executive producer all but promise as much); but you can pretty much count on 1, 2 or 107 other major players biting the dust in a typical season.
Who do you think might be, uh, “eliminated” in Season 6? Which characters would you like to see go most or least. Or come back from the dead (Edgar, sniff!)
Tell us here. And take our “24” quiz on ajc.com if you haven’t done so already. Heck, take it again and see how well you score the second time around.
Tick…Tick…Tick…
An angel not in disguise
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jaclyn Smith, arguably the most successful of the ’70s era “Charlie’s Angels,” lit up the Bravo/USA/SciFi party Friday night at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena, a party relatively dull in star wattage (unless you include the members of the “Real Housewives of Orange County.”)
Her role? She signed on to host and judge yet another permutation of “Project Runway” dubbed “Sheer Genius” as the franchise seeks the best hairstylist. Production starts next week.
Wearing a vintage Chanel jacket and her own KMart jeans, Smith looked smashing for her age, though a check online shows no consistency what that may be. It’s either 59 or 61 depending on the source.
“I’d been a fan of ‘Project Runway,’ ” Smith said. “I love making something out of nothing. So it isn’t just about pretty dresses or pretty hair, it’s the technical as well as the artistic.”
Smith, who has been known for great hair, said she started her acting career doing ads for Breck. “Hair has always been part of my history,” she said. “I’ve worked with some of the best hairdressers of all time.”
Her hair is naturally curly but she’s frequently seen with it straight. She uses a round brush to keep the locks flowing. “I don’t take an iron to my hair every day,” she said. Sometimes, she’ll let it go curlier to let it rest.
“I don’t want to be a slave to my hair,” she said. “That’s why I keep sort of the same layered cut that’s easy for me and I sort of know how to handle my hair. I don’t even wash it every day. That can be harsh on the hair.”
Besides her existing clothing collection for KMart, which has been a very lucrative business for her, she’s working on a home collection. “It’s very challenging, very time consuming,” Smith said. “I’m a collector of antiques. Most of it is based and inspired by antiques. I have bedding and mattresses and an exclusive line of fabrics.” Then she dropped her Web site name, www.jaclynsmith.com, because she knows she’s there to promote, promote, promote.
Smith also noted that tabloid stories to the contrary, fellow “Charlie’s Angels” alum Farrah Fawcett, who is suffering intestinal cancer, is doing better.
In other Bravo-related news, the publicists for Bravo still couldn’t say if Tim Gunn will be back for the next season of “Project Runway,” although he is getting his own spinoff show, fueling speculation that Gunn is either holding out for more money or truly wanting to jump ship.
Law & Order creator goes native
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
HBO offered TV critics a heavy dose of weighty topics Friday, from AIDS to the Evangelical movement to a serial killer. And Dick Wolf, uber-creator of the ubiquitous “Law & Order” franchise, maintained the thematics, showing up to give his pet project, the film version of “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee,” his stamp of approval.
The film spans the late 19th century as the Sioux Indians struggled between assimilation and annnihilation in the hands of the U.S. government. As befits a big HBO production, it stars the likes of Anna Paquin (“X Men,” “The Piano”), Aidan Quinn (“An Early Frost,” “The Book of Daniel”) and “Law & Order” chief prosecutor and former U.S. senator Fred Dalton Thompson. (Thompson plays Pres. Ulysses S. Grant.)
Wolf said back around 2001, his former boss Tom Thayer asked him if he had read the seminal 1971 book “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.” Wolf said yes. Thayer asked him if he wanted to jump aboard a film project based on the book. “I immediately wanted to get involved,” he told the media. “And we went to HBO and it was fast-track from there and here we are five and a half years later. Maybe a new record for HBO.”
As he made clear, HBO likes to take its time on projects it cares about and he lavished praise on the pay cable’s distinct culture.
“I’d do anything that HBO wanted me to do given the strictures that I’m under contractually,” Wolf said. “I would love to find more ways to work with them because it has been an amazing experience. But I would love to send some network people in to intern there for awhile.”
The audience laughed. He later apologized for being so flippant about the broadcast networks who have made him fabulously wealthy, noting that HBO’s business model is so different from, say, NBC. HBO can pick and choose a handful of projects a year while the big three networks have to fill 22 hours a week of mostly original programming.
“They [the broadcast networks] are in the numbers game, the daily numbers game, and that leads to the decisions that are not necessarily artistic or what is best,” Wolf noted.
HBO relies solely on subscribers so while it’s immune to advertiser pressure, it still needs buzz-worthy, appointment TV series, something the network has failed to conjure up lately with the possible exception of “Entourage.”
Wolf even noted HBO’s extravagant period-piece drama “Rome,” which ends after just two seasons this year after modest ratings in relation to its cost. ” ‘Rome’ is one of the most awesome television achievements to me in the past 20 years,” he said. “Again, it was that you look at it and go, boy, they really didn’t care how much it cost.”
The HBO beancounters probably twisted uncomfortably in their seats after hearing that comment.
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