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Bryan Cranston headed for the stage

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:06:00 +0000

With AMC's hit show "Breaking Bad" coming to an end, show star Bryan Cranston has signed on for a new project -- this one off-screen. Cranston, who began his career on the stage, will head to Massachusetts to star as Lyndon B. Johnson in a new production by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan.

From the L.A. Times:

"All The Way" will open the new season at American Repertory Theater in Massachusetts, with performances scheduled to begin Sept. 13. The company said that the play dramatizes Johnson's first year in the Oval Office as he deals with the conflict in Vietnam and civil-rights unrest at home.

Schenkkan wrote the play as a commission for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where it was produced in 2012 with a different cast and directed by Bill Rauch, who is artistic director of the Oregon company. Rauch is returning as director of the new production.

“Breaking Bad” returns in August along with talk show

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 20:05:00 +0000

After months of anticipation, AMC has announced that the second half of season 5 of hit show "Breaking Bad" will air on August 11.

The show's remaining 8 episodes will be accompanied by "Talking Bad," a thirty-minute after-show that, according to Deadline, "will analyze and dissect every detail of 'Breaking Bad’s' final eight episodes."

The after-show is similar in format to "Talking Dead," a televised live discussion for AMC's "Walking Dead."

And, in case you missed it, Conan O'Brien recently interviewed the cast of "Breaking Bad" about the series--for over an hour:

Man arrested for stealing Bryan Cranston’s copy of “Breaking Bad” script

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:22:00 +0000

On March 1, "Breaking Bad" star Bryan Cranston reported that someone broke into his car at Sandia Peak, N.M. in December, stealing a bag that held an iPad and a copy of a season five script of "Breaking Bad"--the hit show's final season.

On Saturday, New Mexico authorities arrested Xavier McAfee for the crime. From ABC, who obtained the criminal complaint from the police:

" 'The criminal complaint revealed how one of Cranston’s employees, Taryn Feingold, was contacted by a confidential informant. The informant detailed to Feingold, and later the Sheriff’s Office, about overhearing a man at a local bar bragging about how he broke into a vehicle in the Sandia Mountain Range. He then showed his friends at the bar 'some type of laptop or iPad,' the complaint read, while 'describing how he also had a script from the ‘Breaking Bad’ series.' "

However, police have not recovered a copy of the script, so let's hope that no spoilers come out before the last half of season five premieres this summer.

“Homeland” recap: My eyes are open

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 03:59:00 +0000

Claire Danes is patently an incredible actress, and there’s one thing that she does better than any one else in the game, excepting “Breaking Bad’s” Bryan Cranston, who is a magician at this particular skill as well: convincingly, seamlessly conveying not just when Carrie Mathison is lying, but when Carrie Mathison is lying to herself.

Carrie, like Walter White, has many occasions to lie. Lying, and lying well, are part of the basic competency requirements of their job. We, in the audience, can hear when they’re doing it just from the tone in their voice. Both Carrie and Walt add a soothing register to their timbres when they are trying to get someone — Brody, Skyler — to do what they want. Carrie’s voice gets a little more innocent, a little happy-go-lucky, while Walt’s becomes flat out syrupy (he’s trying to cover up something much more disgusting than she is, after all).

Even more impressive than this vocal trick, is that they have a third voice, distinct from their lying tone and their truth tone — they have a self-deception tone. When Walter White goes into his self-aggrandizing, self-glorifying, "I’m doing this for my whole family, I’m a victim" shtick, his voice and manner are different from both simple, truthful Walt’s and saccharine, wheedling, lying Walt’s. His voice is rawer, more desperate, impassioned and unhinged. He's overly committed to making this untruth convincing.

Emmy-nominated stars share their fave TV shows

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 10:30:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Long before Kevin Costner, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks and Nicole Kidman were Emmy nominees, they were kids who loved watching TV.

"I liked 'Man from Uncle' and 'High Chaparral,'" Costner said. "I really, really liked that when I was a kid."

"I remember the transition from black-and-white to color," continued Costner, who is nominated as both star and producer of the TV movie "Hatfields & McCoys." ''It like one by one the televisions in my neighborhood became color TVs and we would all go look at each other's color TVs and ooh and aah at 'Bonanza.' I'm kind of glad I saw it all, in a way. I remember the TV would shut off at 11 and just play the national anthem all night long."

Cranston, who is nominated for his role on "Breaking Bad" — which won him the Emmy Award three years in a row, grew up on "The Andy Griffith Show."

"I love the character of Barney: Classic comic character of the absolute confident man with no ability whatsoever. Always funny. The calm and comforting tones of Andy Griffith, who we lost recently," the actor said. "I think there was just something very sweet and comforting about watching that show, and the simplicity of the lifestyle and a days-gone-by kind of thing."

“Total Recall”: A sci-fi classic, reloaded

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 19:37:00 +0000

The original Arnold Schwarzenegger “Total Recall” from 1990 – and let’s admit that applying the word “original” to any Schwarzenegger movie, especially that one, feels weird – marked the apogee of director Paul Verhoeven’s meteoric Hollywood career. I still think film history will vindicate Verhoeven as a singular and important figure, who bridged the gap between 1970s European art-house film and big-budget spectacle cinema. (You can find my now-ancient essay in defense of Verhoeven's oeuvre and significance here.) A dedicated ironist and formalist whose work always has a dark, Freudian undercurrent, Verhoeven was following in the footsteps of Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma, but just as clearly paving the way for Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder.

Vince Gilligan: I’ve never Googled “Breaking Bad”

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 20:47:00 +0000

In my recap of “Breaking Bad's” Season 5 premiere, I quoted the critic Paul Nelson, on Bob Dylan: “Hungry for a sign, the world used to follow him around, just waiting for him to drop a cigarette butt. When he did they'd sift through the remains, looking for significance. The scary part is they'd find it – and it really would be significant."

To a dedicated legion of fanatics, and I am one of them, “Breaking Bad” carries that significance.

Last Thursday, as it has over the past four years, “Breaking Bad” garnered a slew of Emmy nominations. The next morning, I spoke with Vince Gilligan, the creator and show runner of “Breaking Bad.” “Breaking Bad” fanatic that I am, this conversation was akin to traveling on the “Way Back Machine” to the Nashville studio as Dylan recorded “Blonde on Blonde,” and asking him, between takes, “Just what the hell is a “Curfew Plug, anyway?”

And then, to have Dylan answer, candidly.

“Breaking Bad”: “He’s a pure psychopath”

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 19:00:00 +0000

When "Breaking Bad" began, Hank Schrader, Walter White's macho, jokey DEA brother-in-law, played by Dean Norris, seemed to be little more than comic relief. But over the following four seasons, Hank, like everyone else on the show, has changed and deepened. A series of tough breaks — a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder and then near-paralysis and depression following a brutal shot— revealed that, underneath all the braggadocio, Hank was a good, well-meaning, moral guy and a not half-bad law enforcement official, either. As of last week's season five premiere, Hank — who still doesn't know about Walt's drug-making talents — is shaping up to be the the guy who who just might take Walter White down.

In the first installment of a new Sunday series talking in depth about the characters we're obsessed with and the people who play or have created them, we spoke with Norris -- the actor who plays Hank, a Harvard graduate and father of five -- about the looming Hank–Walt confrontation, Walt's psychopathy, and why there are so many anti-heroes on TV these days.

So it’s looking like Hank is going to be Walt’s final enemy and that the show is going to move into being a face-off between him and Walt at the end.

I hate Walter White

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

“Breaking Bad,” AMC’s incredible, amped-up methodrama, begins the first half of its final season on Sunday night, and though it is just starting, I am consumed with how it will end. Over the course of its first four seasons, “Breaking Bad” has taught us what we can expect from it: It will not let us, or our pulses, down. The irascible Jesse will chirp the word “bitch,” among other endearingly smart-aleck, street-inflected phrases, while wearing a hoodie and sneakers. Walter White will continue to become more and more evil as he wrestles with another opponent and manipulates the people he purports to love in increasingly bold ways. It will play like a gorgeously filmed, superbly acted and psychologically rich action movie, a serious drama that is uncharacteristically serious about plot, zooming through story lines like a speed freak on a Yamaha. Everything will be filmed in deadening yellows and washed-out blues. And there will be blood. It's whose blood, exactly, that I have become so consumed by.