What to watch when you’re not eating turkey

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:00:00 +0000

To help you survive the long Thanksgiving weekend in close quarters with your relatives, here’s a guide to what’s worthwhile on TV this holiday.

“Michael Jackson: Bad25” (Thursday, 9:30 p.m. EST, ABC)

On the 25thanniversary of the release of Michael Jackson’s epic “Bad,” Spike Lee has assembled a documentary about the making of that album. It features interviews with everyone from Martin Scorsese (who directed the “Bad” video) to Sheryl Crow (who sang a duet with Jackson on the record) to the less directly involved Mariah Carey, Justin Bieber and Kanye West. There’s also behind-the-scenes footage of the King of Pop hard at work (how did he do that leaning dance thing?). Watching a man in his prime hard at work should help you digest your enormous dinner, right?

"Liz and Dick" (Sunday, 9 p.m. EST, Lifetime)

Lindsay Lohan plays Elizabeth Taylor in this made-for-TV movie about the scandalous, explosive romance between Taylor and Richard Burton. If just reading “Lindsay Lohan plays Elizabeth Taylor” makes you ill, skip it, but if you can stomach it, you’re in for a camp classic that’s totally terrible in a totally fun way.

LiLo’s Lifetime joke

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 19:06:00 +0000

In its review of “Liz & Dick,” the television movie about the storied, passionate, decades long, true lust and love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton — i.e., the Lifetime movie in which Lindsay Lohan plays Elizabeth Taylor — the Hollywood Reporter describes the film as an “instant classic of unintentional hilarity.” I vehemently disagree. There is nothing “unintentional” about it.

“Liz and Dick,” which airs on Sunday night, where it should serve as a perfect final mouthful to a long weekend of binging, is, after all, a Lifetime movie, a camp genre unto itself. The Lifetime movie is where Douglas Sirk lives in infamy, flattered by endless imitation as he rolls over in his grave, mimicked slavishly and poorly, his plots grown ever more sordid, but his earnestness never topped. A movie in which Lindsay Lohan-as-Elizabeth Taylor regularly lectures the camera about how she and Richard Burton (Grant Bowler) invented paparazzi and the celebrity photo frenzy, a movie in which Lohan-as-Taylor downs a bottle of pills and booze and sobs through the resulting dangerous, but entirely manipulative suicide attempt, a movie in which Lohan lies on a bed with cucumbers on her eyes even as said eyes are drenched in her infamous Cleopatra makeup is ridiculous, yes, but it is not unknowing. You can hate Lifetime movies, and still see that “Liz and Dick” is exactly what a Lifetime movie is supposed to be, instantly hootable, usually ludicrous, rarely dull. Snuggle up.

Salon.com > liz and dick

What to watch when you’re not eating turkey

LiLo’s Lifetime joke