Salon.com > Showtime

Edie Falco: I took “The Sopranos” home with me

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 19:00:00 +0000

I am rarely starstruck, but on Monday, I was admittedly nervous at the prospect of meeting four-time Emmy winner Edie Falco, star of Showtime's "Nurse Jackie," in an ABC dressing room, following her appearance on "The View." But my nervousness melted away the moment Falco entered the room, her now-brunette hair swept in a ponytail, strolling over to a chair in bare feet, a pair of heels in her hands — for as you might expect, she is as approachable as the women she portrays. Minus the Carmela Soprano nails. And the Jackie Peyton tough reserve.

At 49, Falco is busier than ever: In addition to promoting the season 5 premiere of "Nurse Jackie," which airs on Sunday, she's currently starring onstage off-Broadway in a new play titled "The Madrid," written by Liz Flahive (incidentally, one of the writers of "Nurse Jackie"). Like Jackie, the mother she portrays in the play, Martha, wants to flee from her life. But unlike Jackie, who relies on drugs and an affair as an escape, Martha literally runs away from her family, and no one, except her daughter, knows where she is or has any sense of why she left.

Showtime’s “The Vatican” books its first cast member

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:29:00 +0000

With eerie timing, Showtime's "The Vatican," a potential series about "spirituality, power and politics", has booked its first cast member. The Hollywood Reporter has learned that "Watchmen's" Matthew Goode will co-star in the pilot as Bernd Koch, the pope's right-hand man.

The show would be "set against the modern-day political machinations within the Catholic church," exploring the power structure and relationships within the inner circle at the Vatican.

Ridley Scott will direct the first episode.

“Homeland” showrunner addresses Season 2 criticism

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 21:00:00 +0000

"Homeland" showrunner Alex Gansa addressed the criticism against the show in an exclusive interview with Grantland following an overwhelmingly disappointing season finale; the finale focused less on tightening the plot and more on the implausible relationship between CIA agent Carrie (Claire Danes) and her target Brody (Damian Lewis), of which Gansa said:

"The finale has its own shape to it. The strategy was to sort of to lull an audience into thinking it's going to be about one thing, and then really turning it on its head in the middle of the story and make it about something else entirely."

According to Gansa, the love affair was "the promise of the season":

"We were fulfilling the promise of the season, which I've been saying from the very beginning is the story of this doomed love affair between Carrie and Brody. And that's what we were really positing in the finale: Is a happy ending really possible for these two characters? And I think the answer was clearly no."

“Homeland” Season 2 finale disappoints

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:15:00 +0000

There was a time when the plausibility of “Homeland,” Showtime’s addictive espionage thriller, had been a selling point (well, to an extent -- it's still an espionage thriller). As Vulture’s Matt Zoller Seitz notes, unlike "other military-espionage tales" (notably, "24"), the show managed to be “intimate and grounded."

But, as the Season 2 finale demonstrated, that might not be the case anymore.

The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley observed that the unlikely plot twists in the show's second season became increasingly sudden and unpredictable: “After so many detours to the implausible, there was every reason to expect the season finale to be a letdown, and even downright silly.” (Stanley, however, was one of the few critics who enjoyed Season 2’s closing.)

But the final straw, for most, was that the love story between Carrie (Claire Danes), a CIA agent, and Brody (Damian Lewis), her target, hijacked the show.

Oliver Stone: America is an “outlaw nation”

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Across a four-decade career in the movie business that has encompassed three Academy Awards, 18 narrative films and several documentaries as a director, and innumerable side projects as a writer and producer, Oliver Stone has been obsessed with one topic: America. Indeed, during what you might call Stone’s classic Hollywood period, from “Salvador” in 1986 to “Nixon” in 1995 – and I don’t exclude such apparent detours as “The Doors” and “Natural Born Killers” – his central subject has been all the ways the United States has driven itself crazy, on both the foreign and domestic fronts, in the years since his own Eisenhower-era childhood.

Given that background, it’s almost surprising that it’s taken Stone this long to tackle a straightforward nonfiction project like his Showtime miniseries “The Untold History of the United States,” which tries to counter the jingoistic mythmaking and obligatory “American exceptionalism” of most public discourse about 20th-century history. That phrase refers to a creed that still holds sway (or so polls suggest) among a large proportion of the U.S. population, although it hasn’t been taken seriously by historians for many years: The idea that America has a special and even sacred role to play in world history, and cannot be compared to other nations driven by the grubby realities of politics and economics.

“Homeland”: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Brody

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 20:48:00 +0000

THE OPENING CREDITS of Showtime’s "Homeland" are a fever dream. The title appears in negative over a full-frame shot of a small, blonde girl sleeping as anxious music plays under audio of Ronald Reagan’s 1986 speech announcing an attack on facilities owned by Muammar Qaddafi. Cut to the girl sitting on the floor watching television as the radio newsman announces that the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 has crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland. The little girl practices a trill on her trumpet in her bedroom; she stands in a labyrinth wearing a dress and a lion mask. Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush address the nation, emphasizing the words America, aggression, terrorism. The girl, now older and looking weary, opens her eyes. Panicked people run through the streets of New York City; a smoke plume rises in the distance over the Brooklyn Bridge.

“Homeland”: In Carrie we (should) trust

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 06:00:00 +0000

We’re two episodes into the season, and already the major narrative threads for each of the main characters have revealed themselves: For Brody, they regard how long he can conceal the truth of his allegiance to Abu Nazir, and the depth of his mental damage. And, for Carrie, how long the CIA will leave her out in the cold because they believe her to be too mentally unstable. If tonight’s episode is any indication, the answer is, not long.

The title of this episode is called “Beirut Is Back,” but it could have just as easily be called, “Carrie Is Back” because we see her on top of her game, lucid, sharp and ready to get the job done. We’re in Beirut as the morning call to prayer sounds throughout the city. In a mosque, women pray, and among them, Fatima Ali, Carrie’s CIA asset, who is the first wife of Hezbolla district commander Abbas Ali. Outside of the mosque, Carrie is there to greet Fatima who wants to know if the $5 million reward for Abu Nazir is still on offer — there are bills to pay, you know. She also has other requests: passage to the United States, which is always an interesting prospect, this idea of the United States as a promised land, even in this day and age. Carrie assures her safety, so Ali gives up the goods: Nazir is meeting her husband the next day in Beirut. The CIA can kill them both, Ali says blithely. Marriage is complicated.