I Guess That's Why They Call It The Link

Hotel Chatter Regina King shows us the best revenge when you're dumped and your tv show is cancelled: look fabulous and happy
Antagony & Ecstasy reviews all Star Trek movies for you because Tim is generous and completist like that
IndieWire Kon-Tiki directors get the next high seas Pirates of the Caribbean gig. Typecasting!  
Broadway World what's next for the stars of the now-departed Broadway tv series Smash? 

Variety Johnny Depp leave the Whitey Bulger biopic Black Mass... no reasons have been given but I'm guess playing real humans is too scary for him! 
Towleroad Joe Manganiello in the best shape of his life and filming Ten with childhood idol Arnold Schwarzenegger
Los Angeles Times Neil Patrick Harris to host the Emmys just a few months after hosting the Tonys. With him becoming a mainstay at both I guess he'll never get to host the Oscars. 
i09 7 bad storytelling habits taught to us by comic books (most of them are very evident in today's franchise culture... even the ones without superheroes) 

Today's Must Read
Self Styled Siren goes to the ATM, withdraws movie thoughts

Today's Must Watch
How it Should Have Ended take on Iron Man Three - really funny stuff. Gold stars to every moment in the Superman and Batman coffee break

R.I.P. "Smash"

Smash, age 2, passed away on Sunday May 26th, 2013 at an undisclosed location at NBC after airing its final two-part episode "The Nominations" and "The Tony Awards". Few were there to mark its passing due to its long and quite unamusing terminal illness. Smash's difficult short life was plagued by self-sabotage, and two unfortunately common showbiz ailments: Actress Dysmorphia Disorder, in which everyone pretends that a gifted actress is NOT awesome so as to place another lesser being on a pedestal, and the no less deadly Audience Prosopagnosia in which a piece of showbiz believes it is performing for a different audience entirely than the one it's got.

Smash, television's first and now only Broadway musical series, was born on February 6th, 2012 to stubborn scarf-aficionado Theresa Rebeck but wrestled away from her and placed in the care of foster parents who, from all filmed evidence, had never set foot inside a Broadway theater, never witnessed a Tony Awards telecast and prefer American Idol Results Shows to Broadway Musicals. 

In its final death rattle on Sunday night, Smash continued to exhibit all of its usual signs of self-loathing and  mental illness: oh look another "Cute" moment about leaving your cel phone on during live theater!; oh look a lame subplot suggesting the show's best actress should chuck aside her showbiz career the second she's earned it; oh look, more encouraging of absolutely unprofessional behavior to get your way in your profession as if everyone working in musical theater is a complete sociopath and everyone else is okay with this!). In its final two hours of life Smash drifted in and out of consciousness and lucidity forgetting it was a musical and then remembering and even breaking the fourth wall (during one bizarre gay flirtation) on the way to its "Big Finish", a cute reminder that McPhee & Hilty did always sound good singing together, despite all the rest.

In the tradition of all self-immolating entertainments, Smash will be buried with the careers of several of its participants though these names are as yet undisclosed and mourners are asked to withhold petitions calling for Katharine McPhee, Jeremy Jordan, and Joshua Safran's entombment. Smash is survived by Megan Hilty (aka "Ivy Lynn"), actress, Christian Borle & Debra Messing (aka "Will & Grace" "Tom & Julia"), actors, and presumably by Anjelica Huston, diva, who survived Jack Nicholson and is rumored to be indestructible.

Smash: "The Phenomenon" & "The Transfer"

Dancin’ Dan here, wishing I could say that I was coming here not to bury Smash, but to praise it. Truly. I have been a huge Smash apologist ever since that (amazingly, awesomely) ridiculous Bollywood number last season, but the show’s two most recent episodes, “The Phenomenon” and “The Transfer”, are just awful. I can't defend them. Any goodwill I had left for the show has gone pretty much completely out the window. Which is all the sadder considering we will soon be laying eyes on the series's final episodes.

SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP

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Smash: "The Producers"

One might also read that blogpost title as a command, "Smash the producers!" Go ahead. I won't stop you.

Tonight I am deeply in envy of my friend Glenn who took over Smash review duties over a week ago while I was in Nashville and lucked upon the best episode of the season "Opening Night". That episode was so good I even liked Karen Cartwright in it! *gasp*

But beware the fall when you reach a peak! Last week was too good to be true and this week's episode proves that Smash won't really be missed when it's finally put down despite its intermittent and blessedly unique high points. Last season's "hate watching," so widely reported because musicals are favored targets of scorn, seems to have turned into "hate-to-watch" since the ratings fall each week. Did you see Theresa Rebeck's e-mail to Buzzfeed? For all of the problematic agenda and ego that might have prompted her very late reply to their infamous Behind the Scenes expose on the troubled Season 1 show, she may well have a talking-about-herself-in-the-third-person point here:

If in fact Theresa Rebeck was the problem with Smash and the trainwreck it became, wouldn't things have gotten better rather than drastically worse - once she left?

Yeah, yeah, I'm avoiding talking about this episode.

A lot of screaming. Which is what I do whenever the show focuses on "Hit List"

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Smash: Opening Night

Glenn here, one of the few remaing Smashites who will be with this dear show until the bitter end. I'm not going to mince words here: "Opening Night" was the best episode of the season so far. This is for a multitude of reasons that we'll get in to briefly, but mostly it's because "Hit List" barely factored. And when it did it was in the shadow of "Bombshell", the musical gets hailed the hit of the season. Too bad they didn't get that "love letter from The Times" that Liza so beautifully sang about a couple of weeks back.

2.12 "Opening Night"

This week is "Bombshell" heavy as opening night occurs and all the anticipation and exhiliration and drama and disappointment that comes with it. This is a good thing, folks, and "Hit List" thankfully takes a sidestep (although the show's writers can't help but force it upon Smash even when there are far more important things to be worrying about).

Ivy is naturally worried about the reviews... [more]

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