Friday Night Lights
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Greatest Series Finales: Friday Night Lights’ “Always” is a beautiful exploration of family
Friday Night Lights had a unique journey, to say the least. Based on the novel of the same name, which was adapted into a film first, the series premiered in 2007 on NBC to critical praise but didn’t manage to find a significant audience. NBC supported the series, bringing it back for a truncated season two (courtesy of the Writers Strike), but season three seemed unlikely to happen until NBC worked out a deal with DirecTV to cost-share the series, renewing it for season three, and then in one fell swoop, four and five. Because of this rocky road, the creators actually ended up crafting three separate episodes intended to function as series finales, season one’s “State”, season three’s “Tomorrow Blues”, and season five’s “Always”. Many series struggle to create a meaningful series finale. Jason Katims and the Friday Night Lights team made three. More
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‘The Spectacular Now’ a swooning, honest tale of teenage angst and love
The Spectacular Now Directed by James Ponsoldt Written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber USA, 2013 The teenage genre is an infinite well Hollywood enjoys returning to, even if such repetition can frequently wind up creating some of the most inherently false-seeming films. We like watching movies about teenagers so we can be nostalgic […] More
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‘Fruitvale Station’ powerfully acted, but slightly scattered as a whole
Fruitvale Station is a series of vignettes searching in vain for connective tissue. Its anchor is the excellent young actor Michael B. Jordan, and while he and the other performers in this dramatization of a harrowing recent tragedy are all solid, the final product is still a bit too scattered to make an impact, despite the moment-to-moment resonance. More
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Greatest TV Pilots: Friday Night Lights’ pilot spotlights middle America with specificity and grace
The opening images in a pilot are usually incredibly specific ones. They’ve been chosen as the very first thing viewers will see, what will introduce them to this series and help them decide whether to tune in or flip to something else. In Alias, it’s Sydney Bristow’s face, her head held under water. In Battlestar Galactica, it’s a ticking clock. In Justified it’s a man in a cowboy hat and boots, heading to a duel at high noon. In Friday Night Lights, it’s Texas. More
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Second Language: A decade of pop music on TV
The third track on one of my favorite rock records of the last decade, Okkervil River’s The Stage Names, is called “A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene.” Without context, its lyric is a bit of a tough nut to crack. Will Sheff sings about events unfolding on a TV screen in the first verse, recaps […] More
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‘Somebody Up There Likes Me’ an enjoyable anti-comedy trifle
It may seem like a fool’s errand to ascribe deeper meaning to a 75-minute lark of a movie, but it’s not terribly difficult to spot a theme recurring throughout Somebody Up There Likes Me, specific to the very meaning of life. More
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Bates Motel, Ep. 1.01: “First You Dream, Then You Die” feels like a cross between Lynch and Hitch
Bates Motel, Season 1, Episode 1: “First You Dream, Then You Die” Written by Anthony Cipriano Directed by Tucker Gates Airs Mondays at 10pm ET on A&E In 1987, a year after the second Psycho sequel hit the big screen, Universal looked to take the franchise to television by turning it into a weekly anthology […] More
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Friday Night Lights with Stephanie Smith
Stephanie Smith from PotentialCast joins us to look at Peter Berg and Jason Katims’ fantastic middle American drama, Friday Night Lights. [powerpress] More
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‘Zero Dark Thirty’ an excellent, exhaustive account of the bin Laden manhunt
Zero Dark Thirty Directed by Kathryn Bigelow Written by Mark Boal USA, 2012 So little in this world is tangibly right or wrong that when an opportunity to channel our innate desire to see good triumph over evil comes along, we grab at it with all our strength. Such a chance arose in the aftermath […] More
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The Televerse #56- Friday Night Lights with Steph Smith
With the Emmys over and done with, it’s officially the start of the fall network TV season. The pilots will come en masse next week, but, along with one of the best one-night comedy lineups in quite a while (Thursday’s Parks and Rec premiere, Wilfred finale, Childrens Hospital UK, NTSF:SD:SUV::, and the culmination of Louie’s […] More
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The Televerse #56- Friday Night Lights with Steph Smith
With the Emmys over and done with, it’s officially the start of the fall network TV season. The pilots will come en masse next week, but, along with one of the best one-night comedy lineups in quite a while (Thursday’s Parks and Rec premiere, Wilfred finale, Childrens Hospital UK, NTSF:SD:SUV::, and the culmination of Louie’s […] More
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Freewheeling and charming ’10 Years’ aided by its ensemble cast
10 Years Directed by Jamie Linden Written by Jamie Linden USA, 2011 These days, a hangout movie is far rarer than a hangout TV show. Many fans and critics would point to Cougar Town as the best current example of a hangout TV show, as the audience spends 30 minutes each week simply relaxing with […] More
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