The rising threat of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida was known to the FBI and the CIA in the late 1990s. But rivalry between the agencies kept their accumulated information in silos, ultimately leading to the breakdowns that helped result in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and the war in Afghanistan.
The Looming Tower, the 10-episode Hulu miniseries based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Lawrence Wright, examines the actions of two separate counter-terrorism… Read
If you think Eugene Jarecki’s fascinating and provocative new documentary, The King, is just another biopic on Elvis Presley, you should think again. Jarecki also appears as a casual guide in the film, which has much more on its mind as it uses the superstar’s life as a starting point to examine America in the age of Donald Trump – where it has been and where it is now.
As I say in my video review above, it is an audacious idea, and Jarecki does a good job intersecting… Read
Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil and I go at it again in a new series of Emmy prediction smackdowns beginning today with the contenders for Comedy Lead Actor and Actress.
As we discuss in the video (click the link above to watch) the race for Comedy Lead Actress is going to hit some new ground this year as Veep took the year off so six time in a row winner Julia Louis Dreyfus won’t be a factor this time around. What does that mean? O’Neil and I disagree on that, as Tom seems… Read
After Donald Trump referred to Haiti as a “sh*thole country,” Conan O’Brien took his TBS late-night show to the island nation to prove him otherwise. O’Brien said at Deadline’s The Contenders Emmys event that the special Conan episode worked because it not only humanized Haitians it humanized him, as well.
“The point of those travel shows is that I want them to laugh at the American,” O’Brien said onstage at the packed DGA Theater. “The kind of comedy I am passionate… Read
“We're all living in echo chambers. You think that your Twitter is giving you 'fair and balanced news,' but you curate it,” I Love You, America host Sarah Silverman said during her Hulu series’ panel at Deadline’s The Contenders Emmys event. “It's a whole world that you have curated according to your thoughts and beliefs, and we're not seeing what everyone else is seeing.”
Taking the reins with her own talk show, the comedian has tried to find her own way out of the… Read
During the panel for Netflix’s GLOW at Deadline’s The Contenders Emmys event, stars Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin, Sydelle Noel and Britney Young talked about how wrestling bonded the cast in the most “intimate” ways.
“We were trust-falling into each other’s arms before we knew what each other’s last names were,” Gilpin said. Added Noel: “We all love each other and that’s really hard with 14 — now 15 — girls.” She points out that there was no “cattiness” on set and said that… Read
With a vibrant producing and directing career that has spawned hit movies like Trainwreck, The Big Sick, Knocked Up, The 40-Year Old Virgin, Bridesmaids and series like HBO’s Girls, Love, and Crashing, how does Judd Apatow have time to take a detour back into the world of stand-up comedy that he did from age 17 to 24? Add to that his very personal documentary project — the 4 1/2-hour HBO docu The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling — and you find there is a lot to talk… Read
From “Carpool Karaoke” to “Crosswalk: The Musical” to “Role Call” (that’s the one where they act out all the films of an actor in 10 minutes), The Late Late Show With James Corden has seen great success with its viral-friendly segments. Still, at Deadline’s recent The Contenders Emmys event, host James Corden said “it’s embarrassing to take sole credit for those segments which people have grown to love.”
Corden said that when they film, he sees an “unbelievable” team of… Read
In Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's 10-part documentary series The Vietnam War, 80 witnesses give testimonies about their experiences in the conflict from Americans who fought to protesters, North and South Vietnamese soldiers, and civilians. Burns thought he knew a lot about the war, but when he took on the project, it didn’t go exactly as he expected.
“I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the 1960s, I was draft-eligible — I thought I knew a lot about Vietnam,” he said during… Read
It was unexpected, but believe me when I tell you Sicario: Day of the Soldado, the sequel to the critically acclaimed 2015 Sicario, is simply the most intelligent and exciting action thriller of the summer. Going in I thought perhaps this would be kind of like They Call Me Mister Tibbs was to In the Heat of the Night — a serviceable but hardly worthy follow-up — but this film absolutely stands on its own, the promise of director Denis Villeneuve’s original more than met… Read
Bryan Cranston came to Deadline’s annual The Contenders Emmys awards-season event and brought with him his new Amazon comedy series The Dangerous Book for Boys, which he co-created with Greg Mottola.
Cranston opened up about the initial difficulty of coming up with a direction for the series, which is based on Conn and Hal Iggulden’s 2012 bestselling book. “It was in the drama department,” he said. “I tried and tried and I couldn’t figure it out. Like so many things, when… Read
The launch of Season 1 of Marvel's Luke Cage in 2016 crashed Netflix. The June 22-debuting second season may or may not repeat that feat, but it sure packs a lot more punch.
I was a big fan of the first cycle of the Cheo Hodari Coker-run and Mike Colter-led Harlem hero series, but there's no argument things went a little sideways towards the end of Season 1. This time around, former music journalist and Ray Donovan co-EP Coker has listened to his ear for knowing it is… Read
