TV as Votive Candle: The Funeral of Whitney Houston

By Roger Catlin | Published: February 19, 2012

Mourning is an odd thing these days, especially for celebrities. Especially if the death is sudden, the cable news networks go into overdrive, interviewing anybody who had a remote connection to the deceased and even those who didn’t. They cover the public displays of balloons and flowers and teddy bears. If there’s old videos, they get on as soon as possible. And movies? Put them on immediately.

The flickering light of the television set is the designated votive candle for celebs. And news directors noticing the a bump in ratings from the initial shocking pronouncement find a way to bring second say stories, third day stories, stories every news cycle until the funeral. And when the funeral comes, as it did Saturday for Whitney Houston in Newark, a week after her death in Beverly Hills, the coverage is well to wall, non stop And even if the service is FOUR HOURS as Saturday’s was, they’ll show it over and over the rest of the day and into the night.

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Saturday TV: ‘Win Win,’ ‘Bad Teacher’

By Roger Catlin | Published: February 18, 2012

Let’s talk about movies that were thoroughly ignored by the Oscars. How about Pal Giamatti as the struggling lawyer and parttime wrestling coach in Thomas McCarthy’s “Win Win” (Cinemax, 10 p.m.) with Amy Ryan, Bobby Cannavale, Jeffrey Tambor, Burt Young and Melanie Lynskey.

Never expected to make it into the Oscar race, though, was the olde English knight spoof “Your Highness” (HBO, 8 p.m.) with James Franco, Natalie Portman and Danny McBride, who returns as Kenny Powers in “Eastbound & Down” Sunday.

Or “Bad Teacher” (Starz, 9 p.m.) with Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel.

On the day before he kicks off the new season of “The Amazing Race,” Phil Koeghan takes a cross country bike ride for charity chronicled in the film “The Ride” (Showtime, 8 p.m.).

The service itself at first wasn’t going to be televised and left to streaming online. But it looks like it will get wall to wall coverage at noon on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc., as well as specials such as the “E! News Special: Whitney Houston – The Funeral” (E!, 11:30 a.m.). Tonight, they’ll replay her most popular movie “The Bodyguard” (Lifetime, 8 p.m.).

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Friday TV: NAACP Image Awards, More Whitney Memories

By Roger Catlin | Published: February 17, 2012

Sanaa Lathan, left, and Anthony Mackie, stars of the film “Vipaka,” host The 43rd NAACP Image Awards (NBC, 8 p.m.) from Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Nominees include Macke, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas-Howard, Laurence Fishburne, Octavia Spencer, Don Cheadle, Jeffrey Wright and Cicely Tyson.

Among the TV nominees are Dule Hill, Vanessa Williams, Andre Brauger, Taye Diggs, Wendell Pierce, Chandra Wilson and Sandra Oh.

But there will likely be some time too to honor Whitney Houston as well.

Elsewhere, it’s all about the late pop star with the whole of a two hour “20/20” ABC, 9 p.m.) devoted to “One Moment in Time: The Life of Whitney Houston.”

But Whtiney can only manage No. 6 on the “100 Greatest Women in Music” (VH1, 10 p.m.), which reaches the top of the weeklong countdown tonight. At the top of the list is Madonna, follwed by Mariah Carey, Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Adele.

You can also see two of her movies, “Waiting to Exhale” (Encore, 8 p.m.) and “The Preacher’s Wife” (Encore, 10 p.m.).

In the new TV movie “Radio Rebel” (Disney, 8 p.m.), Debby Ryan stars as a shy high-schooler who tries to convince teens to avoid cliques through a podcast.

Two more episodes of “Michael Feinstein’s American Songbook” (PBS, 9 p.m., check local listings) will wrap up the second season.

For the season finale of “The Life & Times of Tim” (HBO, 9 p.m.), Tim is asked to take the fall for Omnicorp’s role in an ecological disaster.

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Thursday TV: ‘Exporting Raymond,’ Questioning Black History Month

By Roger Catlin | Published: February 16, 2012

America still leads the world in one export: entertainment. And in addition to its big screen movies and pop culture, its TV shows run all around the word. Sometime they’re just dubbed, other times whole new shows are created based on the U.S. scripts.

After shows like “Married with Children” and “The Nanny” became hits in Russian versions, executive producer Phil Rosenthal decided to try and adapt “Everybody Loves Raymond” (TV Land, 9 p.m.) shortly after it ended its nine season run.

Would its humor be universal? He found out, in an effort filmed for the documentary “Exporting Raymond” (HBO, 8 p.m.).

It’s remarkable, first of all, how much of its humor was memorable, but how tough it is to translate for a Russian audience. The actors get it wrong; the casting is mixed up; there’s a woman hovering over the proceedings thinking the most important thing is that everybody wears fashionable clothes. Finally, Russian men don’t like to think that it’s the wives that run the household.

But a bigger problem may be the network executives, dour people who just like to mess with a project, who come and go without any explanation. It’s an interesting look at the creative process of any show and instructive reminder of what made “Raymond” great.

Should we do away with Black History Month? Filmmaker Shukree Hassan Tilghman got some dirty looks when he led a Quixotic campaign to do away with it. But others signed his petition when he explained that every month should be black history month – that it should be ingrained into U.S. history overall and not relegated to the shortest, often coldest, month of the year.

But others on his journey, captured in “More Than a Month,’ debuting tonight on “Independent Lens” (PBS, 10 p.m., check local listings) insisted there would be no black history taught if there wasn’t the annual reminder in February. He comes to a more realization by the end of the film. A longer review I wrote on the film appeared in Salon. In another black history month documentary screening, “Heart of Stone” (Showtime, 8:30 p.m.) follows a principal trying to turn around a high school in troubled Newark.

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The Littlest ‘Survivor’

By Roger Catlin | Published: February 15, 2012

Among the new things on “Survivor: One World” that starts tonight on CBS – other than the splitting of genders, elimination of Redemption Island, changing of hidden immunity rules, or two tribes sharing a beach – is that the show has its first little person.

Leif Manson, a phlebotomist from San Diego, is the show’s first small person – though CBS’ other major reality competition, “The Amazing Race” opened this door with its popular contestant Charla Maddos.

Manson, reached in California this week, says he was ready for the challenge of “Survivor.”

“Growing up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I pretty much grew up in the woods,” he said. “That had always been my playground. And I knew — the first time seeing the show, I always knew I was destined to be on the show. I wanted for anything to be on it.”

He applied when there was a an audition “at a local casino down the road from me. But from that, I never heard anything back. Ever since then, it had always been on the back of my mind, so it was so amazing when they called.”

And when the call comes, it’s time to jump on a plane and go.

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Wednesday TV: ‘Survivor’ Start, Shue Fits on ‘CSI’

By Roger Catlin | Published: February 15, 2012

There will be few new twists when the new “Survivor: One World” (CBS, 8 p.m.) begins tonight. It’ll be men vs. women, for one thing, but both tribes will live on the same beach, meaning there may be some nocturnal fraternizing.

The rules for hidden immunity idols have changed as well; when one finds one, he or she has to give it to a member of the other tribe, forcing some intertribal strategy along the way.

Certainly the cast seems generally younger and more buff than usual – all pecs and bikini bodies. And they’re forced to be social: there’s no Redemption Island this time around. Among the contestants are an NFL wife, two people with a nickname derived from Tarzan, a small person and a gay Republican. Jeff Probst, the constant, continues as host.

Elisabeth Shue, the most underused actresses in Hollywood, gets a fulltime TV gig, joining the cast of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” (CBS, 10 p.m.). Playing a blood splatter specialist, she’ll take the place of Marg Helgenberger, who left.

Valentine’s Day lingers on some shows, including the season finale of “Hot in Cleveland” (TV Land, 10 p.m.).

Group performances may actually occur as Hollywood Week continues on “American Idol” (Fox, 8 p.m.).

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Ameena Matthews for President

By Roger Catlin | Published: February 15, 2012

In Steve James’ powerful documentary “The Interrupters,” that debuted on “Frontline” tonight, a star and leader and role model was introduced to the nation in the form of Ameena Matthews.

Her boss, Tio Hardman of the Chicago-based CeaseFire says, “I look at Ameena as the 21st century Harriet Tubman.”

But Matthews, speaking to reporters at the TV Critics’ winter press tour last month in California, said it’s only something she started five years ago.

“I was called by someone that I used to hustle with back in the day,” she says. “And he had asked me to help him with this conflict.”

A mother had called to say “My son is loading up the gun and he’s going to go up there and shoot these guys that beat up my other son,” she says.

“So got into the head of this little young guy and his mom, and we got the money and got him out of town. “

There was a happy ending. “He’s in Atlanta, in his third year in college at Morehouse,” Matthews says.

Soon after that, she was invited to join the team and has since found she could defuse potentially violent situations with her persuasive, and street-smart arguments.

“Everybody has different attributes, and mine is, I would say, communication,” Matthews says. But, she adds, “I did not know that I had that [skill] until recently. I just knew that something that needed to be done.

“And if I can stand up first and say, ‘Look, this is what I want, and this is what needs to happen, and you don’t have to kill anybody to resolve a conflict.’”

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FTD Fail, Candy Hearts and Other Valentine Stories

By Roger Catlin | Published: February 14, 2012

Got a timely Valentine’s Day e-mail today. It was from the FTD.com floral spot that I had done some business with the other day.

“Despite our best efforts, due to exceptionally high seasonal demand, we regret we were unable to fill your order as requested,” it said.

No “Be My Valentine,” no nothing.

The site had been doing a disservice to Mercury, its branded Roman figure, by messing up just about every order I’ve made in recent months. When I ordered a pointsietta for my mother in law in Florida in December and didn’t hear from her, it turned out that the  local florist just never filled the request. They finally got one over there — five days late. Luckily that wasn’t tied to a specific date; the Valentine’s Day failure was more serious. They said they could deliver it two days from now — and they could give me a $20 coupon for my trouble. Unfortunately, the birthday of Kim Jong-Il and Lupe Fiasco is not as celebrated as the one for St. Valentine, so I was happy to cancel the order entirely and adjust all future shopping plans with FTD.com.

It also meant I went to the store to fight the crowds for Valentine’s shopping. I already knew things were brutal from the report I heard last night: Shelves were empty at Target, whatever was left was scattered on the ground. I wasn’t that impressed with their offering when it was better stocked — too much Star Wars themed stuff and dolls; not enough variety on kids’ cards or smaller candy.

Things were much worse at CVS today, though there were some small boxes of candy and Spanish language cards still there. What was left of their flowers were horrible, though — broken, wilting, sad. I thought maybe I’d see the guy near the Metro stop who sells flowers 365 days a year, but he had some severely restricted offerings too — dividing his roses into individually wrapped stems; turning to candy and bears and other pink and red holiday fare. I went to that old standby the grocery store to find some roses that didn’t look dead, thanks to its refrigerator. They were ready for crowds, and while a lot of red carnations and single roses were taken to the registers, there seemed far more of those oversized Mylar heart shaped balloons that say “I Love You” or whatever.

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Tuesday TV: ‘The Interrupters,’ ‘The Loving Story’

By Roger Catlin | Published: February 14, 2012

On a special, super-long episode of “Frontline” (PBS, 9 p.m., check local listings) Steve James of “Hoop Dreams” fame and Alex Kotlowitz, author of “There Are No Children Here” tell the tale of brave and brilliantly skilled mediators trying to calm the violent powder keg of attack and counter-attack in Chicago in “The Interrupters.”

The filmmakers put themselves in harm’s way in depicting the challenges; they discover a true hero in people like Ameena Matthews, who has the street skills, humor and empathy to connect with hurting people.

It’s a powerful film that could actually stand being a regular series (there was something like this once, a West coast series called “The Peacemaker: L.A. Gang Wars”).

A film that sounds like it’s a Valentine’s Day tie-in, “The Loving Story” (HBO, 9 p.m.) is actually the story of the Virginia couple named Loving who were arrested for mixing race in their marriage in 1958. Their one year sentence was suspended if they’d just leave the state, ruled a judge who said it was God who meant the races should be separate.

A pair of ACLU lawyers took the case to the Supreme Court as the soft-spoken couple tolerated the spotlight so they could help others. Lots of footage of the period enhance the film. The couple is sweet and obviously in love but you may spend the film as I did, steaming about the fact that people like Rick Santorum would be so at home with the bigots who’d put up walls in the name of God.

Tonight’s “Glee” (Fox, 8 p.m.) was already slated to be its Valentine’s Episode and Amber Riley was already slated to sing Whitney Houston’s hit “I Will Always Love You.” So tonight’s whole episode will be dedicated to the late singer. It also features Jeff Goldblum and Brian Stokes Mitchell appearing as Rachel’s two dads.

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Sharon Malone’s Education of the Old South

By Roger Catlin | Published: February 14, 2012

One of the most remarkable documentaries in Black History Month is the one that premiered tonight on PBS, “Slavery by Another Name,” which recounts the decades of forced labor that followed the Emancipation Proclamation due to a loophole in the 13th Amendment.

It was a brutal, little known chapter in history until it was brought out by Douglas Blackmon, who produced a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the practice after first writing about it in the Wall Street Journal.

Much of the resulting film produced and directed by Sam Pollard, was based closely on the book and its stories. But one story popped up between the book and the movie – involving the wife of the current U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Dr. Sharon Malone already had a connection to black history – it was her sister Vivian Malone who was one of the fist black students to integrate the University of Alabama in 1963. But her involvement in the film came after working with her daughter on a seven grade history project on ancestry.

“I said, ‘Wow, an ancestry project,’” she recalls. “I had no idea much beyond my parents. And my parents were very old — my father was born in 1893, and my mother was born in 1914. And I started it then and left it.”

Just about as far as one could go was the first census in Alabama in 1870, she says. Then she saw Blackmon speak at a conference her friend was throwing in Atlanta.

“I was just electrified,” Malone says. “It made me go back and sort of reexamine my roots.

“At the time that I heard Doug, I had no idea that I was going to be specifically tied to this. I was just researching as mere personal history and as a Southerner because, if I don’t know this history, I can’t imagine that anybody else does. And so that’s sort of how that started this process.

“And the more I looked, the more I found out. There were many things that I thought that were unknowable that really were knowable.”

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