Al Pacino as Jack Kevorkian

Al Pacino has never been better. Not in Scent of a Woman, which won him an Oscar (that award should have gone to Denzel Washington for Malcolm X, but that's a conversation for another time). Not in Dick Tracy. or Dog Day Afternoon. Or even The Godfather.

His work in You Don't Know Jack is genius. He doesn't imitate the euthanasia activist (and uber-narcissist) Jack Kevorkian. He channels him. It's eerie how spot-on this performance is. Makes Jamie Foxx's Ray performance look like child's play.

The closest comparison would be Helen Mirren in The Queen. Or Drew Barrymore in Grey Gardens. Performances that ring so true the actor and the individual are fused in my mind.

I foresee an Emmy nod, if not win, for Pacino.

Some Color on 'Masterpiece'

Masterpiece Theatre has been something of a one-note series for as long as I could remember: screen adaptations of novels about white people in England. Some variety of Dickens or Austen.

The new adaptation of Andrea Levy's Small Island infuses the Sunday night dramatic program with new life. I've watched Masterpiece Theatre since elementary school. It's good to see black folks in principle roles. Let's hope this isn't the last time.

Synopsis from the PBS site: Born into a broken home and an impoverished life in Jamaica, Hortense (Naomie Harris) longs for a fulfilling life in England; one with a fine house and a doorbell. The door of opportunity swings open, and Hortense is married and on her way to the promised land of post-war Britain. Steadfast dreams are soon tested by hard realities as Hortense and her husband Gilbert (David Oyelowo) face racism and poverty. In the small-minded country, their only saving grace is Queenie (Ruth Wilson, Jane Eyre). But Queenie faces her own disillusionment, married to the kind but dull Bernard (Benedict Cumberbatch, The Last Enemy). Bonded by high hopes and broken dreams, these four lives fuse together in a powerful and hopeful story of love and fulfillment. Small Island is based on the award-winning, bestselling novel by Andrea Levy.

First Look: Deathly Hallows

Because I didn't care much for the the film adaptation, I never bothered removing the cellophane from the Half-Blood Prince DVD I purchased some time ago. So I was surprised to learn while browsing Mugglenet.com that Warner Brothers hid a sneak peak of the Deathly Hallows in the DVD extras. The teaser looks cool. But, as we learned from Half Blood Prince, a good trailer does not a good movie make. Check it out:

Treme: Some Words

For reasons that may be obvious to some of my friends, I'll reserve the full weight of my opinion when writing about Treme, David Simon's new HBO series.

Simon brought us The Corner and The Wire, the latter being television's most perfect dramatic series -- ever. The Corner was almost as good, each drawing from Simon's time as a beat reporter in Baltimore.

Treme ain't The Corner, and Treme ain't The Wire.

Both of those shows hooked me immediately. The characters were flesh-and-blood, full-bodied people with stories that seemed to matter.

Don't get me wrong: Some of Treme is good. Khandi Alexander (The Corner) is excellent as the bar owner Ladonna Batiste-Williams; same goes for Rob Brown (The Express, Stop-Loss) who plays Delmond Lambreaux, a trumpet player who returns to New Orleans only because his father (a somewhat disappointing Clarke Peters from The Wire) is a loon who's so hell bent on relaunching his defunct Mardi Gras troop he's living in a run-down building that he doesn't own.

I still don't know what to make of Treme. The storylines are connected only by the location. And while I don't think a show based in post-Katrina New Orleans is an impossibility, I think the idea needs to be secondary to the story, to the lives of the people being brought to screen.

Take, for example, Mad Men. The setting is interesting - ad agency in 1960s America. But the show's life-blood are those fractured relationships and raw emotions.

More can be said about this, but I'll leave it there. I'm hoping things start to come together in the next couple of episodes.

Review: Clash of the Titanss

The critics may have been underwhelmed, but Clash of the Titans kicked major ass. All you gotta know about this movie is this: Gods, monsters, sandals, maidens, swords, Voldemort as Hades and the Kraken!

Plot Problems in Oliver Stone's New Wall Street

So, I just saw this trailer for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Oliver Stone's much-belated follow-up to the 1987 classic, Wall Street. Michael Douglas is back as Gordon Gekko. This time, the upstart protege who falls victim to the machinations of Mr. Gekko is Shia LeBeouf, playing a guy who is engaged to Gekko's daughter, Winnie (Carey Mulligan). Funny thing about this plot line: In the original Wall Street, Gordon Gekko didn't have a daughter. He had a son named Rudy (played by Sean Stone). Unless that little boy had a sex change (hell, this is 2010) or Mulligan's playing a bastard child of a mistress (like maybe Daryl Hannah's character Darien), this storyline makes no sense.

Why I Love Reality TV: What Chilli Wants

Check out this trailer for the new VH1 series, What Chilli Wants. It's celebreality at its finest.

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