The Playlist

The obsessives' guide to contemporary cinema via film discussion, news, reviews, features, nostalgia, movie music, soundtracks, DVDs and more.

Interviews

'24' & 'Party Down' Movies Both Aiming For Late Spring/Early Summer Shoots

By Gabe Toro
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January 9, 2012 9:37 AM
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6 Comments

News

Like Jack Bauer wrapping a sleeper hold around his enemy and cooly whispering, "Don't fight it," there's been a certain inevitability to a "24" movie. Based on the hit Bush-era Fox show, the real-time adventures of CTU superagent Bauer has been bound for the big-screen based on the lives and deaths he's experienced, the terrorists he's killed, and the helicopters he's downed. Television, after all, is too small a medium for this man's excellence in the field of counter-terrorism. Do you really need to see the season three episode where it takes him an hour to kick a heroin addiction? You should.

By Oliver Lyttelton
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September 11, 2011 7:15 AM
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4 Comments

Exclusive: Many a prematurely-canceled TV show lives on in hope of resurrection on the big-screen. This is partly due to the success of "Star Trek," originally a low-rated three-season TV show that became Paramount's biggest franchise after the success of "Star Wars". Very occasionally, it happens; Joss Whedon's cult sci-fi TV show "Firefly," became the Universal movie "Serenity," although the film didn't catch on with many beyond fans. But more often, there's a lot of talk, but very little action -- even Annyong's agent has given up hope of an "Arrested Development" movie ever happening.

By Sam Price
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June 30, 2011 2:15 AM
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2 Comments

“Party Down”, comedy fans may remember, was the superlative, achingly brilliant Starz original series that got shitcanned by former HBO head honco Chris Albrecht so the network could focus on, er, attractive naked people wrestling in ancient times (“Spartacus: Blood and Sand”) and attractive naked people wrestling in medieval times (“Camelot”). It was also one of the best-observed ensemble comedies in recent memory and boasted a cast (Adam Scott, Lizzy Caplan, Jane Lynch, Ryan Hansen, Martin Starr, Ken Marino and Megan Mullally) that launched a thousand fan letters after the series was unjustly wrenched screens a couple of years ago. Since its cancellation, though, we’ve been teased with piecemeal announcements from the show’s creative team that “Party Down” could rise again, phoenix-like, from the ashes as a feature-length movie. This latest one comes from co-creator Rob Thomas who, speaking to a crowd at a marathon viewing session of the show’s entire run at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, had a lot to say about the show’s afterlife:

By Oliver Lyttelton
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May 25, 2011 10:00 AM
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16 Comments

We don't cover much television here at The Playlist. Generally speaking, the magic of sitting in a dark room with a big-ass screen trumps the home experience every time. But TV news is starting to bleed across, thanks to the reams of big-screen stars, writers and directors who are moving into long-form TV work, and the line in terms of the product is starting to blur as well: "Mildred Pierce," for instance, barely qualifies as television, aside from its length, and its premiere airing on HBO. It was a highly cinematic experience, and arguably the best film of the year so far.

By Kevin Jagernauth
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April 27, 2011 3:30 AM
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1 Comment

Exclusive: Oh, "Party Down." Yet another brilliant comedy that shone for a brief moment before getting canceled; ever since going off the air the witty, hilarious sitcom has slowly gained a new audience who are now just catching up with it on DVD. Created and written by John Enbom, Rob Thomas, Dan Etheridge and Paul Rudd, "Party Down" featured an amazing ensemble cast of Adam Scott, Ken Marino, Jane Lynch, Jennifer Coolidge, Megan Mullally, Ryan Hansen, Martin Starr and Lizzy Caplan, and chronicled the travails of an L.A. based catering company made up of actors and writers hoping to make it big, including one who already had a brief taste of the spotlight. The clever concept found the characters catering a different party each episode while the scripts slowly developed the arcs over the course of a season. It was definitely one of the best written shows on television at the time but alas, the ratings were poor and eventually the folks over at Starz gave it the axe.

By Kevin Jagernauth
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April 21, 2011 2:15 AM
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18 Comments

First, don't get it wrong. We absolutely loved every second of "Party Down" during it's all too brief run on Starz. If you haven't seen the show, you have no idea what you're missing. Featuring an amazing ensemble of Adam Scott, Ken Marino, Jane Lynch, Jennifer Coolidge, Megan Mullally, Ryan Hansen, Martin Starr and Lizzy Caplan, the show chronicled the travails of an L.A. based catering company made up of actors and writers hoping to make it big, including one who had already had a brief taste of the spotlight. Created and written by John Enbom, Rob Thomas, Dan Etheridge, and Paul Rudd the show was both hilarious and tender, perfectly encapsulating just how hard, surreal and sometimes outright absurd it is to be chasing your dream while working a shit job. Scott toplined the show as Henry, an actor who tasted fame thanks to a beer commercial he'd rather never talk about again. His love interest was Caplan's Casey, a comedienne seemingly stuck in endless auditions. Led by their boss Ron, played to gung-ho perfection by Marino, each episode found the crew at a new theme party and allowed the ensemble -- including the airhead pretty boy Kyle (a hilarious Hansen), the geek Roman (Starr) and the rest of the crew to build out their stories. And the while show is now gone and the cast has moved on, movie talk has begun to creep up.