Behind the Candelabra: Michael Douglas and Matt Damon on how the clothes helped make them the men

Behind the Candelabra: Michael Douglas and Matt Damon on how the clothes helped make them the men

For the first time in his 25-year film career, Matt Damon says that — courtesy of Behind the Candelabra’s over-the-top nature — he finally embraced wardrobe fittings. Fittings that had him donning everything from a bespangled, bare-cheeked thong to a periwinkle chauffeur getup with matching silver boots to a white-and-turquoise lounge set that would look equally at home on a grandma at the grocery. “I loved it,” Damon says proudly of his country-bumpkin-goes-Hollywood progression. “More than any other movie I’ve been on, actually, the wardrobe and the hair and the makeup really made a difference — and the props, all [...]

Family Tree: HBO brings Christopher Guest mockumentary style to TV

Family Tree: HBO brings Christopher Guest mockumentary style to TV

Family Tree Sundays beginning May 12 HBO, 10:30pm ET The Christopher Guest troupe of actors from films like Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and For Your Consideration seem like a little family all their own. So it’s only appropriate that they finally got around to making a show about a family. With Family Tree, Guest brings his celebrated improv mockumentary style to HBO, along with actors such as Michael McKean, Fred Willard, Bob Balaban and Ed Begley Jr., in a story about 30-year-old Tom Chadwick (Chris O’Dowd), a British man who has recently lost his job and his girlfriend. [...]

Behind the Candelabra: Steven Soderbergh, Michael Douglas and Matt Damon on the year’s most talked-about telefilm

Behind the Candelabra: Steven Soderbergh, Michael Douglas and Matt Damon on the year’s most talked-about telefilm

Depending on how you look at it, the genesis for Behind the Candelabra, HBO’s extravagant and surprisingly emotional Liberace biopic, happened nearly 14 years ago — or more than 40. The film’s director, Steven Soderbergh, 50, says he watched the beloved pianist and “World’s Greatest Showman” with his parents as a kid and recognized that this was no ordinary entertainer. Revisiting those old clips years later, Soderbergh knew his opinion hadn’t changed a bit. By then, he was filming his 2000 Oscar-winning smash Traffic with Michael Douglas. “I was in the middle of playing the drug czar and Steven said, [...]

Louis C.K.: Oh My God shows HBO audiences the comic’s more confident side

Louis C.K.: Oh My God shows HBO audiences the comic’s more confident side

Louis C.K.: Oh My God Saturday, April 13 HBO, 10pm ET/PT To say Louis C.K. has been on a roll is an understatement. The past few years have seen the once-journeyman comic strike it big with a series of highly successful standup specials and a series on FX that has become a bona fide TV revelation. But with the announcement that Louie won’t return until 2014, the best rabid Louis C.K. fans (I’ll unapologetically count myself in that number) have to look forward to is an entirely new hour of standup. Oh My God probably isn’t his best hour — [...]

HBO’s “VICE” goes where other newsmagazines won’t

HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher has long been a panacea for grownups bored by traditional newscasts. Now the network reinvents the newsmagazine with VICE (premiering Friday, April 5, at 11pm ET), a no-holds-barred weekly series for a tech-saturated generation accustomed to having the world in its pocket. Created by the international youth-oriented media conglomerate also named VICE and executive-produced by Maher, VICE takes viewers on a harrowing — and sometimes hilarious — journey to the far corners of the globe, in search of jaw-dropping tales untouched by mainstream news outlets. The series is cohosted by VICE founder Shane Smith, [...]

“Game of Thrones” Season 3 date, time, TV channel, preview and more!

“Game of Thrones” Season 3 date, time, TV channel, preview and more!

Game of Thrones, Season 3 Sunday, March 31 HBO, 9pm ET Well, I cut it a bit close this time. I make it a personal goal to stay ahead of HBO’s beyond-awesome fantasy series Game of Thrones by making sure I’ve read the book in George R.R. Martin’s beyond-awesome fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire that the upcoming season is based on. A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings went pretty smoothly, and I was able to await the premieres of each season contentedly, but A Storm of Swords nearly beat me. The sucker is 1,128 [...]

HBO’s Phil Spector movie showcases Al Pacino and Helen Mirren

HBO’s Phil Spector movie showcases Al Pacino and Helen Mirren

The HBO original movie Phil Spector — a fictional account written by playwright David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross) — explores the relationship between Phil Spector (Al Pacino) and defense attorney Linda Kenney Baden (Helen Mirren), who represented Spector during his 2007 trial for the killing of actress Lana Clarkson in 2003. Mamet examines the complicated personality that Phil Spector embodies: a brilliant but eccentric music producer who revolutionized pop music in the 1960s, and who in the years leading up to the murder trial lived as a virtual recluse in a mock castle in suburban Los Angeles. Phil Spector premieres Sunday, [...]

“Parade’s End”: HBO miniseries showcases World War I’s effect on British society

“Parade’s End”: HBO miniseries showcases World War I’s effect on British society

Parade’s End airs over three nights on HBO, Feb. 26-28. Parade’s End HBO Part 1: Feb. 26, 9pm Part 2: Feb. 26, 10:05pm Part 3: Feb. 27, 9pm Part 4: Feb. 28, 10:05pm Part 5: Feb. 28, 9pm What is it that’s so fascinating about pre-World War I Britain? Perhaps it’s the florid costumes, such pleasing reminders of a bygone era. Or the delicious accents, delivered through stiff upper lips bearing exquisite emotional repression. Then there’s the poignancy of seeing one way of life, so stately and mannered, being rudely and completely demolished by war and social change, giving way [...]

“Mea Maxima Culpa” documentary a shattering look at church’s silence over priest sex abuse

“Mea Maxima Culpa” documentary a shattering look at church’s silence over priest sex abuse

Sexual abuse of a child is one of the most heinous crimes imaginable. When that act is committed in the supposedly “safe” environment of a school or a church, and by an authority to whom the safety of the child has been entrusted, it becomes an even greater betrayal of the trust that should exist between adults and children. Further, when acts are committed upon children who are not only vulnerable to exploitation because of their age but also because they have a physical impairment, then those acts become truly enraging and saddening. Such acts are the subject of Oscar [...]

Manny Pacquiao knocked out again Saturday on HBO

Manny Pacquiao knocked out again Saturday on HBO

See Manny Pacquiao knocked out again Saturday, Dec. 15, as HBO replays the Pacquiao-Marquez IV boxing match. So maybe you didn’t have $60 just lying around last Saturday to order the Manny Pacquiao vs. Juan Manuel Marquez IV Pay-Per-View last Saturday. Fortunately, HBO will reair the match on Saturday, Dec. 15, at 9:30pm ET/PT, so you can see Pac-man eat the canvas. Here’s the press release from HBO: (GIF from Deadspin) HBO SPORTS® PRESENTS THE REPLAY MANNY PACQUIAO VS. JUAN MANUEL MARQUEZ 4, SATURDAY, DEC. 15 It’s a special edition of WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP BOXING® when HBO Sports presents MANNY PACQUIAO [...]