When TNT's 'Lady Law' knocks, open the door! HBB faves The Closer and Rizzoli & Isles return tonight to amuse and delight us -and boy do we need it!

When TNT's 'Lady Law' knocks, open the door! HBB faves The Closer and Rizzoli & Isles return tonight to amuse and delight us -and boy do we need it!

The Closer's 7th season continues tonight with the first of the five last episodes in the series on TNT tonight at 9 p.m., as we begin to suffer premature Kyra Sedgwick withdrawal.

"Thank you."

The repeat is at 11 p.m.

As most of you who follow the show probably know by now, TNT intends to spin-off Mary McDonnell's character of Capt. Sharon Raydor in their upcoming new series "Major Crimes."

As of now, I'm not quite sure when that will air, as they may wish to put it on right before the London 2012 Olympics airs late next summer on NBC's myriad outlets, and then come back in the fall. That's what I'd do if I was programming the network.

Season 2 of Rizzoli & Isles – returns tonight at 10 p.m. as "basic cable’s most-watched drama" with longtime Hallandale Beach Blog favorites Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander as crime-solving sleuths for the Boston Police Department, with lovely Sasha as the drop-dead gorgeous and brainy forensics genius, below, to Angie's "Old School" moxie-filled detective.

Screen grab of Sasha Alexander by South Beach Hoosier.

To quote myself, "Love, Love, Love them!"

Their rapport is spot-on fabulous!

The show repeats at Midnight and then on Tuesday at 11 p.m.

FYI: Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander will be tweeting during tonight's new episode! See http://twitter.com/#!/RizzoliIslesTNT for more details, or ask a question directly to them @Angie_Harmon & @SashaAlexander1.

Need to catch up, see the Rizzoli & Isles - Season 2 Mid-Season Rewind

http://youtu.be/NAbqO02-ofU

If you haven't already heard, TNT is already hard at work producing a drama for next summer called "Perception,"starring Eric McCormack, Rachael Leigh Cook, Arjay Smith and Hallandale Beach Blog fave Kelly Rowan, who so famously played Kirsten, USA's Covert Affairs' Peter Gallagher's on-screen wife in The O.C., a show I loved and never missed because of the clever and knowing dialogue.

And seriously, Rachel Bilson dressed-up as Wonder Woman to surprise Seth?

Both brilliant AND priceless!

Rachel Bilson as Wonder Woman in Fox-TV's "The O.C."

http://youtu.be/SnZ70Q4SN2g

According to TNT's official press release -I'm on their mailing list and a member of their Inner Circle- Perception centers on McCormack as "an eccentric neuroscientist who helps solve complex criminal cases."

In Perception, McCormack plays Dr. Daniel Pierce, a neuroscientist and professor recruited to help the federal government crack difficult cases. His intimate knowledge of human behavior and masterful understanding of the mind give him an extraordinary ability to read people, but his eccentric view of the world and less-than-stellar social skills can often interfere with his work.

When I last saw McCormack on TV it was in one of the all-time classic episodes of USA's Monk, "Mr. Monk's 100th Case," as a TV host profiling Adrian's eccentric method of crime-solving. That episode was on IOn TV recently.

Hmm-m.. eccentric? Sounds familiar, no?

My last two post on these two shows were:

1.) July 12, 2010, Sasha Alexander fans rejoice! Sasha and Angie Harmon in Rizzoli & Isles finally premieres tonight on TNT at 10 pm and 12:05 a.m. Eastern, http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/sasha-alexander-fans-rejoice-sasha-and.html

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2.) JULY 11, 2011, Oh, how I've missed you! Sasha Alexander & Angie Harmon's Rizzoli & Isles, and Kyra Sedgwick & Co.'s The Closer are back to delight us again tonight!

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/oh-how-ive-missed-you-sasha-alexander.html

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TNT's YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/tntweknowdrama

TNT webspage for The Closer:

http://www.tnt.tv/series/closer/

The Closer YouTube Channel:

http://www.youtube.com/show/thecloser

TNT's webpage for Rizzoli & Isles

http://www.tnt.tv/series/rizzoliandisles/

Rizzoli & Isles YouTube Channel:

http://www.youtube.com/show/rizzoliandisles

TNT's YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/tntweknowdrama

http://twitter.com/#!/Angie_Harmon

http://twitter.com/#!/SashaAlexander1

Oh, how I've missed you! Sasha Alexander & Angie Harmon's Rizzoli & Isles, and Kyra Sedgwick & Co.'s The Closer are back to delight us again tonight!

TV Guide magazine video: Rizzoli & Isles secrets! Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander tell all!

http://youtu.be/hFVAgigLbzo

Two of my favorite TV shows, TNT's Rizzoli & Isles and The Closer are FINALLY back tonight after what seems like forever. Or years.

Well, that is, it would seem like years if I didn't habitually watch the repeats, with Rizzoli & Isles having been run on TNT the past few weeks late night to remind people why it was the second-highest ranking cable TV show debut ever when it aired last year.

Watching Sasha Alexander & Angie Harmon's smart and knowing banter and sarcasm, and Kyra Sedgwick's spot-on quirky-meets-savvy-genius leading a team of LAPD detectives to solve an inexplicable mystery is always a treat for me.

They are two of the few TV shows that I never miss or watch while on the computer, since so much of what is conveyed on them is thru facial cues, not unlike some of the best moments of MASH.

You completely miss that element of familiarity if you're on the computer.

Above, a screenshot I took of Season One's finale which was repeated last week on TNT, where Maura (Sasha Alexander, right) has come over to the apt. of Jane (Angie Harmon) to help watch over her, after a perilous situation at the police station where they were held hostage. A few seconds after this scene, where Jane tried to tell Maura how to shoot after Maura has gone over the specs, the following dialogue occurs:

Laura (to Jane) while pointing the gun towards an imaginary miscreant: "Jane, do I look like a bad ass?"

Jane (responding and chuckling while walking to the kitchen):

"Yeah, you look like a bad ass."

How can you not love a show where they say that?

TNT video: Sasha Alexander gives us a tour of the new Season Two sets geared around her character, Maura Isles

http://www.tnt.tv/dramavision/index.jsp?oid=104709&eref=sharethisUrl

TNT video:Go behind the scenes of an intense sequence on the set of Rizzoli & Isles and see how the cast train to make the action as realistic as possible.

http://www.tnt.tv/dramavision/index.jsp?oid=104711&eref=sharethisUrl

See more interesting videos at the official homepage as Season Two begins tonight at 10 p.m.:

http://www.tnt.tv/series/rizzoliandisles/

The season premiere of Rizzoli & Isles repeats Tuesday night at 8 p.m.

The seventh year of The Closer begins tonight at 9 p.m. and like everyone else, I'm eager to see what the repercussions are of Brenda's deliberate decision to drop-off a murdering gang-banger back in the 'hood where everyone knows that he robbed and killed someone at a neighborhood store that was off-limits for the warring gangs.
Earlier, he had conned Brenda and her Major Case Squad of detectives back at the station in a case involving three dead soldiers back from the war outside a night club, including his twin brother.
He got a plea deal for his cooperation, but afterwards, he revealed that he was the one who pulled the trigger at the store.

TNT video: Watch an exclusive overview of Season 7 of The Closer featuring interviews with cast and crew.

http://www.tnt.tv/dramavision/index.jsp?oid=104416&eref=sharethisUrl

More behind-the-scenes videos at The Closer homepage:

http://www.tnt.tv/series/closer/

Losing our cultural & literary heritage, bit-by-bit: Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn

I have a ton of material to drop here over the next ten days or so that I couldn't post when it originally happened or occurred to me, due to some recent computer problems, so if some of this seems a bit old, it can't be helped.

Still, I suspect that if you're one of my usual discerning readers, you'll still appreciate that the facts are what is most important, not when you found out about it.

Today, much later than I originally planned, I'm initiating a new recurring feature on this blog that I believe will largely speak for itself, though I will likely have some comments anyway: "Losing our cultural & literary heritage, bit-by-bit."

Everything else being equal, the feature will be about the very idea that some important aspects of our collective history and culture are continually being miscast, misinterpreted or "misremembered," to use the word that Roger Clemens used so famously.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3243636

Sometimes that happens by accident or mistake, of course, but at other times, when I think it's being done intentionally and disingenuously to advance a particular point of view, especially a political one, I'll write here about why I think someone's mendaciously trying to blur the facts that we should all be familiar with.
At least, those of us paying attention to what's going on around us -and history.

And do I ever have a lot of ammunition for this new feature, too, a lot of it political. I welcome suggestions from readers who want more people to know what they've discovered to their dismay.

In this particular case today, how does the New York Times forget something so important to our understanding about Huck Finn, since Widow Douglas was one of the few people in the story whose opinion of him actually mattered to Huck?

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/pageoneplus/corrections.html

New York Times
Corrections
September 23, 2010

THE ARTS

A critic’s notebook on Saturday about an exhibition on Mark Twain at the Morgan Library & Museum, and the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, misidentified the home in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” where Huck felt discomfort. It was Widow Douglas’s — not Aunt Polly’s, where Tom Sawyer lived.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/books/18twain.html

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"My Huckleberry friend..."

Only one of the greatest songs ever: Moon River, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, music by Henry Mancini.
Appearing in one of my favorite films: Breakfast at Tiffany's, which I've seen dozens of times.
Sung by one of my favorite actresses: Audrey Hepburn, whose every film I've seen at least once, and many of them, dozens of times, like my personal favorite, Funny Face, with Fred Astaire.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050419/


Breakfast at Tiffany's
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOByH_iOn88



When Moon River came on during a crucial character development scene in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July, when Tom Cruise's Ron Kovic was running in the rain to be at the high school prom with Kyra Segdwick's Donna, I actually started crying in the movie theater. (For the record, at an absolutely jammed Saturday afternoon performance at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C., about the tenth row, right in the middle.)
It was movie magic -perfect!
Actual genius!

That great scene I've described is in the first video clip below.

Born on The Fourth of July
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCe4Uym0pfU


That's the thing about film director and political provocateur Oliver Stone.
He really, really, really knows how to manipulate you -even when you know he is.
But his politics aside, there's no denying his genius talent.

That's Stone at 4:58 in the video above as the reporter interviewing the general about how he thinks the Americans will do in Vietnam.
Stone won the Academy Award for Best Directing for the film, which also earned Tom Cruise an Oscar Best Acting nomination, and deservedly so for both of them.
It's a classic piece of film-making that remains gripping.

Here's the classic version of Moon River that you hear in both films.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xNgBLCfmpg


And here's the thing: I thought about ALL of this in the first few seconds after I saw that New York Times correction in the newspaper, while sipping my coffee over at Panera Bread.
That's how my mind works.