Flaming Screens Meets GI Joe

Here, a la his old "Out at the Movies" reviews on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, is Frank DeCaro's latest "Flaming Screens" take on the latest potential blockbuster, GI Joe: Retaliation.

Hey, fans of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart!  Believe it or not, it's been 10 years since Frank DeCaro was last "Out at the Movies," reviewing the weekend's hottest films.  Now, Frank is back at the multiplex with his own new web series, "Flaming Screens."

Here is Frank's first foray, his review of this weekend's big box office hit, Oz the Great and Powerful:

Cleveland Rewrites Miami, and "Americain," History

This week, if you've tuned in to The View, or The Joy Behar Show, or The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, or... hell, if you've been conscious, you've probably seen one of the ladies of TVLand's promising new original sitcom, Hot In Cleveland, out on the talk show circuit.

The show, TVLand's first original comedy, has an impressive pedigree: it was created by Suzanne Martin, who once worked on Frasier, and executive produced by Sean Hayes, whom we all love from one of my favorite comedies ever, Will & Grace. And its cast hails from long-running shows we all have loved: Valerie Bertinelli from One Day at a Time, Wendie Malick from Dream On and Just Shoot Me, and Jane Leeves, also from Frasier.

But there are other, less obvious sitcom antecedents for Hot In Cleveland, which today received a quite positive review from the hard-to-impress New York Times. Think about it: four women "of a certain age," living together -- Betty White among them. Yes, although the ladies of Cleveland may at first seem younger than Betty, Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan and Estelle Getty were in 1985, this just could be this generation's Golden Girls.

Fans have been asking for decades different versions of the question: why are there no comedies like The Golden Girls anymore? Why no comedies about older women? Why no decent network programming on a Saturday night? Why can't they just remake The Golden Girls? Hell, why can't the networks seem to launch very many quality comedies at all anymore? (It's telling that it's taking a cable network to take a chance with these 4 gals in their 40s and beyond.)

I've seen parts of the pilot episode, and the four Cleveland gals are sassy like the Girls -- and Betty is in as fine shape as ever. Yes, of course, they seem much younger and hotter than the Girls ever were -- and that's kind of the generational point. When The Golden Girls launched in 1985, its oldest actress, Betty, was 63, and its youngest, Rue, was not yet 51. And the show featured a character, Sophia, who was in her 80s, even if the actress playing her, Estelle, was in real life much younger.

Demographically, Hot in Cleveland isn't much different. Wendie will turn 60 this December. Its youngest star, Jane, is 49. (Valerie just turned 50.) And it also features a character in her 80s, this time played by a real-life 88-year-old dynamo, Betty.

I think that if Hot in Cleveland is a hit, some day academics will compare it to The Golden Girls, and talk about the shows together show "disenfranchised" women in two different generations. Back then, the Girls were considered old, and banded together to save on expenses, and to guarantee healthcare as they aged. The Hot in Cleveland girls are, in the pilot, women who struggle to stay young in competitive L.A., but by any other city's standard -- namely, Cleveland's -- are still beautiful and desirable. And so, when the four ladies have an emergency stopover in that Ohio city, instead of continuing on their Paris getaway, they decided to stay where they feel desired. Isn't that the 21st Century take on the same theme?

By the way, as long as I'm going on about antecedents, I think it's interesting to note that back in 1993, Valerie Bertinelli headlined another, now-forgotten sitcom, Cafe Americain -- in which her character Holly, also seemingly lost in life, heads for Paris. In that show, there was no airline stopover; Holly made it to Paris, worked in the titular expatriate cafe, and found a love interest in writer Marcel (Maurice Godin.)

So in my trivia-filled mind, I kind of consider Hot in Cleveland to be that show's sequel series, allowing Valerie to find love this time closer to home where we want her. (But Hot in Cleveland writers: I wouldn't mind a cameo from Sofia Milos as model Fabiana Borreli, or the fabulous Jodi Long as the deposed dictator's wife, Madame Ybarra. N'est-ce pas?)

Hot in Cleveland

debuts tonight, June 16

10 PM Eastern/Pacific

TV Land

New Year, New Show. Wake Up, World!

In late 2007, Daily Show with Jon Stewart co-creator Lizz Winstead, along with her "Shoot The Messenger" troupe of New York's best comic writers and performers, mounted Wake Up, World, a live stage show ostensibly bringing you America's first six-hour morning talkfest. (I was honored when the Shoot The Messenger people brought me on board, too, to help with publicity, and was thrilled to hear the few jokes I did contribute coming out of the mouths of these hilarious performers.)

The show became a downtown sensation, and in its one-year-plus run at the Green Room Theater on Bleecker St. (where the troupe just did a fabulous reunion Christmas performance a few weeks back), attracted high-profile guests like Rachel Maddow, Susie Essman, Roseanne, Sarah Silverman, Mo Rocca, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Kate Clinton, Michael Stipe, Ed Schultz, and Ed Begley, Jr.

Following the regular run of the show, Winstead and Co. shot a pilot for a TV version of Wake Up, World, which shows us not only the on-air antics of vapid hosts Hope Jean Paul (Winstead) and the Bryant Gumbel-esque Davis Miles (comic Baron Vaughn) and buxom newsreader Emily Rackcheck (Darbi Worley), but also the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of its crew and network execs. Think The Today Show meets The Colbert Report meets The Larry Sanders Show.

The pilot is available in four parts on youtube; the link to the first part is below. For the new year, I encourage you to check out Wake Up, World, and pass it around!

Wake Up World

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See Lauren Weedman's Bust in NYC

You probably remember her from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and may even have seen her recently in a guest role on United States of Tara. Lauren Weedman is one of the funniest people I've ever had the pleasure of seeing in person -- and now, she brings her new show Bust to NYC.

Here's the show's description:

Bust goes behind bars and into the echoing chambers of the punishing psyche of former Daily Show correspondent Lauren Weedman. Juggling (sometimes) paying acting jobs and her volunteer gig in the L.A. County Jail, Lauren’s gotten an in-depth look at the L.A. penal system so that you don’t need to! Our heroine brings her humor, energy and biting self-indictment to this intelligent and funny portrayal of incarcerated women and the mixed motives that brought Lauren to their door. Directed by Allison Narver.

The show is at the Ars Nova theater at 8 PM on July 23. I'm totally going! For tickets, click here.

Introducing... The Confirmed Bachelors

Introducing... Frank DeCaro of Sirius XM Radio and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in...

The Confirmed Bachelors!