Architecture –Walter Hood
Art – Vik Muniz
Design – Emily Pilloton
Fashion – Prabel Gurung
Film – Davis Guggenhim (An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for Superman)
Food – Grant Achatz
Giving – Blake Mcoskie
Music – Janelle Monáe
New Media – Dennis Crowley & Naveen Selvadural (foursquare)
Theatre – Lily Rabe
Writing – Nicole Krauss

Tune into this documentary to find out just why these twelve artists were labeled as “trailblazers” in the cultural world.

There are two really great aspects of Royal Pains that for the most part are unexpected. One is some really shocking cliffhangers, and the other is the very subtle relationships that are shown between all the important characters on the show. Recently I had a chance to take part in a conference call with star Mark Feuerstein, and these aspects played heavily not just in my questions, but within those of the others participating in the call as well.

The season one cliffhanger, being the very first, took everyone by surprise. Feuerstein’s character, Hank, found out that his brother, Evan (Paulo Costanzo), had not only been in contact with their estranged father, but had also lent him a large sum of money from their company, HankMed, money that their father subsequently disappeared with. This led to the addition of the usually very warm Henry Winkler to the series, playing a guy who on the surface seemed like quite a jerk.

Mark talked about the decision to bring Henry onto the show as his and Evan’s father, and said he was asked by the writers and executive producer what he would like to see in season two. He allowed that Hank is seen as such a perfect guy, but he wanted to see him edged up a bit, and this is how Henry’s character of Eddy came to be.

Mark finds the casting of Henry to be brilliant, and enjoys that his character was allowed to show “rage and adolescent anger” that was never resolved because Eddy had left the family. He sees the show as one about second chances, as Hank got a second chance at being a doctor out there in the Hamptons, and now his dad is getting a second chance at being Hank and Evan’s dad.

Of course this brings up the mid-season finale from last summer. Viewers saw that Eddy wasn’t just there to repair that relationship with his boys, but was also there to gather intel on Boris for the FBI. The truth behind all this was beginning to spill out as Eddy had a sudden heart attack, leaving the questions of if he was going to live or die, and “if he lives, will we kill him?”

Speaking about Henry specifically, Mark noted that he’s always present and always listening as an actor, and only wants everyone to do their best work they can do. He’s not only concerned about himself, but his scene partners as well.

In the first episode they shot in season two, when Eddy shows up at this party that a resentful Hank is attending, the line in the script is supposed to be, “I hope that soon you will be able to trust me.” When the camera was on Mark, and not on Henry, Henry changed line to, “Hank, I love you,” getting a more vulnerable and expected reaction from Mark in the scene.

Mark is just as fond of Paulo, saying their relationship in life is not dissimilar to their relationship onscreen. “He is as impetuous, impulsive, brilliant, spontaneous, and creative as the character of Evan, if not more so.” They have a great time together, as Mark explains that while they’re in the makeup trailer together, Paulo will be imitating about seventeen different characters from the crew or people who have been visiting the set. He’s grown up so much in these seasons, and “to watch him step into manhood as an actor and as Evan … is such a pleasure for me as an older brother would be.”

Since Mark allowed earlier that the writers and executive producer asked for his input, and it led to the character of Eddy being added, I asked what relationships Mark would like to see explored more in season three. He feels a little greedy asking for more, but if he has to, he would only ask to reach an even deeper level in the relationships they’re currently exploring. He’d like to see Hank and Evan perhaps going against their brotherly code even more than they did when Evan brought Eddy back into the picture. Mark is fascinated to see how their relationship will be affected by whatever happens with their dad, and whether he is allowed to stay there or has to go away to jail.

There’s also Divya’s relationship and whether she will have to move away with Raj, move to Europe, or stay where she is. He’d also love to see his dynamic with Boris be taken to the next level, where they’re forced even more out of that landlord/tenant bond.

As far as the cliffhanger for the end of the second season, I asked Mark if he could tell me anything about it, and he did, and could have possibly divulged more than he should have. It’s quite possibly the only cliffhanger that could have outplayed Eddy coming back into his son’s lives and taking their money, and him dropping from a heart attack after he’s outed as a narc for the FBI.

Mark told me that “every single one of the dangling threads that were left open-ended at the end of the first season and last summer, “will be brought to fruition, will be carried out, will be answered in some way, and two fabulous great climactic questions will emerge.” The first question answered will be a three-parter, will Eddy live, and if he does, what will happen now that Boris has outed him, and will his two sons be in his corner. Played out through the season will the question of which brother is right, Evan for thinking Eddy had good intentions, or Hank “for thinking he was full of shit.”

Additionally, there’s the question of Evan and his relationship with Paige, which Mark considers “one of the most delicious, adorable, poignant relationships I have seen on television,” because of both the writing and playing of the characters. Another question that will be answered is if Divya (Reshma Shetty) will carry out the arranged marriage and wed Raj.

The last question we’ve been wondering about is if Hank is going to end up with Jill Casey (Jill Flint) or Emily Peck (Anastasia Griffith). This storyline will be tied up as well, but will perhaps leave even more questions. Hank will walk in on Jill and Emily in bed together! At this point I lost all my journalistic integrity and gasped in the middle of the interview. He calls it a wonderful moment for not just an actor like him, but a guy. He wants everyone to print that exactly as he told it, “even if it’s 500 web pages.”

Yet beyond that, Mark allowed that what he really loved about being on Royal Pains was being on the subway or at the airport, and fathers telling him they watch the show with their daughters, or mothers and daughters telling him they watch together as a family every Thursday. There’s “nothing that warms my heart more” for Mark, as he used to love watching TV with his family. He believes their show has a nice message, and that’s that “people deserve a second chance, and there’s no stronger bond than family.”

Catch the season premiere of Royal Pains on Jan. 20 on USA.

Ally Leeds (Emmanuelle Vaugler) loses her advertising job when the CEO of a candy company (Dean Cain) doesn’t like her ad pitch. Friend Tina (Sarah Thompson) gets her an interview with a friend of a friend, Samantha Ryland (Cynthia Gibb), who runs an advertising company, is the mother of two, and is really busy with her husband currently away opening up another branch of their office in another state.

The good news is Ally lands the job. The bad news is it’s not the job she was looking for. The job opening Samantha had wasn’t in her ad company, but as nanny to her kids. Ally needs the job so badly she doesn’t correct the mistake and decides she can use the opportunity to try and pitch her advertising ideas to Samantha. Instead, she finds her new employer doesn’t like to mix home and business and won’t listen to her ideas.

Ally gets along great with Samantha’s kids who appreciate having someone who isn’t as stringent as their mom around. Ally lets them eat fattening foods and lets them roll down the hill. Instead of doing a cold reading of Shakespeare, she lets them act it out in a role-playing situation. Basically, she makes everything fun.

Everything is going swimmingly until Ally runs into Justin (Richard Ruccolo), Samantha’s right-hand man. She leads him to believe she works for Samantha in the advertising company instead of in her house as a nanny. They fall for each other, and that’s where the trouble lies for her. She wants to help Justin with his ad pitch which is coincidentally for the same candy company Ally lost and her former company, and also wants to keep dating him.

Just like a Hallmark movie, Nanny for Christmas can be quite sappy. Also just like a Hallmark movie, the ending is quite predictable. But also just like a Hallmark movie, it lends easily to a Christmas theme. Samantha is undeniably the Scrooge who needs to gain some holiday spirit. The only question left at the end is how far her newfound spirit will take her.

Nanny for Christmas is available for purchase on DVD.

It’s not easy to create new Christmas movies, to be just as beloved as classics such as It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, etc. These are so beloved and if we don’t already own them on DVD, we search for them on the TV dial every December. Yet somehow, Will Ferrell has managed to create a Christmas film that gives us everything we look for in the genre and is on its way to becoming a classic and joining ranks with the others.

Buddy (Ferrell) was raised by elves, though biologically with his height, is definitely not an elf. He’s never told this until he’s an adult, and he leaves the North Pole to find his biological father, Walter (James Caan), who works as a children’s book publisher. Some of the simplest comedy can be the best comedy here, with Santa Clause being played by Ed Asner, and Buddy’s adoptive father being Bob Newhart. The site gag of Ferrell sitting on Newhart’s lap is stuff comedies are made of.

Landing in New York, Buddy finds Walter, only to have the man not listen to him and have him thrown out. The security guard mistakes his elf outfit for a costume and tells him he belongs at Gimbel’s department store. There he’s mistaken for an employee and gets stuck in the store overnight. He meets an employee, Jovie (Zooey Deschanel), who becomes his love interest as they bond over Christmas tunes.

Buddy thinks he’ll be seeing the real Santa in the store and is upset to find it’s not his friend Santa from back home. A fight breaks out and Buddy is arrested leaving Walter to have to bail him out. He gets a paternity test and finds out Buddy really is his son, and takes him home to meet his wife and son (Mary Steenburgen and Daniel Tay).

The naiveté of Buddy creates both the humor and the heart of the film. Buddy, having been raised by elves, just wants to play all day, really irritating Walter. He takes his newfound son to work with him, but Buddy still just wants to play, and insults a bigwig at the publishing company. He mistakes the small man for an elf. Walter is furious and sends him to work in the mailroom, where he thinks a coworker’s whiskey is his much beloved syrup and downs it, as the two have quite a party in the mailroom.

Walter becomes incensed with Buddy and tells him to leave, which he does, dejectedly, thereby creating the heart in the film. Buddy seems to be the only one around who sees Christmas for what it is and who doesn’t see it commercially at all. He becomes the only source of Christmas, and it eventually is left to him, his lady love, and his family, to help save the day.

Though it’s easy to take Elf at face value for just a Will Ferrell comedy, but it’s really so much more. It includes all those things we love most in the more traditional holiday classics. Buddy shows everyone that while it’s easy to take him as a joke, he’s just a simple guy who believes and loves deeply, although it’s mistaken for naiveté. Instead of being someone like George Bailey who needs someone to show him who great life is, he shows all the others.

For this Christmas, Elf is being re-released and is being shipped in a gift tin along with a sampler of the CD soundtrack, a holiday stocking, gift tags, and a magnetic picture frame. Special features on the DVD include deleted scenes, movie trivia, featurettes, games, a read-along, and karaoke. Elf Ultimate Collector’s Edition is available now in stores.

Get the inside scoop on WB movie & DVD releases! www.wbreelnews.com

Abigail Jensen (Debby Ryan) has been so looking forward to her big day, she’s been keeping a list of the sixteen things she wants on that magical day she turns 16. She has everything on there from getting a new car preferably in red to meeting her favorite teen idol to having the coolest wardrobe. She wakes up that day knowing it’s going to be a good day.

Someone has other plans it seems. A mysterious stranger pulls up in an exterminator truck and lets loose with a wasp that flies into the Jensen family’s attic and starts off an infestation that causes the family to have to flee their home. They won’t be able to make it back into the house, and as luck would have it, Abigail is stuck in her jammies and bunny slippers, with only her wishes chart that makes it out of the house. To make it even worse, her arch rival, Krista (Karissa Tynes), a neighbor with the same exact birthday, has just gotten a brand new car for her birthday.

While Abigail waits at the bus stop with her best friend, Jay (Jean-Luc Bilodeau), a delivery truck arrives with a package. The person driving the truck seems to be the same woman who delivered the wasp. Inside the package she delivers are a set of sixteen candles and a box of matches. Abigail makes a wish on the first lit candle, making a wish off her wishes list, and gets a hot red sports car delivered to her. Of course, the person driving the car is that same delivery woman, Celeste (Anna Mae Routledge).

At school, things start to go bad again for Abigail, but she uses her wishes to pull herself out of all her jams. She has Krista following her around, planning a cooler party, wearing cooler clothes, running for class president, etc., but every time, Abigail lights a candle, makes a wish, and Celeste appears to make everything better. It all goes swimmingly until she makes a wish that can be filed under the “be careful what you wish for” category. She wishes everyone would treat her as an adult, and soon wishes to give the car and everything else back to just go back to the person she was when she woke up that morning.

Every single young girl can identify with Abigail and her plight from beginning to end here. They all want the best clothes, a cool car, to be with a teen idol, and especially to be treated like an adult. In fact all kids dream of that. But there’s a reason why it takes eighteen years to become an adult, and that’s because it’s a slow process of learning how to be adult and to get used to the trappings that come along with it. To get that a few years too early without going through the whole process is just looking for trouble, and that’s what Abigail finds here.

16 Wishes it out now on Blue-Ray and DVD, and specially marked DVDs have a fun prize in each one, a set of special Silly Bandz. Just another thing that every young girl wants!

It’s not even Christmas yet, and Hallmark is rolling out the holiday made-for-TV movies. This weekend they’re rolling out the premiere of their newest movie The Night Before the Night Before Christmas starring Jennifer Beals. If you’re looking for a fun, cheap way for the family to spend a few hours the weekend before the mad holiday rush starts, this is it.

This is probably our best look at behind-the-scenes at the Santa Claus organization  since the bearded one fell off Tim Allen’s roof. This time, the held elf, Nigel (Jordan Prentice), makes a huge error and sends Santa Claus (R.D. Reid) off for his yearly duty one night early. It’s the night before Christmas Eve.

Young Toby Fox (Gage Munroe) is busy trying to get things ready for Christmas, but can’t seem to interest anyone else in his family. His teenage sister, Hannah (Rebecca Williams), is too busy talking on the phone, mom Angela (Beals) is too busy with her photography work, and dad Wayne (Rick Roberts) just got home from the office and continues working even at home. Toby heads outside with a box of donations for a charity and makes a wish on a shooting star to spend more time with his family on Christmas. His family is so busy, they don’t even have a tree or any decorations.

Later there’s huge noise coming from the roof of the Fox home. Going out to investigate, the family finds a man dressed as Santa who is very confused, who has fallen off their roof. It’s of course “the” Santa Claus, but he doesn’t remember who he is. Toby believes he’s the real Santa Claus, but the others in his family obviously don’t believe in Christmas even, let alone Santa, and figure he is a department store Santa.

Nigel shows up to rescue Santa, but Santa not only doesn’t know who he is, but can’t even remember the correct route for Christmas Eve. Finding the sleigh and reindeer outside, the Foxes are still unconvinced this is the real Santa. Nigel is upset to find out Santa’s special red sack of toys is missing. It was mistakenly picked up by the donation truck, and they need to find the bag and get Santa to regain his memory in order to save Christmas.

The movie has the same theme as The Santa Clause, a well as most other Christmas movies. It’s a matter of getting someone to believe in not just Santa Claus, but Christmas as a whole. This particular one illustrates even more how busy we are as families that we put so many things on the back burner, that we even forget what should be the most important, family.

The Night Before the Night Before Christmas premieres on The Hallmark Channel on November 20, or the night before the night before November 22.

Seth Atkins (Dreyfuss) is a lightkeeper, the guy in charge of watching a lighthouse on Cape Cod. In the opening moments of the film, he fires his assistant who complains on his way out about his ex boss’s contempt for women in a way too obvious foreshadowing of plot lines to come. Dreyfuss does play an adequate curmudgeon, however. The failings in that opening scene seem mostly to be in script.

In the next scene, Seth finds a young man washed up onshore, in yet more obvious plot lines. The man claims to not remember where he came from and seems to luck into recalling his name, John Brown (Tom Wisdom). For someone who washed up onshore, he’s in no hurry to leave and does everything he can to stay there with Seth, despite the fact that it seems the lightkeeper despises him. Seth despised him because he asked too many questions. I despised him because he was too pretentious. It just so happens Seth needs a new assistant, so he gets his wish to stay, despite not knowing how to cook or really do anything else that would lead to him being independent.

Seth heads into town and finds out that two women (Danner and Mamie Gummer) will be staying there in a house by the lighthouse, and he completely freaks out over this and shares his frustrations with John. The two end up bonding finally over their mutual contempt of the other half of the species, and through that, we see where the story is going with the two women. Also through this scene, John finally loses his pretentiousness as he lets his guard down for the first time.

I won’t reveal where the story goes between John and the younger of the two women and Seth and the older of the two women, as just with those words there, you probably figured it out. But that’s not where I had the problem. After all, I’m a huge romantic comedy fan, and nothing could be more obvious than those. Yet they’re not only fun, they are always filled with such warmth that emanates off the screen. That can’t be said here, and that’s where I struggled with it.

The Lightkeepers is out now on DVD and Blu-ray.