Time was when summer TV meant reruns and sporting events – and sometimes even reruns of sporting events. But nowadays, there’s original programming to fill those dog days, some of it even eminently watchable and most of it coming to us from our friends in basic and premium cable. Here, a heads up on yet more of June’s forthcoming premieres, some of them offering up the birth of brand new series, others returning favorites back for another (non-ratings) season.
Check out the earlier premieres of the summer: Summer Lovin’: June 2012 TV Premieres, Part 1; Summer Lovin’: June 2012 TV Premieres, PART 2.
And now:
[There’s no Chicken Little, but there may be some Falling Skies...]
Karina Cooper
Oh, how I adore a movie musical. Stage musicals too, yes, of course. And further of course, who doesn’t love a movie made out of a stage musical? Like Rock of Ages, in theaters this Friday, June 15. And one of the best things about almost any musical you care to name is that, more than anything else, the main theme is inevitably True Love.
I am so angry with myself. Livid. I should have known it was coming. I should have known it would come to a bad end: all disappointment, depression and outright disgust. I mean, my goodness, I’m talking about Gossip Girl here, a ridiculous CW show about a bunch of ill-natured young miscreants with way too much money and far too little conscience. How could I have thought to gain anything more out of it than pretty people in pretty clothes mouthing the occasional pretty turn of phrase? These characters are vile, vicious and utterly without value—as the fifth season finale, and the very last episode of this show I will ever watch, demonstrated vividly, and without even a shadow of remorse.
Time was when summer TV meant reruns and sporting events—and sometimes even reruns of sporting events. But nowadays, there’s original programming to fill those dog days, some of it even eminently watchable and most of it coming to us from our friends in basic and premium cable. Here, a heads up on even more of June’s forthcoming premieres, some of them offering up the birth of brand new series, others returning favorites back for another (non-ratings) season.
Time was when summer TV meant reruns and sporting events—and sometimes even reruns of sporting events. But nowadays, there’s original programming to fill those long, dog days, some of it even eminently watchable and most of it coming to us from our friends in basic and premium cable. Here, a heads up on June’s forthcoming premieres, some of them offering up the birth of brand new series, others returning favorites back for another (non-ratings) season.
The day before it opened in U.S. theaters, I gushed somewhat lavishly, though not at all unwarrantedly, in these pages about 
Here’s some news: 
With the third season of F/X’s electrifying Justified having hurtled to a gun-blazing close, the time has come for us all to contemplate the barren, Timothy Olyphant-less wasteland that is television without new episodes of Justified. Luckily for us all, no one that charismatic, talented and utterly, confoundingly captivating onscreen could possibly have remained in complete obscurity before donning his now signature hat and gun belt; as an actor, he is a man with a complicated past, much like his Deputy Marshall Raylan Givens, and there is much in his resume that is worthy of your time. But if repeated viewings of Deadwood’s three brutal seasons, his arc in Damages or that one episode of Sex and the City aren’t your thing (and you find his work as a serial killer in Scream 2, as a vengeful mercenary in Live Free or Die Hard, or just anywhere near 2001’s horrible Freddie Prinze Jr. vehicle Head Over Heels just a little too upsetting) then why not soothe your pain by settling down to an indie movie trifecta of Olyphant deliciousness, where love’s the central theme?
Just a couple of years ago, I first read one of Georgette Heyer’s lesser known—indeed, often thought Lost—works, The Great Roxhythe (of which, read much more 
Georgette Heyer’s Powder and Patch
Jack and Rose. Rose and Jack. The couple at the heart of what was, until quite recently, the biggest film of all time, whose classes-clashing, chaotic, tragic love story sent legions of teenage girls so giddy that they saw the original 1997 release of Titanic in theaters five, six, twenty times, thus making of a potentially expensive bomb a bona fide cinematic phenomenon.
I love The Hobbit. I love everything about it. I love the rambunctious beginning, in which our reluctant titular hero, Bilbo Baggins, is inveigled into joining a bunch of irascible dwarves and their wizardly puppet master, Gandalf, on a perilous quest he little understands. I love the perilous quest itself, full as it is of monsters and lost treasure and heroic, exhilarating battles fought with ancient weaponry—and against goblins! I love the language of Tolkien, his elegant phrases and elaborate vocabulary, and even the constant stream of ditties he throws in, all seemingly random and yet often furthering the plot, making much of the book a kind of literary musical for which you have to make up your own score.
GEORGETTE HEYER REREAD: The Great Roxhythe
You know how, when you see a movie made out of a beloved novel—if you can bring yourself to do it, that is; oh, who am I kidding? We all do it—you have in your head at least one or two favorite lines, scenes or even mere moments that you believe simply must be done justice? Sometimes, you may not even be aware of this adamant conviction of yours until after the fact, as you leave the theater or press stop on the DVD and think to yourself: “Man, they really screwed that line/scene/moment up.”
In preparation for the forthcoming movie about which all the world seems to be Harry Potter/Twilight Saga/The Avengers-level excited, I have just finished rereading Suzanne Collins’s phenomenally successful YA trilogy, The Hunger Games. The first book, also entitled The Hunger Games, I had already read several times, but its sequels had only been so honored once each, upon their respective releases, and I had felt no need to repeat either experience. This was, therefore, the first time I had read the opening novel knowing full well how the closing one would end—damn you, Mockingjay!—and as I read Book 1, I got to wondering what it was, exactly, that I had so adored about it from the outset. And, in particular, why I had been so drawn to its first-person heroine, the energetic Katniss Everdeen.
Oh, Gossip Girl. So many times this season I have been this close to deleting you from my regular viewing schedule. There has been some outright silliness that has been difficult to get past, most of it involving a faux version of the royal family of Monaco, a faux scion of which you engaged – and then wed – to the Upper East Side’s reformed-villainess, Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester).
Maybe it’s just vampire fatigue. Maybe it’s just that tiresome, troublesome Mikaelson family, who can collectively bite me. Or maybe it’s just my continued frustration at the perpetually-pouty Elena’s cavalier treatment of my favorite, though bizarrely-besotted, brother Salvatore. (Yeah, you go, Damon! Hook up with all the hot British vampire chicks you want.) But here we are, halfway through the third season of The Vampire Diaries, and equally halfway into the first season of its lead-in sister show, The Secret Circle, and I have to tell you, nowadays I would far rather spend my time in Chance Harbor than in the formerly-fascinating Mystic Falls.
