Amaury Nolasco

CHICAGO – I try to approach every new series as a blank slate. However, it would be naive to say that things like pedigree and incessant advertising don’t have the same impact on me as they do you. I’m a fan of J.J. Abrams and so I look forward to his work more than, say, the team behind “According to Jim.”

CHICAGO – In our latest adventure/drama edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 35 admit-two movie passes up for grabs to the advance Chicago screening of “The Rum Diary” starring Johnny Depp, Giovanni Ribisi and Aaron Eckhart!

CHICAGO – NBC’s “Chase” is not a “good” show in the strictest sense of the word. It’s hokey, rife with stereotypes, and sets up unrealistic situations for its characters in order to facilitate dramatic, suspenseful chase scenes. To protect my honor and integrity as a TV critic, this must be gotten out of the way first: objectively, I can see that “Chase” is not a good show.

CHICAGO – The basic moral message of “Armored” is simple: Don’t get partnered with sociopathic lunatics especially when they’re given guns and armored cars as a part of their job. This defiantly old-fashioned B-movie wasn’t screened for critics and was dismissed by audiences around the last holiday season but more than gets the job done as an entertaining rental on its own terms.

CHICAGO – The most notable casualties of the disastrous “The Jay Leno Show” may have been Conan O’Brien and the reputation of “The Tonight Show” but the fate of scripted drama on NBC also took a hit, exemplified by the fact that the network let arguably their best show go without much fanfare.

CHICAGO – Very few shows have plummeted as far from their peak to their ignominious end as did Fox’s once-great “Prison Break”. For proof, look no further than the misguided “Prison Break: The Final Break,” what is essentially a straight-to-DVD epilogue at least here in the United States.