Hollywood

This syrupy effort from Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan is, at best, pretty but hard to watch. I had to force myself through the first four episodes to get to a point where I cared enough to endure the bad writing and uneven direction and finish it. There's way too little plot, character development, or point to carry it. The cast did the best they could with some awful, preachy dialogue, overly sugary and convenient plot 'twists' and the shallowest characterisations.

The cast was a mixed bag of wonderful 'seniors', mid-ground familiar faces and inexperienced young over-actors.Patty Lupone, Holland Taylor and Joe Mantello shone in their roles and carried the show throughout. In the mid field, Queen Latifah, Dylan McDermott, Darren Criss and Jim Parsons did excellent work and obviously enjoyed their roles. Queen Latifah always has screen presence and as such, she was under-utilised. Dylan McDermott revelled in his silver fox rendition and Jim Parsons developed his character, as best as the script would allow, from vile to virtuous (too much so, but anyway). The young ones added the pretty and, possibly accidental, youthful naivete.

As to the point of the show, it was never clear what it was trying to do: just entertain? make a point about gays (as a gay person I am tired of the cliche way this is always depicted, find a new cause or at least a new angle) and coloureds? was it to show the 'true' Hollywood? (hardly). At times I wondered if it was trying to be a 1950's women's melodrama about the making of a 1950's melodrama, but that didn't really play out. The directing was extremely uneven. Though it was very heavily preachy (way too preachy) it didn't give any depth to the topic: it really only exploited the 'issues' to provide the little plot that there was. It even seemed to endorse the violence against the journalist/reporter that was going to expose something that was shown to be true.

It was mostly predictable, cliched and shallow and, therefore, very disappointing. It's a shame that all the effort put into recreating the era, ultimately amounted to very little: an opportunity missed (as others have said). Somewhat entertainingly disappointing: will just a little more, it could have been so much more.

Hollywood is another good Ryan Murphy show. It follows the lives of aspiring actors and filmmakers who will pretty much do anything to succeed in their dreams of making it big in Hollywood, it takes place in post-World War II Hollywood. I didn't really know what to expect from this but I gave it a chance because of all the good things I heard and I'm glad I did because it was a very well done series. It seems like anything Ryan Murphy does these days is a huge success! The stories are very diverse and interesting. Most of the bad reviews are because they say it isn't true...who cares? It's a tv show, not a documentary! It admits that it takes places in a revisionist Hollywood that is a pick me up series.

The creators of a mini-series have made a significant effort to demonstrate that hardly any straight men existed in Hollywood during the 1940s. While this might be true, there is an ethical dilemma. Using rumors and facts to fill the script with events that happened and using the names of real people while mixing them with wishful fantasies and lies is a lame move. It destroys the tone of the series. For instance, showing Rock Hudson coming out as gay in public in 1946 with a black boyfriend or Ernest Borgnine presenting an Oscar to a non-existent movie with a non-existent cast is unrealistic. Moreover, the series contains extended love scenes that lack gusto, eroticism, or reason, making them redundant. Despite this, six out of seven episodes are watchable. However, the last episode is full of cheesiness and lacks surprise and intensity, making it forgettable.

I was a young girl in the 70s, so one of my fondest memories is watching American movies of the Golden Age of Hollywood with my family, mainly in black and white, usually on a Monday evening, broadcast by the Italian public tv channel. Those movies were the thread of our dreams, back in our childhood.

I liked "Hollywood" a lot more than I expected. Dylan McDermott (an actor I'm not familiar with since I live in Italy) is phenomenal. I enjoyed every scene featuring him, same with Patti LuPone.

Jim Parsons (one of the reasons I watched this series in the first place) is really surprising as an evil character, so different from his role in TBBT.

Joe Mantello and Ellen Kinkaid are two more actors that excell here.

All in all, a good series, I only took off one star for the amount of nudity and sex, but for the rest is very enjoyable. Dylan McDermott shines on all through the series, he was born for this role and I hope to see him soon in other projects.

Hollywood whisks us away to post-war Tinseltown. Several different characters give us a behind-the-scenes look at the Golden Age of Hollywood. Through their stories, we learn more about a corrupt and unfair system full of prejudices about gender, origin and sexuality that persist to this day.

Several young artists gather as part of a film project to be realized by the Hollywood studio Ace Pictures. It is based on the tragic story of actress Peg Entwistle, who fell from the letter H of the iconic Hollywood sign in 1931. Whether actor, author or director: each of them has to pay a high price in order to be able to achieve their own goals in Hollywoodland.

I really liked "Hollywood".

A slightly different series, but for those who are interested in films and want to see how the film business worked back then, you should take a look here

The whole thing is accompanied by an interesting story and strong characters.