When high school chemistry teacher/part-time car washer Walter White was faced with this grim conundrum, he sought out a former student-turned-delinquent and created a new formula of crystal meth to pay for his medical bills and provide a safety net for his growing family. A six-time Emmy-winner, Breaking Bad goes beyond your standard good-person-gone-bad/drug-related drama. The writing is outstanding and each character’s performance is spot-on.  

Manny (Ray Romano), Diego (Denis Leary) and Sid (John Leguizamo) are on the road again — well, this is the Ice Age, so it’s really a pre-road time, but these three seem to be laying the pathway out with each new adventure — which means that they are edging closer and closer to drifting into the modern age.  

The next stop, To Rome With Love, finds Woody Allen cruising through the Eternal City in a madcap fantasy of misdirection, misinterpretation and almost-missed opportunities for a collection of characters whose lives and misadventures don’t intersect.  

Let’s get something straight about The Amazing Spider-Man, the franchise reboot from director Marc Webb of (500) Days of Summer fame. Comics, especially the new millennial generation editions, have no problems with reimagining and reconfiguring the continuity of these mythic characters.   

During the past seven years, audiences have seen Mary-Louise Parker’s Nancy Botwin transform from loveable, suburban pot-dealing widow/mom to arsonist to Mexican cartel queen to prison lesbian and back again in Weeds.  

Oliver Stone’s late career filmography lacks the raw controversy of his glorious critical and box office run of the 1980s and 90s, but now it seems like the crazy passion of old has been drained from him.  

Following on the heels of the behind-the-scenes documentary on Justin Bieber, this take on Pop sensation Katy Perry aims to highlight the positive aspects of her rise to fame, in order to inspire her young fans.   

While there’s plenty of hilarious human-dog hijinks (verbalizing dog thoughts/characteristics never gets old), it’s the deep, psychological undertones that give Wilfred a dark edge not found in many other current shows (and makes it a great lead-in to Louie). While American remakes of shows tend to dumb down or lighten up, our Wilfred (with the same actor, Jason Gann, playing the title character) takes even more disturbing turns than its Australian counterpart.  

Channing Tatum just might be a real Hollywood swinger and one shrewd customer. Dreaming of fictionalizing his early days as an exotic dancer, Tatum teams up with Steven Soderbergh (after approaching Nicolas Winding Refn of Drive fame) for Magic Mike, which, from the spirited trailers, gives the impression of a return to the fun-loving Ocean’s franchise box office form for Soderbergh.  

Tyler Perry’s Madea has long been a rough shelter in the storm for an assortment of outcasts and miscreants in need of tough love, so in Witness Protection, she’s taking in a Wall Street investment banker (Eugene Levy) and his family who are on the lam from the mob. The cross-cultural mash-up is old hat and likely stale, but somehow you just know that Perry’s audience will remain loyal.  

Imagine a team of eager magazine employees investigating a classified ad seeking a companion for time jumping (mis)adventures. Aubrey Plaza, Jake M. Johnson, Karan Soni and Mark Duplass who seems to jumping from project to project this summer (you can catch him in People Like Us and in the upcoming Your Sister’s Sister) star.   

Seth MacFarlane's new movie Ted, a live action hybrid, finds him channeling just one character, an animated teddy bear brought to life by the wish of a young boy named John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg stands in as the adult body double) who longs for a best friend, a buddy to hang onto during the thunderous storms of life or toke up and watch Flash Gordon with during all of those in-between moments.  

Lola Versus starts with such promise: Lola (Greta Gerwig), on the beach, engaging in morning yoga while through voiceover informing us about life and the changes on the horizon. In particular, she alerts us to the fact that she (like most of us) is not good with change.  

With issues surrounding fracking, natural gas and oil dominating headlines recently, Josh Fox’s 2010 Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning documentary Gasland seems all too relevant. The film is two years old, but the stories presented in the film are now — more than ever — resonant with the people of Ohio.  

From writer/producer Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network, Moneyball) comes a new series about the people behind nightly cable news. The Newsroom (10 p.m. Sundays, HBO) follows journalist Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) and his journey from fair-and-balanced News Night anchor to cable rebel after a revealing and potentially career-ending public outburst in which he shares his opinions about news and politics.