110 entries from October 2007.One Drunk Actor That Wasn't So Lucky Kelsey Grammer, Michele Rodriguez, Kiefer Sutherland, Daniel Day Kim, Lindsay Lohan, the list of irresposible drunk, rich actors is nearly endless. Luckily for those of us that can't afford the pay for the medical expenses caused by a car accident, most of these jerks don't end up hurting anyone but their own really expensive cars. Lane Garrison who was in the first season of Prison Break, and a little bit of the second, got behind the wheel and ended up with one dead kid and another severely injured, because they were just as retarded as he was and got in a car with a drunk in the first place.Garrison is now going to pay for what he's done, as they... Lane Garrison Gerard Butler Leaves 'Escape From NY' More light posting since I have catching up to do - it looks like the remake of John Carptener's Escape From New York was going to stink so bad that both the director and character lead have abandoned the project. Gerard Butler after finding fame and fortune with Frank Miller in 300 was going to take on the role forged by Kurt Russel, but has bailed over the dreaded creative differences - meaning it was going to suck, so rather than stick around and make it better with his glorious talent, he's just running away.Now we're stuck with this guy instead. Ugh.... Escape From New York, Jonathon Mostow Sci Fi Channel Kicks Monster Ass I'm a huge fan of science fiction when it's done right and it just annoys me to no end that the Sci Fi Channel has polluted their schedule with increasingly non-science fiction content. It's bad enough that they mix horror with their original programming and really unfortunate that 99% of their original movies are pure hard-core suck. It was downright embarrassing to tell people that I watch the Sci Fi Channel when they started showing wrestling. What the hell is that all about?Well their increasing willingness to abandon their roots is actually paying off this Halloween as it seems they're beating the tar out of other cable channels running horror-genre marathons this week.SCI FI's 13 Days of Halloween programming stunt... Ratings, Scifi Channel James Vanderbilt to Pen 'Spider-Man 4' James Vanderbilt (who?) has been tagged by Sony to pen the script for Spider-Man 4, continuing the revovling door of scribes for the franchise which is now on its third writer in four films. Seems a little odd, with the tremendous success thus far, that they can't manage to hang on to a single writer for more then two flicks, doesn't it? And they are kind of taking a big risk handing this thing to a guy who hasn't done anything notable in his career, too. Of course I'm actually happy when that happens, since it means there's a rare opportunity to actually be surprised for once.The trade has no information about the potential "Spider-Man 4" plot except to promise... James Vanderbilt, Spider-Man 4 'United Hollywood' Blog Launches Some of the contract captains have setup a blog at Blogspot to write about the things happening over there as we near the expiration of the WGA's contract with the AMPTP. Captain, working writer, and now blogger Kate Purdy explains what her job as a contract captain on United Hollywood:I attend union meetings, and report back to my team of writers. They ask me questions. I get answers. It’s a grassroots, member to member dialogue. Several of us captains huddled, and decided to create this website. Why? Because we want to share our perspectives to, and beyond our membership. Considering that the corporate conglomerates that comprise the AMPTP (the studios and networks) own the newspapers we read, we know we... Rockin, Rollin, and Cryin I had the unfortunate luck to come down with all of the worst symptoms of a head cold all at the same time yesterday, combined with an unfortunate choice of posture sometime on Monday that put my back into holy hell Tuesday. I laid on the floor most of the day blowing my nose and wondering how much more the day could possibly suck than it already did.If that wasn't enough, San Francisco near where my web site is hosted had an earthquake today. What's next? Probably the strike. Joy.... Strike News Roundup There's just about 35 hours left until the Writers Guild of America's contract with the Ass. of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) expires and things aren't looking very good right now. WGA is holding the line in their demands to double DVD residual payments such that they (writers not the guild itself) get $0.08 for every DVD sold instead of about the four or five cents they currently get. The studios adamantly refuse, claiming they can't afford it.What a joke.... AMPTP, WGA Heroes: The Line Things haven't gotten a whole lot better since 2x05 "The Kindness of Strangers" like I thought it would, and yet I'm left with the same impression of next weeks episode which looks and feels a lot more like what we're used to from "Origins" (volume 1, not the spin-off.) We're still spending too much time with the Hondurans with precisely no advancement in either the overall story, or their own arc.The same can be said for virtually everything in this episode, zero forward movement.... Heroes Underworld 3 Becomes Underworld 2.5 Kate Beckinsale has bailed on the Underworld prequel, which I guess would mean it needs a different title than 3, since 2 becomes 3 and 1 becomes 2. Right? Wait, what?"Underworld" creator Len Wiseman, who directed his wife Beckinsale in the first two films, will hand over the reins to Patrick Tatopoulos, who created the creature effects for those films. Danny McBride, who co-wrote the first two "Underworld" screenplays with Wiseman, penned the third script. Wiseman will serve as a producer. Sony's Screen Gems will distribute domestically.Did Beckinsale only get the gig because she was married to the director, or did she only do it because her husband directed it? Can she even act? Does it even matter? Not... Kate Beckinsale, Underworld Sony Says HD-DVD Sales Figures Stink But you know what they say about smelling something rotten, right? There's a bit of a petty dispute (usually born from ones own failings) over Paramount's sales figures from the HD-DVD edition of Transformers. The HD-DVD backer claims they've sold 190,000 units in the first week but Sony is having none of it, taking the opportunity to slap Paramount around as dishonest and desperate because they believe HD-DVD is losing the high-def format war.Unfortunately, Sony has credibility problems of their own.... Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, Paramount, Sony AvP 2 Creature Effects Are Lame I found this goofy looking picture on the right on aintitcool.com, who found it in USA Today. Does goofy appropriately describe these creature effects, or should we go down a notch or two and just call this shit laughable and pathetic, and perhaps only worth the value of the latex and paint it's made from?Seriously, did somebody just cut a couple of pieces off the predator costume and glue them onto the alien one, after cutting some pieces off it as well?When I saw AvP - which was a terrible film by the way - it was exceedingly clear that whoever wrote and directed that movie had either never seen, and certainly wasn't a very big fan of either... AvP 2 NBC and Fox Launch Video Site Technically I suppose this is a beta period where you can sign up, and be notified when they're interested in letting you test out their new site, Hulu.com. This is the direct result of NBC pulling out of iTunes and wanting to go their own way with their own content (that they don't actually own.) Fox is just along for the ride to see what happens, and to be completely clear, as far as I know Hulu is not going to compete with iTunes. Hulu is all about streaming for free (with injected ads, maybe even regular old commercials) while iTunes is download only.I've signed up and will write a review once I get in, or more likely after they... Fox, Hulu, NBC Box Office Booty: October 29th, 2007 If Nikki Finke is whining, it must mean there's a poplar and financially successful horror film in the theaters that involves people hurting other people. I know, it's a shocker that anyone would want to make such a thing, when it's much more "proper" to have humans wiped off the planet by aliens and stuff. Oh well, it makes me happy when people with Puritant tendencies get all offended by fiction, and resent that anyone would actually like something that they don't.To wit, the Saw franchise has been Lionsgate's most reliable set for the past couple of years, and the latest edition failed to disappoint with a studio estimate of $32 million for Saw IV's weekend already making back its... Dan in Real Life, Saw IV Slight Change in The RSS/Atom Feed I've made a slight change in this site's RSS/Atom feed that you might like to know about. Previously in the feed, every single post said something along the lines of "This is only summary..blah blah..click the title to read the blah blah" at the bottom regardless as to whether or not there was more text. At the time, I didn't know how else to do it other than to place that notice on every single entry by default.I just figured out how to do it though, so now when you see that message (in bold as the last thing you see) then it's really true and you should click through to read the rest. I'm trying not to cut posts... Former Studio Exec Bashes Studio's Negotiating Tactics; Both Sides Fighting Over Chairs Former and well credentialed studio exec Herbert F. Solow wrote a letter-to-the-editor which Variety published today in which he blasted the studios negotiating tactics with the writers guild, yet show restrained praise for the person shepherding those negotiations, Nick Counter. From everything I've seen Counter say in public statements, the guy seems like a guy who was beat up as a kid and grew up without any sense of self confidence, and based on his initial retarded proposals that got laughed off the negotiating table, I'd hardly call the man intelligence in any respect.Solow has never been a studio head Solow has been studio chief at Desilu Studios and MGM, and is also a long standing member of the Writers... AMPTP, David Young, Deadline Hollywood, Nick Counter, Nikke Finke, WGA All I Want For Christmas is Five Drunk Actors Driving Down The Street.. What do Kiefer Sutherland, Michelle Rodriguez, and Daniel Dae Kim share in common? They are rich, famous, attractive, irresponsible jerks with criminal records and really bad mug shots. Kim is only the most recent in a string of TV actors who have been "arrested on suspicion of drunken driving early Thursday by Honolulu police — the fourth actor on ABC's 'Lost' to run into trouble with the law while filming in Hawaii." Sutherland's came within the past month+ and Rodriguez got nailed several times along with violating her parole in the process.When Paris Hilton violated her parole for a DUI, in the first instance she only spent less than a week in jail. She ended up going back and still... Daniel Dae Kim, Kiefer Sutherland, Lost, Michelle Rodriguez Theater Watch: October 26th, 2007 This weekends box office is hardly worth writing about, since there are only two new flicks to watch and only one of them is going to see any success: that being the anticipated Saw IV. Lionsgate is intent on milking this series well beyond the saturation point until there is nothing left by hate and disdain. We're not there yet, clearly, and from what I understand, Saw IV is on track to have a good weekend.That doesn't excuse their blatant greed and total disinterest in releasing original films for audiences that have gone well past the begging point.Dan in Real Life is the only other flick opening this weekend, a comedy from Buena Vista (Disney) starring Steve Carell and..nobody you've... Dan in Real Life, Saw, Saw IV, Steve Carell Bionic Woman Crashing Hard and Fast It's based on a series concept that's close to 30 years old, wasn't changed at all, is on its third show runner in as many episodes, and now is crashing hard and fast in the ratings. Gee, you don't think any of that is possibly related, do you? Naaah. "Bionic Woman" earned a 4.8 rating/7 share according to Fast National ratings from Nielsen Media Research, putting in not only a series low, but finishing almost last for the night (when removing The CW shows).NBC was thrilled with the pilot so much that they pushed out Glenn Morgan and replaced him twice, which has clearly and always does fail miserably. Yet they really did love the pilot ratings which was tops... Bionic Woman, Ratings Battlestar Galactica Delayed Again Such a strange story. It used to be that Battlestar Galactica was the darling of all reality, people were complaining that it wasn't making it to the final nomination for best drama in the Emmy Awards, there was constantly speculation that the show was such a critical darling that NBC-U was going to take it away from the Sci Fi Channel and put it on NBC's prime time schedule. That never happened, even though new rumors are that NBC will take the reigns if they get seriously desperate for new content during the coming strike.It has already been what feels like forever since the last new episodes aired and frankly, the most recent season was nothing to write home about.... Battlestar Galactica House Hits a Roadblock Variety is reporting this morning that House, M.D. star Hugh Laurie went home to the United Kingdom last night for what are said to be "family reasons", though Laurie's representative won't elaborate further, saying only that he'll return to the set sometime on Monday.As the lead actor of a show in times when television has turned to ensemble casts, this is pretty unusual. Even being gone for a few days is going to delay production and ruin many carefully laid out schedules for the month. Obviously with Laurie being the well-liked star of an enormously important show for Fox, an inconvenience such as this is a small price to pay.On the other hand, with the writers strike looming, all... Fox, House, Hugh Laurie More 'Underworld' On Tap, Perhaps Opening Next Spring? Wouldn't you know it, just as soon as I published this post about an hour ago, the rain came back and knocked me off-line for a spell. I have managed to collect a number of news items and have them opened locally so I can write some posts, the only question is will this lull last long enough to write and then publish them. Firstly and least importantly, just a day or two ago somebody noticed a foreign film commission released a document listing filming schedules for that country - I debated post it but decided not to since it wasn't confirmed - with one feature that took people a little bit by surprise.Namely that a prequel to Underworld is... Underworld Sketchy Posting Today See I live in a rural area that is criminally under served by broadband access on all levels. There is cable in the form of Time Warner, but not within several miles. Embarq is a local telco formed by sprint for the sole purpose of dumping debt that Sprint acquired by merging with Nextel, a really great business move which is also extremely scummy. Sprint is an extremely pathetic company when it comes to broadband, they don't really care about DSL and just jettisoned their CEO that was going to cover the entire country in a WiMax network.0-25% they say is what my area is served by DSL from these jokers. Immediately to the West probably less than 15 miles... Fox Orders 'Back To You' For a Full Season Even with weak numbers, Fox has ordered up a full season of Kelsey Grammer's sitcom Back to You. At this point I'm not really sure why the networks are ordering series to full season when there's going to be a strike this year, because even in the remote (and I mean remote) event that the two sides come to some sort of agreement, that's likely to happen sometime between the end of this month and the first two weeks of November, giving them plenty of time to fill those orders at a later date.It certainly flies in the face of Nikki Finke (Deadline Hollywood) claiming that all the network execs have given up on the new fall season and don't... Back to You, Fox IGN Interviews 'Scrubs' Creator Bill Lawrence I've been asked once or twice why I don't do interviews of my own, and the answer is simple: I'm a tiny, new site, and nobody will talk to me. I cry at night, all alone, and wonder what the point of even living is. But then I remember that Jesus loves me, I'm a super nice person, and I managed to get dressed all by myself this morning. Go me!Scrubs quickly become known as a series that was able to shift tone and carefully balance drama and comedy, keeping both of them equally effective. Lawrence talked a bit about this, saying "I like when we bridge the gap between the kind of broad, goofy comedy and emotional episodes…I like... Bill Lawrence, Comedy, Interview, Scrubs Writing With Partners Cinematical has an actual employed (and probably about to be unemployed due to the coming strike) writer on staff writing about..well, writing. What else would he write about? If you're interested in this story of thing, he has five in-depth tips for collaborating on scripts when you don't physically meet with your writing partner, which I found terribly odd. Then again I find the entire notion of collaborative writing odd. If you're supposed to write the second act of a telescript and your partner is in the process of writing the first act, how do you know where to start when you don't know where he or she is going to end?I guess you'd have to heavily rely on writing... Dan Brown's 'Angels and Demons' On The OH-MY-GOD-WE'RE-ALL-GOING-TO-DIE-Fast Track It feels like you can't go five seconds without reading an article about the fast approaching writers strike, although that may just be because I read Hollywood trade papers fifteen times a day looking for cool news to post, such as this little bit about Columbia rushing another one of Dan Brown's novels through pre-production in order to get the script locked down before the strike comes, which could happen anytime after October 31st.As Hollywood scrambles to make deals before the Oct. 31 expiration of the WGA pact, one fast-tracked project has almost flown under the radar -- though it could become one of the biggest films assembled during this frenzied period. Producers Brian Grazer and John Calley, Col, Howard... Angels and Demons, Dan Brown, Tom Hanks Rockne S. O’Bannon is Back with 'Warehouse 13' If there is one writer out there doing some truly great mixed science fiction and drama that isn't well known to the public and doesn't have much of an iconic cult status and yet totally deserves it, it'd be Rockne S. O’Bannon. He brought us top 5 best sci-fi show ever in Farscape, wrote for seaQuest DSV (when it was good), Alien Nation, The Twilight Zone (80's), Amazing Stories, and wrote the script for the Sci Fi Channel's miniseries The Triangle.This guy has got serious sci-fi game, and he's coming back to television for the first time since The Triangle (which was pretty good actually) and the Farscape TV movie The Peacekeeper Wars (first part was great, the rest stunk)... Rockne S. O'Bannon, Science Fiction, Warehouse 13 Vietnam Suffering Caveman Syndrome No matter how much I roll my eyes at the old, white conservative males in this country (politicians who aren't getting any) that constantly wage war against pornography and normal human sexual behavior with stupid laws and inappropriate religious interference in the lives of private citizens, I can take some measure of comfort in knowing that there are a lot of places on Earth that are far more primitive than fundamental Christians are - even if they they'd be thrilled to see these puritan cave-man taboos about sexuality applied here with the force of law.HANOI, Vietnam - An online sex video featuring a popular celebrity has riveted the nation for more than a week now, much as (Paris) Hilton's clip... Bionic Woman Burns Through Yet Another Showrunner While I read through some lengthy news clippings and wait for Variety's horrible Windows webserver to actually return the text to the articles I'm trying to load, I'll depress whatever fans NBC's Bionic Woman has left with the news that they are officially on their third showrunner since the series pilot was shot. For those who don't know, a showrunner is the highest level executive producer - the king of the show so to speak and roughly equivalent to a feature film director only for television - usually a writer and the person who created the show in the first place.Some of them write during the course of the show while some write the pilot and then guide the writing... Bionic Woman Quick Links: October 24th, 2007 A short break in the heavy rain storm has allowed our WildBlue satellite modem to resync itself with an extremely expensive chunk of metal orbiting our planet in the cold of space about 22,000 miles away from my house. I have exactly 1.5 seconds to post as much as humanly possible before it starts raining again and I may not get another opportunity for at least 100 years.Surprise hit Samantha Who? gets to live for another six episodes.I AM LEGEND has a final High-Def trailer.Moonlight and Cane get to live for another four episodes while CBS craps its pants.The season seven trailer for 24 leaked 12 hours early.Variety may have jumped the gun reporting that WGA was giving up on... MTV Pumps Trek and Quinto I definitely feel a sense of optimism surrounding the new Trek flick, though I credit it less to J. J. Abrams directing than I do the lack of Rick Berman and company pitching in. Berman has become the most reviled producers in Trek history for the way he's treated the Trek franchise with the terrible Voyager, three bad seasons of Enterprise, and the absolutely dreadful films featuring the TNG cast. I'll be looking forward to seeing this new flick, but only once it comes out on DVD. Abrams has no credibility with me because I'm one of the few people that think Lost is a hackjob, and I'm certainly not alone in pointing out its huge drop in the ratings... J. J. Abrams, Simon Pegg, Star Trek, Zachary Quinto Britney Spears and J.K. Rowling Have Something in Common Having a lot of money usually means never having to hear the word 'no', such is the case with Britney Spears who has become so spoiled and disgusting that even not being able to see her own children won't stand in the way of her treating the rest of us commoners like so much dirt she rolls around in while high, drunk, naked, and probably puking all at the same time.A source told US Weekly: "[Spears] paid her [monitor] no attention or respect at all, as if she were some employee whom she could blow off. "Britney’s often distracted and in her own world when she has the kids and has a hard time focusing. She is adamant that she... Britney Spears, J. K. Rowling Can You Rewrite a Script in Seven Days? I hear Fox is Hiring No joke, according go the L.A. Times, 20th Century Fox is desperately searching for a writer to perform emergency surgery on the script for X-Men spinoff Wolverine with just seven days left before the WGA's contract with the producers expires on November 1st. I'm sure that given enough money and other incentives (I'd take a development deal over a pickup truck loaded with cash, nothing says you love me like commitment after all) someone with the appropriate level of talent could be found and the job done in the few days we have left before Hollywood beats the terrorists to ending the world first.As the smog caked rag writes, Wolverine isn't the only project on a rush job right. The... Warner Brothers Learning That Family Matters Warner Brothers (the studio) is being sued by a former writer-producer for Family Matters over allegedly unpaid revenue sharing agreements and/or bonuses made years - in some cases decades - ago. If memory serves me, this is the third such lawsuit this year alone, although not all of them have been against Warner Brothers. These lawsuits stem over promises by the studios to share profits with series bigwigs, but only if the show can generate a profit on paper, otherwise those sharing agreements don't come into effect while the studio tries to recoup its production costs.Unfortunately for the people who actually make the show, the studios are notorious for juggling their accounting books in ways that would Enron blush. No... Family Matters, Warner Brothers WGA Abandones Reality Orginization Things may be ready to start moving at a rapid pace in negotiations between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Associated of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) with news that the producers have asked the guild to make sure that their full 40-member negotiating committee shows up on Thursday and recent revelations that writers have abandoned their demand that they be given jurisdiction over television reality editors.Such is the first concession on behalf of union writers since negotiations began, and may have been in response to the producers taking back their proposal to revamp residual payments in such a way that writers would essentially never see a dime from them - a move that most outside observers... AMPTP, Reality, WGA Fox Has "Prison Break" Spinoff in The Works It's actually kind of shocking with the serious downturn in quality that Prison Break has suffered in the past two years, to find that Fox is paying for a pilot script that will be spun off the current season sometime next year. I was among those that thought the concept of this show was a terrible one, mainly because it was unsustainable. I then made the mistake of tying its potential for quality to its seemingly inevitable downfall due to stagnation.After it debuted and I was hooked on it like crack, I threw away all my early misconceptions and declared Prison Break to be the next smash hit that would bring in tens of millions of viewers for five or... Fox, Prison Break Scifi Channel Renews 'Stargate: Atlantis' I woke up this morning to the news in Variety that the Sci Fi Channel has renewed Atlantis for a fifth season, which I couldn't be more happy about. It's an odd show in a way where there isn't too much comedy so that you can't take it seriously, yet not too much drama that it gets full of itself (like Battlestar Galatica can do at times.) The third season finale and fourth season premier were the best pair for the show yet, and some friends I've spoken with that are big fans of the franchise entirely agree.We all think the best is yet to come.On a personal and very selfish level I was hoping this would happen so that... Stargate Atlantis Quick Links: October 23rd, 2007 75% of WGA negotiators aren't bothering to show up, the AMPTP proposals are that lame.Marie Osmond collapsed on live TV because because of the Malibu fires. Won't anybody think of the trees?Proposed Barbarella remake nuked due to Robert Rodriguez's insistence that his own wife play the title role.MySpace.com is making a movie.I AM LEGEND gets a new trailer.As does Sly Stalone's attempt to revive a dead acting career."Just because you can" is never a good reason to stretch out a single movie into a franchise.... Could The Strike Help Jericho? That's my thought after pondering for a moment where we find ourselves. SyFy Portal is speculating that CBS may fill the time slot recently vacated by the recently canceled Viva Laughlin, after they spin up some press and get the machine moving. For the time being, they'll fill that hole with reruns of other programs currently producing new episodes such as CSI and some reality garbage.But what about the strike? There has been some speculation too that Jericho will be held back until January or later to start filling in air time when the other shows run out of scripts due to the presumed writers strike that will probably happen sometime in early November. I've been the only person around... CBS, Jericho Good News For 'Pushing Daisies' Fans, Bad News For 'Heroes' Fans The new series that Bryan Fuller left Heroes to create and run has been given a full season order by ABC, meaning there's now zero chance that Fuller could return to Heroes this year or the next, which would have depended on the failure of Daises to free up his time. For Daisies fans, that's great news and means the fall newbie everybody sanctified as the best of the crop has lived up to expectations thus far and is being rewarded for fairly decent and steady ratings.For Heroes fans, as I said this is not such great news as it means Fuller is likely done with Heroes unless he comes in to do an episode of Origins, when Daisies is... Pushing Daises Hasta La Viva Laughlin Say Au-revoir to Viva Laughlin, this one is DOA. It didn't take a genius to know that a musical drama was going to get canceled exactly 1.5 seconds after people realized they were actually watching the show, and not a really bad commercial. Seriously, I love to say "whoever did this [insert act of depravity]" ought to be fired for it, but this defines the term - whoever green lit Viva Laughlin (Hugh Jackson producing or not) needs to either quit right now, or be reduced to janitorial services.(The) Show was based on the hit BBC series “Viva Blackpool,†about a gambler who opens a casino but winds up in the middle of a murder investigation. The series repped part... Viva Laughlin Heroes: Fight or Flight Things are starting to feel a little more cohesive now that I think most of the major introductions have taken place, culminating in the appearance of much-hyped netlet star Kristen Bell. If you go back and watch the first few episodes of the first season, the quality has clearly taken a hit with the loss of Bryan Fuller and I don't think they will ever get the magic back.It can still be good, and based on the teaser for 2x06 the show is on the verge of picking up some steam. Peter will leave Ireland, Matt Parkman and Nathan have set flight after Parkman's evil daddy who is no where near as scary as we were lead to believe -... Heroes Different Day, Same Old Crap There was a post on Defamer yesterday that gave unfortunate press to Nikki Finke's mass delusion over the AMPTP taking their de facto and 100% insincere residual elimination off the table. She thinks it's an actual concession and is trying to convince people that the WGA laughing over the notion is some kind of spin to keep fire in the belly of writers for the coming strike. There are perhaps five people in the entire country that bought that propaganda from the studios, which is actually heartening because that means 99.9% of the rest of us called bullshit when we smelled it.... AMPTP, Defamer, WGA Feature: Drinking Jesus Juice at Deadline Hollywood Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood and I don't see things eye-to-eye when it comes to Hollywood labor. She drinks the coolaid the studios gave out to the press when they took their retarded residual rollbacks off the table in the first sign that perhaps they are actually interested in trying to negotiate a new deal before the strike occurs. For somebody who appears to be a legitimate "expert" on industry execs - insofar as one can be such a thing - and I respect her insight, access, and stinging if not often insulting and unprofessional attacks on said execs, she just continues to miss the big picture.... AMPTP, Deadline Hollywood, Nikki Finke, WGA Is Jim Carrey Back? I know how people have written that Jim Carrey hasn't had a good opening in years, and that's absolutely true even though I thought he was hysterical in Fun With Dick And Jane. But it isn't because his brand of funny isn't hot these days, anymore than Steve Carell's brand of funny is near or at the top of the pecking order. Carell has had the good fortune of being in decently produced films that were well suited to his brand of funny, and Carrey is simply striking out time after time trying to find projects that are suited to his.Maybe a little Christmas cheer is all Carrey needs to get back into the swing of things.Jim Carrey will star... Jim Carrey, Robert Zemeckis Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie Get a Vanity Series For some odd reason, network and cable executives like to give free rides to rich and famous actors (which we already know) along with letting them take on jobs they aren't qualified for and probably have no real interest in doing. Chances are while they'll be sitting at the top as far as creative decisions go (which as non-writers on a television series is just about the worst thing possible) but I guarantee you they won't be putting in 20 hour days, every day for the run of the entire season.They'll hire somebody to do that for them, without the authority that person will have earned through the work, and without any credibility amongst the shows staff. It may very... Angelina Jolie. HBO, Brad Pitt 'Superman Returns' Scribes Running From Their Own Failure Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris aren't coming back to pen the next Superman screenplay, which is probably a good thing. Getting the job in the first place raised their profile to the point where I'm sure they can pick pretty much any project they want, even though the movie sucked and they should be punished by having to write nothing but commercials for the next six months. I'm deadly serious about that - Superman Returns was one giant cliche on the entire franchise, there wasn't one single original thought in that entire movie.You could have made Superman Returns just by splicing together scenes from previous films in a new order - it was that dearth of originality - and as... Comics, Superman Box Office Booty: October 22nd, 2007 Sorry about not publishing a Theater Watch this past weekend, the release schedule has slowed down to a crawl with a lot of bad and boring films being dumped on us lately. There wasn't a lot worth going out to spend money on except perhaps if you're looking for horror flicks in the runup to Halloween. To that end, 30 Days of Night topped the sched that had an old Tim Burton flick re-released by Disney, another ignored Iraq film, and Ben Affleck's directorial debut.Even with it's top spot, I don't think 30 Days of Night will be making back its budget. It cost $30 million to make, opened with a $16 million weekend, but only 55% of that actually... 30 Days of Night, Gone Baby Gone Get Ready For No More Prison Break It hasn't been canceled. Yet. But Fox is preparing to send Prison Break on a nearly half-year long hiatus to make room on its Monday night schedule for The Sarah Connor Chronicles. News has come in that Chronicles will be taking over Prison Break's time slot, with the latter going off the air in mid-December and the former making its debut along side 24 in January.Although Fox has promised to finish off this season at some point, this is precisely what happened to Jericho on CBS, and that resulted in a temporary cancellation (and the striking of their sets) and it's abbreviated return for seven new episodes to test the waters - with a much smaller budget.I definitely think Prison... Prison Break, The Sarah Connor Chronicles 'Cold Case' Pisses Off Christians But who doesn't? Seriously, what doesn't offend Christians these days? This isn't a case of TV shows pushing the envelope more and more every year, I think the real problem is that conservatives keep leaning towards fundamentalism every year and it's only going to get worse until this country stands up as a whole and decides we'd rather not emulate everything we sought to change in Iraq and the Middle East. Today it's forbidden TV shows, tomorrow it's women who can't vote and can't wear sexy clothing...or talk.In the said episode, Cold Case featured an unsolved murder of young woman with a promiscuous past who joins a Christian-based abstinence group in an effort to change her life, only to discover... Censorship, Cold Case Catch a Sneak Peek At 24 - Season 7 I'm pretty sure that Fox did this last year too, though hopefully they've got something new in store for us because I'm not really looking forward to 24 this year. There have been so many ups and downs over the years - the downs having been more plentiful - that it's hard to get excited when I already know what's going to happen. We're already used to the season being divided into multiple arcs which started in what, season 4? And don't get me wrong, season 4 was actually really good, and I think it has a well earned place along with the first and second seasons and the best work that group has ever done.But now that we're used... 24 CSI, Grey's Anatomy Still Monsters on Thursday Night Remember when NBC owned Thursday nights with Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, and all the other sitcoms? Remember when everybody just wanted to be NBC? All those shows reached their natural conclusions beyond which most people were sick of the same people telling the same jokes and they just wanted something else for a change. In rolls Fox with their reality gamble that turned into a monster in its own right and now everybody is sick of that, too.But what people aren't sick of yet is CSI and Grey's Anatomy on Thursday night where NBC is struggling just to beat out The CW - a marriage of the two former netlets UPN and The WB. Compared to these two giants, even Survivor's... CSI, Grey's Anatomy, Ratings, Survivor, The Office To Nobody's Surprise, Private Practice Gets a Full Season While a number of shows are falling in the ratings and several others are growing precariously close to the cancellation zone (which is anything from 0 to 10,000,000,000 viewers for Fox) there are others that were predestined to make it not just all the way through their first season, but through a second, and possibly a third before the network gave any kind of serious thought about kicking it to the curb. This year it was Private Practice, next year it'll be House: The Early Years.Two freshman series, ABC's drama "Private Practice" and CBS' comedy "The Big Bang Theory," received full-season pickups Thursday. ABC and CBS ordered nine additional episodes of each series, bringing the total for "Practice" and "Big... Private Practice, The Big Bang Theory, The Unit Bryan Fuller's New Series Holds The Line If you paid even the slightest attention to the hype running up to the fall TV season, then you probably heard the name Pushing Daisies more than a few times in the same sentence with the word "best of." I don't know whereas I'd agree with that, at this point I'd probably have to go with the BBC's Torchwood, even though I've only seen two episodes and even though technically speaking, this series isn't new. The United States is already a full season behind for Torchwood, but we're just getting to see it now via BBC America (with healthy doses of "shit" which is delightful in reminding me that there are some shows out there not made for 10-year-olds.)Torchwood is... Bionic Woman, Pushing Daises, Torchwood Website Moved to a New Server A bit of good news this weekend, I was having continual problems with other users whom I share a webserver with using more than their fair share of resources that was making it impossible for me to post anything. Because of the way that Movable Type works, pages were serving at what should have been a normal speed with decent responsiveness. After having to complain about people abusing the machine twice in a week, a friend of mine who works at the place I'm hosted with kindly offered to move my site to another server which seems to be a much better suited for what I need.This site doesn't use very much in the way of server resources but the... Scifi Channel Spawns a 'Revolution' I don't pay much attention to new series debuting on cable, especially when we're talking about the Scifi Channel. Stargate SG-1 had its thing going before Scifi rescued it from cancellation, although the Atlantis spin-off had been somewhat successful in its first few years, it's now pulling in so few people that it risks being canceled itself. Their new version of Flash Gordon is terrible and the cable channel has already announced that they won't be renewing that little gem for a second year, and we all know how bad Painkiller Jane was.This new show, however, sounds like it could be fairly decent. Though it reminds me a little bit too much of NBC's insanely great Earth 2, that could... Revolution, Scifi Channel Shock: TV Doesn't Cause Violence I think people that believe that television, movies, and games cause kids to become violent are generally real prudes and that almost all of life's annoyances can be traced directly back to prudish people who want to ruin all the fun in life for the rest of us. They don't like porn or violence but it isn't enough just for them to avoid exposing themselves to it, they have to forbid the rest of us from having it too, because controlling other peoples lives makes them feel more secure since deep down, they know they have no control over their own.Congratulations if you managed to stomach my sermon, for I now reward you with a study about to be released... ABC Streams Hit Shows to European Fans For Free ABC/Disney has made a deal with a Euro television network to stream a couple of their shows online, for free, but ad-supported meaning you'll still be stuck watching commercials. Essentially it'll be just like television, only much worse video quality and a much lower quality of service (ever see your television say "Buffering..." when you change the channel? Didn't think so.) The Variety article only mentions two shows, Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives, so it's not like they're going out a limb with their best rated and highest earning shows.Still, it's laughable that ABC and the other networks and studios are crying all over the negotiating table over the supposed uncertainty of the download and streaming video market. Writers are... ABC, Desperate Housewives, Disney, Ugly Betty Finke Drinks The Studios Cool Aid Nikke Finke - whom I love to read yet think is wrong about 50% of the time - has published her story about the WGA strike authorization vote. I'm heartened by her insistance that the studios are unnerved by the resolve shown by writers, and as she writes, "the feeling was always that if the total of the 'Yes' votes was anywhere above 75%, the studios and networks had a giant headache on their hands."As I posted a few minutes ago, the precise number of members voting to authorize a strike was 90.3%, so I'd imagine based on what Nikki has observed that things have gone from a giant headache to continuous vomiting in corner for their expensive offices. Try not... AMPTP, Nikki Finke, WGA WGA To Studios: You've Been Served According to the Internets, this is what just happened to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP):ServedTo be beaten in a sudden, out of the blue competition. No previous knowledge is required on a subject to be served... Once somebody is served, and then this person serves back, then its on.Ah, South Park humor..anyway, writers have been filling out ballots this past week that would authorize WGA leadership to call a strike once the current contract expires on October 31st. Such a vote is not for a strike, but to authorize one if necessary. I don't think that anybody thought the authorization would fall through, but I know that some weren't quite sure if they'd get the magical... AMPTP, WGA Downtime My host scheduled some downtime for the entire network early Friday morning (as I'm posting this) and I didn't happen to notice. The site has been down for about two hours and just came back up, though it may go right back down again. My apologies, they are performing maintenance on a piece of networking equipment called a core router, which is something that all network traffic goes through.When that gets shut down or disabled, everything is dead including the hosting providers own website. Hopefully this will be resolved shortly. I doubt it will go much past 4am EDT.... Interview: DC Comics VP Gregory Noveck Fanboy website voicesfromkrypton.com (just kidding guys) scored an interview with a VP at DC Comics which is actually a pretty good read if you're interested in how they see things from the comic-side of film adaptation. I skimmed through it and I'm left with the impression that Noveck doesn't really understand the film business, and what he does know and understand comes mostly from common misconceptions concerning industry culture.The man may really know the comic business, but he misses the mark otherwise. The interviewer who apparently preferred to go by an alias rather than his real name asks what Noveck thinks about casting rumors for the upcoming Justice League of America, which is essentially just a fanboy's wet dream where... Batman, DC Comics, Interview, Justice League of America, Superman Interview: Heroes' Tim Kring and Kristen Bell Ran across a transcribed conference call for the media with Heroes showrunner Tim Kring, and new season 2 entrant Kristen Bell. I was going to publish this about an hour ago, but there were a couple of comments under the blog post where I found this to site where you supposedly could watch every episode of Heros online for free. The link not pointing to NBC.com made me more than just a little bit curious, so I followed it to find a site that is nothing but a shell that has a bunch of Google AdSense ads on it and lots of embedded video from Divx.com's video hosting site.Every single video was a full length episode of Heroes, sure enough,... Heroes, Interview, Kristen Bell, Tim Kring Spider-Man 4 Looking For a New Direction Perhaps Sony listened to some of the criticism leveled at Spider-Man 3, that despite its historic opening day numbers (it's still nearly $1 billion behind Titanic, overall), it was a bit of a letdown. I can't say, I haven't seen it yet, but clearly some people were disappointed with what was brought to the table. For whatever reason you choose to believe, Sam Raimi told MTV News that they are looking for new writers for the fourth installment in the overwhelmingly popular franchise and he is still noncommittal towards directing it.Raimi won't have a hand in the script, although he apparently has confirmed that he'll be returning as a producer regardless of anything else. I like that Sony is open... Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, Spider-Man 4, The Hobbit 'Sarah Connor Chronicles' Gets a Date For some odd reason, Fox held back The Sarah Connor Chronicles from its fall schedule this year in favor of releasing it sometime in January or Feb. It could be that they just wanted to bank as many episodes for the series as possible in case the writers strike materializes. Current shows will be running out of episodes right around when 24 and Chronicles hit the airwaves.Those dates have now been set, according to a news bulletin from The Futon Critic, "..the series will premiere Monday, January 14 at 8:00/7:00c." It also says that Chronicles will be "bookended by the three-hour seventh season launch of '24'", which doesn't make any sense at all since 24 has usually launched with a... 24, The Sarah Connor Chornicles Another Day, Another Studio Sued Over Accounting I'm sure that most people don't follow labor issues much, if at all, especially not in Hollywood. To quickly explain, studios play with their accounting books adding in every possible cost they can imagine, discounting certain profits, shifting and adding debt (they are true masters that would make Enron proud) until every movie they produce shows a loss on paper. They do this because a lot of people see huge blockbusters making hundreds of millions of dollars and they figure since they helped make the picture, they ought to get a piece of the profit based on a percentage.The studios never want to give out money they don't have to, so they promise most people a percentage of the profit... 20th Century Fox, Dharma & Greg Plot News For Shyamalan's 'The Happening' This is the first time I've seen any information about the plot of M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, a flick he'll be doing for 20th Century Fox after Avatar: The Last Airbender. This movie is interesting in that Shyamalan took the script to the studio heads of all the major studios and was rejected by every single one of them. Despite that, he got some advice, when home to Philly to retool the script, and got an instant buy from Fox who seems to be pretty enthused about this one.But nobody seemed to know what the heck it was about, other than it's a Shyamalan-style disaster flick. In a short post on MTV's movie blog, there are some quotes from... M. Night, Shyamalan, The Happening Fox Kills Another Fox is exceedingly good at killing their own television shows without giving them a chance to find their voice. Anchorwoman which probably deserved a quick and easy death only survived a single episode on air, but now Fox has taken things to the next level by placing one of their own new fall dramas on indefinite hiatus - before it was even broadcast.With seven episodes of supernatural drama in the can, the network's executives have decided to take a look and decide whether to order additional segments, something considered unlikely."Amsterdam" stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as an immortal New York City police detective. The pilot of the series was directed by Lasse Hallstrom.I was looking forward to this, but leave it to... Amsterdam, Fox My Thoughts on SGA "Reunion" Joseph Mallozzi is an executive producer and writer for Stargate Atlantis, one of many professional writers who blog about their job and (to a degree) their personal life as well. Along with this quick introduction in case you might be interested in this, I also give you the opportunity to skip this post if you've never seen SGA, don't particularly care about the finer points of television writing and are looking for something else.This may not be for you.If you are at all curious, read on. Joe wrote what amounts to a blow-by-blow of 4x03 - Reunion, from his perspective as an EP and the writer. I think as an amateur writer, this is a wonderful opportunity to write... Stargate Atlantis Scifi Channel Snaps Up 'Lost' Syndication Rights NBC-owned Scifi Channel has licensed non-exclusive rights to rebroadcast Lost beginning in September of 2008. While G4 also go a similar deal, nobody really cares because nobody actually watches G4. Scifi will be sliding Lost into its traditional Monday evening block where they've been showing four hours of a single series, in order, back-to-back ever since picking up Stargate SG-1 after Showtime canceled it.This was how I was introduced to Stargate in the first place, and this really paved the way for that channels entry into original programming. Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Eureka, Atlantis, along with a small mountain of absolute crap such as Painkiller Jane and Flash Gordon.The first part of season 3 of Lost was in my opinion just... G4, Lost, Scifi Channel Straczynski's 'Changeling' Cast Grows; Writer Gets Dissed Consider this a nitpick if you will, but it matters to writers. I've now seen in three different places headlines that go something like this: "Clint Eastwood's 'Changeling' Cast News Blah blah.." which is ridiculous and shows immense disrespect for J. Michael Straczynski who wrote the damn script. Not only was Eastwood not the first director (Ron Howard was until a scheduling conflict forced a change) he may not be the last one, either.This movie is on the fast track and if the studio was willing to move forward without Ron Howard at the helm, that really tells you what they think about the director's role in this property. Unless and until Eastwood alters reality with evil magic, this is... Angelina Jolie, J. Michael Straczynski, The Changeling Friday Night Bionic Woman? This news is a little stale at this point but I figured I'd collect a couple of items to burn off some time on this very fine Tuesday morning, during which I'd rather sleep through. There are three things going on right now and it's too early to know if any of them have much significance, although when you add them together, things aren't looking so rosy for this remake that absolutely nobody was actually asking for.First off the top is news that NBC ordered a couple of extra scripts for their top performing new fall shows (notice I said new, not overall) which means they'll likely have those shot and put in the can for airing sometime later this... Bionic Woman After Gerald McRaney, Jericho Loses Another Michael Hinman reported on Saturday the sad news that Pamela Reed (Gail Green) won't be coming back for any more episodes of Jericho, beyond the seven new episodes that recently wrapped production after the shows unlikely resurrection. If you're wondering why, I think Reed lays it all pretty damn well. "The average age of actors on that show is under 40, and those of us over 40 are gone," the 58-year-old actress said, according to Film Stew.McRaney left by his own choice, probably because he thought like everybody else that Deadwood was headed for the silverscreen. HBO pulled the plug on that series, promising at least one movie to follow, then renegged and now that property is essentially deader than... Jericho Heroes: The Kindness of Strangers The Kindness of Strangers (2x04) felt closer to an episode from the first season than any other thus far, which is good, and yet it left out two of the better arcs entirely in favor of pushing two new ones that utterly suck and have up until this point been pretty boring.I jotted down some notes so I'd be able to quickly cover all the points I wanted to write about once the episode was over, and here's the one I ended up writing in three different places: "WHERE'S PETER?"If you haven't seen this episode yet, go no further..... Heroes Joss Whedon Speaks on Fox Shutdown of Fan Gathering News has been circulating the web over the past few days about how a number of fan gatherings have been shutdown by Fox, generating a great deal of negative press for virtually no gain for the studio (we're not talking about the broadcast network here.) Short story: Joss Whedon wrote an episode of his series Buffy The Vampire Slayer called "Once More, With Feeling", which was a musical - one that was nominated for an Emmy, Hugo, Nebula, and won a Golden Reel Award.Buffy was nominated 99 times and won 30 awards in seven seasons, just in case you were thinking this show was pure corn.Fans gather and sing along with the songs that Whedon wrote specifically for the episode... Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Fox, Joss Whedon Friday Night Lights Bleeding Viewers I don't know why NBC renewed FNL over Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. They both were ratings challenged but there is a huge difference between the talent behind FNL and television master Aaron Sorkin. If things don't change, FNL won't be hanging around much longer, which makes 30 Rock next. Both FNL and 30 Rock should have been canceled and those resources shifted over to the stellar Studio 60 last year. It's a miracle that NBC had Heroes dropped in its lap and didn't somehow screw it up.Not surprisingly, the addition of "Murder Club" to the night affected drama competitors "Moonlight" on CBS (prelim 2.0/6 in 18-49, 7.3 million) and "Friday Night Lights" on NBC (prelim 1.7/5 in 18-49,... Friday Night Lights, Moonlight, Murder Club, Ratings Box Office Booty: October 15, 2007 I had no idea that so many people would go out and see a movie that showed no trailers, had nothing written about it, and generally looked like a boring loser from stem to stern. I'm talking about a flick called Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married, which managed to beat off both Michael Clayton and We Own The Night this past weekend. I am simultaneously impressed and disappointed.Was this odd movie by some dude nobody has ever heard of some sort of evil magic, or was it really just a very boring and slow weekend? Who cares, I just hate being wrong.Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married ($21.5 million)The Game Plan ($11.5m)Michael Clayton ($11.010m)We Own The Night... 'House' Ends Up Victim of NBC/iTunes Scuffle I didn't think about this but thankfully someone at BuddyTV did, and the story goes a little something like this: although House airs on Fox and Fox has no outstanding issues with iTunes, the show is not produced by Fox's sibling studio. The studio arm of NBC-Universal, Universal Media Studios produces the ratings monster which is licensed to Fox for broadcast, making NBC the true owner of the show.Since NBC is having a price dispute with iTunes, new episodes of House won't be available once that contract expires, along with all the other shows that NBC-U produces. You can more about it at BuddyTV. NBC, according to Apple, wants to charge $4.99 per episode rather than $1.99, while Apple wants... Apple, House, iTunes, NBC Does George Lucas Expect Writers to Cross The Strike Line For Him? Entertainment Weekly is reporting that none other than George Lucas himself will be trolling the deadly streets of L.A. looking for writers to pitch ideas and get assignments for writing the first 13 episodes of his planned live-action Star Wars television series. There's only about 13,000,000 problems with his plan but I'll save you a couple of years of reading and list the most prominent ones that have the potential to delay the production and ruin the series altogether.The Strike - The contract between the Writers Guild of America and the studios expires on October 31st, and all signs point to a strike being called within a week of that date. Lucas intends to bring his booty of freelancers back... George Lucas, Star Wars Fanboy Feud Erupts Over Jericho Revival Things are starting to shift on the Jericho front, though not necessarily in a good way. In a story on SyFy Portal, Michael Hinman documents the growing dissension and acrimony in the ranks of Jericho fans, particularly those that took part in the shows resurrection after being canceled earlier in the year. The point of contention now seems to be who gets to take credit for bringing the show back with a reduced budget and a heavily shortened episode order.Me, I'm wondering if there is anything worth fighting over right now. A new run of seven episodes is fairly weak and noncommittal on the part of CBS and is more likely a backup plan for replacing one of its inevitable... CBS, Jericho Theater Watch: October 21th, 2007 Perhaps the big dog in theaters this weekend won't be a new arrival, but a flick that is expanding instead. Then again, there are no sure winners in the bunch and they could all easily end up equally sucking and wasting your entire weekend. Just so long as it doesn't turn you into an unsavory prick on Monday, that's all I ask..Michael Clayton - The movie with a title that tells you absolutely nothing about the film, and has a trailer that confuses and makes me want to sleep for a very, very long time. Reviews have been really favorable and it wouldn't surprise me if it took the #1 spot this weekend, and yet I don't expect this to... Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Michael Clayton, The Final Season, Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married, We Own The Night WGA Steps in it Over Supposed Animation Ban There were two curious rules the Writers Guild of America set forth within the past day or two, called Strike Rules (pdf), where WGA supposedly banned its own members from taking part in feature animation writing, which is not covered in the current contract with the studios and is not an area the guild tends to represent. (Forget for now the other odd rule.) Now, the union that does actually represent feature animation writers is none too pleased with WGA's new rules and is threatening to sue over the matter.... AMPTP, IATSE, WGA Kevin Smith Digs 'Lost' I have to admit, I'm actually disappointed by this. The title of this post at Entertainment Weekly is "Kevin Smith Raves About 'Lost'", which makes it sound like a lengthy interview where we get to listen to what one great creative mind says about the work of a half-dozen others. I always love reading things like that, when real talent appreciates the real talent of others - it's very insightful at times.But it's a bust, a total implosion. There's one long dialog by Smith about Lost, a short back and forth (and I mean short) and that's it.Read it if you're a fan of Lost or of Kevin Smith, then complain about them ripping you off. As for Lost itself,... Kevin Smith, Lost 'From a Buick 8' Coming to Theaters There's a note on Scifi Wire that another of Stephen King's books, From a Buick 8, is being adapted for the silver screen by Tobe Hooper (director) and the writing duo of actors Johnathon Schaech and Richard Chizmar (who?). There is basically no other information out there about this like when it might start filming or who has signed up for the cast, so rather than just leave this at a heartless and boring blurb, I'll also point you to this op-ed written by the man himself about violence in movies.In the movie of the same name, it's what the main character (played by Viggo Mortensen) turns out to have. It's also true of American movies in general, which were... From a Buick 8, Stephen King Ready For Some Jericho? It has always been possible that the new limited-run episodes of Jericho (the so-called second season that isn't a season) would be cued up to replace one of CBS' new fall shows that falls on its face. There are quite a few that bomb and drop early and it makes sense to have something ready to slide into its place at a moments notice.Jericho's new episodes are done filming and could be ready to air in a matter of weeks if they are needed, and if the ratings decline some of these new shows are experiencing is any clue, sooner rather than later it may be.Last season "Jericho" aired Wednesdays at 8 p.m., the time period now held by "Nation."... Jericho Bionic Woman Takes a Bionic Crap This show's title is perfectly designed for the most amount of useless puns and unclever jokes..I love it. Unfortunately if you put me in a room with NBC, then I'm the only one in that little world having any fun. In fact, one of us probably wants to jump off a cliff, and honey, it ain't me.Bionic Woman in the span of a week went from the networks best rated fall drama to middle-of-the-pack, says the ratings gurus, though the loss is not nearly as bad as Cavemen. Gee, would would have thought a comedy based on the most annoying Geico commercials every produced wouldn't pan out? Maybe networks should hire a couple of people whose only job is to... Bionic Woman, NBC Additional Script Orders May go to Waste I'm no expert on television production, having not been directly involved with any myself, but it doesn't take a genius to understand that no matter how much the studios stockpile scripts for feature productions and television, some schedules leave projects vulnerable to a strike. Best as I understand it, virtually every new fall show is going to suffer if and when this happens.The question then becomes, have NBC and CBS ordered new scripts for some of their shows despite the possibility they won't even get written, or because of it, in order to sneak them in under the wire without possibility of getting any revisions during the strike, forcing them to shoot what they have, crap or not.... Bionic Woman, Cane, Chuck, Journeyman, Life A Comment on "No More Female Leads" A couple of days ago, Nikki Finke wrote on her blog that three anonymous sources recounted hearing a top Warner Brothers exec say that they weren't going to produce films with female leads anymore. I didn't think very much of it at the time because the world is full of people who would say things like that, people who would say it and not really mean it, and people who would lie to screw over somebody else.A couple of other blogs picked up the story, got an official denial from Warner Brothers which was expected and means absolutely nothing, but Robert Sanchez of IESB raised an interesting question, one he didn't bother to find the answer to.Given how tough it... IESB, Warner Brothers EverQuest Movie Greenlit Yes, those evil fiends we like to call studio executives are once again wasting their $4.3 billion record summer booty so they can spend their woeful days running writers babies through blenders to squeeze more money out of them are making a movie based on an RPG (Role Playing Game) and for whatever reason, they choose the one that isn't the most popular of the bunch to spend their coin on.Because I don't play, don't like, and know nothing about MMORPGs (don't ask what it means or you'll turn into one of them) I simply present you with this picture of Boston pitcher Curt Shilling playing EverQuest.Click on the picture to see a larger version, or read about this sad,... Curt Shilling, EverQuest Next Terminator Flick Inches Foward Though don't expect it anytime in 2008, with something this early in the workings, there's zero chance it'll move forward beyond where it is today until well after the writers strike ends. If it ends. If there is a Hollywood left after it ends. Then again, the strike might crumble early and hard and set writers back for another couple of decades at the feet of greedy studios that are swimming in money from a record setting summer box office.... T4, Terminator 4 CSI:NY Pay Raise Makes Studios Look Like Fools I really want to drive this point home so that people stop believing the lies coming out of Hollywood studios. Josef Adalian of Variety reported last night that Gary Sinise is getting a pay raise for his gig on CSI at exactly the same time studios are crying - literally crying - at the negotiating table with the Writers Guild of America about losing money on television production. They are demanding that writers give up residuals (half their payment, for some writers most of it) until after a program shows a profit on paper (never in the history of television has a program shown a profit on paper. Seriously, Fox claims The Simpsons is being produced at a loss.)So how... CSI: NY, Gary Sinise, WGA Bionic Woman is a Bionic Mess When an executive producer that was intimately involved with the creation of a show is pushed out in one way or another after the pilot, and that EP has the resume of Glen Morgan, it doesn't take a genius to figure that things are only going to go downhill from that point forward. Things are made much, much worse when you factor in how uninspiring the pilot was to begin with, and at least for a few seconds of pure delusional insanity, I can actually understand why NBC wanted changes made.Unfortunately for NBC, it panicked and went for the reset button rather than just chilling out for a few episodes to let the show and its people find their way... Bionic Woman, Glen Morgan J.J. Abrams' Trek Flick Gets a Villain Before I tell you who it is, when did it become written in stone at Paramount that Star Trek feature films have to have a villain? Why are they treating this franchise like they would any other action flick with clear-cut good guys and clear-cut bad guys, and a battle where the good guys beat the bad guys? I don't think you could be more brainless and typical than that.I know Voyager relied heavily on bad-guy-of-the-week stories and I know that most people hated Voyager for it. There are so many stories you can tell, and have been told in past Trek films that show how enjoyable films can be when you stop writing according to a formula meant to... Eric Bana, Star Trek Studios Move Towards Writer Lockout Hardly ever do you hear about what the studios do in preparation for a strike that is just as damaging to the situation as anything the writers do. The writers you see are not the only people who can refuse to stop working with the other side.Will the writers strike until they get what they want, like whiny children bound and determined to stay up just another five minutes? Or will they be fair to those poor production studios who are out there just trying to make an honest buck in a cruel world full of pirates and thieves?... AMPTP, WGA Box Office Booty: October 08, 2007 Neither of this past weekends three new flicks managed the top spot while The Rock is showing off not just his ability to open a weekend for the first time, but also that he can hold onto a top spot for more than a single weekend. I'm talking about The Game Plan which held steady against The Heartbreak Kid, and stood unchallenged by the meekly The Dark is Rising. Feel The Noise didn't even factor into the top 5 though was handicapped by a limited opening in just a tad over 1,000 theaters.From what I've been able to gather, none of these films had stellar budgets, about $22m for Game Plan, and another 20 for Rising. That means Rock's flick... Feel the Noise, The Dark is Rising, The Heartbreak Kid Heroes: Kindred (my thoughts and where to get it streaming) As is usually the case, if you're just looking for a place where you can stream Heroes Kindred from, you can get it here on NBC's website. They'll have it up sometime on Tuesday where it will remain until the next episode airs a week later.Also, while I won't reveal huge plot points from what I write, some things can always be inferred. Don't read the rest of this if you haven't seen the episode. That said, it has been the best episode of the new season, though not really outstanding compared to some first season episodes.I really feel like show has lost a great deal with the loss of Bryan Fuller to Pushing Daisies.... Heroes More 'Halo 3' Rants From So-Called Experts Am I obsessed with this? No, just slightly annoyed. You haven't seen obsessed yet. Nikki Finke is undoubtedly more of an expert on all things Hollywood than I am, and her cited games expert is certainly better placed than I to speak authoritatively on many game related discussions, and yet the silly hype over the Halo 3 sales numbers continues and the so-called experts are still content to compare apples and oranges.... Halo 3, Spider-Man 3 Theater Watch: October 6th, 2007 It has been a rough couple of days, trying to catch the new fall shows while also watching and recording the MLB playoff games. I actually managed to record all my regular programs plus see all three games on the first day of the playoffs. In addition to that, I had a day-and-a-half long problem with two people who have websites hosted on the same webserver mine is on. One was hosting warez and pirated foreign films, another had a horrible designed blog that was causing the servers CPU to go to 100% usage every single time somebody loaded a page.Beyond that, other things simply kept me off the site until this afternoon. To make up for the lack of... Feel The Noise, The Heartbreak Kid, The Seeker: The Dark is Rising Another Look at 'Halo 3' Sales Numbers The last time I wrote a post that clearly showed Halo 3's sales numbers were overblown, a number of the games fans weren't too happy and accused me of being biased against Halo 3 specifically, Halo in general, and games overall. Of course none of those things are true, and thus far the numbers have held up fairly well. Now that more sales figures are in, it's take to take another quick look at how this game compares to the major motion pictures of this past summer.... Halo 3, Microsoft Mysterious Evil Force Disrupting TV in Israel Variety is reporting that the cable and satellite television experience in Israel has degraded precipitously over the past few weeks, with people complaining of screen flickers and frame freezing. As is usually the case, everyone is blaming the military.The onset of the problems coincided with a Sept. 6 Israeli air raid on Syria. Television signals began to deteriorate shortly afterward and on Sept. 12, Lebanon's Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh told local daily An Nahar that interference had "started with the aggressive Israeli infiltration on Syria."But by Sept. 20, Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, which also linked reception problems to the raid, reported "Syrian espionage activities on northern Israel using Russian experts" as a possible cause of the disruption.A third theory emerged... New Battlestar Content Tonight The Scifi Channel is using new Battlestar Galactica content to prop up its new failing series Flash Gordon tonight. They'll be showing original two-minute long clips they are calling "flashbacks" that show parts of the first war against the Cylons from the perspective of a young William Adama. Scifi is calling these shorts by the name "Razor Flashbacks", which is deceptive since they have absolutely nothing to do with the made-for-tv movie of the same name ("Razor") that will air in late November.I'll have to see if someone does a writeup on what happens, because I am not suffering through Flash just to see these. That show is worse than the latter years of Andromeda.Flash Gordon airs on Friday nights... Battlestar Galactica, Flash Gordon Today's Baseball Playoff Games on TV A little late to the game myself but here is a list of the games being played on TBS today, including the first one which is already underway. Virtually every single game in the first round are being aired on TBS this year, with one from each series I believe airing on TNT, but not until later into the week. All times are in Eastern Daylight Time (EDT.)Colorado Rockies @ Philadelphia Phillies (3pm)Jeff Francis (17-9, 4.22) vs Cole Hamels (15-5, 3.39) in Game 1.Los Angeles Angels @ Boston Red Sox (6:30pm)Josh Beckett (20-7, 3.27) vs John Lackey (19-9, 3.01) in Game 1.Chicago Cubs @ Arizona Diamondbacks (10pm)Brandon Webb (18-10, 3.01) vs Carlos Zambrano (18-13, 3.86) in Game 1.Boston and Anaheim... Arizona Diamondbacks, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Colorado Rockies, Los Angeles Angels, Philadelphia Phillies Box Office Booty: October 2nd, 2007 A little bit of a surprise here, The Rock managed to open the top spot this weekend with The Game Plan, squarely knocking out terror drama The Kingdom, sending Mr. Jamie "Oscar Weiner Winner" Foxx to a grueling loss at the hands of a pro wrestler.Ouch.You know, there wasn't much going on this weekend, but this was a much needed win for The Rock. He hasn't had a real hit since making the move from sports entertainment to real entertainment until now, and he just put Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, and Michael Mann on their asses.The Game Plan ($22.9m)The Kingdom ($17.4)Resident Evil: Extinction ($8m)Good Luck Chuck ($6.2)3:10 to Yuma ($4.2)MGM's flick Feast of Love bombed with $1.7 million for 12th... The Darjeeling Limited, The Game Plan, The Kingdom Tonight's Premiers: Cavemen, Carpoolers Yeah, not much in the way of new series debuting tonight and out of these two, one is guaranteed to blow chunks. Can you guess which one it is? I'll give you a hint: it's the show that starts with the letter 'C'.8PM EDTCavemen (ABC)8:30CarpoolersAnyone want to take bets on which one gets canceled first? You may just want to watch House instead, and get ready for the coming preemptions since the MLB playoffs are getting ready to roll.All the division series will be on TBS (and one or two on TNT) but then Fox will pick it up at some point and you'll just have to deal. Sorry, not like it happens all year long.... Carpoolers, Cavemen Writers Strike Inches Closer According to Daily Variety, the Writers Guild of America has sent a strike authorization request out to their members. I won't bore you with the details and if you're truly interested, you can read all about what this means on Variety's website. Short answer: not a lot. This is pretty routine stuff and is far, far from an actual strike occurring in terms of timing. Any strike by WGA or SAG won't happen until the summer of next year at the earliest.I hope people understand what's going on here though, because this isn't a typical situation where both sides are right and both sides are wrong - the writers have the side of God locked down on this one, so... AMPTP, DGA, SAG, WGA Broken Tags Fixed (Kind of) The links at the bottom of posts that say something along the lines of "find more posts about" have been broken for a day or two, ever since I made an effort to make my sites theme XHTML 1.0 compliant. Rather than pointing to the search script where it exists (in /cgi-bin/) it was pointing to the sites root folder. Sorry, I wouldn't have even known had I know gotten curious and took a peek at my error logs and found all the 404's looking for a script I *knew* existed, but the webserver couldn't find.All those search links will fix themselves when the site republishes itself, which is scheduled for 4:30AM EDT. After that point, everything should be working.Sorry... Streaming and Download Links: Heroes, Chuck, Bionic Woman, The Office, Friday Night Lights Links to watch The Office, Heroes, Friday Night Lights, House, 30 Rock, Chuck, and other FOX and NBC shows streaming for free (and legal too.) Bionic Woman, Friday Night Lights, Heroes, The Office Heroes: Lizards Was it good? Yes. Better than the premier? Perhaps. Are there developing problems? Definitely. Will they stop you from watching? Hell no.I love this show but I'm still struggling here. I know some people didn't care for the first season finale, but it left me in a state that few shows ever do (in a good way) and it's hard to come back down from that to enjoy the next marathon. Everything I felt from the premier was familiar just now, it was thrilling and disappointing and I can easily explain why without giving anything away if you haven't seen it yet.... Heroes Tonight's Premiers: Everybody Hates Chris, Aliens in America, Girlfriends, The Game It's an all-CW premier night from 8PM through 10 with four half-hour shows that sound exceptionally unexceptional, perhaps with the exception of Aliens in America. Unfortunately for The CW, they picked the worst night to put these shows on and is it any wonder that nobody watches their network?I don't mean that in an insulting way, just look and what they are up against on the big four tonight: Prison Break, Heroes, K-Ville (which I'm really starting to like which means it will be canceled by Fox in exactly 1.5 seconds), Journeyman, and ESPN has the Patriots playing the Bengals at home.Like I said, worst night ever to put your premiers when you are already deep in the hole by... Aliens in America, Everybody Hates Chris, Girlfriends, The Game Spears Loses Child Custody Battle It's great news for her kids that she lost a custody battle, because it means they might have a shot at having a normal life (and living long enough to see their tenth birthday) not being in the home of a depressed washed up drunk. On the other hand, they are going to live in the house of a drug abusing washed up white rapper.L.A. County Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon issued an order today, stating that Kevin Federline, the boys' father, "is to retain physical custody of the minor children on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 at 12:00 PM until further order of the court."And this is supposed to be better how?... Britney Spears |
