Results tagged “monk”

Tonight marks the last broadcast of Conan O'Brien on "Late Night..." and what a ride it's been. From being a virtual unknown in front of the camera, O'Brien is now a staple of late night television. O'Brien's resurrection of NBC's "Late Night" after the departure of David Letterman to CBS was not easy and the first few years were very tenuous ones for the wild haired funnyman. With support from Lorne Michaels, O'Brien was given enough time to build an audience, something almost unheard of these days.

Controversial contestant Joanna Pacitti has finally been pulled from "American Idol" after it was revealed that she had friendships with multiple executives with "Idol" co-producer 19 Entertainment. For fans of the show who couldn't believe that she had made the cut after performing poorly and fumbling lyrics to several songs during the Hollywood rounds of auditions, it will be assumed that she had moved ahead due to these personal relationships and not merit.

A lot of our sport fan/fiend friends are convinced that this Sunday's Super Bowl event will be a boring blow out - "the Cardinals will win how?" is oft heard. But for a lot of media dorks, ourselves included, the Super Bowl is all about the ads. We already know that GoDaddy and PETA have had their ads denied (as must have been planned for). Adweek's Barbara Lippert analyzes past Super Bowl commercial foibles as well as a list of all expected advertisers for XLIII. On Saturday, CBS also takes a trip down memory lane with a program on the "best" commercials of years past.

A lot of programs return to or make their premiere on premium cable this Sunday including: "Big Love", "The L Word", "The United States of Tara", and "Secret Diary of a Call Girl". What we most eagerly anticipate is the season premiere of "Flight of the Conchords". The pair of musicians and their hapless manager, all hailing from New Zealand, might not have made a second season due to low viewership but their cult like following gave us one more. So enjoy every episode like a smooth New Zealand Merlot, savor it, because this might be their last run, on HBO at least.

The Paley Center hosts the cast and creative team of Monk tonight at 8:30 pm. There’s usually a screening, followed by discussion and Q&A. In person guests include Tony Shalhoub, Traylor Howard, Ted Levine, Jason Gray-Stanford, among others.

This weekend presents a dilemma. The big deal this weekend is the season premiere of "Mad Men" on Sunday at 10:00pm but this puts it in conflict with HBO's excellent "Generation Kill" which runs until 10:30pm but it repeats again at Midnight so that's probably the way out of this mess.

The Screen Actors Guild has officially rejected the June 30th offer from the studios. Cited among the reasons for the rejection was the fact that the major studios and networks have invested large amounts of money and/or have inked deals to distribute their content online or via video-on-demand but the contract offered actors does not account for this increased distribution. Considering that the contract would be for four years, to be locked out of that revenue was considered unreasonable.

Yesterday, the 65-year-old actor Stanley Kamel died in his Hollywood Hills home of a heart attack. In the hit TV show "Monk," there was an episode where Monk and another patient were competing to show who was the most insanely devoted (and stalkerish) patient to Dr. Charles Kroger played by Kamel. A partular running gag is how Monk is incapable of functioning without Kroger and unfortunately, he will have to do just that -- at least in real life. "USA is deeply saddened by the news of Stanley Kamel's passing... He will be sorely missed,” the network said in a statement.

OK so the Oscars are this weekend. Even though the writers' strike is over, the prediction is that this will be a ho-hum (excuse me?) Oscars. First of all, the majority of the films presented for consideration are real downers, secondly, because of the strike, many potential presenters thought that the awards ceremony would be canceled or drastically cut back so they made other plans and are now not available to present at the show. I'm sure they will have enough presenters but perhaps there won't be as many "mega-stars", thus leaving room for more indie-types.

OK so the Oscars a week from Sunday are what we're building up to but as an enthusiastic follower of Dexter on Showtime, I'm intrigued to see how it will translate to its network debut on CBS at 10:00pm this Sunday. At first I was concerned that the end result would be a heavily edited, several minutes shorter, vapid and empty shell of its former glory. Not so according to my Showtime contact. Evidently when they were shooting Dexter, for scenes that were gory, had nudity, or strong language, they shot alternate footage meant for broadcast TV. On Sunday we'll see if the result is a dumbed down and boring version of our favorite serial killer.

The Mars Volta, not that I'm some kind of outraged fan, had terrible terrible sound on Letterman last night. I've noticed this over the last few years, yeah I'm slow, that the sound production on the live band performances (not "the CBS Orchestra") is always sub par on Letterman. All the other late night shows have better live sound, Late Night needs to figure this out.

The Ceremony of Worshiping the Messenger Monk's Ship continues tonight at the Wat Mon Buddhist Temple in Panorama City. The Wat Mon Temple is unique from other Buddhist temples in LA County in that it prescribes Tipitaka (Pali canon) teachings. These scriptures are believed to be the oldest set of teachings of Buddha recorded.