As the SAG/AFTRA/AMPTP drama continues, advertisers are still ponying up the big bucks for TV advertising: $9.2 billion in pre-booked ads for the 2008-2009 season. This broad sale of advertising combined with targeted ad sales technology now offered by Canoe Ventures (you got a dog? say "hello" to even more Purina commercials) makes it seem like things are hunky-dory in TV land but they might not be. Some folks are perceiving these as just defensive......

It's Earth Day on (some of) TV. Below are some marked programming that is Earth Day-related and of course there's plenty online, including web "TV" properties like Joost who have launched an Earth Day Channel. 8:00pm Nova: Car of the Future PBS/KCET - Tom and Ray Magliozzi of NPR's ``Car Talk'' examine new technologies and ideas for transportation, including alternative fuel sources. Earth Day!......

In Orange County, CA, a nearly empty theater Sunday night became a crime scene when two men watching the Sundance raved-about gruesome horror movie, The Signal, got stabbed by another man who fled through the back doors. ...

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Hollywood's latest exercise in Rashômon-style storytelling is Vantage Point. As most of you no doubt realize because you've seen the trailer a quarter of a million times, Vantage Point deals with the attempted assassination of the President from a multitude of perspectives. As the movie's tagline says, "8 Strangers. 8 Points of View. 1 Truth." Critics have been flaming it with Variety's Justin Chang providing some choice barbs. I......

Photo courtesy of The Weinstein Company George A. Romero pioneered the zombie genre when he wrote and directed the seminal Night of the Living Dead in 1968. He would later go on to make Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead (2005). His latest undead picture, Diary of the Dead hits theaters today after successful screenings at the Toronto and Sundance film festivals. Actor Shawn Roberts......

The Super Bowl isn't just the center of the universe for the sports business, but also for anybody working at E! or People. Even TMZ had a giant mobile billboard just outside the stadium in Glendale -- probably reminding party-goers to send them any interesting photos. While the teams were sequestered away under heavy guard (a cop only seemed to half-joke about shooting me when I pulled into a wrong driveway near the Giant's hotel),......

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on LAist. America Unzipped, Brian Alexander's book on the desire of American's to get down and dirty. The Sundance Film Festival, where you can experience the 2008 festival online. Busted Tees, where they're in the middle of their winter sale. All shirts, $15! If you're interested in advertising on LAist or any other site in our network, check out our online mediakit.......

Photo courtesy of jpchan via flickr For me, the Sundance Film Festival officially ended at the airport in Salt Lake City when I was waiting in line behind Bijou Phillips at the Quizno's in Terminal 1. She was politely arguing with the counter guy about why she couldn't get fresh mustard from behind the counter instead of having to use the the mustard packets by the napkin stand. In a heavy accent, he kept......

We just received an unbelievable e-mail from friend-of-LAist and local indie troubadour Matthew Moon and wanted to share. Some amazing and surprising things really do happen at Sundance. Read on: Two days ago I was performing at a Sundance Film Festival event in Salt Lake City, UT. After my performance at Rose Wagner Theater, I began driving the 25 minutes it takes to get back up to Park City. I checked my voice mail......

Photo courtesy of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival As one of my favorite bloggers Jeffrey Wells recently wrote, "The Sundance Film Festival is a 10-day event, but it's always over as of Wednesday morning...the voltage turns down, there are fewer people on Main Street, all the presumably hot titles (i.e., name casts, advance-hyped) have been screened." Park City actually becomes a manageable town again and tickets that were impossible to get a few days......

Photo courtesy of dmax3270 via flickr While the features and shorts at Sundance are occasionally hit or miss, the documentaries are always strong across the board. Yesterday, I was able to see two that I have had my eye on since the festival schedule was originally released: Made in America by Stacy Peralta and Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden by Morgan Spurlock. Considering all the frantic back-and-forths I've been doing since last......

Photo courtesy of Focus Features Even on the best days, the Sundance Film Festival is an extremely hectic place to be. Screenings and events often overlap and are spread all over town, and even though the public transportation is good (and free!), it can still be a nightmare to get someplace quickly. Cabs can be hard to come by and parking (when available) is expensive. Furthermore, there are always going to be lines waiting......

Ben Lyons and Jane Lynch at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival LAist caught up with Ben Lyons from E! to tell us what Park City is really like during the Sundance Film Festival. From Charlize Theron to Diddy, Ben's time at the festival is jam packed with screenings, interviews, and parties. We asked him to fill us in on his favorite films, his obsession with "Beverly Hills 90210", and going bobsledding with Ivan Radcliff.......

In 1992, Quentin Tarantino made a huge splash at the Sundance Film Festival with his directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs. He didn't return to Park City until this year to serve as a member of the Festival's Jury. Last night, he was honored with the Ray-Ban Visionary Award and LAist was there. Following a short introduction by Dennis Hopper, Quentin took the stage and riffed about his first Sundance experience for about twenty minutes. Following......

There are usually only two things to talk about at the Sundance Film Festival: the movies and the parties. Last night was unique, though, because everybody was talking about...the blackout! That's right. Around 9:30 last night the whole town just went completely dark for at least half on hour. Periodic blackouts continued for the next hour or so before everything finally returned to normal. It was a surreal scene. Thousands of people were just......

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on LAist. America Unzipped, Brian Alexander's book on the desire of American's to get down and dirty. The Sundance Film Festival, where you can experience the 2008 festival online. Busted Tees, where they're offering free shipping with the purchase of three shirts. If you're interested in advertising on LAist or any other site in our network, check out our online mediakit.......

Photo courtesy of In Between Sessions via Flickr Starting tomorrow and continuing through next week, LAist will be reporting live from the Sundance Film Festival. We'll be covering the films, the parties, the people and the various surreal and pointless events that comprise the most important film festival in the country. With the WGA strike still in full bloom, most are expecting a buying frenzy up in Park City as distributors stock up on......

When Teeth screened at Sundance last year, there was a collective shudder and crossing of legs by the male members of the audience. You see, the subject of Teeth is the cultural myth of vagina dentata. Jess Weixler plays Dawn, a young Christian girl who is struggling with her budding sexuality and the aggressive attentions of the men around her. She soon discovers that she possesses the ultimate weapon against over-familiarity. That's right, she......

I hope you've got a bunch of stuff Tivo'd because there's nothing on until Sunday. You tell me that there is stuff on tonight? What, you mean Friday Night Lights, NUMB3RS, or Las Vegas? Please. Tomorrow, there's no reason to turn on prime time TV unless it's for Citizen Kane on TCM at 8:30. The Big Story is Sunday, check it: Sunday 8:00pm Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project HBO - Special. Don Rickles is......

Even my beloved Thursdays are starting to fill up with reruns. We do have a great Fellini movie on tonight though, so open a fine Chianti (or my preference of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo) and drink it all in. Also kids, the Style Network notified me that they are looking for folks for a new reality show. Here's the deets: If your business, club, band, school, organization, or team is in need of a make-over then apply......

Looks like we have a few more weeks of comedy and drama to enjoy before our shows start petering out due to the writers' strike. As we can see, late night TV is in repeats. TV Junkie will have an interview with a WGA card-carrying writer posted in the next couple days, as well as some DVD reviews (gotta feed the addiction). Thursday is comedy night in our book: 8:00pm Ugly Betty ABC - Tonight......

I'm hoping that no one had time for TV last night and if they did they had the class to watch the Boris Karloff marathon on TCM. 8:00pm Ugly Betty ABC - The Halloween Episode. TV Junkie 8:00pm Pick. 9:00pm To Die In Jerusalem HBO - Have heard enough about this documentary on NPR and elsewhere to know it's a good thing. TV Junkie Pick-O-The-Night 9:00pm The Office NBC - If you don't feel like......

Baseball was fun last night since there wasn't much else on. Tonight we have more choices, except for late night which only offers us Kimmel. If you have the Sundance Channel you really ought to check out the series Iconoclasts, which pairs up incongruous individuals from sometimes completely disciplines to see what kinds of discussions result. Weird and fascinating. 5:00pm World Series: Game Deux FOX - For all you non-Francophiles or non-Naked Gun fans, Deux......

Ten years ago Long Beach native Morgan J. Freeman was minding his own business in film school back east. Doing what everyone else in his class did, he submitted his thesis film "Hurricane Streets" to Sundance for competition. Not only was it accepted - alongside the "real" movies - but it won three awards at the festivall: Morgan won best director, the cinematographer won for best cinematography, and the film got the audience award......

Hadrian over at Cinefile in West L.A. just sent us the heads-up for a great event going on at the Silent Movie Theatre this Wednesday, 8/15 at 9pm. Brent Green is an animator from rural Pennsylvania whose unique style has drawn comparisons to Tim Burton and Adam Jones. Hadrian blogs: Brent Green an untrained, completely original animator from rural Pennyslvania, who plays music along with his short films, while narrating them live in freeform,......

Movies like Once, happen ...well, just once in awhile. A 2007 Sundance darling, Once is a unique love story set in Ireland. The film is a departure from the regular summer blockbusters and yes, it is a musical- thats right, a musical, but not the break out into song with jazz hands type musicals we're used to. If there were to be a mellow indie rock musical where the songs fit into the story......

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix blew away not only the competition, but its own previous franchise records this week with a 140 million dollar opening 5 days. Expect Potter mania to reach its full flowering later this week when the 7th and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, reaches stores. Transformers held steady at number two, dropping only 49% from the previous week (movies typically drop well over 50%......

Last night I attended a screening of the 2006 Sundance Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award winning documentary God Grew Tired of Us, directed by Christopher Quinn. Fine, maybe I went because Brad Pitt was listed as one of the producers and I thought he and Angie might show, which they didn’t, but it was still worth the trafficky drive up the 405 freeway to where the screening and a panel discussion were scheduled......

A few weeks ago in this space, I predicted that Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer would be the big-budget flop of the summer. Turns out I missed it by one week. Evan Almighty tallied a meager 32.1 million dollars at the box office over the weekend--well below already reduced expectations (the ugliest five words a studio chief can ever hear--worse even than "the call girl taped everything"). Considering its budget was somewhere......

The festival kicks off this morning with a director's coffee talk at the Landmark. Scheduled panelists include moderator James Mangold, Paul Haggis and the next Bond director Marc Forster. Tickets are $11. The big event today (and it's free!) starts at noon and runs until 6:00 p.m. at the Landmark Regent Theater. It's Live Earth Day: A Celebration of Earth and includes 50 short films commissioned by SOS-Live Earth. Some of the filmmakers who've......