Results tagged “tomdog”

Today's big scuttlebutt is that Oprah may relocate her show from Chicago to Los Angeles by 2011. While this might be more convenient for Oprah and TV executives, we think TV is more competitive and more interesting when it is produced in more locations. If the entertainment industry doesn't want to be labelled as a "bi-coastal elitist" then it should be aware of how this appears.

"Sesame Street" is about to enter its 40th season and it's making us feel, well, all of our own 40 years. As a little TV Junkie we were plunked down in front of that show as soon as we could sit up and the power of this incredible show has stayed with us all these years. Characters from the show will be popping up all over the place this week, including co-hosting "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?" on Monday, November 9th.

Did you make the mistake, like us, of watching the original "V: The Final Battle" on Syfy last weekend? We can't believe that series was such a big deal when we were kids but here's good news, the remake of the series that airs tonight at 8pm on ABC takes the premise and completely owns it in a very slick and well done (at least for the part of the pilot that we've seen) rendition. We'll be watching and not remotely comparing.

Today marks the release of "The Shield: Complete Series" on DVD. This series pushed the boundaries of what could be done on cable television, in terms of content, quality of writing and production, and talent (Academy Award winners galore guested or had long-running storylines). "The Shield" paved the way for current darlings of the critics and viewers like "Damages", "Mad Men", "Breaking Bad", Saving Grace", etc. High quality, aggressive and unapologetic storytelling is not limited to premium cable anymore because of "The Shield".

There's already some news about how this season is going in terms of viewership for the big networks: all the big networks have larger audiences with the exception of ABC. NBC is still struggling in 4th place and its "Jay Leno Show" has about 1/2 the viewership of its rival networks at that hour. Leno did an interview over at Broadcasting & Cable to get some positive press and alludes to a desire to return to the 11:35pm slot.

Robert Englund has been involved in film and television for 35 years, other than his most famous creation, Freddy Krueger, he's been in television staples such as "Soap", "CHiPs", and "V" as well as movies like The Phantom of the Opera, Strangeland, and 2001 Maniacs. He's also been a director and is now an author with the release of his autobiography Hollywood Monster: A Walk Down Elm Street With the Man of Your Dreams, which tells the stories of his life in the business so far with anecdotes about everyone from Burt Reynolds to Johnny Depp. We talked with Englund about his book as well as his new web series, "Fear Clinic", which is available on FEARnet - with five new episodes this week, including one featuring teen heartthrob Lucas Till. Englund plays the notorious Dr. Andover who specializes in treating phobias with cures that might be worse than the ailment.

Halloween Weekend Edition You will have plenty of Halloween options starting tonight with CBS covering all bases with "NUMB3RS", "Medium" and "Ghost Whisperer" (fans of the last two should check out this "Spirit of Friday Night" website) but don't forget oldies but goodies like Psycho on TCM at 9pm. Tomorrow there will be Halloween fare all over the place with scary movies on IFC, TCM, and AMC which will be running Night of the Living Dead back to back from 6pm until midnight. You can always check out Martha Stewart's TV options or consider one of these "True Blood" jack-o-lantern stencils for last-minute Halloween ideas.

Tell us, have you watched "Cougar Town"? We've really tried to give this show a chance but the stilted dialogue and hollow stereotypes are starting to get to us: the whole "cougar" premise already seems tired and trite; the cast seems to be waiting for each line of dialogue to be stiffly delivered; and when is the increasingly frozen-faced Christa Miller going to be fed up with being cast as an insufferable harpy?

There was some great TV on last night, with "Sons of Anarchy" continuing to get back on track after some silliness a couple weeks ago. On the more depressing side of things, "Frontline" continued to remind us that we are still riding a unicycle on the precipice of economic disaster. Look forward to more stark details from PBS as Margaret Warner, correspondent for "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer", is traveling in Pakistan with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and will be reporting on the region tonight and all this week.

The AFI Film Festival starts this Friday and while there are many excellent films to choose from, we highly recommend The Messenger. The film stars Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster as U.S. Army officers assigned to the Army's Casualty Notification service whose duty is to deliver notification of death to the next-of-kin of fallen soldiers. We went to the New York City premiere of the film at the CMJ Film Festival and shot the video of Woody Harrelson and the film's director, Oren Moverman, answering questions from the audience about the film and their preparation for it.

It's dance night again and we're asking you if you care. We want to hear from the lovers and the haters: should we keep listing new episodes of "So You Think You Can Dance" and "Dancing With The Stars" in our schedule or can we save that space for something else? 2 contestants from each show will be eliminated tonight BTW. --- TNT is again stepping up to the plate by funding a pilot to be executive produced by George Clooney.

A couple weeks ago we wrote about Microsoft's insidious sponsorship of Seth MacFarlane's November special, Family Guy Presents: Seth and Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show" on November 8th and it now appears that Microsoft can't handle MacFarlane's humor and has dropped the sponsorship. After Microsoft execs attended the October 16th taping, a Microsoft spokesperson stated "We initially chose to participate in the Seth and Alex variety show based on the audience composition and creative humor of 'Family Guy,' but after reviewing an early version of the variety show it became clear that the content was not a fit with the Windows brand." In a twist of reality the company is now behaving exactly like the John Hodgeman parody character.

Tonight at 10:00pm USA will be premiering their new dramedy "White Collar". At the premiere event this morning at Rockefeller Center in NYC, the TV Junkie had a chance to talk to stars Tiffani Thiessen, Matthew Bomer, and Tim DeKay. The series pairs master "white collar" criminal Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) and hardened FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) on capers where they need to track down various corporate criminals...

Weekend Edition The prediction that TV was fading into the fog of yesteryear as a medium seems to not be true (for the moment). Overall viewership of TV is up by 4% and the departure of the coveted 18-49 demographic seems to have been arrested. The Hollywood Reporter offers a breakdown, network by network.

We talked about inspirations behind their new album, See Mystery Lights, which is their first release on DFA. Primary among their inspirations are the bizarre and strange Marfa lights of Western Texas, which they themselves witnessed on multiple occasions.

FOX has pulled "Dollhouse" completely from its November schedule. The series returns in December in a deathrow Friday slot. If this is truly the end of the show, it won't be the end of the line for Eliza Dushku, whose appearance in Hulu commercials has made her a very recognizable face - we hope to see her again soon.

Has anyone been watching "Sons of Anarchy" and "Nip/Tuck" on FX? The motorcycle gang drama (see our interview with series creator Kurt Sutter and series star Katey Sagal) seemed to get back on track last night after last week's somewhat scatter-brained and ridiculous plot turns (gang members riding around as back up for the deputy police chief? Randomly shooting up cars without repercussions? etc.). Tonight we have another round of the pseudo-pornographic "Nip/Tuck" which can range from being a pointed indictment of our superficial culture to being an overwrought train wreck of excess. We admit to being a rubbernecker that just can't not watch it. At least FX is presenting some non-pedestrian series and it appears that it's getting viewership as a reward with these programs earning impressive ratings for scripted programming.

Syndication News: IFC will be rebroadcasting back to back episodes of "Arrested Development" on Sundays at 10pm and Tuesdays at 9pm starting on October 25th. Comedy Central will be rebroadcasting "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" starting in the Summer of 2010.

Ten days ago we bitched about NBC's cancellation of "Southland" and we had a lot of dialogue about that. Now the industry wonders if this move will result in creatives avoiding NBC because why work for a place that would cancel the best-reviewed and highest-rated freshman series in 2008-09? Oh yeah, and it was a series created by John Wells Productions, the guys that created, among other things, "E.R.", which only won about a jillion Emmys and provided NBC with hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising dollars.

Weekend Edition The world watches an empty balloon that could be part of a stunt to get a reality show, hmmm, that makes us think that this particularly family could easily head down the "Jon & Kate Plus 8" route - and whoops, TLC is now suing Jon Gosselin. Unless there is some kind of massive intervention, nothing will end well for anyone in that family.

Some notes on morning programming as a couple new shows have started up fairly recently: Al Roker is a really busy guy, not only is he all over the "Today Show" on NBC but he also feels that he needs to do even more forecasting over at The Weather Channel with "Wake Up With Al" which airs at 3am and 7am. Roker usually (somehow) has a celebrity guest in the studio with him at these ungodly hours.

Looks like "Family Guy"/"American Dad"/"The Cleveland Show" creator Seth MacFarlane is coming through on the idea of a music/comedy variety show. When we attended his "Family Guy" Pre-Emmy party (check out the vids) we marveled at his cabaret prowess an it looks like there were additional admirers at FOX and...... Microsoft? Yeah, MacFarlane will shill Windows 7 as part of the "Almost Live Comedy Show" special as part of an all-Seth MacFarlane night on November 8th. According to Variety, MacFarlane and co-host Alex Borstein "will use what is described as ridiculous and bawdy comparisons to describe what's 'as simple as Windows 7' and what's 'more difficult than Windows 7'" during live-action segments of the show.

On Thursday we will have a chance to speak with some of the surviving members of Monty Python [video to come!] so if you have any questions that you'd like them to answer, please put them in the comments! Also, to remind you, IFC's Monty Python content starts broadcasting this Sunday - for details, check out our post.

What we effed up: Not Tivoing "Mad Men" so we're watching it later tonight. Not that you can spoil it for us since it will probably involve Don jumping in the sack with yet another woman, some new account or other work crisis, and Betty doing something risque. We're not saying that the show is predictable or boring because these are major plot points for almost any show and what makes "Mad Men" special is the style and delivery. Cheers.

From tsunami-watch to bad-acting-watch, news has it that Hawaii will be subjected to a CBS reworking of "Hawaii Five-O". Since "Fringe" co-creators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are writing the pilot, we will give it at least that shot, but unless they have continued involvement, we don't have a lot of hopes for the show.

Will you like Drew Barrymore's Whip It? We know at least one person over at the LA Times that did. As mentioned earlier today, Ellen Page (Juno) who stars in the movie will be producing a single-camera comedy for HBO called "Stitch N' Bitch" that she will co-write with actors write with two other young actors, Alia Shawkat and Sean Tillmann (aka Har Mar Superstar). The story follows two hipsters as they relocate from Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood to Los Angeles' Silver Lake in a bid to become artists. No release dates set yet.

"South Park" returns for a new season tonight and if you've got Xbox, they're launching a "South Park" game today as well. Season 13 will feature a hidden alien in each episode and if you find them all, you can enter to be a "South Park Citizen" and have your animated countenance to appear in a Season 14 episode.

October is Monty Python month over at IFC, check out these items on their schedule: Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's cut): New Six-Part IFC original docu-series on Python legacy airs October 18-23 @ 9:00pm. We've watched this and it is excellent and should not be missed by anyone who remotely considers themselves to be a Python fan. We will be at the US premiere of the documentary next week and will ask you for your questions for the Monty Python posse.

Longtime comedian and actress Elizabeth Beckwith has put pen to paper for her first book, "Raising the Perfect Child Through Guilt and Manipulation" which will be released tomorrow by Harper Paperbacks. As a new parent, Beckwith drew upon her own upbringing in creating this guide which Barnes & Noble should bundle with "What to Expect When You're Expecting".

OK, so the Letterman stuff happened like a million years ago last week but get ready for a fresh round of jokes this week as Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Craig Ferguson finally have their chance to rise and take the bait. Will Ferguson actually take some potshots at his boss?