A blog on how movie posters are created. Some pretty interesting details about how they get their final appearance.

The President v. Sweeps

A blow by blow account of how the President got his press conference televised on the first night of sweeps. But by the way, sweeps has begun! Let the television stunt-casting and cliff-hanging commence, to tide us through the long summer drought of entertainment.

A review of Inside TV magazine

A review of Inside TV magazine. I picked up a copy and found it sadly lacking. There was one article which had pictures of the OC wardrobe closet, which I thought was cool, but the articles are amazingly lacking in content. It must be a hard life as a writer to make a two column story about nothing. They can't even make things up, like the tabloids do - at least tabloid writers seem like they're having fun and cackling madly at their desk as they write.

I was hoping for some behind the scenes articles about the set, the production process or the writers, but it appears to just focus on the celebrities and their clothing. Basically People Magazine crossed with TV Guide. A big enh.

Presidential press conference could mess up tonight's TV

A presidential press conference scheduled for 8:30 pm EST could force the networks to reshuffle their schedules. So, you might not get new shows if they decide to move programs around. And you might need to check on TiVo to make sure he records the programs when they are actually aired.

Update: The networks chickened out and are shuffling their programming all over. There will be two new episodes of the OC back to back next week.

Gah

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are dating. AGH! I'm not sure I can still be a die-hard fan of Katie anymore!

The Serenity trailer

Ta da! The Serenity trailer!

A TAR racer blogs

Gretchen from the Amazing Race is writing blog entries about the most recent episodes.

wtf?

This is a little off-topic, since it has nothing to do with TV and/or Movies or anything at all really, but I'm still on an image-kick. Just keep in mind, next time someone says or does something completely random:

The Perfect Man

The Perfect Man trailer
Heather Locklear & Chris Noth: +10 points + lots of goodwill
Hilary Duff: -8 points
Crappy dance/lip-sync montage in the trailer: - 2 points

Totoro edit: I added an appropriate image. No, it's not doctored. Really.

Serenity trailer

The trailer for Serenity, the movie based on Joss Whedon's ill-fated Fox show Firefly, will be posted on the Apple trailers page tomorrow. Woo!

Apparently, there's also a website and blog for Serenity.

TV Carnage

Apparently, TV Carnage DVDs are an underground phenomenon. The website is pretty funny. I'll have to consider picking one up.

Inside TV magazine

I've been trying to track down a copy of Inside TV magazine, to see if this would be a fun magazine for me. Unfortunately, the website is not particularly inspiring, being largely devoid of content, although it does have lots of colorful gifs...

CNBC ran a mini-marathon of NBC's the Office, so I got to see three more episodes. It's definitely finding its legs and was pretty darn terrible funny. The season finale will be tomorrow. Here's hoping that it will get renewed and have a good season next year. 22 episodes will be a whole different game than a little 6 episode series, but I think it could be pretty funny.

An AICN interview with Rob Thomas, from Veronica Mars. Rob Thomas is definitely making the rounds talking about VM. I got my hands on the first twelve episodes of the season, and am making quick progress through them. I love it!

A trailer for Howl's Moving Castle, the Miyazaki film coming to the US in June.

Bad Boys!

tvtattle.com has a link to an article about television shows that show the less glamorous side of the tv/film industry. The best quote is where a writer admits that "he cranked out 50 pages of an early draft of the brain-dead action picture 'Bad Boys' in a couple of days to cover a gigantic bet on a horse" (fifth paragraph from the bottom). Heh. Awesome!

Inside TV Magazine

Inside TV magazine will be launching this week. I think I'm going to have to pick one up at the supermarket. Supposedly, it is aimed at young women, and will focus on the TV celebrities. Hmm, will it be as trashy as InTouch? Will it be as spoilery as Fox's episode previews? Either of those could kill it for me, but this could be a new part of my required reading!

Charmed

Things don't look good for a season pickup for Charmed. I started watching this show the summer after its first season, when my roommate and I inadverently named one of our kittens with the same name as one of the Charmed characters (Piper, if you want to know). Someone asked us if we named our kittens after the character, so we had to watch the show! (No, it's not worth asking about our reasoning.) I quickly got addicted to the craptacular show, which was surprisingly funny, particularly for the Shannen-era. Reruns of the early season on TNT are well worth your time! I guess this means that I have to watch Shannen's pilot on UPN if it gets picked up...

end of the season

The end of the television season is rapidly approaching, and some of the shows are wrapping up early. Arrested Development had its season finale last night and Joan of Arcadia will be wrapping up on Friday. And one of my roommates is moving out in a few weeks, so I'll be able to nuke her season passes and streamline the Tivo in a few weeks. Woo.

I appear to be unable to use the picture posting utility for the blog, so we'll have to rely on totoro to provide the photo-tacular fun on this site.

AICN posts a list of the renewal status of shows

Here it is.

Shiri Appleby's ABC Family Movie

Unless I'm misreading some of the blurbs on this, Shiri Appleby (Liz from Roswell) is in love with her imaginary childhood friend, but then meets a real guy who might be perfect for her. And so she might have to choose between imaginary and a real boyfriend. Um, kind of scary? But hopefully better than the disaster that was A Time for Dancing.

Britney's reality show

Britney's reality show will be starting on May 17. I'm setting my TiVo. The UPN page for the show. Also, Britney has redesigned her official website with a fairy/fantasy theme. I ask you, where are the unicorns?

In honor of the newly announced season 2 of Veronica Mars and our newly found ability to upload images, here's a pic of Veronica from the official site.

- totoro

Fall Schedules

The networks will be announcing their fall schedules during their upfront presentations during the week of May 16th.

The Man Date

There are all sorts of rules for the man date. No, not a mandate.

Pictures!

We've decided we'd like to spice up the blog a little and show some images, so here's the inaugural blog image featuring, of course, Marvin the really depressed robot.

edit: Snuffles just pointed out to me that this poster is clearly out of date, since the movie is now slated for release on April 29, 2005. Whatever, the poster gets the point across. And the point is that Marvin is the AWEsome.

- totoro

More Mars!

Veronica Mars has been renewed for a second season!
-nyanko

Scrubs hint/spoiler

Here's an article talking about a plot point for the end of the season for Scrubs. It's non-specific, but a little spoilery so don't look if you don't want to know.

- nyanko

Coupling, part III?

The blurb about the plot for the pilot Love Life seems remarkably similar to the premise for Coupling.
-nyanko

Sailing

Christopher Cross helps Michael Rosenbaum (Lex on Smallville) with road rage. (last paragraph). No, really. Also, how much road rage is there with Canadians in Vancouver?

- nyanko

Yahoo! News - Bad LANGuage: AP's Pop Culture Blog

Here's a sweet interview with the brothers from the Amazing Race. Also, a non-answer to whether Brian is dating one of the blondies.
- nyanko

Chick flicks

Two of the writers from Television Without Pity have a column on MSNBC. Pretty darn entertaining. The chick flick article spoke to me since I watched Bridget Jones II last week; but the archives also had some pretty funny comments on Jennifer Garner and Sandra Bullock.

- nyanko

ABC picks up four shows

ABC has picked up Alias, Boston Legal, Desperate Housewives and Lost for next season.
-nyanko

Britney in a reality TV show

Okay, it's not April 1 anymore, so I guess this news must be real: Britney will be in a reality show on UPN (second item). It will be about the courtship, engagement and wedding of Britney and Kevin. Despite the fact that I have been a longtime appreciator of Britney's hilarity (which I believe is frequently intentional), I'm not sure whether to be slightly optimistic or horrified by this news. Yes, I'll be watching.

- nyanko

The Little Prince on Great Performances

Our friend cc works at the Houston Grand Opera and was involved in the premiere of a musical (operatic?) version of the Little Prince. But now we'll be able to see a televised version of the show on PBS, on Great Performances. I'm setting my TiVo now!

- nyanko

Movie Review: Sin City

This is one of the most hyped movies in recent months, with an ensemble cast even bigger than Ocean's 11 (or 12), and although I did have some complaints about it I'd have to say that it turned out all right. My review, however, is incredibly biased because I am a fan of the books (I read a couple years ago, and re-read them all this past week). This comes into play in two ways: 1. the movie is basically the books transcribed onto the screen and into live action, verbatim, and 2. the extreme violence and shocking nature of some events in the movie aren't so shocking when you know everything that's going to happen.

Fun Index: 1 sparkly ball, there isn't much sparkly about Sin City
Pain Index: 5 spiky balls, there is a lot of pain there, though. a lot.
Gore Index: 4 blood covered spiky balls (see above). this number would be higher but most of the gore is b&w and it's comic-book style (i.e. exaggerated and not that real)
Final Grade: Visually amazing, shocking the way it should be, watch it if you dare.

- totoro

Pilot Review: Eyes

I love this show! I know Nyanko already mentioned this in her last post, but I recently saw the pilot episode with Snuffles and it was quite entertaining. Similar to the way I enjoy watching House and Veronica Mars, most of the funny in the show is derived from the main character and them just being the way they are. Eyes, however, has an extremely intriguing overarching storyline (so far) and if it keeps up the formula with the weekly case to solve and some overall plot advancement it could be a winner.

Fun index: 3 sparkly disco balls
Pain index: 1 spiky ball
Final grade: I'm hooked, for now.

- totoro

Eyes

I watched the pilot of Eyes and found it to be quite entertaining. It's got a bit of the intrigue/surprise factor that 24 plays so well, mixed into the glitziness of Las Vegas. We'll have to see if the writers can keep up the fun, while still surprising us with soapy surprise twists. Here's hoping we don't hit the amnesia storyline in the first run of episodes.

Fun factor: Three sparkly disco balls
Recommendation status: I'd recommend it to the tomcat, but I'm not sure if I'd give it a ringing endorsement to all my friends

Also, if you watched CSI last night? Ew. A particularly strong warning not to watch this one while you're eating.

And finally, damn you Kelly Clarkson. That 'Since U Been Gone' song is really catchy; I've now had my own totoro-esque 'Breakaway' incident... (hear and like the song, then find out it's an American Idol)

- nyanko