Battlestar to end after fourth season

As rumored earlier in the year, it appears that the upcoming season of Battlestar Galactica will be its last. This is probably a good thing to have that decided up front and to leave us wanting more. I love the show, but didn't think this season was its best so I'd rather have it end well, as opposed to Gilmore Girls which just dragged its way to the end...

In other news, I have configured my phone to allow me to blog from it. Not sure that I'll use it much, but I feel like I'm speeding forward on to the information superhighway. Woo!

Fox - Fall 2007 Previews

Fox's fall lineup is next, and the interesting thing is that the two remaining networks seem to have many more new series coming in for the next season, so either they are trying to play catch-up or there's just that much good stuff out there (or NBC/CBS just aren't showing everything yet). Fox is still running out its big hitters American Idol and 24 next season, but both of those are having steadily diminishing appeal. I've looked at clips/trailers from 7 new series for the coming season, although there are several more reality/game show types that are also coming up.

• Back To You - This seems to be like Frasier, only instead of Kelsey Grammar being a psychiatrist, he's a disgraced anchorman from a big market going back to his roots in the ever hilarious Pittsburgh. I never really even liked Frasier that much, so this is not happening for me.
  
• Canterbury's Law - Julianna Margulies as a hard-hitting attorney, I am so not interested.
  
• K-ville - Anthony Anderson as a hero cop in post-Katrina New Orleans. More zzzz, but I never watched The Shield, which is probably the kind of audience this is trying to appeal to (I believe Anderson also appeared in several episodes of The Shield).
  
• New Amsterdam - A guy does a heroic act a long time ago and gets blessed with immortality with a catch, he cannot die until he finds his true love. Aww. At least he's not a vampire or anything, but of course he does good deeds with all his experience and long-living as a police detective. Dialogue does not appear to be witty.
  
• The Return of Jezebel James - Parker Posey doing her thing, only this time her thing is going back to an estranged sister to ask for a surrogacy. I haven't been a fan of Parker for quite some time so her doing her usual insanely shrill thing is not particularly attractive.
  
• The Rules for Starting Over - Farrelly Brothers comedy about 4 friends who are newly single in their 30s, hilarity supposedly ensues as they all look for their perfect mates at this "ancient" age. I'm not a fan of most things Farrelly but people who are would probably consider this. The clips I've seen support my decision to skip this, as we have a monkey, a guy in a leprechaun suit, and fart jokes. Oh, and come on, 30 is totally young.
  
• The Sarah Connor Chronicles - !!! I saved this for last because this is probably the only one on this whole list that I'm actually going to watch. We've got Zach from Heroes (Claire's friend - Thomas Dekker) as John Connor, Lena Headey (the wife from 300) as Sarah, and Summer Glau (River from Firefly) as their protective Terminator model. This could be good, although from the clips that I've seen, they really need John to stop being so whiny. It's likely that this will play out like an extended Terminator movie, which should be a good thing. I'm hoping we're going to see lots of terminators running around and Sarah and River kicking ass. For people who are familiar with the movies, this is set between Terminator 2 and 3.
  

New York Times Crosswords

I'm super excited that the New York Times Crosswords DS game has been released. This could get me to kick my DS sudoku habit, but unfortunately only to replace it with another game. I'm having to persuade myself that I should not go to Target tonight to look for this game...

Tivo Series3 Lite?

There is word from Engadget that there should be a cheaper version of an HD Tivo known as the Tivo Series3 Lite coming out later this year. Seeing as how Nyanko mentioned a little while ago that the price has dropped considerably on the current Series3, I wonder how cheap the Lite will be, and what features are going to get cut.

One more thing, it looks like Tivo actually turned a profit in Q1 2007. Congrats!

Judd Apatow: Britney Spears’ Biggest Fan?

Via Defamer, Judd Apatow talks about trying not once, but twice to get the rights to use Toxic in his movie. Apparently, he tried to use it 40 Year Old Virgin and failed, but succeeded in getting it for Knocked Up. Seriously, how can you avoid rocking out to Toxic? Sadly, he doesn't say why he likes Britney so much or if his Britney obsession goes deeper.

Summer TV

Here's a list of all the summer shows, in case you are looking for some actual new content to watch. I'm vaguely tempted by the pirate reality show, but it might be completely tragic.

Memorial day weekend

I spend my Memorial Day weekend achieving TiVo zero (woo!) and watching Catch and Release. Since my Achilles heel appears to be Jennifer Garner movies (along with other random female starlets), I had to watch even though the trailers looked terrible. And my verdict - bad, but not unwatchable. In fact, at times, I found the movie to be somewhat enjoyable. It had Jennifer, and the poor man's Barry Watson (they blew the budget, I'm sure, on JG and Juliette Lewis). Juliette Lewis on the other hand, was in fact unwatchable. And the little kid? Also unwatchable. But for some reason, I kind of liked the romance subplot even though I think there was almost no substance/connection between the two people. Which brings me to my latest realization. Sometimes I'm really in the mood for some crappy and sappy romance movie and it doesn't matter how bad the movie is, I'm still going to enjoy it. This was one of those days. Watch it at your own risk.

NBC - Fall 2007 Previews

Now that I've watched previews on each of the 4 major stations, I'd have to say that CBS appears to be the real loser. There is not a single show on CBS that really appeals to me, but then again when you have the CSI Empire then who needs new shows.

NBC's new Fall shows are up next, they're sticking strong with My Name is Earl, 30 Rock, The Office, Scrubs, and ER (this is still going?) on Thursday nights but we've got 4 new shows spread out on M-W, almost all of which are more appealing to me than CBS's lineup.

• Journeyman - Drama that seems a lot like The Time Traveler's Wife, which was a pretty decent book. We've got a guy who travels back in time involuntarily which causes trouble in the present, since he disappears randomly, and in the past, since now he can change the future even though he never has any idea when he is. Overarching storyline appears to be whether or not he decides to or is capable of saving his old girlfriend who died many years ago. This appears meh but I may watch a few.
  
• Chuck - Comedy (that will probably have some drama) about a guy who works at the local Nerd Herd (which is like the Best Buy Geek Squad) who happens to somehow be the recipient of some email that contains all the crazy secrets of the government, except he doesn't know it of course. This results in a secret agent girl whose job it is to control/kill him, except they go on a date and of course she decides she likes him and is now his bodyguard, hilarity ensues. I am probably going to watch this, but I worry about the cheez.
  
• Bionic Woman - Huge hype on this one, it's a remake of the old series. In this one, the woman is guardian to her deaf sister who seems to hate her, then she gets in a really bad car accident and is saved by having various parts of her body replaced with crazy super-sekrit technology. She is now super, and after the initial freakout this becomes kind of like Dark Angel. She tries to figure out what to do with all the powah, people are chasing her down, etc etc... Of note: Starbuck from BSG shows up as her enemy in the trailer, I'll probably watch the first few just for this.
  
• Life - Cop gets sent away for life for a crime he didn't commit, he eventually gets out when they realize they put the wrong guy there. In his settlement, he gets a lot of money and his old job back, because he loves being a cop. His new partner is a sassy woman (omg tension) and instead of making it all about his angst/bitterness, he shows everyone what a good detective he is and makes wisecracks the whole time. I will probably pass on this, but if they can keep the funny up along with some decent crime-solving/catching bad guys and work the angle of him being a hardened veteran of 12 years in jail... this'll probably be decent.
  

Fall TV shows

Since totoro kicked things off with his recaps of fall shows, I'm going to contribute uh, someone else's recap of fall shows. More opinions = better, right?

Nutty Jericho renewal campaign

This was news last week, but it's still funny to me so I'm going to post about it. Jericho fans have decided to send thousands of pounds of nuts (peanuts) to CBS to try to get the show renewed. Tragic, but does give the office drones lots of snacks! Hope no one has a crazy peanut allergy.

Zagat for fast food

Zagat has decided to branch out beyond the more upscale dining choices to give us information about what's really important and ubiquitous. That's right. Chain restaurants. So here we have ratings for fast food restaurants, in case you're wondering what to gamble on when you're in an airport full of unfamiliar restaurants and sit down chain restaurants for when you are perusing a strip mall perhaps in a different region of the country than you live in.

CBS - Fall 2007 Previews

I've been making my rounds through the various major network sites watching their Fall 2007 preview trailers, so in an effort to get my post count up, I'll drop some tidbits in here that might interest our reader(s).

First up is CBS, note that this will not cover all of their new shows, just the ones that had reasonable-length previews available to stream from their site. I am ignoring reality shows.

• Cane - Drama about a family that runs a drug cartel, except it's not drugs, it's sugar cane. Jimmy Smits is the kingpin.
  
• Big Bang Theory - Comedy about two science nerds who discover that they live next door to a hot blonde. A little bit of Beauty & the Geek here with the ditzy beauty and the socially inept nerds who are in love with her. I didn't recognize anyone from the trailer.
  
• Moonlight - Probably the most interesting trailer I saw on the CBS site, this is about a vampire who likes to do good (Blade??) but does it in the form of a Private Investigator. It looks ridiculously cheesy and stars Lindsay from The O.C. as the female lead. I didn't recognize her until the end of the trailer when she does her shocked/sad look.
  
• Swingtown - I slept through most of the 2 min of this one, it has something to do with people in the 70's and what they do as they, uh, live in the 70's. Trailer made it seem like a drama version of That 70's Show. Just to clarify, this appears to be a midseason show instead... not that anyone's going to watch.
  

Other networks to come...

Nielsens

Here's a link to the ratings for all the shows for the 2006-2007 season. It's interesting to see how all the shows stack up against each other. One thing I noticed - Amazing Race 10 did better than the All Stars season. The Office actually doesn't get great ratings, which is sad since it's such a great show!

Sports Guy

ESPN's Sports Guy now has a podcast - I think I might actually listen to this because he's funny and makes hilarious pop culture references. The downside - most of these pop culture references are embedded in discussion about lots of sports that I'm not super into... Hmmm, tradeoffs... I'll have to give it a listen though. If only I could find my iPod connector cord, this would go a lot better...

Super sizing is done?

Via tvtattle, it looks like NBC might finally stop trying to super size their episodes. Which would be nice because I think typically, the half hour comedies are really good with pacing a half hour show, but when the show was longer, they just were throwing in filler and the shows just seemed a bit off. Plus it was incredibly confusing with what shows would be on when...

Summer burn off

This is for the tomcat's friend, who is the LCD: all remaining episodes of the Loop are being aired. The networks are unceremoniously dumping a bunch of unaired episodes on the air - Studio 60, the Loop, and the Kevin Williamson show Hidden Palms, which I wish would bring back some Pacey-Joey level goodness, but that should not be any part of expectations based on reviews, and the fact that the show is being dumped out now.

pinkberry

When I was in LA recently, I finally tried the frozen yogurt place pinkberry, which is pretty popular with celebrities and has gotten quite a bit of press. And turns out, it lives up to the hype, at least for me! The yogurt is nice and tangy, without being too creamy, and you can get lots of nice toppings. I'm definitely going to go when I'm in New York in a couple weeks because there is one near my hotel. Obviously I'm totally psyched.

Also, please go and listen to the song on their website. It's absolutely hilarious. I can't find an MP3, but I want it. They also mention that a ringtone is coming soon, and I'm embarrassed to say...that I totally want it. Although I think I might make it the ringtone for the tomcat... Now it would be true nirvana if either Britney or Kelly Clarkson covered the pinkberry song. Maybe I can make a video of my lip syncing to it and it can be the Easter egg on my wedding website.

George Michael

Michael Cera from Arrested Development is starring in some webisodes about two young boys who are trying to make it in Hollywood. I haven't watched it so I don't know if it's any good, but I loved Michael in Arrested Development, so I think I have to watch... After I catch up on the Grey's episode I missed. :P

American Road Trip

A writer from the New York Times is taking a twelve week roadtrip across the US. It looks like he's hitting some interesting spots!

Tivo Series 3

With the TiVo Series3 finally coming down in price (I think it's about $600 at Amazon) the tomcat is trying to argue that the case can be made for buying it, getting your HD over the air, dropping the cable service, and using Netflix or online resources for getting any cable shows you might want (Project Runway, Psych, Battlestar - I'd miss you so much!). And I'm starting to see that it might be a good option, with the added bonus of being able to stick it to the cable companies (who seem like they are just trying to bleed me dry) and not give them my money anymore. You'd need to manage to get a decent price for internet, but it wouldn't take too long to get a return on your investment on the TiVo box. It would go even faster if you are also paying a rental on a cable company DVR...

If more shows were available on Amazon's Unboxed so I could download them, this would be even more appealing! And it would all be in HD!

Sigh, bad music

I'm so sad that I actually kind of like the Fergie song, Big Girls Don't Cry. When I first heard the song, I was laughing at it for the lyric "like a child misses its blanket", but the song is totally growing me. I might even buy it on iTunes. I hate myself... Sigh. In other news, I've started buying a bunch of songs by former American Idol contestants. I'm such a sucker for pop/Top 40 type music.

Slings & Arrows

I was watching the second season of Slings and Arrows and realized that one of the actors seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place him. Then it hit me that it was Gilbert Blythe (Gil!) from Anne of Green Gables. It's too bad that he hasn't gotten more work on American TV, because how can you not love Gilbert?

The Devil and Daniel Webster

So I just realized today that the movie The Devil and Daniel Webster, which stars Alec Baldwin as Daniel Webster, and ... yes, Jennifer Love Hewitt as the devil, is being released later this year as Shortcut to Happiness. It's been on the shelf for maybe six years, so JLH is going to look markedly younger, and I'm sure the movie is absolutely terrible, and yet, I can't help but want to see this train wreck. Maybe terrible reviews will scare me away.

TV movies are all the rage

Looks like there's a chance that there might be a TV movie to wrap up Gilmore Girls (presumably written by Amy Sherman-Palladino) and for Veronica Mars as well.

Due to a sad TiVo snafu, my household did not get the Grey's finale, so I guess I'll have to watch it online. Sigh.

Next job for 'Apprentice' up in the air

Via tvtattle, even though Donald Trump has claimed to have quit the Apprentice, it turns out that he's still on contract with NBC. Like so many others in TV, he's been bitten by the fact that most TV show contracts run seven years... But he has good lawyers, so who knows how that will turn out...

Fall TV clips

A collection of clips of the shows picked up for the fall. If you're really excited about a show, or want to find out which shows you might be excited about for next fall, this appears to be the place to go. I've been running around with travel for the past couple weekends on travel, but hopefully I'll have some time to peruse the new shows and start thinking about how my fall TiVo scheduling is going to go.

However, on the upside, there are a ton of shows for the summer, so I think I'm actually going to have some things to watch (which might actually be a bad thing). And Studio 60 is starting the episode burn off this Thursday so I've already got that on my plate, as well as the last two weeks worth of sweeps stuff. I've also started killing defunct season passes, so the Tivo scheduler is feeling much less overworked already...

DVR time lags for ratings

In response to gecko's previous question about how much extra time is included for having DVR watching added to a show's ratings, it looks like networks are settling on live + three days, although ABC has been pushing for a more logical (to me) live + seven days.

Last of the upfronts

Here's Fox's schedule; I don't think the Eliza Dushku pilot got picked up. And the CW's schedule also got announced. It appears that Veronica Mars is dead. It sounds like Gossip Girl might be interesting, but I'm sad that there's currently nothing I'm super excited about watching on the CW.

Email my heart!

Britney's obscure song Email My Heart from her first album gets a shout out in this quick cynical tidbit about Britney's latest letter to her fans on her website

the CBS lineup

CBS Announces Its Fall Lineup and there's not much of interested to me, except the fact that the Amazing Race has gotten picked up for midseason. Phew! I was worried they weren't going to be bring it back after the All Stars season...

Clips of NBC pilots

NBC is posting clips of its new pilots and you can watch a number of them on this Chicago Tribune blog. If you go back to the main page, you can also find clips from a number of other new shows as well.

J.J. Abrams' next project

J.J. Abram's new hospital/oncologist themed show will be on HBO. I hesitate to wonder how they're going to make it memorable/edge enough for cable. But this is certainly somewhat intriguing... I wonder if the characters are all secretly double agents for the government...

HD online?

Rumor has it (via tvtattle.com) that ABC will offer HD online...

Fall 2007 TV is announced!

Things have been a bit crazy for me, so I haven't been posting about upfronts yet, but they are happening through Thursday. So yesterday NBC announced its fall schedule and ABC announced their's today. For lots of dirt on what's coming up, go to TV Guide's page on the upfronts or troll the futon critic's page.

Some of the highlights which have come out since last Friday - Friday Night Lights got renewned, the Office got picked up for 30 episodes, the Grey's spinoff will air on Wednesdays, Lost comes back next February, Studio 60 and Raines have been cancelled, Scrubs has been renewed, and Gilmore Girls' Amy Sherman-Palladino's show got picked up.

Duncan Sheik

Wow, who knew that Duncan Sheik cowrote a musical? Well, I guess my friend cc actually knew, since she's always up to date on that type of thing, but I had no idea, so I think it's funny that a pop star I remember has gone into doing musicals, albeit rock musicals...

National Treasure part II

Oh dear, there's going to be a National Treasure sequel. And I'm going to feel compelled to watch and yell out random American history facts along the way. They're filming in South Dakota - perhaps at Mount Rushmore? I wonder if this can also be spun off into a second Treasure Hunters reality show...

Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the TV show

I may be behind the times on this, but TV Squad has some news on the Mr. and Mrs. Smith television show that I was previously unaware of. The movie with Brangelina was one of my favorite movies of the last few years, and so I'm excited that the creators are going to try to make a series out of it, although of course I am also skeptical as to its ability to succeed without the two stars who made the movie.

The main draw of the movie was the combination of attractive people with action sequences and funny dialogue. These are all elements that can be translated to a TV series, but it may be more difficult to make it effective over a whole season.

The biggest news (to me) of this article is the names of the people who are starring on the show, and I actually recognize the majority of them, although I can't think of any that have had any recent notable roles. Jordana Brewster, Martin Henderson (Darcy of Bride & Prejudice), Julia Ormond, and Bridgette Wilson are all in this.

Pilot buzz

Awesomely the futon critic is doing a very unscientific buzz index for pilots. It's kind of entertaining to try to measure buzz, which is really not very indicative of whether something will really get picked up.

No Reservations

Well, I guess Catherine Zeta-Jones has decided to start working again, and her next movie is No Reservations, which appears to be a hybrid romantic comedy/taking care of an orphaned kid story. The romantic lead is Aaron Eckhart and the trailer is just schamaltzy enough to get me. I'm sad to say I found it tugging at my heartstrings. I'm a total loser.

Target does weddings

One of the commenters tipped me off to Isaac Mizrahi's new Wedding line for Target. It's pretty awesome. If my local Target carries this, it's going to be come a regular stop in my trips to the store.

Slings and Arrows

I've been watching the Canadian show Slings and Arrows, which is pretty funny and entertaining. I'm currently halfway through the second season (it goes fast since there are only 6 episodes in a season). But the premise and basic setup of the show are very similar to Studio 60, and it just goes to show how Studio 60 could have been a really fun and entertaining show, but instead was just awkward and pompous. sigh.

Also, this link to the futon critic lists all the shows that have already been renewed for 2007-2008.

TV 2007-2008

Via tvtattle.com, here's a list of some of the hot shows for the fall season. Unfortunately, it doesn't really give you a synopsis of what the shows are about, so if you're really interested, you can cross-reference with the futon critic's very extensive coverage of pilots in development... One of the pilots that is listed as close to hot in the first link is Nurses, which stars Eliza Dushku (Faith from Buffy). The OC's Josh Schwartz seems to have a pilot for the CW that is looking good. I watched one episode of the BBC's Football Wives and really didn't like it (too campy - I know, can there be such a thing?), but it's looking hot at ABC, so I'll be curious if this translates well.

License to Wed

Pop Candy has a link to the trailer for the new Mandy Moore/John Krasinski movie License to Wed. I have to admit that I was really excited about this movie (it has Mandy, and Jim from the Office!), but then I realized that it also had (dun dun) Robin Williams. Yes, it's going to be one of *those* movies. Other equally damning headliners would have been Jack Black or Ben Stiller. And then I watched the trailer. And it's terrible. I'm debating whether to delete the movie off my queue now. But I think there continues to be a danger that I will relapse and decide that I should still watch the movie, because of Mandy and John.

Also, I'm very sad that recently Mandy has done some interviews where she's been a bit embarrassed that she was the singer of the song Candy. Mandy, don't turn your back on that! I still have it on my iPod. And based on some early comments on her new album (which is posted streaming somewhere, I think), it sounds like Candy and I Wanna Be with You may have been better eras in her record history...

Goodbye girls

`Gilmore Girls finally gets cancelled (courtesy of gecko). Thank goodness, since gecko and I would probably have kept watching even despite the decline...

Bird book

The tomcat bought me the book Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird and I started it last night, which appears to have been a tactical error because I stayed up much later than I should have reading. The book is fun and light, and tells you all sorts of weird facts (my favorite kind of fact!) about the birds.

TV by the book

A writer who used to work on Dawson's Creek has written a memior about working in TV. Sounds like it might be a fun inside look at the television business, so I think I'll put this on my reading list (from tvtattle.com)

Wired for fashion

From tvtattle.com, a cool article about the wardrobe designers for the Wire

DWTS

Last night's Dancing with the Stars featured a cute segment called Dance Center, with Kenny Mayne doing a Sports Center knockoff. The commentary was reasonably funny, but the best part was the telestrator slowmo recaps of specific parts of dances. I've always thought that this would be funny and entertaining to have commentary on the dancing, with replays, so I'm thrilled to see it in, even if it was a joke. One can only hope they'll incorporate it into the show!

Dead Like Me isn't so dead?

I'm incredibly excited that Dead Like Me (the cancelled Showtime show) might have a straight to DVD movie. I'd love to see the original cast do this, although who knows if that's possible... I think Mandy Patinkin is on a CBS show... Anyway, this is a totally awesome show, and since totoro currently has netflix, I think he should watch this as well!

Britney

Britney Spears finally gives us some news that's not about her divorce, her clothing (or lack thereof) or crazy antics. She's back to work, people! One can only hope that she's going to release an album, but not go crazy in the process. I'm looking for some fun new dance tunes!

BBC shows online

It looks like the BBC is also going online, they have approved this thing called the iPlayer for online viewing of TV episodes. I don't understand everything in this article, since I'm still not sure what "series stacking" means, but it looks like it'll be something similar to the services that all the major US networks have now.

Hopefully this means it will be easier to watch certain BBC shows without having to resort to waiting for their DVDs to be released or hope that BBC America doesn't suck. I just started watching MI:5 as per nyanko's recommendation, and so far it is another striking example of how they make shows slightly differently over there (other than the fact that their "seasons" are about 1/4 an American season).