Private Practice Recast

Francie from Alias (Merrin Dungey) is getting replaced on Private Practice by Audra McDonald. Sigh, I guess that means that we won't suddenly find out that Addison's best friend has been replaced by a lookalike assassin.

Netflix pricing

Via popcandy, Netflix has lowered the price for the 2-at-a-time rental plan by $1. I'm currently on the one out unlimited plan (although I could theoretically downgrade to 4 per month, probably), but this makes the two out plan pretty appealing. However, I'm going on a big trip soon so I'm actually going to put my Netflix account on hold while I'm gone, so I guess I don't have to worry about this for a while.

Netflix Up Close and Personal

Well, if you ever wanted to feel a personal connection with people who work on the UI of Netflix, you can read the Netflix blog. The way they write the blog is a littel strange because they seem pretty apologetic/afraid of angry customers. I've definitely encountered angry users, so I can see where they are coming from, but it seems a bit odd to be so timid from the get go. But I guess you can assume that many of the Netflix users are rabid/jaded/terrifying technology power users. Or at least the ones who would seek out a Netflix blog. As opposed to say, the Us Weekly blog... But it is interesting to see the new features that are being added into Netflix to make it a more fun community experience.

Burn Notice

A number of the cable channels are starting to premiere their summer shows, and it actually looks like USA and TNT have some intriguing options. Of course, I'm excited about Monk and Psych, which start in mid-July, but there have been some positive reviews for USA's Burn Notice, about an ex-spy who is now doing investigative work. It has a 67 from Metacritic. I think the tomcat might really like this since it's set in Miami, and he really liked Miami Vice. He actually bought the DVDs of Miami Vice and watched them.

Saving Grace, which starts in late July also gets a good review here. The previews for Glenn Close's show Damages have also been really appealing to me. So while I haven't had much to watch on TV lately, it looks like things might be picking up...

MySpace vs. YouTube

Here's an interesting NY Times article about MySpace and YouTube with some data about their users, including the fact that YouTube claims that over half its audience is overseas. Who knew?

recasting on Moonlight

Shannon Lucio (from the OC) is being replaced on the new CBS fall show Moonlight, and she's going to be replaced by Sophia Myles, and randomly, I know who that is and I'm really excited about it. I saw Sophia Myles on an episode of Dr. Who, and I really liked her. She's like a British Julia Stiles who does TV. So now I'm even more likely to watch Moonlight.

In other news, the tomcat is getting very pressed for summer TV entertainment, so he's been watching a bunch of DVDs. But he finally started watching Friday Night Lights and loves it. Totoro, you really need to watch it too! I've also gotten my sister hooked on Arrested Development. Woo!

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip DVD

Aaron Sorkin will do commentary on the Studio 60 DVD. I would be interested to hear what he has to say about the show and the whole saga of its season.

Oprah, the store

Yes, Oprah is opening her own store to extend her brand. Oprah iPod covers, key rings, hats - yikes. Sadly, I'll bet my mom would love something from here.

Chicken Dance

Here's a compilation of the Chicken Dance from Arrested Development. Sigh. It made me laugh all over again.

Paley Center To Stream Footage

The Paley Center, which does fun panel interviews with TV shows currently on the air, will stream some of the footage from their sessions.

DS Lite

Nicole Kidman is getting paid to tell people she likes playing the brain training games on the DS Lite. Here's a picture where she intently tries to lower her brain age. I wonder how does on remembering all 30 words in the brain age test.

Aaron Sorkin

An overview of Aaron Sorkin's career and how he got to doing Studio 60. A bit gossipy, so it's interesting. (via tvtattle)

Makeup tips on myspace

Sigh, it looks like the latest place for getting good makeup tips is via watching videos on myspace. I also recently saw an ad for a house for rent that has it's own myspace page. Maybe my tivo should get a myspace page! It likes to read Cormac McCarthy, long walks on the beach, loves Julia Roberts movies and thinks Lifehouse is HOT!

Sheeps!

The creator of Wallace and Gromit has a show about animated sheep which just got picked up by Disney. I hope it's cute - I'll have to try to Tivo it.

Dress like Izzy

You can now have your own Katherine Heigl-designed/inspired scrubs.

Cylons!

The tomcat pointed me to this funny blog post about a hilarious Microsoft banner ad that has a shout out to Battlestar Galactica.

Star Wars parody

The Cartoon Network show Robot Chicken apparently did an episode with a Star Wars spoof, for those of you who are into that...

More wedding stuff

Sorry for the flurry of wedding stuff - it's not normally like this, but I guess it's June, so I'm going with it... Anyway, Slate is doing a wedding issue which is pretty interesting. I think they'll be putting up articles all week.

A Tivo themed wedding

Oh dear, some Tivo fanatics got married and featured TiVo as a theme in their wedding. When TiVo heard about it, they donated plush TiVo dolls as favors and people wore the antenna headbands during the reception. I wonder if the company will offer a set of wedding favors as a package you can buy or redeem with TiVo rewards. Maybe it would drive an additional revenue stream...

Matchmaking online

Hilariously, through an email blast from a friendster like site, I heard about Linx Dating company. Now, the reason I think this is funny is because of the following excerpts from the blurb on their site: "a high caliber mix of sophisticated eligibles. Everyone has excelling background, great job, excelling education... physically fit and attractive." "completely offline and pursuing zero advertising, ... it can be considered the 'hidden' source for exclusive Bay Area dating". They call themselves a "private society" - I can only hope that this is a secret society like the Skulls! Maybe Joshua Jackson will show up! (Although he appears to be dating Diana Krueger now, sigh.) Here's an article about the company in the SF Chronicle, which is also entertaining - says that this is the place for singles who are "too old to cruise trendy Yelp parties or to ride the N-Judah in hopes of getting picked up on Craigslist's "Missed Connections." Yep, that's right. Riding a bus in hopes of finding yourself listed on Craigslist. Maybe no one does this, but the idea is pretty funny... Plus, they name checked Yelp!

Music for a new power set

Sadly, Dancing with the Stars has been a place where I have discovered some new music, as well as remembered my love for some older songs... But the most recent song that I am totally addicted to, courtesy of DWTS, is the Enrique Inglesias song Do You Know, which includes ping pong ball bounce noises as sound effects. A while back, totoro and I had assembled what we called the power set, which was a hilarious (and awesome) mix of teenybopper music that we loved. We ended up with a series of three discs of power sets, but if I were to make a fourth disc, this would definitely make it.

the futon critic's first looks!

The futon critic has restarted his feature of reviews of pilots for the fall season, with an added bonus of also reviewing one pilot that did not get picked up. The first article is reviewing Big Shots and the dead Mr. and Mrs. Smith pilot. His review of Big Shots is not great, which is particularly disappointing because I love Michael Vartan and Josh Malina, so I might have tried to watch it based on those two alone. But it doesn't seem very promising. Go to this page on subsequent days to see the rest of the reviews that will be posted in the future.

DIY wedding photos

On the heels of the trashing your wedding dress photos, my roommate gecko pointed me to this site about newlyweds who shot their own wedding photos, throughout a trip across Europe. The pictures are cute and the locations are of course wonderful (Versailles!), and I guess this works if your dress isn't too big to haul around, but it does seem like you're definitely going overboard on the wedding pictures when you have two weeks worth of wedding dress pictures. But you do get your money's worth out of the dress, and I wonder if you get free stuff along the way because most people like newlyweds.

However, I'm wondering if it's weird to see the normally dressed couple in front of a historical site one moment and when you look back, they are suddenly in wedding attire and hauling out a tripod. One funny thing to note is that their practice shots which are on a couple of the pages, were shot at Stanford.

Trashing wedding dresses

In a strange new trend (I'm unsure whether this really has gotten big enough to actually be called a trend as opposed to 'I know a couple people who did this thing'...), apparently some brides are trashing their wedding dresses and documenting it with a photoshoot. (Courtesy of my friend cc). This seems horrifying in the waste, since the gowns are typically expensive and if they are expensive, there was hand work done - like beading, and embroidery. Children and little old ladies who are going blind from close work are going to be sad that you are jumping in lakes with that dress! Of course, if you're keeping it in a box, I guess that's not exactly making good use of the dress either.

TV stuff

While I really don't care about the show Jericho, its cancellation and subsequent revival have prompted a lot of articles that give more insight into the business side of television and the changing metrics that networks are using to measuring viewership.

Weekend update

Well, I finished the first season of Heroes, with a combination of Tivo, Tivo to go and iTunes purchases, and of course, the requisite sleep debt. I enjoyed it, but wouldn't evangelize it to all my friends.

One thing I thought was interesting about Jericho was that in their letter to the fans about the renewal, they were very upfront about the fact that the audience has to grow in order for it to stay alive. It will be interesting to see how CBS handles it, and whether this could be a template for future shows that have more cult standing. If they say exactly what the ratings need to be, will that help the fans motivate and keep the show alive? Will fans try to game the system? It would be hilarious to see people start writing scripts to stream the episodes in order to juke the numbers... I guess we'll just have to wait for CBS servers or maybe the entire internet to go down due to "people" all simultaneously watching Jericho...

And lastly, I watched American Dreamz, with Hugh Grant and Mandy Moore, which wasn't a great movie, but was still funny, dark and entertaining. It had silly pop songs, including the theme song of the fake TV show which included the lyrics "American Dreamz, Dreams with a Z". It was also pretty funny to see Mandy doing some of the classic pop stuff like what she did in her first album...

Burke is out

Well, I guess it's official. Burke is gone from Grey's Anatomy for next season. There were several cliffhangers at the end of the season as expected, and it looks like Burke is gone but George and Izzy are sticking around, and the latter two both get raises. Then again, the 2nd source I linked also thought that Burke was coming back.


This should result in a major shake-up in Cristina's story, but that has been one of the more entertaining ones in the last few seasons so this is unfortunate for the show in my opinion. The George love triangle is just getting old.

Nuts gets Jericho Renewed!

The whole grassroots sending nuts to CBS campaign has actually worked and now Jericho is renewed. Granted, it's only for 7 episodes, but it's better than nothing. I'm torn between being annoyed that CBS has given into some total nutbars, and being jealous that they were actually able to save their show, since I would love to have saved a show like Dead Like Me. (I'm sure their fans aren't total nutbars, but it's funny to imagine that). However, there are a lot of shows I wouldn't expend the energy for - like say, Gilmore Girls or even Veronica Mars.

In other news, I'm on a work trip, but I bought a few eps of Heroes on iTunes and TiVo to Go'd a few other eps that I had that were chronologically in order, so I'm tearing through them like there's no tomorrow. I think I'm to at least the eighth or ninth episode already. I also went to the American Girl store today (not for me!) because one of my coworkers wanted to buy something for his daughter. So the othet three of us trooped in and in the process the other two fell into the clutches of that store, and ended up buying something for their kids. I was the only one who came out empty handed.

Fame Audits are now on TWOP

Fametracker's Fame Audits have started appearing on TWOP and now they are evaluating the cast of Gilmore Girls. I love the idea of Paris and Michel having their own show where they make snarky comments on everything. I love the quote: "In fact, Graham is well positioned for a run at Warmly Funny And Not In Her Twenties Leading Lady, sliding into the spot that's currently just exceeding the grasp of Diane Lane. Or, come to think of it, Jennifer Aniston."

Knocked Up

So I went and saw Knocked Up this past weekend, it was mostly the instigation of two of us and the rest of the people either had nothing better to do or eventually got convinced by the ridiculous tomatometer rating on this movie (92% at the time of this post).

This movie has seen some hype by the people who are into this kind of thing, and it's directed and written by Judd Apatow, advertised as the guy responsible for The 40 Year Old Virgin. If you enjoyed 40YOV, chances are good that you'll enjoy Knocked Up as well. It stars many of the same people (Paul Rudd is pretty awesome) and has a similar style of humor.

The premise is pretty simple: two completely different people (successful/clean reporter woman and slacker/stoner/unemployed man) have a drunken one-night stand and it results in her being pregnant. A lot of people will get turned off early on by the Ben Stone character and his pals, as there were definitely some facepalm moments when I just could not believe they did/said what they did. I think an almost equal number of people will be turned off by some seriously insane behavior from the women, but in the end everything works out of course. The fact that fantasy baseball has a brief cameo makes this movie even better, of course. This is obviously not your typical romantic comedy, but it does follow the usual formula, and there are some absolutely laugh-out-loud memorable scenes (Katherine Heigl's character meeting with her office superiors comes to mind, Marshall from HIMYM is hilarious, and the club bouncer) that I think make this movie worth recommending for someone who is capable of getting past the rather explicit language. In the end, this is a feel-good movie with edgy humor, just as you'd expect.

Music and Lyrics

So I got Music and Lyrics from Netflix and I have to say that I absolutely loved it. Unalterated squee! It's fairly tragic how much I enjoyed it. At this very minute, I'm partway through a second viewing, which began pretty much immediately after I watched the gag reel. Drew Barrymore is her usual kooky, but the dialog is well written enough that I don't get quirky overload from her. I'm poised to buy the album and added the movie to my Amazon wishlist. So anyway, maybe you'll all hate it and hate me for telling you to watch it, but I loved it. Squeeee! Silly pop music plus silly dialog plus romance equals Friday night fun for me!

Oh, and I totally forgot - they reference Knott's Berry Farm, as a place where Hugh Grant's character performs. They definitely had me at that reference.

ABC - Fall 2007 Previews

Last of the 4 big networks is ABC and their Fall 2007 schedule. The big returners are Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives which has lost a huge amount from its initial viewership. ABC has a whopping 8 new Fall series with 3 more mid-season shows, and the really noticeable difference here is that all 11 of these shows are scripted, with no new reality shows in sight.

• Sam I Am - Christina Applegate has retrograde amnesia, and as she starts to reconnect with family and friends she realizes that she was (is?) really not a very nice person and was estranged from her parents. This is a half-hour comedy that seems to follow a familiar formula, and the clips I've seen make the show seem pretty generic. I am a slight fan of Christina for no apparent reason but even so I think this is going to have to be a pass.
  
• Cavemen - I never really even found the GEICO commercials all that amusing, so a full sitcom based on the premise of a few less-evolved sub-homo sapiens trying to get by in present-day Atlanta just seems like it's going to be full of pain.
  
• Carpoolers - I wasn't able to glean much from the trailer except that it seems to be about 4 men of varying personalities/lives carpooling together and, uh, talking? Jerry O'Connell is one of the guys, and another one of the guys seems to be the idealistic one that all the others make fun of. They really need to come out with better commercials before this could seem even remotely interesting.
  
• Pushing Daisies - This is probably one of the more original and quirky concepts I've seen among all the previews I've been watching. The main character discovers at an early age that he has the power to bring dead things/people back to life with a touch, but the catch is that if he touches them again then they die permanently. The execution and tone are amusing and quirky in a Wonderfalls/Dead Like Me kind of way (surprise, Bryan Fuller is involved in all 3 of these shows). The guy grows up and uses this power to solve murders by bringing back the victims to ask them who killed them, but then one day he finds his childhood love murdered and brings her back, but can never touch her again...
  
• Private Practice - Okay, we all know what this is, and we've probably mostly seen the "preview" in the form of parts of episodes of Grey's Anatomy. I'm honestly not sold on this yet, it has a star-studded cast, Addison is probably one of the most likable characters of more recent GA, and I am a fan of Tim Daly, so I'll probably have to watch at least the first few, especially with GA seemingly on the decline.
  
• Dirty Sexy Money - It was hard to tell what this was really about from the available clips, but it appears to be about a super-rich family headed by Donald Sutherland who has a bunch of spoiled brats (including William Baldwin and Samaire Armstrong (Anna!)) that need to have their various antics dealt with by Peter Krause (of Six Feet Under), their straight-man lawyer. There appears to be a lot of acting spoiled and yelling/complaining, so it does not look that interesting.
  
• Big Shots - Imagine 4 high-powered women sitting around gossiping/complaining about their various personal issues: cheating spouses, new love interests, having affairs, etc... Now replace the women with men (including Dylan McDermott from The Practice and Michael Vartan from Alias) and you've got what this show seems to be about. Dylan even says himself at the end "Men... we're the new women."
  
• Women's Murder Club - Angie Harmon is back... and this time she's a police detective who teams up with 3 other women (an Assistant DA, a CSI, and a reporter) and the four of them work together to catch criminals, each using their own particular expertise. Of course, they also chat about their personal lives when meeting together to figure out how to catch killers. I originally thought this was going to be about a club of women who go around killing people, which probably would've been more interesting. Even so, this could have some promise if you're into crime-solving shows.
  

Pirate Master

I have a TiVo conflict with taping Pirate Master, but read the TWOP recap, which honestly makes the show sound hilarious (though perhaps it is unintentional on the part of the producers). I think I'm going to have to ask roommate gecko if she'll tape it for me... (Spoiler) They voted off a person, even though he took their compass hostage. Don't you think a compass might be useful on a survival/adventure game? Huh. I hope someone on that team is good at navigating by the sun/stars... However, I should note that the show got terrible ratings, so it might not even last out its full run. But perhaps this will be the Treasure Hunters of this summer (that's the reality scavenger hunt show from last year, as opposed to the Nicolas Cage movie National Treasure, which threw everyone off, the last time I posted about it).

An entertaining interview with the cast of Ocean's Thirteen

Here's an excerpt and link to a funny interview with the Ocean's Thirteen cast

Soft rock

VH1 counts down the best soft rock songs. Awesome.