Britney Spears's Album Out Nov. 13

And here's the release date for Britney's Album...

Britney's back

Britney has indeed released a new single (I guess all those tabloid rumors were in fact correct, and you can listen to it streaming here. The song isn't an Autumn Goodbye, or Oops, or Walk on By, but it is pretty catchy. The spoken intro is a bit terrifying with some disembodied Britney laughter and slightly strange breathy talking, but I suspect this is one of those songs that will grow on you over time, until you start liking it. Much like most of Justin Timberlake's songs.

Dance off

I thought this was a joke, but apparently it's not so, I guess I'll blog about it. Apparently, ABC wants to pad their schedule with something more like So You Think You Can Dance so they are having Carrie Ann and Bruno assemble dance troupes for a dance off. Or something. And Drew Lachey will host.

The Office Summer Vacation

A NBC preview of what the characters on the Office did over the summer. It's pretty cute, and fun!

Annyong Hermano

Ah, this silly t-shirt makes me miss Arrested Development. At least I know that someone else (other than gecko, of course) misses it too! We can relive the glory with this shirt.

Dancing With The Stars' new cast

I think you have to be hiding under a rock to have missed the Dancing With The Stars announcement of the new cast. I'm a bit surprised that it wasn't in 70 point font on the front page of the paper today, since the news seems like it's everywhere. Obviously, the cast is somewhat exciting (Jennie Garth), but seems a little scary (Wayne Newton, Melanie "Scary Spice/Questionable Eddie Murphy Babymama Paternity Fight" Brown). They've gone a bit more afield with their sports stars (boxing and car racing), and avoided the aging (meaning thirtysomething) teenybopper pop star. Maybe Jane Seymour will be a good dancer... Happily my favorite pro dancers will be back, and we'll see Juliane Hough's brother join the cast as well.

If you want to see something terrifying, the main page of the ABC DWTS website has a montage of clips set to Vanessa Hudgen's new single (she's the lead from High School Musical who apparently is dating the other star - Zac Efron). This is not a fun awesome song ala Pinkberry - it's just sigh, well, I wouldn't buy it and I love pop music. Anyway, she's the star of High School Musical who actually sings her own songs, unlike Zac Efron.

Colbie Caillat

My latest iTunes purchase is Colbie Caillat album, after hearing the latest single on the radio. Her single, Bubbly, may be well into the overplayed rotation, but since I was out of the country for a month, I apologize if I'm coming late the party (By the way, that Narnia SNL rap is awesome! And the dancing hamster!). Anyway, I would actually bet money that this song will end up Grey's Anatomy and the rest of the album seems equally catchy and fun. On her album cover, she looks like Jennifer Aniston. Okay, that's it for my unique and clever insights...

MTV Travel Guides

Hmm, Frommer's and MTV are teaming up to do travel guides. I wonder if they are trying to create a competitor to Let's Go. And I wonder if MTV is adding any valuable content to this. Anyway, I'll have to take a look at these in the bookstore.

Fall TV Guide

A fall TV guide from the Chicago Tribune, with one critic's opinions on what to watch and what to skip. The futon critic should be posting one soon as well, but I'm not sure if E! Online will be doing one this year.

PlayStations news

PS3 will add DVR features, as well as the ability to transfer shows to the PSP

Wedding magazine blog

Martha Stewart Weddings magazine has finally started a blog

Friday Night Lights Guarantee

The first season DVD of Friday Night Lights comes with a money back guarantee. So really, you should watch it, because it's awesome!

K-Ville

The pilot of K-Ville (one of the new fall shows) has been posted to Yahoo.

Traveler - trying to resurrect

In case you, like the tomcat, would actually have liked to see Traveler continue as a series, there's a campaign to resurrect the show on a cable network (TNT). I think gecko and I were pretty schmeh on the it, so I am extremely ambivalent and won't be signing any petitions or sending candy/soda/condiments to any studios. If only I had gotten into Dead Like Me sooner, I might have been sending stuff to Showtime... It would be hilarious to get into a show much later, but then do whatever their renewal campaign was, but two/three/five/ten years later...

Lost meets the Wire?

Capt. Daniels from the Wire (aka Lance Reddick) will be on Lost next year. Don't read if you don't want to know the role, since that might be a minor spoiler for Lost...

Movies on the plane

So one of the good (and bad) things about going on a long plane trip is that you get to watch lots of movies. I recently watched:
* Breach - the Ryan Phillipe movie where he's investigating a mole in the FBI - not very good, but it passed the time.
* Becoming Jane - since I was flying a foreign carrier and this movie apparently got released earlier elsewhere than in the US, I got to see this before it released in the US. Woo, I'm in the know! - it was okay, but I love Anne Hathaway so I was hoping I'd like it more. Maybe I was just grumpy from being on the plane for too long.
* Next - I wrote about this one already.
* Paris Je T'aime
* Blades of Glory

I was also excited that they had TV episodes, so I also got to watch House and Top Gear (a UK car show that's pretty funny.

Marigold

I haven't watched any Bollywood movies, but I'm starting to think I should. And apparently, Ali Larter from Heroes is in Marigold, which is a Bollywood-esque romantic comedy. The movie is supposed to be out now, but I can't find it on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, but I can save it in Netflix, so I'm not sure what that means about the movie's release date. Anyway, I'm not sure is having Ali Larter makes it not really a Bollywood film, but it might be fun, so I'm going to check it out.

Shaun the Sheep

I started watching Shaun the Sheep which is showing on the Disney channel. Shaun is the sheep from the Wallace and Gromit short A Close Shave. Each episode is only 5 minutes and it's adorable. I love it. The sheep are so cute and the silly situations they get into are very entertaining. I highly recommend it. If you click through the link to the site, you can see some links to clips of the episodes.

VM getting around next season

Kristen Bell (i.e. Veronica Mars) already has one new show this upcoming television season, and although it is only a speaking role so far, she is the titular character in the upcoming CW show "Gossip Girl." Now she has one more, as she was recently signed on to the next season of Heroes to play yet another mysterious character.

Gossip Girl doesn't hold a whole lot of appeal to me, since it sounds like it's just going to be a bunch of teenagers being catty to each other, but it has gotten reasonable reviews thus far. Among the two main characters, one of them (Blake Lively) is in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants franchise and the other is best known (to me) as the insane underage girl who goes after House.

Apparently Heroes has about 2853 new characters next season.

Celeb Apprentice?

I'm not sure how whether this entire entry is a rumor sourced by NY Post, or only the info about them trying to recruit Brit, Paris and Lindsay Lohan, but there are rumors that the next version of the Apprentice could have celebrities or "celebrities" as the contestents. So this entire concept could be a sham, but I have to admit, I'd watch it.

Josh Whedon interview about Serenity

Pop Candy posted about an interview with Josh Whedon that has been posted to Amazon.

The InStyle Weddings curse

I had kind of noticed this, since I'm an avid InStyle Weddings reader, but it looks like there has the InStyle Weddings curse is really starting to have quite a lot of evidence to back it up. The New York Times wrote an article about it back in 2002 and there have been a number of instances after that. TVGuide.com mentions the curse in a post about how Jennifer Morrison and Dr. Chase from House are calling off their engagement... Also, the NY Times article references Shannon Elizabeth, who in fact did get divorced from her husband. I wonder if this is going to get as much traction as the Sports Illustrated curse...

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Yes, the National Treasure 2 trailer is up and I'm so excited! This is going to be awesome. And it comes out this Christmas! I'm going in the theater, that's how excited I am. Best. Trailer. Ever. Also, I should admit that for a while National Treasure 2 searches on Google were the most frequent referrals to this blog. Apparently there wasn't much info on it out there, since it's definitely poor pickings when you're on this blog.

Also, I should mention that I was recently on a trans-oceanic air trip and watched so many terrible movies, including Next, the Nicolas Cage movie where he can see two minutes into the future, gets together with Jessica Biel, and scored his very young real-life wife a cameo. It was both horrible and yet perfect for a long airplane ride. Take that as you will.

Pilot first-impression: Pushing Daisies

With Nyanko out of the country for a while and me being the sad sad blogger than I am, there hasn't been much traffic here recently. However, thanks to Adia, I was able to get my hands on a few of the pilots for the upcoming Fall season. These were all briefly talked about in my earlier previews, but a full pilot theoretically should give more information.

Pushing Daisies is a quirky romantic comedy with a disturbing premise but hilarious execution and tone. It definitely has the Wonderfalls feel to it, as would be expected since this is also a Bryan Fuller creation. The premise is made pretty clear right at the beginning, and the pilot is an entertaining self-contained episode that sets up the rest of the series. Basically, our hero Ned discovers at an early age that he can bring dead things back to life by touching them. However, there are limitations and side-effects to this. If the person he brings back to life stays alive for more than a minute, then someone else in the vicinity will die. Also, if Ned ever touches the person he brought back again, they will also die for good.

He teams up with a private investigator (McBride) later on in life and they go around collecting bounties by finding dead people, asking them who killed them, and then letting them die again before the minute is up. One of the most hilarious things about this show is how all the dead people who get brought back to life are just cool with it. They don't go around trying to figure out HOW it happened, they're just like "hey, what's up." That is pretty much the tone for the show, and I love it. The two leads are pretty cute together and the show does a good job of mixing the feel-good warm fuzzies with the weird and disturbing. Anyway, this is on my must-watch list for next season and it should be on yours too.

Oh, the image above shows the cast in Ned's place of work, he makes pies for a living at a place called "The Pie Hole."

Dead Like Me Movie

MGM confirms that the Dead Like Me movie has wrapped and should release in about a year. There's also some interesting discussion of how cagey/irrational Showtime has seemed when discussion their shows, renewals and ratings. Sadly, Mandy Patinkin won't be back for the DVD movie, along with the original actress for Daisy (Laura Harris). But funnily enough, they recast Laura Harris (crazy Marie from 24 who shot her Middle Eastern fiance) with her TV sister from 24, Sarah Wynter. I was wondering if Mandy Patinkin went AWOL from Criminal Minds because of the Dead Like Me movie, but that obviously wasn't the reason...