Wall-E

There's a viral website out there to promote the new Pixar film Wall-E

The Wire is almost here!

More teasers for "The Wire". I'm getting really excited about the season!

Prom reality show

ABC Family will be having a prom queen reality show. I have no idea what the criteria for prom queen really is, since I always thought that was largely a popularity contest, so no doubt this will be a totally tragic show...

Julianne Hough: Pop star?

cc2 (if you want a new nickname, you have come up with one!) and I have a total crush on Julianne Hough and this article brings us the "news" that she is still denying dating Helio, but also the mind-bending news that she's recording an album which is to be released in early 2008. Wow. I hope she works with Timbaland (who isn't, these days... He's everywhere!) Maybe she can replace the place that Britney once occupied in my heart!

Personalized Sharpie

Via pop candy, you can now create Personalized Sharpies! Seems like fun!

Dancing with the Stars Backstage Report

The Dancing with the Stars finale show last night (before the finale results show) was pretty lackluster, but it sounds like it was due to illness (Julianne), injuries (Maks, and bizarre judgement (Marie). However, I was finally motivated enough to actually pick up the phone and vote for a reality show for the first time ever.

Rock Band

Here's a fun review of the Rock Band video game which it sounds like Totoro has been having a lot of fun playing.

Time to get HBO!

I knew that the Wire would be back in 2008, but I hadn't kept track of exactly when. However, it snuck up on me, since the new season starts on 1/6/08, but the first episode of the season will go live on OnDemand on New Year's Eve!

Amazon's secret price guarantee!

Amazon actually has a 30 day price guarantee if they lower their price. You just need to call into the customer service number listed in the article (woo, for finding the customer service number!) and ask for it!

A La Carte Cable vs. Cable Bundling Nonsense

A rebuttal to the A La Carte Cable article from the NY Times

More Chuck

Chuck gets a full season pickup!

In Defense of Cable Bundling

Unbundling cable channels so that you only pay for what you want/use seems like such a great idea, but there was an article this past weekend in the NY Times that states that if cable channels were not bundled, costs would actually go up and a number of channels would actually go out of business.

Made Of Honor

Patrick Dempsey is getting a lot of mileage out of being a romantic comedy main man - besides Enchanted, he has another movie coming out in May. He's now in a movie called Made Of Honor, where he is a total playboy who finally realizes he's in love with his best friend, but she's already engaged and then he gets asked to be the maid of honor... The trailer doesn't look horrible; it's certainly better than Fool's Gold.

Cookies + Milianos!

Pepperidge Farm is making a social networking site around their cookie brand. Weird.

Kate and Matt reunited: Fool's Gold

I know there are some fans of How To Lose a Guy In 10 Days, here's the next offering from Kate Hudson (yay!) and Matthew McConaughey (boo) called Fool's Gold. It appears to be a romantic comedy that follows the typical formula where a couple breaks up early in the movie and then they maybe possibly get back together by the end. Maybe.

Brian Grazer

I'm not as gaga over everything Brian Grazer does, as I am about Jerry Bruckheimer, but Grazer has been behind a number of shows which I love, like Arrested Development, Friday Night Lights and Sports Night. The main reason I'm familiar with him is because of the hilarious (to me at least) running gag on Defamer with their obsession with both the man and his crazy publicist-provided head shot. Anyway, according to the NYTimes, Grazer also has a running gag of leaving behind small heart shaped pictures frames with pictures of himself among family photos when he visits people's houses, including .... Fidel Castro. Apparently some people got really mad about his prank, but he thinks it shows interesting things about people. I'm not even sure what to say about this... You can't make this stuff up.

My heart will go on!

Yes, next week, Celine Dion will be the singing performer on the Dancing with the Stars finale. And she's singing the Titanic song! It's like the producers are making this show *just* for me! Or for me and a bunch of 50-year-old women...

What could have been on DWTS!

Shannen Doherty turned down Dancing with the Stars in the first season because she has an issue "being judged." No kidding! Heh, it would have been awesome to see her on that show, although there would have been a good chance that she might have attacked the judges... I'll bet she was one of the first people they thought of wanting to have on the show. I can only hope that once they finish working their way through the cast of 90210, they'll start getting the cast of Charmed on. Imagine having Piper (Holly Marie Combs), Alysa Milano or Leo, the whitelighter (you know you don't care about his real name). The power of three!

'One Tree Hill' Flashes Forward

'One Tree Hill' deals with the awkward transition most shows have when taking their characters from high school to college in a different and novel way - they're skipping it and putting the show forward four years, which will make the actors look much more age appropriate as well... I never watch this show, but thought it was funny that they were doing the fast forward.

Decent review for Enchanted

Enchanted, starring Amy Adams and McDreamy, in a half animated, half live action film about a fairy tale princess who gets transported to Manhattan, has a good review from Yahoo. Currently (and shockingly), it's at 100%, but with only 5 reviews so far.

Riverdancing with the Stars

Yes, Michael Flatley will perform on Dancing with the Stars next week on Tuesday's results show. I felt I needed to let you know since some of you may not be regular DWTS viewers, but would not want to miss this totally awesome event! Seriously, how long has it been since you thought about Riverdance? That was a phenomenon that swept the nation for a while!

Live '30 Rock' and 'SNL'

There will be live performances of a '30 Rock' episode and 'SNL' in the next week. George Michael Bluth (aka Michael Cera) will be hosting the SNL!

Trading card games for girls

The founder of Wizards of the Coast, who brought Pokemon to our shores, is now starting a card game for girls, featuring ponies and unicorns. Apparently these cards are already huge in Scandinavia. And they have a treatment for a movie already! Heh. Also, interesting is the aside that professional women with children are Target's core customers.

Crowned

The CW is having a beauty pageant reality show - hopefully it will be as fun as the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders show and much more interesting than the MTV Pageant Place (ugh). It does have Carson Kressley as one of the judges, which should keep it entertaining, although it might become clear that he was only really hysterical when in the context of and counterbalanced by the other Queer Eye guys.

Season 2 & 3 of Damages

Turns out that the first time I linked to news on the renewal of Damages, it was actually a bit premature and the decision hadn't been made. But now the news is out that FX has picked Damages up for 2 more seasons. Obviously, I can't verify how true the news is this time, but seems legit! I hope so!

Summer & Chuck!

Rachel Bilson's guest arc on Chuck starts tonight! Thank goodness this got filmed before the strike!

NBC Direct launches

NBC Direct launches, but with lots of caveats. You can only download episodes of The Office, 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights, Bionic Woman, and Life, and even then you can only download the most recent ep and must watch it within 48 hours. That sounds like a total pain in the butt. I guess the networks want to try out various business models and they have the flexibility to keep experimenting until they find one that works, at least for some period of time... Better to be too strict, rather than not strict enough and then try to change later on, I guess...

'RUNWAY' CONFIDENTIAL

Apparently, being on Project Runway is like being in a sweatshop for a month. It has always been somewhat clear to me that the new challenges are given out the night of an elimination based on the hairstyles of the contestants and the models, even though they are wearing a different set of clothes. The only contestent who didn't complain about post-traumatic stress effects during interviews was Chloe Dao, whose family escaped from Laos during the Vietnam War. Huh.

Bunnytown

There's a new kid's show called Bunnytown, which "these crazy, silly bunnies — space bunnies, super bunnies, pirate bunnies". How can that not be awesome? I think this would be relevant to one of totoro's friends who loves bunnies!

Ben Silverman

I'm looking forward to reading this Esquire article about NBC's Entertainment President.

Office reruns starting soon

There are no more new Office episodes after next Thursday's show, so they'll go into repeats, as an early victim of the writer's strike. Sadly, the one upside of the strike is that I might finally catch up on my TV and start watching the Netflix I am paying for.

Rent-a-dog

Via Freakonomics' New York Times Blog, there is in fact a service where you can rent a pet. It's up and running in San Diego and New York, and is soon to expand. And it's actually kind of expensive!

Super sorry about Heroes

Courtesy of Chris, the Heroes creator admits that Season 2 is kind of sucky and apologizes.

New Fox schedule

Fox has postponed the premiere date of 24 until the full season can run in its entirety. Premiere dates have also been set for New Amsterdam (2/22) and Amy Sherman-Palladino's show The Return of Jezebel James (3/7).

An economist solves the mysteries of dating. - By Ray Fisman - Slate Magazine

This link is for totoro after we had a conversation about a study he read that put an actual dollar amount of how much money a person would have to make in order to overcome certain less desirable traits (like being less attractive) when doing online dating. This study uses speed dating to find out dating preferences. Interestingly, they

"found no evidence of the stereotype of a white male preference for East Asian women. However, we also found that East Asian women did not discriminate against white men (only against black and Hispanic men). As a result, the white man-Asian woman pairing was the most common form of interracial dating—but because of the women's neutrality, not the men's pronounced preference."

Teasers for BSG: Razor

SciFi has been showing 2 minute teasers for Battlestar Galactica: Razor movie which is coming out in two weeks, and here is one of them streaming online.

Another plus for Facebook

I have been resisting the pull of Facebook, but there's yet another reason to join - CBS has created an Amazing Race facebook page. Although I thought things were based on your real identity so I'm not sure how that works - this seems more like something MySpace would do. Anyway, chalk up another point for Facebook.

Care Bears turn 25

I find it hard to believe that Care Bears are already turning 25. I guess I'm finally getting old.

Friday Night Lights: Renew or Cancel?

TV by the Numbers is running an interesting series of mini-articles evaluating whether a network should renew or cancel various shows. Unfortunately, the numbers seem to point to the fact that Friday Night Lights ratings indicate that NBC may have good reason to want to cancel it. Bummer. The numbers for Chuck also seem to indicate that it might be a cancellation candidate. Maybe it will be like the Office and will need a season or two to build its audience...

Dancing romance

For the two people who actually care, Sabrina Bryan admits she's dating her partner Mark Ballas, which seemed pretty inevitable if you watched the show where they got eliminated. Sadly, cc2 and I had long conversations speculating about this so it's very exciting to get confirmation...

writer strike FAQ

the futon critic wrote up an FAQ about the writer's strike in case you want to understand the issues a bit better

Hourlong Offices

Apparently the ratings for the one hour episodes of the Office were way up, so the viewers have voted with the remotes and NBC figures they love it. And you can't argue with data, but really? Arg. I guess this means that more one hours episodes will be in our future.

National Treasure II & Pushing Daisies

Pop Candy linked to two awesome things:

First, the second trailer for National Treasure: Book of Secrets which is still looking hilariously entertaining. It comes out right before Christmas and seems like it could be a pretty fun movie for the family during the holidays. I would go to this in the theater if it gets halfway decent reviews - although I might be far more easily entertained than most people.

And second, the futon critic posted an interview with Brian Fuller and Barry Sonnenfeld (who writes hilarious tech reviews in Esquire) from Pushing Daisies. And oh gosh, he reveals that if Dead Like Me had continued and the character who could bring people back to life had been introduced, he would have had a story arc where he touched George, brought her back to life and she would have gone back to her family for a bit, but he would touch her again because she had abandoned all her reaper responsibilities.

Dollhouse

Here's a more indepth article about the new Joss Whedon show, including the notes that if they can get into production soon, they might be able to have the show ready for the spring and even do a full season next fall if successful. Eliza is going into training so she can "into that 'Dark Angel'-on-crack shape where I can do everything." A Dark Angel shoutout? This show could be even more awesome than I imagined. And more on the plot:

Beyond Dushku's character, the show will also revolve around the people who run the mysterious "dollhouse" and two other "dolls," a man and woman who are friendly with Echo. Then there's the federal agent who has heard an urban myth about the dolls, and is trying to investigate their existence.

So it's the classic sci fi show, but I'm still totally excited!

'Amazing Race' Goth team

Here's a short article about the Goth team on the Amazing Race - and the good news - they actually did some preparation and working out before they left, as opposed to figuring their uniqueness and positive attitude will take them to the finish line. Unfortunately, it's less clear if the compacts of face powder and one shared flatiron will assist them, or just weigh them down.

‘Reaper’ Goes to iTunes

Interestingly, the CW is now putting all the Reaper episodes aired to date - this is mainly interesting just because the ratings on this show have been struggling, but before this the show was not available online - it wasn't streaming on the CW website and you couldn't buy it either. Is this a last ditch effort to try to bump up the ratings and visibility of the show by giving people other ways to watch it beyond just on TV or on your DVR? What is the advantage of not having it online before this? Ah, all questions which I have no idea what the answer is!