Top Gear news

Adam Carolla talked about filming the Top Gear pilot last week. Apparently, there are reviews of the taping all over the internet. So we might know sooner rather than later whether the show will be fun. Corolla said

that finding a star to cram into the "reasonably priced car" took a mighty effort on behalf of both the show's producers and Carolla himself. They came close to settling for Howie Mandel and/or ex-Spice Girl Mel B., but somehow landed the legendary David Hasselhoff at the last moment. Alec Baldwin, a personal friend of Carolla's, was at least approached and Cameron Diaz's name floated about.

Harry Potter 6 trailer

Yup, it's the new Harry Potter teaser. This has been making the rounds since it was released earlier today but I think the most interesting thing is the vastly different style that this trailer has taken on compared to teasers for previous Harry Potter movies. If it didn't take so much effort I would try to look up teasers for the previous movies and embed them here to make it easy to compare but as far as I remember most of them took the format of some voiceovers followed by many snapshots of various scenes from the movie.

This teaser for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince instead is essentially one extended scene and is really quite dark. I'm not sure that this is a children's movie any more. I mean, maybe in the same way that Labyrinth was a children's movie, and that thing scared the crap out of me when I was little.

Chuck Season 2 infoz (possible spoilers)

The video above is about a 6.5 minute preview of Chuck's second season that was screened at the San Diego Comic-con. It's a cam, so the quality of both the video and the audio are pretty poor and you can hear people cheering in the background, but you do get a few good glimpses of things that might happen in the next season.

Some non-spoiler highlights:

• Agent Sarah and... Nicole Richie? Fighting. In the shower.
• Tony Hale of Arrested Development (Buster) playing a role at the Buy More
• Michael Clarke Duncan playing a thug
• Melinda Clarke of The O.C. (Julie Cooper) playing the type of character you'd expect her to play
• Jordana Brewster finding Chuck hiding under a table (I think she plays the girl that he never quite got over... but I could be wrong)
  
• John Larroquette playing some kind of spy boss/mentor
  
• Hilariousness involving Captain Awesome
• Sarah working at a frozen yogurt place
  

Some more details from Watch with Kristin are available. Chuck was one of the few shows that I actually watched last season so I am pretty excited about it starting up again in the Fall. It's not a great show exactly, but it's fun to watch and a few of the characters (mostly Adam Baldwin and Captain Awesome) really make the show worth it.

Rachael Leigh Cook in Psych

There's no confirmation on IMDB about this yet, but our favorite girl who is All That seems to have shown up in the latest episode of Psych. The episode focuses around Shawn and Gus at their high school reunion and Rachael appears to play Shawn's old high school crush. I've embedded a brief clip from the beginning of the episode which is available in its entirety from Hulu.

I have fond memories of She's All That from the pinnacle of the teenybopper era but it is sad to see that Rachael has gone from low budget teen movie lead to starring in a TV pilot that was never picked up to guest starring on a USA show. She's still pretty cute though, so I guess there is that.

'Dr. Horrible': An oral history | 2 | Web Video | News + Notes | Comic-Con 2008 | Entertainment Weekly

An interview with Joss Whedon, Neil Patrick Harris and others about Dr. Horrible - a few fun notes: Neil Patrick Harris auditioned to be the doctor on Firefly (sadly, I don't think I would have liked him as much as the other guy), and that the Dr. Horrible remote was just a website viewed on an iPhone (and Joss wants to make the website public so everyone can have the Dr. Horrible remote!).

'Twilight' @ Comicon

Teenagers are anxiously awaiting the movie adaptation of Twilight and the Comicon session was filled with screaming, swooning girls. Yikes.

Chris Brown dance show

Chris Brown will be getting into the dance reality show craze! Cool! Hopefully he'll do lots of dancing!

OC flashback!

woo, Taylor Townsend from the OC (aka Autumn Reeser) is going to be a guest star on the Pushing Daisies season premiere

as a Southern Belle named Kentucky Fritz who has a deadly run-in with some killer bees. "She's the number one girl at Betty's Bees, who may or may not have been up to some mischief when she was stung to death by a swarm of bees," teases Daisies creator Bryan Fuller.

Neil Patrick Harris Q&A

Here's a fun Q & A with Neil Patrick Harris, but the most surprising thing? The actor he'd most like to work with is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Really? Hmm, I have a bad radar for sarcasm so is he serious or not?

Fringe screening at comicon

Uh oh, looks like the screeing for Fringe at Comicon wasn't an overwhelming success. Maybe they can do some recuts for the premiere?

Dr. Horrible stats

Apparently about 2 million people watched the Dr. Horrible musical online. Not sure how it's doing on iTunes, but Joss Whedon and co. are planning to release a DVD of Dr. Horrible as well.

Caprica trailer

Here's a trailer for Caprica, the TV movie prequel to Battlestar Galactica, set about 50 years before Battlestar. It looks pretty exciting! The latest rumors are a series pickup for Caprica has not yet happened, so the SciFi channel is getting a final cut of the movie soon, and will decide whether to greenlight a season of the show.

Yes Zooey

Here's a trailer for Jim Carrey's new movie Yes Man, which actually looks pretty amusing even though I've never been a particular fan of Jim's and he's looking noticeably older. Basically the only reason why I'm posting this is because Zooey Deschanel is in it and the trailer is actually pretty amusing. I suspect the movie itself will probably not be very good as its premise is basically the classic story of a Scrooge-type character who sees the light and changes his ways and probably finds love along the way, the wacky hijinks that ensue may be amusing but will probably be equally painful.

In Search of a Midnight Kiss

I'm intrigued by the trailer for In Search of a Midnight Kiss, which looks like it might be a fun, quirky romantic comedy (or a total train wreck).

Flash of Genius

So this movie, Flash of Genius doesn't look that exciting to me, but it was so nice to Lauren Graham again! I miss seeing her on Gilmore Girls, although I have to admit I was glad to see her escape from the sinking ship that was the last couple seasons of Gilmore Girls...

Brenda's back

Yes, it's true, Shannen Doherty will make a guest appearance on the new 90210 spinoff. Here's hoping that things don't get ugly again!

Dr. Horrible: Watch now!

Don't forget to watch Joss Whedon's new online only mini-show Dr. Horrible, with Doogie Howser and Mal from Firefly, since I think it won't be online for much longer. Or you can buy it from iTunes!

High School Musical 3

Here's the trailer for High School Musical 3: Senior Year. As usual, it looks like it's full of fun songs and dancing.

Hayden Panettiere’s new song

Listen to a clip of Hayden Panettiere’s song “Wake Up Call” . I thought it might be kind of fun, pop-y and catchy, but the tomcat thinks it's lame.

Netflix for magazine

Time Inc is launching a service called Maghound, where you pay a monthly subscriber fee and can pick a certain number of magazines to get that month, out of a stable of 300 magazines (at launch). So you can pay $5 to get any three magazines, and so on and you can change which magazines you get each month. I wonder if you'd be able to see what the cover/contents of the magazine look like before you choose which magazines you want.

I don't think I get any Time Inc magazines, but they do have a bunch of big hitters like Sports Illustrated. I think the tomcat will love this since he loves magazines.

New Twilight trailer

By request of Nyanko, here's a new trailer for Twilight that shows a bit more action. I have not read the books and the trailer doesn't make me any more excited about the movie but I guess there are a lot of people who are into this series.

The only thing I know about this is that the lead female star Kristen Stewart looks way older than she really is (ack she was born in 1990) and she played Meg Ryan's daughter in that movie with Adam Brody that looked really horrible.

Scrubs news

I kind of thought that Scrubs was just going to be on ABC for its last season, but it looks like they haven't really ruled out doing more seasons. Zach Braff has stated that this will be his last season on the show, but at the TV press tour, they talked about bring in new doctors and continuing the show. Hopefully a new cast will bring a creative renaissance as I think the last couple seasons have been kind of weak. Or maybe I'll finally just have to kill my season pass to the show.

P.S. I assume Zach Braff wants to do movies/write movies, but will he ever play a different character than the feckless, wayward 30-something dude? Or can he make a lifetime career of it, ala Hugh Grant?

Kara Saun and ABDC

Looks like Project Runway contestants are making their mark as stylists on TV shows... First we had Kit Pistol dressing Samantha Harris on Dancing with the Stars, and now we have the news that Kara Saun is doing the wardrobe for America's Best Dance Crews.

Megan Fox and Simon Pegg

I am on a roll with the trailers, here's one for How To Lose Friends and Alienate People, a comedy starring Simon Pegg, Megan Fox, Kirsten Dunst, and Jeff Bridges. I have still not seen Shaun of the Dead but I thought Hot Fuzz was hilarious and Simon Pegg appears to be doing pretty well as it looks like he's moving more into mainstream Hollywood with this film.

Also of note, as far as I know this is Megan Fox's first major release since Transformers. One of the main theaters around here has a big prop for this film that I've seen a few times so I've been wondering what this was all about. Now that I've looked into it a bit more it appears that this is based on a book of the same name so I could've figured it out a lot earlier I suppose. Then again, if Megan Fox wasn't on that prop I'm not sure I would've cared that much at all.

Watchmen trailer

Yay more video embedding. Here's a link that may or may not work for the highly anticipated trailer for the upcoming Watchmen film based on the groundbreaking graphic novel by Alan Moore. I pulled this out of the source from this page at Cinematical and it may stop working at any moment since their link to the original post on Empire is also broken. All of these are likely to be fixed this weekend since there have been numerous reports now (too many to reference) that this trailer will be attached to The Dark Knight which is coming out... tonight.

Wire movie? Maybe not.

Apparently, the Wire creator David Simon isn't hot on doing a movie, since he feels that the series had an ending that was appropriate to itself. I guess that throws some cold water on the rumors that some of the cast members had been spreading about trying to put together a movie...

Netflix on the Xbox 360

The tomcat will be thrilled that the Roku box functionality of streaming Netflix rentals will be on the Xbox 360 starting this fall. The service will be free if you already have a Netflix subscription, and again, this is only a subset of the entire Netflix library. Maybe the tomcat give me my Roku box back after that.

Alias

JJ Abrams admits that even he is confused by Alias:

He told a story about recently watching an old ep of Alias with his pal Greg Grunberg. "I was so confused. It was impenetrable," says Abrams, the, um, creator of Alias. "I was like, ‘Who the f--- is that guy?"

At least it wasn't just me. I instituted a rule in my home when others were watching Alias with me of "No 'why' question". You were allowed to get a quick summary of who a character was, but you weren't allowed to ask about why things were happening, because it would take three years to explain and really, it wasn't important.

SYTYCD

Jessica from So You Think You Can Dance got injured so she'll be replaced by the most recently eliminated woman, Comfort.

David Simon and HBO

HBO picks up the pilot for the Wire's David Simon's new show about Post-Katrina New Orleans. Hopefully this will lead to a series. I'd subscribe to HBO just to see it.

epMotion!

Have you ever wondered what an boy band video about an automated pipetting system would be like? Wonder no more. I wish I could be as cool as totoro and embed the video, but I don't think I can do that with this video. You have to watch this - it's pretty hilarious.

Little Britain

I think the tomcat may be excited that HBO will be producing an American version of Little Britain since he started watching it while spending some time in England.

Office webisodes

I'm sure I'm a bit behind on this, but there are new webisodes for the Office, if you need an fix to get you through the summer until the new season starts. This review says that they are not brilliant, but they are fun and worth watching. The webisodes are posted on the NBC website.

The tomcat is currently on the prowl for a 3G iPhone. We'll see if his quest is successful.

Dessert Trucks on Manhattan Streets - NYTimes.com

I love the concept of roving Dessert Trucks in New York. I haven't seen one and maybe I'll have to track down one or two of these the next time I get out there. I always make a Pinkberry pilgrimage, but this would also be pretty fun. There's something so appealing to me about the transience of a dessert shop on wheels and having to deal with parking. When I was in college, the burrito truck used to come by and play their horn song every morning, and it would have been awesome if a dessert truck had come by. Hmm, maybe that will be my new second career plan - a wandering truck-based cupcake/smoothie/pinkberry yogurt place!

Project Runway

I didn't realize this, since there's been no publicity/marketing, but the new season of Project Runway starts next Wednesday and the cast won't get announced until Monday. This article speculates on why there has been so little publicity - is it because they are mad that the show will be going to Lifetime for the next season so they don't want to market it? Is it because they want to generate a lot of buzz, and there will be something exciting to unveil when they announce the cast? We'll have more of a clue next week...

Phonesaber

Since we're talking about iPhone apps and I got 2.0 installed on my phone last night and proceeded to download a bunch of random stuff, this one goes down as probably the most amusing and not useful at all app so far: Phonesaber.

TheMacBox has a brief description of it in case the iTunes link up above doesn't work, but basically it just lets you swing your iPhone around and make lightsaber sounds, who doesn't want that?

BTW that's an actual screenshot from my phone, the new firmware also implemented a screenshot ability (hold the Home button down and then hit the Sleep button up top and it'll stick a screenshot in your Camera Roll).

Urbanspoon

There's an iPhone app out now called Urbanspoon which will take your current GPS location and recommend a decent place nearby for you to eat. It works kind of like a magic 8 ball because you shake it and it comes up with a suggestion and you can keep shaking it to get new options. Kind of fun! This would have been a fun thing to have when I was hanging out with sc and we were always at a loss of where to eat, and neither of us wanted to decide.

Max Payne trailer

There's a trailer for the movie version of Max Payne up now, starring Mark Wahlberg as the title character with Mila Kunis co-starring. I've only very barely played the video games that this movie is based on, but I remember them as being fairly hyped due to the "bullet time" mode in which you are able to slow time down and thereby control your character in dodging bullets and shooting the bad guys in cool slow-motion ways. The first game came out not too long after The Matrix did and it seemed to have been heavily influenced by the action style in that movie.

The trailer appears somewhat Sin City-ish to me, with the kind of dark hued look of a noir thriller. I like Marky Mark as an actor and in action films in particular so this is relatively exciting. I never particularly enjoyed That 70's Show but Mila was quite cute in Forgetting Sarah Marshall so right now this movie is pretty high up on my list of things to watch in the Fall (release scheduled for October 2008).

One other interesting note, although IMDB does not list it, wikipedia claims that Olga Kurylenko, otherwise known as the new Bond girl, will play a small role in this movie.

Jane in a new show: Leverage

TNT has a new show coming out called Leverage. It looks to be an action/drama but the real draw of the show is that it co-stars Gina Bellman, otherwise known as Jane from Coupling. She doesn't do much in the trailer above but it's definitely her.

I suppose I could do some more research into the show but really I'm just excited to see more people from Coupling get work. We've seen Steve in Pirates of the Caribbean and some other stuff, Susan was in the failed Teachers but other than that there hasn't been much that I've seen.

Taken trailer

There's a teaser for Taken on Yahoo movies now. This seems pretty interesting to me if only because it has Liam Neeson in what appears to be a classic action role that I would've expected someone like Jason Statham to do. The plot seems pretty standard: a father has a daughter who is kidnapped for whatever reason and so he goes and gets her back, presumably making the kidnappers regret what they did in the process.

Pierre Morel is the director, his only other directing credit to date is District B13, otherwise known as the French parkour action movie. Liam Neeson is the main star in this as mentioned before, Maggie Grace of Lost fame plays the victim (she looks a bit old for the role) and Famke Janssen appears to be the wife.

I wouldn't say that I am hugely excited about this just yet, but it has some potential if the action sequences come out well.

Another viral video...

This video has been making the rounds over the last couple of weeks but I just saw it for the first time today and it is quite entertaining:


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

I saw this on Cinematical originally but for those who are interested in some of the details about this short film, this is a nice blog post about it. That post has the youtube version of this video but I found the vimeo one to be nicer quality.

No more Netflix

I have finally admitted that I'm not watching Netflix enough so I just cancelled my subscription. It's kind of sad, but I guess I'll have more time to watch the TiVo, read books and play the DS (I'm making good progress through the sudoku game).

But I finally got around to watching some episodes of Bones, since it's one of maybe two shows that totoro actually watches. It's been pretty entertaining so I'm looking forward to catching up on the season during the summer. I might even watch some episodes online if I have time.

In Plain Sight has also become one of my summer favorites. It's not particularly good, but I find the characters to be fun and entertaining.

Dr. Horrible

Joss Whedon's internet video musical Dr. Horrible starting Neil Patrick Harris will be online for only one week, with acts posted on July 15th, 17th and 19th.

Battlestar Galactica: Another TV Movie?

Rumors abound that there's going to be another TV movie for Battlestar.