TVSquad

Holy crap. Everybody's favorite Scientology war bride, Katie Holmes, has apparently used those perfect chompers of hers to gnaw through her ankle shackles and score an acting gig. Holmes is set to guest star on Eli Stone this fall. Producers are staying mum on any details, but sources say that she is signed up for one episode of the fledgling drama.

Holmes got her big break on TV, playing Joey Potter on the uber-popular teen soap Dawson's Creek. She also had a few impressive turns in movies, such as Pieces of April and Thank You for Smoking before meeting Tom Cruise and taking an extended hiatus from the business.

Holmes also gave up her role in the Batman franchise before dipping her toe back into acting waters with the critically panned Mad Money. She is set to film her episode later this month and then spread her wings further by traveling to New York to star in a revival of Arthur Miller's play, All My Sons.

Things are looking good for Ronald D. Moore as Battlestar Galactica wraps up its run on SciFi. Brad already posted about the new show for Fox, Virtuality. Now comes word that the former Star Trek scribe has a new deal with United Artists. It seems Tom Cruise has tasked Moore with creating an original sci-fi trilogy. Feel free to insert your own Scientology joke here.

Details of the trilogy are, quite obviously, scarce at this point. That being said, if you want to go out and make a big budget sci-fi epic, having Tom Cruise on board is a great first step. It means this thing has a solid chance of actually coming to fruition. And while I'm not the biggest Tom Cruise fan, I'm on board to give anything Moore pens a shot.

[ Reuters via Yahoo ]

Don't you just love the web? News traveling so fast, ideas extrapolated and speculated upon based on the simplest of facts. That said, here's a sweet little tidbit that I found amusing. Tom Cruise was spotted on the Los Angeles set of the new Star Trek feature film. He reportedly was visiting writer/director JJ Abrams. The two men, you'll recall, collaborated on Mission Impossible 3.

This exclusive, courtesy of JFXOnline, revealed that Tom stuck around the set for a couple of hours. Prior to this sighting, there had also been talk last fall that Abrams had wanted to enlist the superstar to make a brief cameo appearance in the revamped Star Trek opus, telling the story of how creator Gene Roddenberry's original characters came to be. How Captain Kirk made it out of the Star Fleet Academy (in The Wrath of Khan he said he cheated on his Kobyashi Maru simulation test), as well as the first time Kirk met the half-Vulcan, half-human Mr. Spock.

Rosie O'Donnell has been campaigning very heavily to be the new host of The Price is Right. Personally I can't think of a worse choice for the job. I'm sure I will ruffle plenty of feathers with this list but if I can do anything to make sure she doesn't replace Bob Barker, it's worth making enemies.

5. She is too self-absorbed to care about the contestants.
Rosie can't stop talking about herself long enough to run a show like TPIR. With her as the host, Viewers would be lucky to get to see on spin of the wheel.

(S05E18) And so ends a short, inconsistent, Family Guy season. I don't know if we should chalk it up to Seth MacFarlane being spread too thin with American Dad and The Winner to watch over, or just the show coming up on 100 episodes. Something just wasn't quite right at Family Guy HQ this season though.

Funny series of screen caps over at TV Newser. I guess MSNBC went "Breaking News" crazy over the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes wedding, and actually had a whole series of neverending stories at the bottom of their screen all day long. Hopefully they covered other news that day too.

Did they cover other celebrity stories like this too? "Breaking News: Bob Barker to retire," or "Breaking News: Ben Affleck buys a Mocha Frappucino at L.A. Starbucks."

Maybe - maybe - they could have had one "Breaking News" report at the bottom of the screen, when the couple were actually married. But did they actually have to go add "Breaking News: Tom Cruise arrives at castle" or "Breaking News: Ex Penelope Cruz sends white roses"? Jeez. They could have had a bunch more. "Breaking News: MSNBC puts up a Breaking News logo about Tom/Kate wedding" and "Breaking News: Jennifer Lopez and Brooke Shields among invited guests."

Oh, wait, they actually did have that last one.

Nip/Tuck writers are running a storyline about Scientology. Creator Ryan Murphy says he's curious about it and not just planning to go this way just for the publicity or the controversy. Too late. Anything involving Scientology becomes controversial. This story arc also happens to include Brooke Shields who bore the brunt of Tom Cruise's anti-psychiatry rants during the year of his melt down. Shields plays a doctor will play a shrink. Just a coincidence says Murphy, who feels Brooks Shields seems "psychiatristy" to him.

It looks like they will be using Scientology pretty extensively, with Kimber and Matt taking long saunas together and "auditing" each other. Nip/Tuck will explore the way people might use a belief system the way plastic surgery is used, and try to open up a religion that's name and celebrity followers is known, but which keeps a lot of its beliefs and rituals secret. Seems a logical step for the series, Matt is one of the most confused characters in the history of original cable series, always looking for an answer in some new extreme way. Kimber and Christian aren't far behind.

[via Defamer]

Ah, I see The Food Network has crossed over to the dark side. Last night, I saw a promo for an upcoming special called, Catering Impossible M:i:III. Because there's just not enough Tom Cruise happening these days.

In case you're interested, it's a behind-the-scenes look at how a team of cooks feeds an army of actors and production folk who make the movie. It airs Saturday at 9 pm.

It's unfortunate what has happened to some word these days. "Genius," and "cool" have all gotten twisted in the past couple of decades. Now add to that list the word "exclusive."

You ever notice the tabloid shows (ET, Access Hollywood, The Insider, Extra) will all say they have an "exclusive" interview with a celeb, but then you turn on another show and they'll have an interview with the same celeb, often in the very same chairs that the other interview had? What's up with that? Larry King does it a lot too. These shows honestly think that just because they interview a celeb on their show at a certain time in a certain way, that this qualifies as an "exclusive." Didn't exclusive once mean that no one else had the interview?

Wow, we've made it to numer ten! The format we followed last week worked out great, so we're continuing with it again this week. Some subjects we yack about:

• We've got a couple of clips from Joel's upcoming interview with George Takei. You tell us: does George call William Shatner a loser?
• Some interviews we're persuing soon.
• The Holmes/Cruise baby and the general weirdness of Scientology.
• The Gilmore Girls creators are gone. So, what now?
• Were Parker and Stone high when they wrote the latest South Park?
• An all-Lost Spoilers Anonymous meeting.

Grab the file directly (link), subscribe to our podcast RSS feed (link), or visit the iTunes music store (link).  (Running time: 37:03)

Former Dawson's Creek actress Katie Holmes gave birth to a baby girl today, according to People magazine. Katie and her fiance, Tom Cruise, named the little girl Suri, which means 'red rose' in Persian and 'princess' in Hebrew.

Their daughter was 7 pounds, 7 ounces and 20 inches long.

Coincidentally, Brooke Shields also gave birth to a baby girl today. Her daughter's name is Grier.

There has been a lot of uproar over the 'Come out of the Closet' episode of South Park from both Isaac Hayes (allegedly) and from Tom Cruise lately. Maybe you're getting sick of hearing about it. Or, maybe you're wishing you'd seen it when it aired a few months ago. I think it's pretty safe to assume the episode-in-question is never going to see the light of day again on Comedy Central, but the cool cats over at YouTube have been kind enough to post the ENTIRE EPISODE on their website.

They also have clips from a hilarious bit on Jimmy Kimmel where Isaac Hayes' new job is to do all the voiceover for Tom Cruise.

[Via The Superficial]

You may have noticed that Wednesday night's episode of South Park was not the one where Tom Cruise refuses to come out of the closet numerous times, as was previously scheduled. The abrupt change actually had nothing to do with the fact that the episode was the final straw for Chef Isaac Hayes. Comedy Central yanked that episode at the last minute because Tom Cruise threatened Viacom with pulling Mission: Impossible-3 advertising if it aired again (is anyone else nervous about the amount of power that man has?).

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone released this hilarious and potentially inflammatory statement through their lawyer today:

Since we reported on the alleged break-up, it's only fitting that we report on the latest in the TomKat saga. It appears that Tom may sue Life & Style magazine for its story earlier this month, declaring that the two lovebirds had parted ways. Cruise's lawyer said Tom was furious over the story, which claimed that he and fiance Katie Holmes split up but were making public appearances to look like they were still together. The magazine also reported that Tom bought Katie a house so he could be close to his child, which she is carrying.

I'd never heard of Life and Style magazine until it came out with that story. Maybe it was just a ploy on the part of the magazine to get its name in headlines. A risky ploy, since Tom Cruise has a history of lawsuits against tabloids.

The British won't get to see the infamous episode of South Park, which outted Tom Cruise something like 13 times in 22 minutes. Cruise, who has a crazy fear about people thinking he's gay, complained about the episode to Paramount and the production company agreed not to play it again. According to The Register in the U.K., Paramount got worried that Cruise would sue them, as he has sued so many tabloids in the past whenever they 'out' him.

The episode in question aired November 16th here in the states. It featured Nicole Kidman and John Travolta characters who kept pleading for Tom to "come out of the closet." At one point, Kidman's cartoon character says, "Don't you think this has gone on long enough? You're not fooling anyone." It really was a funny episode and I'm sad that our friends in Britain won't see it but I'm sure if you scour the internet hard enough, you'll find it.