TVSquad

The Jay Leno Show has taken a bit of a beating from viewers and critics, but my household has been watching, and we like the show. Sure, there are parts of it that fall a little flat (like, ok, The Real Housewives of Orange County bit last night; Jason didn't like it either), but overall, Jay's pretty funny no matter what he's doing, and we enjoy the show.

One of the bits we like is 10@10, the part where Jay gets celebrities on his screen and asks them ten questions about anything. In last night's episode, he caught up with Billy Crystal, currently in Philadelphia touring with his show, 700 Sundays.

The late night talk show process hasn't been refined in any major way since the early days of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Well there is Carson Daly's show, but I don't count that as a late night talk show ... or a show, for that matter.

You've got your monologue, your one or two comedy bits or sketches and banter with the band and the sidekick, throw in two or three guests, end with a musical performance and you're done. It's comedy by the numbers that works as long as the comedy is funny.

So it's refreshing to see Jay Leno and company retooling the format of the bit, even if the result still screams of the old show. It's also nice to see a show that knows and plays on Leno's strengths and weaknesses as a comedian and a talk show host with the skills of an NFL offensive coordinator, even if it sometimes feels as though that offensive coordinator works for the Detroit Lions.

Jay Leno is sure mixing it up on his new TV show. Mike recently reported that The Jay Leno Show will feature a mash-up of musicians, and Leno's Green Car Challenge looks just as fun.

Drew Barrymore is the first star to accept a challenge to test her green driving skills during Leno's show. She'll get behind the wheel of a high-powered electric car on Sept. 19, facing off against another Hollywood racer.

Leno recently told Access Hollywood, "The fun thing about it, there's a lot of people ... perhaps athletes and people like this who are not good talkers but would be fun in this sort of environment -- to see if Shaquille O'Neal is faster than Cameron Diaz."

AMC's Storymakers returns this Friday with guests including Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, as well as film directors Nick Cassavetes and Judd Apatow. The show features a round table discussion with the guests and hosts Peter Bart, former editor-in-chief of Variety, and film producer Peter Guber.

I've never seen the show, but I'll definitely catch this Friday's episode. I can't wait to see what the dynamic is like between two great but very different filmmakers like Cassavetes and Apatow, and two pampered stars like Cruise and Diaz.

What are the odds that a big screen adaptation of ABC's 1980's hit MacGyver will be a success? Judging by the success-to-failure ratio of TV-to-movies, I'd say it's 50-50 at best. For every The Fugitive, there's The Wild, Wild West. A Mission: Impossible reboot works well enough as a Tom Cruise vehicle, but a live action Speed Racer is an unmitigated disaster. Still, the optimist in me will hope that New Line's MacGyver to the big screen will work. They first mentioned this about a year ago, but it's picked up some traction now.

There's no star attached as yet, but a lot of De Laurentiises -- Dino is exec producer, Raffaellla and Martha are producing for Raffaella Productions. (Giada is sticking to the Food Network.) Fortunately, the series creator, Lee Zlotoff is attached, too.

The folks at our sister site Cinematical are working hard to give you news and reviews of the best -- and worst -- the silver screen has to offer. Here are some of their latest musings on the latest blockbusters, indies, and everything in between:

• You guys, I cannot take Valkyrie seriously. Seriously, who thought that making a movie in 2008 about Nazis starring Tom Cruise in an eye patch was a good idea? Anyway, Cinematical reviews Valkyrie here.
  
• Don't you love year-end list time? Movies, actors and trends; Cinematical examines the hottest of 2008.
• Okay, don't freak out yet. Warner Bros. is still planning on releasing The Watchmen in March, but a judge has ruled that FOX has at least distribution rights. Read the latest on the battle for Watchmen here.
• If you have to take out classics like Psycho and the original Friday the 13th and only choose movies from 1990 to the present, what would you put as the best horror movies? Cinematical has the top 25.
• Because it's the day after Christmas, I present to you without further comment, drunk Jeff Goldblum. Happy holidays!

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?