rosie odonnell-related stories
Posted Nov 4th 2009 2:02PM by John Scott Lewinski
Filed under: News, Music and Variety, Celebrities
Rosie O'Donnell reminds me of a sexually transmitted disease.
I might have enjoyed my first experience that brought me in contact with her. But she's grown painfully irritating over the years, and I can't seem to get rid of her now. No matter what happens, she just keeps coming back to irritate me further -- leaving me to wonder what ever led me to welcome her irritation in the first place.
When O'Donnell proved too annoying even for
The View, and then flamed out on her disastrous one-off variety show, I thought we'd seen the last of her. But it looks like we'll at least "hear" from her again, as she's moved away from the TV talk circuit and taken a gig hosting her own
satellite radio talk show on Sirius XM.
Continue reading Rosie O'Donnell rises again to haunt Sirius XM show
Posted Oct 19th 2009 8:40AM by Jonathan Toomey
Filed under: OpEd, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(
S07E05)
"Have you noticed if she has any proclivity for chopsticks?" - Larry
It's amazing to me that the main topic of last night's Curb Your Enthusiasm, people in wheelchairs, has never been tackled by Larry before. I'm sure there have been a few wheelchair jokes in the past that I'm forgetting, but this? This was a full-blown, inappropriate mess of incorrectness and every second of it was brilliant. Save for "The Reunion," this was easily the strongest episode of the season. Wheelchairs, wrestling Rosie O'Donnell, and the return of Leon! How can you go wrong?
Continue reading Review: Curb Your Enthusiasm - Denise Handicap
Posted Aug 20th 2009 9:02AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities, Pickups and Renewals, Ratings, Reality-Free
See, this is a reason why cable is becoming the best place to watch TV.
Lifetime has picked up Drop Dead Diva for a second season. The show is a real chick-flick kind of comedy/drama that has done well in the ratings ... for Lifetime.
The 2.6-3 million viewers would mean a cancellation on the networks – think
Pushing Daisies – but on Lifetime, the charm and whimsy of
Drop Dead Diva, the appeal to the female demographic, and the pairing with
Army Wives on Sunday nights spells success.
Continue reading Lifetime loves the Diva
Posted Jul 30th 2009 9:59PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, TV Royalty, Celebrities, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free
If the meta-ness of my headline confuses you, I apologize. It's the best way I could phrase it, because it's kind of mind-blowing in concept.
At today's HBO session at the TCAs, Larry David came on stage to talk about the upcoming season of
Curb Your Enthusiasm. In it, as we all know, he'll be
reuniting the Seinfeld cast on the show. And what will they be doing? They'll be working on... a
Seinfeld reunion episode.
"The context is that for years I've been asked about a
Seinfeld reunion," said David, "and i'd say no it's a lame idea. And then i thought it might be very funny to do that on
Curb, and I kept thinking about it and different scenarios of how to pull it off."
When he talked to Jerry Seinfeld and the cast about it, they were all game. "So doiung a
Seinfeld reunion show on
Curb we'll see writing read through rehersals show being filmed. You won't see the entire show, you'll see parts of the show get an idea of what happened eleven years later."
Continue reading The Seinfeld reunion on Curb will be about a Seinfeld reunion - TCA Report
Posted Jul 28th 2009 9:42PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Other Comedy Shows, Late Night, News, Music and Variety, Celebrities, Talk Show, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free
The daytime segment of cable's first day concluded with four Turner-related panels: Joy Behar on her new HLN talk show; a CNN panel with John King, Christiance Amanpour, and Soledad O'Brien; a panel with Jerry Bruckheimer and the cast and producers of TNT's
Dark Blue; and George Lopez, who is starting a new late night talk show on TBS.
Behar and Lopez bookended the session, and they were an interesting contrast. Two comedians, both opinionated, both with things to say about current events. But while Behar's gentle jabs played to mostly silence among the cranky writers in attendance, Lopez got more than a few of us to laugh. I've never been the biggest Lopez fan, but I have to admit, he was ready for us: he made most of us stand up to talk to him, he jostled us on our reluctance to be enthusiastic, and he was able to make pretty quick comebacks with ease. Must be the years of dealing with hecklers.
Anyway, after the jump, some details of Turner's day in Pasadena, including audio of an interview with O'Brien that I started with the word "cankles."
Continue reading Turner panels: Dark Blue, George Lopez, Joy Behar, and cankles - TCA Report
Posted Jun 20th 2009 5:48PM by Annie Wu
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, OpEd, Celebrities, Reality-Free
For some strange reason, I was initially compelled to start this installment of
Sketch Comedy Saturday with "Never fear,
Little Britain is here!" I suppose there was a need for a campy intro. Then, I realized that there are actually
plenty of things to fear in
Little Britain: Matt Lucas wearing really tight shorts, old women violently projectile vomiting on everything in sight, more Matt Lucas wearing really, really tight shorts ... Really, the horrifying list goes on.
Continue reading Sketch Comedy Saturday: Little Britain
Posted May 19th 2009 2:25PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, Pickups and Renewals, Upfronts, Reality-Free
It was inevitable. Ever since Rosie O'Donnell grew a second head and spit venom at Elisabeth Hasselbeck,
The View has been on the radar. Even without current host Rosie O'Donnell, there's been buzz with new co-host Whoopi Goldberg. Hasselbeck keeps causing trouble on the set with her lone conservative voice, Whoopi is outspoken in her own right, Joy Behar is a lunatic and even Barbara Walters has been known to snag a headline or two. Of course Lifetime wants a piece of that buzz. And to get it they're grabbing ... uh ... Sherri Shepherd?
Doesn't Sherri Shepherd think she'll fall off the edge of the earth if she goes too far? I thought she was still there because they didn't want to have to rebuild the table with one fewer chair. Huh, I guess I was wrong.
Lifetime picked up Sherri Shepherd's sitcom Sherri for 12-episodes.
Continue reading The View's Sherri Shepherd is getting a Lifetime show
Posted May 15th 2009 7:06PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: American Idol, Watercooler Talk, Contestants, Alumni
Attention, Rosie O'Donnell: Simon Cowell promised that next week's
American Idol will be a ding-dong finale. Break out the Drake's Cakes! Actually, Simon wasn't referring to Rosie's favorite chocolate cake treat, he was using perhaps the strangest euphemism he could come up with to hype the finale which he anticipates -- and rightfully so -- a great showdown between two singers who could both be deservedly crowned the winner of
American Idol.
Adam Lambert vs. Kris Allen might seem like a heavyweight versus a bantam weight, one guy who's already been splashed on magazine covers -- last week's Entertainment Weekly -- as the presumptive champ, while the other was nearly knocked on his butt by the judge's song choice that was so bad that Simon faulted Kara and Randy for setting him up to fail.
Continue reading Anticipating a ding dong American Idol finale
Posted Jan 27th 2009 4:30PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Web, Celebrities, Reality-Free
Sad news for people who enjoy blogs that are typed in all lower-case letters:
Rosie O'Donnell has stopped updating her blog. Oh the humanity, etc.
O'Donnell says she has stopped blogging because it "wasn't providing the joy that it used to." Or the Whoopi, the Sherri, the Barbara or the Elizabeth. Definitely not the Elizabeth. This all is perfectly reasonable though. Nothing Rosie has done lately (*cough*
live show on NBC *cough*) has given any joy to TV viewers either, so it's only fair that this stop bringing joy to her. But she's not shutting down her web site. She'll just post other things besides her opinions and thoughts and personal videos. Rosie.com now forwards to
RosiesBroadwayKids.org, which is a worthwhile endeavor, so kudos to her for that.
My favorite quote from Rosie about the blogging stoppage is this: "when I started to blog, no one knew what a blog was." Uhhhh, yeah. OK.
[via
TV Tattle]
Posted Jan 27th 2009 9:02AM by Eliot Glazer
Filed under: American Idol, Daytime, Video, Music and Variety, Watercooler Talk, Talk Show
Well, we're not through to Hollywood just yet, as the
American Idol auditions keep on keepin' on. Indeed, as promised by the show's producers, we're not seeing as many crazies as we have in years past. However, it's safe to say that the pool of eccentric
Idol wannabes has been anything but left on the cutting room floor. That's not going to happen anytime soon.
In terms of memorable performances thus far, Von Smith has arguably been "the big breakout," at least among the contestants on
American Idol's Kansas City stop (he sang "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and wore a white fedora ... which, when you think about it, doesn't necessarily differentiate him from every other contestant).
Continue reading Before Idol, Von Smith was a YouTube sensation - VIDEO
Posted Jan 12th 2009 9:03AM by Eliot Glazer
Filed under: Programming, OpEd, Video, Game Show, Host
As far as we can tell, here are the responsibilities for hosting
Deal Or No Deal:
1. Repeat the painfully obvious rules of the game over and over and over.
2. Loudly announce the names of pretty ladies holding suitcases.
3. Pretend that a game requiring absolutely no skills whatsoever requires skills when choosing numbers in a logically devoid random order.
4. Convince fully-grown adults that you're not pretend-talking on the phone to a villainous, money-hungry banker.
5. Never
ever touch the palm of another human being.
Continue reading Howie does what exactly? - VIDEO
Posted Dec 5th 2008 12:06PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Industry, Music and Variety, Reality-Free
Memo to TBS: vaudeville is dead. Apparently, the folks at Turner never got that news flash.
TBS has greenlighted a vaudeville pilot to be hosted by Harland Williams. The half-hour installments -- should it get picked up -- would be a late-night entry.
That means you'd have to be up late and probably pretty bored with infomercials to not surf away from the jugglers, puppets, plate spinners, gymnasts and other novelty acts likely on the program.
TBS is serious about this concept, tentatively called
The TBS Comedy Roadshow, and if they emphasize the comedy aspect, maybe it'll find a niche. But the term vaudeville makes me very wary.
Continue reading TBS to try vaudeville...no kidding
Posted Nov 30th 2008 12:05PM by Danny Gallagher
Filed under: Programming, Music and Variety, Celebrities, Cancellations, Ratings, Reality-Free
It seems that the show
NBC hoped would revive the variety show format was getting an autopsy before it even had a chance to get off of the operating table.
E! Online reports that Rosie O'Donnell said her live variety show, the cleverly named
Rosie Live, won't make it past the first episode, or as she so cutely wrote on her
web site, "there will b no more."
The one and only episode of Rosie's return from TV purgatory was dismal, to say the least.
Friday's Wednesday's episode only drew 5 million viewers, despite the appearance of high profile celebrities like
Alec Baldwin,
Alanis Morissette and
Ne-Yo to help them forget the fact that they were watching a show where Rosie O'Donnell is the star.
Continue reading Rosie Live now among the living dead
Posted Nov 28th 2008 10:33AM by Brad Trechak
Filed under: Video, Ratings, Reality-Free
It looks like
Rosie Live has been declared dead. Her attempt at reviving the variety show format
tied for the lowest-rated program of the evening.
Frankly, I don't think it's necessarily a death-knell for the format so much as the host. Rosie's
highly-
publicized feuds have certainly soured me on watching any sort of television program hosted by her.
In comparison, Stephen Colbert's
A Colbert Christmas pretty much embraced the variety show format (with enough changes to keep it modern and interesting) and it was great entertainment. Granted, cable stations don't have the ratings requirements of network and the entire special was pretty much an attempt to sell the DVD (in a humorous, non-annoying fashion). If some other Broadway-style celebrity hosted the same show, I'm willing to bet ratings would have been higher.
I've embedded a video from
Rosie Live after the jump, guest-starring Alec Baldwin. I'll let you folks judge for yourselves whether or not Rosie's variety show is cringe-worthy or simply unappreciated.
Continue reading Rosie does not equal ratings - VIDEO
Posted Nov 26th 2008 10:04PM by Debra McDuffee
Filed under: Music and Variety, Episode Reviews
I grew up on
The Lawrence Welk Show (during visits to my grandmother) and
Donny and Marie, so my affinity for the variety show started young. I was always a little bit rock-and-roll, which is why I couldn't help but like the
Nick and Jessica Variety Hour specials when they aired several years back; it was in my blood.
So I was curious to check out
Rosie Live! tonight. I expected some goofy skits, like from
Laugh In (or
Nick and Jessica), but instead we got some authentic conversation with the guests, some horribly executed guest visits, some unknown talent that was almost painful to watch and ... show tunes.
I liken
Rosie Live! to a parade. You wait through the whole broadcast for those special floats that don't come until the end, and of course for the bigger-than-life balloons. The balloons never came, folks.
Continue reading Rosie Live! - the parade with no balloons
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