Jay Leno will be back behind the desk (yes the desk is coming back! and the couch!) on NBC's 'The Tonight Show' when the show returns after the Olympics are over (March 1, next Monday). So who will Jay have as guests his first big week back? Why, Steve Guttenberg and Carrot Top, of course!
Well, OK, actually he has some bigger names than that. The guests his first week are Jamie Foxx, Lindsey Vonn, and Brad Paisley (Monday), Sarah Palin and Shaun White (Tuesday), the cast of 'Jersey Shore,' Chelsea Handler, Apollo Ohno, and Avril Lavigne (Wednesday), Matthew McConaughey and Jason Reitman (Thursday), and Morgan Freeman and Meredith Vieira (Friday). Media Decoder also has his second week of guests, and they include 'American Idol's' Simon Cowell and 'Twilight's' Kristen Stewart.
No word yet on who David Letterman will have on his show next week. I know, it would be fun to see Conan but something tells me that's not going to happen yet.
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 musings on the latest blockbusters, indies, and everything in between:
I'm honestly kind of surprised that it's taken this long to get a Kurt Cobain biopic, but now that we have one in the works, who should play the title character?
I had a Stretch Armstrong toy when I was a kid. Like most boys I tried to find some way to break it. Sure, the ads said you could stretch and stretch and stretch the guy, but could you really stretch him really far and not snap off an arm or a leg? If I remember correctly he was pretty resilient. We'll see what they do on the big screen, because they're making a movie out of the toy (and I'm sure they'll be a toy for the movie, so it all comes full circle), and Taylor Lautner is going to play Stretch.
In this ad, the kids each take an end of Stretch Armstrong and stretch him practically across the room. I know that Lautner is not a doll he's a grown human being, but I think it would be funny if they included a scene like this in the movie. Sort of a wink and a nod to parents in the audience who remember the toy.
Personally, when it comes to describing the decisions of drooling, mouth-breathing TV executives, vampires are the most appropriate literary metaphor until someone invents a teen novel series involving mutant bloodsucking teenage leeches in love. Trust me, it's in the works.
(S35E09) Hello, Twilight fans. I know you're only here because of your screaming hearts, thudding so hard that every beat is a case for internal bruising. I'm going to be upfront: I don't like Twilight. I tried reading it before it was a "thing" because my friends recommended it to me and I found myself struggling to get through it because, well, even then I knew it was embarrassing. I also watched the film, which I thought was very funny, though I realize that was probably not the intended effect.
That said, I thought Taylor Lautner did a great job. See? I'm not just swimming in haterade. Obviously, I wasn't prepared to like him, but just like Blake Lively from last week, Lautner delivered a strong performance. He seemed really comfortable throughout the entire episode and was surprisingly natural, more natural than some of the actual cast members at some points, at least in terms of blatantly looking at cue cards.
And thanks for keeping your shirt on for all 90 minutes, Sharkboy.
It's hard to disparage Fox for wanting to get into the werewolf business after the huge – and soul crushing – financial success of the lycanthrope-heavy New Moon. But the network that canceled Dollhouse, Firefly and, amusingly, Werewolf might be stretching America's love affair with fanged furries to its breaking point.
Last year, we reported that Fox was eyeing Bitches, about a pack of urban shewolves. Now comes news that it's developing a second werewolf show called Howl, from Dreamworks TV. Variety says that Howl is a family drama about warring werewolf clans in a small Alaska town.
It sounds like Fox is looking to grab some of that Team Jacob money with its own hairy version of The Vampire Diaries.
The entire time I watched this clip from last night's Late Night, I was thinking, "if Taylor Lautner smashes into a wall face-first or falls off of the mini-bike and cracks his head open, Fallon is going to be in big trouble." The two guys raced around the NBC hallways on mini-bikes. The winner wins because he cheats.
There's a major movie opening tomorrow. It's the movie everyone is talking about and obsessed with, to the point of standing in line for hours and hours, and they say it could be the highest-grossing movie of the year. Of course, I'm talking about The Blind Side.
Kristen Stewart is in a movie tomorrow too, and last night she appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and threw footballs at plats. If the whole movie thing doesn't work out...
(S35E05) I had to talk myself through being allowed to criticize Taylor Swift. Ever since Kanye West VMA outburst turned everyone in America into Swift's over-protective mom, she's been shown even more as an innocent country-inspired sweetheart. Every time she messed up in this episode, I felt the need to hold back any not-super-great remarks because, well, she's a teeny-bopper! Teeny-boppers are just kids goofin' around!
And then I have to pause and remind myself that she's almost 20-years-old, around the same age as Shia LaBeouf and Ellen Page when they first hosted and Abby Elliiott when she initially joined the featured players. Screw it, there's no need to hold back. Swift is a musician, so we can't expect her acting skills to be super-good, but the fact I keep thinking she's only 14 shouldn't affect anything else.
Vampires aren't scary anymore. They haven't been for a while.
Anne Rice saw to that while she was making her fortune turning vampires into the kind of delicate camp caricatures you see hosting cooking shows on Bravo. It's continued through Twilight and every Twilight clone coming down the pipe. Still, Twilight can build it's own Federal Reserve Bank now, and no one gives a cuss what I think.
Now, I've officially typed the word "Twilight" way more than I wanted to today, and I need to get to the point. So, vampires will be the cause celebre of Spike TV's 4th Annual "Scream.," Tuesday, October 27 at 10 PM ET/PT.
There's still plenty of Comic-Con International coverage en route from me, including exclusive interviews you'll only find here.
But, as the Monday morning after the madness dawns, we'll take a few minutes and review the major impressions left by the four day weekend.
What happened? What were the biggest themes of the convention and what didn't happen that everyone was hoping would. In other words, what was Comic-Con 2009, and where did it fall short?
The movie side of the annual pop-culture cavalcade opened with one of the biggest names in the history of film and what could very well be one of the biggest names in the future of film. Director James Cameron screened a solid 25 minutes of his forthcoming sci-fi epic Avatar. Blogger Todd Gilchrist got a hint of the plot and special effects movie-goers can expect when the film hits theaters later this year and said it "promises to be both hugely entertaining and technically groundbreaking." Man, that's got me worried. That's what they also said about Titanic.
TV Guide has a couple of weekly recap shows about American Idol when it's on, but even so this seems a bit excessive. I know Twilight is a big hit with the kids, but is it big enough that we need a weekly hour-long show to build up to the premiere of New Moon, the second film in the franchise.
"This week we'll interview the cast and crew and show you some sets. Next week we can talk more to the cast and show you another piece of set. Ooh! Ooh! Wanna see an exclusive six second sneak preview of Jacob growing fur and a snout. Enthralling!" Sadly, this will probably work. If nothing else, it will get young girls watching ReelzChannel.
I have no problem with the behind-the-scenes specials we get to spotlight upcoming movies, but an entire series based on one movie seems a bit ridiculous. That said, maybe NBC should look at picking this up in case Leno doesn't work out. Make it a nightly thing. After all, there's more movies coming!
I'm not even going to pretend that this clip is particularly funny (though I did laugh at some of the inane names of magic spells that Jimmy Fallon comes up with), but I think it's worth watching to see some of the bizarre stuff that Fallon is doing on Late Night. I've seen some of the Harry Potter movies but I haven't seen Twilight, so I'm not sure if Fallon is making references to the movie or what ("bothered?").
For a while there, it looked like Showtime, with buzzworthy shows like Californication, Weedsand Dexter, was dominating headlines and getting all kinds of praise. In response, their ratings were rising. Meanwhile, HBO had struggled to replace The Sopranos, Deadwood and Rome when all three left the airwaves in 2006-07. New "big" shows like John From Cincinnati and Tell Me You Love Me failed to make waves with audiences.
Really, it was Dexter that started swinging the ship toward Showtime, and in so doing, brought attention to the rest of their lineup. With HBO floundering, Showtime saw an opportunity and took full advantage, offering bold new entries. Apparently there's an audience that looks almost exclusively for premium cable original programming. And everything was going so well ... until HBO managed to snag a piece of America's current fixation on vampires.
Jay Leno will be back behind the desk (yes the desk is coming back! and the couch!) on NBC's 'The Tonight Show' when the show returns after the Olympics are over (March 1, next Monday). So who will Jay have as guests his first big week back? Why, Steve Guttenberg and Carrot Top, of course!
The folks at our sister site, 
It's hard to disparage Fox for wanting to get into the werewolf business after the huge – and soul crushing – financial success of the lycanthrope-heavy New Moon. But the network that canceled Dollhouse, Firefly and, amusingly, 
Vampires aren't scary anymore. They haven't been for a while.
There's still plenty of Comic-Con International coverage en route from me, including exclusive interviews you'll only find here.
TV Guide has a couple of weekly recap shows about American Idol when it's on, but even so this seems a bit excessive. I know Twilight is a big hit with the kids, but is it big enough that we need a 
For a while there, it looked like Showtime, with buzzworthy shows like Californication, 
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