Welcome to Buzz Brainteaser, the trivia feature on BuzzSugar! Every weekday I'll test your knowledge about TV shows, music, and movies. If you enter in the correct answer, you win points!
For what 1990 film was this one of the tag lines? His story will touch you, even though he can't. Source
Fox has repeats of Prison Break and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
NBC has 2008 Olympics coverage
CBS has repeats of The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men, New Adventures of Old Christine, and CSI: Miami
ABC is new with High School Musical: Get in the Picture and has Bewitched
The CW has repeats of Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill
MTV is new with the season premiere of The Hills
VH1 is new with I Want to Work for Diddy, New York Goes to Hollywood, and Luke's Parental Advisory
TLC is new with Take Home Nanny and Jon & Kate Plus 8
TNT is new with the The Closer and Saving Grace
Bravo is new with Date My Ex: Jo & Slade
ABC Family is new with The Middleman
Comedy Central has repeats of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report
Showtime is new with Weeds
Late-night highlights include David Duchovny and Black Kids on a repeat of Late Show with David Letterman on CBS and Chris O'Donnell, Larry Block, and Phantom Planeton on Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson on CBS
After seeing Tropic Thunder, I felt a teensy bit of relief that the Summer blockbuster events of 2008 seemed to be over at long last. Not that I didn't have fun, but I'm a little maxed out on major hype, epic special effects, and huge box office totals. I'm ready to dig out my warm jackets and sweaters and settle down with some little Fall movie gems.
I'm not alone in this feeling, as Salon's movie critic Stephanie Zacharek describes her own fatigue in a thoughtful piece she wrote this week called "Do You Suffer from Blockbuster Fatigue?" She broaches some interesting topics and makes some good points, including:
Zacharek says that "this year the assortment of big Summer movies hasn't been that different from other Summers in recent memory," but she wonders: "So why has the Summer of 2008 seemed exhausting in a way previous Summers haven't?"
Here's one excellent point she makes: "The most important element of Summer-blockbuster culture isn't the selling of movies; it's the selling of anticipation, because the amount of time we might spend looking forward to a big Summer movie is almost always longer than the shelf life — in theaters, at least — of the actual movie."
Also, did you know the all-important opening weekend summer box office precedent started with Jaws in 1975? Zacharek notes that after that fateful and lucrative summer, Jaws became "the picture to beat, and to emulate." Thus the action-adventure tradition.
She concludes her column by accepting that Summer blockbusters that have "great characters, an arresting visual style, and brilliant storytelling" and also draw millions to see them are "rare and elusive." She says fatigue comes when Hollywood tries to repeat a winning formula, like with The Dark Knight. "The minute you try," she writes, "you've already diluted some of the magic."
What do you think? Has the summer of 2008 been overwhelming in hype? Or do you hope blockbuster season gets bigger and better each year?
What do you get when a raunchy, dirty, frequently inappropriate TV event meets one of the raunchiest, dirtiest, most inappropriate comedians of a generation? Awesomeness — and a stomach that aches with pain from too much laughter. And that's why I'm not-so-secretly looking forward to tonight's roast of Bob Saget on Comedy Central.
If you haven't heard yet, Bob Saget is a major dirty perv of a comedian. His shtick can be uncomfortable, but I've seen him do it live, and it's mostly pretty funny. He has the kind of mouth my grandmother would wash out with soap. It's hilariously strange given what a clean-cut father figure he was to those of us who grew up watching him as Danny Tanner on Full House, the role that made him a household name.
Anyone on Full House is a pretty easy target for a roast like this because the show was so wholesome. However, news spread this week that some off-color jokes about the Olsen twins may have crossed the line (Saget himself said those jokes went a little too far). But that tiny controversy aside (and, really, what roast worth watching doesn't stir up controversy?) the whole thing looks pretty hysterical.
Tonight's show will also be a bit of a twofer as "roast master" John Stamos does not escape ridicule either, as you can see in some of the preview clips I've gathered. The roast airs tonight at 10 p.m. EDT and PDT. To see the clips, including an absolutely wonderful bit from the legendary Cloris Leachman that literally made me spit my drink out in laughter, read more
I've already given you some of my highlights from the week, but today, I wanted to check in with some of the Web's best TV bloggers to see what they were buzzing about. To see what was making headlines this week, just read more
All Olympics, all the time. That's pretty much the story for this week, as the 2008 Olympics dominated the ratings every night — and that's even with some of the major events airing after 11 p.m., when primetime ratings typically cut off. The "weakest" night was Wednesday, when the network averaged 27.2 million viewers.
Dogging it. Maybe it's just the Olympics talking, but Greatest American Dog has been struggling of late. This Wednesday's episode brought in 5.2 million viewers; its highest-rated episode earlier this Summer drew 9.5 million people.
Late-night lift. The Olympics are helping at least one other segment of programming: NBC's late-night shows. For example, the episodes of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O'Brien that aired after the Olympics' opening ceremonies were the highest-rated those shows had been in months.
Still flashing. One of the impressive notes for CBS this week: Flashpoint held up well even with the Olympics on, drawing 6.3 million viewers on Thursday.
Singer and actress Selena Gomez posed for pictures at the 2009 American Music Awards with a pretty pink smile on her face. She took advantage of the occasion and went glam; wearing a Talbot Runhof sequin dress with black strappy heels.