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Buzz News Roundup, 1/16

BuzzSugar — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:30:14 -0800

Metallica and Run-D.M.C. are among this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. - E! Online
The Japanese anime TV series Cowboy Bebop is being adapted for the big screen, with Keanu Reeves attached to star as a bounty hunter traveling through space in 2071. - The Hollywood Reporter
Amy Ryan has joined the cast of Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut, Jack Goes Boating. - Variety
Also, Amy Ryan will return to The Office at some point. - Entertainment Weekly
Casey Affleck will direct a documentary on the musical career of Joaquin Phoenix who is embarking on a new path as a rapper. - ComingSoon
Kath and Kim's episode order has been cut to 17. - The Futon Critic
A guide to the musical acts appearing at Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration. - Billboard
Kieran Culkin has been cast as Wallace Wells in Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. - ComingSoon

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Buzz News Roundup, 11/17

BuzzSugar — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:30:27 -0800

Monk has been renewed for an eighth - and final - season. - Variety
ABC's official midseason schedule adds Scrubs and The Unusuals to Wednesdays - and drops Life on Mars and Pushing Daisies. - The Futon Critic
Aaron Eckhart will star in the action film Battle: Los Angeles. - ComingSoon
CBS has ordered more episodes of Gary Unmarried and Worst Week. - The Hollywood Reporter
Maya Rudolph will guest-star on Kath and Kim. - TV Guide
50 Cent's album release has been pushed to January. - Billboard
Nigel Lythgoe and Michael Flatley are bringing a new dance competition show to NBC. - Zap2it
NBC is developing a comedy based on the life of Criss Angel. - Variety

Photo courtesy of USA

Kath and Kim and Samantha Are Sticking Around

BuzzSugar — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 05:30:52 -0800

We won't be forgetting about Samantha Who? or Kath and Kim anytime soon. Both comedies are sticking around for the remainder of the season.

ABC has ordered seven more episodes of Samantha Who? while NBC asked for nine more from Kath and Kim. They're the first two comedies to be picked up for a full season, though CBS has ordered additional scripts for both Worst Week and Gary Unmarried.

Samantha Who? is averaging 10.5 million viewers per episode so far this season while airing after Dancing With the Stars. Meanwhile, Kath and Kim has averaged about 6 million viewers per episode airing between My Name is Earl and The Office in NBC's Thursday night block. According to The Hollywood Reporter, an NBC executive called Kath and Kim "a show we love and believe in," while Samantha Who? could help ABC launch any of the six midseason comedies it's got planned.

Are you happy these funny ladies will be sticking around? Does either pickup surprise you? Sound off below!

TV Tonight: Kath and Kim Take on Breast Cancer

BuzzSugar — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 08:30:17 -0700

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and tonight, NBC's Kath and Kim is getting into the act. The mother-daughter team at the heart of the comedy has hooked up with Ford's Warriors in Pink campaign to help promote awareness of the disease in tonight's episode.

Anyone who tunes into the show tonight will have a chance to win a Ford Warriors in Pink Mustang (which will also be Kim's car for the duration of the season - huh, who knew she had a license?). There's also a funny little spot at the end of the show spotlighting breast cancer awareness in a way that only Kath and Kim can: by talking about how they need to pick a cause, what with being celebrities and all.

Last week's Kath and Kim premiere got a mixed reaction, but this sounds like as good a reason as any to give the show another try. If you didn't see the first episode, you can watch a quick recap of it if you read more.

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Watch, Pass, TiVo, or Rent: Kath and Kim

BuzzSugar — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:30:48 -0700

I've been curious for a while now to see NBC's Kath and Kim, an adaptation of an Australian comedy series about a dysfunctional mother and daughter starring Molly Shannon and Selma Blair. I thought the first clips were pretty hilarious, but the show's switched directors since then, and the tone of the premiere episode is pretty different from what I was expecting.

You'll get to see it for yourself tonight at 8:30 p.m., and I'm wondering if it's one you're planning to check out - or one you'll skip altogether. Since this is the first time I've done a Watch, Pass, TiVo, or Rent poll for TV, a quick definition of terms: "Watch" means you're rushing home tonight to watch it, "Pass" is pretty self-explanatory, "TiVo" means you'll record it and maybe watch it later, and "Rent" means that you'd consider picking up the DVDs sometime down the line. So, have at it! Where does Kath and Kim fall for you?

Photo courtesy of NBC

Selma Blair Hones Her Comedy Skills at TCA

BuzzSugar — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:30:34 -0700

Most of the cast of Kath and Kim is best known for comedy: Molly Shannon had all those years on Saturday Night Live, John Michael Higgins is one of Christopher Guest's regular players, and Mikey Day is a Groundlings grad who's also dipped a toe into Internet comedy. So how on earth does Selma Blair fit in?

Pretty well, actually, if her appearance at the TCA press tour is any indication. It was the last day of the tour, when reporters tend to get snippy. Blair, though, was ready to snipe right back, and her droll comments had much of the room in stitches. It basically confirmed my thoughts upon seeing the first promos that Blair's going to be the scene-stealer. Some of the goodies:

An early (and pretty expected) question was about what Blair and Shannon thought about playing a mother and daughter when in real life they're less than a decade apart. "Actresses play different people all the time," Blair said - and then just ran with it. "It's weird. It's this thing . . . called acting? And so you just, like, play different characters that aren't your age or anything? I mean, I think. I don't know." She also cracked that she only got the role because "Dakota Fanning was unavail."
On playing younger in the show: "If you squint your eyes when you're watching it, and you don't put it on high-def, if you're like squinting and put some Vaseline on your eyeballs - I look so young."
When a reporter asked about Ben Silverman, NBC's co-chairman for entertainment, also being an executive producer of the show, Blair broke in: "Quite. A. Catch. Yup. Eyes on the prize."
The real fun came when a reporter asked Blair, whose hair is short right now, how many wigs she'd be wearing. That time, she actually gave a serious answer, until breaking into her own response by saying "this is probably the most boring answer to a question you've ever had." Then, well, this happened:

"If I get a wig, it will be a three-quarter wig because apparently I have a very low forehead line, which a lot of people comment on all the time. I am apparently from the monkey family. I hear that all the time. People are either rats or monkeys. I'm a monkey. I know. Look at your friends. You're all either a rat or a monkey. It's true."

She then declared the monkey-vs.-rat status of all her costars: Monkey (Day), Monkey (Higgins), Rat (Shannon), "you're kind of monkey-rat" (executive producer Michelle Nader).

The whole thing felt like a Christopher Guest movie, which I suppose means her comedy skills are just fine.

For the record, Blair also did give some real answers. They just weren't nearly as fun.

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First Look: NBC's Kath and Kim

BuzzSugar — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:35:35 -0700

It was almost a year ago that I first caught wind of Kath and Kim, NBC's remake of the hit Australian comedy. Since then, Molly Shannon and Selma Blair have been cast in the leads as a dysfunctional mother-daughter team, and NBC has picked the show to anchor its Thursday night comedy lineup. I started seeing promos for the show over the weekend, and so far, I'm finding them completely delightful.

For one thing, it's great to see Molly Shannon with a sassy, blonde haircut and some seriously out-there clothes. For another, I'm loving the attitude Selma Blair's bringing to her role, falling somewhere between entitled princess and petulant teenager. While the two apparently look very little like their Australian counterparts, maybe they can turn the show into an equally big hit.

The odds may be against this remake - and I mean literally, as Horizon Media has already pegged it as one of the shows most likely to fail this Fall - but if the full episodes can keep the easy humor of these promos, I think it stands a chance. To check them out, just read more.

Photo courtesy of NBC

NBC's Fall Schedule: My Take

BuzzSugar — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:36:52 -0700

NBC started off this year's Upfronts more than a month early this afternoon, kicking off the frenzy of Fall TV announcements with its no-frills presentation (which took the form of either a PowerPoint presentation or a conference call, depending on where you were). While the format of the announcements wasn't thrilling, the content will give us much to speculate about over the next few months. Here are some of my initial thoughts:

I think Save Friday Night Lights said this one best: Touchdown! The Friday Night Lights/DirecTV deal had been sounding like a sure thing for a while, but it's nice to know for sure that the Panthers will live to play another season. There are more details over here about how the partnership will work, but the short version is that episodes will start airing on DirecTV in October and then be broadcast at 9 p.m. on Fridays on NBC starting in February. I wonder, though, if people will actually wait for the NBC episodes or if BitTorrent and YouTube will be the real beneficiaries here.
The spinoff of The Office is . . . mysterious, to say the least. NBC issued a separate press release about the show, but it's quite vague: "Audiences will follow another comic journey, complete with new faces and new locations, but with the same unique sense of humor and brand of quality from Daniels and his creative team." NBC entertainment head Ben Silverman said they were keeping a lid on things because Office fans are so rabid; when asked if characters from the main show would appear on the spinoff, he responded: "There's a huge ensemble on The Office right now . . . " Come on, man. A title? A setting? Anything?
More on that: Back in October, most of you thought a spinoff would be a bad idea. Now that it's happening, how do you feel? What's your dream setting for the show? Have you changed your mind about which characters it should focus on? Best suggestion I've heard so far: the warehouse.
Also, it's worth mentioning that the big headline from last Spring's NBC Upfront was a Heroes spinoff, and, well, we know how that turned out.
My gal Liberty is wondering what you think of NBC's plan to put special "Weekend Update" segments on the air on Thursdays leading up to the Presidential election in November. There certainly should be enough political mockery to go around by then.

Some other thoughts, plus the full night-by-night schedule, so just read more.

Most of the new shows NBC announced had been rumored for a while - we first heard about Kath and Kim way back at the TV critics' press tour last summer, and once news of a project starring Christian Slater was out there, how could it not become a series? So, no big surprises there.
Knight Rider: the series? Do you think this has any chance of succeeding? Oh, and if you were waiting on the edge of your seat to find out: Yes, Val Kilmer will return as the voice of KITT.
Silverman tried so hard to give us the warm fuzzies: NBC shows might involve losers or bad guys, but they're all just people who really want to do the right thing! Gotta give the guy props for finding a connection between Ian McShane as an evil king and the weight-loss mavens of The Biggest Loser.
I can't tell you how many times Silverman used the words "ER" and "last season" in close proximity to each other. Get it? The show will be back - but only one more time. We promise!
There's officially no Scrubs on NBC's schedule, so I have to assume that means ABC gets it, for sure.

Your thoughts? Here's a full schedule of the shows for both Fall 2008 and Winter 2009 - though, as always, this information is subject to change. New show descriptions follow below:

Fall 2008
MONDAY
8 p.m. Chuck
9 p.m. Heroes
10 p.m. My Own Worst Enemy (new)

TUESDAY
8 p.m. The Biggest Loser: Families
9:30 p.m. Kath and Kim (new)
10 p.m. Law & Order: SVU

WEDNESDAY
8 p.m. Knight Rider (new)
9 p.m. Deal or No Deal
10 p.m. Lipstick Jungle

THURSDAY
8 p.m. My Name is Earl
8:30 p.m. 30 Rock
9 p.m. The Office
9:30 p.m. The Office or SNL Thursday Night Live (new)
10 p.m. ER

FRIDAY
8 p.m. Crusoe (new)
9 p.m. Deal or No Deal
10 p.m. Life

SATURDAY
8 p.m. Dateline
9 p.m. Knight Rider repeats
10 p.m. Law & Order: SVU repeats

SUNDAY
NFL football

Winter 2009
MONDAY
8 p.m. Chuck
9 p.m. Heroes
10 p.m. The Philanthropist (new)

TUESDAY
8 p.m. The Biggest Loser: Couples
9:30 p.m. Kath and Kim (new)
10 p.m. Law & Order: SVU

WEDNESDAY
8 p.m. Knight Rider (new)
9 p.m. Deal or No Deal
10 p.m. Law & Order

THURSDAY
8 p.m. My Name is Earl
8:30 p.m. 30 Rock
9 p.m. The Office
9:30 p.m. The Office spinoff
10 p.m. ER / The Celebrity Apprentice

FRIDAY
8 p.m. Deal or No Deal
9 p.m. Friday Night Lights
10 p.m. Life

SATURDAY
8 p.m. Dateline
9 p.m. Law & Order: SVU repeats
10 p.m. Law & Order repeats

SUNDAY
8 p.m. specials / Merlin (new)
9 p.m. specials / Medium
10 p.m. specials / Kings (new)

New show descriptions (all from NBC's press release):

My Own Worst Enemy - Henry Spivey (Christian Slater, Bobby) is a middle-class efficiency expert living a humdrum life in the suburbs with a wife, two kids, a dog, and a minivan. Edward Albright is an operative who speaks 13 languages, runs a four-minute mile, and is trained to kill with his teeth. Henry and Edward are polar opposites who share only one thing in common - the same body. When the carefully constructed wall between them breaks down, Henry and Edward are thrust into unfamiliar territory where each man is dangerously out of his element. My Own Worst Enemy explores the duality of a man who is literally pitted against himself. And it raises the question: who can you trust when you can't trust yourself?

Knight Rider - On the heels of NBC's hit movie, the iconic 1980s television classic comes roaring back to life as an updated drama series showcasing the new customized KITT (Knight Industries Three Thousand) Ford Mustang. As the sequel resumes, KITT is absolutely the coolest car ever created: its supercomputer capable of hacking almost any system; its weapons systems efficient; and its body - thanks to its creator's work and nanotechnology - is capable of actually shifting shape and color. It is the ultimate car -- and someone will be willing to do anything to obtain it. Knight Rider stars Justin Bruening, Deanna Russo, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, and Bruce Davison.

Crusoe - Based on the legendary novel by Daniel Defoe, this is the tale of Robinson Crusoe. A young man leaves his true love to embark on an adventure - only to end up shipwrecked on a remote tropical island for 28 years, completely detached from the life he once knew. His desire to return to his wife and his strong and unlikely friendship with Friday are the only things that keep him sane. While stranded, Crusoe encounters enemies and braves the elements. Equal parts MacGyver, Castaway, and Pirates of the Caribbean, this series is an inspirational tale of survival rife with action and comedy.

Kings - Kings is an inspiring exploration of the timeless David vs. Goliath struggle. The show is set in a modern metropolis under siege where the fighting has gone on for too long and cost far too many lives. When David Shepherd (Christopher Egan, Resident Evil: Extinction), a brave young soldier, rescues the king's (Golden Globe winner Ian McShane, Deadwood) son from enemy territory, he sets events in motion that will finally bring peace. Suddenly, David is thrust into the limelight, earning the affections of women - including the king's daughter. When he's promoted to captain, he becomes the reluctant poster boy for hope. But for David, the line between his allies and enemies will blur as the power players in the kingdom go to great lengths to see him fall. From the director (Francis Lawrence) of the blockbuster movie I Am Legend comes the ultimate story of David vs. Goliath, and there's no telling who will win.

Merlin - Merlin brings to life a new legend for a modern audience. Merlin is an exciting, hour-long fantasy series set in the mythic city of Camelot - but inspired by 21st Century storytelling. Before Merlin (Colin Morgan, Doctor Who) and Arthur (Bradley James, Lewis) became legends, they were ambitious young men looking for adventure, hoping to live up to their family's expectations, discovering love and finding their own true destiny, making mistakes along the way. The innovative, action-packed drama has cross-generational appeal and paints a picture of Merlin and Arthur's early life that audiences have never witnessed before. Anthony Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Richard Wilson (A Passage to India), Angel Coulby (Magicians) and Katie McGrath (The Tudors) also star.

The Philanthropist - This one-hour drama is about a rebel with a cause. Teddy Rist loves women, money and power. After the tragic death of his only child, Teddy has an awakening and becomes the world's first vigilante philanthropist - a renegade billionaire who uses his wealth, connections and power to help people in need. He'll do anything to achieve his goals - bargain with the self-righteous, trade with the nefarious and even tell the truth. Instead of spending $25,000 a plate at a fundraiser, he's dodging bullets in third-world countries to hand-deliver vaccine. It's a global adventure that will take viewers to the ends of the Earth and will inspire them as well.

Kath and Kim - They're the most dysfunctional duo in suburbia. Kath Day (Molly Shannon, NBC's Saturday Night Live) is the mom, a foxy, 40-something divorce who finally has time for herself and her valiant search for love. Kim Day (Selma Blair, Hellboy," "Hellboy II" is the daughter, a self-absorbed princess recently separated from her husband who finds consolation in stuffing her face. When Kim decides to move back home, Kath reluctantly agrees - but to Kim's chagrin, Kath is not about to cater to her every whim as she has in the past. Based on the most successful comedy in Australia of the same name, Kath and Kim are two brassy women who prefer the finer things in life like acrylic nails, big hair and faux diamond chips.

Buzz News Roundup, 2/6

BuzzSugar — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:42:28 -0800

Reuters has an appreciation of Beatles spiritual mentor Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who died overnight.
Brittany Murphy may be Lindsay Lohan's replacement in the dark comedy Poor Things, writes Hollywood Reporter.
Billboard has news that Metallica, Pearl Jam, and Kanye West will headline Bonnaroo this year - and not Led Zeppelin, as some sources erroneously reported.
ComingSoon reports that Josh Brolin may go from playing George W. Bush to playing the new Terminator.
Debra Messing has nabbed a role in the family dramedy Humboldt Park, Variety reports.
Zap2It has the news that Casey Affleck is attached to star in a film adaptation of Tom Epperson's period noir drama The Kind One.
The Selma Blair/Molly Shannon show Kath and Kim has been given a series order by NBC, writes Hollywood Reporter.
According to ComingSoon, Emilio Estevez's directorial follow-up to Bobby will be a social drama titled The Public, which will be set in a library.
Late-night host (and new citizen) Craig Ferguson will host the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, Variety reports.

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Selma Blair Heads to TV for NBC's Kath and Kim

BuzzSugar — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:30:13 -0800

Selma Blair has been focusing on her film career for years, but now she's headed back to the small screen. After a long search, NBC has tapped her to play opposite Molly Shannon in the comedy Kath and Kim.

The show, based on an award-winning Australian series, focuses on the dysfunctional relationship between a mother, Kath (Shannon), and her daughter, Kim (Blair). It's been a high priority at NBC for a while: The network first picked up the pilot a year ago, and NBC entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman was talking it up way back at last summer's TCA, but it was reportedly tough to find the right actresses for the leads. The series comes from Silverman's production company, Reveille, which also adapted The Office and Ugly Betty for US television.

This is Blair's first regular TV role since her breakout appearance as Zoe on the WB's Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane back in 1999. Can you see her playing Shannon's daughter? To watch part of an original Kath and Kim episode, just read more

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