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TV Tonight: Gossip Girl

BuzzSugar — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:30:50 -0700

With Rachel Bilson and Melinda Clarke already making guest appearances on Chuck, it should come as no surprise that Josh Schwartz likes to keep his OC alumni busy with jobs on his shows. The latest: Willa Holland, The OC's (second) Kaitlin Cooper, who will appear on Gossip Girl tonight.

Holland stars in the first of three episodes tonight as Agnes, a young model who becomes a friend of Jenny's and will have a big influence on Little J's career aspirations. According to Holland, "Agnes sees Jenny as somebody who’s not working for herself; she’s working for everybody else. She has a lot of talent and potential, so Agnes pushes her to get out on her own." She also may turn out to be a bit of a flake - but a well-intentioned one.

This episode also puts Taylor Momsen's dramatic haircut in full effect, along with what appears to be an entire drugstore worth of eyeliner. In other news, Serena's going to click with a new guy (an artist named Aaron Rose, played by John Patrick Amedori), and Blair and Chuck continue their little games. To watch a preview, just read more.

Photo courtesy of The CW

Gossip Girl Went to the Hamptons, and All I Got Were Photos

BuzzSugar — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:30:16 -0700

Judging from the massive number of photos the CW has released in the past couple of days, I can say with certainty that the following things happened when Gossip Girl went to the Hamptons for its season two premiere:

Croquet was played.
Red wine was served.
Red wine was spilled, specifically on Dan.
Dan got all writer-ly by the light of a fire.
He also almost missed a bus.
Blair rode bikes with a potential paramour.
They also had heated conversations.
As did Nate and Serena, as well as Serena and Dan.
Lots of people wore white.

As for what this truly means for our favorite Upper East Siders - who's dating whom, who's the queen bee when we return to NYC, etc. - well, I've got nothing. But speculate with me, won't you, by taking a look at the pretty pictures? "Summer, Kind of Wonderful" airs Sept. 1, but you can get a glimpse right now if you read more.

View 49 Photos ›

First Look: Gossip Girl's Summery Start to Season Two

BuzzSugar — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:30:15 -0700

Those marketing gurus over at the CW are at it again: We now have some cute teasers for the upcoming season of Gossip Girl from the folks who brought you OMFG. Gossip Girl returns September 1, and these clips reveal just how juicy S and B's summer in the Hamptons has been (hot lifeguards included).

Can you wait for the new season to start?! I bet as soon as you hit "play" on this video, the mere sight of Chuck in a fedora sipping a drink on the beach will give you the case of the LOLs (as Gossip Girl herself might put it). To check it out, read more.

Photo courtesy of The CW

OMFG! Gossip Girl Getting a Spinoff?

BuzzSugar — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:30:23 -0700

Hey, Upper East Siders, are you ready for a double dose of gossip? There's a story floating around that the producers of Gossip Girl are planning a spinoff of the CW series.

(Update: Josh Schwartz has said it's not true, but in the same story, a CW boss says they'd consider it if the second season does well. Hmm . . . )

According to the Hollywood Reporter, one likely scenario is that Jenny Humphrey (played by Taylor Momsen) would move on and become the lead character of her own series - much like what happened in the Gossip Girl books, when Jenny's character got her own book series. The producers are also considering introducing a new character in the Fall who would be spun off - and whose path would mirror that of Jenny from the books, which involves getting publicly humiliated in a series of scandals, leaving Constance Billard, and entering a boarding school in upstate New York where she reinvents herself as the queen bee.

The producers are reportedly interested in the project whether the CW wants it or not - and, if the network isn't interested, the series could land at another channel. Well, as we've learned from the Queen B vs. Little J battle, there's nothing like a little competition to keep things interesting among socialites, no?

On the other hand, there's one teensy problem with this plan - which is that the Gossip Girl ratings still aren't good. Could the show's fan base support a spinoff? Would you watch a show all about Little J?

Photo courtesy of The CW

TV Tonight: Gossip Girl

BuzzSugar — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:30:16 -0700

Tonight, there's a new Queen B in town - and her name starts with J. Gossip Girl returns from its strike-induced break with the first of five new episodes, which find a disgraced Blair ceding control of her Upper East Side minions to the rising star from Brooklyn, Jenny Humphrey.

We've already heard quite a lot about what's to come over the next few weeks: More Bad Serena, the arrival of Michelle Trachtenberg as Georgina Sparks, a potential wedding, and the possible outing of one of our characters. Tonight's episode, "The Blair B*tch Project," sees Blair tentatively returning to school after her public, pregnancy scare-related scandal - but at least she has Serena by her side. Serena has issues of her own to deal with, though, not least of which is adjusting to living with her new future stepbrother, Chuck Bass.

The CW has been trying to drum up interest in these episodes, what with a salacious ad campaign and the end of free online streaming. Will it work? I guess we'll find out tonight. You can check out a couple of preview clips for the episode if you read more.

Photo courtesy of The CW

First Look: Gossip Girl's Sexy Return

BuzzSugar — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:31:59 -0700

Gossip Girl returns April 21, and from the looks of things, the CW wants to remind you of a couple of things:

The show stars some gorgeous young things.
They have sex with each other.
This is scandalous!

The jaded part of me wants to roll my eyes and say, well, of course they're going the nudity-and-sex route to promote a show that, while buzzed about, still doesn't get great ratings. But the GG fan in me is saying "OMFG!" right along with everyone else. We've already been promised more Bad Serena, but it looks like we'll be seeing more of everyone else's naughty side, too.

What do you guys think? Are the ads too much? Or do they just get you even more excited for the 21st? To check out two equally sexy video promos, just read more.

Photos courtesy of The CW

PaleyFest: The Goods on Gossip Girl

BuzzSugar — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 06:30:11 -0700

Hey, Upper East Siders. BuzzSugar here, with all the dish from Saturday night's Gossip Girl panel at the Paley Festival in Los Angeles. The sold-out crowd got some hints about what's coming up when the show returns with five new episodes starting April 21 and some of the scoop straight from the set - including the truth about Blake Lively's Guitar Hero skills, the plot lines that Gossip Girl series creator Cecily von Ziegesar would like to see included in the show, and how the fictional Gossip Girl blogger got her voice.

The evening started with a clip of the "Angela + Jordan = total sex in his car!" scene from My So-Called Life, which was greeted with appreciative cheers from the crowd - which was split pretty evenly between the MSCL demographic and the current teenage set. If not for the strike, we would have then gotten to see a new episode of Gossip Girl, but because none had been completed, we got a package of highlights from the season instead - including a mini gag reel of screw-ups from the set. (You know how every show seems to have that one cast member who can't help but drop an f-bomb every time he flubs a line? That's Penn Badgley.) The whole cast slipped into the auditorium to watch after the lights went down, so there was a lot of whispering and clapping going on in a row just to my left.

After clips, the cast and creative team took the stage. All of the main cast attended, along with creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, author von Ziegesar, and two of the show's other producers; the only obvious missing stars were Connor Paolo (Eric van der Woodsen) and Nicole Fiscella and Nan Zhang, who play Blair's dress-alike sidekicks Isabel and Kati. (Zhang apparently headed back to college during the strike, a fact Josh Schwartz said he only learned when they got back on set). Lively seemed to get the most applause, but there were plenty of squeals for Ed Westwick and Badgley, too.

Of course, the juiciest part of the evening was getting hints about what we'll see come April, so for the scoop (and update: here's part two!), just read more.

The biggest thing we'll be seeing: more Bad Serena! A lot of that will be thanks to the arrival of Georgina Sparks (Michelle Trachtenberg), a key figure from Serena's past and someone Blair fears.
Teased Lively: "Maybe the fact that [Serena] slept with Nate isn't the real reason she left, dot dot dot . . . "
Also, Serena and Chuck are getting used to the idea of being siblings, Dan is going to get dirtied up a little, and Blair and Jenny are going to war. Jenny will still be the queen bee when we return, just "learning her power," Taylor Momsen said.
Serena and Eric's father is going to show up eventually, though nobody would say when. Also, the five episodes will be building up to a wedding, Schwartz said. Hmm, who's getting married - Lily and Bart Bass, perhaps?
We'll also be seeing a lot more Vanessa - and not just in the Serena and Dan story. She's going to be getting some plots of her own, possibly including a little something with Nate.
Speaking of Vanessa, finding Jessica Szohr to play her was something of a happy accident. Schwartz and Savage were having a tough time casting the role, but then Szohr turned up with some mutual friends at a barbecue at Schwartz's house. "I had to go home and IMDB her to make sure she was actually an actress," Savage said.
One of the other great casting stories was Leighton Meester's. She was blonde when she auditioned, which proved to be a sticking point for the CW. "The network was like, 'She's great, but she's blonde,' Schwartz said. "We were like, 'She can also be brunette!'" But asking an actress to dye her hair during pilot season is a stretch, so Meester tried wearing a brown wig, which didn't work out so well. Eventually, she did take the plunge and dye her hair.
Lively's requirements for signing on to a series: no having to be locked in a cage, no being brainwashed by an old lady, and no pet monkey. "I would love to be a part of the show," she said she told Schwartz, "but I can't act with a monkey." Thus, Chuck lost his pet monkey - a shame, according to von Ziegesar, who said the monkey just makes Chuck "gayer and gayer and gayer" in the books. Hmmm, could he be the guy coming out of the closet?
The moderator (Entertainment Weekly's Tim Stack) asked Lively if she's as good at Guitar Hero as she was when Serena kicked ass at a party earlier this season. "I'm actually much better," she replied, revealing that she goes to tournaments in Brooklyn, covered in fake tattoos. She takes this stuff seriously: Originally, she was supposed to lose Guitar Hero to Vanessa, but she pleaded with the writers: "Let her get the guy, make her more beautiful, make her more talented, make her better in every way - but don't take away Guitar Hero!"
She then revealed she can actually only play well on medium - though she can apparently spin the guitar around her neck.
How did they pick the voice of Gossip Girl? Kristen Bell declared herself for the role, Savage said. But everyone was vague about whether we'd ever see the blogger in the flesh.
Noting that all the parties on Schwartz/Savage shows seem to end in fisticuffs and tears, Stack asked the two to explain what happened to them at parties that so scarred them for life. Savage: "Every party I ever went to ended in fisticuffs and tears." Schwartz: "I was never at one."

Here are the rest of the goodies from the GG panel. xoxo . . .

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Paranoid Park: Better in a Museum Than a Multiplex

BuzzSugar — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:30:00 -0700

As a piece of art, Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park has a lot to recommend it. It's carefully told and beautifully rendered, and it establishes an instant mood of fearfulness and dread. Van Sant proved with Elephant, his 2003 film about a school shooting, that he knows how to tap into the creepiness of the everyday - dishes clanging in a sink, a light switching on in a far-away room - and Paranoid Park uses those haunting moments to their full effect. It's the sort of film I could see playing in a constant loop in the multimedia wing of a modern art museum.

As a commercial movie, though, Paranoid Park doesn't quite add up. With non-professional actors playing many of the roles, the film has an unusual authenticity - but it also has a distracting amateurish quality. And though it's just 85 minutes long, Paranoid Park still has too much space, with too much time spent on skateboarding shots and too little spent on teasing out the main character's emotions.

The film, adapted from author Blake Nelson's young-adult novel of the same name, focuses on Alex (Gabe Nevins), a high school skateboarder who finds himself drawn to the edgy crowd at a local skate park - the illegal, dangerous Paranoid Park - as his parents' marriage is falling apart and his girlfriend (Taylor Momsen of Gossip Girl) starts pressuring him to have sex. Told through flashbacks that follow the narration from a letter Alex is writing, the film focuses on the buildup to and aftermath of one traumatic event: the night that Alex accidentally kills a security guard and decides not to tell anyone. But that's just the plot, so to hear more of my take, just read more.

Alex conveys his story in a monotone, like a kid reading aloud from a complicated book without any sense of where to place emphasis or pause for punctuation. A deliberate choice, or a sign of Nevins' inexperience as an actor? I'm not sure - and that was my problem with much of Paranoid Park. Van Sant's intentions seemed constantly obscured, whether by the acting or by the filmmaker's own artistic quirks. Is the moment of the guard's death supposed to snap Alex out of his aloof fog? Or does he remain just as removed as he was before? I spent the movie waiting for Alex's breakthrough, but it never seemed to come; right after the accident, he has a couple of moments of pure, unfettered emotion, but he fades back to his normal, inexpressive self so quickly that it's not clear what those outbursts mean.

Van Sant's direction - while thoughtful and beautiful - also keeps the audience at arm's length. One of the enduring images from Elephant is a repeating shot of an ominous sky, constantly changing as clouds swirl past. Paranoid Park has a similar motif with its interludes of grainy skateboarding footage, but rather than add to the story, the skating scenes seemed to drain energy from the film. And right after the guard's death, there's a shot that is so disgusting, I shudder even thinking of it; it felt gratuitous, and it frustrates me that my reaction seemed more visceral than Alex's.

Paranoid Park works best as a pure mood piece: Though Nevins never really conveys Alex's fear and dread, the film's claustrophobic shots, jumbled structure, and uncomfortably long pauses do that for him. But when it comes to telling a full story, Paranoid Park falls short. In the end, I felt the same alienation from the film as its lead character apparently feels from the world at large.

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Movie Preview: Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park

BuzzSugar — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:29:40 -0800

There's something about the tone of director Gus Van Sant's work that gives me a deep uneasiness in the belly. His previous indie movie dealing with teens and violence, Elephant, won a bunch of awards at Cannes (including the Palm d'Or) in 2003 and it was certainly effective in delivering this dark queasiness I now feel again having watched the trailer for his newest film Paranoid Park.

Nominated for Best Feature and Best Director at this year's Independent Spirit Awards, Paranoid Park again focuses on troubled teenagers. This time there's a mystery involving a kid who dies on train tracks and another kid, a skater boy, who seems to be struggling with his role in the death. Also, Jenny from Gossip Girl is in it in what looks like a decidedly un-Jenny-ish role.

The movie has already screened at a variety of film festivals, and will open in limited release March 7. To check out the creepy trailer, read more.

Clipta - new video wave: Paranoid Park - Trailer 2

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Gossip Girl Rundown: Episode 8, "Seventeen Candles"

BuzzSugar — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:32:35 -0800

Hey, it's me, Buzz, pinch-hitting for Molly this week. While this week's episode of Gossip Girl was full of the usual tears, drama, and awkward situations, I have to say that I was surprised by how tame it was. Nobody throws a party quite like Blair Waldorf, but I was expecting a lot more drunken debauchery and a little less Guitar Hero. That said, this episode still brought a healthy dose of Wednesday night guilty pleasure, so let's get down to it. And don't forget to take Fab's fashion quiz and Geek's tech quiz while you're at it!

Vanessa is starting to annoy me to no end. She and Dan are supposed to be BFF but she doesn't tell him that she got a job? Plus, is she going to catch Serena and Dan making out in every episode? Granted, they really need to get a room.
As much as I usually can't stand Chuck, I'm starting to feel for the guy. He didn't pressure Blair into doing anything she didn't want to, so he doesn't deserve all the crap she gave him. Also, the scene with the necklace was almost sweet enough to make me forget that he kinda tried to date rape two of the main characters in the season premiere.
Okay, can someone tell me what happened to Serena's little brother Eric? He and Jenny were totally the cute freshman couple and suddenly he's off the show and nobody talks about him at all?

To read more of my thoughts (warning: spoilers!) just read more

So, Blair gave up her V-card to Chuck. The religious aspect of the opening scene was kind of totally out of the blue, but it was pretty priceless when Blair said she "surrendered her virtue" and asked the priest for a birthday wish. The Da Vinci Code reference was also kinda great.
Nate's parents are super awkward, not to mention totally dim. The scene where his dad is trying to convince Nate the the whole scandal isn't really a big deal was painful.
The way the Archibalds are trying to force an engagement on their son to save the deal with Eleanor Waldorf is starting to make the show feel like a bizarre modern day Jane Austen novel.
Um, is it just me or does it seem like Dan and Jenny's mother doesn't really know her kids, like, at all?
All the kids on this show have amazing wardrobes, yet Blair's little minions are dressed as sailors. What?

The scene where Serena and Vanessa face off over a game of Guitar Hero was so random that it made me feel uncomfortable. First of all, are we really expected to believe that S and B sit around and practice their video game skills? Plus, couldn't they have come up with some other, more scandalous way to vie for Dan's affections? Even a dance-off would've been more exciting. Also, Serena's guitar faces. Awkward.
"You went down almost as hard as Britney at the VMAs." Love it.
The random girl taking a picture on her camera phone of Nate and Jenny was pretty aggressive (not to mention creepy) but also makes me wonder if Gossip Girl has minions all over the city. Side note: The text she sent to Blair was way harsh.
As creepy as Chuck can be, I think I like him and Blair together. Nate is too vanilla for her, and their banter is pretty entertaining, especially when Blair is telling Chuck to kill his inner butterflies.
So now Jenny is going to end up with Nate (which begs the question, Jenny - how dumb are you, really?) and Blair and Chuck are still hooking up and only Serena knows. I can't wait to see what happens when Nate and Blair find out what their friends have been up to.

So what did you think? Is Jenny totally in over her head? Are you wishing all of the parents would relocate to a desert island so we don't have to watch them anymore? I'm kind of over them myself. And will Dan and Serena be able to make it through an episode without a Vanessa interruption?

Photos courtesy of The CW