Saturday, May 27, 2006

Article of interest as the summer flicks roll out

EDITOR'S NOTE: AS WE SLIDE SLOTHILY INTO THE SUMMER MOVIE SEASON, HERE'S ONE CRITIC'S TAKE ON WHY WE GO EVEN WHEN WE KNOW BETTER.

Who cares what the reviews say?
The film of The Da Vinci Code was savaged by reviewers, but that hasn't stopped audiences flocking to see it. It's the latest example of a 'critic-proof product', writes Mark Lawson

Four years ago, I faced an ethical dilemma. My duties as a crime and thriller reviewer for the GuardianEDITOR'S NOTE: ENGLAND. FYI.... had brought in a book by a little-known American writer. It was a matter of fine judgment whether the content (conspiracy theory) or the prose (making a crisp packet read like a sonnet in comparison) was more preposterous. I worried, though, about being too brutal to a new talent.

Unfortunately, even the traditional perjury for book reviewers trying to reduce the wound - this will make a great film - could not be applied to a work that seemed about as cameraunready as was possible. In the end, my review condemned the novel as tosh,EDITOR'S NOTE: TO CALL SOMETHING 'TOSH' DOESN'T SEEM NEARLY AS MEAN AS CALLING IT 'CRAP', HUH? balancing the barbs with some thoughts about why post-9/11 American readers might be drawn to fantasies in which events were shown to be meant. Even so, was the piece perhaps too nasty? A newspaper big-foot stamping on an emerging literary career?

You will by now easily have broken the code of which book this was and quite how well the writer survived the savage judgment. And, by proving just as immune to hostile reviews on the screen as on the page, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code raises the question of whether printed and broadcast opinion matters at all. Has our culture now created a sort of genetically modified turkey - the critic-proof product?

In fact, although the early box-office performance of The Da Vinci Code suggests the most vivid sighting of such a creature, other recent successes had already indicated that cinema was evolving in this way. Mission: Impossible III has performed impressively, despite critical derision for the movie and significant personal abuse towards its star, Tom Cruise. Before that, Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ, which received notably cold notices in most places, achieved almost supernatural takings. EDITOR'S NOTE: SORT OF APPLES-AND-ORANGES THERE. "DA VINCI" AND "MI3" ARE BOTH DOING PRETTY WELL AT THE BOX OFFICE, BECAUSE, DESPITE THE HUBBUB FROM THE CRITICS, THEY ARE ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD MOVIES. THAT OTHER ONE COULD HAVE BEEN BIBLE PAGES PASTED ONTO FILM STOCK. THE PEOPLE THAT DROVE THE (INCREDIBLE) BOX OFFICE FOR "THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST" WEREN'T GOING PRIMARILY AS FILM AFFICIANADOS.

In each of these cases, reviewers are able to defend their virtue. M:I3, although it will certainly buy the Cruise baby a few diapers, shows a dip in income compared to the first two films in the series, which might be attributed to newspapers making people stay at home.

Similarly, movie reviewers insist that audiences for The Da Vinci Code will fall once the turgidity of the film is circulated by word of mouth. And, the defence of critics runs, the people who went to see The Passion of the Christ were "just American Christians", who are not the preferred readership of the papers that were rude about the movie.

These exculpations are not completely convincing, however.

If you happen to own a company which trucks DVDs to the shops, you would be ill-advised to sell it before M:I3 and The Da Vinci Code come out. Only the most selfbelieving critic could deny the evidence from these events that - in cinema, as in most areas of culture - there is a significant gap between public and pundit opinion.

Movies that appear in hundreds of reviewers' top 10s - such as Michael Hanneke's Hidden and Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale - are unlikely ever to appear in box-office charts. This is because critics are giving marks for originality, acting, photography and scripting, while mass audiences are more drawn to familiarity of genre, stars they would like to have sex with or plots that are more likely to make their dates have sex with them. Reviewers are doing their day's work, cinema-goers are escaping from theirs: this leads to an inevitable difference of response. EDITOR'S NOTE: OVER-SIMPLIFIED A BIT, I THINK. YES, WE ARE ALL UNTHINKING DRONES, BLAH BLAH BLAH. BUT SOMETIMES, THE CRITICS JUMP ON A MOVIE OUT OF A HIPPER-THAN-THOU MALARKY BANDWAGON. SOME OF THESE CRITIC-FASHIONABLE FAVES ARE ALMOST THE OPPOSITE OF BEING CRITIC-PROOF....THEY AER ENTERTAINMENT-PROOF.

It is, though, wrong to conclude that reviewers are completely useless. If The Da Vinci Code had been an unknown novel, media indifference could have killed the film. The same would have been true if Gibson had made a Latin-language movie about Catullus rather than Christ, or Cruise were a novice actor appearing in a movie called Shanghai Tower rather than Mission: Impossible III. The reason all of these movies could bypass the thoughts of the arts pages is that at least one name - Da Vinci, Christ, Cruise, Mission: Impossible - brought in a pre-sold audience. EDITOR'S NOTE: OR MAYBE, IN THE SPECIFIC CASES OF "DA VINCI" AND "MI3" AT ANY RATE, THE CRITICS WENT IN WITH EXPECTATIONS AT A DIFFERENT PLACE THAN THE REALITY OF SUMMER MOVIES. BECAUSE, AGAIN, NEITHER OF THOSE TWO MOVIES IS BAD. THEY ARE ACTUALLY ENJOYABLE. AND THIS IS SUMMER. THERE AREN'T GOING TO BE MANY DEEP AND MEANINGFUL FILMS TILL SEPTEMBER, RIGHT?

The reception of The Da Vinci Code is also interesting in showing not merely the gap between media and ticket-buying opinion (a long-established phenomenon) but also a gulf between official and unofficial reviewers. If blockbuster box-office takings were not already enough to make established film journalists feel at least occasionally irrelevant, their professional significance has been challenged in recent years by websites and blogs on which films are rated by guerrilla critics or cinema-goers who have seen early screenings. This has brought to cinema a version of what happens in music, where, for decades, sales have been driven less by reviewers than by popular response to plays on radio or now online. EDITOR'S NOTE: GOD FORBID WE THINK FOR OURSELVES HOW TO SPEND OUR SHECKLES.

The film director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Jarhead) has confessed that he regularly checks one internet site - Rotten Tomatoes - on which multiple opinions are averaged out of 10.

By yesterday, The Da Vinci Code was scoring a more than decent 6.7, although it should be noted that nothing would prevent a mass-vote by people with an interest in the film.

In the world of television and books, there would be no surprise at all that professional assessors should be out of step with civilian purchasers. For example, the Top 50 Bestseller list in Britain, based on bookshop sales, currently contains not a single work of fiction that has received significantly good reviews. Admittedly, the selection is slightly skewed by the presence all four novels by Dan Brown - the extreme example of the difference between praise and sales - but the charts also feature numerous other popular novelists, such as Martina Cole and James Patterson, from whom it is scarcely worth the publishers sending out review copies since the books sell millions without any help from the pundits.

In the area of fiction - on factual subjects, there is a greater crossover of taste between punters and pundits - the books pages and the bookshops are separate states, with almost no travel between them. Which is perhaps the place to say that my review of The Da Vinci Code as a book was not "wrong", at least in my opinion; it simply applied values - of literacy, plausibility and characterisation - that are clearly not significant in the choices of beach and plane readers.

For this reason, adulatory reviews for a novel almost never translate directly in to sales; publicity and prizes have a much more substantial impact on a book's success. The influence of awards juries - a Whitbread or Man Booker winner is guaranteed a reprint - is rather peculiar, as many of the judges are critics, applying precisely the criteria by which the literary columns operate. Yet, for some reason, the book-buying public seems to regard the concensus of a panel as more objectively reliable than a single identified critic.

In television, the influence of reviewers has generally been negligible, although the issue is complicated by the tradition in this discipline of employing two different critics to write before and after transmission. As a broad rule, previews were short and useful, reviews longer and amusingly digressive, although the styles have often overlapped, especially in magazines.

The use of television as the basis for a comic essay - exemplified by the Guardian's Nancy Banks-Smith and Clive James in the Observer during the 1970s - was a response to the perceived uselessness of TV reviewing. Because any single-edition show was over by the time the piece was read, these columns had none of the tip-off responsibilities given to film and theatre critics.

This encouraged a habitual division - even greater than the one in books - between what was written about and what was liked. Television's most popular programmes - soap operas such as Coronation Street and EastEnders - were routinely ignored by reviewers, until the pioneering work of Hilary Kingsley and Jaci Stephen.

As it happens, the opening episode of EastEnders, in 1985, was widely reviewed; the BBC was in crisis at the time and the soap was the proposed solution to its problems. The first sight of Albert Square was generally disliked by critics, yet it has survived for more than 20 years.

There are many subsequent examples of the remote-control vote proving decisive, regardless of what the critics think, including ITV1's Footballers' Wives and Channel 4's Big Brother.

The reason that TV is so easily able to appeal over the heads of reviewers is partly that it has a captive audience and partly because it can advertise incessantly to that captive audience through trailers.

Where television critics do have influence is in providing small-audience shows with a cachet that may lead to them being retained or recommissioned. The usual rule is that, in order to survive, a show needs the support of either the audience, an executive or reviewers. The latter are unlikely to be decisive alone but can trigger a death-row appeal.

Theatre is the art form that has always attributed most power to critics. Manhattan folklore was that the New York Times could close a show or keep it going. In Britain, no individual has ever had such impact - John Osborne's Look Back in Anger was popularised by a televised extract, not Kenneth Tynan's Observer rave - but a swarm-review, in which all the critics attack together, has seen off many shows, especially musicals. EDITOR'S NOTE: AND YET, "BLOOD BROTHERS" HAD A NICE, LONG RUN. (GIGGLE...JUST FOR YOU, JOEL)

Even here, though, there is increasing evidence that the Dan Brown curse is extending beyond cinema to the notebook-holding folk at the end of the row. We Will Rock You, the Ben Elton musical based around the songs of Queen, is still running five years after it was rudely rebuked by reviewers. EDITOR'S NOTE: I THINK HE IS MAKING THE ASSUMPTION THAT THE AUDIENCE....READING AUDIENCE, FILM AUDIENCE, TV AUDIENCE, WHATEVER....IS SOME SORT OF MONOLITH. WE ARE A MULTI-HEADED CREATURE. THE PEOPLE WHO READ THE REVIEWS AND WHO LISTEN TO THEM, AREN'T NECESSARILY THE ONES GOING TO SEE ADAM SANDLER MOVIES. (ALTHOUGH, THERE IS SOME OVERLAP; STAY IN THE CLOSET, WE DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND HAVE TO QUESTION OUR FRIENDSHIPS).

AND EVEN THEN, SOME OF US CAN GO SEE "MI3" TODAY, AND "MUNICH" NEXT WEEK. AND READ THE REVIEW AND DECIDE WE WANT MINDLESS FAMILIARITY TODAY, AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING 'ART' TOMORROW.

Julia Robert's current Broadway performance in Three Days of Rain met thumbs jabbed down, but the opinions were pointless; the show had sold out months before opening. Madonna's West End debut in David Williamson's Up for Grabs was a similar experience, with touts selling tickets for a show reviewers insisted no one should see.

The reason that such shows become criticproof is economic: at best, 40-60,000 tickets might be available for a short theatre run by a major star and an audience of that size is available regardless of one person's judgment of its dramatic worth. As for We Will Rock You, musicals have always done better at generating greenbacks than newsprint. And, of course, the show's music was also already well-known. Indeed, all of the works that have proved commercially immune to derisive reviewers - The Da Vinci Code movie, Julia Roberts and Madonna on stage, the Queen musical in the West End - have one factor in common: an element - title, actor, songs - that was already exceptionally well-known.

Interestingly, while most cinema-goers and book-buyers care little for the opinions of the critics, the producers of the material - what the jargon of new technology calls "content providers" - generally do. The studio bosses crowing over the opening weekend profits of The Da Vinci Code would, in the hearts lying deep beneath their bulging wallets, have preferred to have both that gross and thumbs-up from America's cinema pundits. EDITOR'S NOTE: WELL OF COURSE THEY WOULD. WHO WOULDN'T?! BUT IF THEY HAD TO CHOOSE JUST ONE OF THESE TWO OPTIONS......

My suspicion is that even Dan Brown, wondering how to spend the next million as he sits in his New Hampshire mansion, would hand over the content of one of his accounts for a book-section front-page story acclaiming him as the new Edgar Allan Poe.

Occasional books, movies and shows may be critic-proof, but the egos and psyches of the people who make them very rarely are. EDITOR'S NOTE: INCLUDING CRITICS, WHO MUST JUST HATE IT WHEN WE DON'T HARKEN TO THEIR EVERY SNARK AND GUIDING ADMONITION.

Friday, May 26, 2006

THE REVISED (FALL TV) LINE-UP

EDITOR'S NOTE: AS PROMISED, OUR NEW-AND-IMPROVED LINE-UP WITH NEW-SHOW DESCRIPTIONS. (I WONDER IF I SHOULD START NUMBERING THEM, SO THAT BY THE TIME FALL ROLLS AROUND WE CAN BE SURE WE'RE ALL ON THE SAME VERSION?)

ALL TIMES EST.

SUNDAY
7:00
ABC
CBS "60 Mintues"
CW: "Everybody Hates Chris"/"All of Us" Spinoff from UPN comedy "Girlfriends". (Tia Mowry, Aldis Hodge, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Hsea Chanchez, Jennifer Baxter, Coby Bell)
Fox: Fall: Football overrun, comedy repeats; January:Comedy repeats/"King of the Hill"
NBC: "Football Night in America"

8:00
ABC: "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition"
CBS: "The Amazing Race"
CW: "Girlfriends"/"The Game"
Fox: Fall, January:"The Simpsons"/"American Dad"
NBC: "NFL Sunday Night Football"

9:00
ABC: "Desperate Housewives"
CBS: "Cold Case"
CW: "America's Next Top Model (Encore)"
Fox: Fall, January:"Family Guy"/"The War at Home"
NBC: "NFL Sunday Night Football"

10:00
ABC: "Brothers and Sisters" Ken Olin directs a family soap that focuses on adult siblings. (Dave Annable, Balthazar Getty, Calista Flockhart, Patricia Wettig, Rachel Griffiths, Ron Rifkin, Sarah Jane Morris, Jonathan LaPaglia) EDITOR'S NOTE: BUFFY'ITES. MARTI NOXON IS ALSO INVOLVED IN THIS ONE ON THE PRODUCING SIDE.
CBS: "Without a Trace"
NBC: "NFL Sunday Night Football" /"Medium" EDITOR'S NOTE: THERE WAS SOMETHING CALLED "RAINES" IN HERE FOR JANUARY. THAT WAS THE JEFF GOLDBLUM/LINDA PARK/MATT CRAVEN THING. NOT SURE IF THAT IS GONE FOR GOOD, OR WHAT?

MONDAY
8:00
ABC: "Wife Swap"
CBS: "How I Met Your Mother/"The Class" Eight former third-grade classmates reunite as adults at an anniversary party. (Jason Ritter, Lucy Punch, Jesse Tyler Fergusen, Andrea Anders, Jon Bernthal, Heather Goldenhersh, Sean Maguire, Lizzy Caplan). EDITOR'S NOTE: DAVID CRANE (FROM "FRIENDS") PRODUCER. FYI....
CW: "7th Heaven"
Fox: Fall:"Prison Break"; January: "Vanished" A senator's wife goes missing as part of a larger conspiracy. (Gale Harold, John Allen Nelson, Joanne Kelly, Rebecca Gayheart, Margarita Levieva, John Patrick Amedori, Chris Egan)
NBC: "Deal or No Deal"

9:00
ABC: "The Bachelor"/ "Supernanny"
CBS: "Two and a Half Men"/"The New Adventures of Old Christine
"CW: "Runaway" A man accused of murder takes his family into hiding until he can prove his innocence. (Donnie Walberg, Leslie Hope, Dustin Milligan, Sarah Ramos, Nathan Gamble)
Fox: Fall: "Vanished"See above, 8pm (est) ; ; January: "24
"NBC: "Heroes" Ordinary people made into superheroes join forces to save the world. (Greg Grunberg, Ali Larter, Hayden Panettiere, Tawny Cypress, Santiago Cabrera, Masi Oka, Milo Ventimiglia, Noah Gray-Cabey)

10:00
ABC: "What About Brian"
CBS: "CSI: Miami"
NBC: "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" The beind-the-scenes politics at a network late-night sketch comedy show. (Matthew Perry, Nathan Corddry, Evan Handler, D.L.Hughley, Carlos Jacott, Amanda Peet, Michael Stuhlbarg, Steven Weber, Timothy Busfield, Sarah Paulson, Bradley Whitford). EDITOR'S NOTE: AARON SORKIN AND TOMMY SCHLAMME. NUF SAID.

TUESDAY
8:00
ABC: "Dancing With the Stars"/ "Set for the Rest of Your Life" EDITOR'S NOTE: OK. NOT SURE WHAT THIS SECOND ONE IS. SORRY.
CBS: "NCIS"
CW: "Gilmore Girls"
Fox: Fall: "Standoff"; January: "American Idol: Performance"
NBC: "Friday Night Lights" Based on the 2004 feature film, a high school coach takes on a team in a football-crazed Texas town. (Kyle Chandler, Scott Porter, Gaius Charles, Zach Gilford, Minka Kelly, Aimee Teegarden, Connie Britton, Taylor Kitsch, Adrieanne Palicki). EDITOR'S NOTE: PETER BERG AND BRIAN GRAZER IN CHARGE OF THINGS.

9:00
ABC: "Let's Rob…"/ "Help Me Help You" Blue collar guys decide to rob a celebrity. (Donal Logue, Sofia Vergara, Kevin Michael Richardson, Lenny Venito, Josh Grizetti, Max Jobrani, Koji Kataoka)/A brilliant therapist can't get his own life in order. Single camera. (Ted Danson, Charlie Finn, Jim Rash, Suzy Nakamura, Darlene Hunt, Jere Burns, Carla Gallo)
CBS: "The Unit"
CW: "Veronica Mars"
Fox: Fall, January:"House"
NBC: "Law & Order: Criminal Intent"

10:00
ABC: "Boston Legal"
CBS: "Smith" Crime drama told from the point of view of career criminals being pursued by the FBI. (Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Franky G., Amy Smart, Jonny Lee Miller, Simon Baker, Chris Bauer, Michelle Hurd) EDITOR'S NOTE: FROM OUR PAL JOHN WELLS!
NBC: "Law & Order: SVU"

WEDNESDAY
8:00
ABC: "Dancing with the Stars"/ "George Lopez"/ "According to Jim"
CBS: "Jericho" A small town in Kansas survives a nuclear holocaust that destroys everything around it. (Skeet Ulrich, Lennie James, Erik Knudsen, Michael Gaston, Kenneth Mitchell, Sprague Grayden, Gerald McRaney, Ashley Scott)
CW: "America's Next Top Model"
Fox: Fall: "Bones"; January: "Justice" A high-powered L.A. law firm represents rich and famous clients involved in media-driven trials. (Victor Garber, Kerr Smith, Eamonn Walker, Rebecca Mader) EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS ONE'S FROM JERRY BRUCKHEIMER!
NBC: "20 Good Years"/"30 Rock" Two New York men in their 50's have epiphanies and resolve to make the most of the next 20 years. (John Lithgow, Jeffrey Tambor, Heather Burns, Jake Sandvig)/Behind the scenes at a "Saturday Night Live"-like comedy sketch show. (Tina Fey, Alex Baldwin, Tracy Morgan, Rachel Dratch, Jack McBrayer)

9:00
ABC: "Lost"
CBS: "Criminal Minds"
CW: "One Tree Hill"
Fox: Fall: "Justice""See 8pm, above; January:"American Idol: Results"/"The Loop"
NBC: "The Biggest Loser"

10:00
ABC: "The Nine" Nine strangers held hostage for 52 hours during a botched bank robbery form a unique bond. (Jessica Collins, Chi McBride, Scott Wolf, Lourdes Benedicto, John Billingsley, Owain Yeoman, Kim Raver, Camille Guaty, Tim Daly)
CBS: "CSI: NY"
NBC: "Kidnapped" Series tracks a kidnapping over the course of an entire season. (Jeremy Sisto, Timothy Hutton, Delroy Lindo, Mykelti williamson, Carmen Ejogo, Dana Delany, Will Denton, Boris McGiver, Linus Roache)

THURSDAY
8:00
ABC: "Big Day" /"Notes From the Underbelly" A couple's wedding day plays out over the course of an entire season. Single camera. (Josh Cooke, Wendie Malick, Stephen Rannazzisi, Marla Sokoloff, Kurt Fuller, Miriam Shor)/A group of friends are affected when one couple becomes pregnant. Based on Rita Green's novel. (Jennifer Westfeldt, Peter Cambor, Melanie Paxon, Rachael Harris, Michael Weaver)
CBS: "Survivor: Cooks Island"
CW: "Smallville"
Fox: Fall, January:"'Til Death"/"Happy Hour" Young, naive newlyweds move next door to a veteran married couple of 25 years. (Brad Garrett, Joely Fisher, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Kat Foster)/A guy loses his girlfriend, apartment, and job and moves in with a ladies' man. (Lex Medlin, Nat Faxon, Jamie Denbo, Beth Lacke, Brooke D'Orsay).
NBC: "My Name Is Earl"/ "The Office"

9:00
ABC: "Grey's Anatomy"
CBS: "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation"
CW: "Supernatural"
Fox: Fall, January: "The O.C."
NBC: "Deal or No Deal"

10:00
ABC: "Six Degrees" Ensemble soap about a group of strangers in New York whose lives intersect. (Jay Hernandez, Dorian Missick, Erika Christensen, Bridget Moynahan, Hope Davis, Campbell Scott) EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS ONE IS FROM BAD ROBOT (AKA, J.J.ABRAMS)
CBS: "Shark" A high-profile L.A. lawyer becomes a government prosecutor. Spike Lee directs the pilot. (James Woods, Jeri Ryan, Sophina Brown, Alexis Cruz, Sarah Carter, Romy Rosemont, Sam Page) EDITOR'S NOTE: FROM BRIAN GRAZER.
NBC: "ER"/ January:"The Black Donnellys" Irish brothers grow up amid organized crime in New York's Hell's Kitchen. (Jonathan Tucker, Olivia Wilde, Kirk Acevedo, Tom Guiry, Billy Lush, Keith Nobbs, Michael Stahl-David). EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS ONE IS FROM PAUL HAGGIS. ("CRASH")

FRIDAY
8:00
ABC: "Betty the Ugly" Based on a popular Colombian telenovela, a homely but lovable secretary works at a fashion magazine. (America Ferrera, Becki Newton, Eric Mabius, ana Ortiz, Ashley Jensen, Mark Indelicato, Tony Plana, Alan Dale, Vanessa Williams). EDITOR'S NOTE: SALMA HAYEK IS ONE OF THE PRODUCERS. (FYI)
CBS: "Ghost Whisperer"
CW: "Friday Night Smackdown"
Fox: Fall: "Nanny 911"; January: "Bones"
NBC: "Crossing Jordan"

9:00
ABC: "Men in Trees" A New York shrink flees to Alaska to start a new life after she finds out her husband ins cheating on her. (Anne Heche, Emily Bergl, Derek Richardson, James Tupper, Abraham Benrubi, Sarah Strange, Suleka Matthews, Seana Kofoed, John Amos)
CBS: "Close to Home"
CW: "Friday Night Smackdown"
Fox: Fall: "Trading Spouses"; January: "The Wedding Album" A photographer and his assistant capture wedding glamour and dysfunction. From a script first developed in 2001. (Bruno Campos, Tara Summers, Ptolemy Slocum, Eva Pigford, Jayce Bartok, Ashlie Atkinson, Connie Stevens, Tony Lo Bianco). EDITOR'S NOTE: ANDY TENNANT IS ONE OF THE CREATORS.
NBC: "Las Vegas"

10:00
ABC: "20/20"
CBS: "Numbers"
NBC: "Law & Order"

SATURDAY
8:00
ABC: "ABC Saturday Night College Football"
CBS: Crimetime Saturday
Fox: Fall, January: "Cops"
NBC: "Dateline Saturday"

9:00
ABC: "ABC Saturday Night College Football"
CBS: Crimetime Saturday
Fox: Fall, January: "America's Most Wanted"
NBC: Drama Encore

10:00
ABC: "ABC Saturday Night College Football"
CBS: "48 Hours Mystery"
NBC: Drama Encore

Thursday, May 25, 2006

NBC Blinks

EDITOR'S NOTE: WELL, THE FALL LINE-UP HAS BEEN IN PLACE FOR ALMOST A WHOLE WEEK. THIS MIGHT BE SOME KIND OF RECORD, ACTUALLY.

SO HERE IS THE REVISED, 5-NET GRID.

SIGH.....

NBC Updates Its Fall Schedule
Last week, the five broadcast networks unveiled their fall schedules. NBC, which was the first to present its line-up, has now revised its schedule to counter some of the moves of its rivals, ABC, CBS, Fox and The CW.

NBC, as expected, announced that it is moving to another night its new Thursday night 9 p.m. EDITOR'S NOTE: ALL TIMES EST, OF COURSE. drama for the 2006-07 season, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, to Monday night at 10, and will replace it in that Thursday time period with hit game show Deal or No Deal.

But at the same time, in one of the most aggressive pre-season scheduling changes announced at any one time, NBC made programming shifts in its fall schedule on every other night of the week, except Saturday, which is a repeat night.

NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly said all strategy used in putting together the NBC prime-time schedule for next season which was announced at the network's upfront presentation on May 15, has now been replaced by the thinking, "Let's just launch our new shows in the most opportunistic time periods." EDITOR'S NOTE: YOU WOULD THINK....AND GO WITH ME ON THIS ONE...THAT THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE BEST IDEA ALL ALONG? (HMMMM???)

Studio 60 was scheduled to air Thursday nights at 9 p.m next season, but following NBC's announcement of its schedule, ABC said that it was moving its drama hit Grey's Anatomy from Sunday night at 9 to Thursday night at 9.

Studio 60 also would have had to face the CBS hit drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. So NBC moved it to Monday night at 10, replacing its veteran drama Medium, which will now be held until mid-season, when it will air on Sunday night at 10, when Sunday Night Football finishes its season on NBC. EDITOR'S NOTE: NO "MEDIUM" TILL JANUARY?! SNIFFLE. SORKIN BETTER NOT LET US DOWN ON "STUDIO 60";IT BETTER ROCK! (OF COURSE, THAT MEANS "MEDIUM" WILL HAVE VERY FEW REPEATS WHEN IT DOES FINALLY AIR, SO I GUESS THAT IS A GOOD THING?)

Reilly said once he had a chance to look at all his competitors' schedules, it became evident that other moves needed to be made. Rethinking Tuesday, Reilly believed premiering two new shows, Friday Night Lights and Kidnapped back-to-back was risky, so he decided to leave Friday Night Lights at 8 and will move in veteran drama Law & Order: Criminal Intent from Friday at 10 to Kidnapped's slot on Tuesday at 9, leading into Law & Order: SVU.

Kidnapped will move to Wednesday night at 10, and the occupant of that time period, Law & Order, will move to the Criminal Intent slot on Fridays at 10.

Other changes include flipping new sitcoms 20 Good Years and 30 Rock from 9 into the 8 p.m. time period, and moving that time period occupant, The Biggest Loser to 9 p.m.

Veteran drama Crossing Jordan, previously not scheduled to come on the air until mid-season, will now air at 8 p.m.Friday in the time period previously filled by Deal or No Deal.
EDITOR'S NOTE: GOT ALL THAT? CAUSE THERE WILL BE A QUIZ.

Reilly said moving Studio 60 to 10 p.m. Monday will allow the network to promote it better on Sunday Night Football telecasts, and that he expects the freshman show to steal some female audience from CBS' CSI: Miami. He said moving Criminal Intent so it leads into SVU will give the two shows compatible audiences and good viewer flow.

Here is an updated schedule, reflecting NBC's changes.

Unlike the other networks, CW and Fox only program prime-time shows from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m, with the exception of Sunday night when they start their programming at 7 p.m.

Fox also introduces a new schedule starting in January.

The CW has no Saturday night programming. EDITOR'S NOTE: AND IF WE'RE BEING HONEST, NEITHER DOES ANYONE ELSE.

SUNDAY
7:00
CW: "Everybody Hates Chris"/"All of Us"
Fox: Fall: Football overrun, comedy repeats; January:Comedy repeats/"King of the Hill"
NBC: "Football Night in America"

8:00
ABC: "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition"
CBS: "The Amazing Race"
CW: "Girlfriends"/"The Game"
Fox: Fall, January:"The Simpsons"/"American Dad"
NBC: "NFL Sunday Night Football"

9:00
ABC: "Desperate Housewives"
CBS: "Cold Case"
CW: "America's Next Top Model (Encore)"
Fox: Fall, January:"Family Guy"/"The War at Home"
NBC: "NFL Sunday Night Football"

10:00
ABC: "Brothers and Sisters"
CBS: "Without a Trace"
NBC: "NFL Sunday Night Football"

MONDAY
8:00
ABC: "Wife Swap"
CBS: "How I Met Your Mother/"The Class"
CW: "7th Heaven"
Fox: Fall:"Prison Break"; January: "Vanished"
NBC: "Deal or No Deal"

9:00
ABC: "The Bachelor"/ "Supernanny"
CBS: "Two and a Half Men"/"The New Adventures of Old Christine"
CW: "Runaway"
Fox: Fall: "Vanished"; January: "24"
NBC: "Heroes"

10:00
ABC: "What About Brian"
CBS: "CSI: Miami"
NBC: "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip"

TUESDAY
8:00
ABC: "Dancing With the Stars"/ "Set for the Rest of Your Life"
CBS: "NCIS"
CW: "Gilmore Girls"
Fox: Fall: "Standoff"; January: "American Idol: Performance"
NBC: "Friday Night Lights"

9:00
ABC: "Let's Rob…"/ "Help Me Help You"
CBS: "The Unit"
CW: "Veronica Mars"
Fox: Fall, January:"House"
NBC: "Law & Order: Criminal Intent"

10:00
ABC: "Boston Legal"
CBS: "Smith"
NBC: "Law & Order: SVU"

WEDNESDAY
8:00
ABC: "Dancing with the Stars"/ "George Lopez"/ "According to Jim"
CBS: "Jericho"
CW: "America's Next Top Model"
Fox: Fall: "Bones"; January: "Justice"
NBC: "20 Good Years"/"30 Rock"

9:00
ABC: "Lost"
CBS: "Criminal Minds"
CW: "One Tree Hill"
Fox: Fall: "Justice"; January:"American Idol: Results"/"The Loop"
NBC: "The Biggest Loser"

10:00
ABC: "The Nine"
CBS: "CSI: NY"
NBC: "Kidnapped"

THURSDAY
8:00
ABC: "Big Day" /"Notes From the Underbelly"
CBS: "Survivor: Cooks Island"
CW: "Smallville"
Fox: Fall, January:"'Til Death"/"Happy Hour"
NBC: "My Name Is Earl"/ "The Office"

9:00
ABC: "Grey's Anatomy"
CBS: "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation"
CW: "Supernatural"
Fox: Fall, January: "The O.C."
NBC: "Deal or No Deal"

10:00
ABC: "Six Degrees"
CBS: "Shark"
NBC: "ER"/ January:"The Black Donnellys"

FRIDAY
8:00
ABC: "Betty the Ugly"
CBS: "Ghost Whisperer"
CW: "Friday Night Smackdown"
Fox: Fall: "Nanny 911"; January: "Bones"
NBC: "Crossing Jordan"

9:00
ABC: "Men in Trees"
CBS: "Close to Home"
CW: "Friday Night Smackdown"
Fox: Fall: "Trading Spouses"; January: "The Wedding Album"
NBC: "Las Vegas"

10:00
ABC: "20/20"
CBS: "Numbers"
NBC: "Law & Order"

SATURDAY
8:00
ABC: "ABC Saturday Night College Football"
CBS: Crimetime Saturday
Fox: Fall, January: "Cops"
NBC: "Dateline Saturday"

9:00
ABC: "ABC Saturday Night College Football"
CBS: Crimetime Saturday
Fox: Fall, January: "America's Most Wanted"
NBC: Drama Encore

10:00
ABC: "ABC Saturday Night College Football
"CBS: "48 Hours Mystery"
NBC: Drama Encore
EDITOR'S NOTE: SOMETIME THIS WEEKEND I WILL TRY TO REPOST THE GRID I DID LAST WEEK....WAS IT ONLY JUST LAST WEEK? WHY IT SEEMS A WHOLE SCHEDULE AGO. (SNICKER).....WITH THESE REVISIONS, AND INCLUDING MY NEW-SHOW DESCRIPTIONS.

The Psychology of X-People

Phoenix's Unresolved Daddy Thing, and Other X-Men Issues
By CHRISTIAN MOERK
IN the beginning, superheroes didn't have quite so much human baggage.

True, most of them started in strap-hanging form like the rest of us; there was Superman's workaday alter ego, Clark Kent, or the last iteration of the Green Lantern, whose human identity, Kyle Rayner, was an unsexy freelance artist. But they quickly outgrew mere people problems, even as the supervillains around them loomed just as large and otherworldly. The Joker and Green Goblin were regular fellows at birth, but soon became evil archetypes with few human traits to confuse our need to have good and evil duke it out in comics or, more recently, on screen.

Later, however, the superheroes got more complicated.

Tim Burton crossed a line with his 1992 dystopian fetish-fantasy EDITOR'S NOTE: OOO...'DYSTOPIAN FETISH-FANTASY'. OOOOO.....WELL PUT. (AND DOESN'T THAT MAKE YOU WANT TO GO OUT AND IMMEDIATELY DRESS IN BLACK LEATHER?!) "Batman Returns," in which hero and villain were equally human: We wept for Danny DeVito's Oswald Cobblepot because his parents abandoned him to become a misshapen Penguin. We pitied and lusted for Michelle Pfeiffer's Selena Kyle, because her repressed sexuality could only be released after a 50-foot drop that turned her, as Catwoman, into a representative of full-blown sadomasochism.

Now comes the third X-Men film, 20th Century Fox's "X-Men: The Last Stand," which is replete with mutant superbeings whose problems — give or take a few deadly energy bursts — are a compendium of psychological and sociopolitical woes only too familiar to the rest of us.

To sort through all the sources of their angst would take a college seminar, if not a Woody Allen dinner date.

Here are at least a few of the very human problems that the director Brett Ratner ("Rush Hour 2") and the writers Simon Kinberg ("Mr. and Mrs. Smith") and Zak Penn ("X2") tackle in the film, which opens on Friday:



AN ELECTRA COMPLEX
It is not giving away too much to say that Dr. Jean Grey, a k a Phoenix, played by Famke Janssen, has issues. And not the least of them is a controversial condition — conventionally called an Electra complex, the flip side of an Oedipal complex — in which some young women become unnaturally attached to their fathers and yet often wish to kill them in order to assume their power.

"Jean developed a dual personality," Professor X (the unfortunate father figure played by Patrick Stewart) explains at one point.

Indeed. According to the movie's writers Grey's fixation took them on a trip from classical mythology to clinical diagnosis.

"She's absolutely someone embodying Greek goddess, but also a human, grounded in Freudian terms, a victim, a schizophrenic," Mr. Kinberg said in a recent telephone interview from Los Angeles.

In a separate phone interview Mr. Penn acknowledged, "There's no question that there's an Oedipal drama played out." He added that Grey's psychological deterioration took its toll on the filmmakers, who were divided as to whether she would ever be well enough to rejoin the good mutants in their country refuge.

"There were a lot of extremely tense arguments of how far we could go with the Jean story," Mr. Penn said. "Some people really didn't want us to have her come back to the mansion. It was as tense arguments as I've even been involved with on a movie." EDITOR'S NOTE: I GUESS IT DEPENDS ON WHERE EACH OF THE WRITERS WAS IN THEIR OWN THERAPY...AND WHETHER OR NOT THEIR THERAPISTS WERE JUNGIANS OR FREUDIANS OR WHAT HAVE YOU....AS TO WHERE THEY CAME DOWN IN THIS ARGUEMENT?

THE EUGENICS DEBATE
"Mutant cure shots available here" reads a sign on the outside of Mr. Ratner's editing room on the Fox lot. And as anyone who has followed Web chatter about the movie knows, the ability to cure mutants isn't necessarily a good thing. Or a bad thing.

Instead it's a terrible social dilemma that entangles the X-Men and their adversaries in questions that would befuddle the shrewdest of medical ethicists.

It might be wonderful if a "cured" Rogue, played by Anna Paquin, could finally touch her lover without destroying him. But maybe Wolverine without his claws is just another hairy guy. EDITOR'S NOTE: HUGH JACKMAN? JUST ANOTHER GUY? DON'T THINK SO, BABY!

Is it better if mutant Goths — urged to "be what you are" — destroy the cure? Or should we hope their more wholesome mutant adversaries — though wary of dull normalcy — will save it? As in life, the questions outnumber the answers, if not the action beats.

RACE AND TERROR
Lurking deep in the tortured soul of this "X-Men," as with its predecessors, are questions about the way society treats its racial minorities — those who are born looking different — now compounded by the geopolitics of a mounting war against mutant terror.

It is probably no accident that Dr. Hank McCoy (Kelsey Grammer) is a shaggy blue mutant in the halls of the government, trying to mitigate the excesses of authority from within. (Think of an increasingly embattled Secretary of State Colin Powell holding the hawks at bay.)

Responsible leaders can hardly be blamed for striking back at a deadly threat from the equally blue Mystique and her ilk, as they do in "X-Men: The Last Stand." But is the president truly fighting evil when the worst mutants are carted off for their cure? Or is he lashing out at an entire ethnicity?

Mr. Penn said he doesn't see a hidden reference to immigrants, Arabs or any distinct ethnic group in his film. But he allowed that his thinking about the Department of Homeland Security may have influenced the script.

And as to the ruminations about a besieged society's way of dealing with the Other, he said, after a moment's thought, "You may have a point."

GAY ACCEPTANCE
In the wake of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" plays and mini-series, it is difficult not to see a metaphor for the plight of young gay men in a subplot that involves Warren Worthington III, aka Angel.

Young Worthington, played by Ben Foster, on discovering that his own mutant gift is a pair of large, feathery white wings, tries to hack them off. EDITOR'S NOTE: SO....ANGELS ARE GAY, RAINBOWS ARE GAY....UMM, WHAT ELSE?!! NEXT SOMEONE IS GOING TO INFER THAT THE WHOLE BRITISH BOARDING-SCHOOL SYSTEM IS GAY! (SNICKER....)His shocked father, played by Michael Murphy, sets off on a quest for the cure, which his son and other mutants may not want. The filmmakers thus add another layer of psychological drama to a movie that is meanwhile pretty busy setting up battles between fire and ice, and testing the stability of the Golden Gate bridge.

Even if the X-Men themselves are too busy saving the world to seek expensive therapy, more earth-bound crew members, Mr. Kinberg said, may have benefited in unexpected ways.

"This is stuff that everyone working on the movie pays people in Beverly Hills $185 an hour for," he noted. "And I thought, 'Why don't we get rid of it through our day job?' "EDITOR'S NOTE: AND I REST MY CASE! (BOY MY MOM COULD HAVE MADE A MINT IF WE'D STAYED IN CALIFORNIA WHEN SHE SET UP HER SHRINK PRACTICE).

Klingon FUGITIVE Alert!

EDITOR'S NOTE: GIGGLE....

Police Seek Klingon For Questioning/Star Trek prop seized by local cops
A police knife amnesty appears to have got off to a flying start with even alien criminals giving up their arms in the face of stern looks from the local bobby.

The national initiative,EDITOR'S NOTE: IN ENGLAND, FYI... which began yesterday and continues until 30 June, is predicted to see 30,000 illegal blades turned over to authorities with no questions asked.

Most surprising, though, was the unexpected surrender of a Klingon bat'leth.The traditional melee weapon of Klingon warriors, the bat'leth has struck fear into the hearts of countless alien races, wielded to deadly effect by those loyal to the great Klingon Empire.

The long history of the weapon dates back to the days of Kahless the Unforgettable, who, as the legend goes, dropped a lock of his hair into lava from the Kri'stak Volcano, and then plunged the fiery lock into the lake of Lursor and twisted it to form a blade. EDITOR'S NOTE: NO. REALLY! YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP!



The seized bat'leth is pictured in the custody of a stern-faced police officer and ran in today's Metro alongside the caption 'A policeman with a 5ft blade designed to decapitate victims and seized by officers ahead of the knife amnesty'.

It seems both the local constabulary and the daily newspaper need to better familiarise themselves with popular science fiction.

A suspect has been taken into custody over the seizure* and police have released this likeness of the man being questioned.



When asked for a statement by authorities, the suspect is reported to have declared: "QaplH ponDu 'ooe'ml SoeHQ Ke'bl jllspl Dlavtl!"EDITOR'S NOTE: ANY TREKKIES OUT THERE READY WITH A TRANSLATION? IT SAYS 'BITE ME' IN KLINGON? (ALTHOUGH, TRUTH TO TELL, EVERYTHING IN KLINGON KINDA SOUNDS LIKE A KISS OFF).

*this part may be a lie. EDITOR'S NOTE: YEAH. CAUSE EVERYONE KNOWS THAT KLINGONS ARE NOT FROM ENGLAND, THEY'RE FROM FRANCE.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Semi-Breaking TV News

EDITOR'S NOTE: REMEMBER HOW I 'JOKINGLY' MENTIONED THAT ALL TV SCHEDULES WERE SUBJECT TO CHANGE?

SUCH WIT. SUCH PRESCIENCE.

I'D LOVE TO TAKE CREDIT FOR SOME SORT OF ASTONISHING WISDOM, BUT BETTING ON A TV SCHEDULE TO CHANGE DAILY IS BETTING WITH THE HOUSE.

TV Upfront Waits On One Day, Thursday
A media critique
by Wayne Friedman,
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
THE network advertising upfront EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS IS THE OUTDATED, NEVER-WAS-VERY-SMART MAD SCRAMBLE FOR AD DOLLARS THAT COMES EVERY YEAR RIGHT ON THE HEELS OF THE ANNOUNCEMENTS OF THE FALL SCHEDULES. could get more complicated thanks to NBC decision to change things around on Thursday night.

NBC, the first network to present programming to advertisers last week, proudly put
the new Aaron Sorkin drama, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," on Thursday at 9 p.m. EDITOR'S NOTE: YEP...EST....But even before the ink was dry on the schedule, network executives said they were willing to change it around--depending on other networks' moves.

Thursday was the night that used to belong to NBC. But instead of looking to make a comeback on that night, NBC looks to get out of the way, with ABC scheduling its big "Grey's Anatomy" against CBS's big "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."

All this is giving advertisers some pause. If NBC doesn't know where its shows are, advertising executives say a good idea might be to wait until NBC does know. EDITOR'S NOTE: WOW. HOW DO WE TELL THE MENSA MEETING APART FROM THE AD CONFAB? DUH.

While many advertisers just buy GRPs in a commodity-like way--without looking too closely as the shows--network schedules are still important. Media agencies need to look at ratings and share estimates.

For NBC, this is not just one small programming move. NBC said "Studio 60" was a highly sought-after new show. NBC would like to protect it--rather than just letting it play to almost certain doom. The odds are that the network moves it to Monday at 9 p.m.--which means NBC's "Heroes" would need to find another spot.

Of course, for the movie companies, Thursday is all-important. They would be the most prone to extra hesitation.

To rid the world of uncertainty, NBC in an unprecedented move, might make a major programming switch only days after its upfront program presentation. EDITOR'S NOTE: WHAT THE HECK! I MEAN, IT'S NOT LIKE YOU PRINTED OUT THOSE FANCY FALL SALES PIECES YET, ANYWAY, RIGHT?

Waiting on NBC has to be considered another big "negotiating-in-the-press" move by advertisers--one where marketers are looking at ways to slow down the upfront negotiating process. Networks and advertisers are already at a standstill over the DVR viewing issues.

Marketers also say potential digital offerings give them pause as well.

The claim that they need NBC to make a programming decision, seems to add another ball in their court. EDITOR'S NOTE: THE CHAOS! THE CONFUSION! THE....ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ......WHAT WERE WE TALKING ABOUT, AGAIN?

More Thespy advertising silliness

EDITOR'S NOTE: I THINK WE ALREADY HAD AN ITEM ABOUT HOW SOME WEST END (LONDON, FOR YOU NONTHESP DWEEBS) THEATER WAS TRYING THIS.

SO NOW IT COMES TO THE GREAT WHITE WAY.

TURNS OUT WE DON'T JUST GET THEIR GOOD STUFF (RADA-TRAINED ACTORS, GUINNESS BEER, STILTON CHEESE), BUT SOME OF THEIR SILLY STUFF TOO (ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER, "BLOOD BROTHERS", SIMON COWELLL....)
Enter Stage Right: Live Advertisements
By
CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
Seven fifty-five p.m. A moment, in theater, of whispered anticipation, of studying Playbills, of turning off cellphones. And a perfect time, before a performance of "Stomp" at the Orpheum Theater in the East Village last night, for a commercial.

"Give me a picture of the London scene," said an actress in the audience on her cellphone, supposedly talking to her daughter in London on the eve of her own trip there.


Alice Parsloe as a newlywed in an onstage commercial before a performance of "Stomp" Tuesday night, where she declaimed the joys of a London honeymoon.

No, to answer your question, there is nothing sacred.

The advertisement, which is itself advertised as the world's first live theatrical commercial, is a creation of Visit London, a tourist organization. There have already been performances of the live commercial on stages in Dublin and Hamburg, said Ken Kelling, Visit London's communications director, and there is to be another on Friday in Pittsburgh.

"They're a captive audience," Mr. Kelling said. "They can't switch channels or change over or walk out once the thing is started." EDITOR'S NOTE: OH YES WE CAN! (TRY TO STOP ME!) He said that he did not think this would open the door to live ads for detergents and soft drinks, and that Visit London had no plans to continue the ads after this Friday in Pittsburgh.

Richard Frankel, one of the producers of "Stomp," said he viewed the three-minute performance as a "public service spot." No money has changed hands, he added. "Stomp" also has a London production.

Last night's ad began with a woman onstage putting the audience on notice that they would in fact be watching a commercial, "brought to you by Visit London."

The audience, mostly foreign tourists and students from a Brooklyn school, clapped and kept chatting.

The cellphone rang in the audience and the mother-daughter scene followed, with an almost-inaudible daughter, onstage, recommending London attractions. And the British actress Parminder Nagra (Dr. Neela Rasgotra on "ER") stood up for a cameo appearance.

Next, the audience was treated to an onstage couple on their London honeymoon discussing "a stroll along Shaftesbury Avenue," in the West End.

A disembodied voice chimed in: "Whatever you like doing, you'll love doing it in London."

And... scene.

"It took a long time for everything," said a Dutch-born New Yorker, Daphne van der Meulen, 29. "I think you can see from the people that it didn't really — how do you say it? — didn't really hit."EDITOR'S NOTE: WEIRDLY CLEVER IDEA. BUT IT TAKES SO LONG TO GET TO A THEATER TOILET....IF YOU'RE A WOMAN, AT ANY RATE...THAT I DON'T THINK PEOPLE ARE GOING TO SEE THE AD FOR THE CHATTING AND MAD-DASHING TO THE LOO.

TV and Thesping, a rare meeting of the programming

Combs a Producer on ABC's 'Raisin in the Sun'
Tony Winners Rashad, McDonald to Reprise Broadway Roles
By Christopher Lisotta
ABC will broadcast a TV movie version of the 2004 Tony-winning Broadway revival "A Raisin in the Sun." Sean Combs, EDITOR'S NOTE: PUFFY? who starred in the revival and will reprise his role for the TV movie, is producing along with Craig Zadan and Neil Meron's Storyline Entertainment.

The cast will also include the revival's Sanaa Lathan and Tony winners Audra McDonald and Phylicia Rashad. EDITOR'S NOTE: WHAT A WONDERFUL CAST. BLESS ABC FOR AGREEING TO BROADCAST THIS!

"A Raisin in the Sun" was the first play written by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. It premiered in 1959 with a cast that included Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, Ruby Dee and Louis Gossett Jr. A Columbia Pictures feature version with the same cast followed in 1961. S

toryline Entertainment, Mr. Combs' Bad Boy World Wide Entertainment Group and Sony Pictures Television will produce, along with "Raisin's" Broadway producers Carl Rumbaugh, Susan Batson and David Binder. Kenny Leon, who received a Drama Desk nomination for outstanding director for his staging of the play on Broadway, will be making his film debut with this movie. Screenwriter Paris Qualles ("Tuskeegee Airmen") will adapt Lorraine Hansberry's play and screenplay for the TV movie version.

TV Shows and Action Figures

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'M BEGINNING TO FEEL LEFT OUT; DON'T YOU THINK THE QOTD SHOULD HAVE HER OWN ACTION FIGURE??!!!
TV Characters As Action Figures
A media critique
by Wayne Friedman
TV COMEDY STARS MAY NOT be made into toy action figures, since action poses are limited--seemingly smirks, grins, laughs, don't count. But they should.

Surviving a plane crash is something else. So Disney/ABC's Touchstone TV has struck a deal with McFarlane Toys to create a line of action figures based on characters from the hit "Lost."

Keeping with the action figures premise, each character will come with an associated prop. So Kate (Evangeline Lilly) will include a toy lead plane the character chased down in season one; Hurley (Jorge Garcia) will come with a lottery ticket. Characters will also be frozen in specific key moments, such as when Locke (Terry O'Quinn) first found the hatch.

McFarlane Toys CEO Todd McFarlane said it's rare for a TV to lend itself to action figures--which is typically left to big action-packed or sci-fi theatrical movies such as "Spider-Man" or "Batman" or "King Kong." Given the show's sci-fi nature, however, "Lost" becomes a perfect candidate.

"The younger guys get it," McFarlane said to Daily Variety. "Hurley, his face scanned the best. There's a lot going on there. When he smiles, a lot happens to his face."

With this in mind, we wondered about comedy--a lot happens on those characters' faces, too. Characters on "Two and a Half Men," "Everybody Loves Raymond," or "Seinfeld" would have their own smirking identity: Ray Romano's smirk is different from Jerry Seinfield's smirk or that of Charlie Sheen's.

How far can this go? Perhaps we could have "American Idol"'s Simon Cowell leering - in a karaoke bar; "Desperate Housewives"'s Susan (Teri Hatcher) with frightened _expression after burning down her neighbor's house; and "Prison Break"'s Michael Scofield's (Wentworth Miller) secretive stare at his fellow inmates.

These characters could have alternative looks--a frown, a well-placed mug, a grimace, a far-away look. EDITOR'S NOTE: SO INSTEAD OF A LITTLE PROP, THEY COULD COME WITH INTERCHANGEABLE FACES!

Storylines are naturally important to TV series; but the initial essence of TV shows comes with its characters and their faces. Sell every inch of it to the TV public. Have those figurines sneering at you on your mantle during prime time. EDITOR'S NOTE: HE SAYS THIS LIKE IT'S A BAD THING?

EDITOR'S NOTE: AND IN RELATED NEWS.....

LOST Video Game News
A LOST video game is set to hit shelves in 2007. The game will be developed by Ubisoft's Montreal studio for consoles and PCs.

"We are delighted to work with Bryan Burk, one of the biggest producers in Hollywood and with Touchstone Television," said Yves Guillemot, chief executive officer of Ubisoft. "That they have chosen us for the adaptation of the cult series 'Lost' is the best homage that a producer can make to the creativity of Ubisoft."

"Many of us on 'Lost' have been hardcore gamers for years and the chance to work with Ubisoft, a company behind some of our favorite titles, has excited us to no end," said Lost executive producer Bryan Burk. "With the ability to tell new interactive stories within the 'Lost' universe, we're giddy to be developing a game that, once completed, will be as engaging and fun to play as it is to create."EDITOR'S NOTE: IT ISN'T BAD ENOUGH THAT I SPEND SO MANY OF MY WAKING (AND SEMI-WAKING) HOURS WATCHING TV. (INSTEAD OF.....UMMM...WHATEVER IT IS PEOPLE DO WHEN THEY'RE NOT WATCHING TV?) NOW THE REMAINING HOUR OF MY DAILY LIFE SHOULD BE THE GAME BASED ON THE SHOW!

DARN THIS WHOLE WORKING/EATING/SLEEPING THING! INTERFERING WITH MY TV IMMERSION! DARN DARN DARN....

Mid-Week Movie News

DIE HARD 4 May Be a Go



Bruce Willis has announced that shooting on a fourth Die Hard movie is as close to starting as ever.

"We're as close as we've ever got to getting Die Hard 4 started," Willis said. "It won't be called Die Hard 4 but that will be the story. Hopefully it will be out next summer." EDITOR'S NOTE: YAY. (ALTHOUGH 'AS CLOSE AS EVER' IS SORT OF A HESITANT GREEN LIGHT, HUH?)

There had been rumors of script problems slowing development as it seems the script centered on a giant wave hitting New Orleans. EDITOR'S NOTE: YEAH...I CAN SEE WHERE THAT MIGHT BE PROBLEMATIC.... A new script seems to have been created and the movie seems to be moving forward. A rumored working title was Die Hard 4: Die Hardest, but that will probably change in the near future if the project gets underway again.

The original Die Hard hit theaters in 1988.

Bryan Burk involved with STAR TREK
The team developing the 11th Star Trek movie is looking a lot like the team responsible for Lost. Bryan Burk, an executive producer for Lost, has announced that he will be involved with the project.

He will be joining Lost's co-creators Damon Lindelof and J.J. Abrams, who will direct. Abrams' longtime writing colleagues Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who co-wrote Abrams' Mission: Impossible III, will also be involved. EDITOR'S NOTE: THERE MIGHT BE LIFE LEFT IN THE TREK FRANCHISE YET! (IT CERTAINLY COULDN'T BE IN BETTER HANDS).

News on DA VINCI Sequel
Acting quickly on The Da Vinci Code's success at the box office, Sony Pictures has started development on a possible sequel.

ANGELS & DEMONS is the likely choice for a sequel and Sony has signed Akiva Goldsman (Da Vinci Code) to pen the script.

No news as of yet regarding Ron Howard and his possible return, but it is expected he would be offered the project. Hanks would likely reprise his role as Robert Langdon.

Lee's future will include 'Lust,' WWII
CANNES -- Oscar winner Ang Lee is reuniting with longtime collaborator James Schamus and Focus Features to direct his follow-up to "Brokeback Mountain," the espionage thriller "Lust, Caution."

Set in World War II-era Shanghai, the Chinese-language film is expected to begin production this fall. The film will be exec produced by Focus CEO Schamus. The screenplay will be adapted from Eileen Chang's short story by Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" screenwriter Wang Hui-Ling. Bill Koning, who produced "Crouching Tiger" is reteaming with Lee to produce, and Schamus will serve as exec producer.

"Ang is going to be making a very exciting film that's unlike anything he's done before," EDITOR'S NOTE: SO...NO LANGUID SHOTS OF SCENERY AND WIND BLOWING THRU ICE/TREES/SAGEBRUSH? WELL, DRAT. (SMIRK....)said Schamus, who's collaborated with Lee on nine features." `Lust, Caution' is a uniquely Asian story which, in Ang's hands, will surprise and attract audiences around the world."

Focus has worldwide rights to the film, excluding Asia. Focus Features International is handling overseas sales and distribution

Harryhausen, Mindfire meld
Seminal filmmaker Ray Harryhausen has joined forces with Mindfire Entertainment on a series of new movies, telefilms, video games and merchandising under the "Ray Harryhausen Presents" banner. EDITOR'S NOTE: FIRST QUESTION....RAY HARRYHAUSEN IS STILL ALIVE?!

These projects will be based on unproduced material by Harryhausen.

Mindfire CEO Mark A. Altman said several scripts are in development -- one set in Greek mythology and another with an alien invasion theme -- with production on the first film set to begin in the fall. The plan is to release one movie in the $15 million range and three telefilms in the $4 million range every year, Altman said.

Harryhausen will be involved in the development of the projects and will oversee all visual effects, which will be done in CGI but will be in the spirit of the stop-motion special effects that he pioneered, Altman said EDITOR'S NOTE: HAVE THEY ACTUALLY SEEN HIM FACE TO FACE? OR MAYBE THEY COMMUNICATE WITH A CLAY AVATAR?

Cillian Murphy Displays TelepathyStarring in a sci-fi drama


EDITOR'S NOTE: HE SURE IS PURTY,HUH?

Cillian Murphy can see the future. Or at least if he could, he’ll see that in October, he’ll see himself starring in a sci-fi thriller about Russian telepaths.

Telepathy, which will also star Sam Neil and Miranda Richardson, EDITOR'S NOTE: WHAT A YUMMY CAST! focuses on identical twin brothers Josef and Viktor Zalenski in Russia who are recruited for a to-secret scientific program that hopes to use telepaths to communicate with aliens.

The script comes from Stephen Volk, who last penned ITV’s drama Afterlife, starring Andrew Nichol, and Lesley Manning, who worked with Volk on 1995’s spooky drama Ghostwatch.

Cyrus 'The Virus' Grissom Vs. Forrest Gump
John Malkovich has joined the cast of “The Great Buck Howard”, a new drama about magicians, headlined by Tom and Colin Hanks.

According to Variety, the “Con Air” star will play a magician who takes a young recruit (Colin Hanks, of “Roswell” fame) under his wing. Tom Hanks plays the young man’s disapproving father.

Malkovich is said to have replaced original choice, Kevin Kline. EDITOR'S NOTE: DRAT. KLINE COOL. MALKOVICH CREEPY. (AH WELL....)

Closer duo bite into Blueberry



“Closer” duo Natalie Portman and Jude Law will reunite for “My Blueberry Nights”, the English-language debut for director Wong Kar Wai (“2046”).

Also starring Rachel Weisz and Norah Jones, the film tells of a young woman (Jones) who travels across America, looking for love, and encounters some weird and wonderful characters along the way. EDITOR'S NOTE: NATALIE PORTMAN, RACHEL WEISZ, AND JUDE LAW? ALMOST TOO PRETTY TO WATCH WITHOUT SUN GLASSES OR SOMETHING.

Pre-production begins straight after Cannes – where Wong is jury president – with filming beginning next year

Broken Arrow 2 : Dancing Time!
“Broken Arrow” duo John Travolta and Christian Slater might be re-teaming for something that’s, well, light years from the aforesaid 1996 actioner.

According to Sky News, Travolta and Slater are circling “On the Town”, a musical remake of the old Frank Sinatra/Gene Kelly pic, about a trio of sailors on leave in New York.

Apparently Slater has a YEN for Musicals at the moment, thanks to the kudos he’s getting for his performance in the stage version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, so wants to milk it why he’s still hot…. or, lukewarm, or whatever he is these days. EDITOR'S NOTE: I UNDERSTAND HAVING A YEN FOR MUSICALS...WE THESPDWEEBS ARE RIGHT THERE WITH YOU. BUT HOW DOES SLATER DOING "ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST" CONNECT TO DOING MUSICALS? PLEASE TELL ME IT ISN'T A MUSICAL VERSION? EEK.

Travolta’s been looking for another musical – at one stage, it looked like it was going to be “Grease 3”, but that idea was put to sleep pretty quickly. EDITOR'S NOTE: PHEW. YOU 80'S FANS CAN RELIVE YOUR STINKYFEET, DECULTURED, MISSPENT YOUTHS ON YOUR OWN TIME.

Hilary Swank Says I Love You In a new drama



Hilary Swank will re-unite with director Richard LaGravenese, with whom she’s just shot Freedom Writers, for P.S. I Love You.

The movie will adapt Celia Ahern’s bestselling book about a widow whose life takes on new meaning when letters left by her dead hubby inspire her to go on a series of adventures.

Freedom Writers will be released early next year, but if you can’t wait that long for a Swank fix, she also stars in Brian De Palma’s upcoming Black Dahlia, and Warner Bros’ supernatural thriller The Reaping. EDITOR'S NOTE: BUSY BUSY!

Spike Lee is SELLING TIME
Spike Lee has signed a deal to rewrite a script for SELLING TIME, a supernatural thriller for 20th Century Fox. Lee might sign on to direct the project as well.

The story follows a man who sells chunks of his life so that he can relive and change the worst day of his life.

The film will be produced by John Davis and Jennifer Klein.

EDITOR'S NOTE: AND SPEAKING OF FILM-SCHOOL TRENDOIDS.....

Tarantino to advise Weinstein Asian label
CANNES -- Bob and Harvey Weinstein unveiled a new label Tuesday called Dragon Dynasty, under which the Weinstein Co. will release Asian films.

Titles will include "Ong Bak 2," "The Protector" (aka "Tom Yum Goong"), "Born to Fight", "SPL," "Seven Swords" and "Dragon Squad." It will also encompass a package of 43 titles, which have been licensed from Fortune Star Entertainment, the distribution division of News Corp.'s STAR Group, which owns the world's largest contemporary Chinese language feature film library.

In addition, Dragon will also handle a collection of 50 movies from the Shaw Brothers including John Woo's "The Killer," "Hardboiled," "Bullet in the Head" and "A Better Tomorrow 1 & 2."

Quentin Tarantino, a longtime champion of Asian cinema, will actively work with the Weinsteins in all aspects of Dragon's brand development. EDITOR'S NOTE: FOR A GUY WHO HAS ONLY MADE A SMALL HANDFUL OF FILMS, TARANTINO SURE DOES SELF-PROMOTE BRILLIANTLY, HUH?

Hatcher does double duty in 'Coraline'
Teri Hatcher will voice a dual role opposite Dakota Fanning in "Coraline," the first animated film from Laika Entertainment, Phil Knight's animation studio based in Portland, Ore.

Focus Features has worldwide sales distribution rights to director Henry Selick's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's 2002 international best-seller, which features songs from They Might Be Giants.

Hatcher plays both the mother of the title character (voiced by Fanning) and her other mother in a parallel universe. The young Coraline steps into a world that appears to be a much better version of her own reality, but when her artificial parents attempt to keep her there forever, she must escape the dangerous situation and take a brave journey to get back home.

Brokeback duo doing Dylan
Real-life duo, and “Brokeback Mountain” co-stars, Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams will reunite on “I’m not there”, a new film about legendary musician Bob Dylan.

Ledger has stepped in at the 11th hour to replace originally cast Colin Farrell, says Production Weekly. EDITOR'S NOTE: COLIN FARRELL NOT IN A MOVIE? USUALLY A GOOD THING.

Directed by Todd Haynes, it’s essentially thoughts on the life of the man, where seven characters embody a different aspect of the musician's life and work. Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere and Julianne Moore also star. Actress (!) Charlotte Gainsburg (“21 Grams”) is also said to be playing Dylan, at one point in the film.

Interestingly, Ledger told us in January that he’d be taking this year off, so that his wife could work. Looks like a live-in babysitter is in need.

Also over at Production Weekly today, news on Sidney Lumet’s new film “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead”. It’ll star Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney and Marisa Tomei, and tells of two brothers who plot to rob their parent’s jewellery store. EDITOR'S NOTE: THAT'S GONNA PLAY HECK WITH THANKSGIVING DINNER-TABLE CHIT CHAT, HUH?

Raising Caine
Yet another old TV series is headed to the big screen – and this one, doesn’t really surprise me, it’s almost aching for it.

Classic David Carradine starrer “Kung Fu” is getting the cinematic refurbish, with thanks to Warner Bros.-based Legendary Pictures and writers Ed Spielman (who also created the original TV show) & Howard Friedlander, says Variety.

The original series, co-created by Bruce Lee, fixed on a Shaolin monk who flees to China, after avenging the death of his teacher, to the American West and helps people while being pursued by bounty hunters.

It’s unlikely Carradine will be involved. EDITOR'S NOTE: WHY NOT?! (I MEAN, APART FROM THE FACT THAT HE'S NOT ASIAN. BUT,I MEAN, HE WASN'T ASIAN BEFORE, EITHER).

Stockwell helming Toy Rabbit movie
“Blue Crush” director (and one time 80’s actor) John Stockwell has signed on to helm the film version of the kiddies’ book "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" for New Line Cinema.
The children's book, written by Kate DiCamillo and published by Candlewick, received a rave review from the New York Times last week.

The book is a fable about a girl whose narcissistic porcelain toy rabbit, EDITOR'S NOTE: LET'S PAUSE AND THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A MOMENT...... A 'NARCISSISTIC PORCELAIN TOY RABBIT'. THIS IS A ROCK BAND NAME WAITING TO HAPPEN, HUH? named Edward Tulane, is swept overboard on a family trip and begins a journey to discover the true meaning of love, says The Hollywood Reporter.

Stockwell’s next film is “Turistas”, a thriller with Josh Duhamel and Melissa George. He recently announced his next project, “Chasing the Whale”, about a casino-gambler named Kerry Packer.

Elisabeth Shue Scores Gracie/A football drama
With the World Cup just around the corner, it seems the right time to announce that Elisabeth Shue’s football EDITOR'S NOTE: FOOTBALL AS IN SOCCER, I PRESUME?drama Gracie has found funding. Picturehouse will grab US rights to the film, which starts shooting this summer.

Davis Guggenheim will direct Shue, teen actress Carly Schroeder (Mean Creek) and brother Andrew Shue in a story inspired by her real-life family history.

The film focuses on a 16-year-old girl, who after her football star brother dies playing the game, dedicates her life to winning the right for girls everywhere to play the game competitively.

Guggenheim, who is currently promoting his documentary An Inconvenient Truth at Cannes, is also known for being Elisabeth’s Shue’s husband. Expect the rest of the family to provide the catering. EDITOR'S NOTE: YUM!

Perry gets his 'Girl': it's Union
Gabrielle Union will star in Tyler Perry's latest Lionsgate film, "Daddy's Little Girl."

Written by Perry, the reverse-Cinderella tale centers on a successful attorney (Union) who falls in love with a janitor who is a single father of three children. This relationship causes a rift between the woman and her father, as he hoped she would marry wealthy.

The film is being produced by Reuben Cannon and will shoot in the summer in Atlanta. Union most recently starred in ABC's short-lived series "Night Stalker" and next appears in "Running With Scissors." Other feature credits include "The Honeymooners," "Bad Boys II" and "Deliver Us From Eva."

Taylor joins bridal party in Kwapis' 'Wed'



Christine Taylor has been cast in "License to Wed," a Warner Bros. Pictures/Village Roadshow Pictures comedy being directed by Ken Kwapis. She joins the already cast Robin Williams, Mandy Moore and John Krasinski. EDITOR'S NOTE: PRETTY MUCH PEOPLE I DON'T CARE ABOUT. (EXCEPT FOR WILLIAMS, AND HIS TASTE IN MOVIE PROJECTS CAN'T REALLY BE COUNTED ON FOR HELP IN ALLOCATING MY ENTERTAINMENT DOLLARS).

The story revolves around a young couple (Moore, Krasinski) whose wedding plans are interrupted when the pushy minister (Williams) of the bride's family church orders the pair to complete a marriage preparation course. They must pass the class if they want to marry in his church. Taylor will play Moore's older sister. Vince DiMeglio and Tim Rasmussen did the latest rewrite of the script.

SPECIAL Finds a Home



First Look Studios has grabbed the worldwide rights to the upcoming film Special.

The movie stars Michael Rapaport as a comic book-loving meter maid who finds himself with amazing superpowers. After taking a mind-altering drug, he is sent into a world of defying gravity, reading minds, and walking through walls.

The movie is directed by first timers Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore.

Paul Giamatti is Dr. Satan
Paul Giamatti will lend his voice to the cast of Rob Zombie Presents the Haunted World of El Superbeasto (Superbeasto). Giamatti will voice Dr. Satan, the film's main villain. EDITOR'S NOTE: WHAT WERE THIS CHARACTER'S PARENTS THINKING?! I MEAN, YOU NAME YOUR KID 'DR.SATAN', AND IT PRETTY MUCH GUARANTEES THEY ARE GOING TO BE A BAD EGG. POOR KID....

Superbeasto will be a 2-D animated comedy based on the Spookshow International comic book The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. It follows the exploits of a washed-up Mexican wrestler, El Superbeasto, in the mythic world of Monsterland.

Tom Papa will voice El Superbeasto. Sheri Moon Zombi and Brian Posehn will also voice characters. EDITOR'S NOTE: WHO BE THEM?

Freeman and Kinnear in Love
The always dependable Greg Kinnear will re-team with his “Nurse Betty” co-star Morgan Freeman for the feature film adaptation of Charles Baxter’s novel, “The Feast of Love”, says The Hollywood Reporter. EDITOR'S NOTE: SO A DARING SAMESEX/CROSSRACE DRAMA?

The film revolves around a community of friends in Oregon and is described as “an exploration of the magical, mysterious and sometimes painful incarnations of love”. EDITOR'S NOTE: WHICH DIFFERENTIATES IT FROM OTHER MOVIES ABOUT LOVE, HOW?

Kinnear will play Bradley Thomas, an all-around nice guy who owns a coffee shop and paints on the side. Unfortunately, Thomas can't catch a break with his love life, losing his first wife to a lesbian and a second wife to another man. His character shares a unique bond with Freeman's character, philosophy professor Harry Scott.

Oscar-winning helmer Robert Benton ("Kramer vs. Kramer") recently signed on to direct the film, scheduled to begin shooting in August in Portland.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

A lovely little Babylon 5 second

EDITOR'S NOTE: I WAS JUST READING A BABYLON 5 EMAIL (YES, FANS ARE STILL OUT THERE AND ACTIVE, EVEN THOUGH THE B5 UNIVERSE HAS BEEN KIND OF DORMANT FOR SOME TIME). AND THEY HAD A REALLY LOVELY QUOTE FROM B5 CREATOR JMS.

THOUGHT I'D SHARE.....

THEY ASKED JMS WHAT ONE SENTENCE COULD SUM UP WHAT BABYLON 5 STOOD FOR.

AND HERE'S THE RESPONSE ----

And what is that one sentence, what are those three words, that soencapsulate everything that Babylon 5 stands for, everything that JMSbelieves? It comes down to this:

"Never Surrender Dreams."
EDITOR'S NOTE: NICE, HUH? COULD BE WHY B5 RESONATED SO POWERFULLY.

Another Weird ADBIZ moment

EDITOR'S NOTE: MAYBE IT'S JUST ME, BUT THE SPONSORSHIP OF EVERY WAKING MOMENT PHENOMENON IS SOMETHING I FIND ENDLESSLY AMUSING.

JUST ME?

Advertising Goes Postal
USPS Cancels Law Against Branded Stamp Art
By
Beth Snyder Bulik
(AdAge.com) --
Forget the ads stuffed inside your mailbox: Now the pitch is in the postage.

The U.S. Postal Service last week canceled an old law that forbade businesses from placing ads or logos on any type of currency -- including postage -- relinquishing to marketers once-hallowed ground unsullied by commercialism.

The effort is part of the USPS' push to stem a loss of income as consumers increasingly turn from so-called snail mail to Internet correspondence. First-class mailings have plunged since the mid-1990s from almost 55 billion pieces mailed in 1998 to just over 43 billion last year.

Personalized custom postage began with a two-month test in 2004, with some snags that led to stamps featuring less-than-savory characters including Ted Kaczynski and Jimmy Hoffa.

The USPS reinstated the program for individuals in May 2005.

Stamps.com -- one of three USPS-approved vendors, along with Zazzle and Encidia -- alone has sold almost 17 million personalized postage units. (Its PhotoStamps division accounted for $9 million in revenue in 2005 and $4 million in the first quarter of 2006.)


HP postage stamps feature images of the HP logo as well as its founders and the garage in which they started the company.

Hewlett-Packard will be the first marketer to leave its stamp on consumers with branded postage art that includes a photo of founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, an HP logo and a current print ad. HP executives and sales-force members are already using them in mailings, said VP-brand marketing Gary Elliott, although the company is still working on other potential uses.

"HP employees who send the correspondence become brand ambassadors. Recipients are reminded of the heritage of HP and the company's innovative background," Mr. Elliott said. "HP sees this as an exciting opportunity to extend its brand into a whole new avenue."

In that, it's not alone. Stamps.com President-CEO Ken McBride said his company is "talking to a lot of names you have heard of" in the Fortune 500, while Endicia VP-Marketing Mark Delman said he believes the market will be huge.

Backlash likely

Still, the latest infringement of advertising may not sit well with all consumers.

Images on "postage stamps have always been George Washington or the flag or scientists, educators and innovators, reflective of the culture," said Jim Nail, chief marketing officer of media-and-marketing consultant Cymfony. "There has to be a backlash of some sort. Here it is, this sacrosanct space where we've never seen ads before." EDITOR'S NOTE: WHAT THEY GAIN IN SPONSORSHIP, THEY MIGHT LOSE IN THE CACHE OF COLLECTIBILITY?

However, he believes the backlash will not result in lost sales, but rather a more psychological hardening of resolve against the overall inundation of advertising.

"If there is a negative reaction, I think it will be along the same lines of the way some people reacted when baseball and football stadiums began selling corporate naming rights," said Joe Calloway, an independent branding consultant and author. "There was a great outcry, but then, for better or worse, it wore off and we all became used to it."

"It will be interesting to see what marketers do with this," Mr. Calloway said. "If you're General Motors and you're going to do a mailing to a Nascar demographic with a Chevy Nascar on it, then I can imagine people would think that's pretty cool."

The cost for businesses will depend on the size of the mailing. A single sheet of 20 39-cent stamps costs $17.99 at ZazzleStamps for Business, but the price per stamp drops as the size of the order increases. Still, even for a large-volume mailing, businesses can expect to pay first-class rates plus a premium of 15% to 20% for the personalized postage -- all for mailings they could get at bulk rate.

Purists may be relieved to find that the branded postage created by companies is not actually a stamp. EDITOR'S NOTE: ACTUALLY, THAT IS GOOD NEWS. I ENJOY THE ANTICIPATION OF WHAT THE POST OFFICE WILL RELEASE EACH YEAR; I THINK IT'S GOOD THAT THEY ARE MAINTAINING A SEPARATION BETWEEN THEIR RELEASES, AND CORPORATE-GENERATED PRODUCT.However, consumers who receive one on a piece of mail will not likely discern the difference.

"We have 47,000 members in 100 countries and they're all viewing them as stamps," said Dana Guyer, spokeswoman for the American Philatelic Society. She said their members likely will snap up the corporate postage as collectibles, and she envisions a whole new category of stamp collecting.

~ ~ ~

Here are some of the most popular U.S. stamps:
Breast-cancer research: 800+ million sold to date. It was the first semi-postal stamp, meaning it is sold for more than its value. Reauthorized for sale through 2007.

Elvis Presley: 517 million (no longer sold)

Spay and neuter pets: 250 million (no longer sold)

9/11 heroes: 133 million sold (2002-2004, with proceeds going to victims of the attacks)

EDITOR'S NOTE: CLEARLY, MY TASTES IN STAMPS ARE QUITE DISPARATE FROM THE REST OF THE COUNTRY. MY FAVORITES ARE THE MUPPETS, DISNEY, MOVIE STARS, AND SOME OF THE REALLY PRETTY FLOWERS. AH WELL..... THAT'S WHAT MAKES HORSE RACES, AS ME AGED MUM WOULD SAY. (SHE ISN'T A DWEEB, OR I WOULDN'T DARE CALL HER THAT!)

Monday, May 22, 2006

A Little (TV) Inside Scoop

EDITOR'S NOTE: A FUN ARTICLE FROM AD AGE...THE ADBIZ BIBLE....ABOUT LAST WEEK'S FALL TV PROGRAM PRESENTATIONS TO THE AD COMMUNITY.

JUST SNARKY ENOUGH TO BE ENTERTAINING EVEN TO NON-ADBIZ TYPES.

Best and Worst Moments From the Broadcast Upfront Presentations
The Angriest Man of the Week; Who Should -- and Shouldn't -- Sing and Dance
By
Abbey Klaassen and Claire Atkinson
Published: May 22, 2006
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) --
Last week, the broadcast networks spent oodles of money to introduce their fall lineups to marketers and agencies, as well as to Wall Street and their affiliates. Some of them pulled it off in style, with their execs smoothly executing some intricate dance moves (ABC), while others probably wished they had done a few more dress rehearsals (Fox).

Here, some of the best and worst moments of the week.

Best Pitch:
ABC was to-the-point and entertaining.

"I didn't look at my watch once," said Larry Novenstern, exec VP-director, national electronic media, Optimedia.

But did you check your BlackBerry?

Angriest Man of the Week:
Group M's Irwin Gotlieb, who reamed a Fox account rep about the disorganized start to its presentation at Manhattan's Armory.

Attendees spilled out into two lanes of Lexington Avenue traffic as they waited a half-hour to enter the building.

"This is the last event you'll ever have," he told the rep.

Best Theme Song:
CW's from the Black-Eyed Peas.

Best Digital-Media Drone:
NBC's Jeff Zucker's catchphrase-peppered speech.

Said Shari Anne Brill, VP-director of programming for Carat: "It's hard to come by sleep that good anymore -- and you can quote me on that!" EDITOR'S NOTE: YOU GO, GIRL!

Most Hype in One Sentence:
MyNetworkTV's introduction of the telenovela format:

"It is without question the most epic success story of international television."

Best Zucker Punch:
"At least NBC will have one hit this year" --CBS football analyst Phil Simms referring to the Manning-a-Manning Colts-at-Giants match-up that will kick off NBC's "Sunday Night Football" lineup.

ABC's Moonlighting Hoofers:
William Shatner, backed up by the male stars of ABC shows, with a cameo by Marc Cherry, was fair turnaround from last year, when the "Desperate Housewives" danced. "

Desperate Housewives"' Marcia Cross and castmate Ricardo Antonio Chivarez dirty dancing at the party following the presentation also made for a nice cross-promotion for "Dancing With the Stars."

Of course, Entertainment President Steve McPherson's cha-cha during the presentation, which brought the audience to its feet, already had done a pretty good job of that.

Hispanic Moonlighting Hoofers:
Telemundo's VP-Entertainment Ramon Escobar took direct aim at Univision with his refrain "We're not for sale. We're made for you. Not to be too rude, but we're not being sued." EDITOR'S NOTE: YEAH. BRAVO, TELEMUNDO. OF COURSE THIS NICE BIT OF SNARKY SPINE DOESN'T CHANGE THE FACT THAT YOU ARE NOT ONLY SO FAR IN UNIVISION'S DUST THEY CAN'T EVEN SEE YOU, BUT THAT YOU ARE OFTEN NOT EVEN IN THE NUMBER TWO POSITION BEHIND THE LEADER. (AN 'HONOR' THAT BELONGS TO UNIVISION'S OWN SISTER-NET, TELFUTURA).

Univision Co-Presidents Tom McGarrity and Dennis McCauley, meanwhile, sang and danced with six Rockettes, taking their shots at the English-language networks.

Keep Your Day Jobs:
"Family Guy's" Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein, whose opening song and dance for Fox was much too screechy.

CBS's Mandy Patinkin's Murder Medley, in which he sang standards with lyrics that described violent crimes, was too bloody for the audience's taste. EDITOR'S NOTE: HAVE THEY SEEN "CRIMINAL MINDS"? AIN'T EXACTLY FOR THE SQUEEMISH.

Most Uncomfortable Joke:
From Leslie Moonves, explaining why, for the first time in a decade, he wouldn't be starring in an upfront-themed film:

"It was going to be me and Bob Scheiffer in our own version of 'Brokeback Network.' We actually flipped a coin to see who was going to be Heath Ledger." EDITOR'S NOTE: NOW WHY WAS THAT DEEMED 'UNCOMFORTABLE'? I MEAN, THEY DON'T SAY IF THE COIN TOSS WINNER WAS HEATH OR LOSER.

Best Sport:
NBC, for letting Alec Baldwin get in this shot while introducing "30 Rock," a half-hour behind-the-scenes look at a sketch-comedy show not unlike "Saturday Night Live" that the network picked up along with the one-hour drama "Studio 60," another behind-the-scenes look at a sketch-comedy show:

"Every once in a while there comes along an idea that is so moving NBC only has two of them."

Too Close to Home:
B.J. Novak, who plays temp Ryan Howard on NBC's "The Office," when he called himself the "highest-paid temp on television ... except for Kevin Reilly." EDITOR'S NOTE: THE PRESIDENT OF NBC ENTERTAINMENT. FYI...

Uncomfortable silence.

Upfront Tongue Twister:
"Tostitos," apparently, as Fox Sports President David Hill butchered again and again the pronunciation of the title sponsor for the Fiesta Bowl, now airing on his network