Category: External TV (Page 50 of 419)

Entourage 7.6 – Hair

There are a lot of good things you could say about tonight’s episode, but one thing it was not was entertaining. Although there were a few laughs to be had at Drama and Turtle’s expense (the former has drunken himself into a stupor and sarcastically claims that Dos Equis has hired him for a new campaign as the Least Interesting Man), the rest of the episode leaned very heavily on Ari and Vince’s ongoing storylines. Granted, that’s pretty much been the theme of this season, but with only four more episodes to go, I was really hoping we’d see Drama finally get a job – and no, not as the voice of a cartoon character.

Unfortunately, it looks like that’s where the writers may be going after Billy Walsh suggests that Drama isn’t attractive enough to star in his own show, but has the kind of voice that could headline an animated series. It’s all part of his plan to reignite his own career with the help of Eric, who he believes can get him back into the business the same way he did with Vince. But while he may have gone straight since the “Medellin” debacle (to the point that he’s completely sober, doesn’t swear, and is now an ordained minister), this might just be his craziest idea yet. Drama may be desperate, but why in the world would he want to settle for a cartoon after spending the better part of his adult life trying to make it in Hollywood? He’d be much better off just acting on stage, and would probably make more money doing it. Voice acting can certainly be a lucrative career for some, but Drama believes too much in the craft of acting, and it would be a major disservice to his character to suddenly abandon that philosophy.

entourage_7-6

At least Turtle’s love life is on an upswing of sorts after he finally scores with Alex, although it didn’t exactly start out great. In fact, Turtle tells the other guys that their first night together was a complete disaster after he got so freaked out from seeing Alex’s bald nether regions that he didn’t perform to his best. Alex thinks that it was Turtle’s first time (though he quickly assures her it was not) and decides to give him a second chance, which goes much better than the first. Of course, as Vince’s friend, it’s hard to imagine that Turtle has never seen (or been with) a girl who was completely shaved, so I didn’t really buy the storyline at all. Then again, it’s also hard to believe that Turtle would be so stupid to think it would be a good idea to post videos to Vince’s Twitter account of him and Sasha Grey positively smashed on his tequila.

Continue reading »

TCA Press Tour, Summer 2010: Day 7

Day 7 of the TCA Press Tour technically began on Day 6: just as the ABC all-star party wrapped up, Fox hosted a cocktail party which doubled as an early check-in for their day of the tour…and, better yet, it was hosted by Will Arnett and Keri Russell, the stars of one of Fox’s upcoming new sitcoms, “Running Wilde.”

You’ll get more details about the show in due time, since there was a “Running Wilde” panel as well, but for now, I’ll just mention that two other individuals affiliated with the show made unexpected appearances at the early check-in: executive producer / co-creator Jim Vallely and co-star Peter Serafinowicz.

I didn’t really get a chance to chat with Russell (she was pretty well surrounded from the moment she arrived), but I did talk to Arnett for a few minutes. Thanks to my wife, though, I ended up having a relatively lengthy conversation with Serafinowicz and Vallely. I knew I’d recognized Serafinowicz, and he quickly reminded me why: he had his own series in the UK, one which many YouTube clips reveal to be extremely hilarious. Indeed, he’s the one who told me I should check them out, particularly his Beatles-related parodies, of which he’s quite proud. No wonder he was cast to play Paul in Robert Zemeckis’s “Yellow Submarine” remake.

In a strange “small world” moment, I also learned that Jim Vallely is the father of Tannis Vallely, the actress who played Janice, the glasses-wearing, cello-playing prodigy on “Head of the Class.” She’s now on the casting side of the business, having worked on such films as “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” “Oceans’ Thirteen,” and “It’s Complicated.” Eventually, my wife and I grew tired and retreated for the evening, but it would only be a few hours until we were back in the thick of it again, this time for the real beginning of Day 7.

Breakfast was brought to us by the casts of “Human Target” and “The Good Guys,” shows which, back in the days when the networks weren’t too cheap to spread their series across a two-day period, would’ve earned their own panels. Instead, we had to settle for chatting with them over bacon and eggs, bagels or donuts, and that sort of thing. In truth, the only person I really had the chance to speak with was Jackie Earle Haley on “Human Target,” and that was mostly because I feel like I kinda sorta know him (he’s friends with Bullz-Eye’s own Ross Ruediger and, as a result, has come to recognize me on sight as “Ross’s friend”), but as you can see, everyone was in the house from both series.

Soon enough, the actors headed out to start their own days, and having finished our breakfast, we took our seats and prepared for the first panel of the morning to begin.

Continue reading »

TCA Press Tour, Summer 2010: Day 6

Day 6 of the TCA Press Tour was all about the American Broadcasting Company – that’s ABC to you and me – presenting their slate of programming for Fall 2010, along with a couple of new entries that are technically midseason entries but will likely find themselves slotted into the schedule sooner than that. (You know how it goes: there’s always a show or two that gets the boot within a couple of episodes, thereby giving one of the relief squad a chance to go in early.)

Give Kevin Brockman, ABC’s head of publicity, full credit for getting the first big laugh of the day: he walked onto the stage holding a giant stuffed pink elephant named Binky, allowing him to be flanked by the real elephant in the room while addressing the metaphorical one, which was the somewhat unexpected departure of Steve McPherson, the network’s former President of Entertainment.

“On Tuesday, we issued a statement announcing Steve McPherson’s resignation from ABC Entertainment Group,” said Brockman. “I realize you all may have questions, obviously. That is what you do for a living. But to save us some time and hopefully make this as productive as possible, I just want to say that Tuesday’s statement still holds. It is literally all we are going to say on the subject. So you may ask, but you will get the same answer. So I’m just saying please know that is the statement. We have given it. We will give it again if we need to. But in the spirit of trying to make things as productive today, just realize that that’s where we are. We really have nothing more to add.”

And, indeed, they did not. Someone tried a bit later in the morning to get Paul Lee, McPherson’s hastily arranged replacement, to say something on the matter, but…well, we’ll get to that in a moment. First, let’s talk about the panel that preceded Mr. Lee’s executive session.

Detroit 1-8-7

Can it really be possible that “Detroit 1-8-7” is the first police drama to be set within the city of Detroit? That would seem to be the case, and yet it seems like such an incredible oversight that it’s never been done before. More impressive, however, is the fact that the show is actually being filmed in Detroit.

“There are a lot of benefits to shooting in Detroit,” said producer David Zabel. “Included in that is that there is a bit of an infrastructure forming of crew. We are filling out our crew with a lot of locals. A lot of locals are working on the show, and hopefully in the long run what will then happen is that a lot of the locals who are working at mid-level positions are going to get better at these jobs and rise up and be doing more of the key department-head work as well. Overall, they’ve been doing quite a bit of feature work in Detroit, so there’s some aspects there that are well in place, but there are some things that are a little bit of a learning curve, and we’re sort of going through that together. A lot of the key department heads are from Los Angeles for now, but the vast numbers of the crew are largely local hires. In certain key departments we had to bring from L.A. in order to have qualified people so that we could deliver the show. Also, they are shooting seven features right now in Detroit, so even the talent pool that exists locally in Detroit is spread a little thin right now. But as the series goes on, I think we’re going to get more and more people that are local working on the show.”

As happy as I am for Detroit that they’ve got this series filming in their fine city, I must say that I got more than a little bored with the plethora of questions about that particular aspect. I was much more interested in the fact that the original conceit of the series as seen in the pilot which was screened for us in advance of the TCA tour – the detectives were being filmed as part of a documentary – has been thrown out the window due to the fact that, as a result of an unfortunate event in Detroit, the city has banned documentary filmmakers from following police officers around. With that having been put into play, they couldn’t exactly show such a thing going on within “Detroit 1-8-7,” now, could they?

Continue reading »

Top Chef DC: halfway home

Is it just me or are these reality shows now expanding the number of contestants, yet blazing along so fast so they can get the season over with and start selling DVDs? “Top Chef DC” is no exception. I feel like I just started blogging Season 7 and now we are halfway home. Last night we went from 9 chef-testants down to 8. But here’s the best part–aside from Angelo, there are quite a few that could actually win. That makes this season extremely interesting.

So the episode began with host Padma Lakshmi bringing in guest judge Marcus Samuelsson, who is the reigning “Top Chef Master.” Marcus is an expert in Ethiopian cuisine and the quick fire challenge was to create a dish in the Ethiopian genre. Some of them had experience in this, but most did not. The winner of this challenge would have immunity this week in the elimination challenge.

Continue reading »

Steven Moffat discusses 2010 “Doctor Who” Christmas special…but not very much

Given that the annual “Doctor Who” Christmas special is still several months out, I knew full well that Steven Moffat wouldn’t be willing to offer up much in the way of information about what we could expect to see come December, but since I’d been fortunate enough to sit down with him – along with Mark Gatiss – in connection with their work on “Sherlock” (which comes to PBS in October), I couldn’t very well miss the chance to ask about it, anyway.

I started off with a non-specific question, asking how Michael Gambon had found his way into the “Who”-niverse.

“We sent him a script, asked him to do it, and he said, ‘Yes,'” said Moffat. “Simple as that.”

Had Gambon been a fan of the show?

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I didn’t get the impression that he was a fan of ‘Doctor Who,’ except insofar as everyone in Britain is at the moment, but it’s really…with these guys, send them a good part and there’s a really stonking chance they’ll do it. I mean, if it’s a good script…and you think it is…they’re being offered prime-time on Christmas day, really, so there’s a real chance you can get anyone for that. But it’s very exciting. He’s brilliant. Of course he’s brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. What a voice.”

The time had come to make the jump and ask something specific, so I wondered aloud if the teaser line at the end of season finale about the Orient Express in space would indeed come to pass come this Christmas.

“Who knows?” replied Moffat, stonefaced.

I told him he was a terrible person…which caused the stone face to break into a laugh.

“You wouldn’t really want to know,” he said. “I can tell. Also, what you have to keep in mind that I genuinely lie. I do. I actively lie to people about what’s going to happen in ‘Doctor Who.’ I’m not officially employed with the BBC. I can say any old thing I like. Even if I told you something, there’s no guarantee that it’s true. Disinformation and the white noise of nonsense is how we get through this!”

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2026 Premium Hollywood

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑