Category: TCA Blog 2009 (Page 13 of 19)

TCA Tour, Jan. 2009: “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”

January 15, 2009 /

If you happened to catch my review of the “Keeping Up with the Kardashians: Season 1” DVD, you already know that I’m not really a fan of the series. If you’re too lazy to click on the link, my feelings are probably best summed up with this line: “Watching (the show) provides one significant challenge for the viewer: trying to decide which female member of the family you want to smack the most.” I did, however, walk out of the viewing experience with a certain amount of respect for Bruce Jenner…partially just because he manages to put up with everything that happens in his house, but mostly just because he looks legitimately annoyed and pissed off about it all.

I’m not going waste space by offering up quotes from anyone else…because, honest to God, I don’t understand why we should care about them…but for those of you who watch the show, I’ll at least provide you with some of Jenner’s comments.

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TCA Tour, Jan. 2009: NBC newsflash

January 15, 2009 /

Angela Bromstad, President of Primetime Entertainment, and Paul Telegdy, Executive Vice President of Alternative Programming, just popped up on stage to offer the following tidbits of information, some of which were announced awhile ago but which we haven’t yet covered on Premium Hollywood:

* “Southland,” the new drama from John Wells (which was formerly known as “Police”), will premiere on April 9th, Thursday at 10 PM.

From Emmy Award winners John Wells, Ann Biderman and Chris Chulack comes a raw and authentic look at the police unit in Los Angeles. From the beaches of Malibu to the streets of East Los Angeles, “Southland” is a fast-moving drama that will take viewers inside the lives of cops, criminals, victims and their families. Michael Cudlitz plays John Cooper a seasoned Los Angeles cop assigned to train young rookie Ben Sherman. Cooper’s honest, no-nonsense approach to the job leaves Sherman questioning whether or not he has what it takes to become a police officer. Cudlitz and McKenzie are joined by other cast members including Regina King who plays Detective Lydia Adams. Adams lives with and is the primary caregiver of her mother. Her partner, Detective Russell Clarke (Tom Everett Scott) is an unhappily married father of three. Michael McGrady plays Detective Daniel “Sal” Salinger. Sal oversees fellow gang detectives Nate Moretta (Kevin Alejandro) and Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy). Arija Bareikis plays as patrol officer Chickie Brown, a single mom who dreams of being the first woman accepted into SWAT.

* They have ordered 3 more episodes of “ER,” bringing the season total to 23. The series finale will now air on April 2nd, with a one-hour retrospective preceding the two-hour finale. Why the additional episodes? “Why not?” asked Bromstad. She then clarified, however, that it allows John Wells time to get “Southland” ready.

* They have officially signed on for additional seasons of “The Office” and “The Rock”

* NBC has signed Don Cheadle and his company, Crescendo Productions, to a two-year, first-look television development deal.

* Due to its success up against “American Idol,” they will indeed be picking up another season of “Biggest Loser” for next season.

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TCA Tour, Jan. 2009: “Eastbound and Down”

January 15, 2009 /

Danny McBride had a hell of a 2008, what with scene-stealing roles in “Pineapple Express,” “Tropic Thunder,” and…well, okay, maybe “Drillbit Taylor” wasn’t everything it could’ve been. But, still, the guy’s definitely on a roll, and although 2009 was already shaping up to be a good year for McBride, thanks to his co-starring role in Will Ferrell’s take on Sid & Marty Krofft’s “Land of the Lost,” he can now also claim ownership of a lead role in an HBO series.

HBO’s Sue Naegle was able to sum up the premise of “Eastbound and Down” in a single well-constructed sentence: the hilariously tragic story of Kenny Powers, a former major league pitcher whose bad-boy ways have him down and out and teaching phys ed. at his old middle school in North Carolina. As a man who’s spent his entire life within a 30-minute drive of the Tarheel State (though this is probably the first time I’ve ever referred to it as the Tarheel State), I admit to a certain affinity for the premise, particularly after hearing McBride talk about his reasons for doing the series.

“These guys both grew up in North Carolina,” McBride said, referring to his collaborators Jody Hill and
Ben Best, “and I grew up in Virginia, and we all met at film school down in North Carolina School of the Arts. We weren’t really happy with the way the South was portrayed in a lot of film and television. It seemed like it kind of stopped at the ‘Hee-Haw’ kind of deal, which is overalls and Billy Bob, so we kind of wanted to find new things to make fun of in the South.”

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TCA Tour, Jan. 2009: “Will Ferrell: You’re Welcome, America. A Final Night with George W. Bush”

January 15, 2009 /

No-one goes into a panel with Will Ferrell…not even one being done via satellite…with an expectation that it’s going to be a serious affair. But when he turns up wearing a woolen winter hat and a pair of New Year’s Eve glasses shaped like the number 2009, it’s fair to say that you can throw seriousness completely out the window.

“First of all, these are actually prescription glasses,” Ferrell assured us. “I’m not trying to be funny. It happens to be 2009, so that’s great. I also had head surgery, so that’s why I have this hat on, too.”

Sure, Will. Sure.

Ferrell and his longtime collaborator, Adam McKay, had turned up to discuss Ferrell’s new one-man show, “You’re Welcome, America: A Final Night with George W. Bush,” which will be getting a live airing on HBO on March 14th. Ferrell hadn’t really been called upon to do his Bush impression very much since departing from “Saturday Night Live,” but he thought the show would be a fun way to send off George W.

Ferrell and McKay reminisced about the origins and evolution of Ferrell’s impression, which began as a mere walk-on in a Clinton sketch. “It was before we kind of even knew who he was,” said McKay, “and Will basically just played him as a frat guy drinking beer, high-fiving.”

“Darrell Hammond was always going to play Gore,” said Ferrell, “and then Lorne Michaels had asked me if I wanted to play Bush. I thought, ‘Yeah, this will be fun. I’ll play him for a couple of months. He probably won’t win.’ And then he eventually won. He just kept kind of gaining momentum in terms of his comedic persona. He went from the 90 percent popularity to…it’s the longest sustained drop in popularity in Presidential history. Obviously, there’s been an incredible combination of some insane news events that he’s had to deal with and, obviously, some poor decisions on his part, along with his type of personality and the fact that he kind of can’t speak properly. That makes for a wonderful kind of comedic stew…and I like to use the word ‘stew’ whenever I can.”

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TCA Tour, Jan. 2009: “Big Love”

January 15, 2009 /

I’m very much out of my element when it comes to discussing “Big Love.” Not that I’m not interested in the show, but I simply haven’t watched it. I know, however, that another fine member of our editorial staff – one J. Codding – is a regular viewer, so I wouldn’t dare miss the opportunity to cover the upcoming third season of the show. Plus, really, whether you’ve watched the show or not, who in their right mind wouldn’t want to sit in on a panel that includes Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny, and Ginnifer Goodwin?

If you haven’t followed the behind-the-scenes activity on the show, it’s been kind of a weird time for “Big Love” since it left the airwaves back in August 2007. The writer’s strike led to a delay in production for the show’s third season, and when the strike was concluded, executive producers Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer made the decision to throw out the ideas they’d come up with for Season 3 and basically start fresh.

“It’s always good to have more time and more time and more time to digest story and to reconsider choices made,” said Scheffer. “It makes the show stronger, deeper, better, you know, to have a couple of goes at initial assumptions. And so it was a blessing in that way, a mixed blessing because we were late coming on back to our fans, but, you know, I think that that little interim period where we weren’t writing when we were just sort of protesting and showering and such that we could have this time to breathe into the characters and the stories even more than we would have if we had just gone on our straight route. You know, I think the show would have been great, but I think what we have now is like beyond great.”

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