Curry out Guthrie in

The further awkwardness of the last few weeks surrounding the problems at NBC's Today Show got even more awkward as Ann Curry's replacement was announced a mere 24 hours after the head honcho's forced Curry out of duties on that morning show.

Savannah Guthrie will take over the morning duties starting July 9, but the NBC's poor handling of this -on the heels of way they handled the whole Conan O'Brien affair 2 years ago- shows just how far from reality NBC has come when they were the most dominate broadcast network. Their prime time schedule is a pathetic mess, canceling shows that back in the 80's would have survived to become flag ship shows, renewing crap on a stick that is Whitney, while abandoning better written shows like Community and Parks & Recreation. And while that was 30 years ago and times have changed, NBC's leadership -or lack there of it- in these two recent incidents, along with their ever weakening grasp of well done dramas and comedies, shows they are spinning out of control. That they are more in favor of shareholders rights than the TV viewing audience. And while the 2011-12 TV season saw them rise to third place after spending the last few years in fourth (and at times being beaten by Telemundo and five year-old reruns of other shows), they've still not been able to capitalize on any trends, beyond their number one priority, save as much money as possible. 

NBC News president Steve Capus today noted Guthrie's "undeniable range." But also included in the press release was Capus saying that the new host was also the "ultimate team player." To me, that is a huge swipe at Curry, who appears to have been the scapegoat for the Today Show's losses to rival Good Morning America over at ABC (how she can be solely held responsible is beyond me). What it also means, in business speak, that Guthrie will do whatever her NBC Overlords will ask her, and she'll never raise her hand and ask the question: "What does God need with a Starship?"

Then, of course, there is the creepy Matt Lauer, who appears to understand that as a white male in his fifties, he has some how achieved great power over at NBC. It's already been rumored he had an affair with his 2006 Olympics co-host Natalie Morales. While they were just rumors, and it did come from The National Inquirer, it did prompt Lauer's wife, Annette, to file for divorce -though she later withdrew the petition and reconciled. So while NBC News president Steve Capus ignores these things, and ignores that Curry might not be the one to blame for NBC's downturn, he seems to fully support Lauer. 

Also, the Today Show is bound to get an uptick in ratings once the summer Olympics begins in July, but after that, it will be the real test to see if it was Curry's presence that ended the Today Show's 16 year dominance in the morning TV wars. 

In short, the network went with flash instead of experience; youth instead of wisdom. Guthrie is intelligent and articulate. But you can bet that’s not why she got the job. It remains to be seen whether the Today Show's demographically older audience warms up to her.

Teaser trailer for 'Untitled Web Series About A Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time'

Ann Curry gets dumped at 'Today'; is she really to blame?

Ann Curry became the scapegoat at NBC’s stalwart morning show, Today, for its faltering ratings. Yes, the popular morning show is facing its biggest challenge in the ratings from ABC's now resurging Good Morning America -Today hadn't lost a week in the ratings since 1996 but this spring lost four times- but the complaint is she never really clicked with co-host Matt Lauer, so she’s got to go. Which may be true, but is that Curry’s fault? I mean, could the egotistical Lauer and that laughable idiot Al Roker be also part of the problem? Maybe what she brought to the table was some serious journalism, while NBC and –apparently- the rest of America wanted tabloid gossip. 

Curry has always come off as an intelligent, independent minded journalist. She is articulate, watchable and coy. She seems witty and fun, as well -like she would be fun party goer. Matt Lauer is the complete opposite. But he’s a man, and in this male dominated world, he’ll be given the pass (and while he just signed a new contract, I’m guess legal thought it would be easier- and cheaper- to get rid of Curry than Lauer). 

To me, there is a huge accountability issue here. Somehow, because the ratings slid began this spring, Curry is solely responsible for it, while Roker and Lauer get contract renewals –and thus passes. Is this logical, is this right? Meanwhile, then there is harpy’s like Kathie Lee Gifford, who continues to make one idiotic blunder after another, but she gets a free pass as well.

If anything, this latest problem at NBC is indicative at what’s wrong at the broadcast network and with the American public as it news and entertainment –infotainment as Homer Simpsons called it- are blurred. The sense is that news, hard hitting, non-exploitive news, is regulated to the dust bin of history in favor of them showing us the latest trends on Twitter, what the fucking Kardashians are doing today, and what kooky place Matt Lauer is at today.

NBC and the Today show producers showed their true colors by dumping Curry, that ratings are, and always will be, the barometer in which fire someone from “news” shows like this. At least if your female, anyways. 

I will agree chemistry is part of these shows, but it should not be the first line of reason for firing someone. And she was fired –after what has been an awkward few weeks- so let’s make that clear. But she did get a booby prize: “They’re giving me some fancy new titles (her one true dig at NBC) which essentially mean I’m going to get tickets to every big story we want to cover.” Instead of letting her go at NBC completely, they gave her this Anchor at Large status, which is meaningless in the big picture. They just didn’t want her going to a rival network (I’m sure ABC would love to have her) and further damaging Today’s ratings.

It’s hard to see people getting dumped for all the wrong reasons, and Ann Curry’s tenure at Today ended in such a stupid way. She deserved better and I hope when her contract is up at NBC, she does give the peacock network the middle finger and jump ship to a network at appreciates her intelligence, her charm and, more importantly, the real news a large portion of us care about.  

Don Grady 1944-2012

Don Grady, the handsome, put-up middle child of the first 5 seasons of the classic family sitcom My Three Sons, died after a long battle with cancer on June 27 in Los Angeles at the age of 68. 

When it premiered on ABC in 1960, My Three Sons included veteran actors Fred MacMurray –who, as he aged, did a lot of Disney films and I Love Lucy’s Fred Mertz, William Frawely (who would be forced out after season five to due health reasons and replaced for the remainder of the series by William Demarest).  The series chronicled the life of a widower and aeronautical engineer named Steven Douglas, raising his three sons. The boys were played by Tim Considine, Don Grady and Stanley Livingston. The early seasons were unique in structure, having no specific generic type; any episode from one week to the next might be comedic or dramatic.

After its fifth season, ABC decided that the costs were too much to produce it in color so the series ended up on CBS for 7 more years –and in color. There were cast changes as well, Considine did not renew his contract after a falling-out with executive producer Don Fedderson over his wish to direct but not co-star in the series. Considine later told Pat Sajak back in 1989 that he was devoted to car racing, which his contract forbade. The character was written out and along with Meredith MacRae, who was playing his fiancée, after their wedding in the sixth season opener and is never seen again -though he is mentioned a handful of times during the rest of its run.

Grady became the eldest son, which forced the writers to create another “brother” to keep the title of the series going. Livingston’s younger brother Barry, who had joined the show in a recurring role in 1963 as neighbor Ernie, was then adopted by the Douglas’s (Ernie, it turned out, was a foster child) and became a main cast member from the 6^th season until its end.

Grady was a life-long musician –he appeared with his own band The Greefs on the series, and was the drummer for The Yellow Balloon, whose self-titled song became a minor hit during 1967. After the series ended in ’72 he pursued his musical career  full time that included music for the Blake Edwards comedy Switch, the theme song for The Phil Donahue Show  and for EFX, a Las Vegas multimedia stage show which starred Michael Crawford, David Cassidy, Tommy Tune and Rick Springfield. In the fall of 2008, Grady released Boomer: JazRokPop, a collection of songs written for and about the baby boomer generation. 

He is survived by his wife Ginny and children Joe and Tessa.

David Warner & Dougray Scott confirmed for 'Doctor Who'

It’s been confirmed that veteran actor David Warner will guest star in an episode of Doctor Who for season seven. Warner has had a long acting career appearing in films such as The Omen, Time Bandits, Tron, The Lost World, Titanic and Planet of the Apes. He’s made multiple appearances in the Star Trek franchise, including the movies Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country as well as in the two-part Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Chain of Command. He’ll appear in the eighth episode scheduled for 2013. Also, Dougray Scott (Desperate Housewives, Mission: Impossible II, The World is Not Enough) will appear in episode 11 of the show, rumored to be titled Hider in the House. Other reports include the rumored title for episode 7 to be Phantoms of the Hex.

Nora Ephron 1941-2012

Hollywood continues to be run by white males. Its directors are primarily males –and white as well. While female writers abound, not many had abilities that Nora Ephron had.  Plus, she was multi-talented, being an essayist, a playwright, a journalist, a novelist, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter and a movie director. 

She was unique within the Hollywood power structure, for she pretty much set the standard for contemporary romantic comedies. Plus, as a woman she became the voice for them in movies, even when the studios were not really pursuing that demographic. She can be credited for helping break down those barriers.

When she died on June 26 at age 71 from pneumonia, Hollywood moguls and fans were shocked. No one knew she had been ill, as the pneumonia was a complication from the disease she had been quietly battling since 2006, acute myeloid leukemia.

She earned three Oscar nominations for her screenplays, Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle (which she also directed). She also wrote and directed Mixed Nuts, Michael , You’ve Got Mail, Lucky Numbers, Bewitched and what would be her last big screen effort, 2009’s Julie & Julia. Her 1986 re-teaming with Meryl Streep was Heartburn, based on her book about the break-up of her marriage to Watergate investigative journalist Carl Bernstein.

But it was Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally where her true strengths were on display, a self-deprecating woman who brought strong, but appealing characters life, and who tackled relationship issues with a comic insight few had done before. 

Ephron always claimed it was her parents that gave her the ability to find humor in almost anything, especially her dad. "They were funny and they believed that everything was copy," Ephron said in 2009. "They believed that anything in life could be turned into a story, which is really the first rule of humor. I don't think you can get through almost anything without humor." Henry and Phoebe Ephron were Hollywood royalty, having written screenplays for classic films as Carousel, Desk Set and There's No Business Like Show Business. Sadly, both her parents were alcohols, with her mother dying in 1971 at the age of 57.

As noted, Ephron was married three times, Dan Greenburg, Bernstein (where she had two sons, Jacob and Max) and screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, who she wed in 1987. She also survived by three sisters.

What's wrong with this 'Alex Cross' trailer?

There is a huge problem with the trailer for Alex Cross, the third attempt at adapting a James Patterson "written" novel to the screen. The first two, Kiss the Girls (1997) and Along Came a Spider (2001), starred Morgan Freeman as the titular character. While the first one was a moderate hit, the second failed.  However, both were savaged by the critics.

The Alex Cross series is basically a cop, a family man, investigating horrible murders, and each book the killer gets more grizzly than the last. It's pulp fiction at best, written by hired writers. Patterson has made it known he doesn't actually write the books, he creates outlines and then hands them over to other writers to actually do the work (which explains why the "quality" goes up and down) of creating a book. For this, Patterson grossed somewhere in the realm of $80 million dollars last year. 

Meanwhile, real writers can barely get an article published let alone a novel.

In the last 12 years, TV has provided us with a lot of procedural shows like the CSI franchise, the NCIS franchise and the Criminal Minds franchise. All of them have done serial killer stories. All have done hundreds of episodes giving us horrible people who do horrible things to other people -mostly women.

So what's wrong with Alex Cross -besides the stupid tag line: Don't Ever Cross Alex Cross? I call it the John Carter Effect. For a 100 years, writers and directors were stealing from Burroughs because they could, mostly due to the fact that bringing John Carter of Mars to the screen required a huge leap in technology. While we have had that technology for the last 20 years, and it's only gotten better. What happened, though, was by the time Disney got around to making John Carter, people who watched it were saying, "hey, we've seen this story before" (and, perhaps burned by Avatar, another film that looked pretty with technology but had its story stolen from Dances with Wolves, people and critics abandoned it). And while the visual effects were impressive, the story failed because it's premise, it's action set pieces and what not, had been cannibalized by writers and directors for 100 years!!

So when I watched this trailer, my initial reaction (beyond the miscasting of Tyler Perry; what Idris Elba was not even considered here?) was Alex Cross resembled an expanded episode of Criminal Minds or CSI (and to some extent as well, Law & Order). 

Again, have we not seen this before?

The reason people go to movies is to see a great film, one where the writing, the acting, the direction and the production design all work in harmony. But when you do films like this, taking a pulp fiction book like these James Patterson "written" novels, and then make it in the most pedestrian sort of way (what's with the poor CGI explosion), without even trying to make it stand-out from the rest is criminal to me.

I ask why should I watch Tyler Perry prance through a tired old TV script that every procedural on the idiot box has done over and over for the last 2 decades? 

And getting back to Elba, did not the studio or the producers even think of approaching him, or did they go with the cheaper Madea actor because he appeals already to a certain demographic? Or if they did get in contact with him, did the Luthor actor realize it was pretty stupid and declined?

The simple moral is this: If you're going to bring a novel series to the screen such as John Carter or the Alex Cross franchise, do it as quickly as possible. TV shows that cover the same ground in the Alex Cross series have been stealing your plots for 20 years. 

And remember: what makes a movie or TV series successful always starts with the script. 

'JP IV' moving again?; 'Chucky's' back; Daleks in 'Ayslum' & Lange a nun?

Is Universal Pictures finally moving forward with a fourth Jurassic Park film? For 10 years now, Universal has kept their biggest franchise in developmental hell with various writers attached including Oscar winner William Monahan (The Departed) and John Sayles. Plus the deaths of original novel author Michael Crichton and creature designer Stan Winston seemed to stall the project as well. Back in 2011, Mark Protosevich was the latest writer brought in, but that went nowhere. Now the latest news is that Universal has brought in Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, who wrote the hugely successful Rise of the Planet of the Apes, to now pen Jurassic Park IV. Joe Johnston seems to still be attached to direct, while it will be produced by Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy. 

 

While the first Child’s Play movie was not the most perfect of films, yet there was some attempt at making it somewhat entertaining. Eventually, four sequels would follow, and the franchise de-evolved into one silly premise after another, becoming campy and not even scary.  MGM seemed to put the franchise to bed back in 2004 with the release of Seed of Chucky. But like any property a studio owns that is no longer generating a cash flow, rumors surfaced in March that the studio was considering another stab at the series, possibly rebooting it completely. While that rumor was eventually squashed, it now seems that Universal Home Entertainment is moving forward with a direct-to-DVD sequel called Curse of Chucky. Dan Mancini, who wrote all the Child’s Play movies, and directed the last film in 2004, will write, produce and direct the newest installment.  The plot involves Chucky arriving to “wreak havoc within a family that’s regrouped for a funeral. In the wake of her mother’s passing, a young woman – in a wheelchair since birth – is forced to put up with her sister, brother-in-law, niece and their nanny as they say their goodbyes to mother. When people start turning up dead, the fearless Nica discovers the culprit might be a “strange doll” she was sent a couple of days earlier.” According to Universal Home Entertainment, the plan is to return the franchise to its darker roots, with the camp toned down considerably to enable the franchise to become (somewhat) scary again. As expected, Brad Dourif will be return to supply the voice of the titular knife-wielder killer, but no other casting has been announced. 

It’s been officially confirmed that the seven season opener of Doctor Who will be called Asylum of the Daleks. The highly-anticipated episode will be screened on August 14 at the BFI Southbank in London ahead of its rumored premiere at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. No official announcement has yet been made regarding the official air date of the series.

American Horror Story writer Tim Minear has given a bit of insight into the anthology series second season. We know that that Jessica Lange will star as an administrator at a 1960s-era, East Coast mental institution and will spar with Zachary Quinto, who will be overseeing patients played by Maroon Five frontman Adam Levine and Chloë Sevigny. It’s also known she’ll become entangled in a May-December romance with her supervisor, played by Joseph Fiennes. Now Minear confirmed that Lange’s character is actually a nun - or as Minear puts it, "a bride of Christ.” Well, at least it won’t piss off the Catholic too much, right?

Caroline John 1940-2012

Caroline John may not have been the most popular Doctor Who companion, but the template in which she created help the Doctor’s companions become less screaming females in distress as it progressed during its original run. John, who was 71, died on June 5th; however word of her passing was not released to the press by her family until after her funeral on June 20. Cause of death was not released. Caroline John joined Doctor Who for its seventh season, becoming the newly regenerated Third Doctor’s first companion in 1970. As Elizabeth Shaw she was unlike many of the preceding female companions of the Doctor, as Shaw was a doctor of science and understood much of the Time Lords technobabble. Sadly, it was that strength that became the characters downfall –the conceit of the companions was to ask the Doctor a lot of questions. But because Shaw and the Doctor were talking on equal levels, he seemed to respect her, which for most of the early series seemed out of place –the Doctor had a tendency to be patronizing to them. Producer Barry Letts (who came on after the first serial of season seven) recognized this, and her contract was not renewed for season 8. Still, when the late Elizabeth Sladen joined Doctor Who in Pertwee’s last season as Sarah Jane Smith, much of the DNA that John brought to Elizabeth Shaw was sewed into Sarah Jane, including her independence and intelligence. So while Sladen brought a breath of fresh air to the companions, their beginnings started with Caroline John. Like many former companions, she never fully left Doctor Who. She returned to the role in 1983’s The Five Doctors and appeared in the Dimensions in Time charity special, as well as various Big Finish audio productions and a little known 4 episode series called P.R.O.B.E. created by Mark Gatiss in the mid 1990's. Watching that show on Youtube, and you can possibly see the early beginnings of Torchwood. The actress was married to Geoffrey Beevers, who many fans know helped resurrect The Master back in 1981 serial, The Keeper of Traken.

Casting 'Mockingbird', 'Snow Crash', 'The Alchemyst'

Bryan Fuller is bringing one of regular actors to Mockingbird Lane. Veteran character actor Beth Grant, who played nosy neighbor Marianne Marie Beattle on Fuller’s Wonderfalls and then brought the character over to his Pushing Daises series, will have a recurring role on The Munster’s reboot as the wheelchair bound neighborhood busybody, Maryanne. Apparently, this Maryanne is very suspicious of her creepy new neighbors. 

Director Joe Cornish, who wowed critics with his low budget alien invasion film Attack the Block, has scored a major follow-up prize -the long in development version of Neal Stephenson’s 1992 classic novel Snow Crash. The long-time Steven Spielberg producer Kathleen Kennedy (who has been tapped to take over the CEO reigns of Lucasfilm now that George is retiring) has drafted Cornish to write and direct the film for problem-plagued Paramount Pictures.  Snow Crash follows Hiro Protagonist as he investigates the effects of a mysterious virus called "Snow Crash" through both real and virtual worlds in a near future dominated by corporations and organized crime. The novel's development history goes all the way back to its publication, when Kennedy first picked it up for Paramount. The studio eventually dropped the project, and Kennedy took it to Disney, where it went stagnant. 

 

 

The popular young-adult fantasy novel series by Michael Scott, The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, will be heading to the big screen as Lawless Entertainment will partner with the Australian based AMPCO Films to adapt the first novel in the six-book series, The Alchemyst. Scott will adapt his own book, though no director has been announced. Production, however, is scheduled to begin in February in Australia and New Zealand. No distributor has picked it up, either.

 Deadline is reporting that Gaumont International Television and producer Martha De Laurentiis are looking to adapt the 1968 cult film Barbarella into a TV series. Martha, and her husband, Dino De Laurentiis -who produced the original film- acquired the property back in 2007 and was working on a remake before his death in 2010. Gaumont International Television is a French based company that launched a small office in Los Angeles back in the fall of last year, who are also behind Bryan Fuller’s 2013 midseason drama for NBC, Hannibal. 

 

 Veteran character actor Richard Lynch, who for more than 40 years played villains in many horror and science fiction films, along with many TV series appearances, died June 19 in Palm Springs. The actor was 76, though no word was released on what he died of. During the late 70’s and 1980’s he played many bad guys, mostly in science fiction shows like Battlestar Galactica (Gun on Ice Planet Zero), Galactica 1980 (Galactica Discovers Earth), Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century (Vegas in Space) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (Gambit). Other appearances on TV included Blue Thunder, Charlie’s Angels, Airwolf, Highlander. His movie roles included the films The Sword and the Sorcerer, Alligator II: The Mutation, The Seven-Ups, Vampire, Trancers II, Puppet Master III, the remake of Halloween (2007) and this year’s Rob Zombie film The Lords of Salem.