Mormon Fundamentalism Finally Defeated
After all these years, we've finally done it. Also today: Tom Cruise has taken up with ghosts, Grace's best friend/property gets a new show, a blogger gets a TV show (ugh), and some movie casting.
TNT is taking another crack at Eric McCormack, the man what played Will on the Happy Homo Hour all them years ago. This new pilot (McCormack's third with the network, after Imperfect Union and Trust Me — "Three tries, Eric? I dunno, this seems like an imperfect union." "No, come on TNT, trust me!") is called Perception, and is about a nerdy neuroscientist who teams up with the government to solve crimes. Oh, one of those. I'm sorry, isn't The Mentalist that exact show? Except it's not a neuroscientist, it's a strangely addled transgendered man? Other than those details, same show. Ah well. I wish him luck. Maybe Sean Hayes will guest star as a particularly flamboyant corpse. That'd be fun. [THR]
It's a cold day in Utah, folks. HBO and the show's producers have agreed to end their show Big Love after the upcoming fifth season. Boo? I don't know! I don't know how I feel about this. I love the show. The third season was spectacular, but the fourth season was decidedly not. I think mostly I'm sad because it means that Jeanne Tripplehorn only has one more shot of winning her much-deserved Emmy. But otherwise it's probably for the best that they wrap things up in a tidy manner and that's that. It's been a good run! A good, vaguely creepy run. And hey, if they wanted to do a whole spin-off about Bill's half-brother who got cast out of Juniper Creek and was forced to hustle on the streets of SLC, well, hey, I wouldn't stop 'em. [Variety]
Oh, brother. So HBO gets rid of Big Love, and Showtime picks up a show based on a blog. Guhhh. They're developing a show based on the blog ImBoyCrazy, about a single girl in LA being a single girl. Neat show idea! The blog's creator, Alexi Wasser, will star in the series and is co-creating it with a writer from Californication. So basically Ughhh all over place. Good for people getting TV shows, that's really great and all, but boo for things about single girls dating on blogs. Right? Boo for that? [Deadline]
Gosh it's just a busy TV day today. Saturday Night Live has announced their next two hosts, slated to go on in November. Scarlett Johansson will make her third appearance on the show, and Anne Hathaway will make her second. Huh. It's almost as if they like putting pretty women on their television program. Anyhoo, maybe ScarJo will do her "Look at this one, look at that one, and that one..." routine, and maybe Hathaway will do another Lawrence Welk weird deformed sister thing. We'll see, I guess. [EW]
If you were entrusted with rebooting a once-successful, now struggling movie franchise, making it hip and exciting again, and you had to come up with a title for it, what title would it be? Specifically, if you were coming up with the title for Mission: Impossible 4, what might it be? Well, OK, I'll make the question easier. If you were coming up with the title for make-it-or-break-it movie Mission: Impossible 4, do you think the title you ended up with would be Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol? I should hope not. Ghost Protocol. Ghosts have protocol for dealing with various ghostly matters. Also, I don't know if there's a second colon in that title? If there's not, then they're saying that the mission is to follow impossible ghost protocol. "God, these ghost bylaws and traditions are just so strange and complicated! They're impossible to follow. Stupid ghosts." Ghost Protocol, guys. Get into it. [Deadline]
That Tower Heist movie keeps adding cast members. The latest to sign on is Casey Affleck, who will be playing a friend and coworker of Ben Stiller's frustrated building manager who decides to rob an evil Madoff-type. Only Affleck's character doesn't want to rob anyone and wants to turn in the crew. Conflict! I dunno. The more I read about this movie the weirder it sounds. There are just so many damn people in it. Judd Hirsch joined the cast too. What are they all gonna do??? [THR]