· Attempting to keep vital a love affair they began back on the set of Gangs of New York, director Martin Scorcese and still-boyish muse Leonardo DiCaprio will reteam once again on Shutter Island, an adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel about a U.S. Marshal investigating the disappearance of a dangerous crazy lady in the 1950s. [Variety]
· ABC picks up the back nine episodes for this season of Pushing Daisies, bringing their order to a full 22 hours of beautifully shot, expensively produced whimsy. You know, unless the writers fulfill the networks' secret wish to wipe out the rest of the TV season. [THR]
· ABC's Samantha Who? posts another "solid" Nielsen performance on Monday night, while NBC's Heroes set a new series low. Also: Dancing with the Stars wins the night behind Marie Osmond's dramatic fainting spell, leading producers to plan a stunt in which Jennie Garth will suffer an orchestrated, on-camera ankle fracture on next week's show. [Variety]

The Z-List celebrity dance competition world was thrown for a loop yesterday when Marie Osmond collapsed on live TV following a performance on Dancing with the Stars: It was a shocking turn of events that elicited gasps from the audience, if not a few snickers of derision from overzealous competitors, at least one of whom was overheard to have said, "Geez, my mother died and yet I still managed to keep it together. Looks like the pressure's finally getting to someone. Team Seymour!" A round-up:
· Marie describes what it feels like to survive a post-Samba, nowhere-near-death experience: "I wasn't quite sure what was going on and then I saw everybody. I saw my kids, I saw TOM [BERGERON] and I think I said, 'Oh, crap!'" [ETOnline]
· Brother Donny helpfully speculates on some of the external factors that might have contributed to Marie's loss-of-consciousness! Health scare! Tragedy!: "Marie is touring, she has 8 children and went through a divorce." If we had 8 sets of crushed eyes staring down at us after falling off the reality TV gravy-train, we might say, "Oh, crap" too. [ETOnline]

· Finding The View to be an unacceptably highbrow discussion of topics of concern to the modern woman with the free time to watch TV during the day, Debi Mazar, Aida Turturro, and Karen Duffy are shopping around a "New Jersey take" on the format. [THR]
· As fleetingly exciting as it was when the studios dropped that residual-rollback proposal they never would have followed through on, the threat of a strike remains "high." Keep stockpiling those canned goods, everyone! [Variety]
· The CW's Online Nation earns the distinction of being the first new Fall show to be canceled. Somewhere, a trio of underachieving, modern-day Neanderthals breathe a sigh of relief that they've survived the initial round of network executions. [THR]

Once again, Internet billionaire Mark Cuban is safe for one more week on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." This one I didn't get — but then again, I didn't really understand why Yahoo paid $5.7 billion for Broadcast.com, either.

· The trades discuss yesterday's big strike news that's allowing Hollywood its first glimmer of hope that a walkout might be avoided. (Please, no one say anything about the internet and digital downloads and ruin the town's brief buzz.) Also, THR unveils its stunning, strike-related news logo (at left). [THR, Variety]
· You know who hasn't had an unfunny family sitcom for far too long? Damon Wayans! Don't worry, ABC is busy filling this gaping hole in its primetime lineup. [THR]

Even though yesterday's Hollywood Radio and TV Society luncheon and panel discussion has to be declared an overall disappointment because NBC perfect storm Ben Silverman and combative ABC president Steve McPherson, appearing together for the first time since McPherson challenged the network rival who took his best buddy's job to "be a man," failed to come to the blows the assembled journalists not-so-secretly hoped for, director/producer Barry Sonnenfeld did earn positive notices ("One of the HRTS' more lively moderators in recent memory!" raves Variety) for his hosting work at the event. THR compiles a greatest hits package of Sonnenfeld's attempts at comic relief:

Despite Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban's tenacity on Dancing With the Stars and his status as Silicon Valley demigod, he is not considered a "who's who" by Activision. He's been left out of the videogame publisher's Wii and PlayStation 2 titles based on the ABC show, which allows you to fulfill your most nerdly ballroom-dancing fantasies in the privacy of your own living room. But sadly, Cuban's hot-trotting shoes and puppeteer-spontaneous jazz-finger outbursts are not part of the package. Instead the adaptations stick you with the likes of Emmitt Smith and Joey Lawrence.

So far on Dancing with the Stars, Mark Cuban could do no wrong, as far as I was concerned. But last night's performance? A disaster all around. Slow and tepid dancing, and Cuban's expression, under caked-on makeup, looked like the Joker's frozen smile. Not even geek pride could get me to vote for this.

· The studios and networks are "outraged" with the WGA's strike rules, which AMPTP president Nick Counter says are "filled with threats of fines, punishment and blacklisting," and have threatened to sue the Guild if tries to interfere with its members' contractual delivery of all the rushed material they're trying to stockpile to help them survive a work stoppage. Unsurprisingly, the WGA has told the producers to invest the time they're spending worrying about its rules coming up with less ridiculous proposals. [Variety]
· A&E casts Benjamin Bratt as the lead in its pilot The Cleaner, instantly giving the project a legitimacy on the level of an average network series likely to be canceled after five poorly rated episodes. [THR]

· Ray director Taylor Hackford convinces "very busy" wife Helen Mirren and semi-retired actor Joe Pesci to star in Love Ranch, the heartwarming tale of the man who established Nevada's first legal brothel, his madam spouse, and the boxer gunned down by a bodyguard for his suspected sexual involvement with the aforementioned Mustang Ranch proprietress. [Variety]
· Justice League director George Miller is auditioning virtually every young actor in Hollywood (Adam Brody! Minka Kelly! Mary Elizabeth Winstead!) during a "marathon casting session" running through today, hoping that the cattle call will help him fill coveted parts like Superman, Batman, the Flash and Wonder Woman with talent cheap enough to stay together for several movies. [THR]
· Led Zeppelin is finally making their music available online, with the band's entire catalogue hitting the internets on November 13. Also: the "Black Dog" ringtone you've been wanting since you were sixteen will soon be made available. [Variety]
· CBS wins Sunday night after the Patriots-Cowboys game runs long, though ABC's Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters both put up better numbers than last week. [THR]
· Overseas moviegoers continue to delight in Pixar's animated story of a talented rat who saved a fading French bistro by flouting Paris's overly restrictive restaurant cleanliness laws. [Variety]

"ABC is the only major broadcast network that is using the staff of its evening newscast to produce a separate and distinct daily program for a Web audience," a New York Times feature reports today. Among the differences from the broadcast show: More casual correspondents, plus longer back-and-forths between anchor and reporter that would be cut to seven seconds on cable. But ABC's online clips are shackled by two Web video blunders.

· Showing a Baueresque level of self-sacrifice, Kiefer Sutherland takes one for his TV team, pleading out to 48 days of jail time that can be served on a two-stint schedule that won't interrupt the shooting of 24, even though he probably could have served fewer days if he'd opted for a consecutive sentence. If eighteen months of being tortured by the Chinese couldn't break him, seven weeks should be a breeze. [THR]
· After putting up "solid" premiere numbers, ABC's bold Cavemen experiment falters, dropping off 25 percent in its second week. Enjoy your lovable, squash-playing, Swedish-furniture-hawking Neanderthals while you still can. [Variety]

Mark Cuban is safe for another week on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." From his grim expression, though, you'd think he was all but convinced he was off the show — note how it takes a few seconds for his win to register. Kym Johnson, his dancing partner, also seems shocked by the voters' choice.

From the tone of his blog post yesterday, I was prepared to see Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban fall down on the dance floor, writhing in pain as his career on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" went up in flame. Instead, the Web's ultimate good-time Charlie kept jazz-handing his way through the number, smiling all the while. Was he hopped up on hardcore pain medication endorphins or what? Still, a lesson for every startup founder: Set expectations low, and then exceed them.

· Hollywood Out Of Ideas, Feature-to-TV Recycling Edition: Demonstrating a company-wide commitment to reducing its new-idea-footprint, NBC Universal's USA Network plans a TV series based on Thank You for Smoking, while its NBC flagship will try to adapt Outsourced into a primetime workplace comedy. [Variety, Variety]
· If this doesn't stoke your interest in the upcoming Ashton Kutcher/Carmeon Diaz comedy What Happens in Vegas... (not to be confused with the recently announced, Kutcher-free Dude, Where's My Groom?) nothing will: Queen Latifah has signed on for a cameo so hilarious that if the details of her participation were to escape, the entire project would be doomed to turnaround. [THR]
· Just in case you hadn't heard, last week's WGA contract talks weren't as friendly as they could have been. [Variety]
· NBC wins Sunday night behind its Packers-Bears football game, beating lineups from ABC and CBS that dropped off from last week's numbers. [THR]
· While American moviegoers largely shunned this weekend's offerings, overseas ticket-buyers turned out for Rataouille to the the tune of $19.7 million. [Variety]

Internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban warns viewers that, well, he's going to suck tonight on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars," thanks to a recent hip-replacement surgery that left the muscles of one leg weak. That's okay, Mark — from the very beginning, every vote for you was already a sympathy vote.

Loudmouth Internet billionaire Mark Cuban thanks the "Nerd Hard" [sic] for keeping him on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" for one more week. You're welcome, Mark. And, um, thanks for noticing, I think. [Blog Maverick]

Guessing incorrectly that Filipino Desperate Housewives fans would find a tossed-off reference about the inadequacy of medical education in the Philippines* uproarious good fun, ABC was forced to apologize for its insensitivity in airing the joke after outraged viewers lit up the network's switchboards and an online petition (internet activism really does work, even if it failed to free Paris Hilton from her unjust imprisonment) drew the e-signatures of 30,000 individuals better informed about the quality of the nation's health care system. The offending dialogue and commentary from the man who started the petition follow:

As it turns out, ABC knew exactly what it was doing when it decided not to let the media get an advance look at the Cavemen premiere, a strategy that forestalled the show's critical bludgeoning until after it aired. [Metacritic]

With a controversy-shy ABC having retooled all of the potentially inflammatory, racial-allegory material out of the version of Cavemen that finally debuted last night, the show was forced to generate edgy laughs by having its put-upon Neanderthals participate in activities for which primitive Man would seem hilariously ill-suited, like selling futons at a fictionalized Ikea, participating in a round of Wii golf following a shopping spree, and playing squash in country club-quality outfits that would cause them to surrender whatever small amount of cave-cred they had left. We'll let you be the judge of how effective they were in the squash scene, but we'll admit that by the fifth or so time we had to listen to the Andy and Joel characters whine about their relationships, we thought we were just watching a version of Tell Me You Love Me with more unsightly body hair and less fucking.