CBS has announced their lineup for the fall 2012/2013 season. There are some time slot shifts, but a fairly low amount of new shows, which is a luxury you have when you’re the highest rated network currently.

(New shows are in bold)
MONDAY
8:00-8:30 PM   HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER
8:30-9:00 PM   PARTNERS
9:00-9:30 PM   2 BROKE GIRLS
9:30-10:00 PM   MIKE & MOLLY
10:00-11:00 PM HAWAII FIVE-0

TUESDAY
8:00-9:00 PM   NCIS
9:00-10:00 PM   NCIS: LOS ANGELES
10:00-11:00 PM VEGAS

WEDNESDAY
8:00-9:00 PM   SURVIVOR
9:00-10:00 PM  CRIMINAL MINDS
10:00-11:00 PM  CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION

THURSDAY
8:00-8:30 PM    THE BIG BANG THEORY
8:30-9:00 PM    TWO AND A HALF MEN
9:00-10:00 PM   PERSON OF INTEREST
10:00-11:00 PM  ELEMENTARY

FRIDAY
8:00-9:00 PM    CSI: NY
9:00-10:00 PM   MADE IN JERSEY
10:00-11:00 PM  BLUE BLOODS

SATURDAY
8:00-9:00 PM    CRIMETIME SATURDAY
9:00-10:00 PM   CRIMETIME SATURDAY
10:00-11:00 PM  48 HOURS MYSTERY

SUNDAY
7:00-8:00 PM    60 MINUTES
8:00-9:00 PM    THE AMAZING RACE
9:00-10:00 PM   THE GOOD WIFE
10:00-11:00 PM THE MENTALIST
Show descriptions at the “Continue Reading” link
Continue Reading ->

It’s time for ABC to do their presentation for the 2012/2013 season.

(New shows are in bold)

MONDAY
8/7c Dancing With the Stars/The Bachelor (in January)
10 pm Castle

TUESDAY
8 pm DWTS Results
9 Happy Endings
9:30 pm Don’t Trust the B—– In Apartment 23
10 pm Private Practice
In January
8 pm HOW TO LIVE WITH YOUR PARENTS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
8:30 THE FAMILY TOOLS

WEDNESDAY
8 pm The Middle
8:30 pm Suburgatory
9 pm Modern Family
9:30 THE NEIGHBORS
10 pm NASHVILLE

THURSDAY
8 pm LAST RESORT
9 pm Grey’s Anatomy
10 pm Scandal

FRIDAY
8 pm Shark Tank
9 pm Primetime: What Would You Do?
10 pm 20/20
In November
8 pm Last Man Standing
8:30 pm MALIBU COUNTRY
9 pm Shark Tank
10 pm Primetime: What Would You Do?

SATURDAY
8 pm Saturday Night College Football

SUNDAY
7 America’s Funniest Home Videos
8 pm Once Upon a Time
9 pm Revenge
10 pm 666 PARK AVENUE

Show descriptions at the “Continue Reading” link
Continue Reading ->

The Fox schedule for the 2011/2012 season is out, and not a whole lot is changing from this year.

New shows are in bold.

MONDAY
8:00-9:00 PM BONES
9:00-10:00 PM  THE MOB DOCTOR - THE FOLLOWING joins in midseason.

TUESDAY
8:00-8:30 PM RAISING HOPE
8:30-9:00 PM  BEN AND KATE
9:00-9:30 PM NEW GIRL
9:30-10:00 PM THE MINDY PROJECT
THE GOODWIN GAMES joins in midseason.

WEDNESDAY
8:00-10:00 PM THE X FACTOR (fall) / AMERICAN IDOL (midseason)

THURSDAY
8:00-9:00 PM THE X FACTOR Results (fall) / AMERICAN IDOL Results (midseason)
9:00-10:00 PM GLEE

FRIDAY
8:00-9:00 PM TOUCH
9:00-10:00 PM  FRINGE (fall)
HELL’S KITCHEN returns in midseason.

SATURDAY
7:00-10:30 PM FOX SPORTS SATURDAY (fall)
COPS returns in midseason.
ANIMATION DOMINATION HIGH-DEF will join late-prime in 2013.

SUNDAY
7:00-7:30 PM NFL Game (fall) / ANIMATION DOMINATION (encores)
7:30-8:00 PM THE OT (fall) / THE CLEVELAND SHOW
8:00-8:30 PM THE SIMPSONS
8:30-9:00 PM BOB’S BURGERS
9:00-9:30 PM FAMILY GUY
9:30-10:00 PM AMERICAN DAD

Show descriptions at the “Continue Reading” link

Continue Reading ->

Even in its second weekend, The Avengers continues to dominate the records.

Following its $207.3 million first weekend, pundits began to wonder what The Avengers could do in its second weekend.  No film had ever done more than 75 million in a second outing, and no comic book film has ever lost as little as 50%.  Well, this one did both.  Falling 50.3%, the film brought in another $103 million, bringing its domestic total to $373.1 million in just 10 days.  Combined with it’s foreign box office results, it is has pushed past the $1 billion benchmark in just 19 days.  It now looks set to breeze past $500 million domestic.

Coming in a very distant second was Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows with an anemic $28.8 million.  Combined with a traditionally soft weekend and The Avengers to deal with, this film had next to no chance, even with Johnny Depp in the lead role.

Third place went to Think Like a Man with another $6.3 million to add to its tally.  With a $12 million dollar budget and $81 million at the box office already, this film is making some executives very happy.

The Hunger Games continues to hold on with another $4.4 million which was enough to secure it a fourth place finish.

Rounding out the top five was The Lucky One with another $4 million.

Wednesday will see Sascha Baron Cohen’s The Dictator opening wide, and Friday will see What to Expect When You’re Expecting and Battleship will take their respective bows nationwide. As The Avengers has already over performed by leaps and bounds, some analysts are already calling next weekend a threepeat with the numbers for all of the movies opening being adjusted downwards for their opening tallies.  We’ll have to wait and see what happens, but I can’t say I disagree with those assessments.

NBC has announced its 2012/2013 schedule, and it’s making a lot of changes this year with a heavier focus on comedy.

NBC FALL 2012-13 SCHEDULE

(New programs in UPPER CASE)

MONDAY

8-10 p.m. – “The Voice”

10-11 p.m. – “REVOLUTION”

TUESDAY

8-9 p.m. –“The Voice”

9-9:30 p.m. – “GO ON”

9:30-10 p.m. – “THE NEW NORMAL”

10-11 p.m. – “Parenthood”

WEDNESDAY

8-8:30 p.m. – “ANIMAL PRACTICE”

8:30-9 p.m. – “GUYS WITH KIDS”

9-10 p.m. – “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”

10-11 p.m. – “CHICAGO FIRE”

THURSDAY

8-8:30 p.m. – “30 Rock”

8:30-9 p.m. – “Up All Night”

9-9:30 p.m. – “The Office”

9:30-10 p.m. – “Parks and Recreation”

10-11 p.m. – “Rock Center with Brian Williams”

FRIDAY

8-8:30 p.m. – “Whitney”

8:30-9 p.m. – “Community”

9-10 p.m. – “Grimm”

10-11 p.m. – “Dateline NBC”

SATURDAY

Encore programming

SUNDAY (Fall 2012)

7- 8:15 p.m. — “Football Night in America”

8:15-11:30 p.m. — “NBC Sunday Night Football”

SUNDAY (Post-football/Winter 2013)

7-8 p.m. – “Dateline NBC”

8-9 p.m. – “Fashion Star”

9-10 p.m. – “The Celebrity Apprentice”

10-11 p.m. – “DO NO HARM”

Show descriptions at the “Continue Reading” link

Continue Reading ->

In the past week, 15 shows have met the chopping block.

The week before the network upfront presentations is usually filled with flowers and love as shows pick up renewals for the coming season.  This year, the axe has swung hard and 15 shows met an early demise.  By comparison, last year only three shows went out to pasture the week before the uppresentations.

What in the world happened?

To be fair, a couple of the shows – Pan Am for instance – were a foregone conclusion, but that still didn’t stop this week from looking like a massacre.  Shows that met their demise just this week include:

• Alcatraz (Fox)
• Are You There, Chelsea? (NBC)
• Awake (NBC)
• Bent (NBC)
• Best Friends Forever (NBC)
• Breaking In (Fox)
• The Finder (Fox)
• GCB (ABC)
• Harry’s Law (NBC)
• I Hate My Teenage Daughter (Fox)
• Missing (ABC)
• Pan Am (ABC)
• Ringer (CW)
• The River (ABC)
• The Secret Circle (CW)

The scary thing is, more cancellations are expected in the coming days.  CSI: Miami and CSI: NY are both on the edge with the latter looking like a given at this point.  Although, it was revealed last week that all three versions of the show are the most watched shows in the world, so who knows what will happen.

What’s worth noting here is that only two of the shows that got chopped were older than a season (Breaking In and Harry’s Law), all the rest were freshman series.  And a lot of them share some common problems.  Going back to my breakdown of the new shows from last May, here is what I had to say about Missing:

Sean’s take: I like Ashley Judd, but this, like so many shows last season, sounds like the plot of a limited series or a movie, not a full-blown series.  They will keep it interesting by just teasing the heck out of the audience, and that quickly get boring.

And The River:

Sean’s take: Wow … I think I fell asleep reading the description.

The networks are so desperate for anything to hit in this age of hundreds of channels that they are throwing everything at the wall that they can to see what sticks.  They are taking concepts that are at best a six to 12 episode limited run and attempting to stretch them into 22 episodes just to get them through one season let alone multiple ones.

With this many shows having gone off the air, we are going to be faced with a ton of new programming.  ABC has already picked up at least six new shows, and the early breakdowns don’t sound promising to me.

Network television needs to be fixed, and it needs to be fixed quickly.  Chuck the 22 episode season and go with shorter, more focused ideas.  It works pretty much everywhere else in the world, and it works for a slew of cable shows.  Break the year into three segments (fall, spring and summer) with 13 episode runs per time area.  Yes, this equals 39 weeks, but it gives you breathing room for holidays, and the winter is pretty much a wasteland of reruns anyway.

Perhaps if the networks would go with something like this, we wouldn’t see another block of 15 shows get killed off in the span of five days.

In a not so surprising move, The CW announced today that it is taking Arrow to series.

It was announced back in January that The CW was ordering up a pilot entitled Arrow which would be based on the Green Arrow from DC Comics.  Not too long after that a casting sheet leaked out that pretty much convinced me that once again the network was going to mess this up just as it had with Smallville.

Well, never fear, it was announced today that The CW has ordered the pilot to series according to TV Line, so now we can all enjoy in the pain.  At the same time the network also picked up it’s re-imagining of Beauty and the Beast as well as the Sex and the City prequel The Carrie Diaries, so apparently the network just wants to annoy as many fan bases as possible in one season.

Seeing as The CW canceled The Secret Circle and Ringer today, but renewed Nikita, it looks like you can expect these new shows to air sometime between Monday and Thursday as Friday is full and it doesn’t run original content on the weekends.

A lot of shows have been canceled and renwed in the past couple days, so you may want to take a look at the constantly updating Which TV Shows are Canceled and Renewed for 2012/2013 post again.

[via TV Line]

Gangster Squad has released it’s first trailer, and I have to say that I’m shocked at how intrigued I am by it.

I’m not a fan of Sean Penn. Never have been, probably never will be. I’m also not big on Ryan Gosling. I do, however, like Emma Stone, Josh Brolin and Giovanni Ribisi. Mixing all of them together in a movie I’ve heard next to nothing about seems like a recipe for disaster, but I’m also a sucker for the 1940′s.

As of yet Gangster Squad doesn’t have a release date, but the trailer out, and it definitely grabbed my attention.

Will it suck? Probably. For now, though, color me intrigued.

And in case you were wondering who everyone in the trailer was:

• Ryan Gosling as Sgt. Jerry Wooters
• Emma Stone as Grace Faraday
• Sean Penn as Mickey Cohen
• Josh Brolin as John O’Mara
• Anthony Mackie as Rocky Washington
• Giovanni Ribisi as Conway Keeler
• Robert Patrick as Max Kennard
• Josh Pence as Darryl Gates
• Frank Grillo as Jimmy Reagan
• Mireille Enos as Connie O’Mara
• Michael Peña as Navidad Ramirez[8]
• Nick Nolte as Bill Parker[9]
• James Hébert as Mitch Racine
• Maxwell Perry Cotton as Charlie
• Lucy Walsh as Manicurist
• Troy Garity as One-Eyed Assassin
• James Carpinello as Johnny Stompanato

Universal looks set to announce it’s moving ahead on Kick-Ass 2, and filming may kick off as soon as August.

According to sources speaking with Deadline, Universal has picked up the rights to Kick-Ass from Lionsgate and plans to move full-speed ahead on a sequel to the cult hit.  New deals will need to be struck with the characters who played the three surviving characters: Aaron Johnson (Dave/Kick-Ass), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Chris/Red Mist) and Chloe Moretz (Mindy/Hit-Girl).  It will be Moretz that may pose the most issues as she has aged quite a bit since the original and has become quite the in-demand actress since the original film.  (Mainly because she stole the film.)

Matthew Vaughn who directed the original is committed to the X-Men: First Class sequel, so he would be unavailable when it came time to film.  He, however, has supposedly given his blessing to new director Jeff Wadlow who has also penned the script.

The original film was made for $30 million and grossed $48 million domestic and $48 million foreign for a $96 million worldwide gross.  While it didn’t make a huge return on its theatrical run, it has gone on to do well on home video and build up a cult following.  In a lot of cases such as this, the sequel will perform better than original as people who got acquainted with the original via home viewings wil go out to see the follow-up.  Will it be a giant hit?  Nope.  Will I be thrilled to get a sequel?  While I loved the original, it had its issues (I still can’t get over that jet pack), but I would gladly plopped down my money for another outing with Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl.

[via Deadline]

A former Florida teacher has been arrested over accusations that she had sex with an underage student during the school day in a closet attached to her classroom.

According to police reports, Kacy Christine Wilson, 28, was taken into custody last week over allegations she had sex with a 16-year-old student.  Supposedly Ms. Wilson called the student out of another class at Osceola High School under the guise that he had left something in her room when he left class.  The student, who has since confirmed the event, claims that upon entering the room she slammed him against a wall and began to make out with him.  As the incident progressed she moved them into a closet attached to her room and proceeded to have sexual intercourse with him.

The allegations first arose last October when an anonymous letter to the school leveled accusations that Ms. Wilson had engaged in sexual relations with multiple students.  The letter was turned over to the authorities for investigation, but when she was confronted with the information she refuted the claims, resigned her position and moved to Colorado.

Up until recently the student had not confirmed the claims, but on April 20 he officially went on record with everything that had happened.  He went to the police and confirmed the original allegations and also provided them with topless photos Wilson had recently texted to him.

Wilson was arrested in Salida, Colorado and extradited to Osceola County where she is now in jail with her bond set at $85,000.

[Thanks to Jo for the tip]

Don’t even try to act surprised that that it won the weekend.

Not only did The Avengers take first place this weekend, but it absolutely trounced a number of records in the process:

• Biggest opening weekend
•  Biggest Weekend
•  Fastest to $200 million
•  Biggest midnight opening for a superhero movie
•  Biggest Saturday
•  Biggest Sunday

Basically it just broke every record it could and broung in a cool $200.3 million. Combined with its foreign take, the film has already bypassed $641.8 million in worldwide gross making it the number one film for Marvel. Domestically it has already passed The Incredible Hulk, Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor, and has only Iron Man 2 and Iron Man to pass.

Considering the rave reviews and good word of mouth already going around, I won’t be too surprised to see a $100 million second weekend.

Coming in a very distant second place was Think Like a Man $8 million.

The Hunger Games held on to third place with another $5.7 million. This movie just keeps bringing the folks in and it makes you wonder just how well the sequels will do.

Fourth place went to The Lucky One with another $5.51 million.

The kid-friendly The Pirates! Band of Misfits fell from second to fifth with $5.4 million.

As every studio was smart enough to not take on The Avengers, there were no other big releases this weekend.  Next weekend will see the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp Dark Shadows project hit the screens, and as much as I like it when these guys work together, the commercials and trailers just aren’t getting me that amped up for this.  I’m thinking they’re going to wish they had put a bit more distance between themselves and The Avengers.

If you’ve seen The Avengers, you’ve seen the end credits scene with the purple guy. If you haven’t seen it yet, just move on to another post on this blog.

During the credits for The Avengers there is a scene that takes place between the leader of the alien army and a mysterious purple guy in armor.  If you aren’t a comic reader you have no clue who this is, but to those of us who have read Marvel comics for any length of time will immediately shout, “THANOS!”

First appearing in Iron Man #55 in 1973, Thanos has gone from an oddball villain to “The Mad Titan” who ended up killing off half the universe and pretty much every hero of Earth in the 1991 limited series, The Infinity Gauntlet.  Since that time he has been a bit more ambiguous as to what his motivations are, but suffice to say it appears he’s going to be a major pain-in-the-behind for the Marvel cinematic universe.

Born on Saturn’s moon of Titan, Thanos belongs to a race known as the Eternals.  While most of them appear human, Thanos was born with the Deviant gene which makes him look like the Eternals cousin race, you guessed it, the Deviants.  (Hey, Marvel wasn’t known for being overly original in the 1970′s and 80′s …)  Due to not looking like his race, he became secluded and fascinated by the darker things in life, eventually falling in love with Mistress Death, the embodiment of death in the Marvel Universe.  After going completely mad and slaughtering nearly all of the other Titans, he eventually launched on a crusade to impress Mistress Death so she would fall madly in love with him.

Thanos set out to collect the six Infinity Gems, also known as Soul Gems.  The six each represented a different aspect of reality: Time, Space, Soul, Mind, Reality and Power.  He combined the six gems on to what was dubbed the Infinity Gauntlet and with a wave of his hand wiped out half of the population of the universe.  Of course Earth’s heroes attempted to take him on, but they all met Mistress Death for their trouble.

When the true cosmic players of the universe finally got involved, they were able to get the gauntlet away from Thanos and undid all of the damage he had done, and the Mad Titan went to live on a farm on a desolate world.  He has shown up from time to time, but never in such a grandiose way.

So, what will the Marvel movies do with him?  Well, I think it’s fairly obvious this isn’t Farmer Thanos.  If they plan to introduce the Infinity Gauntlet, however is a different matter.  The glove was actually in the background of Thor in Odin’s armory.  Marvel even released an official photo of the prop that you can see at the bottom of this post. So the Gauntlet, while never mentioned, has been established as existing in the film continuity.

The question now is what Marvel plans to do with him.  As Thanos as obviously a big, huge bad, I can’t imagine him showing up in Iron Man 3 or Captain America 2.  As I suspect he will be picking up the gauntlet at some point, my suspicion is he will play a major part in Thor 2.   The only problem here is the release schedule actually goes Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Captain America 2 and then The Avengers 2.  So Marvel could mention the gauntlet has gone missing, then have Captain America talk to S.H.I.E.L.D. about it and … oh who knows, I’m sure there is a plan written down somewhere.

Any way you slice it, Thanos is here, and the Marvel cinematic universe is going to fell it down to its core.