We are now a full week into season eight of Big Brother. We’re still figuring people out and finding out who has game and who doesn’t. When I left you last week, Kail had won HOH. She ended up nominating Carol and Amber for eviction. Her reasoning was that she didn’t want to make people mad in the first week so she picked the two that were eliminated first in the HOH competition. It’s true that you don’t want to make people mad in the first week and that is why I would never try and win the first HOH. Daniele won the veto competition and chose not to use it leaving the nominations as they were. Tonight’s episode saw the first eviction of the season. Carol was sent home on a 10-1 vote. Eric also voted America’s vote on who to evict which was also Carol. Apparently, I was in the minority as I voted for Eric to evict Amber. Nothing against Amber but I liked Carol. From a game point of view, that was probably best for Carol to be voted out. Carol has been noticeably uncomfortable on the live feeds all week and the cameras were just creeping her out. I don’t know if she was really into this game at all and from what I understand, Jessica signed up for Big Brother and Carol was sought out to be the rival. Did you notice that Carol was trying to take the high road when Julie talked to her about Jessica? She tried her best to not bad mouth her. That was until they showed her the clip of Jessica from a previous episode. Carol just decided to forget it and let her feelings be known. HOH competition was held. Jen won the HOH. I fully expect Dick to be nominated as he has called her out on several things with him not liking her attitude. Other thoughts from tonight and the week of episodes. I found it interesting just how disappointed that Eric’s family and friends were to learn that he was America’s Player. Wow, they were not happy with that at all. I see their point of view where it does seem like he can’t play his own game with having to listen to America. It’s nice to see that he is such a fan of the show and knows so much about it. Actually, he doesn’t have to listen to America from what I understand but he doesn’t win any money if he doesn’t do the stuff?? We’ll have to see how that alliance goes of Kail and the guys. Jameka hasn’t been featured hardly at all in the episodes this week. I have seen a lot of tears over the years in the Big Brother house but never have I seen a houseguest cry over their profile picture!! Are you kidding me??!! The houseguests looked at the picture wall for the first time and Jen looked at her picture and hated it. She then covered it and wouldn’t let anyone see it including her beginning to cry over it. Then, she was crying in the diary room over it as well. Can you imagine her crying when something major goes down in the Big Brother house against her?
Movie box office numbers for last weekend. It should be pointed out that Transformers made a lot more money than what the weekend tally shows as its opening stretched over a full week instead of just the weekend. 1. Transformers – $67.6 million. 2. Ratatouille – $29.0 million. 3. Live Free or Die Hard – $17.4 million. 4. License To Wed – $10.4 million. 5. Evan Almighty – $8.1 million. 6. 1408 – $7.1 million. 7. Knocked Up – $5.2 million. 8. Fantastic Four – $4.2 million. 9. Sicko – $3.7 million. 10. Ocean’s Thirteen – $3.5 million.
Transformers set the record for the highest July 4th box office ever taking in $29.1 million on that day. The previous record was Spider Man 2 in 2004 which was $22 million. I already mentioned in last week’s Wrap Up that it set the record for the highest box office total ever for a Tuesday bringing in $27.4 million beating the previous record by a lot. It also set the record for the highest debuting week for a non sequel movie with $152.5 million topping 2002’s Spider Man. Spider Man was the previous leader with $151.6 million. One factor to throw into that is that although Transformers made more money, the ticket prices are higher than they were in 2002 with Spider Man. So, Spider Man actually had more people watching but made less cause of the increase in ticket prices since then. The movie is said to have already made $277 million worldwide. WOW.
I know I promised my thoughts on Transformers this week as far as getting into spoilers but I’m going to hold off until next week. One, I haven’t had the chance to finish typing that up today. Two, it gives everyone another week to see it. I will say this though, I have gotten emails and talked to several friends who have seen it and every one of them has raved about it. I thought it was an awesome movie and was very happy with it. This coming from an old school Transformers fan who was extremely nervous on how this movie was going to turn out. I’ll get into the story spoilers part next week. Go see it!!
There are more records being broken already this week as well. Here is the latest one involving the opening of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The movie was given a special midnight opening early Wednesday morning. The movie made an amazing $12 million with the midnight showings. This is the biggest Wednesday midnight opening ever which topped the opening of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King which had brought in $8 million in 2003. It didn’t however do the overall best midnight showing ever as it trailed others including the midnight showing of Star Wars: Episode 3 back in 2005 which did $16.5 million. Harry Potter did top the midnight showings of last week’s Transformers as Transformers did $8.8 million with its midnight showings. The movie also set the record for the biggest Wednesday opening ever taking in $44.23 million which topped the previous record holder of Spider Man 2 which had $40.4 million.
MLB and ESPN had problems over the disclosure of the All Star Game selections. ESPN got themselves in trouble last week with Major League Baseball. The story seems to be that TBS had the rights in their new TV deal to name the All Star Game players on their exclusive All Star selection show. ESPN then started naming the players after they had been named on the TBS show but before the TBS show had concluded. MLB was furious over this and punished ESPN for it. ESPN was not allowed to broadcast live from the outfield area inside the park for Sportscenter and Baseball Tonight on Monday and Tuesday night. ESPN senior vice president, Len DeLuca, had this to say: “We understood that it was an embargo through the end of the show, but we considered that impractical and really unfair in terms of its enforceability. We were very clear about what we would do.” Tim Brosnan, who is MLB’s executive vice president of business, responded by saying: “Our agreement with ESPN was not left up to them to decide what is practical or impractical. We expected our agreement to be honored. When someone purchases exclusive rights from us, we’re aggressive in protecting that exclusivity.” David Levy, president of Turner Sports, commented on MLB’s response by saying “We’re happy to have a partner that aggressively protects the rights of its TV rights holders.”
People is reporting that the role of Supergirl on Smallville has been cast. They are reporting that Laura Vandervoort has been cast in the role. She will play Kara, the cousin of Clark Kent. This is a new name for me as I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this actress. She was on the show, Instant Star, and has also made guest spots on Goosebumps, Are You Afraid Of The Dark?, C.S.I., The Dresden Files, and more.
Lifetime has renewed their hit show, Army Wives. The show is the highest rated series ever for the network. The second season will premiere in the spring and be 18 episodes.
Supernatural is about to get a new cast member. Katie Cassidy, daughter of David Cassidy, is set to join the cast playing the role of a another demon hunter.
CourtTV is set to make changes including its name. The network will be named truTV when it launches on January 1, 2008. It’s pretty much a deal where they felt that the CourtTV name didn’t really fit them anymore and the name limited them to people thinking that they just cover court cases which they have expanded from.
Springfield, Vermont is the official host city for the premiere of The Simpsons movie. Thirteen other Springfields in the country competed to be the host city and some really went big with the campaigns of trying to host it. Springfield, VT will host the premiere on Saturday, July 21st. Voting was done to decide this and Vermont got 15,367 votes just beating out Springfield, IL which had 14,634. Each city had done a video project to plea their case. The other Springfields will get to host sneak preview screenings the night before the official release. here is a news piece on Springfield, VT winning.
MTV finally put up season two of The Hills on their cable On Demand service. It’s about time!! The one show that I actually watch on MTV and they take their sweet time in putting up On Demand. Finally watching season two and liking it so far.
I said last week that Drive fans were probably getting mad. Well, this week they have even more reason to be. The last unaired episodes of Drive were set to air on July 4th. Fox pulled it and rescheduled it for July 13th. Now, Fox has pulled them from airing on that day as well. Fox really doesn’t do much for the fans of their shows. I have really seen that proven over the last couple of years. It isn’t over though, supposedly, for Drive fans. News came today that Fox is going to stream the last two episodes over on www.myspace.com/fox beginning on Monday. As we’ve seen, that is always subject to change but that is the latest with that.
ABC is making changes to its new show, Cavemen, that will premiere in the fall. They have already recast one of the main characters of the show and are tweaking the story somewhat. The pilot episode is being put away and won’t be the first episode of the series. It will likely be an episode later on in the series. They are going to shoot a new first episode. I said this when ABC announced this show but I’ll be interested to see if they can take a funny 30 second commercial and make it a funny sitcom. We’ll find out in the next few months.
I checked out the DirecTV Hot Pass preview during the Nascar Pepsi 400 on Saturday night. Some definite improvements since the last free preview that I watched. I can’t really complain about anything. One thing that I REALLY like is that they now give you audio options. One complaint from me and many fans in February was that the play by play commentary from the commentators on each channel dominated way too much over the driver radio audio. Now, you can pick the regular option of the channel where you hear the exclusive channel commentators mixed in with the driver and team audio. The second audio option is just of the TNT audio from their broadcast. The third audio option is just driver and team radio only. I like that a lot. Now, fans can pick what they want and it’s easy to switch back and forth. Just depends on what kind of receiver that you have on how you can do it. Junior’s channel didn’t get a lot of use when he was involved in an early crash. They stuck with him for a while and then decided to change over to Martin Truex for the rest of the race since Junior was just driving around with a beaten up race car. Darrell Waltrip did the play by play on Tony Stewart’s channel and that channel switched over to JJ Yeley after Tony was out of the race. Darrell got an interview with Joe Gibbs that I saw where he asked how Gibbs, as a coach, handles a situation between teammates like with what happened with Stewart and Hamlin. I give the Hotpass a big thumbs up. They have made a lot of improvements and I liked it a lot better than I did in February. I also watched the TNT “wide open coverage” that was limited commercial interruptions as they only took three local breaks every hour. During the race, they would show commercials in the lower portion of the screen at times in place of regular commercials. We lost sound on the race obviously but we can still watch the race as the commercials are on. I liked also having the ticker at the bottom of the screen instead of the top. Awesome finish to the race with Jamie McMurray beating Kyle Busch by inches.
TV on DVD releases for Tuesday, July 17th. Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog (Volume 1), America’s Funniest Home Videos (Guide To Parenting), Birdman and the Galaxy Trio (Complete Series), Bozo’s Big Top (Bozo: The World’s Most Famous Clown), The Business (Season 1), College Hill (Virgin Islands), Gunsmoke (Season 1), The Incredible Hulk (Season 2), Minor Accomplishments Of Jackie Woodman (Season 1), Most Haunted (The Collection – Seasons 1 & 2), Overhaulin (Season 3 – Volume 1), Payback (Season 1), Rising Damp (Series 4), The Rookies (Season 1), Space Ghost and Dino Boy (Complete Series), Taxicab Confessions (New York, New York), Vincent (Series 1), Voyagers (Complete Series), Wanted: Dead Or Alive (Season 2), William and Mary (Complete Series).
You Tube Video Of The Week: Chad Vader Returns For Episode 8.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz0aXl303j0
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