Movie box office numbers for last weekend. 1. Stomp The Yard – $22 million. 2. Night At The Museum – $17.1 million. 3. Pursuit Of Happiness – $9.1 million. 4. Dreamgirls – $8.1 million. 5. Freedom Writers – $7.1 million. 6. Children Of Men – $6.4 million. 7. Alpha Dog – $6.1 million. 8. Primeval – $6 million. 9. Arthur and the Invisibles – $4.3 million. 10. The Good Shepherd – $3.9 million.
This week’s movie review, Superman Returns. I REALLY liked this movie a lot. The movie runs two and a half hours long but the time flies by. I’m going to go into some spoilers with the movie so if you haven’t seen this movie and don’t want to know of some things that happen, skip the rest of this paragraph and move on to the rest of this post. This movie picks up with Superman returning from his quest to find out if there was any chance that his home planet had survived. It hadn’t so he returns five years later. The world has moved on without him including Lois Lane who has been dating a guy for a very long time including having a son. One thing that I really found different was that they made Lois’s boyfriend really likable. They didn’t make him this unlikable person making you not want them together. People tend to cheer for Lois and Clark/Superman but the boyfriend really likes her and fights for her. I automatically assumed and I’m sure others did too that the father of the son was the guy that Lois was currently dating. Well, we find out otherwise later on. He is indeed the son of Superman. I liked that huge twist. Lex Luthor is back out on the loose again as Superman didn’t show up as a witness at his trial cause of him being gone. So, he is freed and back out on the loose causing trouble. The cast really did a good job in this movie. Brandon Routh was a really good Superman. Really impressed with him. It’s amazing how much he does favor Christopher Reeve. Kevin Spacey was a good Lex. Great to see Noel Neill get a scene in the movie. She deserved that for sure as she has a cameo is in the beginning of the movie. It was cool cause I’ve actually met two people in this movie, Noel and also Stephan Bender who played the 15 year old Superman in a scene toward the beginning of the movie. The special effects in the movie are amazing especially with the scene involving the plane early on. I highly recommend this movie as I really liked it.
New episodes of Veronica Mars return this Tuesday night at 8pm on The CW. It will be interesting to see where they go after the amazing previous episode. Gilmore Girls also returns with new episodes this Tuesday at 7pm on The CW.
Kelly vs. Justin, Ruben vs. Clay, Fantasia vs. Diana, Carrie vs. Bo, and Taylor vs. Katharine. Who will it be this year? The journey has begun to find out as American Idol has returned. Networks have run away screaming to get away from this show and rightfully so after the ratings came out. The show debuted with a higher rating than it did last year. The premiere did a 20.3 rating with 37.3 million viewers. The show had 35.5 million viewers for last year’s premiere. This season’s premiere was the second highest rated episode of the show ever. The second episode’s ratings got a 20.2 and nothing on the other networks even got close to that rating. My early thoughts so far are that the auditions have been rough so far with more bad than good. The truth of that shows when in Minneapolis, they sent I believe it was 17 on to Hollywood out of 10,000 people who auditioned. I don’t have anyone that has really knocked me out yet that I’m going to get behind. I liked the brother/sister combo pretty well. I’ve said this before but I’m just not big into the audition episodes for the most part cause it is mostly the bad auditions. I just feel bad for these people that have their dreams crushed sometimes way too harshly. Simon gets a lot of heat over this but I think the other judges dish it quite a bit too. I know a lot of people watch the first few weeks just for the bad auditions and then tune out but I’m not into that. I perk up when someone comes in that can really sing and I’m looking forward to seeing who I am going to cheer for each season. Next week sees the Idol auditions go to Memphis and the previews teased that the talent is much better for those auditions.
The all star teams have been revealed for the Amazing Race All Stars. I’ve got some thoughts on this as I don’t think it is really a strong all star cast. It will be entertaining for sure but I think it could have been a better cast. For one, only one previous winner?? The only winning team is Uchenna and Joyce. Rumors were true and Rob and Amber will be on the show. I saw the revelation of the teams on The Early Show and Rob was quoted as saying “I’m sick of finishing second” obviously referring to Survivor and the previous Amazing Race. From season one, Drew and Kevin will be back which I am absolutely in support of cause they were a ton of fun that season. They are definitely the most memorable team of that season. Also from season one, Team Guido returns. They were a strong team but made several of their competitors unhappy with their behavior at times. From last season, Dustin and Kandice (the blondes) return. I’m all right with that cause they were a very strong team. Also from last season, David and Mary. I may take some heat for this but I don’t like this pick. Yes, they were likable but they weren’t a strong team. It’s obvious that their personality got them in this but……if we’re going with personality picks, how about the hippies? They were big personality picks but they also won the race. I just want a lot of strong teams on All Stars. Ozwald and Danilo from season two are in and I actually barely remember them. John Vito and Jill from season three. Very happy to have them back as I liked them. They finished 5th in their season and were a good team. Charla and Mirna from season five are back and I’m fine with that. Charla was amazing at what she was able to do in the race. Teri and Ian from season three who finished in second place. Now, the last team is that they have combined people from two different teams. Eric and Danielle from season nine. They were on different teams as I said but are now dating and being put together. Eh. I’m just kind of disappointed at some of the stronger teams that got left out. I just thought that there were really good teams that got left out and that there should have been more previous winners. I am really looking forward to this season though. One of the producers had this to say about the upcoming season and that there will be a lot of friction right off the bat. I’m confident we laid something on the table that will be very unexpected, and story-wise, there were plenty of fireworks.
Jennifer Aniston is set to guest star on Courteney Cox-Arquette’s new show, Dirt. Aniston will appear on the March 27th season finale on FX. She will play a rival magazine editor to Courteney’s character.
Survivor has been picked up for two more editions for the 2007-2008 TV season. With the season about to premiere, that is three more Survivor editions to look forward to.
Criminal Minds will get the post Super Bowl time slot on CBS this year. The show will have James Van Der Beek in the episode. It’s always fun to see which show the networks put in that time slot. Years past, Friends was put in that time slot by NBC and it did huge numbers that night helping the popularity of that show grow. CBS launched two different seasons of Survivor after the Super Bowl with the second season in Australia which did huge numbers and the premiere of Survivor All Stars in 2004 brought the series its highest ratings since the Australia season finale.
The Rock and Terence Stamp are joining the cast of the movie Get Smart which is based off of the old TV show. The movie already stars Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway. The Rock will play a new created character named Agent 23. Terence Stamp is going to play an evil leader. The movie begins shooting next month.
NBC has decided to add a 4th hour of The Today Show. Does that show really need a 4th hour??!!
NBC is canceling the daytime soap, Passions. Insiders are saying that it appears to be an economic decision more than anything. Some are pointing the cancellation to the adding a 4th hour to Today decision. The show is still good ratings wise especially in the young women demographic. The show actually tied with Days Of Our Lives in the women 18-34 demographic numbers at the beginning of the month. There is talk that NBC might possibly try and keep it going possibly on the internet or on SoapNet.
Apple released their holiday sales numbers. Their sales numbers were up 50% from the Christmas holidays of 2005. The Toronto Sun had an article saying that Apple may soon announce that they are going to start selling Beatles songs on iTunes which would be huge. Rumor is that Apple may announce this in a Super Bowl ad.
I told of the Wii and Playstation 3 sales totals in Japan last week for 2006. Well, here are the numbers for the U.S. Nintendo sold 1.1 million Wii’s. Sony sold 687,000 PS3’s. Overall, the video game industry did much better in 2006 than it did in 2005 which had a lot to do with the launch of the Wii and PS3. Revenue was up 19% from 2005.
ABC has decided to not put Dancing With The Stars head to head against American Idol. The show will be on Mondays with the results show on Tuesdays.
Rachael Ray’s show has been renewed for two more years. The show is ranked in the top five syndicated talk shows in the country.
NBC has renewed several of their shows for next season including Heroes, My Name Is Earl, The Office, and Law & Order: SVU.
The producers of Lost are already talking to ABC about setting a date for the series finale so it will help the writers plan out better in advance on how to end the series. They say they don’t plan on ending it anytime soon but just want to have a target date.
DVD news on Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. Season 2 of both shows will be released on May 1st. Bonus features on the 90210 set will have a featurette with Carol Potter and James Eckhouse who played Jim and Cindy Walsh. The other featurette will be with Christine Elise who played that wild Emily Valentine. Both featurettes will have the actors looking back on their days on 90210. The extras stuff on the Melrose Place set will have some featurettes mostly just looking at the events and characters of season two. Many fans have been very upset over the 90210 season one release after all the music changes with me being one of them. Season one wasn’t as bad with me because I don’t remember a lot of the certain music as well that was used in that season. NOW THOUGH, we’re getting into season two and coming up on season three which I remember a ton of music from various scenes and the fan reviews of these sets could be where I get very angry about music replacements. If you’re interested and want the episodes in their entirety with music and all, they are just past the halfway point of season three on SoapNet. They are about to get to the high school graduation episode.
TV On DVD releases for Tuesday, January 23rd. Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book 2: Earth Volume 1), Beyond Reality (Season 1), Hopeless Pictures (Season 1), Walker Texas Ranger (Season 2), The Waltons
(Season 4)
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