Hey everyone. I’ve got a lot of stuff for you this week. I’ve got a review of the first comic from the new Buffy season 8 series, some battles over online and music content, American Idol thoughts, and news on Seinfeld and Harry Potter. I’ve also got some great news for you that are fans of the Trademark Properties crew on the first season of Flip This House. Let’s get right into it.
Movie box office numbers for last weekend. Number one brought a smile to my face as that brings back some childhood memories. 1. TMNT – $25.4 million. 2. 300 – $20.5 million. 3. Shooter – $14.5 million. 4. Wild Hogs – $14.3 million. 5. The Last Mimzy – $10.2 million. 6. Premonition – $10.1 million. 7. The Hills Have Eyes II – $10.0 million. 8. Reign Over Me – $8.0 million. 9. Pride – $4.0 million. 10. Dead Silence – $3.4 million.
I FINALLY have gotten the first issue of the new Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8 comic book. If you are planning on reading this and don’t want to know spoilers, you may want to skip this and come back to it after you’ve read the comic. The first issue was mostly setting things up and letting us know what is going on since the end of season seven. I like what I am reading so far just from the first issue. I’m just thrilled to have something new of Buffy!! The only characters that we see in this issue are Buffy, Xander, and Dawn. Well, of the main cast anyway which is what I’ll get to in a minute. When we last left Buffy, the power was unleashed letting potential slayers around the world have the power right at that moment. Sunnydale was destroyed left with a huge hole in the ground from where it used to be. Spike used the amulet to help finish it off and seemingly himself which wasn’t the end of him as we saw in season five of Angel. In the beginning of the comic, we learn that there are now 1,800 slayers. We also learn that there are three Buffy’s. What does that mean? Basically, the group decided that Buffy was a target so they’ve made two others of her as a decoy. I liked this little detail cause this ties into something from season five of Angel. She mentions that one decoy is underground while the other is in Rome “partying very publicly and supposedly dating some guy called The Immortal”. She says that it was Andrew’s idea to have her date The Immortal cause he thought it would be hilarious. This ties into the Angel episode near the end of the run of the series where Angel and Spike go to Rome and see Buffy dancing with The Immortal in a very funny episode. So, it turns out that it wasn’t really Buffy, it was one of the decoys. Xander is overseeing things at command central as they have tons of people communicating with their teams of slayers all over. Dawn is going through teenage stuff and won’t talk to Buffy about things. She will only talk to Willow about it but Willow wasn’t around yet in this issue. Also, Dawn is a giant at the moment after a bad encounter with a “thrisewise”. Buffy is also missing home and what life used to be like including missing hanging out with just the gang. She is definitely struggling with that. After a battle, Buffy and her group find a symbol on one of the monsters and begin to investigate it. Back in Sunnydale, we learn that the US government is investigating what happened in Sunnydale and basically see Buffy and the gang as terrorists especially based on “what she did to her own hometown”. A guy does encounter something “sixty feet down” in the hole that used to be Sunnydale. The something says “I’m gonna help you kill her”. What is it? Well, it’s a familiar face. This person is messing with a lot of magic and wanting more magical power. The military wants to work with her cause it can bring them closer to Buffy and the gang. They say “she wants a lot of cheese”. Any guesses? Amy the witch is back and she is looking mighty powerful and unstable on the last page. Bring on issue two!!!
Now, my thoughts on Amy returning. It makes a lot of sense to me and I can completely see them going this direction for season eight. We never really got that payoff of what happened with Amy against the Scoobies. With Amy being so powerful with the magic, I can see why she was able to survive what happened in Sunnydale.
American Idol this week saw Gwen Stefani be the featured artist of the week as she helped the contestants. Some did songs of hers while others did songs of her musical influences. The bottom three this week were Phil Stacey, Haley Scarnato, and Chris Sligh. Bottom two were Chris and Haley. Going home this week was Chris Sligh. I liked Chris immediately after his audition. He did struggle this week and the judges weren’t too kind to his performance. Bummer to see him go home. At first, I thought that Phil Stacey was going to be a star in this competition but he has just kind of blended in with the others instead of standing out. I don’t expect him to be around much longer. Haley? I think Haley has had two good weeks. She seems to be picking songs that are more right for her. Now, the talk of American Idol for the last few weeks has been Sanjaya. I haven’t commented on it cause I don’t like getting into that bashing stuff like with what people are doing with him. I feel bad that he is getting hammered as bad as he is in the public cause in the end, he’s just performing and fans are voting him through. I do find it funny that everyone is all the sudden crying foul about people voting for the worst especially naming the website that is titled just that. That site has been around for several years. This also almost happens every year too where there is a contestant that keeps getting further and further while they are clearly less talented than the others. I don’t see this as a big deal that Sanjaya is still there as we are still fairly early on but that will change if he gets to say the final four or if the usual annual shocker happens where a very strong contestant goes home and he is still there. I thought he should have been the first one sent home in the top 12 because the other talent is clearly better but I don’t like the personal attacks on him. I’m still liking Gina, Melinda, Jordin, and Blake as my favorites this season. Oh, and if you have Fox Reality channel, they are again doing their American Idol Extra show where they are behind the scenes and recap the week of Idol including interviews. It’s a good show and if you’re an Idol fan, you’ll like it. They repeat it many times over the weekend.
Woo hoo!! I won!! I’ve been playing that Amazing Race prediction game for a year or so now and I finally won. I didn’t win in glorious fashion though as I and apparently everyone else didn’t have Charla and Mirna as winning that leg of the race. I did have Teri and Ian going home though and it paid off. Free Amazing Race stuff coming my way.
Hey Flip This House/Trademark Properties fans, I FINALLY have some news for you. The new show featuring Trademark Properties is set to launch this Saturday night on TLC at 8pm. Let me fill you in if you are unfamiliar with the A&E show Flip This House. The original version of Flip This House featured the Trademark Properties group and they buy houses that are run down and need fixing up. They “flip” the house fixing it up and then sell it for profit. A&E launched a “new season” last year but fans (including myself) were infuriated when the new season premiered and the Trademark group was gone without even a hint from A&E that there would be new people. The fans backlashed so much that A&E shut down the message board on their website. Trademark took legal action over A&E continuing with their own concept and then casting new people to do it. A&E continues to air the reruns of the Trademark crew usually on Saturday nights so if you see the Trademark episodes, I highly recommend checking them out. I don’t get into much “house fixing up” type shows but this is one that I love and I watch the reruns over and over regardless of how many times that I’ve seen them. The group of people that work at Trademark are a ton of fun and make the show really enjoyable to watch. As for TLC. From what I gather, this is a special instead of a regular series at the moment entitled “A Home Run For Trademark” which airs Saturday night. Here is the description for the special that I received in the email: In the one-hour special, Davis and his team first purchase the former home of baseball great Shoeless Joe Jackson in Greenville, SC and then work to transform it into a Shoeless Joe museum. Although Shoeless Joe was banned from baseball in 1921 due to his alleged involvement in the “Black Sox” scandal, his fans have worked tirelessly to restore his reputation ever since. For his part, Davis puts together a crew, transplants and repositions the house all in just one week, giving Shoeless Joe a place of honor in the hearts of baseball fans everywhere. Now, this isn’t the end though. The new series involving Trademark is launching on TLC on Wednesday, April 21st at 8pm and is going to be called “The Real Deal”. That will the first of at least nine episodes set to launch. I hope this show is just as entertaining as the first season of Flip This House.
Save One Show voting is still underway over at E Online. Kristin is saying that the voting is very close between two shows and there isn’t a clear winner unlike previous years. Looking at the list, my guess is that the voting is between Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls. I would like to point out that Gilmore Girls returning revolves around the actors instead of the network. Gilmore is an actors decision on whether the show continues while Veronica is clearly a network decision.
I mentioned last week on the rumor of an upcoming Seinfeld DVD release. It is now official. Season 8 of Seinfeld will be released on June 5th. Expect the usual extras that have been seen on previous season sets.
The problem is solved with Harry Potter. Emma Watson will return as will Rupert Grint in the rest of the Harry Potter movies. Watson had this statement that was released through the Warner Brothers film studio, “I could never let Hermione go — she is my hero. I love her too much and love what playing her has meant to me.” The next Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, will be released on July 13th.
XM Radio and the music industry are battling over the XM + MP3 service that XM Radio is making available to their subscribers. The music industry is claiming that it violates copyright cause it allows people to store and replays songs. XM argues that the devices can’t have the music exported to anything else and that if the subscriber cancels their service then they also lose all of their music that they may have saved. From what I gather, it is sort of XM’s counter to the iPod.
Ron Jaworski has been picked to replace Joe Theismann on Monday Night Football.
Roswell’s Jason Behr, has been picked to be the lead in the new Fox series, NSA Innocent. He will play an employee at a defense contractor who is hired by the National Security Agency to spy on his bosses.
The supposed last season of MTV’s show, Punk’d, is set to start in a few days. I say supposed because you might remember that this show was set to end before a few years ago and it was a plan to get celebrities to put their guard down. I do think though that this time will be real as this show doesn’t have the steam that it did a few years ago. But does any MTV show really have any steam right now? The season premiere will be on Tuesday, April 10th. However, MTV is planning to air a “sneak peak marathon” of all eight episodes on Saturday, April 7th at 12pm. Some of the announced celebrities that will be punk’d this season are Hilary Swank, Magic Johnson, Evangeline Lilly, and Hayden Panettiere.
I have one big curiosity with this season’s Dancing With The Stars. How long will Heather Mills stay on the show? When I first heard that she was going to be on the show, my first thought was that you do realize this is a viewer voted show? I want to see how long she stays on there especially with the heavily publicized divorce of her and a member of one of the most beloved music groups of all time, The Beatles.
Starz is suing Disney over the fact that Disney movie downloads are now available on several sites including iTunes and Walmart.com. The suit claims copyright infringement and breach of contract. Starz says that they have had an exclusive deal with Disney and their movie distribution since 1993 and that this violates the agreement. What probably stirred this up more is that there is talk that Starz is trying to come up with a way of doing digital distribution.
NBC Universal and News Corp. are looking at countering You Tube. They are set to launch a video-sharing site this summer. The plan is to offer episodes of shows shortly after they originally air. They also own the Fox distributing company so those shows would be available as well. The content will air for free but advertising will be going on as well obviously. Some of the full shows and clips that are going to be available at the launch of the site are Heroes, 24, House, My Name Is Earl, Saturday Night Live, Friday Night Lights, The Riches, 30 Rock, The Simpsons, The Tonight Show, Prison Break, and more. Some movies are also going to be available as well. Partnering with NBC and News Corp. on distribution will be AOL, My Space, MSN, and Yahoo. This is kind of a deal where they know people are going to be watching stuff online and instead of trying to defeat it like Viacom is, they’re going to make their own and compete that way. I am excited to see how this turns out.
Those Transformers DVD box sets of the original 80’s series that fans were hoping for may not be happening. Sony BMG Music Entertainment has shut down Sony Wonder who were doing the sets including the recent 20 Year Anniversary edition of Transformers The Movie which they did a great job on producing. Sony Wonder also had bought the rights to other cartoons such as G.I. Joe, Jem and The Holograms, and InHumanoids. The trailer advertising the Transformers sets was on the Movie DVD and was given a 2007 release. No word on if they will or can be released but it doesn’t look very good at all. That is really bad timing considering that I think they would have sold a ton of them with the timing being in the same year as the new Transformers live action movie hitting theatres. It doesn’t make much sense to me.
TV On DVD releases for Tuesday, April 3rd. The Brady Bunch (Complete Series), Defenders Of The Earth (Volume 2), Entourage (Season 3 – Part 1), Happy Tree Friends (Season 1 – Volume 2), Law & Order (The 5th Year), Pink Panther Show (Volume 5), Roseanne (Season 7), She-Ra: Princess Of Power (Season 1 – Volume 2), Tom Goes To The Mayor (Complete Series), Twin Peaks (Season 2).
You Tube Video Of The Week: Jeff Probst tells Kelly Ripa of a poker game gone wrong. I saw this when it originally aired and cracked me up. I’ve always thought that Probst is a good storyteller too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV_t37le4lA
Wishing all of you a great weekend.
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