Good News, Bad News: Special NBC UpFront Edition

post from the TV addict on 10 May 2012 05:49:52 PM. © the TV addict

Good News: Your very own TV Addict will not be forced to “Occupy NBC” thanks to[...]

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Want to change your vote for the ABDC Top 4
Contest Enter again now!

post from Blogging America's Best Dance Crew on 10 May 2012 05:41:00 PM. © Blogging America's Best Dance Crew

[...]

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Bill Maher To Produce News Magazine Show With
HBO, Vice

post from TV on HuffingtonPost.com on 10 May 2012 05:38:31 PM. © TV on HuffingtonPost.com

HBO is heading into some irreverent territory with an a news magazine project with VICE.

The project, titled VICE, will be hosted by the company's founder Shane Smith, who will executive produce the series with current HBO talker Bill Maher, VICE's creative director officer Eddy Moretti with CNN's Fareed Zakaria consulting.

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David Finkle: First Nighter: Smash's Hilty Does
Right by Gentlemen Prefer Blondes but Is No Marilyn Monroe

post from TV on HuffingtonPost.com on 10 May 2012 05:34:14 PM. © TV on HuffingtonPost.com

If a reviewer decided to adhere to the old maxim about comparisons being odious in the case of the City Center Encores! series Gentlemen Prefer Blondes concert reading, he'd be obliged to say that Megan Hilty does a solid job as Lorelei Lee.

She gets her laughs on the lines Anita Loos and Joseph Fields supplied the deceptively savvy, supposedly dumb blonde Loos first immortalized in her 1920s Harper's Bazaar sketches and eventually published in novel form. Wearing a dazzling gown on which costumer David C. Woolard consulted, Hilty delivers an applause-reaping "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." Indeed, throughout the show, she acquits herself as well as might be hoped and expected.

If, on the other hand, a reviewer admits it's impossible to sit through any Gentlemen Prefer Blondes iteration without flashing on the previous two attention-demanding Lorelei Lees -- Carol Channing on Broadway in 1949 (following her scintillating Great White Way bow the previous year as the Gladiola Girl in Lend an Ear) and Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 flick -- Hilty doesn't fare so well.

The truth is that proficient as she may be, she lacks the whatever-it-is -- the je ne sais quoi -- that Channing and Monroe had that made Lorelei such a forceful, such an unforgettable presence. This isn't to say there is any obligation for Hilty to replicate either Channing or Monroe, neither of whom was like the other.

Or maybe it is to say there is pressure on her to bring her own what-is-it to the party, her own indefinable charisma on an exalted par with Channing, a super-smart actor who developed a particularly high-wattage persona to which she's adhered throughout her career, and Monroe, a questionable actor by standard definitions but possessed of a quality no one since has come close to manifesting.

It could be that Hilty appeared to be the most obvious choice to impersonate Lorelei on the basis of her Smash television series character Ivy, who's vying for the Monroe role in a planned Broadway musical bio to be called idiotically Bombshell. Actually, though, Hilty's abilities give the impression of being in direct opposition to the Loos creation.

Extremely effective, even charismatic, in Smash, Hilty plays a conniving hopeful infrequently required to be giddily amusing. As Ivy attempts by hook or crook to land the Monroe part, Hilty is an expert at letting viewers see her devious mind working overtime.

This is never true of Lorelei, which leaves Hilty -- certainly a sexy blonde, no matter how you slice it -- simply playing by the numbers under John Rando's direction. She can't be faulted on her endeavors, founded as they are on commendable acting and singing chops. But by the same token, she can't be acclaimed as blazingly inimitable in her own right.

Nor, by the way, is she or anyone else in the singing-dancing-joking cast helped by the wardrobe consultant Woolard has put together. Aside from the "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" stunner, the clothes on Hilty and on every one of the women are almost consistently bereft of style.

So, with Hilty filling her part adequately but offering too little beyond that, a curious thing happens to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The property's mediocrity is as exposed as if a policemen's interrogation light had illuminated it. Its strung-together-sketch beginnings are there for all to see as Lorelei and gal-pal Dorothy Shaw (Rachel York) accumulate men while sailing on the Ile de France and then larking about Paris because Lorelei believes her intended, Gus Esmond Jr. (Clarke Thorell), has dropped her at the insistence of his tycoon dad, Gus Esmond Sr. (Brennan Brown).

The more the libretto ambles through scenes involving additional personages like strait-laced Dorothy-pursuer Henry Spofford (Aaron Lazar), his tippling mother Mrs. Ella Spofford (Deborah Rush), womanizing duffer Sir Francis Beekman (Simon Jones), his mah-jongg-playing spouse Lady Phyllis Beekman (Sandra Shipley), and several chiseled-abs members of the 1924 Olympic team, the more it becomes apparent the enterprise rises and falls on the pluses and minuses of the Leo Robin-Jule Styne score and the routines constructed from them.

Lucky, too, since many of the songs -- chief among them, "I'm Just a Little Girl From Little Rock," "Bye, Bye Baby" and the title tune -- shine, and the lesser ones are engaging as they pass, for which music director-conductor Rob Berman certainly earns kudos. Moreover, the well-crafted ditties offer choreographer Randy Skinner the chance to turn them into rousing, often surpassingly athletic routines.

Not only is Skinner, a tap authority, able to leap at the chance, but he has dancers on hand more than up to the demands he puts on them. For one glittering example, he shapes a specialty turn for Nicholas Brothers-like Phillip Attmore and Jared Grimes and Megan Sikora at the end of which the audience response goes on even longer than it does for Hilty's "Diamonds" setting. Hey, maybe the twinkling Sikora as forever practicing Gloria might have been the Lorelei the undertaking needed to soar above its limited parts.

With performers like York, Sikora, the always funny Jones, smooth crooners Lazar and Thorell, the daft Steven Boyer as steward Pierre, York as appealing brunette Dorothy and, yes, Hilty, this Gentleman Prefer Blondes is okay. But it's not one that, in the end, gentlemen and their equally discerning ladies would necessarily prefer.

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'Teen Wolf' Returns June 3 After The MTV Movie
Awards And Fans Can Unlock The First 10 Minutes Of The Season 2 Premiere

post from Starpulse Entertainment News - TV News on 10 May 2012 05:31:15 PM. © Starpulse Entertainment News - TV News

Want to watch the first 10 minutes of the season two premiere of MTV's Teen Wolf before it premieres on June 3rd? In order to do so, we have to get the season 2 trailer to five million views!

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'Do No Harm' And 'Infamous' Get Series Orders
From NBC

post from TV on HuffingtonPost.com on 10 May 2012 05:27:57 PM. © TV on HuffingtonPost.com

NBC has given a series order to two new shows: "Do No Harm," a "Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde"-inspired medical drama, and "Notorious," which will be renamed "Infamous," according to The Hollywood Reporter.

"Do No Harm" stars Steven Pasquale -- who recently appeared on NBC's freshman comedy "Up All Night" as Luke, Ava's boss Yvonne's right hand man -- as a brain surgeon who struggles to control his dangerous alter-ego.

Phylicia Rashad, of "Cosby Show" fame, is set to co-star in the drama. The series will be written by David Schulner, the writer of NBC's short-lived sci-fi thriller "The Event."

"Infamous" is set to star Laz Alonso and Meagan Good. The show has been described as an "opulent soap" in which Good's character, a detective, goes undercover to investigate her former best friend's murder. The twist? She's investigating the wealthy family whose home she was raised in (as the housekeeper's daughter).

The shows join the two other drama pilots that have been picked up by NBC so far this season, Dick Wolf's "Chicago Fire" and J.J. Abrams' "Revolution."

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NBC's Most Surprising Pick Up News Yet

post from TV on HuffingtonPost.com on 10 May 2012 05:20:33 PM. © TV on HuffingtonPost.com

"30 Rock" and "Parenthood" have both been renewed by NBC so get ready for more laughs, tears and laughter-induced tears.

"30 Rock" will be back for a seventh and final season, consisting of a shortened 13 episodes. The former critical and fan favorite has seen its ratings diminish in its current Season 6.

The final season plan aligns with what series star Alec Baldwin has told the press and what "30 Rock" star/creator Tina Fey has hinted at. Both Baldwin and Fey are contracted through Season 7 and in early April 2012, Fey appeared on "The View" and said "the end of the show is visible on the horizon."

Earlier this week, Deadline reported that NBC was eying "30 Rock" for one more shortened season after locking in several key behind-the-scenes players.

In the most surprising pick up news of the week, "Parenthood" will be back for a fourth season. The critical darling -- with Peter Krause, Lauren Graham and Craig T. Nelson -- was shuffled around in its third season before NBC ordered two more episodes. But the Season 3 finale of "Parenthood," which featured an emotional wedding, pulled in strong ratings, helping it get a Season 4.

The returning shows join recently picked-up new comedies including Matthew Perry's "Go On," Anne Heche's "Save Me," Ryan Murphy's "The New Normal," Josh Gad's "1600 Penn" and the Justin Kirk-fronted "Animal Practice."

On the drama side of things, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde drama "Do No Harm," "Notorious," Bryan Fuller's "Hannibal," Dick Wolf's "Chicago Fire" and J.J. Abrams/Eric Kripke's post-apocalyptic drama have also gotten series orders. They're joined by the sophomore seasons of "Grimm" and "Smash," which are also on NBC's 2012-2013 slate.

For more on the fates of your favorite shows, check out our slideshow below:

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Which 'Mad Men' Affair Were You Saddest About

From the very moment we meet him, Don Draper is cheating on his wife. In fact, on Mad Men, just about everyone cheats on their spouses at some point, sometimes out of emotional desperation, sometimes out of the desire to be cruel, sometimes out of lust, and sometimes out of actual love. But many of these romances ? like many things on Mad Men, in general ? seem plagued by an ambient sense of tragedy, either present or impending. Cheating: It's sort of exciting, but also a huge bummer.

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ONCE UPON A TIME Season Finale First Look Video:
Emma Discovers the Key to Saving Henry!

In anticipation of what promises to be one helluva final chapter to ONCE UPON A TIME’s[...]

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NBC wants to make Meagan Good 'Infamous'

With all of these new shows rolling onto NBC's 2012-2013 line-up, the face of fall TV is going to look very different. Today the peacock network picked up yet another dramatic pilot with Infamous (formerly Notorious...

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