Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

I’m back to work and feeling much better after succumbing to “con crud” – the dreaded head cold and cough that seems to plague so many attendees of Comic Con each year. I hope to kick the last of this cold by tomorrow because I’m sick of being sick.

In the meantime, there is a lot of great news to share with all of you:

TELEVISION

Oscar nominee Terrence Howard has joined the cast of the new NBC drama Law & Order: Los Angeles, portraying a district attorney. He will share the position with Alfred Molina (Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time), who plays Deputy District Attorney Morales, in alternate episodes. (The Futon Critic)

NBC has updated its fall premiere schedule. Parenthood has been moved a week earlier now airing its premiere on September 14 at 10 PM. The new drama Outlaw, starring Jimmy Smits will now air on September 15 at 10 PM. And, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit will have a two-hour premiere on September 22 at 9 PM. After its preview, Outlaw will move to its regular day and time: Fridays at 10 PM (starting on September 17). (The Futon Critic)

Oscar nominee Elliott Gould will guest star in the second episode of CSI this fall, playing an old-school casino mogul who crosses paths with the team when one of his casinos becomes the crime scene. (TV Guide)

Eddie Cibrian has landed a multi-episode arc on the new NBC drama Chase, which follows a group of U.S. Marshals. He will play a bounty hunter for at least two episodes. The arc is scheduled to begin in October. The series stars Kelli Giddish and Cole Hauser and is set to premiere on September 20 at 10 PM. (Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide)

Jennifer Love Hewitt will guest star in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, playing a woman named Vicki who has been raped multiple times and is afraid to leave her house. (TV Guide)

Dick Wolf, the creator and executive producer of the long-running Law & Order franchise confirmed today that the flagship series Law & Order will not be picked up by any other network now that NBC has canceled the series. (Lynette Rice at Entertainment Weekly)

Nathan Lane will guest star in an early season 2 episode of Modern Family, playing Cam’s flamboyant friend Pepper. Justin Kirk will reprise his role as Mitchell’s potential boss. (Michael Ausiello at Entertainment Weekly)

Janet Montgomery (Entourage) has joined the cast of Human Target in the recurring role of Ames, an experienced thief who ends up assisting Chance, Winston, and Guerrero on missions. (Michael Ausiello at Entertainment Weekly)

Wanda De Jesus (CSI: Miami) has joined the cast of the new series Law & Order: Los Angeles. She will play Arleen Gonzales, the cool and authoritative captain of the Robbery Homicide Division. Regina Hall (Ally McBeal) will play beautiful and brainy ADA Eva Price. (Michael Ausiello at Entertainment Weekly)

Those mistakes Heroes made? Here’s how The Cape plans not to make them

TV INTERVIEW

“Laws were made by people, and people are often wrong.” That’s the mantra for Sarah Shahi’s titular character in USA’s new legal drama, Facing Kate. The show, executive produced by Michael Sardo and Steve Sark, focuses on the world of lawyers who, like Kate, resign from practicing law and simply mediate clients’ disagreements. “Mediation is exploding in this country, exploding all over the world,” Sardo said Friday at the Television Critics Association fall TV preview. “Kate is someone who rebels against the one-size-fits-all mentality of the law.” “I’ve been waiting to play a character like this,” Shahi said of Kate, who is someone that gravitates towards danger for the greater good. “My history with roles in the past has always been bad girls. I wanted to play something that was similar to me in a way that it was upbeat. She’s a beautiful mess. Her flaws, at the end of the day, are what make her interesting.” Kate will be faced with a weekly conflict to resolve, which producers said will stem from questions such as what life is worth and what it means to be a hero. “Each one deals with a fundamental precept of human behavior,” Sardo said. Kate’s foils include a stubborn boss who looks at their firm as her child and an ex-husband (Michael Trucco) who just can’t let go of his relationship with Kate. “I’m sort of the knight in shining armor to Michael’s distress,” Shahi said. The couple is going through a divorce, but they’re still friends with benefits. Because of these tricky relationships, Kate throws herself deeply into work. “The busier you are, the less you have to look inside [yourself],” Shahi said. (Natalie Abrams at TV Guide)

AWARD WINNERS

Congratulations to the following winners of the annual Television Critics Association Awards (list provided by Zap2It):

Program of the year: “Glee”
Outstanding achievement in drama: (tie) “Breaking Bad” and “Lost”
Outstanding achievement in comedy: “Modern Family”
Outstanding new program: “Glee”
Individual achievement in drama: Julianna Margulies, “The Good Wife”
Individual achievement in comedy: Jane Lynch, “Glee”
Outstanding achievement in movies, miniseries or specials: “The Pacific”
Outstanding achievement in news and information: “Life”
Outstanding achievement in youth programming: “Yo Gabba Gabba”
Career achievement: James Garner
Heritage Award: “M*A*S*H”

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

SYFY’S ROBUST SCRIPTED DEVELOPMENT SLATE FEATURES PROJECTS FROM KEVIN SORBO, LEE MAJORS, SANCTUARY CREATIVE TEAM AND UNIVERSAL CABLE PRODUCTIONS

David Shore is currently in the process of reworking his Rockford Files retelling without star Dermot Mulroney. The Americanized version of Prime Suspect has been resurrected under the stewardship of Friday Night Lights executive producer Peter Berg. (The TV Addict)

DVD ANNOUNCMENTS

Chuck

Caprica

BOX OFFICE

Brian Geraghty, Josh Peck and Margarita Levieva will star in the box office movie ATM, which is about three young co-workers who make a late-night visit to an ATM and end up in a desperate fight for their lives when they become trapped by an unknown man. (First Showing)

Bruce Willis is set to star while Sigourney Weaver is “in talks” to star in an upcoming thriller called The Cold Light of Day. Henry Cavill is already set to play a young American whose family is kidnapped on vacation in Spain. He has hours to find them, and unravels a government conspiracy. Willis will play his father, who has secrets of his own. Weaver is in talks to play the villainess, a role that was originally written for a male actor. (Deadline Hollywood Daily and First Showing)

The top 10 movies for this past weekend are as follows (according to a list provided by Zap2It):

1. Inception – 43 million
2. Salt – 36 million
3. Despicable Me – 24 million
4. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – 10 million
5. Toy Story 3 – 9 million
6. Ramona and Beezus – 8 million
7. Grown Ups – 7.4 million
8. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse – 7.1 million
9. The Last Airbender – 4 million
10. Predators – 3 million

Q&A SECTION (with Matt Roush from TV Guide)

Question: I loved the Doctor Who finale with all its twists and turns. But what I loved most was the ever- elusive River Song. Her character (and Alex Kingston) kicks major ass! She needs her own show pronto. It would be nice to have a sci-fi show with a strong female lead. What do you think are the chances? — Aaron

Matt Roush: Actually, wouldn’t a female Doctor be a nice change one of these iterations? Sci-fi shows in recent years have been much more generous in creating strong female roles, from Farscape to Battlestar Galactica to you name it, but with River Song, I think her elusive nature is best played out in small and mysterious doses. More might actually be less where she’s concerned, although every time she appeared on Doctor Who last season, I enjoyed it. It has been years since I’ve seen Alex Kingston enjoy herself with such wicked abandon. (The first time I remember seeing her on TV was as a very saucy Moll Flanders in a rollicking Masterpiece adaptation in the late ’90s. Worth checking out.)

Question: What can you tell us about the program NBC has been promoting constantly, something about The Event? My husband says, as a Lost fan, I’m getting sucked in to this one. Actually just curious to know if this promises to be something worthwhile. — Diane

Matt Roush: NBC’s greatest hope is that The Event will attract fans looking for “the next Lost”—although that’s such a misnomer. There will never be “another Lost.” But judging from the convoluted pilot, which jumps around in time a bit too much for my taste, this is a high-concept, high-action suspense thriller with a deep and mysterious mythology and a very appealing and sympathetic center in its everyman hero, Jason Ritter. I won’t reveal too much at this point except to say that a lot of the action in the pilot takes place aboard an endangered plane (echoes of Lost), and what happens next has a “what the hell” aspect that made me curious to see episode two, albeit with a fair amount of skepticism. Signing on to a show like this does require a leap of faith, and hopefully we haven’t been too burned by shows like FlashForward in particular to give the next ambitious project a chance. It’s one of the very few fall series that has any watercooler potential, so I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt for now.

Question: I’m looking forward to the next installment of that series of movies where Tom Selleck plays Jesse Stone, a small-town cop. What can you tell us about it? — Mike

Matt Roush: The Jesse Stone movies are still being made, despite Selleck having landed the lead in a new CBS series, Blue Bloods. When he appeared at the TCA press tour last week to promote the new show, he made a point of saying that the seventh movie in the Jesse series, Innocents Lost, is “ready to go … And I made it real clear that I wasn’t going to give up Jesse, so we’re writing No. 8.” When these will see the light of day is another matter. Since CBS, like all the other broadcast networks, have largely abandoned the TV-movie format and there’s no dedicated night for them, the Jesse movies will be scheduled whenever CBS has an opening, usually on a non-sweeps Sunday. But the good news is that, whatever happens to Blue Bloods, Selleck is committed to the franchise, and the movies have been generally engrossing. I wish there were more of these sorts of movie series to add some variety to the lineup.

That’s it. Enjoy!