Rueben's Ramblings

Hey All,

Welcome to Monday! How is the start of your week going? Hope it’s good. If you don’t already know, mark your calendar for November 22 at 6 AM Pacific time for registration for Comic Con 2011. That’s when the registration will be reopened and hopefully won’t crash again!

In the meantime, here are the news items I found for today:

TELEVSION

Actress Fiona Shaw (Aunt Petunia from the Harry Potter movies) will have a regular role on True Blood as Marnie, a mousy, timid and secretly self loathing storefront medium and palm reader who is taken over by the spirit of a powerful witch. (Nellie Andreeva at Deadline)

Goran Visnjic (ER) will appear on Leverage as Damian Moreau, a ruthless international financier who runs money for drug dealers, gun runners, smugglers and other nefarious groups. Nate (Timothy Hutton) and his team searched for Moreau throughout the third season at the behest of a mysterious woman known only as The Italian (guest star Elisabetta Canalis). But when the team members finally come face to face with Moreau, they will be forced to rethink their strategy to take him down and avoid retaliation from The Italian. Leverage returns with a holiday episode on December 12 at 9 PM followed by the two-part season finale on December 19. (Adam Bryant at TV Guide)

Dean Norris (Breaking Bad) will guest star on Law & Order: Los Angeles, playing the father of a college student whose girlfriend’s brother is murdered. (Robyn Ross at TV Guide)

AMC has picked up The Walking Dead for a 13-episode second season. (Twitter)

CONDOLENCES

Actress Jill Clayburgh, who was most recently seen in the TV series Dirty Sexy Money passed away late last week at the age of 66. (Twitter)

DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Actors-turned-writers Mark Wilson and Patrick McKenna have booked an ensemble cop drama at CBS which is set in a Canadian-US cross-border town. No other details are available on this project. (The Futon Critic)

MADE FOR TV MOVIES NEWS

NBC has booked the made-for-TV movie A Walk In My Shoes, which will be the third in the Walmart and Procter & Gamble’s “Family Movie Night” franchise. It will air on December 3 at 8 PM. Previous movies include Secrets of the Mountain and The Jensen Project (which aired on April 16 and July 16 respectively). Nancy Travis will star in this new movie as Trish Fahey, a stressed-out high school teacher who can’t understand her students’ lack of effort and why their parents don’t seem to care. This is especially true of Justin (Cameron Deane Stewart), a basketball star who is underperforming in her class. All of this changes when Trish wrecks her car and wakes to find herself living in the shoes of Justin’s mom (Jana Lee Hamblin), a woman she has personally judged and criticized. With the help of a mysterious stranger (Yara Martinez), Trish discovers the real reason behind her struggles, teaching her a whole new meaning of compassion. No one is left unchanged.” Philip Winchester (Crusoe) and Jackson Pace also star. (The Futon Critic)

BOX OFFICE NEWS

Abigail Spencer (Mad Men), Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) and legendary actress Cicely Tyson have joined the cast of the movie called The Haunting in Georgia, which has Chad Michael Murray (One Tree Hill) playing Andy Wyrick, the blue collar, no-nonsense husband to a young mother (Spencer) struggling with horrifying visions, a curse she shares with her wayward sister Joyce (Sackhoff). The mother now fears they have been passed on to her young daughter Heidi (newcomer Emily Alyn Lind). (Heat Vision and Dark Horizons)

Guy Pearce, Peter Stomare and Tom Hollander will star in the sci-fi action feature called Lockout. Pearce will play a government agent trying to save the president’s daughter (Maggie Grace) from rioting convicts in an outer-space maximum-security prison. This movie won’t be out until 2012, though. (Dark Horizons)

Kyra Sedgwick has joined the cast of the thriller movie called Man On A Ledge, which stars Sam Worthington as a disgraced cop who stands on a ledge atop a high rise threatening to kill himself. Sedgwick will play the reporter trying to figure out if he means it or if he has an ulterior motive. Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell, Ed Harris and Titus Welliver also star. (Mike Fleming at Deadline)

Rebecca Hall (The Town) is in talks to take the lead role in the adaptation of the Tom Bradby novel Shadow Dancer, which is about a young woman who is a former IRA terrorist turned informer for Britain’s MI5. Guy Pearce may also be slated to star in this movie. (First Showing and The Playlist)

The following are the top 10 movies for the past weekend according to Exhibitor Relations:

1. Megamind – $47.7 million
2. Due Date – $33.5 million
3. For Colored Girls – $20.1 million
4. Red – $8.6 million
5. Saw 3D – $8.2 million
6. Paranormal Activity 2 – $7.3 million
7. Jackass 3D – $5.1 million
8. Hereafter – $4.02 million
9. Secretariat – $4 million
10. The Social Network – $3.6 million

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

Question: I recently heard that The Chicago Code is putting Lie to Me into another hiatus. After the first hiatus of the second season, Lie to Me’s ratings dropped and they are still falling now. I was wondering if you knew anything about it or if it might be cancelled. I would like to know if I should prepare myself for a cancellation since Fox has already pulled Lone Star off the air? — Hannah

Matt Roush: It’s probably wise to stop using Lone Star as a yardstick by which to measure any other show’s chances for success. That was (unfortunately) an ambitious but immediate noble failure, and except for the fact that Lie to Me was rushed back on the schedule to fill its time slot, the two shows have nothing in common. Lie to Me seems to me destined to be a somewhat undervalued utility player for Fox, the kind of show that often looks like it’s being taken for granted or badly used. Witness how Fox burned off so much of the second season during the summer months, and then slapped it on Mondays with very little warning. (Not that Fox had a choice.) The fact that Lie to Me will once again fall off the schedule in February when The Chicago Code premieres is hardly surprising, given that prime-time real estate is at a premium in the back half of the season on Fox once American Idol kicks in. But I’m not sure this necessarily means the show is in immediate danger. Networks need shows like this to fill troublesome holes on the schedule, and while it’s unlikely to ever be a breakout hit, I’m hoping Lie finds its place on the network as Bones eventually did.

Question: Outcasts has been on the “coming soon” page of BBC America’s website for many months now. Latest from their press website: “Currently in production in South Africa, the U.S. premiere season of Outcasts begins late 2010.” Can you shed any light on when this program will begin to air, and if you have any opinion on whether it might be worth a watch, I’d love to read it. — Mariah

Matt Roush: No firm air date yet, but look for it in early 2011, at which time I’ll offer an opinion, since I haven’t seen it so can’t possibly handicap it yet. But BBC America’s track record is fairly good when it comes to speculative fantasy and sci-fi, so I’m excited to at least sample this one. The cast is promising, including Jamie Bamber and Eric Mabius among the pioneers establishing a civilization on a new planet after Earth is no longer habitable. Not a brand-new premise, but I always look to the British to put a new spin on classic genres.

That’s it. Enjoy!