SOAPNet plans Beverly Hills 90210 beach marathon
So Shannen may be coming to the new 90210, and Jennie is definitely in the cast, and Tori will miss the first few episodes because she just had a baby, but generally speaking, there’s been lots of buzz and interest in the upcoming, 2008 version of Beverly Hills 90210.
While CW gears up for the new, SOAPNet is happy to celebrate the old.
On Saturday, July 26th, SOAPNet will glory in the 50 hottest moments of the original Fox series. From 4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m., ET/PT, three beach-oriented episodes of the show will be shown back-to-back-to-back, with six interstitials that will reveal from 1-50, the hottest “moments” in BH 90210 history.
The three episodes will be as follows:
– The Party Fish: Brandon gets a job at the beach club, but he learns more about life and love when he has a romance with an older woman.
– Sex, Lies and Volleyball / Photo Fini: Brandon and Steve have the hots for the same new beach volleyball player, Brooke, while in Paris, Donna and Brenda enjoy all things French.
– So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye: Brenda’s off to college in Minnesota while the gang moves into a new summer beach house and throw her a goodbye party.
I was never a full-time BH 90210 watcher, but one of the great things about SOAPNet is being able to catch up now. The episodes are highly addictive. Damn that Aaron Spelling and his TV acumen! So if you’re at all curious about the new 90210, DVR this mini-marathon or tune in to get a taste of the way they were.
Jason Schwartzman is HBO’s newest leading man
Jason Schwartzman is officially coming to HBO. The actor will play the lead in Bored to Death, a new comedy from the cable network. Schwartzman has been cast as Jonathan, a struggling writer in this thirties who has a drinking problem. The series, which is set in Brooklyn, follows Jonathan’s post-breakup decision to pretend to be a private eye.
Although he’s not qualified for detective work, Jonathan loves the novels of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. He’ll luck out and solve a few cases, but his lack of experience will often make matters worse for his clients. Novelist Jonathan Ames wrote the pilot and will serve as the show’s executive producer.
I’m looking forward to watching the Bored to Death pilot now that Jason Schwartzman is on board. He hasn’t done a lot of work on television, but he’s had some memorable leading roles in movies like Rushmore and Shopgirl. As far as TV goes, Schwartzman did a guest spot on Freaks and Geeks and starred in the short-lived FOX series Cracked Up.
Can you picture Jason Schwartzman as a private eye?
George Carlin dead at 71
Wow. I just got in from a very, very late flight from Denver, and the early-morning newscasts hit me with this wallop: my favorite comedian, George Carlin, passed away last night. On Sunday, he admitted himself into a local Santa Monica hospital, complaining of chest pains, and ended up dying that evening of heart failure. He was 71.
Carlin, of course, is most famous for the 1970s comedy routine “Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV.” It was a bit which not only got radio stations that played it in trouble with the FCC, leading to landmark First Amendment and decency rulings by the Supreme Court, but he was also arrested in Milwaukee on indecency charges after doing the routine on stage there.
During a long and varied career, Carlin went from doing goofy, straight-arrow comedy bits like “The Hippy-Dippy Weatherman” on The Ed Sullivan Show to being the ultimate counterculture spokesman, giving his observations — big and small — about the world on stage and TV. He was one of the first comedians to do hour-long specials on HBO, and his last one, It’s Bad for Ya, was well-received when it aired earlier this year. He also had a self-titled FOX series for a couple of years in the Nineties. So his tie to TV is quite strong.
Sigh. I’m sure Carlin’s fans will have more to say later today and this week. He’ll be sorely missed.
Clooney gets The Fall of Bob on Showtime
To some people, George Clooney’s affable good nature and sincerity comes off as smug over-confidence. I fall into the former rather than the latter category.
I think George is ambitious and grateful to be working in the business. I think he remembers the years of struggling to become a star — those years on The Facts of Life and Riptide and E/R (the Elliott Gould sitcom, not the Emmy award-winning NBC medical drama).
Failures like Leatherheads have to keep him humble. Anyway, his efforts to expand as an actor and director and producer strike me as someone who is wisely not resting on his laurels. That said, today it was reported that Clooney’s production company, Smoke House, is behind a new pilot for Showtime called The Fall of Bob.
The title character of this half-hour comedy, Bob, is all about suicide. Actually, it’s about what’s happening while he’s attempting to commit suicide. Bob jumps off a building and as he’s plummeting to the ground, his life flashes before his eyes. In flashbacks, Bob narrates the stories of those flashback episodes. Presumably, those scenes will give us some idea why Bob has jumped in the first place.
Danny Zuker is the creator of this dark comedy. For obvious reasons, it’ll be shot in a single-comedy format, the current trend in Hollywood. Zuker’s been involved in all kinds of comedy, including Roseanne, Grace Under Fire, Coupling, and most recently, Pamela Anderson’s Fox series, Stacked.