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  • Posted 11/21/09 at 6:40 PM
  • Mad Men

Don Draper: the Doll

Smooth operator

Smooth operatorPhoto: DraftFCB

To promote the third season of Mad Men in New Zealand, the communications agency DraftFCB put together Don Draper dolls to send to the media there. While you can't own one, and they don't really look like Jon Hamm, whose face is much craggier and more masculine, with a stronger jawline and a much less button-y nose (we can't even imagine how smooth this doll's "smooth area" must be!), you can admire the idea and the craftsmanship. A representative from the agency told the Mad Men uber fansite Basket of Kisses how they put the doll together:

"His suit is hand-stitched from real cloth, we designed and built a wood-paneled box for him to sit in. They were prohibitively expensive to make and we ran out of budget pretty quick, but totally worth it."

Note that the packaging is even cuter than the doll: "Collect all four mistresses!"

Don Doll Want [Basket of Kisses]

  • Posted 11/21/09 at 6:13 PM
  • Tina Fey

Tina Fey Did Sarah Palin Jokes at the Ad Council Dinner

Tina Fey hosted the Ad Council's dinner the other night, where she made NBC jokes ("I really believe that if everyone in this room would watch NBC for one night ... then that would be a 40 percent increase") and even did a brief Sarah Palin impression ("all of my ideas are in these glass things!," meaning the teleprompter glass). It's a little weird to see Tina do award-show-host one-liners, but once you get used to it it's pretty funny.

Read more »

  • Posted 11/21/09 at 5:18 PM
  • Vampires
New Moon Shatters The Dark Knight's Box Office Records

Nikke Finke breathlessly reports that The Twilight Saga: New Moon is expected to have made $72 million on its opening day, breaking the record set by The Dark Knight in 2008 ($67 million). The lesson appears to be: girls rule, boys drool. [Deadline Hollywood]

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  • Posted 11/21/09 at 12:00 PM
  • Sitcoms

Canadians Are Cool With How I Met Your Mother's Relentless Canadian Jokes

In an article about HIMYM, which has 700,000 viewers in Canada, the CanWest news service addressed the show's constant teasing of its Canuck character, Robin Scherbatsky, played by actual Canadian Cobie Smulders, quoting her co-star Neil Patrick Harris: "By the end of (last) season, Cobie was like, 'All right, dudes, enough with the Canadian jokes." The article is good-humored about the whole thing, though its writer couldn't help but throw in a mention of Canada's Stanley Cup win and the writer even makes a national self-deprecating joke about the Stanley Cup.
How I Met Your Mother Going Strong Thanks to Plenty of Canadian Jokes [Canada.com]

  • Posted 11/21/09 at 11:25 AM
  • Moyerspocalypse

Forget Oprah, Bill Moyers is Retiring!

Lost in, or possibly timed to coincide with, yesterday's puzzling huge fuss about Oprah's planned departure from her show many many moons from now was the news that Bill Moyers, trusted voice of calm reason at PBS, is retiring from weekly television and will end his current show, Bill Moyers Journal, at the end of next April. By way of explanation, he told the New York Times "I'm 75 years old." Now that is some actually fuss-worthy TV show host retirement news!
Bill Moyers to Leave Weekly Television [NYT]

11/20/09

  • Posted 11/20/09 at 8:45 PM
  • Roll Credits

Week In Review: Team Volturi!

How many ways is New Moon (the movie) better than New Moon (the book)? We ran the numbers, and the answer is 34. This is less a testament to the vagina-less Chris Weitz than it is a credit to Kristin Stewart's much improved demeanor and Taylor Lautner's not-at-all restless abs. Besides, the tweens of America clearly didn't care how crappy the CGI werewolves looked, they just wanted to feast their eyes on Robert Pattinson's sparklechest.

So, what else happened this week? »

  • Posted 11/20/09 at 7:00 PM
  • Overnights

Grey’s Anatomy: Happy New Year!

Grey’s Anatomy: Happy New Year!

Photo: Danny Feld/ABC

This episode blasts us through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's faster than you can say "Meet me in the on-call room." It's a whirlwind of illegitimate children, unrequited love, an alcoholic chief, and a disapproving father. And, as usual, McDreamy magically saves some lives, too.

Video: Christmas in the O.R.! »

  • Posted 11/20/09 at 6:50 PM
  • Overnights

Community: Salsa Verde

Community: Salsa Verde

Photo: Courtesy of NBC

It’s Green Week, everyone! Yes, that hilariously contrived Ben Silverman idea that NBC is actually continuing after Silverman’s unamicable departure (as opposed to “Pumas On Hovercraft Week” and the equally ill-fated “Bikini Models With Lasers Week”). Green Week works, partly because it offers the Thursday-night comedy lineup an enormous opportunity for parody — something the producers of Community were clearly eager to run with. Last night’s “Environmental Science” wasn’t just the funniest Green Week-inspired sitcom since 30 Rock’s David-Schwimmer-in-a-bodysuit “Greenzo,” a few years back, it was also the best episode yet of Community’s young life.

Video: Pickled bull testicles! »

  • Posted 11/20/09 at 6:45 PM
  • Franco-phile

James Franco Debuts on General Hospital

11/20/09: The day people who had never watched General Hospital before in their lives watched a little bit of General Hospital, just to see James Franco. Never forget! Turns out, it's not very hospital-y, at all, and it's about the mafia and the art world and a lady having a meltdown in her living room. But also, at least for now, starting today, it's about Franco, a famous artist whose art is killing people or maybe rearranging them after they die, or something, and whenever he's on the screen, the piano part from that song “Mad World”, popularized in a cover version on the Donnie Darko soundtrack plays. The best part was at the end, when James Franco reveals his beautiful, glistening face and kisses a lady. Here's that part. James Franco!

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  • Posted 11/20/09 at 5:30 PM
  • Oprahpocalypse

Oprah Invites Us on an Eighteen-Month-Long Journey

Oprah Winfrey officially announced today that her show will not continue indefinitely exactly as it is now, and the world reacted with screams and sobs. In her tearful announcement, Oprah said that 25 years felt like the right number, and invited her audience to continue with her on the eighteen-month journey to the show's finale in 2011. It's kind of hard to muster much excitement about this, because eighteen months is an unbelievable amount of time (you could conceive a BABY today and it could be TALKING during Oprah's last show) but also because, come on, Oprah is like energy: She can't go away, she can only change form.

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  • Posted 11/20/09 at 5:00 PM
  • Chat Room

John Woo on Red Cliff, Returning to Asia, and Why He’s Not a Hustler

Director John Woo’s career in Hollywood began with the 1993 Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Hard Target, and went on to encompass such massive hits as Mission: Impossible 2 and Face/Off. Now, after fifteen years of toiling in the Hollywood machinery, Woo has returned to Asia, with the medieval war epic Red Cliff, based on a famous battle between three warlords at the end of the Han Dynasty in China. The film, which features some of the most spectacularly elaborate battle scenes that anyone has ever put on film, was released in two two-and-a-half hour parts in Asia, where it broke box-office records. Woo has cut it down to a svelte two-and-a-half hour version for U.S. release. Vulture caught up with him in a SoHo hotel to talk about the importance of Red Cliff to his career, as well as his impressions of his own Hollywood legacy.

Read more »

  • Posted 11/20/09 at 4:45 PM
  • Snubs
James Toback Isn't Taking His Oscar Snub Well

In an interview with the New York Times, enigmatic director James Toback went to great lengths to assail not only the reputation of the committee that selects the shortlist for the Best Documentary award, but also the fairness of their selection process. “How is some tiny, dirty covert weirdly protective little group within the Academy going to be immune?,” he posed to Michael Cieply, before adding that he experienced something during the selection process “which I put fully in the category of extortion that I did not go along with.” [NYT]

  • Posted 11/20/09 at 4:30 PM
  • News Reel

Ang Lee and James Schamus Discuss the Mistakes They Made With Taking Woodstock

Ang Lee and James Schamus Discuss the Mistakes They Made With Taking Woodstock

Photo: Patrick McMullan

On Wednesday night, the National Arts Club awarded its Medal of Honor in Film to director Ang Lee and his longtime collaborator, Focus Features president James Schamus. It was, the two frankly admitted, probably the only accolade they’d get this year, given critics’ — and audiences’ — tepid reaction to Taking Woodstock, which Lee directed and Schamus wrote. The two of them spoke with Vulture in the drawing room, after the entrée, but before the dessert.

"Everybody who goes to an Ang Lee movie wants to be sublimely depressed by the end of the film. And if you have 'Woodstock' in the title, you think you’re going to be seeing Joe Cocker screaming onstage." »

  • Posted 11/20/09 at 4:00 PM
  • Quote Machine

Blake Lively Isn't the Least Bit Worried About Being Attracted to Alan Arkin

"Apparently naked, not fully naked. I was lying partially naked on Alan Arkin, but strategic body parts were covered. It's always scary when you're in front of strangers half naked, but the fact that it was with Alan, honestly, didn't make it any weirder. I think being with a young dude would have been more awkward because I might have been like, 'Well, does he think I look cute right now?'"—Blake Lively on not caring what Alan Arkin thought in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee [Parade]

“I don’t think I could be here without her. I think she has blazed a trail. She is an amazing woman. She will always be the Queen of daytime television and she also said she is leaving me all of her money. I was like, God, thanks Oprah, thank you.”—Ellen DeGeneres on Oprah's announcement [EllenTV]

Plus: Dakota Fanning talks about smooching her New Moon co-star, Kristin Stewart. »

  • Posted 11/20/09 at 3:30 PM
  • Party Lines
Sorry, Kellan Lutz Won’t Let You Lick Him

When we caught up with Twilight star Kellan Lutz at the premiere for New Moon last night, we wondered if Twilight Moms and other older women are suddenly taking an interest in the 24-year-old. "Yeah, a few pumas, a few cougars," he confessed. "You know, it’s always great when you get fan mail of one clothed picture and then on the back it’s quite the opposite. A Twilight mom once asked if she could lick my face, and I was like, uh, that’s all right." Also, see Robert, Taylor, Kristen, and more at the premiere in our Party Lines slideshow.

  • Posted 11/20/09 at 3:15 PM
  • Mary Jane

Jonathan Ames Loves His Bored To Death Vaporizer

When Vulture attended the Bored To Death panel discussion at the Paley Center a few weeks back, show creator (and "drowned ghostly ship's captain" resembling) Jonathan Ames played it coy when an audience member asked him about the role marijuana plays in the show's creative-development process. As he put it, "I think it can be a lovely drug, from my memory of it." Well, we caught up with Ames at the Moth Ball the other night, and he was singing a bit of a different, sweet-smelling tune. "You know that vaporizer they use [on Bored to Death]?," he asked us. "I was given that by the production, yeah. So fucking good. They gave us a vaporizer. Yeah … it's really good. Was yesterday Monday? So Sunday, I vaporized mid-day. I love it. I love my vaporizer. One bag, it's like getting heroin." Guess you can chalk that up as yet another reason why a good number of TV creatives choose HBO over Showtime.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story contained an inaccurate quote about the Bored To Death producers, Jonathan Ames and marijuana. We have corrected the quote and we regret the error.

  • Posted 11/20/09 at 2:45 PM
  • Trailer Mix

Amanda Seyfried’s Letters to Juliet: The Dumb Man’s Amelie

Okay, that's too mean, but there are some similarities between the French masterpiece and the lighter-than-air Amanda Seyfried vehicle Letters to Juliet, in which a young woman on vacation in Verona, Italy finds an old letter to Juliet Capulet and sets off to reunite its writer (Vanessa Redgrave), now old, with the true love she jilted half a century before. As Cinematical points out, this trailer is a particularly egregious example of the trailer that shows the entire movie, but, hey look, it's from Summit Entertainment, and it came out today — they gotta grab those famously uncritical Twilight Saga eyeballs while the butts are in the seats.

Read more »

  • Posted 11/20/09 at 2:30 PM
  • Overnights

Fringe: Observing the Detectives

Fringe: Observing the Detectives

Photo: Michael Courtney/FOX

They usually just lurk in the background, but last night, the hairless Observers took center stage. While the episode unveiled some juicy information about their origins, the writers continued to pursue a theme they’ve developed over the series’ run: the fear of losing those closest to us.

Video: See Walter talk to one of the baldheads! »

  • Posted 11/20/09 at 2:20 PM
  • Overnights

FlashForward: Bryce Yourself

FlashForward: Bryce Yourself

Photo: Courtesy of ABC

When it comes to supporting characters, FlashForward is just as stingy as Lost in the doling out exposition. It's taken nine episodes to get anywhere with Bryce, the previously-suicidal-but-now-optimistic surgeon who works under Olivia at the hospital. But now's his shot: The Bryce Episode. And it's not a bad one to have: right before we take a two-week hiatus for Thanksgiving, and leading up to the winter finale. (Incidentally, the A.V. Club has a theory that we should only be watching the odd-numbered episodes of this show, because it's the even-numbered ones that have been crap.)

Video: Smashy, smashy! »

  • Posted 11/20/09 at 1:55 PM
  • Vampires
America’s Teens Break Curfew in Record Numbers for New Moon Debut

While no one quite knows exactly how much money New Moon took in during its 12:01 a.m. screenings last night, everyone is acknowledging that it almost certainly broke the midnight-screenings record set by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this July. Vulture buddy Nikki Finke's sources are telling her that it made $23–$24 million last night, while the Los Angeles Times is saying that it raked in between $22.2 and $26 million. Either way, that's a lot of babysitting money that just got pumped back into the economy. UPDATE: Finke deleted her previous estimate that we quoted earlier, but now it turns out that the film grossed $26.27 million last night. [DHD, Company Town/LAT]

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