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Remember a few weeks ago when an oddly specific Heroes spoiler leaked from two sources? [Stop reading if you don't like spoilers!] It went like this: a male cast member, one of the show's originals, learned of his character's abrupt death from reading the script. That didn't leave a lot of options and we guessed Peter Petrelli, played by Milo Ventimiglia. But we were wrong! It's Adrian Pasdar's character Nathan Petrelli. R.I.P.
'Heroes' spoiler alert: The rumors are true [Ausiello Files/EW]
After idly watching Paranormal Activity become the new movie people talk about when they talk about enormously successful low-budget movies, the guys behind The Blair Witch Project have decided to get the Handycam out of storage. Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick are currently pitching a script for Blair Witch 3 to Lionsgate, which owns the film's rights. Their script picks up after the first movie with the original cast members playing small roles. Blair Witch 2, which neither was involved with, is ignored.
Richard Gilbert is a former Madison Avenue adman who founded the agency Gilbert Advertising, and last year wrote the book Marching Up Madison Avenue: How I Beat the Entrepreneurial Odds Armed With a Pencil and My Imagination. So every week when he tunes in to Mad Men, it's like tuning into his life, except for the parts that are all wrong. In a letter to Ad Age, Gilbert rips into the show for getting London Fog wrong, not understanding sixties censors, and generally sucking. Here's his zing! line:
"The show's producers claim that they did meticulous research, and they obviously did — on girdles, cigarettes, clothing, furnishings, art work, etc. But they seem to have done little or none on advertising for an advertising-themed show.
Zing! If you consider Mad Men a historical document above all else, you probably shouldn't read the rest.
After rapping with Lil Wayne and teaming up with Katy Perry, Rivers Cuomo isn't really able to surprise us anymore with his bizarre collaborations. So when we watch this video of Leighton Meester joining Weezer onstage, or read about Cuomo writing a song for Adam Lambert, we just shrug. [RS]
Photo: Courtesy of Showtime
“This place is toxic,” announces Karen with finality, and Hank breaks into a grin: They’re going back to New York. Or are they? By the end of this packed episode, Becca will have thrown a tantrum about it — “New York doesn’t mean shit to me. It isn’t the answer to anything!” — Karen will have figured out who Hank is sleeping with, lied to him about who she’s sleeping with, and both of them will have had an ugly scene with the drunken parents of Becca’s best friend. So there’s ample evidence to support the “toxic” theory.
Photo: WireImage
This weekend, as the rest of the city was fighting off Halloween hangovers, and 40,000 really ambitious folks were running 26 miles, Vulture was trying to recover from two straight days of shuffling around the backstage gifting lounge and press room at Madison Square Garden for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th Anniversary concerts. We've already told you what happened onstage on Night 1 and Night 2. Here's what you missed offstage.
Bono! Tom Morello! Fergie! Mick Jagger! Tom Hanks! Mark-Paul Gosselaar! 
Photo: Courtesy of Showtime
A shocking development: Harry Morgan doesn’t show up once. But with Dexter more obsessed than the average viewer about things like whether the Trinity Killer keeps souvenirs and whether his love for his family is real or carefully crafted camouflage, this episode’s big revelations about Trinity don’t seem as significant as they should.
Photo: Courtesy of HBO
The lesbians who have given Ray's jerking off "new meaning" went AWOL. Ray knows next to nothing about the potential mothers of his children, but he and Jonathan learn where they live by way of their Park Slope Co-op membership card. Ray and Jonathan break into the couple's empty apartment only to find that the ladies aren't breeding — they're selling Ray's seed on the black market! Armed with an Excel spreadsheet of semen customers, the duo sets out on a wild, gay goose chase to find the lesbians, but all they track down is a series of angry women who've been duped by Ray's useless ejaculate. Sigh. Jonathan's attempts to produce more than one line of text for his next novel have proven fruitless; Ray's sperm has failed to produce a viable zygote. Jonathan meets up with George at a dingy Flatiron bar. Wouldn't you know it, George's nemesis, the GQ editor, is tossing back a few with a Slate book critic (played by John Hodgman) who panned Jonathan's last book. They proceed to hurl rumors about Edition's imminent demise and its massive ad-page shrinkage. George retaliates with an excoriating editor's letter about Mr. GQ. The tabloidy mudslinging culminates in an agreement to take things into a real-life boxing ring. The good-news-bad-news ending to “The Case of the Stolen Sperm” is that yes, one of the women was actually able to conceive, but no, she wants nothing to do with the schlubby daddy. A glimmer of hope comes from the baby mama's partner (Samantha Bee), who whispers to a distraught Ray: “Find me on Facebook.”
Photo: Frans Lanting/Corbis
In this week's magazine, Emily Nussbaum traces the history of the TV cougar, from Samantha Jones to Cougar Town. Tim Murphy spends 93 minutes with Lynn Redgrave. Andrew Marantz talks to the apocalypse experts Sony recruited to help sell 2012. Justin Davidson tells us how New York is sneaking great new buildings into tiny, unexpected places. David Edelstein reviews Precious. Logan Hill interviews the makers of HBO's flattering new Obama doc, By the People. Miranda Siegel weighs in on Robert Bergman's gallery debut. And Jerry Saltz reviews the Urs Fischer show at the New Museum. Sam Anderson reviews Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals. And Alexandra Lange rediscovers Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy series, the original Gossip Girl.
An acquaintance recently turned us on to the work of Seattle-based filmmaker Matt Cibelli, whose work flits between the narrative and the experimental with disarming ease. In particular, his new short, Kicks 4 Cranes, is one of the coolest things we’ve seen in many a moon. The one-sentence pitch doesn't quite do it justice: The film juxtaposes (beautiful) footage of construction cranes with (enigmatic) audio of women talking about their shoes. It’s hypnotic, but what does it all mean? Like all good experimental films, it manages to render its subjects even more mysterious than ever before. But it also draws our attention to the way that beauty, particularly of the female kind, often has to be constructed and maintained, just like a giant office building. And, perhaps most surprisingly, it does the reverse, too: It shows us (particularly through cinematographer Adam Forslund’s hauntingly lovely images) that a giant, gleaming construction crane against a sky can, in its own way, be as alluring as a pair of pumps.
Hell hath no fury like a Simpson sister scorned! Just weeks after her baby sister Ashlee was dropped from the cast of Melrose Place, big sister Jessica took to Twitter to blast the show (episodes of which, mind you, are still featuring her sister). "[W]ho writes this crap? [I] have had bad scripts to work with, but this? [T]hank God my sister is amazing and got you some press," she tweeted. Oh, snap? [JessicaSimpson/Twitter via Us]
Following the current owner's declaration of bankruptcy over the summer, the Terminator franchise will be auctioned off later this month to the highest bidder. Among those seriously interested: Platinum Equity, Summit Entertainment, and Media Rights Capital. Among those facetiously interested: Joss Whedon, who just wrote a funny blog post preemptively offering $10,000 for the rights. [Whedonesque]
"Matt Damon's moustache is made of synthetic fiber. He can not grow a moustache." —George Clooney [Access Hollywood]
“The nude scenes never felt magical. They felt like a pain in the arse. I think I should have just had one big nude day. Wouldn’t that have been a good idea? Then I could have got it all over and done with, which would have been good. Those scenes were an unnecessary evil. I did exactly as I was told so we could get them done as quickly as possible and get on with the rest of the day.” —Eric Bana on shooting The Time Traveler's Wife [Sydney Morning Herald]
There are some things that we, as a society, hold up as immutable truths: The sun will come up tomorrow, two plus two equals four, and Robert Pattinson is the hunkiest piece of British vampire meat who's ever been born. However, after reading the preview of the new Vanity Fair cover story on Robert Pattinson — who cares that he's barely in the new movie! — earlier this morning, we found ourselves rocked to the core when we discovered that the producers of the first Twilight film were not entirely convinced that Pattinson was dreamy enough to inhabit the sparkle-chested character of Edward Cullen. Even more upsetting? Pattinson himself didn't want to take his shirt off during his audition with Kristen Stewart and director Catherine Hardwicke!
Photo: Courtesy of ABC
Last week, Ugly Betty warned us of the perils of jealousy; this episode, the show celebrates the pleasures of honesty. So what do we know about truth? It hurts. It sets you free. It leads to awkward interactions with supermodels (see below).
"As much as I love giant wieners flying at me, this is a little outside my comfort zone."
The real, official version of No Ceilings — the new Lil Wayne mixtape that leaked last week — was released over the weekend. It features four new songs, including a take on Beyoncé’s "Sweet Dreams," and an overall better sound quality. In a related story, Wayne's protégé, Drake, tells Rap-Up.com that his mentor isn't thinking much about his impending prison sentence: "He's kinda more concerned about getting [out] as much music as he possibly can," so maybe he wasn't kidding about releasing those three albums before the end of this year. For now, you can download No Ceilings at WeAreYoungMoney.com. [via NahRight.com]
You may know Devendra Banhart as the hirsute dude who briefly dated Natalie Portman, but the 27-year-old Californian is a seriously gifted (and slightly eccentric) singer-songwriter who’s released six records of wonderfully experimental folk-rock. This month, he returns with What Will We Be, his first album for major-label Warner Bros. Vulture caught up with Banhart to talk about recording in a remote area of Northern California and his favorite songs of the decade.
Photo: Courtesy of HBO
Considering the last two weeks, which have featured silly plotlines revolving around belly flab and Christian Slater’s penchant for caviar, this funny and focused episode is a welcome return to form. Although we couldn’t help but notice that the main story line — a peripheral character having a heart attack after being insulted by a main character on a golf course — appeared on Entourage a couple of seasons ago. (We confess: We once watched Entourage. We’re not proud of it.) We’ll let it go this one time. On to the outrageous moments ...
Photo: Courtesy of AMC
Last week, Joan bashed the bad doctor over the head with a vase and reconnected with Roger, while Betty and Don had the epic face-off we'd all been anticipating. This week, the second-to-last episode of the season sets up the finale with a bang. But don't worry — Don says "everything's going to be fine."
The New York Times reports this morning that GE and Comcast are nearing a deal to give the cable monster an ownership stake in NBC Universal, and that an official announcement could come next week. All this means for you, the NBC viewer, is that on 30 Rock, instead of jokes about a corporate overlord that makes useful things like wigs and toaster ovens, you'll get jokes about a corporate overlord with poor customer-service ratings and a stranglehold on half of the country's cable subscriptions (Tina Fey can still make this funny, we bet). [NYT]
Ah, how we miss the undergrad life: Waking up at the crack of noon, hitting the cafeteria with your friends, then maybe or maybe not going to class, depending on how much TV we had to catch up on. Well, it seems that up in the hallowed halls of Harvard, one professor is hoping to fool students into going to class by promising that they'll get to do nothing but watch TV. During a panel this weekend, sociology professor William J. Wilson announced that he'll be launching a class next semester that focuses solely on The Wire. That sounds all well and good, but if we were still in school, we'd hold out for the seminar on SpongeBob SquarePants. [NYP]
Like you knew they would, TNT has officially picked up the critically acclaimed, NBC-discarded cop drama Southland and will air all of its thirteen already-produced episodes starting on January 12 (including the seven aired by the Peacock last spring, plus six new ones). TNT hasn't yet committed to shooting any new scripts, though, which means they'll wait to gauge ratings on these episodes before laying out any more money. This also means you'll have to watch Southland's first season, even if you've already seen it, if you want to find out how the second one ends. On the plus side, Michael Cudlitz will have a couple months off should he feel like calling up a reporter and lavishing more praise on his former network.
Official: TNT picks up 'Southland' [Live Feed/HR]
An alarming statistic courtesy of today's Times: On average, 46 percent of DVR-owning adults are not skipping past ads during time-shifted programming, a number that's up slightly from last year. Obviously, the major networks are thrilled about this, since they think it means TV watching is an inherently passive activity that turns humans into sloths, and that their 60-year-old business model is still temporarily viable (time-shifted viewings currently add about 10 percent to live ratings and let networks charge advertisers for commercials watched up to three days after they first air). Clearly, though, this is more indicative of a design flaw in currently available DVRs, and signals that there's a bunch of money to be made by the company that makes commercial-skipping an automatic process (and dodges the resulting lawsuits from networks). If we'd paid any attention in engineering school, you can bet that's what we'd be trying to figure out how to do this morning.
Two-Hour Viagra Commercial: Warner Bros. has picked up an untitled comedy from writers Josh Cagan and Greg Coolidge with Morgan Freeman attached to star. The script, which has the working title Dirty Old Men, is about an old playboy who meets the love of his life. His wingman of 40 years (Freeman) is not too keen on this development and tries to break up the new couple. Warner Bros. is hoping to snag Jack Nicholson to star as the playboy, reuniting the duo from your grandpa's favorite movie of 2007, The Bucket List. [HR]
Class Reunion: Katie Holmes is set to replace Liv Tyler in The Romantics, an independent film about eight college friends who reunite for a wedding. Holmes will play Laura, the maid of honor to the bride played by Anna Paquin. The film also includes Josh Duhamel, Malin Akerman, Elijah Wood, Adam Brody, Jeremy Strong, and an album's worth of Feist songs. [Variety]
What went wrong with Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, the Broadway revival that shut down Sunday just one week after it opened? Everything, according to the Times.
There were no big stars like Jude Law in the current commercial hit Hamlet, there was no marketing campaign that framed the Simon play as a can’t-miss theatrical event, and there was no wow factor that brought the period piece to life, like the breakneck pacing of the popular farce Boeing-Boeing last year. But the failure also reflects America’s evolving sense of humor and taste.
How exactly has our sense of humor evolved? We've left behind the snappy dialogue of Simon's sitcom-style plays in favor of "reality shows like American Idol," the "sardonic humor of The Office," the "wit of Up", and the "fratty banter of The Hangover." The result: a $3 million production by one of America's most celebrated playwrights that can't make more than $125,000 a week. Thanks a lot, Simon Cowell. And Steve Carell. And Pixar. And Mike Tyson's tiger.
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Nine
Did You Hear About the Morgans? Premiere
A Little Night Music Opening
Premiere of It’s Complicated
VEVO Launch Party
Doctor Parnassus Screening
Michael Cera, Prince of the Innocent Adolescent
The Rise of P.S.1’s New Boss, Klaus Biesenbach
David Edelstein on Sherlock Holmes
The View From W. Eugene Smith’s Window
