
Number 9? Number 9? The erstwhile Number 6 changed his number - and his fate, with a suggestion of tequila shots. Kal Penn by Isabella Vosmikova/Fox
Episode Recap: The Right StuffOooohhh, trippy. Gotta love an opening sequence that references both Stanely Kubrick's classic a href=" 2001: A Space Odyssey and House's acid trip last season. I'm sure synesthesia (the Patient of the Week's initial diagnosis, a condition in which she "started to hear with [her] eyes") is awfully disconcerting, but it sure looks neat.To start things off, House assigns his group of hopefuls the task of diagnosing Buddy Ebsen, the original Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, who had to give up the role after he developed a life-threatening allergy to the costume's silver paint. But a far more interesting and breathing, paying test case walks in the door, in the form of an Air Force captain and NASA hopeful, who offers House $50,000 in cash to figure out what's wrong with her, on the condition of preserving her anonymity. (Apparently NASA doesn't send biological lemons into orbit.) So House introduces her to the class as Osama bin Laden and sets ...
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Todd McFarlane by Duffy-Marie Arnoult/WireImage.com
Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures are teaming on Oz, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane's revisionist take on the L. Frank Baum books that begat the Wizard of Oz chestnut. Though McFarlane's vision is described as "dark, edgy and a muscular PG-13," and an Oz toy line he launched years ago reimagined a rather buxom Ms. Gale, screenwriter Josh Olson (A History of Violence) tells Variety, "Dorothy as some bondage queen isn't something I want to do. I want this to be Harry Potter-dark, not Seven-dark."
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Masi Oka by Trae Patton/NBC
If you'd told me back in January, when 24 premiered with a riveting four-hour blast of breakneck suspense, that on the last Monday of the regular season I'd be looking more forward to Heroes' finale than 24's, I'd have frisked you for your crack pipe.Funny how things work out. As I've written in my Review column and elsewhere in my online columns, as Heroes' narrative tightened in late January and February before going into overdrive in this final May stretch, 24 began to crumble and ultimately fell apart. Leaving me wondering: When's the last time I approached a season finale of 24 with anything less than breathless anticipation? The answer: Never. Until this season. And my low expectations for Mondays two-hour finale (it felt longer) were pretty much rewarded.The problems with 24 can be pretty well summed up in a woeful line of dialogue from Nadia, after Doyle is blinded by a faked circuit board that explodes in his face, the latest casualty who zigged where Jack would have ...
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Speaking of Bones, Emily Deschanel's sister, Zooey Deschanel, has landed the female lead in Tin Man, Sci Fi Channel's trippy retelling of The Wizard of Oz. Per Variety, Deschanel will play DG, a young woman who finds herself transported from her dull existence into the fantasy-filled world of The O.Z. (Outer Zone). As previously reported, Alan Cumming is on board as a friend of Dorothy's, the Scarecrow-like Glitch. The six-hour miniseries is eyed for a December debut.
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Sci Fi Channel is producing Tin Man, a $19 million, six-hour miniseries that revisits The Wizard of Oz as a "relevant, modern and fresh" science-fiction fantasy. Per Variety, the update finds a young woman name DG plunged in a netherworld called the Outer Zone, where she meets up with Tin Man, a cowardly Wolverine-like creature, a sorceress named Azkadellia, and a larger-than-life entity called Mystic Man.... NBC has tapped Rick Cleveland (Six Feet Under) to bring the indie Thank You for Smoking to the small screen, in the form of a single-camera comedy focusing on superstar spin doctor Nick Naylor (played in the film by Aaron Eckhart).
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Question: I've heard that Oscar winners sometimes sell their statuettes and that there's supposedly something wrong with that. What's the story, and just for the record, what is an Oscar worth?
Answer: The only Oscar winner who actually sold his own statuette was Harold Russell, who traded his best-supporting-actor statuette from The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) for $50,000 in 1992. Russell, a nonactor, played a World War II veteran who comes home a double amputee, as Russell himself had done in real life. And he actually won two Oscars for the same performance, so even after selling his acting award, he had a special Oscar "bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans" for his mantle.
But generally when an Oscar is up for sale, it's by heirs of the person who actually won the award, and the problem
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American IdolKellie Pickler ("pick Pickler!") belted out Kelly Clarkson's "Since You've Been Gone" like a champ, but her hard-luck backstory got the lion's share of attention. You've probably noticed that as soon as a contestant has his or her story told, he/she is pretty much guaranteed to move on to Hollywood. And when your father is in prison and your mother abandoned you at age 2, you are definitely making it to the next round. Kendra Winston's tale of growing up in orphanages and becoming a young mother was equally poignant, and call me a sucker, but I hope the woman Simon called a "young Whitney Houston" goes very far in this competition. I would have been annoyed if anyone other than Paris got so dramatic after
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American IdolKellie Pickler ("pick Pickler!") belted out Kelly Clarkson's "Since You've Been Gone" like a champ, but her hard-luck backstory got the lion's share of attention. You've probably noticed that as soon as a contestant has his or her story told, he/she is pretty much guaranteed to move on to Hollywood. And when your father is in prison and your mother abandoned you at age 2, you are definitely making it to the next round. Kendra Winston's tale of growing up in orphanages and becoming a young mother was equally poignant, and call me a sucker, but I hope the woman Simon called a "young Whitney Houston" goes very far in this competition. I would have been annoyed if anyone other than Paris got so dramatic after
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Scrubs Happy 100th episode, you best darn medical comedy on television, you. Zach Braff directed this loving homage to my favorite movie of all time, The Wizard of Oz, and the shout-outs ranged from a Toto song on J.D.'s iPod to a makeshift yellow brick road through the halls of Sacred Heart. Not to mention ruby-red sneakers; paying no attention to that man behind the curtain; a melting wicked witch; "lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" and an "oil can!" for good measure; and a potential heart donor named Ray Bolger. (Although, if I'm gonna let my geek colors really fly, I have to wonder if it'd be more appropriate to call him Jack Haley, since the Tin Man's the one with the heart all along....) And yet with all these theme-y delights g
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Donald Faison, Scrubs
Tonight at 9 pm/ET, NBC's Scrubs presents its 100th episode, featuring — no, not the death of someone close to Clark Kent — a humorous homage to The Wizard of Oz. This week's second helping guest-stars Jason Bateman and a whole lotta angry ostriches. Is this show officially off the hook? TVGuide.com spoke with Donald Faison, aka Turk, about crafting Scrubs' weekly remedy for the prime-time blahs.
TVGuide.com: Donald Faison, pardon my French, but you are on one damn funny show.Donald Faison: Thanks, but where did you speak French in that?
TVGuide.com: Um, when I said "Faison"? So do you get that a lot, people telling you that Scrubs
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