If only he could travel back in time to avert this catastrophe! After remarking that the only people who watch Heroes live are "saps and dipshits" who haven't figured out how to operate a DVR, show creator Tim Kring is apologising for his remarks becoming so public. "It was a boneheaded attempt at being cute and making a point. Instead, it turned out to be just plain insulting and stupid." Wait, we're sorry: that was actually his attempt to explain season two of Heroes. [SyFy Portal]

With Heroes currently undergoing a ratings tailspin that even a concentrating, constipated-faced Milo Ventimiglia can do nothing about, one would think that creator Tim Kring would be trying to hold onto whatever fans he had left. Not so much! The Washington Post reports that at a recent Creative Screenwriting panel (where Kring attended solo sans two of the promised guests: Heroes executive producers that NBC recently fired), Kring complained that the Heroes downturn was less his fault and more the fault of people who actually sit down in front of the television and watch the show:

Read More »

· CBS's Monday night sitcom lineup won the night, with How I Met Your Mother earning a season high. NBC saw modest gains, too, except for Heroes, which matched last week's series low of 7.6 million. Bring back the slovenly puppeteer! His powers to enact drama-class exercises were kick arse! [THR]
· The King of Kong and Four Christmases director Seth Gordon is attached to Universal's Suicide Squad, about a Kentucky Derby heist. [THR]
· Cosby brought him here, now it's time for Obama to do some TV landscape changing of his own: NBC is developing a sitcom based on the book Making Friends With Black People. "It seemed like a good opportunity to strike while the iron is hot," said author Nick Adams. Sounds like a great idea. [Variety]

After the jump: Whoa. Whooaa.

Read More »

Before the premiere of this fall season, NBC head Ben Silverman liked to brag about the extensive movie star outreach he'd done to populate his shows: Selma Blair in Kath & Kim! Christian Slater in My Own Worst Enemy! Sadly, Kath was poorly received, Enemy has just been axed (alongside another show called something like Project Lipstick, we think?), and the rest of the fall lineup is skidding out like Silverman's Knight Rider retread. You might imagine, with all this broadcast carnage, that some of it might be Silverman's fault. Nuh-unh! protests Page Six:

Read More »

How's this for a cliffhanger: ratings for NBC's Heroes have dropped precipitously this season, leading to the firing of two producers, an Entertainment Weekly cover story asking whether the show can be saved, and now, a NY Times article that lays the blame on Jeff Zucker, Ben Silverman and show creator Tim Kring. According to the media frenzy, Heroes has suddenly undergone a drastic creative plummet in its third season. Here's the thing though: the show? Never that good!

Read More »

How do you know when campaign season is over? Maybe when the boldest idea of the week comes from film and TV critic Marshall Fine, who argues today for the termination of TV series after one year. Even the hits! (Especially the hits, in fact.) And we might even sign on — with a few exceptions.

Read More »

Having already enjoyed the effects of one defribrillation at the hands of master career re-animator Quentin Tarantino, '70s TV acting icon (with occasional forays into B-movies like Alligator and Disney's The Black Hole) Robert Forster makes another deserved comeback on NBC's sprawling super-power fantasia, Heroes.

Read More »

From megastars like Matt Damon to Cutting Edge alums like D.B. Sweeney, it seems like every celebrity in Hollywood has an opinion about this November's presidential election. Earlier this week, actress Jessica Alba decided to muzzle herself if that's what it would take to get America to vote (an enticing motivator, though perhaps not as compelling as keeping Diddy out of sight forever). Now, a curiously able-to-speak again Alba has decided to pay it forward, muzzling other celebrities like Heroes star Hayden Panettiere and 90210's Tristan Wilds (is this because he made out with Dakota? Is it?!). Props must be paid to Alba, whose maniacally enthusiastic pitch should probably shoot to the top of her reel. Extra points if she can sew Dane Cook's lips shut next time!

The clip, after the jump:

Read More »

Now that Heroes has resumed shooting after a strike-truncated, poorly received second season, star Milo Ventimiglia has less time for nachos ("uh-oh!") and more publicity rounds to make. The latest stop on his Heroes redemption tour is gay magazine The Advocate, where Ventimiglia sat down and dished to writer Brandon Voss about his frequent on-screen shirtlessness ("You do start to wonder..."), his friend John Krasinski, and a certain gossip blogger's habit of defacing his paparazzi pictures:

Read More »

Watching Dave Letterman sucker-punch Hills axis of vapidity Spencer Pratt on The Late Show Friday night brought up one major question for us: why has it taken this long for a talking head to publicly shame the guylighted villain? Shilling, we presume, merely for the gruesome brand that is Spencer and Heidi, the numb and pathological Pratt answered a few very pointed questions regarding the MTV show's obvious scripted nature and what exactly Bromance nobody Brody Jenner does for a living. At that point, Letterman finally pulled out the big guns after Spencer boastfully claimed he "won't go to a club for less than $100,000." Dave's shock, insulting-yet-gentle series of guffaws and his no-beat-missed announcement that he wants Spencer off his set immediately sum up an interview too good to be true. See for yourself after the jump:

Read More »