the simpsons

Could Anything Ever Kill The Simpsons?

7:30AM Kyle Buchanan | Fox just put in an order for two more seasons of The Simpsons, ensuring that it will exceed Gunsmoke’s 20-year run to become the longest-running primetime series ever. Here’s why it may never end. More »

Bart Simpson Pushes Scientology: ‘Don’t Have A Thetan-Ridden Cow, Man!’

2:49AM Kyle Buchanan | In a move that will no doubt make Fox super excited, Simpsons actress Nancy Cartwright is using her Bart voice to shill for an upcoming Scientology event at Hollywood & Highland. More »

WGA Awards Recognise Every Half-Decent Show On TV With Its Own, Worthless Nomination

8:12AM STV | The Writers Guild unveiled its 2009 TV nominees this morning, revealing a radical shift in taste that rotated only one new drama and two new comedies into the year’s Best Series nominations — all replacing old nominees that weren’t on the air this year. Let’s hear it for attrition! More »

‘Hi Diddly Ho, Draper!’: ‘The Simpsons’ Gets Its Best Ratings In Five Years

5:25AM Seth | The Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons, shown in the US last night, featured a direct homage to Mad Men—the familiar strings accompanying a silhouette of Homer tumbling down the side of a building on whatever Springfield’s answer to Madison Avenue is. More »

Homer Simpson Votes For Barack Obama, Suffers the Consequences

2:25AM STV | Who would Homer Simpson vote for? It’s a question pundits across America (or at least a couple of them) have spent part of 2008 attempting to answer, particularly after the failed grassroots effort to mobilize his third-party presidential candidacy for November. (It came down to his support of nuclear energy, or Marge not wanting to exploit Maggie… rumours abound). But in an excerpt we found from The Simpsons episode slated for Nov. 2, the all-important Simpson endorsement is finally revealed — better late than never for one candidate, if not quite beneficial to Homer himself. We suppose that in addition to Ohio’s little-known secession from the US, the lesson here is that voting is a contact sport, and not an especially fair one. But like so many things in the world, it could have been worse; when the chips are down, those Diebold voting machines have nothing on an armed Sarah Palin. [YouTube] More »

Little French Comedy To Be Drained Of All Charm By Will Smith

6:20AM Seth | Will Smith will produce the U.S. version of Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis, a little French comedy sleeper about a post office manager banished to the boonies. “There are only 65 million people who live in France, and $191 million seemed to defy all logic,” explained producer Ken Stovitz, his eyes rolling to the back of his head and passing clear out as he did some quick calculations and came up with an opening weekend domestic total of $1.2 billion. [Variety] John Grisham’s novel Playing For Pizza, about a slice of pizza who gets recruited by a high-power law firm only to find itself caught up in a web of corruption and intrigue and eventually eaten by a hungry sanitation worker, has been optioned by Phoenix Pictures. [THR] John Woo will tackle 1949—a “a big budget romancer,” that is not, to our knowledge, a sequel to the 1979 Steven Spielberg film picking up eight years into the high-flying adventures of Cpt. Wild Bill Kelso and friends. [Variety] More »

Defamer Immortalised In Cartoon-Form By ‘The Simpsons!’ Sort Of! OK, Not At All!

4:36AM Seth | We’re loath to admit we’ve fallen behind on new episodes of The Simpsons, so we’re extremely grateful to the reader who pointed the following out to us: On Sunday’s show, after a fairly hilarious sequence in which Homer engages in an illicit affair with a gyro cone (which, for $4300, could basically give you all the unsafe satisfaction you could handle), the portly paterfamilias then puts a happy ending on his marathon session of rotisserie lovemaking with a trip to Pudding on the Ritz. His order? “One Butterscotch Stallion.” More »

Bart Simpson, Scientologist, Says Keep Springfield Working!

9:24AM Defamer Hollywood | Now that we know the voice of Bart Simpson is a full-on “Clear” scientologist, we had to wonder what Bart would sound like were he played by the Clearest of All Clears: Mr. Tom Cruise! In this video mashup keenly edited together by Intrepid Defamer Videographer™ Molly McAleer, our favorite yellow-haired toon turns from a loveable little menace whose tagline is “Don’t have a cow, man” to an eerie little OT in-training who abides by the mantra “Anything LRH does.” We can’t help but wonder what would’ve gone down had the little guy had had the powers of Xenu with him during that climactic final scene in The Simpsons Movie. We imagine that Bart, embiggened with the energy of the alien king, could have extracted the entire family from the Springfield bubble himself, saving Homer all those motorcycle-induced scrapes and bruises. More »