saying good-bye to the daisies

You may have noticed on the Sharp home page there is no more AP entertainment video. I don’t know all the details, it’s a little above my paygrade. But from what I understand, it’s a money issue, AP wanted something like $500 extra a month to keep it up. we just don’t get the traffic to justify it. Sorry if we took away something of major value, but it’s available in so many other places, we just couldn’t justify it.

Anyway on to the weekend primer:

I’m legitimately p!ssed. Not at ABC, because it seems like it did everything it could to keep Pushing Daisies on the air. But at America for not watching. The news came down today that ABC has canceled Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money and Eli Stone. The news comes on the heels of CBS literally trouncing ABC in Wednesday’s ratings. It’s not a surprising move, Dirty Sexy Money cost a boatload to produce each week and wasn’t the most popular show around. Eli Stone made a nice run, getting a surprise renewal this year, but didn’t seem like it could ever shake the “you’re just a midseason replacement” stigma. But the Daisies, that one hurts. Maybe ABC shouldn’t have made a whole night’s lineup with just new shows, given it some kind of anchor to help nurture it, like maybe moving Ugly Betty to Wednesdays and give Daisies the Thursday 8 p.m. spot. But it’s not ABC’s fault as much as it is yours, America. I’m baffled as to how people can watch the boringly redundant CBS procedurals but decide to skip the Daisies. If you weren’t watching Pushing Daisies but think that Criminal Minds is compelling TV — and it seems like that’s a lot of people — then I’m not sure what to think about society as a whole. Please, someone argue with me and tell me why I’m wrong. Because I’m not. You are. Plus, this means I’m probably going to have to go get my wife off the roof before she jumps after she hears this news.

A little better news from ABC — Scrubs will premiere on Tuesdays in January.

I know I’m starting to sound like The Boy Who Cried Dark Knight, but the more news I see about Twilight, the more I think it can be the biggest box office hit of the winter. It’s got three of the biggest requirements to be a bona fide hit:

1. Huge opening weekend potential.

2. Be-there-or-be-square aura.

3. Rabid fans who will see it multiple times, no matter what kind of reviews it gets.

And there is the problem, the thing that’s going to keep it from going truly into the second stratosphere — the reviews suck. We could be looking at $90 million this weekend, then see it drop below the week’s other release, Bolt, next week. But this looks like a huge opening weekend.

I’m not sure what to think about Spielberg-Big Willie Styles re-imaging of Oldboy, the Korean film that just missed my 2006 top 20. It missed because the ending is so horrific, so crazy and so inconceivable to me, I just couldn’t fully digest it. But looking back on my 2006 list, it probably should have made it over things like Munich and Brokeback. I liked the sequel Lady Vengeance much better. Anyway, Spielberg and Smith are remaking it, and I just don’t know how it can be as good as the original, even if it will be based on the graphic novel, not the movie.

Someone — ANYONE — give me an idea of why the new Guns N ‘Roses album is such a big deal. Doesn’t anyone realize it’s only Axl Rose? Just because he won the court battle to keep the GNR name, does that really make it GNR? Of course not. Velvet Revolver had more of a claim to the GNR name. Luckily, Slash and Duff have moved on — too bad Axl never could. If you’re one of the people actually looking forward to this, Chinese Democracy comes out Tuesday.

Yes! Now the air traffic controller from Die Hard 2 can get his own movie.