still can’t get enough coney

Some catch-up of stuff I’ve had all week, and some updates:

An end to the Conan-Leno-NBC debacle? Looks like it’s on the way, unfortunately for the rest of us. Well, at least me. I’m usually over stories like this in about 30 seconds, but I can’t get enough of this because there’s new news EVERY DAY!!! And all of it is riveting. We may never see anything like this again, one of the biggest power plays in TV to mask one of the most frightening network mistakes that has ever been made. There will be books written about this, which will lead to a movie, and could even spawn a TV show since Studio 60 and 30 Rock already have the parodies of late-night sketch-shows market cornered. And what a shock, Tonight Show’s ratings have gone up. The offer is out there for Leno-hater Howard Stern to be on the show. What a final show that would make! That would not only burn Conan’s bridges with NBC, but it would be like him sticking 20 pounds of dynamite under each of its legs and pushing the plunger himself. And half of America would be watching. If they don’t own the show already.

Marc Webb as the new Spider-Man director? Hmmmmm … OK, I thought about it, and no. But thanks for asking! I know the trend in Hollywood is to lock up the hot-new-thing as soon as you can, but let’s look at Webb’s body of work. There’s (500) Days of Summer — one of my favorite movies of the year — and then there’s … a bunch of music videos. I’m not saying that can’t be a good resume since that’s how a guy like David Fincher came up. But when Fincher was given the keys to direct a big franchise installment right out of video school, he gave us the poop we now know as Alien 3. Is that what we want for Spider-Man? Despite everything that has happened this week, this is still one of the most valuable franchises in Hollywood — and of all time — that has earned the reputation and the right to have a sure-fire director who will continue the quality of work Sam Raimi started. Wow, I think I’m actually tired of talking of Spider-Man.

Then again, we can always sneak in a little more. There’s no rule that says rebooting the franchise is a bad idea — it could be the best idea ever. So maybe there actually are reasons to look forward to a whole new Spidey. But we’re reaching here, people.

the upper vest side?

Since we’re not burned out on sequels that have major suck potential and are giving new meaning to the question “Why?” I give you Ghostbusters III. The first one is one of the best comedies of the 80s that still holds up today, it’s amazing to think when I saw it in 1984 I had to go straight to Farm League practice at Sloan in West Scranton. The second was OK, but it was pretty clear those guys were in it for the paycheck. When the secondary Yanosz Poha is the funniest thing about it, you should know there are problems. Bill Murray could be funny eating a block of cottage cheese for an hour-and-a-half, so it wasn’t without its moments, but it certainly didn’t live up to the first one. Never forget the first rule of Hollywood — if there is money to be made, nothing is ever dead. Don’t think for a second there aren’t still people thinking they know a way to make Titantic 2.

Instead of tired movie franchises, we can talk about tired TV franchises! You know, like 24. I’ve been hard on the show for the last three years — rightfully so, mind you — but there is still no feeling on TV like gearing up to watch those first four hours of every season. I’ve said it before, it’s the best gimmick in all of TV, showing the first four hours of the show over two consecutive nights. They always come up with a big ending after the fourth episode that hooks you in for the rest of the season, even if it’s nothing but a tease because the rest of the year sucks rotten apples. But if nothing else, it’s always a blast to look forward to these first four hours. And who knows, maybe Human Target will be good too. It looks like it’s worth giving a try, at least.

I think someone reported this earlier, but it warrants mentioning again — Tim Riggins is for sure gone after this year of Friday Night Lights. Hopefully he can squeeze in a week somewhere to come back and film a farewell episode, but I’m not going to hold my breath. His devotion to the show up until this point has been admirable, since he’s the only non-Jeter dating member of the cast to really break out.

It’s never, ever too early to start thinking about how summer movies are going to stack up against each other. The problem is I’m not really that interested in any of these movies, let alone how they’re going to perform against each other. The best weekend for a good box-office dogfight is the July 2 holiday weekend — but will it even be a fight? There are plenty of $$$ to go around, but Twilight is the smartest, most efficient franchise out there right now, and releasing just seven months after the last one made a gazillion dollars is brilliant. The kind of audience it’s going to attract — teen girls — is going to take away major dollars from a Tom Cruise-Cam Diaz action comedy. I like the trailer, even though it’s painfully obvious they’re going for a Mr. and Mrs. Smith 2 kind of vibe and we all know after watching a two-minute trailer that the movie ends with Cruise and Diaz smooching on some Hawaiian beach. Although Marc Blucas with a true-blue porn mustache is pretty cool.

My favorite Web site around this time is Metacritic’s compilation of the best movies of the year from critics across the country. But why hasn’t anyone started a “worst of the year” site? Ask and you shall receive. Can’t believe someone put Precious in their worst of the year, not only did that take a lot of balls to go against the grain like that, but it’s also wrong. I guess I can see where someone would hate it, but you can’t have a worst of the year list with Precious and not include either GI Joe or Transformers.  Inexcusable, but a lady from the New York Times I’ve never heard of did.