Home Featured TV Shows All TV Shows Movie Reviews Book Reviews Articles Frequently Asked Questions About Us

Doux News: February 2, 2014

This Week: Danny Strong is Going Strong -- Would You Like Chips and Salsa with that TV Show? -- This Week in Casts -- Aaron Paul in The Dark Tower -- The Big Game -- Veronica Mars Loves Brains -- Plus… -- GLAAD Likes LARP -- Superhero Roundup -- This Week in Groundhogs


Danny Strong is Going Strong

Buffy alum Danny Strong is on a great streak: after the success of Game Change and The Butler--and a guest-starring role in this week’s Justified--Strong and Lee Daniels (who directed The Butler) have been tapped by Fox to create a hip-hop drama called Empire.


Would You Like Chips and Salsa with that TV Show?

Chipotle, the fast-food burrito place with outlets popping up all over the US, has decided to get into the TV game with an original series for Hulu. The four-part series about “an industrial meat company facing P.R. flak for its petroleum-based cattle feed’s unintended side effect of causing its cattle to explode” will star Ray Wise of Twin Peaks.

This is an interesting and wacky idea. Chipotle has a history of odd advertising techniques: they have a section of the Huffington Post all to themselves, for instance. Chipotle’s attempts to use sustainably-grown veggies, not to mention happy cows and pigs, means they’re one of the better companies out there. (Their burritos are good, but they don’t have churros. It’s very important that you know this about me: I really, really like churros.) And, really, how is a TV show produced by Chipotle different from a TV show sponsored by another brand? Especially on a baby network like Hulu, this sort of partnership might set an interesting standard for shows to come. However, that doesn’t mean that I’ll watch it.


This Week in Casts

Ron Glass will guest-star on CSI.

• Jonathan Banks will reprise his role as Breaking Bad’s Mike Ehrmentraut on the upcoming spinoff Better Call Saul.

Sleepy Hollow has upgraded John Noble to series regular.

Lori Petty will join the cast for the second season of Orange is the New Black.

• Ian Ziering and Tara Reid will reprise their original roles in the upcoming Sharknado sequel, called—predictably--Sharknado 2: The Second One.

Boardwalk Empire’s Michael Pitt will have a recurring role on Hannibal.


Aaron Paul in The Dark Tower

Hail Gilead! Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, who first tweeted his desire to play Eddie Dean back in 2012, revealed to Ain’t It Cool News that he has met with Ron Howard and others regarding the proposed multi-platform adaptation of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. As Doux News has reported time and again, this series is constantly jumping into the limelight just long enough for us to get our hopes up until they are smashed on the rocks of Discordia. This article, which seems to contain the most information about Paul’s relationship with The Dark Tower project, also reports that Russell Crowe is the most recent name attached to the starring role of Roland. Better than Javier Bardem, I guess, but still not right.


The Big Game

For ten years, Animal Planet has given the gift of cuteness to those of us who don’t watch the Super Bowl: the annual Puppy Bowl has consistently been the most adorable counter-programming all year. But this year, the adorability quotient will get kicked up a notch (is that a football pun?) by the presence of Bo and Sunny, the two White House dogs. Bo and Sunny will bring their human, First Lady Michelle Obama, to the big game on Sunday.

However, not all is well in Camelot. The Hallmark Channel is offering some counter-programming counter-programming (which is sort of like an anti-anti-love-spell-spell-spell): the first-ever Kitten Bowl. I’m tempted to declare this a Tea Party plot to spoil the now-partisan Puppy Bowl, but I’m too busy calling an audible “aww!” as I watch the promos.

(Did I use "calling an audible" correctly? I really don't know what I'm saying.)





Veronica Mars Loves Brains

Rob Thomas may have a new show in the works. The CW has given him, and Diane Ruggiero, a pilot order for an adaptation of iZombie (based on the DC graphic novel). Here’s the official description, courtesy of TVLine: “A med student-turned-zombie takes a job in the coroner’s office to gain access to the brains she must reluctantly eat to maintain her humanity, but with each brain she consumes, she inherits the corpse’s memories. With the help of her medical examiner boss and a police detective, she solves homicide cases in order to quiet the disturbing voices in her head.”


Plus…

In other CW news, the baby network has ordered a pilot from Fringe and Sleepy Hollow masterminds Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci called Identity, about “a young woman in need of a transplant who learns she is related to a powerful family whose son is her only hope for a donor organ.” That sounds silly, but so do Fringe and Sleepy Hollow if you try to explain them to co-workers, who then look at you like you’re crazy and say no, you can’t borrow the stapler, freak.


GLAAD Likes LARP

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (now called GLAAD) has honored Supernatural with a nomination for Outstanding Individual Episode (of a show without a regular LGBT character) for the Felicia Day-centric “LARP and the Real Girl.” See, SPN? The world is happy when you don’t kill off female characters. We are, in fact, quite glad.


Superhero Roundup

A full trailer for the upcoming Captain America: Winter Soldier film will air during the Super Bowl, but here’s a teaser for the trailer for the film:




In other superhero news, the internet went crazy for the recent casting updates for the upcoming Batman/Superman movie: Jesse Eisenberg will play Lex Luthor, and Jeremy Irons will play Alfred Pennyworth. (Alfred has a last name?) I haven’t been following this story at all, but apparently Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston was a fan favorite for the role of Lex Luthor, prompting at least one tweet with the rhyming chastisement “We want Heisenberg, not Eisenberg.”


This Week in Groundhogs





7 comments:

  1. Churros are heaven. And now I want a churro.

    At what point did we start seeing advertisements for advertisements? Does it seem insane to anyone else?

    ReplyDelete
  2. If football, puppies, or kittens aren't your thing, you can tune into National Geographic Wild for The Fish Bowl on Sunday. Rumor has it that it is nothing but a goldfish swimming around in a bowl for four hours. I may have to review it for next week's column.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Count me in for the Kitten Bowl. It had better not be a Republican State of the Union response.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alfred has always been Pennyworth in the comics. Once he even had a daughter. I guess she's forgotten now.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks again for the Sunday fun. I always look forward to the 'news'.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The Dark Tower project keeps crashing because the studio gets a good look at the property and realizes it's unfilmable*. I expect that trend to continue.

    * - Not literally, of course. After all, they made a movie out of the Fountainhead and at least two out of Atlas Shrugged. But just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Adverts for adverts seems completely insane to me, and yet that doesn't stop me pulling apart and scrutinizing every second of Game of Thrones season 4 that gets shown...

    ReplyDelete

We love comments! We moderate because of spam and trolls, but don't let that stop you! It’s never too late to comment on an old show, but please don’t spoil future episodes for newbies.