Image Credit: Fox
Though it actually launched on Oct. 9, 1986, Fox is celebrating its 25th anniversary this weekend with a primetime extravaganza featuring such stars of yesteryear as Calista Flockhart, Gabrielle Carteris, Ian Ziering, and David Faustino. Before tomorrow night’s broadcast, we thought it appropriate to take a look back at how the network has changed the pop culture landscape in the last quarter century. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Chuck Hodes/Starz; Everett Collection
Since Kelsey Grammer walked into our favorite Boston watering hole in 1984, as Diane Chambers’ pompous new paramour, there has seldom been a time that he hasn’t been a constant presence in our television lives. He originally signed on to play Dr. Frasier Crane for just six episodes, but he ended up sipping drinks — booze in Boston, coffee in Seattle — for the next 20 years (a television record matched only by James Arness, who famously played Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke). America adored Grammer’s portrayal of the egghead shrink; he even was nominated for an Emmy when his character made a single guest appearance on Wings. Throw in his work as the high-brow arch-criminal Sideshow Bob over two decades of The Simpsons (itself a derivation of Grammer’s Frasier character) and you can make the argument that Grammer is the greatest sitcom performer of the last quarter century — even with more recent misfires like Back to You and Hank on his ledger. I think this clip sums it all up: READ FULL STORY »
The South Park mid-season finale famously left audiences teetering in limbo, with Stan’s parents divorced, Stan seemingly living somewhere else, and the episode’s critique of the show’s one-crazy-adventure-after-another story structure casting doubt on whether Matt Stone and Trey Parker even wanted to continue making South Park.
But praise Queen Spider, South Park is back, at least through 2013. Tonight’s episode seems like classic South Park shenanigans, too, at least judging from the episode title — “Ass Burgers” — and the preview clip of Eric Cartman going to the school nurse, faking some kind of ailment in his buns, and her finding a hamburger hiding in his pants. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Fox
Before we get into a discussion about the news that after 23 years on the air, the future of The Simpsons is up in the air, let me tell you with full disclosure: I’m on a classic Simpsons trivia team. (Go Team Bake ‘Em Away, Toys!… Go Apple! Go Orange! Go Banana!) Yes, I’m one of those kind of Simpsons nerds. I have special place in my heart for the ’90′s era of The Simpsons, and a place in my brain where basic knowledge should reside, but Simpsons trivia does instead. (Or maybe that’s just a crayon?)
That said, The Simpsons could soon become a part of the past, for all of us. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Claudette Barius/HBO
You haven’t hugged it out (b*tch) until you’ve hugged it out at the multiplex. Luckily, for fans of Entourage, they’ll likely get to do just that. While there’s been word for some time that the HBO series would be adapted for the big screen — the series’ executive producer/occasional guest star/inspiration Mark Wahlberg told EW back in December that he wanted an Entourage movie to happen — it now seems the show’s writer and producer Doug Ellin is moving in that direction.
Ellin told The Hollywood Reporter at the New York City premiere for the eighth and final season of Entourage that he does, in fact, have a script in the works (Ellin’s reps told EW they had “no comment” regarding the news) while Emmanuelle Chriqui (E’s lady Sloan) revealed to Fox & Friends that, “Nothing is definitive but it’s not just a rumor anymore.” READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Comedy Central
Tomorrow, EW.com will unveil our list of the 25 greatest animated series ever. We’ll be asking you, beloved readers, to decide which among those choices is the number one TV cartoon ever — a difficult task. To get you in the mood, we asked you to weigh in yesterday on one of the great never-ending conflicts in pop culture: Family Guy or The Simpsons? Some of the responses thoughtfully analyzed the variable nature of comedy: “Family Guy is more uneven,” said Greg Browning, “But when it hits, I belly laugh. Simpsons is consistently chuckle-worthy but I wouldn’t count on it for huge laughs.” Other commenters noted that Simpsons, for all its acclaim, has been in a rather long dry spell; said Glenn, “Simpsons Great Years: 2-7. That’s it, with an occasional good ep since then. Otherwise, completely unwatchable for me.” But there was one rallying cry that swept through the comment boards, starting with Stevie: “This debate is pointless, because South Park is much better than both.”
Chaos! But the Cartman loyalists may have a point. South Park has been on for almost 14 years now, with its 214th episode airing tomorrow night. (That makes the show fifty episodes older than Family Guy.) In a sense, then, South Park is just as much a Grand Old Man of Animation as The Simpsons. And if you ask me, it has also maintained its quality over a significantly longer period than The Simpsons. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Family Guy, Simpsons: FOX
On Wednesday, your friends and bitter enemies here at EW.com will unveil our list of the 25 greatest animated series of all time. The list includes classics from the early days of TV animation, sincere kids’ cartoons which taught you important life lessons, surreal kids’ cartoons that your parents didn’t understand, animated satires, animated musical space westerns, animated fantasies, and whatever Aqua Teen Hunger Force is. But here’s the twist: Instead of ranking these shows, we’re going to ask you readers to cast your vote to decide which animated series is the greatest of them all. You’ll be wrestling with some of the great conflicts in animated TV history. Beavis & Butthead or Ren & Stimpy? Aqua Teen Hunger Force or The Venture Brothers? The Flintstones or The Jetsons? (Just kidding on that last one. The Jetsons will never appear on a list of greatest anything, except for Elroy, whose cold dead eyes and slurry hippie voice certainly earn him a place on the list of Greatest Headache You’ve Ever Been Given by a Character on Television.)
Still, no animated feud has ever matched the neverending battle between two apparently-immortal Fox comedies about American families who spend their days deconstructing a broad swath of the history of pop culture. It’s time to revisit the age-old contest, people: Is The Simpsons still better than Family Guy? READ FULL STORY »
Admit it. You think the Candy Land movie is one of the worst ideas in Hollywood history. A movie based on the children’s board game that itself seems specifically designed to numb the adult mind with its winding rainbow path past the domains of the nefarious Duke of Swirl and Lord Licorice and into King Kandy’s scrumptious kingdom. But what if the Cupcake Commons were, say, the Shire, and the Chocolate Mountains were Mordor? Because that’s what the Candy Land writers have in mind. Jonathan Aibel, who co-wrote Kung Fu Panda 2 with Glenn Berger, told EW at yesterday’s Hollywood premiere that they have ambitious plans: “We envision it as Lord of The Rings, but set in a world of candy.”
The Lord of the Rings. In a world of candy. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: FOX
In the opening crawl of Family Guy‘s third Star Wars spoof, Seth MacFarlane openly admits his fatigue in having to give us a Return of the Jedi parody. Even though there’s a lot of good stuff in “It’s a Trap!,” the writers aren’t entirely joking when they tell us to lower our expectations — it’s clear from the early scenes (Rush Limbaugh as the Rancor … eh) that this episode feels a bit more dutiful and less exuberant than “Blue Harvest” and “Something, Something, Something Dark Side.” READ FULL STORY »
The first footage of Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a five-second video cut that looks like a high-budget, dramatic ape-retelling of “Dramatic Chipmunk.” (The clip was first posted to the film’s Facebook page.) But what we can gauge from the footage is a sense of realism missing from the original Planet of the Apes films and Tim Burton’s 2001 ill-advised remake (…and Troy McClure’s musical.) Dude looks like monkey! And a nefarious, shifty-eyed one, at that. Or is this just how he felt watching Rise co-star James Franco’s Oscar hosting duties? Check it out below: READ FULL STORY »
