Day: April 11, 2011

Categories
Television

Can’t wait!!

‘The Office’ to bid Carell farewell on April 28
NEW YORK ñ NBC is confirming April 28 as the date for Steve Carell’s final appearance on “The Office.” His farewell episode on the popular comedy will be supersized, the network announced Monday.
That night’s long good-bye will air from 9 to 9:50 p.m. Eastern time, followed by an extended version of “Parks and Recreation” that concludes at 10:30 p.m. Eastern, NBC said.
Carell, who plays inept branch manager Michael Scott, announced last year that this would be his last season on the series, which premiered in 2005. NBC has made no announcement about who might fill the gap in the cast.

Categories
Television

I am not holding out high hopes for it, but I will still watch it until I can’t be bothered anymore.

Cuthbert touts her ‘Happy Endings’
Not all ìromantic situation comediesî have to be bland, sappy, formulaic hunks of junk.
To be fair, Elisha Cuthbert did not use those exact words. But itís kind of what she was suggesting as she championed her new series Happy Endings, which debuts Wednesday, April 13 on ABC and Citytv.
ìIím used to seeing what you see – every other thing thatís out there,î Cuthbert said. ìBut there are some surprises here in the sense that the characters (in Happy Endings) go in different places. And the comedy is a lot edgier than I anticipated.
ìI really want people to hang in. We have to set up some stuff in the pilot, obviously. But episodes two, three, four, it just gets better and better.î
Cuthbert, of course, has been a well-known Canadian actor since she was a kid. She became a familiar face in the United States largely through her role on 24, where she played Kim Bauer, the daughter of Jack Bauer.
In Happy Endings, Cuthbert plays Alex, a young woman at a crossroads in her life who gets the plot rolling by leaving her longtime boyfriend Dave (Zachary Knighton) at the altar, literally.
This action causes great turmoil not only for Alex and Dave, but also for their close circle of friends: Jane (Eliza Coupe), Brad (Damon Wayans Jr.), Max (Adam Pally) and Penny (Casey Wilson). Does the gang have to choose sides now?
Okay, weíre all thinking the same thing: Six attractive young people, romantic entanglements, another Friends wannabe, blah blah blah. In the past few months several seemingly similar shows have tried and failed. No one wants another Perfect Couples on their hands.
But we will say this for Happy Endings: The ensemble cast definitely is stronger than the ensemble casts on most of those other shows.
And Cuthbert insisted Happy Endings is not achingly predictable, notwithstanding the laboured nature of the initial setup.
ìAs the episodes progress itís almost the opposite of what youíd expect, which is that the guy who was left at the altar would be in shambles and my character would be running the town,î Cuthbert said. ìYou would assume that if sheís the one leaving, she would want freedom. But youíll start to discover that her reasons for leaving are a little deeper.î
Cuthbert stopped herself there.
ìWell, as deep as you can get on a comedy,î she said with a laugh. ìWeíre not going to start sitting and crying about why I left the altar. You know, itís a sitcom, 22 minutes, letís go!î
Cuthbert said Happy Endings came along at a perfect time for her, as she was determined to tap into her funny side.
ìMaybe thatís why I wasnít as stressed out as others about an air date and a pickup,î Cuthbert said. ìIíd said to everyone, ëI want to do a comedy. This is my priority. And if Iím not filming this, Iím going off and living my life and not doing anything else.í
ìThis is new for me, too. Iím used to one-hour drama. But itís really interesting. Youíll be surprised.î

Categories
Concerts

I haven’t decided whenter or not I will go and see them on this tour. Obviously they don’t need my money, but I still might. We’ll see.

U2 tour rattles sales records, hums along
Can any act top U2’s new record?
The band’s U2 360 world stadium tour is now the biggest-grossing concert trek of all time ó and the bar will soon be set out of just about everybody else’s reach.
With Sunday night’s performance in S„o Paulo, U2 surpassed the $554 million earned by the Rolling Stones’ A Bigger Bang tour in 2005-07. By the time the two-year tour wraps up July 30 in Canada, it will have made more than $717 million, sold 7 million tickets and played 110 stadium shows in 30 countries.
“U2 was at a place with touring that we thought we could be successful,” says Arthur Fogel, global touring CEO at Live Nation Entertainment. “For a band to top this, they would have to play all stadiums. Otherwise they would have to do so many shows it wouldn’t be feasible.”
U2 travels with its own massive stage, set up at the center of the field. The 360-degree design allows the audience to surround the stage and features a large, four-legged steel structure that houses the speaker system and video screen.
“Given the huge capacities this unique production allows, and U2’s ability to fill these stadiums, this will be an extremely tough record to break,” says Ray Waddell, Billboard’s senior editor for touring.
Recent comparable tours fall far short. AC/DC’s Black Ice world tour (2008-10) made $441 million in 167 dates; The Police’s reunion tour (2007-08) made $359 million in 156 dates.
How about the Stones, who celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2012? (In February, the band announced on Facebook that it had “no news on touring” but urged fans to “watch this space!”)
“The Stones conceivably could challenge it, especially if they went out with a ticket price double what U2 charged (about $250) on the top end,” Waddell says.
It’s unlikely that any other band has the fan base necessary to even come close.
Today’s fragmented audience makes it “difficult for bands to develop into stadium acts with staying power,” Waddell says. “When you’re talking U2 and the Stones, it’s rarified air, indeed.”

Categories
Games

I love that damn game!!!

‘Angry Birds’ tops the mobile pecking order
The mega-popular Angry Birds did not hatch perfectly formed.
Before the mobile video game landed in Apple’s App Store, the birds and their porcine enemies both needed seasoning.
The birds now hop eagerly as they await a chance to divebomb the pigs that stole their eggs. If bombardments fail, you hear the grunting of the pigs ó which are green, thanks to the swine-flu scare that hit as Angry ideas were gelling for the Finnish developers at Rovio Mobile. “They even had runny noses in character sketches,” says Rovio’s Ville Heijari.
During the polishing stages of the game, “we were determined to add more character and more personality,” says Joe Wee, co-founder of U.K.-based mobile game publishers Chillingo, which worked with the designers.
Other additions included a trajectory line that remains after a bird is fired from the slingshot. And the ability for players to pinch and zoom and pan left and right, before taking a turn, are “tiny things that add up,” he says.
There’s no telling whether Angry Birds would have laid an egg without these tweaks.
But with them, the game has soared beyond phenomenon status. Players have bought more than 10 million copies from the Apple Store and more than 100 million across the other platforms.
Rovio has sold 2 million plush Angry Birds toys and branched out into shirts and hoodies. And last month, the developer released a new version, in which you free caged exotic birds ó a tie-in to the Fox animated film Rio, out Friday. Angry Birds: Rio, which comes in free and paid versions on iPhone (99 cents) and iPad ($2.99) and free for Android devices, had 10 million downloads in its first 10 days. Coming soon: an Easter edition.
Angry Birds demonstrates the huge potential for the perfect mobile game in a global marketplace that Juniper Research expects to rise from $6 billion in 2009 to $11 billion in 2015.
But what goes into a “perfect” mobile game? Experts say it should:
ï Be easy (but not too easy) to play. The goal with Angry Birds, Heijari says, was to make it playable by anyone, with “a core game-play mechanic that you can instantly grasp,” he says. “Simplicity was always the top priority.”
ï Be quick to play. The best mobile games let you play for just a few minutes or an extended period, says Andrew Stein of PopCap Games, creator of Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies. Also important: Mobile games can “be disrupted at any time by a phone call or a text,” he says.
ï Have a “look.”Angry Birds’ “audiovisual design was in line with this: simple, basic shapes (and) bright colors,” Heijari says. Another Chillingo-published game, Cut the Rope, stars the green, google-eyed Om Nom, who antsily awaits candy you deliver to him. “It’s important to create characters users get emotionally attached to,” Wee says.
ï Be addictive. The best mobile games call to you from your purse, backpack or pocket.
When all these factors come together, word of mouth can go viral. “People tell you, ‘You gotta play Angry Birds,’ ” says analyst John Fletcher of research firm SNL Kagan, which estimates that U.S. customers spent nearly $600 million on mobile games in 2010. “People get it.”