Bugs Bunny and pals get makeover
The WB network will take the famed Looney Tunes characters as models for a new children's series, Loonatics, that will air Saturday mornings starting this fall. The characters' descendants - Buzz Bunny and the like - will be superhero action figures for the cartoon set in the year 2772.
The network's animators have reimagined Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote as sleek new figures for a modern age.
"We all flipped for it," David Janollari, president of the Kids' WB, said this week.
"We just said: 'Wow, what a great way to take the classic Looney Tunes franchise that has been huge with audiences for decades and bring it into the new millennium."'
Janollari said both boys and girls enjoyed the new action figures in test runs of the show. Their parents may be a little surprised, however. and his pals are being updated for the future - way in the future.
"I think the legacy is intact," he said.
"If anything, it's an homage to the legacy, instead of a destruction of the legacy."
REMEMBER WHEN 'SNL' WAS FUNNY?
February 17, 2005 -- It's impossible to think that 30 years ago, "Saturday Night Live" made its debut and changed forever the way TV was produced and watched.
"SNL" - with its insane ensemble company of pot-smoking rogues, bad boys and naughty girls - brought to TV what had never been there before: true irreverence.
On Sunday night, a documentary disguised as yet another annoying anniversary show, brings back the best of the first five years of "SNL." And you'll laugh as hard as if you'd never seen the sketches before.
Perhaps because two of the show's most important cast members died way before their time, NBC didn't attempt a - God forbid - reunion show.
Instead, there's this terrific documentary, "Live From New York: The First Five Years of Saturday Night Live," by Kenneth Bowser - so good it debuted at the Miami Film Festival earlier this month.
It chronicles how these funny kids - well, young adults anyway - did things that you just couldn't do on TV. Not then, and in some cases, not now. Not on regular broadcast TV anyway.
But all the forbidden words - which are still forbidden - somehow were broadcast. And will be again on Sunday night.
They might have been very young, Lorne Michael's loony bin ensemble company of comics: John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, and Jane Curtin. But they understood that saying the forbidden words out loud took away their power.
They show the sketch with Richard Pryor, for example, where Chase plays a job counselor giving Pryor a word-association quiz that degenerates into racist craziness of "What pops into your mind when I say 'spearchucker'" - and Pryor answers, "honky!"
Then Chase uses the n-word, and Pryor answers, "dead honky!"
Try to get away with that now. They'd shut the network down and institute immediate diversity-sensitivity training.
The filmmakers talk to Morris - the smart, funny black guy (as opposed to just the smart, funny guy) who never quite fit in.
They discuss how Curtin hated Belushi (although there are no comments from her), and how Chase left after his one-year contract ran out because - yes - his California girlfriend wouldn't move to New York!
"I was in love," he says. Loser!
With many of the original stars and guest hosts, as well as clips of musical guests from George Harrison and Paul Simon to The Grateful Dead and Blondie, and clips from the most unforgettable, ground-breaking, and screamingly funny stuff ever on TV, this show is definitely a keeper.
It does have a real downside, however: It serves as a horrifying reminder that we used to have John Belushi. And now we have Paris Hilton.
Charlottetown awarded 2006 edition of East Coast Music Awards annual gala
SYDNEY, N.S. (CP) - Charlottetown has been chosen as the site of the 2006 East Coast Music Awards and Conference, it was announced Thursday. The annual conference and awards weekend was last held in Charlottetown in 2001.
"The people of Charlottetown love the ECMAs and have proven in the past that they are ready to come out and support this event," said Shelley Nordstrom, chair of the East Coast Music Association board of directors.
The 2005 edition of the popular awards show goes Sunday night in Sydney.
Swank and Bening in Actress Oscar Rematch
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood didn't quite know what to do with Hilary Swank after she emerged from obscurity to win the best actress Oscar in 2000 for chopping off her hair and dressing as a male in the searing transgender movie "Boys Don't Cry."
Swank didn't fit the glamorous leading lady mold, was never cut out to be a Hollywood babe and at 25 was too young to be a character actress.
But after an undistinguished hiatus, Swank has come back swinging as a gutsy female boxer whose career is dramatically cut short in "Million Dollar Baby."
There's one problem for Swank on her path to a rare second Oscar -- Annette Bening, the classy "American Beauty" actress Swank beat in 2000 and who is still looking for her own elusive piece of Oscar glory.
Call it a rematch, or as Bening terms it "a funny coincidence," but the two women are front-runners again for the best actress Oscar at the Feb. 27 ceremony.
"Five years ago, Hilary Swank came out of nowhere to win the best actress category. It looked for a while as if she was one of those Oscar flukes who we would never hear from again," said Tom O'Neil, host of the showbiz Web site goldderby.com.
"So Annette is due and she came back this year to get the Oscar and here's that darn Hilary Swank again," said O'Neil.
COINCIDENCE OR JINX?
Bening, 46, was considered the early Oscar front runner for her role as a luminous English stage diva in "Being Julia." She has already won a Golden Globe, National Board of Review and Golden Satellite award for her performance.
But that was before the release of Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" was brought forward to catch the awards season and Swank captured a Golden Globe of her own as well as a Screen Actor's Guild trophy and a slew of critics awards.
"I think Hilary Swank is probably the front runner, even though she's won once before. Annette Bening is charming and wonderful in 'Being Julia' but I think the picture itself is a little lightweight," said Time magazine movie critic Richard Schickel.
Neither Swank, now 30, nor Bening see it in terms of a rematch. "I don't experience it that way. We just happen to be giving performances that people like in the same year in movies that are recognized," Bening told Reuters.
"It felt like a funny coincidence. I think 'Million Dollar Baby' is a really special movie and Hilary is great in it."
British actresses Kate Winslet for quirky romance "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and Imelda Staunton for 1950s abortion drama "Vera Drake" along with Colombian newcomer Catalina Sandino Moreno in "Maria Full of Grace" round out the nominees in the best actress category. All are considered to have given fine performances by movie pundits.
JOINING THE ELITE?
The Academy's exalted 77-year history and the demographics of Academy voters are as likely to play a role in determining the acting honors as performances on the screen.
If Swank wins again, she will enter the elite ranks of actresses who have won two or more Oscars -- including the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Jodie Foster.
"There are Academy voters who say Hilary hasn't earned the right yet to be in the pantheon of double winners so there may be some resistance to giving her that," said O'Neil.
The make-up of Academy voters remains shadowy but industry insiders believe they are two-thirds male and mostly over 50.
"The sad truth about women at the Oscars is that the babe always beats the mature star. This bias is historical, consistent and obvious," said O'Neil.
Schickel said Swank posed a conundrum for Hollywood after winning her first Oscar. "The part she won for was so weird. So Hollywood wondered who is she, what is she as a star personality? And that is a problem she may face again.
"She is a nice-looking lady but she's not a glamour queen. She is a real actress," he said.
If Bening had any sore feelings about losing out to Swank five years ago, they were swept aside by giving birth two weeks later to her fourth child with actor Warren Beatty and the prospects of a new, post-children career.
"I feel really excited and interested by a lot of things that are coming my way. It feels like a new beginning in a way, without a baby on my hip," Bening said.
"My husband won a lifetime achievement award that night in 2000, and I was so pregnant. When I got home, the feeling was 'OK, all of that's over now'. It was just heavenly to know I didn't have to try to squeeze into another pair of shoes.
"This time the whole red carpet thing is so much more fun," she said.
Rather to Host His Own Farewell Tribute on CBS
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - No sooner will Dan Rather bid viewers a final good night as anchor of the CBS Evening News than he will be back on the air to lead viewers through a retrospective of his 50 years in broadcast journalism.
CBS News said on Thursday that an hourlong special, "Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers," will be telecast on March 9, at 8 p.m. EST, within an hour of his stepping down as host and managing editor of the "Evening News."
The broadcasts come exactly 24 years after Rather assumed the anchor chair from legendary newsman Walter Cronkite.
The prime-time special is billed as a "candid memoir of Rather's extraordinary career, told in his own words." CBS said it will span the past five decades of his life and include never-before-seen archival footage.
A network spokeswoman said Rather would address the controversy surrounding his now-discredited "60 Minutes" report last September questioning the military service of President Bush.
The program will undoubtedly highlight the more celebrated points of Rather's career, including his coverage of the Kennedy assassination in 1963, the tumultuous Democratic National Convention of 1968 and the Watergate scandal during the 1970s, not to mention testy on-air exchanges with President Nixon and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush.
It remained to be seen how CBS would handle Rather's less flattering moments, such as walking off the set in 1987 after a tennis match pre-empted the start of a newscast, or the jokes he endured after being assaulted on the streets of Manhattan by a man who asked him: "Kenneth, what's the frequency?"
While TV retrospectives have become ubiquitous on prime time, paying homage to figures ranging from Johnny Carson to "Laverne & Shirley," a self-hosted special paying tribute to a living broadcast journalist on the day of his retirement is rare.
"I don't remember them doing one like this for Walter Cronkite, but you could bet they would if Walter Cronkite were retiring today," said Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television.
On the other hand, Thompson said, "He (Rather) has got a lot of good clips.