'Desperate Housewives,' 'Lost' head for Emmy race
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two surprise hits driving a ratings rebound at ABC -- "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" -- are now front-runners at this week's Emmy Award nominations, joining a mix of newcomers and old favorites vying for U.S. television's highest honors.
"Desperate Housewives," a wry, episodic tale of suburban intrigue, is widely seen as a leading contender for best comedy series, and the castaway thriller "Lost" is heavily favored to clinch a bid for best drama when Emmy nominees are announced on Thursday. The winners will be announced in September.
The Emmy-sponsoring Academy of Television Arts and Sciences is notorious for repeat coronations of past nominees. But new entries and previously snubbed shows are given better odds than usual this year because such recent Emmy heavyweights as HBO mob drama "The Sopranos" and NBC's smash sitcom "Friends" are out of the running.
"It's a great year for the Emmys to redress past oversights and welcome the hot new players," said entertainment awards pundit Tom O'Neil, author of "The Emmys" and senior editor of In Touch Weekly magazine.
While most TV series typically gain little Emmy attention their first season on the air, "Housewives" and "Lost" both drew Emmy buzz as breakout hits that reversed a three-year ratings slump at ABC while winning mostly favorable reviews.
Some observers have cried foul over "Desperate Housewives" competing as a comedy, arguing the hourlong show hews closer to a drama than a half-hour sitcom. But supporters of the show point to the precedent set by "Ally McBeal," the Fox legal "dramedy" that ran as an hourlong comedy and won in 1999.
The Emmy race for best comedy is seen as especially wide open this year due to the absence of several perennial nominees -- "Friends," "Frasier" and "Sex and the City" all went off the air last year, and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" was on hiatus this past season.
Last year's critically praised but ratings-poor comedy champion, Fox's "Arrested Development," is expected back to defend its title, and the CBS sitcom hit and 2003 winner "Everybody Loves Raymond" is considered likely to claim a nomination for its just-finished ninth and final season.
Emmy watchers also give strong odds to two NBC comedies, "Will & Grace" and "Scrubs, as well as HBO's new satire of Hollywood culture, "Entourage."
The race for best drama series is considered a less open contest, with three past nominees expected to make the cut again his year -- NBC political saga and four-time winner "The West Wing," CBS's top-rated detective show "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and Fox espionage thriller "24."
Last year's most nominated series and winner for best drama, "The Sopranos," is on the sidelines for lack of qualifying episodes this past season, possibly making room for another HBO critical favorite, the gritty, foul-mouthed western "Deadwood."
CBS will broadcast the 57th annual Primetime Emmy Awards live on Sept. 18 from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.
When "Harry" Met "Charlie"
Will Harry steal Charlie's golden ticket at the cash register?
That's the tantalizing new question gripping Hollywood now that the great box-office slump has been busted. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling's sixth installment in her mega-selling magic boy franchise, arrives in bookstores at the same time Warner Bros. is unspooling Tim Burton's update of Roald Dahl's kids classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory hits movie theaters.
Warners execs have good cause for hand wringing. The heavily hyped Half-Blood Prince goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. Saturday with more fanfare than all the previous Potter books combined.
Rowling's U.S. publisher, Scholastic, has ordered a record-setting initial print run of 10.3 million copies of the 672-page tome, and booksellers nationwide are gearing up to host Midnight Magic Parties. The buzz is so great that book chain Barnes & Noble plans to celebrate the landmark release with Potter gatherings at more than 670 of its outlets, according to PotterParties.com.
And both the book and the movie target the same family-friendly demo.
While it's hard to compare rival media like books and movies, especially with differing price points, recent history has shown that Harry has some serious sales magic no matter the competition.
The fifth chapter, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, was released in 2003. Retailing for $30, it sold a whopping 5 million copies its first 24 hours. That $150 million in first-day grosses for Scholastic far surpassed that revenue generated by the weekend's blockbuster movie opening: Universal's The Hulk, which took in $62 million in its three-day debut weekend.
"It's an interesting concept that people even acknowledge that the Potter books are so popular that they have an effect on other media," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. "But that said, the people who want to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will see Charlie. There's plenty of time for both."
Derbarabedian believes that Charlie has a built-in audience of those adults who grew up with Dahl's book and the 1971 adaptation, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, who are now parents who want take their children to see it.
Then there's the Johnny Depp factor, says Gitesh Pandya, editor of BoxOfficeGuru.com. The Oscar-nominated actor, whose quirky take on Willy Wonka sparked talk in recent days over whether he based the candy man on Michael Jackson, is a big draw for cinephiles who enjoyed his previous collaborations with Burton (see Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood).
"You have two giant audiences [the filmmakers] are tapping into," Pandya tells E! Online, "the family audience that loves all those lavish effectsand the audience which loves to see Tim Burton and Johnny Depp together."
Both Degarabedian and Pandya conclude that Harry won't dent Charlie's box office. Traditionally, they say, competition among various media hasn't stopped moviegoers from flocking to the megaplex because people can usually squeeze both events into a weekend.
"If you look at past history, Disney and DreamWorks tend to fight it out a lot," explains Pandya, "so you'll see Shrek 2 come out on DVD the same day The Incredibles hit theaters. You might think people will stay home for the weekend and watch Shrek 2, but The Incredibles grosses $70 million its opening weekend."
Adds Dergarabedian: "You can counterprogram a book or video to a movie opening, but once people make a decision to go see that movie, they'll do that--and buy whatever competing property is out there. To me [the Half-Blood Prince] is less problematic than two movies chasing the same audience."
That's one thing Warners won't have to worry about. The only other big release this weekend targets a more adult audience, not families: The Wedding Crashers, starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. The R-rated film is being released by New Line, which also happens to be owned by Time Warner, parent company of Warner Bros.
Besides, Warners owns the movie rights to all the Harry Potter books. (The next celluloid installment, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, based on the fourth of Rowling's books, is due out in November.)
Meanwhile, as fans around the globe get ready for a return to Hogwarts, Harry's publishers are casting a dark spell over anyone who attempts to spill Half-Blood Prince's secrets before Saturday.
Rowling's Canadian publisher, Raincoast Books Ltd., revealed that several copies of the penultimate adventure were sold by a store in Vancouver and it has since gone to court to obtain an injunction barring those buyers from disclosing any tidbits about the plot. As an incentive, the publisher also promises that those who return the title before the on-sale date will receive book plates autographed by the celebrated author.
Skateboarder Clears Great Wall of China
LOS ANGELES - Daredevil skateboarder Danny Way rolled down a massive ramp at nearly 50 mph and jumped across the Great Wall of China on Saturday, becoming the first person to clear the wall without motorized aid, an event sponsor said.
Way botched the landing on his first attempt but then successfully completed the jump across the 61-foot gap four times, adding 360 degree spins on his last three tries, sponsor Quiksilver, Inc. said.
"I was aware of the dangers and my heart was pumping in my chest the whole time, but I managed to pull it off with the help of my team, and I'm honored to have my visions embraced by the people of China," Way said in a statement.
A crowd of several thousand people, including China's ministers of extreme sports and culture, gathered at the Ju Yong Guan Gate about a 40-minute drive from Beijing, Quiksilver's greater China marketing director Ryan Hollis said.
"It was pretty fantastic," Hollis said in an interview from Beijing. "He really has spent quite a few years even thinking about this whole idea. It's been in logistical planning for about eight months. ... It was pretty amazing today to see this happen, to see it adopted by the culture, adopted by the government."
Way's made the jump on an adaptation of the so-called mega ramp, a gigantic structure that he helped create near his home in the Southern California desert. He set a skateboard jump world record for distance (79 feet) on a mega ramp at last summer's X Games, and in 2003 set the height record of 23 1/2 feet at the desert ramp.
Event sponsor Quiksilver, based in Huntington Beach, makes skateboard apparel.
ALL ROCK AND ALL AMERICAN
For John Mellencamp to get the kind of respect he's earned — outside his fan base — he should lie down in a coffin and die.
Music's hipsters who move and shake the charts don't esteem a lifetime of achievement, or even a kick-ass concert like the one Mellencamp nailed Friday at Jones Beach — they respect death.
File it under you don't know what ya got 'til it's gone. Just ask Luther Vandross whose untimely death last week became the ultimate career move. Suddenly everyone and their brother loved Luther again.
But at Mellencamp's concert, the guy didn't die — he killed with a program that showcased him as a songwriter and performer.
At this rainy-night open-air show, the 53-year-old rocker could have held back, rested on his laurels and stayed dry with a short, low-key set.
But obviously jazzed about playing Jones Beach for the first time in four years, Mellencamp performed like he wanted to impress. He displayed his durability with a high-test performance that cranked through his entire career, chronicling his evolution from Cougar to man.
Mellencamp seamlessly mixed songs about alienated youth like "Jack and Diane" with unabashed devotionals including "Lonely Ol' Night."
The Long Island audience embraced his defiant "Authority Song" and his celebration of community life, "Small Town." "Paper in Fire" the midshow highlight sizzled in an electric/acoustic arrangement featuring a fiddled lead.
Then there were the songs with a musical conscience, such as "Rain on the Scarecrow." On that one, Mellencamp supercharged the music by enlisting opening act John Fogerty to sit in with him. The two elegantly captured the song's rage about how the small farmer is becoming an endangered species in America.
While most of the songs were classics from Mellencamp's songbook, one of the show's other highpoints was the new tune "Walk Tall" off of his latest album, "Words And Music." That one nicely blended the tune's R&B swagger with rock poise.
That recent album and this show seem to be statements from Mellencamp painting a picture of both who he used to be and what he's become. That notion was cemented with video clips of his highs and lows that covered his '80s MTV golden-boy days to his becoming one of the elder statesmen of rock.
After the video segment, Mellencamp came back with a fire-in-the-belly greatest hits set. You might predict that "Pink Houses," "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A," "Hurts So Good" and "Cherry Bomb" were played, but the music wasn't predictable note-for-note copies of studio records. Instead, Mellencamp twisted and bent those old songs with honest roots rock inflections.
Chalk that appeal up to Mellencamp's ability to forget he's a star and project a regular-joe image that's sarcasm- and irony-free.
If you don't think Mellencamp exudes cool onstage, is no longer relevant and isn't a national treasure who deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, head to New Jersey on Saturday when he plays the PNC Bank Arts Center and have your attitude adjusted.