Doctor Who - The Doctor calls in sick - Season 1 delayed

Earlier today we received a report that Doctor Who may be delayed from the planned Feb 14 release date.

We checked with the BBC PR company, and they checked with BBC and were told that there were "complications" with the set, and it wouldn't meet the release date.

This doesn't surprise us since nothing with this release has gone according to every other BBC title.

The release was announced, yet the Warner Home Video (their distributor) press site had nothing about it for weeks, then once it was added to the press site it still wasn't available to purchase.

It could be that the delay was simply caused by the slow process of getting the title information out to retailers, or it could have been delayed due to ongoing negotiations with a US broadcaster (the series hasn't been shown in the US yet).

We called Warner Canada to find out if the title will be delayed as well, and while Warner Canada hadn't received a delay notice, they expected to receive one given the delay in the US.

"War of the Roses" Remake?

Catherine Zeta Jones is attempting to remake the 1989 dark comedy, War of the Roses. According to Moviehole.net, The Legend of Zorro actress wants to re-visit the film that saw her husband, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner duke it out on-screen as a married couple who hate each other. Zeta Jones is hoping to replace Turner in the new version, while her hubby would reprise his original role. Commenting on the news, Turner says, ''Well, I think Catherine and Michael are very good together, but as for doing a remake... I think that would be silly. It wouldn't be as good as the one with me in it.''

Blunt, Kaiser Chiefs Lead Brit Award Nominations

With five nods each, newcomers James Blunt and Kaiser Chiefs are the frontrunners heading into the Brit Awards 2006, to be held Feb. 15 at London's Earl's Court.

Singer/songwriter Blunt is nominated in the British male solo artist, British breakthrough act and pop act categories. His debut album, "Back to Bedlam" (Atlantic), is up for the British album award, while the hit single "You're Beautiful" is in the running for the British single trophy.

Alternative rock act Kaiser Chiefs (B Unique/Polydor) are in the hunt for the British group, breakthrough act, rock act and live act awards. Their first album, "Employment," is nominated in the British album category. The band was on hand to perform several songs tonight (Jan. 10) at the nominations announcement in London.

Coldplay has nominations in four categories, including British group and British album for their international chart-topping hit "X&Y" (Parlophone). American pop superstar Madonna, critically lauded Canadian band the Arcade Fire and Scottish singer/songwriter K.T. Tunstall are among a host of U.K. and international acts to garner multiple nominations.

Tunstall is up against pop singers Charlotte Church and Natasha Bedingfield and veteran songstress Kate Bush in the British female category.

Robbie Williams has a chance to extend his record total of 15 Brit Awards with a lone nomination in the British male category. Williams will compete against 2005 Mercury Prize winner Antony Hegarty (frontman of Antony and the Johnsons), former Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown, pop singer Will Young and Blunt.

Coldplay, Kaiser Chiefs, Blunt, Tunstall, Kanye West and Kelly Clarkson are the first performers confirmed for the event, and will be joined by Paul Weller, already announced as the recipient of the outstanding contribution to music award.

In the United Kingdom, Sony BMG will issue on Feb. 6 a Brits TV compilation album in the DualDisc format.

Letterman Not the Retiring Type

At 58, David Letterman may be approaching traditional retirement age, but a spokesman says the talk host wasn't looking ahead to his own shuffleboard court years on Monday's Late Show.

"Dave has no plans to retire," Steven Rubenstein of Letterman's Worldwide Pants production company said Tuesday.

The comment came in response to an inquiry about an exchange between Letterman and guest Albert Brooks, in which a deadpan Brooks wished his friend well on the occasion of his farewell week. Letterman corrected Brooks, remarking, more than once, that he had another (only?) "two or three years" to go on the show.

The statements were first red-flagged by blogger Bob Sassone on TVSquad.com, who wrote, "Maybe I'm reading a little too much into this, but the way it was presented, I don't think so."

But according to a TV industry source, Letterman is not only not not contemplating retirement, he's talking contract extension.

Letterman has been with CBS and Late Show since 1993, a year after he lost out on the Tonight Show gig at NBC to Jay Leno. In 2002, the irony-rich comic spurned ABC's advances, and reupped with CBS with what was reported to be a three-year deal, with an option for two additional years.

While Letterman's said to be the unretiring type, it's the indefatigable Leno who's down to only three years on the job. Per a 2004 announcement, Leno is due to hand the Tonight Show keys to Late Night's Conan O'Brien in 2009. Leno inherited the show from Johnny Carson in 1992.

In making his retirement plans public, Leno said he'd promised his wife he'd take her out to dinner before he turned 60. In 2009, he'll be 59.

Letterman turns 59 in April. Traditional retirement age is generally defined as 65, although one can start receiving full Social Security benefits at 62. Given the reported $14 million Letterman makes a year, it's unlikely his plans will be dictated by what a monthly government check may or may not bring.

If Letterman were to use the Carson model--and it's served him well so far--he would stay in the late-night game until age 66. That would give him a few years to try to do to O'Brien what he's only rarely been able to do to Leno since 1995, beat him in the ratings.

Given that O'Brien will be on the fast slide to 50 by the time he's scheduled to take over Tonight (he'll be 46), Letterman wouldn't even have to worry about making a kid cry.

Lohan 'Appalled' by Vanity Fair Article

NEW YORK - Lindsay Lohan is "appalled" by the Vanity Fair article released last week in which she confessed to dabbling in drugs and battling bulimia.

The Vanity Fair story, which hit newsstands nationally Tuesday and was widely reported last week, made headlines for the 19-year-old actress' acknowledgment that she dabbled in drugs "a little."

The magazine also quoted Lohan on her drastic weight loss last year: "I was making myself sick," she said. The article, written by Evgenia Peretz, noted Lohan was "referring to bulimic episodes."

Lohan also said, "I knew I had a problem and I couldn't admit it."

However, in a statement released Tuesday to Teen People magazine, Lohan denied having bulimia and said, "The words that I gave to the writer for Vanity Fair were misused and misconstrued, and I'm appalled with the way it was done."

An editor for Teen People said Lohan's denial was regarding Vanity Fair's reporting of her alleged bulimia, not drug use.

"Aside from (the writer's) lies and changing of my words, I am blessed to have this job and wonderful family that I do," Lohan's statement read.

Vanity Fair, in a statement of its own, stood by its story.

"Evgenia Peretz is one of our most reliable reporters," the magazine said. "Every word Lindsay Lohan told her is on tape. Vanity Fair stands by the story."

A call to Lohan's publicist, Leslie Sloane Zelnick, was not immediately returned Tuesday.

Britney Spears Tops 'Worst Dressed' List

LOS ANGELES - Britney Spears topped Mr. Blackwell's 46th annual "Worst Dressed" list for wearing clothes that he said made her look like an "over-the-hill Lolita."

"When it comes to Couture Chaos, this Tacky Terror should take a bow — looks like an over-the-hill Lolita," Mr. Blackwell said in a statement released Tuesday.

Bohemian teen tycoon Mary-Kate Olsen was the next target of the acid-tongued fashion critic. He called her clothes "bag lady rags" and "depressingly decayed."

Jessica Simpson followed Olsen. Though her Daisy Dukes shorts landed her on the pages of numerous magazines, Mr. Blackwell said she "resembles a cut-rate Rapunzel — slingin' hash in a Vegas diner."

The other offenders on Blackwell's list of fashion flops were Eva Longoria, Mariah Carey, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Shakira, Anna Nicole Smith and Renee Zellweger.

Blackwell said Hilton — who topped his list two years ago — "still looks like yesterday's cheesecake ... with a side of kitsch."

Lohan is "drowning in grown-up groaners," he said, while Zellweger looks like "a painted pumpkin on a pogo stick."

"2005 turned out to be a particularly bad year for couture chaos, wardrobe wrecks and stylistic sleaze," Blackwell said. "These woman may be fabulously talented in their respective fields, but when it comes to fashion, they resemble weary weeds in a lovely garden."

Billy Crystal Says He Passed Oscar Job

LOS ANGELES - Billy Crystal said he passed on the Oscar hosting job that went to Jon Stewart because his one-man stage show is consuming his attention.

Academy Awards producer Gil Cates repeatedly asked, "please do the show," calling as late as just before Christmas, Crystal said. But his Tony Award-winning "700 Sundays" was his first priority.

"I'm so tired at the end of '700 Sundays,'" Crystal told the Los Angeles Daily News. "I didn't want to go from that into a meeting where I'm saying, 'Give me "Brokeback Mountain" jokes.' It seemed so not what I wanted to do."

"700 Sundays," currently playing in Los Angeles, concludes its limited engagement Feb. 18. It previously played in New York and Chicago.

Stewart said he is pleased to have the chance to host the Oscar's, but speculated there were alternative motives to his being chosen.

"As a performer, I'm truly honored to be hosting the show. Although, as an avid watcher of the Oscars, I can't help but be a little disappointed with the choice. It appears to be another sad attempt to smoke out Billy Crystal," Stewart said last week.

Crystal has been a reliable performer for the Oscars. The ceremony turned last year to Chris Rock, who drew younger viewers but managed to annoy some academy members with his jokes about stars including Jude Law and Tobey Maguire.

Rock is producing and narrating "Everybody Hates Chris," a UPN sitcom based on his life.

Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," will be making his first appearance as Oscar host. He has twice hosted the Grammy Awards.

When Stewart was announced as host last week, Cates said he doesn't believe that Stewart — whose show revels in pointed political humor — will have any problems.

"Jon knows the difference of being irreverent without being impolite," Cates said. "This is not a political show. I think he understands that."

The 78th annual Academy Awards will air March 5 on ABC from Hollywood.

Michael J. Fox returns to small screen

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Michael J. Fox says that acting for him, these days, is "like being a right-handed painter and being forced to paint with your left hand."

"You go, 'Yeah, I'm artistic, but the lines aren't straight anymore. I have creativity, but I'm not staying within the lines.' "

Since quitting acting full-time in 2000 because of the debilitating symptoms of Parkinson's disease, first diagnosed in 1991 but not revealed to the public until 1998, the Family Ties and Spin City star has only occasionally acted on TV.

In 2001 he returned for several guest appearances as Deputy Mayor Michael Flaherty in ABC's Spin City, and in 2004 guest starred as a surgeon with obsessive-compulsive disorder on two episodes of NBC's Scrubs.

Now the 44-year-old Canadian-born actor guest stars in three (and a bit) episodes of ABC's Boston Legal. He plays a business tycoon, Daniel Post, a cancer sufferer who hires the notorious legal firm Crane, Poole and Schmidt to defend him. Post's been sued for corrupting a study for a new cancer-fighting drug by using his insider clout to ensure he was given the non-placebo. Amid the court case he becomes romantically entangled with his lawyer, Denise Bauer (Julie Bowen.)

Fox's first episode The Cancer Man Can, airs Tuesday. His story arc concludes Feb. 7. All the episodes air 10:01 p.m. EST.

The producers of Boston Legal knew since last season of Fox's interest in the show, but it wasn't until now that a suitable role came up.

Executive producer Bill D'Elia says the actor was "number 1 on a list of one," because "the character was someone that had to have irresistible charm."

"It was kismet - a combination of several events occurring to create perfect karma," says D'Elia, delighted that Fox signed on for the David E. Kelley series, which "often creates these spicy roles" for guest stars.

Fox says he is a fan of Boston Legal for a number of reasons, including its "so smart and so funny take" on ethical and moral issues. He also likes the way the show understands the complexities of human nature and that it is not afraid to recognize that "sometimes people are likable and they are corrupted, and sometimes they are incorruptible, but kind of off-putting."

He particularly enjoyed working on Post's brief encounter with Denny Crane, the most notorious of the ethically challenged lawyers, played by William Shatner, a "fellow Canadian."

"I was really pleasantly blown away by him. First of all Denny Crane, is, I think, one of the great creations of television in the 21st century ... and then there's Shatner's artistry, which I think is a lot misunderstood," Fox says, during a phone interview from New York.

Fox - once the cute young Marty McFly in the Back to the Future trilogy of feature films - says, "What I loved was being part of the creative process again. Something as simple as being in a night shoot and smelling the smell of carbon lights in the cold air. 'Wow, the smell of the grease paint!' It was nice, and nice being involved with other actors."

Because of the Parkinson's disease, Fox says he "can't show up with a game plan." He expresses sympathy and understanding for veteran showman Dick Clark, who, though not fully recovered from a debilitating stroke, had gamely co-hosted ABC's New Year's Rockin' Eve.

"I am not in such a bad position as he, just given the nature of our separate challenges, but I can see what he was going for, and I felt bad for him that he's gotten such a mixed reaction," says Fox.

Because Fox doesn't know how extreme the symptoms of his illness will be on any given day, he had to wing it in suggesting Post's own health problems. "I just show up and do what I can do, and stay true to the emotional arc of the character."

Fox, who won three Emmys for portraying Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties and a fourth for playing Flaherty on Spin City, says he loved it that Boston Legal provided "the chance to do one those courtroom speeches - a soliloquy in front of the judge - which in my long and assorted career I've never done. It was so much fun."

Fun though it was, he admits it was physically "pretty taxing," and he doesn't plan to return to acting full-time. Instead, he says, he's always "finding better things to do," particularly spending as much time as possible with his four kids and wife, Tracy Pollan.

He also devotes himself to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, founded in 2000, which has already raised millions in hopes of finding a cure.

Additionally, he's working on a book, a "kind of followup" to his memoir Lucky Man.

Its theme?

"I'm exploring the idea of optimism in all it's forms ... What is optimism all about? It's kind of something I've been playing with."

'SOUTH PARK' DEFENDS 'BLOODY' CUT

Comedy Central says religious groups are prematurely claiming victory in a battle over a recent episode of "South Park."

In the controversial episode of the racy animated show — titled "Bloody Mary" — a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeds from her nether regions.

The graphic tone of the show, which first aired in early December, offended The Catholic League and other conservative religious groups, who now claim to have pressured Comedy Central into pulling the "vile" episode from rotation on the network.

Not so, Comedy Central executives wrote in a letter issued late last week to irate viewers who had e-mailed the network voicing their displeasure for "caving in" to outside groups.

"Despite misleading claims from those who would like to claim victory, we have not permanently shelved the 'Bloody Mary' episode from future airings due to outside pressure, nor will we exclude it from future DVD releases," the letter stated.

"We appreciate your concerns about the potential influences of outside special interest groups on the media and entertainment industries, and particularly Comedy Central."

Some viewers were especially upset that the episode did not appear in a year-end "South Park" marathon.

The Comedy Central letter stated that the network had kept the episode out of the marathon "in deference to the holidays." But it did in fact "air in every one of 'South Park's' normally scheduled repeat timeslots.

"As satirists, we believe that it is our First Amendment right to poke fun at any and all people, groups, organizations and religions and we will continue to defend that right," the letter stated. "Our goal is to make people laugh, and perhaps if we're lucky, even make them think in the process."

Music Lovers Go Legit

Consumers' embrace of legal online music downloads grew ever larger in 2005, and with all the buzz about MP3 players' continued popularity, it's no surprise that legal downloads achieved a new record in the week between Christmas and New Year's.

According to Nielsen SoundScan data, legal downloads nearly hit the 20 million mark in that key holiday week -- almost three times the number of tracks downloaded in the same period the year before. The market research firm said that this new record smashed the previous weekly peak of 9.5 million tracks downloaded -- and that record was set a mere week beforehand.

It goes without saying that Apple is the elephant in this particular room. Consumers' love affair with the iPod still seems to be going strong, and iTunes entered the list of top 10 music retailers in the third quarter of 2005. Traffic to Apple's site was hopping in the weeks leading up to the holidays, largely due to iTunes' popularity.

As the Reuters article citing this data pointed out, downloads from peer-to-peer networks may still greatly overshadow legal download numbers. In addition, older data about CD sales suggests that they're still a trouble point for the music industry. Still, the momentum for legally downloaded music seems destined to grow, provided it remains convenient and attractively priced. The time frame in question may have also helped the surge in legal downloads; it's likely that many iPods were unwrapped under the tree or by the menorah, not to mention a flood of gift cards being redeemed for services such as iTunes.

The increasing momentum in legal music downloads helps to explain why so many companies want to get in the groove. Napster, RealNetworks, and Yahoo! are just a few of the companies that hope to compete in the musical arena. Major mobile phone companies also want in; just consider recent news from Motorola, as well as an autumn move by Sprint Nextel.

For me, the most significant element of this story is the amazing and continued success of Apple's iPods and iTunes. There's still plenty of opportunity for rival download services to gain market share, but for now, Apple still seems to be the name to beat.

'Brokeback' Wins 3 Critics' Choice Awards

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - "Brokeback Mountain" won a leading three awards, including best picture and best director for Ang Lee, but it was Philip Seymour Hoffman's entrancing portrayal of Truman Capote that captured the best actor honor Monday at the 11th annual Critics' Choice Awards.

George Clooney received the Freedom Award, a special tribute "for illuminating our shared values of freedom, tolerance and democracy" through "Good Night, and Good Luck," his film about television reporter Edward R. Murrow and the McCarthy era. Oscar winner Julia Roberts, making her first public appearance since having twins, presented the award.

Reese Witherspoon was named best actress for her sassy performance as June Carter in the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line."

Michelle Williams of "Brokeback Mountain" tied for the award for best supporting actress with Amy Adams of "Junebug."

Paul Giamatti, whose "Sideways" co-star Thomas Haden Church was named best supporting actor last year, took the honor this year for his role as a fight promoter in "Cinderella Man."

Freddie Highmore won his second award for best young actor for his role in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." Last year, it was for "Finding Neverland."

The awards were presented by the Broadcast Film Critics Association at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

Another special award, for Distinguished Achievement in Performing Arts, went to the movie epic "King Kong," for "revolutionary cinematic achievement in synthesizing visual effects with an actor's performance to create the character." Andy Serkis, whose movements and expressions were captured to animate the big ape, was among those on hand to accept.

The complete list of winners:

Picture: "Brokeback Mountain."
Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Capote."
Actress: Reese Witherspoon, "Walk the Line."
Supporting Actor: Paul Giamatti, "Cinderella Man."
Supporting Actress: (tie) Amy Adams, "Junebug," and Michelle Williams, "Brokeback Mountain."
Acting Ensemble: "Crash."
Director: Ang Lee, "Brokeback Mountain."
Writer: Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco, "Crash."
Animated Feature: "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit."
Young Actor: Freddie Highmore, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."
Young Actress: Dakota Fanning, "War of the Worlds."
Comedy: "The 40 Year-Old Virgin."
Family Film (live action): "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."
Picture Made for Television: "Into the West."
Foreign Language Film: "Kung Fu Hustle."
Song: "Hustle & Flow," written by Al Kapone and performed by Terrence Howard, from the film "Hustle & Flow."
Soundtrack: "Walk the Line."
Composer: John Williams for "Memoirs of a Geisha."
Documentary Feature: "March of the Penguins."

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Special Awards:

Freedom: George Clooney.
Distinguished Achievement in Performing Arts: "King Kong."