ABC Schedules 'Alias' Endgame
The countdown to the end of "Alias" can now officially begin.
ABC said Tuesday (Feb. 28) that the high-octane spy drama, which has been on hiatus to allow for star Jennifer Garner's maternity leave and to make room for "Dancing with the Stars," will begin its final run of episodes with a two-hour show at 8 p.m. ET Wednesday, April 19. That's a change from earlier in the season, when the show aired on Thursdays.
The network also announced a few more schedule changes, including a delay in the premiere of "What About Brian," the return of "Hope & Faith" and "Invasion" and the scheduling of its miniseries "The Ten Commandments."
"Alias," which last aired in December, was originally scheduled to return in March, after "Dancing with the Stars" ended its season. As ABC rolled out its midesason schedule, though, the show was left hanging.
The later return date also likely means that the series will have fewer than 22 episodes for its final season. ABC does, however, promise that the final episodes will reveal the final stages of the Rambaldi prophecy and feature the return of Bradley Cooper as Will Tippin and Gina Torres as Anna Espinosa -- not to mention the reappearance of the presumed-dead Vaughn (Michael Vartan) and the birth of his and Sydney's (Garner) baby.
"Alias" will take the place of comedies "George Lopez" and "Freddie" on the Wednesday schedule; those shows will end their seasons a little early. "Invasion," which will get a four-week break for "The Evidence" starting March 22, will also return on April 19.
The network's update of "The Ten Commandments," starring Dougray Scott (NBC's "Heist") as Moses, will air April 10 and 11 -- a few days before Easter and the start of Passover. The miniseries also features "Lost" star Naveen Andrews, "Alias'" Mia Maestro and Omar Sharif ("Doctor Zhivago").
With "The Ten Commandments" scheduled for Easter week, ABC has moved the debut of "What About Brian" back two weeks. It was originally scheduled to premiere Sunday, April 2 and move to its regular Monday home the next night. Rather than pre-empt it for the miniseries, the network decided to hold back; "Brian" will now premiere Sunday, April 16 and take over the 10 p.m. Monday spot on the 17th.
Finally, "Hope & Faith" will make the move to Tuesday nights starting March 21. It will replace "Rodney" at 8:30 p.m.
New, improved on DVD, "Network" hasn't aged a day
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "I think I'd like to be an angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of our time," fallen news anchor Howard Beale tells co-workers in the opening minutes of Paddy Chayefsky's masterpiece "Network."
Writer Chayefsky, equally mad as hell, used his black comedy about a raggedy fourth TV network to denounce the hypocrisies of 1976 and warn of media evils to come.
Like his creation Sybil the Soothsayer, "Paddy was capable of seeing the future," director Sidney Lumet says. Chayefsky warned of entertainment masquerading as news, corporate meddling, violent reality shows, the tyranny of ratings, foreign ownership of U.S. media -- essentially the strip-mining of what already was a vast wasteland.
"The vision that the movie displayed so eloquently is alive today," producer Howard Gottfried maintains. Adds Lumet, "TV today has become its own satire."
Warner Bros. has released "Network" in a double-disc set that's tagged "Still mad as hell after 30 years." Disc 1 includes a sober but quite good commentary from Lumet, who focuses on who won what Oscar, why he rehearses actors and the thinking behind the "Network" lighting scheme, in which "even the camera is corrupted" as the movie descends into anarchy.
The extra features leadoff is a making-of by DVD documentary specialist Laurent Bouzereau. It includes chapters on the late Chayefsky, the "mad as hell" phenomenon and the film's powerhouse actors. The docus cover a lot of material and get the job done, but don't expect much of that loopy "Network" spirit.
Also on Disc 2, Chayefsky ponders "Network" on a segment of the talk show "Dinah!" And there's an hour-long Lumet retrospective from 2005, when he received an honorary Oscar, partly to atone for oversights that included losing the best director award (for "Network") to John Avildsen for "Rocky."
"THE DEATH HOUR." A GREAT SUNDAY NIGHT SHOW FOR THE WHOLE
FAMILY.
Aside from "Network's" on-air killing of a TV personality -- "because he had lousy ratings" -- all of its outrageous events happened in real life, Lumet points out.
"Network" anchorman Beale (Peter Finch) starts his wild ride by threatening to kill himself on camera. Crazy talk, but it mirrored headlines of the time. In 1974, as Chayefsky was writing "Network," a Florida TV personality shot herself to death on a morning show, saying it was "in keeping with (the) policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts." In the world of "Network," an on-air suicide was good for "a 50 share, easily."
The home video hit "Faces of Death" followed "Network" by two years, launching an above-ground snuff franchise. "Cops," "The Morton Downey Jr. Show" and Howard Stern were in the wings.
Today, death and violence -- real and imagined -- do brisk business in all media. News divisions draw and redraw the line between electronic journalism and morbid pandering. Freeway chases don't always end with surrenders and handcuffs, a percentage play that keeps viewers tuning in at 10 and 11. Local TV news "is as corrupt as anything I've ever seen," Lumet charges.
As for death in primetime, the director says: "On one of the reality shows it'll happen. There will be a real death. And it'll be shown to you, I promise."
Ratings are money, Chayefsky said in 1976. "If you follow the desire to get ratings . . . we will pursue this right into 'Coliseum '77' -- in which we will throw Christians to the lions every Saturday night."
The message of "Network," he said, was, "When do we say 'Hold it!' A human life is a hell of a lot more important than your lousy dollar."
Star Faye Dunaway reflects: "The reason ('Network') was so funny was because it was so outrageous. You're thinking, 'C'mon, nobody's going to kill somebody on television, are they?' And now we sort of think, yeah, we think so."
THE NEWS DIVISION WILL BE REDUCED FROM AN INDEPENDENT
DIVISION TO A DEPARTMENT ACCOUNTABLE TO NETWORK.
Walter Cronkite, who worked with Lumet on the historical re-enactment series "You Are There," recalls CBS news staffers' reactions to "Network": "I understand it was supposed to be a combination of drama and comedy, but to us it was all comedy -- it was so overdrawn. . . . We howled with laughter."
Chayefsky talked extensively with NBC's John Chancellor but otherwise relied on his own adventures in live television. Cronkite says accusations that Chayefsky and Lumet were turning on the medium that made them were just "sour grapes from some who were envious." Adds Lumet: "We didn't leave TV. It left us."
Of ratings demands on network news, Cronkite says, "It is a fact that the pressure is there" to entertain. But taken too far, "The newspeople would revolt, pressure and maybe quit." As they did in "Network." Sort of.
Cronkite, whose daughter Kathy played the film's Patty Hearst lookalike, says the film's legacy is "it waved a banner of warning to the TV industry that it better not let things do as far as it did on that (UBS) network."
ALL I WANT OUT OF LIFE IS A 30 SHARE AND A 20 RATING.
Faye Dunaway's portrayal of lone-wolf programming VP Diana Christensen won her the best actress Oscar -- and it is her top-billed performance that gets the most attention in the DVD extras.
Diana, "who learned life from Bugs Bunny," stalks the sagging UBS network's news division, eventually hijacking its madman anchor for her evening news carnival. The ratings potential of her show "The Mao Tse-Tung Hour," featuring the criminal exploits of black radicals, brings the slinky executive to orgasm. She beds the everyman news chief (William Holden), stealing him from his wife and then stealing his division.
The part "wasn't easy to say yes to," Dunaway says. "I was advised not to do it. Because, you know, she didn't have a soul. She was a TV baby. There was a vacantness behind those eyes. People were afraid I'd be thought of that way."
Theater veterans Dunaway and Finch helped Holden adjust to Lumet's drawn-out rehearsals, a new one on the longtime film star. Dunaway says rehearsals "always struck me as insane not to do" on films.
SHE GETS THE WINTER PASSION; I GET THE DOTAGE.
Three "Network" players won Academy Awards: Dunaway, Finch (posthumously) and Beatrice Straight. There were five acting nominations in all, making the cast the most honored in Oscar history.
Straight, a stage actress, took home the supporting actress gold for one five-minute scene, in which Holden's newsman tells his wife of 25 years he's in love with the beautiful young programming exec. Her reply, in a heartbreaking monologue, contains some of Chayefsky's finest writing. Lumet says he deliberately exhausted the actress by making her do repeated takes, then captured this amazing scene.
Ned Beatty, who played a corporate chieftain, likewise was nominated for a single scene in which he uses the voice of doom to warn Beale that he's "meddled with the primal forces of nature." Beatty, who mimicked his hometown holy roller for the tirade, describes himself as just "a day player" on the film.
"Network" couldn't beat "Rocky" in the best picture race, a loss that Chayefsky took hard. "I think it's a hell of a film," he told Dinah Shore.
VIDEO DIFFICULTIES ARE TEMPORARY -- PLEASE DO NOT ADJUST
YOUR SET.
The new! improved! "Network" DVD smokes Warner's bare-bones versions of 1998 and 2000. Images are suitably colorful and handsome for a '70s film, though the presentation suffers from some speckling and unwelcome grain. The stereo Dolby Digital seems challenged by the audio's occasional spikes, lessening their intended impact. The aspect ratio is 2.35:1; the video employs the enhancement for widescreen monitors.
Courteney Cox Returns to TV in 'Dirt'
LOS ANGELES - When "Friends" left television, so did Courteney Cox, who played Monica Geller on the long-running series. But the actress is coming back in "Dirt," a drama pilot for the FX network, in which she will play tabloid editor Lucy Spiller.
Production on the pilot is scheduled to begin in March.
"We are absolutely thrilled that Courteney has chosen `Dirt' for her return to series television," Nick Grad, the network's vice president of original programming, said in a statement Tuesday.
Along with the show's director, Matthew Carnahan, Cox and her husband, David Arquette, are credited as executive producers.
Woody serves up Match Point
A serious departure for Woody Allen in virtually every respect, Match Point still bares the soul of its director from start to finish. Dreamworks will unveil the story of luck and disaster on DVD this spring.
A one-time tennis pro, Chris Wilton (was used to falling just short in his life. But when he befriends Tom Hewett (and marries his sister, Chloe), the doors are opened to the kind of money and success that Chris had once only dreamed of. Chris should have settled for happiness, but he is torn by his attraction to Tom’s impossibly beautiful and sensual fiance, Nola. The attraction turns to an obsession that forces Chris to make a critical choice. Now everything in his life hinges on if Chris falls short again…and whether or not his luck runs out.
The DVD like all Allen films will be in mono only, but with an anamorphic widescreen transfer. No supplements appear to be included.
The DVD arrives on April 25th with a $29.98 suggested retail price.