Shock! "Saw" No. 4 set for release next Halloween

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Perhaps inevitably, the record-breaking box office launch of "Saw III" has inspired the film's distributor to order a fourth installment of the R-rated horror series.

According to final data issued Monday, the film earned $33.61 million during its first three days, a record for both Lionsgate and for the franchise, but off $700,000 from the three-day estimate the studio published Sunday.

"Saw III" received an overall grade of B from exit pollster CinemaScore. With a hefty per-screen average of $10,612, the film was best received by the under-25 crowd, which was divided pretty evenly male-female. "Saw III" stars Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith as serial killers. Another sequel is on tap for next Halloween.

In contrast, Focus Features' "Catch a Fire" was a huge disappointment, earning a meager $2.03 million for a 12th-place bow in the weekend's rankings.

It wasn't the only bomb. Newmarket Films' controversial mockumentary "Death of a President" earned just $281,778 from 143 screens for a per-screen average of $1,835. The indie firm had trouble booking theaters because some chains wanted nothing to do with a film that depicts the assassination of President Bush.

The best performer in the limited-release world was Paramount Vantage's "Babel," which bowed to $389,351 on seven screens for a per-screen average of $55,621. Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's R-rated drama, which stars Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael Garcia Bernal, will add 13 markets next weekend before going wide November 10.

The Weinstein Co. did well with its documentary "Shut Up and Sing," about the firestorm surrounding the Dixie Chicks after lead singer Natalie Maines insulted President Bush. Opening on four screens in New York and Los Angeles, the film boasted a per-screen average of $12,526 and a total of $50,103.

Elsewhere, Warner Bros.' "The Departed" held on at No. 2 for a third weekend, with $9.85 million, taking its total to $91.1 million. The previous week's champ, Disney's "The Prestige," had a little magic in its numbers, earning $9.57 million, bringing its 10-day total to $28.78 million.

Paramount Pictures' "Flags of Our Fathers" slid in its second week in release, down one to No. 4 with $6.35 million despite a boost in its theater count; it has earned $19.92 million after 10 days.

Sony Pictures also struggled with its ninth-ranked "Marie Antoinette," which suffered from weak word-of-mouth in its second weekend. Sofia Coppola's period saga earned $2.85 million, taking its 10-day haul to $9.75 million.

Sony's literary adaptation "Running With Scissors" rounded out the top 10, jumping 18 places in its second week after earning $2.53 million. The R-rated film from writer-director Ryan Murphy added 578 runs, up from eight during its first weekend. Its per-screen average of $4,320 was below expectations. According to exit pollster CinemaScore, the film generated a C+ with audiences. Audiences were drawn to the film's subject matter primarily, with women over 25 attending the film in the greatest numbers.

Bob Barker retiring after 50 years on TV

LOS ANGELES - Bob Barker is heading toward his last showcase, his final "Come on down." The silver-haired daytime-TV icon is retiring in June, he told The Associated Press Tuesday.

"I will be 83 years old on December 12," he said, "and I've decided to retire while I'm still young."

He'll hang up his microphone after 35 years as the host of "The Price Is Right" and 50 years overall in television.

Though he has been considering retirement for "at least 10 years," Barker said he has so much fun doing the show that he hasn't been able to leave.

"I've gone on and on and on to this ancient age because I've enjoyed it," he said. "I've thoroughly enjoyed it and I'm going to miss it."

Reaching dual milestones, 50 years on television and 35 with "Price," made this an "appropriate" time to retire, Barker said. Besides, hosting the daily CBS program — in which contestants chosen from the crowd "come on down" to compete for "showcases" that include trips, appliances and new cars — is "demanding physically and mentally," he said.

"I'm just reaching the age where the constant effort to be there and do the show physically is a lot for me," he said. "I might be able to do the show another year, but better (to leave) a year too soon than a year too late."

Leslie Moonves, president and CEO of CBS Corporation, said Barker has left an enduring mark on the network, calling his contribution and loyalty "immeasurable."

"We knew this day would come, but that doesn't make it any easier," Moonves said in a statement. "Bob Barker is a daytime legend, an entertainment icon and one of the most beloved television personalities of our time."

Barker began his national television career in 1956 as the host of "Truth or Consequences." He first appeared on "Price" on Sept. 4, 1972 and has been the face of the show ever since.

A CBS prime-time special celebrating the show's longevity and Barker's five decades on TV was already under way, a network spokesman said.

To kick off his retirement, Barker said he will "sit down for maybe a couple of weeks and find out what it feels like to be bored." Then he plans to spend time working with animal-rights causes, including his own DJ&T Foundation, founded in memory of his late wife, Dorothy Jo, and mother, Matilda.

He said he'd take on a movie role if the right one came along, but filmmakers, take note: "I refuse to do nude scenes. These Hollywood producers want to capitalize on my obvious sexuality, but I don't want to be just another beautiful body."

Freemantle Media, which owns "Price," has been looking for Barker's replacement for "two or three years," Barker said. And he has some advice for whoever takes the job: learn the show's 80 games backwards and forward.

"The games have to be just like riding a bicycle," Barker said. "Then he will be relaxed enough to have fun with the audience, to get the laughs with his contestants and make the show more than just straight games, to make it a lot of fun."

As for his fans, Barker said he "doesn't have the words" to express his gratitude.

"From the bottom of my heart, I thank the television viewers, because they have made it possible for me to earn a living for 50 years doing something that I thoroughly enjoy. They have invited me into their homes daily for a half a century."

But when it comes to saying his final TV goodbye, Barker said he'll do it the same way he does each day on "Price": "Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered."

Concertgoer throws drink at Streisand

SUNRISE, Fla. - The funny girl wasn't laughing. Barbra Streisand had a drink lobbed at her Monday after a mid-concert skit poking fun at President Bush.

Streisand's publicist, Dick Guttman, said a paper cup filled with some sort of liquid was thrown on stage but apparently did not hit Streisand during her second performance in this Fort Lauderdale suburb.

Streisand's manager, Martin Erlichman, said she shrugged off the incident and responded to the angry audience member by saying: "It's a free country and they're entitled to express their opinion."

It's at least the third time the skit, which includes a George W. Bush impersonator, has angered Streisand's audience. A heckler targeted her at the Philadelphia opening of her 20-city comeback tour, Guttman said, and Streisand made headlines with her response to a jeerer at Madison Square Garden last month.

Erlichman said Streisand, 64, believed the skit was in good fun and noted impersonator Steve Bridges, who wrote it, is a Republican.

"This skit has been so massively covered by media, it's impossible that it still could come as a surprise to any of the Bush admirers who bought tickets," Erlichman said.

Despite the controversy, Erlichman said the skit would remain a part of the tour.

"It stays in the show except for the few performances where Steve has a conflicting commitment," Erlichman said.

Streisand, an outspoken liberal, is touring the country after a 12-year absence from the stage, offering fans a repertoire of her four decades of hits.

Lights out for drama Studio 60?

By the time you read this it probably will be official. Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip will be cancelled by NBC.

Getting pulled this Monday night to test low-rated rookie Friday Night Lights in the time slot was the kiss of death. The season's most hyped (and expensive) drama crashed and burned because of high expectations and low ratings, always a killer combo.

Studio 60 started out last month with some 14 million U.S. viewers but has slid to fewer than 8 million.

What went wrong? A brilliant pilot was followed by five uneven episodes. While there were flashes of style and wit, the sketch-show-within-a-show at the core of this series never for a second seemed funny. Aside from Matthew Perry, who was brilliant, not all the cast members clicked (although Steven Weber as a pissy network boss worked for me). And while critics raved about Aaron Sorkin's clever dialogue, the inner workings of a TV show was probably just not that interesting to the average viewer,

For those of you who loved it, like I did, wait for the DVD.

The news comes as another blow to CTV which has gone 0-for-this-fall. Of their four rookie dramas, one is cancelled (Smith), one is probably cancelled (Studio 60) and the other two are faltering (Justice, The Nine). Of their five new comedies, two are cancelled (Happy Hour, Twenty Good Years), one is postponed (Knights Of Prosperity) and two are bombing (30 Rock, The Class). Even worse, one of their mid-season shows, Waterfront, has been cancelled even before it premieres.

Meanwhile, three of the highest-rated new shows south of the border -- Heroes, Shark and Brothers & Sisters -- are all on Global. CHUM also has two of the U.S. Top 5: Jericho and Ugly Betty. All five have won full-season orders.

Conan goes bare-bones

Move over, Nichol Richie, Posh Spice and that skinny Olsen twin -- Conan O'Brien is going "skelevision."

Tonight's special Halloween episode of Late Night With Conan O'Brien (12:35 a.m. EST) will be performed entirely with skeletons.

It is one of those crazy ideas that usually cracks people up in a writer's room and then never sees the light of day -- except on O'Brien's up-for-anything little show.

Over the past 13 seasons, O'Brien and company have never shied away from turning Late Night inside out. They seem to do this as much to keep themselves keen as to shake up their audience. As O'Brien told me a couple of years ago when he took his show to Toronto, "From the beginning we always tried to make this show where it's not safe to turn it off."

There have been some pretty out-there examples over the years. One Late Night episode was done entirely in claymation, like an old, extended Mr. Bill cartoon from Saturday Night Live. Another was retooled as an infomercial, with O'Brien in a really loud sweater pitching the 10th anniversary DVD of the series.

Then there was the time they broadcast an entire show from one of those Circle Line ferries that rings Manhattan. During New York's 2003 blackout, they did a last-minute, 15-minute version of the show using nothing but reserve power.

Other late-night talk shows have thought outside the box in the past. Diehard Letterman fans will recall the time he broadcast an entire hour in Spanish, or the time the entire screen slowly rotated 360 degrees over the course of the hour (people who tuned in halfway through saw an upside-down Peter Ustinov). TV repair shops were flooded with calls.

After 50 years, so much of late night is the same old same old -- the desk, the band, the monologue -- that shows such as Letterman and O'Brien have to shake things up just to keep everybody honest. Torontonians will recall the week-long O'Brien orgy that hit this city early in 2004. O'Brien recently rocked Chicago with a similar road trip. Then there was that wacky, hour-long travelogue to Finland to meet look-a-like Finnish president Tarja Halonen,

REAL EPISODE

But skeletons? "This may be the finest hour of television NBC has ever produced ... with skeletons," O'Brien said in a press statement. He didn't say, "It takes guts to do a show with skeletons," so I'll say it for him.

The idea is to take an episode from last May, which featured guests Larry King, Omar Epps (House) and actress and pole-dancing workout instructor Sheila Kelley, and re-do the visuals with skeleton puppets. Toronto-born Will Arnett (Arrested Development) will also be "skeletized" with O'Brien in the opening "In The Year 2000" bit.

While no preview screener was made available to press, the stills from the show (surrounding this story) look pretty damn funny. Check out King's red suspenders on his skeleton. If anything, the CNN host looks healthier than usual.

O'Brien's skeleton, of course, is sporting a big red wig. The purple tie is a classy touch.

Will this get old in about two minutes? Taking stupid to its ridiculous conclusion has always been part of O'Brien's charm.

After 2,000-plus hours, O'Brien has to do something while he waits to take over Jay Leno's hosting duties on The Tonight Show (scheduled to occur in 2009).

"Most nights, you're looking for anything," O'Brien confided to the Sun in 2004. "Someone told me that Johnny Carson once broke into a card trick spontaneously on the air. In the commercial break, the guest said, 'Wow, that was really cool.' And Johnny said, 'When you have a job like this, you eventually use everything you've got.'"

Everything, right down to the bare bones.

Canadian cities star as themselves in new movies

TORONTO (Hollywood Reporter) - Canadians have long been used to seeing their cities on the big screen as backdrops for Hollywood shoots here.

But with U.S. production in Canada on the wane, Canadian cities increasingly get to play themselves in homegrown theatrical dramas and comedies.

Paul Fox's "Everything's Gone Green," for example, features Vancouver as Vancouver, which sits well with local screenwriter Douglas Coupland.

"So many shoots are always going on in Vancouver. You'll see four or five in a row, and every time you die inside, as we're never Vancouver. Instead, we're Portland, Los Angeles or Seattle," Coupland says.

He recalls the Vancouver street he lives on doubling in 1999 for a location in Colorado for the thriller "Double Jeopardy," starring Tommy Lee Jones and Ashley Judd.

"It was out of control," Coupland says of his hometown disguising itself for Hollywood's benefit. In "Everything's Gone Green," Coupland's ode to Vancouver, the screenwriter uses the city's sea-to-sky beauty and expensive property market to drive the motivation of characters.

"That helped establish what the characters do, and the embryo of the city itself -- real estate, grow-ops, pyramid schemes and the post-industrial economy -- anything where you don't make anything tangible," he explains.

At the other end of the country, Atlantic Canada is disguising itself less and less as New England. Halifax, for example, plays itself in two goofball comedies: the Ivan Reitman-produced "Trailer Park Boys: The Movie" and David Gonnella's "A Bug and a Bag of Weed," which used the city's South Center Mall and Q Billiards Hall as locations.

Erik Canuel's buddy movie "Bon Cop, Bad Cop," which in early October became the highest-grossing Canadian movie of all time, even used its Toronto and Montreal backdrops to generate laughs. That includes a murder investigation opened after a body is found draped over a highway sign on the border dividing Quebec and Ontario.

And Ross Weber's "Mount Pleasant" features a derelict, drug-ridden Vancouver neighborhood in which the journey of three separate couples from varying backgrounds intersect when a little girl is accidentally pricked by a poisoned discarded needle.

U.S. production here continues to slide as the rising Canadian dollar makes it too expensive for U.S. producers, who are turning to cheaper foreign locales or just decide to stay in Hollywood. Canadian provinces are fighting back by offering more financial incentives.

Charlize Theron Rides Ferris Wheel

Charlize Theron will star in the indie drama Ferris Wheel with Nick Stahl, AnnaSophia Robb, Woody Harrelson, Dennis Hopper and Deborra-Lee Furness.

The movie Drama an 11-year-old girl's struggle to come to terms with her mother's abandonment. Bill Maher will make his feature directing debut from a script by Zac Stanford. Shooting begins next month.

Theron will also serve as producer on the project. It was announced earlier this week that she'll star in The Battle in Seattle for director/boyfriend Stuart Townsend. She's also rumored to be in talks for Tonight, He Comes opposite Will Smith.

"Manchurian Candidate" Actor Joins "CSI"

Film actor Liev Schreiber will soon be seen as a recurring character on TV's hit crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Moviehole.net reports The Manchurian Candidate actor will take on the role of an experienced investigator, whose talent for solving cases brings him to the Las Vegas Crime Lab.

CSI executive producer Carol Mendelsohn says, "We first sat down with Liev earlier this summer to discuss the possibility of him appearing as a recurring character on CSI. We knew it was a long shot, he really doesn't do television.

But he was patient and I think amused, as we promised that we'd create a character for him that he couldn't refuse to play. Excitingly for us, he collaborated in this process. And we've got a wonderful, complex character as a result."

Obviously pleased with his upcoming role, Schreiber says, "After meeting the people who run CSI, it immediately becomes apparent why it has consistently been one of the top shows on television. I am a fan, how could I say no?"

New Releases, Oct. 31: The Who, Meat Loaf, Barry Manilow

The Who "Endless Wire"

It will be a very happy Halloween for The Who fans, as the classic rock act releases its first new studio album since 1982's "It's Hard."

According to a press release, the new record will include new tracks, "as well as music culled from a 29-minute operatic work, described by The Who's co-founder Pete Townshend as a mini-opera inspired by his novella 'The Boy Who Heard Music.'" All of the songs that appear on "Wire & Glass," an EP recently issued by The Who (available in the US only as an import), will turn up on the forthcoming album.

The sole remaining founding members of the group are guitarist/singer Townshend and frontman Roger Daltrey. Original Who bassist John Entwistle died of a cocaine-induced heart attack in 2002. Original drummer Keith Moon died of a drug overdose in 1978.

Last month, The Who kicked off its first world tour in 20 years. The touring lineup includes drummer Zak Starkey (son of Ringo Starr), guitarist Simon Townshend (Pete Townshend's brother), bassist Pino Palladino and keyboardist John Bundrick.

* * *
Meat Loaf "Bat Out Of Hell III"

What better time than Halloween for Meat Loaf to release the third installment of this ghoulishly titled series? The first two efforts, 1977's "Bat Out of Hell" and 1993's "Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell," were tremendously successfully, combining to sell some 45 million copies around the globe.

"Bat Out of Hell III" features seven songs written by longtime collaborator Jim Steinman. Steinman's involvement follows the amicable resolution of a lawsuit regarding ownership of the lucrative "Bat Out of Hell" trademark.

Produced by Desmond Child (Aerosmith, Cher), "Bat Out of Hell III" features additional vocal arrangements by Todd Rundgren, producer of the first "Bat Out of Hell" album, and songs by Nikki Sixx (Motley Crue), John 5 (Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie) and Marti Frederiksen, a contributing Aerosmith songwriter.

During a recent teleconference, Meat Loaf said that the upcoming "Bat Out of Hell III" tour, slated to start March 1 in Florida, will be his last.

* * *
Barry Manilow "The Greatest Songs of the Sixties"

Having hit the jackpot with "The Greatest Songs of the Fifties," Manilow now jumps a decade and shoots for gold with this set.

"The Greatest Songs of the Sixties" find the crooner covering such well-known '60s chart-toppers as "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," "Can't Help Falling in Love," "Blue Velvet," "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" and "Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime."

* * *
Deftones "Saturday Night Wrist"

The Deftones return with the first release since their 2003 self-titled album. The first single from the record is "Hole in the Earth."

The band is supporting the album with a lengthy tour, which kicked off last week and is currently scheduled to last through an early December date in Washington, DC.

* * *
Phish "Colorado '88"

This three-disc live set chronicles the legendary jam band's early trip through the Rocky Mountain state, and features many songs that would go on to become staples of the group's concerts. "Colorado '88" is available exclusively through the band's website.

* * *
Other new releases:
Ayo, "Joyful" (Universal)
Behemoth, "Pandemonic Incantation" (Metal Mind)
Birdman, Lil Wayne, "Like Father, Like Son" (Cash Money)
Closterkeller, "Nero" (Metal Mind)
Sonny Curtis, "Beatle Hits Flamenco Style Guitar" (E)
Desdemona, "Version 3.0" (Metal Mind)
DJ Jazzy Jeff, "Hip Hop Forever, Vol. 3" (Rapster)
Kevin Federline, "Playing With Fire" (Reincarnate)
Flavor Flav, "Hollywood" (Draytown)
Lady Sovereign, "Public Warning" (Def Jam)
Lizard, "Spam" (Metal Mind)
Pitbull, "El Mariel" (TVT)
Theatre of Hate, "Revolution" (USD)
Various Artists, "Bayou Blues Blasters" (ACE)

R.E.M., Van Halen Headed to Hall?

R.E.M., but not the Replacements. The Stooges, but not MC5. Van Halen, but not Mötley Crüe, Billy Idol or KISS.

Nominations were announced Monday for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Class of 2007. And as happens, some eligible acts made the ballot; most didn't.

The nominees are:

- Producers Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards' funk group Chic ("Good Times");

- British Invasion band the Dave Clark Five ("Glad All Over");
"White Lines" hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash and his outfit, the Furious Five;

- College/indie-rock icons R.E.M.;

- 1960s girl-group/Phil Spector project The Ronettes ("Be My Baby");

- Punk poet Patti Smith (Horses);

- Iggy Pop's breakthrough act, the Stooges ("I Wanna Be Your Dog");

- The late soul singer/rap innovator Joe Tex ("Hold What You've Got");

- And arena-rock gods Van Halen.

Of the nine, R.E.M., The Ronettes and Van Halen are the only first-time nominees. And of the nine, only a maximum of five will end up in the Cleveland museum next year.

The inductees will be announced in January. The hall's typically jam-packed induction ceremony is scheduled for Mar. 12 in New York City.

An act becomes eligible for the Rock Hall of Fame 25 years after the release of its first single or album. On that basis, R.E.M., which hit college radio in 1981 with "Radio Free Europe," is the only band from this year's nominee crop to make the ballot in its first year of eligibility.

Artists and acts who, like R.E.M., debuted in 1981 but didn't score a Hall of Fame nomination on Monday included, per FutureRockHall.com: Billy Idol; Depeche Mode; Duran Duran; Eurythmics; Mötley Crüe; Phil Collins, the solo act (i.e., not the Genesis drummer); the Replacements; and the Stray Cats.

Veteran snubbed acts who got snubbed again included: KISS; Rush; Alice Cooper; and, much to the presumed dismay of the 258 signatories of the "Osmonds Rock & Roll Hall of Fame" online petition, the Osmonds.

Like the Osmonds' faithful, KISS' fans did their part to try to get their heroes on the ballot. In August, more than 500 members of the so-called "KISS Army" assembled outside the Rock Hall's headquarters to demand the band's induction. KISS, which released its first album in 1974, has been eligible for at least seven years.

One of this year's more curious snubees was MC5. The seminal Detroit rock band, a former nominee, was noted in the official nomination announcement as having helped shepherd the Stooges. And yet in the end, it was the Stooges that were nominated, and not MC5.

If record sales are any judge—and, frankly, they don't appear to be—then R.E.M. and Van Halen would have the inside track to the Hall. The highest-profile nominees, both groups have sold millions of albums, specializing in songs that helped score the post-boomer's life.

R.E.M., the jangly Atlanta outfit originally consisting of singer Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry, was the preeminent band of 1980s college radio. Its hits include "Losing My Religion," "Stand" and "Man on the Moon."

Van Halen, the California hard-rock band distinguished by the guitar prowess of Eddie Van Halen and the lead vocals of David Lee Roth...and then Sammy Hagar...and then Gary Cherone...and then Sammy Hagar again, briefly, sold 10 million copies with its 1978 self-titled debut. 1984's 1984 sold another 10 million. Its hits include: "Jump," "Panama" and "Right Now."

Singer returns for 'Superman' sequel

Bryan Singer has reportedly reached an agreement to directed the sequel to this summer's "Superman Returns."

According to Variety, Legendary Pictures is expected to co-finance the Warner Bros. production with an eye toward a summer 2009 release.

Of course, "Superman Returns Again" ("The Return of Superman Returns"? "Superman Returns Is Back"? "Superman Rereturns"?) is currently without a script or a budget, so the film hasn't officially been greenlit, a decision that won't come until later in the development process.

"Superman Returns" just limped past the $200 million domestic figure. The DC Comics franchise reboot is also approaching the $400 million figure worldwide. Legendary and Warner Bros. still insist that "Superman Returns," which starred newcomer Brandon Routh, will be profitable, though nearly everybody involved has admitted that its performance was less impressive than anticipated.

It's assumed that a "Superman Returns" sequel will have a somewhat lower budget than on the first entry, where casual and conservative estimates put the figure at around $250 million. Singer has discussed the overly expositional structure of the movie and emphasized that a sequel would be able to jump straight into the action.

Routh and several other cast members have contract options for a sequel.

Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Phillippe split

LOS ANGELES - Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, who started the year on an Oscar-winning high, are ending it on a low note: The couple have separated.

"We are saddened to announce that Reese and Ryan have decided to formally separate," publicist Nanci Ryder said in a statement issued Monday on behalf of the couple.

"They remain committed to their family and we ask that you please respect their privacy and the safety of their children at this time," the brief statement concluded. Ryder said she could not elaborate on the split.

Witherspoon, 30, and Phillippe, 32, have two children, 7-year-old Ava and 3-year-old Deacon. The couple, who co-starred in the 1999 movie "Cruel Intentions," married that year.

In March, Witherspoon won a best-actress Academy Award for her role as June Carter Cash in 2005's "Walk the Line." Phillippe co-starred in the best-picture winner, "Crash," and is starring in Clint Eastwood's latest film, the World War II drama "Flags of Our Fathers."

November sweeps a real turnoff

November sweeps used to be the mother of all TV deals. To goose ratings and boost advertising revenues, networks used to spend millions on all kinds of flashy new junk. You could always look forward to a CBS Hallmark literary classic starring Jane Seymour or a live execution on Fox.

Today, not so much. For one thing, the networks are broke. NBC just announced they're not going to try anymore from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. All that money they spent on Kidnapped and Studio 60, right down the drain.

Besides, viewers aren't at the mercy of network schedules anymore. You no longer have to wait for sweeps to see something cool -- you can rent, buy or download anything anytime you want. Tons of entertainment, good or bad, is always just a click away.

Networks have countered by trying to goose their own brand by stacking their CSI's, Law & Orders or House's with big name guest stars. Even NBC, which hardly has any hits any more, supersizes the so-so shows they still have. It's that old marketing strategy -- if you've got nothing, make it longer.

In Canada, there really is no November ratings sweeps period, so horrible award shows like The Geminis (Nov. 4, Global) can be thrown on a schedule without anybody caring. Still, except at CBC where it is over, everybody is trying to win every hour.

Here, in no particular order, are ten November sweeps goodies to look out for:

1. Show Me the Money (premieres Nov. 22 on ABC). Here it is folks, the future of network television: William Shatner hosting a big money game show. With the instant success of Howie Mandel's Deal Or No Deal, the rush is on to get dumb-luck game shows featuring dumb-luck Canadian hosts on the air. (Want proof? Alan Thicke is set to host The Singing Office on CBS).

Shat's show features trivia questions, showgirls holding scrolls with hidden dollar figures and TV's latest sensation, dancing. As Spock used to say, "fascinating."

2. No more Twenty Good Years. The horrible NBC sitcom starring John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor has been pulled off the air. Thank you, NBC! 30 Rock survives and has been moved to Thursday nights where it will be paired with the return of Scrubs Nov. 16. It will also be super-sized that night, so maybe they'll call it 40 Rock, or Alec Baldwin will be taller.

3. Tuesday November 7 is the night of the U.S. mid-term elections. The Daily Show (Comedy, 11 p.m., CTV 12:05 a.m.) will have a field day unless the Republicans hold Congress, in which case it will be a wake.

4. Speaking of which, The Simpsons run their annual Treehouse Of Horror post-Halloween special Sunday Nov. 5. The XVII edition ends with a shockingly direct anti-Bush, anti-war statement that I can't believe will really air (and probably won't if any of the spin dogs at Fox News find out about it).

5. On that same election night, CTV deals with no new Law & Order: SVU by slapping in The Giller Prize, the annual Canadian literary awards. Justin Trudeau hosts. As his dad used to say, "Just watch me."

6. The big Prison Break mid-season finale airs Monday, Nov. 27 (Global/Fox). Fox plans to rest this a while to give T-Bag time to grow another hand. They'll show Christmas goodies throughout December, then bring back 24 Jan. 14 and 15 in a two-night, four-hour premiere. Speaking of which...

7. Don't wait until November sweeps. Go, right now, to www.24trailer.com. You'll see how Jack Bauer's next bad day is about to unfold. When last we saw Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), he was getting the snot beat out of him on a slow boat to China. After a year-and-a-half in confinement, a bearded, Jesus-like Bauer gets swapped in a prisoner exchange. Praise the Ford! Then he gets a shave and a haircut so he can save the world again. Even Chloe gets a makeover. Cool.

8. Those guest stars? Listen for Sutherland on The Simpsons (Nov. 12). David Morse starts a stint as a cop on House Nov. 7 (John Larroquette pays a House call the week after). Jane Seymour? It's sweeps and she's still working, guesting on Fox's Justice Nov. 20.

9. Among the series premieres next month will be The O.C., returning this Thursday night at 9 p.m. on Fox. The crowd-pleasin' challenge: How to kill off the rest of the cast now that Mischa Barton is gone. Stanley Tucci headlines the new medical drama 3 lbs (CBS/CITY-TV, Nov. 14). If that sounds too heavy (I kill me), Taye Diggs stars as a cop who keeps re-living the same bad day in the Groundhog Day-like Day Break (ABC, Nov. 15). And Wendy Mesley has a new CBS series called Underdogs coming later next month.

10. The 2006 American Music Awards airs Nov. 21 on ABC. Rascal Flatts has been added to the lineup. Like I said, sweeps ain't what they used to be.

Universal raises eyebrows with "Bruno" deal

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Universal Pictures has won the intense bidding war for "Bruno," Sacha Baron Cohen's follow-up movie to "Borat."

Sources said that Universal is paying $42.5 million for the worldwide rights to the film. The price includes the production budget of the film, rumored to be in the $20 million-$25 million range. Also included is a significant profit-participation component for the film's participants, believed to be the 15% range.

The price has raised eyebrows in Hollywood because Baron Cohen's much-hyped "Borat" does not open until November 3. Despite much advance praise for "Borat," distributor Fox scaled back its Friday opening to about 800 theaters because it is concerned that the movie wasn't registering high enough in audience-awareness tracking.

With "Bruno," Baron Cohen is calling upon another of his comic alter egos, Bruno, a gay fashionista from Austria who fancies himself as "the voice of Austrian youth TV" and who sashayed from New York Fashion Week to Miami nightclubs in his previous appearance on HBO's "Da Ali G Show,"on which Baron Cohen also first introduced Borat to American audiences.

As in the case of "Borat," Jay Roach would produce with Baron Cohen. No director is on board, though it has been reported that Baron Cohen wants to shoot the movie during the summer.

Muppets gone wild

It's cold, it's cruel, but when Scorsese meets the 'Street,' the parodies flow in endless streams.

SWEEPING through the debris field that makes up today's YouTube catalog, a few emerging schools of webcamography are evident: confessional videos by teenage girls, stolen footage of Jon Stewart and Asian game shows, caught-on-camera car accidents and faux pas, adorable pet moments and rampaging, ultra-violent, foul-mouthed Muppets.

Not surprisingly, it is that final genre that is attracting the great auteurs of the Internet today. Suddenly, everywhere you look across the Internet, Kermit and Miss Piggy, Ernie and Bert are cussing each other out like gangstas, battling to the death with armored weapons and restaging the edgiest films of our time..

The Muppet remix features the likes of "The Muppet Matrix" and "Murdah Muppets." The Web and its accompanying tools of low-budget editing have granted filmmakers the power to manipulate and reframe the great characters of entertainment to their hearts' desire. But with this freedom, an arms race has also begun, sending filmmakers in a competitive frenzy to place the Snuffleupagus in ever more compromising positions.

Among the recent entries to the unauthorized oeuvre: an animated shot-for-shot restaging of "The Matrix" trailer featuring Kermit in the Keanu Reeves role; a music video of rapping Muppets With Attitudes in which the N.W.A song "F*** tha Police" is cleverly dubbed into snippets of Muppet footage; and "C for Cookie," a spoof of "V for Vendetta" in which an underground hero played by Cookie Monster fights for citizens' rights to eat snacks all day long against an oppressive Big Brother-like dictator played by Oscar the Grouch. (Elmo tries his hand at the Natalie Portman role.)

Perhaps the most circulated recent entry into the genre is "Martin Scorsese's Sesame Streets," a series of respliced scenes from the Henson flagship show overdubbed with snippets of trademark dialogue from the director of "Taxi Driver" and "Goodfellas" canon. Panning over a scene of "Street's" Muppet and human cast singing atop their urban stoop, to jazzy theme music, a narrator intones, "In a world so familiar, some secrets just can't stay hidden." Soon we hear Joe Pesci's voice emanating from Grover, demanding of a little girl: "I make you laugh!?! I'm here to … amuse you!?!"; Big Bird confronting Snuffleupagus, "You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here, so you must be talkin' to me"; and Ernie and Bert's quiet domestic life recast as a fraught scene of betrayal and mistrust. "One neighborhood where time stands still and nothing is what it seems," the narrator deadpans. "Sometimes the most dangerous place to go is back home."

"Sesame Streets" is the work of Jim Paul and Max Stinson, two Chicago advertising executives who cut the piece for a film festival thrown by their firm and then uploaded it onto YouTube so they could share it with their friends, little realizing that it would soon be colonized by the voracious Internet audience, copied, linked to, e-mailed and reposted around the Net for an audience that now surpasses half a million viewers. In a case of how the Web's power often leaps away from its creator's intention, the pair were so unsuspecting that the video would have an audience outside their immediate circle that they didn't even put their names on it, posting simply as "mscorsese."

"We both like the Muppets," Paul said by phone. "So this was an opportunity to take these two extreme worlds and put them together."

Accustomed to working in the medium at their day jobs, the pair wanted to demonstrate how "you can take different audio and video, and take situations that actually exist and make it feel like something very different than how it was meant," Stinson said.

Starting first by writing a "Mean Streets"-esque trailer script, they sifted through DVDs of "The Best of Grover" and "Follow That Bird" to find moments that would give new meaning to the words, and vice versa. One shot, for instance, of Bert looking through the window at a sleeping Ernie is as spine-tinglingly sinister as anything in "Cape Fear." "We were looking for a moment of betrayal," Stinson said, "and suddenly we saw that shot and it just changed the way you look at it."

As the Muppet remix race builds, an almost diametrically opposed sub-genre is clogging the Internet airwaves: human re-stagings of the classic "Máh-Ná-Mah-Ná" song from "Sesame Street." At a recent count, YouTube had more than 100 non-Muppet retellings of "Máh-Ná-Mah-Ná," including a trash can "Máh-Ná-Mah-Ná," several baby "Máh-Ná-Mah-Nás" and a "Drunk 'Máh-Ná-Mah-Ná.' "

Paul and Stinson cite as their inspiration an early giant of the genre, a widely forwarded trailer parody of "The Shining" that remixed scenes from the movie with upbeat music and narration to create an incredibly convincing romantic comedy trailer. However, the genre's roots go back even further, before the dawn of the digital age, to at least 1987 when a filmmaker dubbed dialogue from "Apocalypse Now" over Winnie the Pooh cartoons and created a haunting nine-minute film, "Apocalypse Pooh Now" — which in itself has found a new life today, widely forwarded and posted on the Internet.

In a parallel universe, a portal

AS soon as MySpace and YouTube made the passage from viral upstarts to new media establishment, the hunt for the next big thing went into hyperdrive. And it took tech writers and bloggers all of about seven minutes to crown an aspirant to the Online Hottie Throne. Second Life, the online virtual-world video game — tomorrow belongs to you!

Second Life, which you will no doubt soon be seeing as the subject of magazine cover stories, business analyses and cultural critiques, is a role-playing video game in which players create alternative reality characters (avatars) for themselves. They then go about living lives in a world that allows them to create, do, build or be anything they can imagine. They can construct mansions and furnish them, recruit an army and go to war, have relationships and bizarre group sex, attend AA meetings, sit in a coffee house and complain about their real lives — all are part of the experience. There is a Second Life currency, which people earn in an allowance, augment by taking on jobs (the illicit ones being the highest paid, shockingly) and trade in the open market for actual U.S. currency (as of this writing, the exchange rate of SL's Linden dollars to U.S. dollars was 284.50 to 1).

Web die-hards complain that Second Life is merely a watered-down version of the already established virtual game World of Warcraft. To which cultural savants respond, the tiny difference of not being in a Tolkien-inspired realm of orcs and jousting is likely what will make SL, shall we say, welcoming to a broader community. Non-techies ask: Why would I want to play a game where I have to get a job? Because, you'll be told, this is more than just a game — Second Life, the prognosticators wax — is how you'll communicate, make friends and navigate your world in the future. YouTube plus MySpace times Google, more or less.

Time will tell, but the recent explosion of interest was sparked Oct. 18 when Second Life gained its millionth member. The same week the United States gained its 300 millionth citizen — but SL is growing, they will tell you, much, much faster. Already Reuters has assigned a full-time reporter to the virtual kingdom. Symposiums cannot be far behind.

Mark McKinney, Corner Gas winners at comedy awards

The television series Corner Gas and Mark McKinney were double winners at the seventh annual Canadian Comedy Awards.

The series, featuring Saskatchewan comedian Brent Butt, captured prizes for best direction and top female performer for Janet Wright.

Former Kid in the Hall McKinney grabbed best male performance on television for Slings and Arrows and shared the best scripting award for the series along with Susan Coyne and Bob Martin.

The awards were handed out Friday night in London, Ont., as part of the yearly Canadian Comedy Festival.

Mike MacDonald was honoured with the inaugural Dave Broadfoot Award for comic genius. As well, special awards were given to Don Ferguson and Roger Abbott of the Royal Canadian Air Farce for their achievements in comedy at home and abroad.

Pete Zedlacher and Laurie Elliot were named best male and female stand-up comics and Jon Dore was top newcomer.

Other winners included:

Best sketch troupe: The Second City Reloaded.
Best TV direction: The Frantics Reunion Special.
Best film direction: Donnie Mills for Chasing Aces.
Best male performer, film: Sean Cullen in Phil the Alien.
Best female performer, film: Jennifer Robertson in Twitches.
Comedic play: SARSical the Musical.
Improv troupe: Die-Nasty! Improvised Soap Opera Troupe.

'Saw III' takes $34.3M cut at box office

LOS ANGELES - Halloween came early at movie theaters as "Saw III" sliced up the competition with a $34.3 million debut, the best opening yet for the gory horror franchise. Lionsgate's "Saw III" easily took over as No. 1 at the box office, bumping off Disney's dueling-magicians saga "The Prestige," which slipped to third place with $9.6 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. "The Prestige" raised its 10-day total to $28.8 million.

Martin Scorsese's mob tale "The Departed" held strongly again, taking in $9.8 million to place second for the third-straight weekend. The Warner Bros. film lifted its total to $91.1 million.

Revenues for "The Departed" were down just 27 percent from the previous weekend, compared to 35 percent for "The Prestige" and 38 percent for Clint Eastwood's World War II epic "Flags of Our Fathers," which was No. 4 with $6.35 million.

Paramount's "Flags of Our Fathers," which cost $90 million to produce, has gotten off to a slow start, raising its 10-day total to $19.9 million. The acclaimed film still could follow the pattern of Eastwood's last two movies, "Mystic River" and "Million Dollar Baby," which became hits on the strength of Academy Awards buzz.

Focus Features' South African drama "Catch a Fire" premiered weakly with $2 million in 1,306 theaters, averaging $1,541, compared to $10,830 in 3,167 cinemas for "Saw III."

"Catch a Fire" stars Derek Luke and Tim Robbins in the story of a black family man driven to rebel against South Africa's apartheid system in the 1980s.

The far-flung drama "Babel," whose ensemble cast includes Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, had a huge opening in limited release, grossing $365,801 in seven theaters. The film traces the consequences of a tragedy in the desert on families in Africa, Mexico and Japan.

Distributor Paramount Vantage plans to open "Babel" nationwide on Nov. 10.

The Dixie Chicks documentary "Shut Up & Sing" debuted solidly in limited release, taking in $50,798 in four theaters. Released by the Weinstein Co., the film explores the furor after lead singer, Natalie Maines, told a London concert crowd on the eve of the Iraq war in 2003 that the music trio was ashamed President Bush was from Texas, their home state.

Hollywood remained on a box-office roll, with business up for the fifth straight weekend. The top 12 movies took in $89.1 million, up 2.4 percent from the same weekend last year, when "Saw II" opened at No. 1 with $31.7 million.

Since the low-budget "Saw" debuted with $18.3 million over the same weekend two years ago, Lionsgate has turned the franchise into an annual ritual with quickly produced sequels each Halloween.

The movies follow the diabolical schemes of psycho killer Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), who stages elaborate, bloody games to test the moral fiber of his victims. Lionsgate plans to have "Saw IV" in theaters over Halloween weekend next year.

"It's the biggest no-brainer of the century to put these movies out on Halloween weekend and wait for the money to roll in," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. "Saw III," $34.3 million.
2. "The Departed," $9.8 million.
3. "The Prestige," $9.6 million.
4. "Flags of Our Fathers," $6.35 million.
5. "Open Season," $6.1 million.
6. "Flicka," $5 million.
7. "Man of the Year," $4.7 million.
8. "The Grudge 2," $3.3 million.
9. "Marie Antoinette," $2.85 million.
10. "Running With Scissors," $2.55 million.

Meat Loaf unleashes "Bat" for third flight

NEW YORK (Billboard) - By his own estimation, Meat Loaf has turned down offers to appear in five movies, six episodes of the new TV hit "Heroes" and a guest-starring stint on "CSI" this year.

If he wanted, the rock veteran could be working like, well, a bat out of hell. But come to think of it ... he is anyway. The monster that Meat Loaf helped create in 1977 has been unleashed again, and it's chewing up all his time and energy -- with his full and willing cooperation.

Virgin Records releases "Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose" on October 31, adding a new chapter to the biggest and best-known album serial in rock 'n' roll history. Its two predecessors -- 1977's "Bat Out of Hell" and 1993's "Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell" -- have sold nearly 50 million copies combined, and Meat Loaf is well aware that the anticipation for the threequel is as much, if not more, about the "Bat" than it is about him.

"'Bat Out of Hell' are not Meat Loaf's records," the singer says. "'Bat Out of Hell' is bigger than me. It's bigger than any of us who are involved. Meat Loaf becomes the spoke in the wheel of an event, and it's the event that takes over."

STAGE ROOTS

The "Bat" experience started in the mid-'70s. Back then, Meat Loaf, a one-time high school football player born Marvin Lee Aday in Dallas, had established credits on stage ("Hair") and screen ("The Rocky Horror Picture Show"), recorded an album for Motown in 1971 with "hair" colleague Shaun "Stoney" Murphy and sang on Ted Nugent's "Free for All" album in 1976.

Meat Loaf met Jim Steinman when the singer performed in the composer's musical "More Than You Deserve." The two were part of a tour for the National Lampoon Road Show. While Steinman was working on what Meat Loaf calls "a futuristic Peter Pan story" called "Neverland," he came up with the idea for the first "Bat Out of Hell" album, enlisting his friend to sing. All melodrama and bombast -- Phil Spector meets Tod Browning -- the Todd Rundgren-produced album became a late-'70s sensation, spawning three hits ("Two Out of Three Ain't Bad," "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth" and "Paradise by the Dashboard Light") and logging an 82-week stay on the Billboard 200.

A second "Bat" project was planned to follow immediately, but Meat Loaf suffered a psychosomatic voice loss he now chalks up to simply being unready to take the plunge again.

"I thought it was way too early," he says. "My intuition said, 'You don't want to do this. "Bat Out of Hell" is still selling this many copies a week. Why do you want to squash this? Why not let it just run its course? Come back in five years and do it.'

"If that record came out when they wanted to bring it out, I wouldn't be sitting here talking about 'Bat III."'

Instead, Steinman recorded the songs himself as 1981's "Bad for Good," which didn't come close to equaling the success of "Bat." But a dozen years later, "Bat II" hit pay dirt, winging to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and pushing Meat Loaf toward a Grammy Award for best male rock vocal performance for the chart-topping single "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)."

DIFFICULT BIRTH

"Bat III" went through a little hell before it became a reality, too. Meat Loaf and Steinman started working on it in late 2001, but the composer suffered some health setbacks, including a heart attack, forcing Meat Loaf to make the difficult decision to move forward without him.

"I told Jim I wouldn't do 'Bat II' without him, and I had no intention of doing that," Meat Loaf says, adding that "lawyers worked for over a year putting together a contract for him to do 'Bat Out of Hell III.' It was one of the best producer's contracts in the history of the record business."

Meat Loaf acknowledges that his decision to sideline Steinman -- who still composed seven of the tracks on "Bat III" -- "was absolutely selfish on my part. He had a heart attack and two strokes; his health was the main concern for me. I know the stamina that it takes to put together a 'Bat Out of Hell' record, and the intensity. I just did not believe he was healthy enough to sustain it.

"The decision not to use Steinman has taken its toll on me. It was not easy, because I am a really loyal person. But I had to make the decision that was right. I couldn't sit around and wait."

Steinman would not comment on the issue, but his manager, David Sonenberg, says that "Jim's health is excellent. That's not the reason he didn't participate in ("Bat III"). He had some meaningful health problems about four years ago, but he's been totally healthy the last couple of years. His health in no way impacted on his involvement in the 'Bat Out of Hell' project."

Sonenberg says Steinman is in the midst of working on a "Bat" theater piece, which probably will debut in England.

Meat Loaf subsequently wound up going to court earlier this year to wrest from his collaborator the "Bat" trademark, which the singer says Steinman had acquired through an attorney's "clerical error." The $50 million matter was settled out of court. Steinman received profit percentage points on the record, which Meat Loaf says is "fine. ... That kind of makes up for me not using him" to produce it.

GUITAR ARMY ENLISTED

Meat Loaf chose Desmond Child, a hitmaker with plenty of hard rock credits (Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Kiss) and a burning desire to be part of the "Bat" story.

Child -- who began recording sessions by playing Slipknot CDs to get the assembled musicians in the mood -- had plenty of help bringing "Bat III" to life. Rundgren returned to help arrange backing vocals. Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx, former Marilyn Manson and current Rob Zombie guitarist John5, Steve Vai and James Michael contributed to the songwriting, while Vai, John5, Grammy-winning producer John Shanks and Queen's Brian May were part of the album's guitar army.

"I didn't just want to bring in rock players -- I wanted to go to extreme rock people," Meat Loaf says. The result, he adds, is an album that "has all the touches of the other two 'Bats,' but it's much more of a rock album."

Nevertheless, the album's first single, a duet with Marion Raven on "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," falls decidedly on the pop and even adult contemporary side of the spectrum. The song, a Steinman-penned hit for Celine Dion in 1996, originally was slated for "Bat II," and Meat Loaf is still disappointed ("I'd use a stronger adjective," he says with a laugh) that he didn't get first crack at it.

The "Bat III" campaign, however, started with the hard-rocking title track. Honing in on Meat Loaf's association with Major League Baseball -- dating back to the spoken segment on "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" by Hall of Fame broadcaster Phil Rizzuto -- Virgin took "The Monster Is Loose" to the league for play at ballparks during broadcasts.

Meat Loaf's appearance in the upcoming Tenacious D film "The Pick of Destiny" should also be a boost for "Bat." And on Halloween night, Pillar Entertainment will present a "Bat III" release event in more than 100 theaters across the country, which will include footage from the recording sessions and the video for "It's All Coming Back to Me Now."

Meat Loaf is planning a "Bat III" world tour that begins in March in Florida. He staged a special concert showcasing all three albums October 16 at London's Royal Albert Hall, with a "Bat on Broadway" performance slated for November 2 at New York's Palace Theater. He'll also perform the show in Toronto, Atlantic City, N.J.; Uncasville, Conn.; and Mexico City.

"I'll tell you what ties (the albums) together," Meat Loaf says. "They're all very funny. They're all tongue-in-cheek. It's all these high, tense, emotional songs that are way over the top, and that's what makes them 'Bat Out of Hell' ".

He adds, "Maybe that's what makes them so difficult to make."

CDs are dead: recording company CEO

A top recording industry executive on Friday said the music CD is dead and that recording labels must become more innovative if they hope to sell the discs in the future.

"The CD as it is right now is dead," Alain Levy, chairman and CEO of EMI Music said in his keynote address at the London Media Summit.

Levy acknowledged that the control over content that the industry once wielded by virtue of controlling the means of distribution is rapidly slipping from its grasp.

"Power is shifting everywhere from manufacturers, content providers and retailers to consumers. In this age of empowerment, the consumer is king," he said.

He noted that 60 per cent of people rip their music CDs on their computers to transfer the songs to digital music players such as Apple Computer's market-leading iPod.

Recording companies must make CDs more appealing to people by adding value that compels individuals to buy physical media, Levy said at the conference being held at the London Business School.

"We have to be much more innovative in the way we sell physical content," he urged the industry, adding that EMI is practicing what he was preaching. "By the beginning of next year, none of our content will come without any additional material."

Oscar buzz grows for Penelope Cruz in "Volver"

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Penelope Cruz calls it the hardest role she's ever played, and if early reviews and award buzz hold up, her portrayal of an abused girl's mom in "Volver" could win Cruz the first-ever Oscar for a Spanish actress.

The movie debuts in major U.S. cities on November 3, and it reunites Cruz with award-winning director Pedro Almodovar, who cast the then relatively unknown Spanish beauty in his 1997 movie "Live Flesh" and later in "All About My Mother."

In English, "Volver" translates into coming back, and Almodovar returns to exploring the lives of Spanish women -- which characterized his early films -- and to his quirky sense of humor after more dramatic fare like 2004's "Bad Education."

Despite the funny moments in "Volver," viewing sexual abuse with anything but a serious mind is hard, and getting the right mix of comedy and tragedy challenged 32-year-old Cruz.

"It's the most difficult and complex character somebody has put in my hands," she told Reuters. "I know women who have gone through things that could have destroyed them, but they kept fighting. ... My character is not a victim."

Of course, numerous movies have yet to be seen before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gives out its coveted awards in February, and Cruz faces stiff competition from the likes of Helen Mirren in "The Queen" and Kate Winslet for "Little Children," among others.

But Cruz has several factors in her favor including global star power and an increasingly strong resume that varies from box office winners like "Gothika" to art-minded "Vanilla Sky" and critically lauded Italian film "Non ti muovere," or "Don't Move," in which she played a poor, small town waitress.

SWEET REVENGE

In "Volver," Cruz portrays Raimunda, the wife of a husband whose roving eyes land on Raimunda's teenage daughter. When Raimunda discovers this, she gets revenge in a way that, ironically, puts her into business running a local cafe.

At the same time, Raimunda's sister, Sole, has begun seeing the ghost of their dead mother, and Sole's visions lead to the unraveling of a mystery that has strained family relations.

Cruz said the script was the best she ever read, and that type of comment is high praise for Almodovar, who won the screenwriting Oscar for 2002's "Talk to Her."

"He has cast me in movies, he has given me characters that had nothing to do with other parts I played and nothing to do with who I am in real life," she said. "He has a great imagination to see what actors can do before they've done it."

Because of her striking good looks, Cruz often played the sexy love interest of leading men in her early Hollywood roles. But in films like "Don't Move" and "Volver," she expanded her range to portray independent-minded women, and her contemporary beauty became as much a liability as an asset.

For "Volver," Almodovar required Cruz to wear a "false ass" so she would appear like 1950s Italian film heroines, such as Sophia Loren, with a round, curvy figure.

Critics have responded with mostly good reviews. "She is the kind of actress who depends on a strong screenplay and a good director, but I think the potential is there," said Emanuel Levy, a veteran reviewer at Emanuellevy.com.

Asked about all the Oscar talk, Cruz said she was flattered and excited but preferred not to think about it.

"I like being honest about those things and of course it would make me happy. I have no interest in pretending to be cool about it and say, 'I don't care,' because that is fake."

"Saw III" set to rip up weekend box office

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - For the third year in a row, the diabolical character Jigsaw is set to rule the Halloween box office with the thriller "Saw III."

The only other wide new release is "Catch a Fire," a political thriller set in South Africa. It means that last weekend's top movies, led by "The Prestige," Martin Scorsese's "The Departed," and Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers," will have a chance to do significant business.

Limited-release entries include the Oscar hopeful "Babel," starring Brad Pitt, and the controversial British docudrama "Death of a President," which depicts the assassination of President Bush.

Last year, "Saw II" opened to nearly $32 million, and tracking suggests that the latest film in Lionsgate's R-rated franchise will garner an even larger opening number.

Tobin Bell is back for a third time as Jigsaw. In this chapter, the ailing serial killer uses a doctor to help keep him alive while his new apprentice puts a second victim through a game. "Saw II" director Darren Lynn Bousman filmed from a script by Leigh Whannell, who wrote all three installments. It opens in 3,167 theaters.

"Catch A Fire" stars Derek Luke ("Antwone Fisher") as a family man who joins the African National Congress after he is arrested for a terrorist act he did not commit. Tim Robbins stars as the policeman forced to hunt down Luke's character.

Focus Features' PG-13 film was directed by Phillip Noyce ("The Quiet American," "Clear and Present Danger"). It opens in 1,305 theaters.

Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" will be watched closely after a soft $10.2 million opening last weekend. Paramount will expand the R-rated wartime drama to 2,190 theaters from 1,876.

Paramount Vantage will open Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Babel" on seven screens in Los Angeles and New York. The R-rated movie, also starring Cate Blanchett and Gael Garcia Bernal, follows three interweaving stories dealing with how a rifle shot in the desert sparks a chain of events.

Newmarket Films is opening "Death of a President" in 91 theaters. The faux documentary from director Gabriel Range, which debuted last month at the Toronto International Film Festival, centers on the hypothetical ramifications of the Bush's assassination. Three national movie chains refused to book the film, and advertising has been pulled from some television networks.

The Weinstein Co. will open its political documentary "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing" in four theaters. The film chronicles the country trio's journey after they ignited a political firestorm when singer Natalie Maines told a London audience in 2003 that she was embarrassed that Bush came from her home state of Texas. The film, from co-directors Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck, sneaked last weekend to a sold-out audience in Lubbock, Texas.

Magnolia Pictures will open its documentary "Cocaine Cowboys" in 12 theaters. The R-rated film from director Billy Corben chronicles the Colombian cocaine barons who invaded Miami in the 1980s.

Game 4 of World Series postponed by rain

ST. LOUIS - Pitchers dominated the first three games of the World Series and the rain took over.

Game 4 was postponed Wednesday night because of rain and will be made up Thursday at 8:27 p.m. EDT, potentially sending the World Series into scheduling chaos. More showers are expected the next two days, and nobody was certain when the Detroit Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals would play again.

"They're going to be dicey," said Jimmie Lee Solomon, executive vice president of baseball operations in the commissioner's office.

Game 5 at Busch Stadium was pushed back to Friday night, which was supposed to be a day off in the Series. It doesn't look much better this weekend in Detroit, with a forecast of rain and cold.

The Cardinals lead the best-of-seven Series 2-1 after a 5-0 victory behind ace Chris Carpenter on Tuesday night. A silver tarp covered the infield all evening, players didn't come out to warm up and Game 4 never got started.

"You want to go out there and play, but you can't control the weather. It's not that big of a deal," St. Louis outfielder Preston Wilson said.

Steady showers all day led to the first World Series rainout since the 1996 opener between the Atlanta Braves and New York Yankees. The rain fell harder as the night progressed, and the game was called after a delay of 1 hour, 51 minutes, the first time a Series game in St. Louis has been rained out.

It also was the fourth washout of a wet postseason. The Cardinals had two games rained out in the NL championship series against the New York Mets, and Game 2 of Detroit's first-round series at Yankee Stadium also was postponed.

The postponement gives St. Louis manager Tony La Russa a chance to juggle his rotation if he wants. He could bring Jeff Weaver back on regular rest in Game 5 instead of pitching rookie Anthony Reyes again. Reyes, however, tossed eight-plus strong innings for a 7-2 victory in the opener.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland could do the same with Kenny Rogers, who beat Weaver in Game 2 on Sunday night and extended his shutout streak to 23 innings this postseason. But Leyland specifically set up his rotation to give Rogers two starts at home, and the Series doesn't shift back to Detroit until Game 6.

A sparse crowd at Busch Stadium was informed of the rainout about three minutes after Major League Baseball made the announcement. Fans covered in plastic who had hoped for the rain to stop quickly filed toward the exits.

'Scrubs' Returns as NBC Remakes Thursdays

LOS ANGELES -- Old is the new new at NBC.

Starting Nov. 30, the network will bring back the Thursday comedy block that was an NBC staple for some 20 years before this season. "Scrubs" will come off the bench to start its sixth season that night, and "30 Rock" will move over from Wednesdays to join "My Name Is Earl" and "The Office."

NBC will also air super-sized episodes of "Earl," "The Office" and "30 Rock" on Nov. 16 before launching the full new lineup at the end of the month (the Thursday in between is Thanksgiving). The change spells the end for the Thursday edition of "Deal or No Deal," and "Twenty Good Years," which had been paired with "30 Rock" on Wednesdays, appears to be done as well.

"We are excited about the prospect of two-hours of top-notch comedy on Thursday nights, which includes the return of 'Scrubs,'" NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly says. "We will stay on-brand with the best comedy block on television, which will position us for the future on the night."

The four comedies will try to keep NBC in the game on a night dominated by CBS and the newly potent ABC. "Scrubs" and "30 Rock" will have the most daunting task, airing in the 9 p.m. ET hour opposite the top two shows on TV so far this season, ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" and CBS' "CSI."

The move of "30 Rock" to Thursday will also force a change to NBC's Wednesday schedule. The network plans to feature specials in the 8 p.m. hour starting Nov. 22. Neither "30 Rock" (6.9 million viewers) nor "Twenty Good Years" (6.07 million) has fared too well so far, but critics have generally been kinder to the former show, which was created by and stars "Saturday Night Live" alum Tina Fey, and it's a better fit with the other single-camera comedies in the new block.

No Joke: 'Borat' Is Make Unglorious Slash

Apparently coming to the conclusion that middle-America will not "get" Borat (official title: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan), 20th Century Fox has cut in half the number of theaters that had been booked to show it, the studio confirmed Tuesday.

Fox distribution chief Bruce Snyder told today's (Wednesday) Los Angeles Times that despite enormous pre-release publicity and marketing, the studio's research had concluded that the movie was "soft in awareness."

The Times noted that industry analysts could not recall a similar action by a studio taking place just two weeks before a film's opening.

Fox indicated that it hopes that by opening Borat in 800 theaters, the resulting word of mouth will propel it into a stronger position the following week when it will be expanded to 2,200 screens.

ABC Sets 'Lost' Return Date

"Lost" is coming back after its hiatus, and we now know when. The same can't be said for "Extreme Makeover," whose return to ABC turned out to be extremely brief.

The network has yanked the better-living-through-surgery show after just one airing last Friday, in which it pulled down fairly weak ratings. Reruns of "Grey's Anatomy," which had been airing in the timeslot, will move back there staring Friday, Nov. 3 (the Halloween special "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" fills the hour this week).

ABC made a couple other scheduling moves Tuesday, setting a February return date for "Lost" -- which will then run uninterrupted through the end of the season -- and giving "Boston Legal" a one-time-only airing in its old Sunday timeslot next month.

"Lost" will return to the schedule on Wednesday, Feb. 7, almost exactly three months after its final fall episode airs Nov. 8. The scheduling strategy is an effort by ABC to avoid repeats of the heavily serialized show; it has three more episodes to go in its initial run this fall and will have 16 weeks of uninterrupted episodes when it returns.

Another serial drama, "Day Break," will take its place starting Nov. 15.

"Boston Legal," meanwhile, will get the post-"Desperate Housewives" berth -- where it began its life in 2004 -- for the first half of a two-part episode on Sunday, Nov. 26. The episode will find Alan Shore (James Spader) helping his friend Jerry Espenson (Christian Clemenson) argue a murder case and Shirley Schmidt (Candice Bergen) in jeopardy. The second half of the story will air in the show's regular Tuesday timeslot on Nov. 28.

As for "Extreme Makeover," the show drew only 4.8 million viewers to its premiere Friday and an equally small 1.5 rating among adults 18-49. The "Grey's" repeats, while hardly world-beaters, have drawn about 900,000 more viewers and averaged a 1.9 in the 18-49 demographic so far this year. They've also been a better lead-in for the dramedy "Men in Trees," which fell more than a million viewers below its season average last week.

Kurt Dethrones Elvis

Elvis Presley is no longer the King of Dead Celebrities.

The pelvis-swiveling crooner was dethroned from his perch atop Forbes.com's annual roundup of top-earning deceased celebrities by the late Kurt Cobain, who made his first appearance on the list in its six years of publication.

The former Nirvana frontman, who committed suicide in 1994, earned $50 million between October 2005 and October 2006, according to the site.

Presley landed in the number two slot, with earnings of $42 million for the same time period, down from $45 million in the year before.

The earnings are based on licensing deals for the deceased celebrities' work or images. Presley has consistently been the top-earning dead star since the list's inception until this year.

Cobain's surge in wealth was due to his widow Courtney Love's sale of one-quarter of the Nirvana song catalogue to New York music publisher PrimeWave.

Coming in at third place, with $35 million was Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, followed in fourth by John Lennon with $24 million. (Lennon's fellow dead Beatle George Harrison ranked 12th with $7 million.)

Albert Einstein rounded out the top five with earnings of $20 million, thanks in large part to the licensing of Disney's hit Baby Einstein video series.

The only woman to rank in the top 13 was Marilyn Monroe. The actress, who died of an overdose in 1962, pulled in $8 million, good for ninth place.

Here's a rundown of the top 10 (the complete list is online at Forbes.com):
1. Kurt Cobain, $50 million
2. Elvis Presley, $42 million
3. Charles Schulz, $35 million
4. John Lennon, $24 million
5. Albert Einstein, $20 million
6. Andy Warhol, $19 million
7. Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), $10 million
8. Ray Charles, $10 million
9. Marilyn Monroe, $8 million
10. Johnny Cash, $8 million

Hacker unlocks Apple music download protection

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A hacker who as a teen cracked the encryption on DVDs has found a way to unlock the code that prevents iPod users from playing songs from download music stores other than Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes, his company said on Tuesday.

Jon Lech Johansen, a 22-year-old Norway native who lives in San Francisco, cracked Apple's FairPlay copy-protection technology, said Monique Farantzos, managing director at DoubleTwist, the company that plans to license the code to businesses.

"What he did was basically reverse-engineer FairPlay," she said. "This allows other companies to offer content for the iPod."

At the moment, Apple aims to keep music bought from its iTunes online music store only available for Apple products, while songs bought from other online stores typically do not work on iPods.

But Johansen's technology could help rivals sell competing products that play music from iTunes and offer songs for download that work on iPods as they seek to take a bite out of Apple's dominance of digital music.

ITunes commands an 88 percent share of legal song downloads in the United States, while the iPod dominates digital music player sales with more than 60 percent of the market.

Cupertino, California-based Apple, whose profits have soared in recent years on the strength of the iPod, declined to comment.

Johansen, known as DVD Jon, gained fame when at the age of 15 he wrote and distributed a program that cracked the encryption codes on DVDs. This allowed DVDs to be copied and played back on any device.

His latest feat could help companies such as Microsoft Corp., Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., which have all announced plans over the past few months for music download services combined with new devices to challenge Apple.

Major record label moves the 'demo tape' online

The days of the traditional demo tape may be numbered.

U.K. recording label EMI has set up a new, online system to accept music files and allow aspiring stars to tell if their work has been reviewed.

The London-based group's Parlophone label has adopted a new software, called A&R Tools, which was created by ex-musician turned IT consultant Nigel Rees and the software group Senica.

Parlophone is considering phasing out acceptance of demo tapes and CDs sent by mail in favour of the online system.

Prospective musicians already send MP3 files, web addresses and links to personal sites such as MySpace, where demos can be placed online.

But, until recently, recording studios had a tough time keeping track of online demos.

The new software provides a more viable system to receive and rate these recordings.

Musicians and musical groups can upload their recording and photos to the Parlophone website.

The artist and repertoire (A&R) team at the recording studio can then rate the material, group it with other work from the same artist and, if it seems promising, forward it up the hierarchy in the company.

Artists are notified when their work has been seen and reviewed.

The software system is already in use at some independent labels and Parlophone tried it out for three months this summer before deciding to run with it.

"One of our top priorities is to keep our talent-spotting process as efficient and up to date as possible," Parlophone's Nigel Coxon said in a statement.

"This new system allows us to do just that, while at the same time, helping us stay committed to giving anyone the opportunity to be heard."

In addition to Parlophone, whose artists include Paul McCartney, Radiohead and Norah Jones, EMI has other major recording labels, such as EMI Records and Virgin Records.

It has not announced plans to take online demos at these labels.

New Releases, Oct. 24: My Chemical Romance, John Legend, Paul Stanley

My Chemical Romance "The Black Parade"

These modern goth-rockers return with the follow-up to their platinum-plus-selling major label debut, 2004's "Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge." The new album was produced by Rob Cavallo, best known for his work with Green Day.

In an August press conference, lead singer Gerard Way called the album "an epic, theatrical, orchestral, big record that is also a concept album. It has a very set story, but as you listen, the layers of that story peel away. What you're left with at the end is a story about mortality."

The band debuted the album's first single, "Welcome to the Black Parade," during this year's MTV Video Music Awards pre-show.

* * *
John Legend "Once Again"

The Grammy-winning vocalist/pianist returns with the follow-up to his immensely successful debut, 2004's "Get Lifted." Kanye West, who produced Legend's first album, had a hand in the new disc, as did Raphael Saadiq and Will.I.Am.

The first single from the album is "Save Room," which was inspired by an old AM radio single, "Stormy," by the Classics IV, a '60s-era Top 40 band best known for the song "Spooky." Legend will support the new album with a lengthy tour, kicking off 10/26 in Washington D.C. and currently stretching through a 12/2 date in Norfolk, VA.

It's already been a very good year for Legend. Back in February, the vocalist picked up three Grammy awards: Best R&B Album ("Get Lifted"), Best R&B Male Vocal Performance ("Ordinary People") and Best New Artist.

* * *
Paul Stanley "Live to Win"

Nearly there decades after the release of his first solo set, KISS singer/guitarist Paul Stanley returns to deliver his second.

While continuing to lead his popular rock band with bassist Gene Simmons, Stanley has remained pretty busy outside of KISS. His work in recent years includes a 1999 run as the lead in a Toronto production of "Phantom of the Opera." More recently, he made his debut as a painter and began exhibiting and selling original works of art last year.

Stanley is currently on the road in support of "Live to Win." The tour is scheduled to wrap up Nov. 14 in Los Angeles.

Stanley's first solo album was a 1978 eponymous effort released in conjunction with solo albums by the other three KISS members.

* * *
Hannah Montana "Hannah Montana"

Hannah Montana is the current queen--or, perhaps, princess is more accurate--of the tween market. The singer (whose real name is Miley Cyrus, daughter of country crooner Billy Ray Cyrus) has a hugely popular show on Disney. Make no mistake about it: There's a real chance that this CD soundtrack could top the charts.

* * *
Aimee Mann "One More Drifter in the Snow"

The Grammy-winning vocalist offers up a seasonal collection filled with such wintry favorites as "I'll Be Home for Christmas," "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," "Winter Wonderland," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen."

* * *
Original Soundtrack "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas"

This expanded, two-disc soundtrack to one of the most popular holiday films of recent years features plenty of new songs as well as a 3-D cover. Adding weight to the original Danny Elfman score are such guest stars as Marilyn Manson, Fiona Apple, Fall Out Boy, She Wants Revenge and Panic! At the Disco.

* * *
Other new releases:
George Benson, Al Jarreau, "Givin' It Up" (Concord)
Eisbrecher, "Antikorper" (Dancing Ferret)
Ben Folds, "Supersunnyspeedgraphic--The LP" (Sony)
Merle Haggard, George Jones, "Jones Sings Haggard, Haggard Sings Jones: Kickin' Out the Footlights ... Again" (Bandit)
Koop, "Koop Islands" (K7)
Lil Boosie, "Bad Azz" (Asylum)
Moby, "Go: The Very Best of Moby" (V2)
Montgomery Gentry, "Some People Change" (Sony)
Fernando Ortega, "The Shadow of Your Wings: Hymns and Sacred Songs" (Curb)
Skid Row, "Revolutions Per Minute" (Steamhammer)
Taylor Swift, "Taylor Swift" (Big Machine)
Various artists, "Butchering the Beatles: A Headbashing Tribute" (Restless)
Andreas Vollenweider, "Midnight Clear" (Denon)
Winger, "IV" (Frontiers)
Frank Zappa, "Trance-Fusion" (Zappa)

The Hip announce '07 Cdn. dates

The Tragically Hip have announced dates for their upcoming two-month Canadian winter tour.

In an email message to fans, the group revealed they will play 19 dates in January and February on a tour that is moving from west to east.

Tickets for all shows go on sale on October 27 and October 28. A special presale for registered users at thehip.com will be able to get first crack at the best seats in the house starting tomorrow (Oct. 24).

The tour is in support of the band's latest album, "World Container."

The band are currently gearing up for the bigger tour with intimate club dates in select cities across the country.

Here are the '07 dates:

January 8th -- Save On Foods Memorial Centre, Victoria, BC
January 10th -- Interior Savings Centre, Kamloops, BC
January 12th -- CN Centre, Prince George, BC
January 13th -- Canada Games Arena, Grande Prairie, AB
January 14th -- Rexall Place, Edmonton, AB
January 16th -- Enmax Centrium, Red Deer, AB
January 17th -- Enmax Centre, Lethbridge, AB
January 19th -- Brandt Centre At Ipsco Place, Regina, SK
January 20th -- Mts Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba
January 22nd -- Fort Williams Gardens, Thunder Bay, ON
January 23rd -- Steelback Centre, Sault St. Marie, ON
January 25th -- Barrie Molson Centre, Barrie, ON
January 27th -- Sudbury Arena, Sudbury, ON
January 29th -- Memorial Centre, Peterborough, ON
January 31st -- General Motors Centre, Oshawa, ON
February 2nd -- Scotiabank Place, Ottawa, ON
February 5th -- John Labatt Centre, London, ON
February 6th -- Copps Coliseum, Hamilton, ON
February 8th -- Air Canada Centre, Toronto, ON

Mellencamp Looks To Past For New Album Inspiration

John Mellencamp's new single, "Our Country," will be on his next album, but he tells Billboard.com it's hardly indicative of what the rest of the album will sound like. "It's pretty interesting," Mellencamp says of "Freedom Road," due in January via Universal Republic. "It sounds very 1966, but it sounds now. 'Our Country' is the most John Mellencamp-sounding record on it. I think people are gonna go, 'Wow!,' or they're gonna go, 'What is he trying to do?'"

Mellencamp, who wrote and produced all 14 songs on the album, says he and guitarists Mike Wanchic and Andy York have been working on "Freedom Road" for nearly a year, recording at his Belmont Mall studio in Bloomington, Ind. When he says 1966, Mellencamp means the garage rock side of things, and to get the flavor right they actually recorded in the rehearsal room of the studio, which is, in fact, a garage.

"We tore apart ... every song from 1966, 1965," Mellencamp says. "We listened to all that music, then we learned it, we listened to it, we examined it -- 'How did they do that?' We were inspired by it, we copied it, we stole it. We did everything we could from that era."

Among the songs is "Jim Crow," a duet with Joan Baez, as well as a track called "Cigarettes" that Mellencamp says Pat Boone "could sing in a second."

"Freedom Road" also brings Mellencamp back to his first recording home -- kind of. All of the labels the artist recorded for early in his career are now under the Universal Music Group umbrella, which Mellencamp signed to after a two-album stint with Columbia.

"I didn't even want a deal," says Mellencamp, who's selling "Our Country" on digital resale sites and has licensed it to Chevrolet for a truck commercial. "[Universal chairman/CEO] Doug Morris has come forward and I like Doug; he's an old school record guy. So I'm very happy to be putting this album out on Universal, but I'm dealing with ... guys who care about music and care about the artists."

Mellencamp plans to tour in support of "Freedom Road" after its release.

TV themes' swan song?

The catchy jingles that once opened favorite shows (`I'll be there for yoouu!') are going the way of the cassette tape.

NEW YORK — Don't remember much about high school biology or physics. Couldn't tell ya how to compute a calculus problem. But, for the love of Will Smith, the theme song to "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" remains fresh in the mind.

Smith's catchy rap opened each episode of his hit '90s sitcom, in which he starred as a street-smart teen from Philly who moves in with wealthy relatives. A whole generation knows it by heart — that, and the "Saved by the Bell" song.

Familiar TV themes from such shows as "The Beverly Hillbillies," "The Brady Bunch," "Cheers" and "Friends" conjure up memories of cozy nights, childhood bliss and a universal nostalgia for bygone days. But today, show themes are doing a fast fade as the networks crunch their programming budgets.

Are they about to join the variety hour in the TV graveyard?

"It's a rarity today," TV historian Tim Brooks said of the catchy, tuneful opening. "It's kind of like the Broadway musical producing hit songs — it just doesn't do that anymore."

Back in the day, even into the '90s, shows usually had a "main title," a 40- to 60-second opening montage that introduced the cast and was often set to music written by a composer, said Jon Burlingame, author of "TV's Biggest Hits," a history of themes. Songs summed up what a show was all about, whether spinning the tale of how a group of wacky castaways ended up on "Gilligan's Island," telling how a spunky single career woman was "going to make it after all" or describing why six touchy-feely Manhattan singles were there for each other.

But now many sitcoms and one-hour dramas are dropping that device. They dive straight into the action, sometimes flashing the show's title or logo at various points throughout an episode.

ABC's "Lost" does it. The twisty drama begins after a teaser, which touches on what happened in previous installments, and cuts to a black screen at a crucial plot point. A white "Lost" logo swirls into view. Eerie music plays. The whole thing lasts about five seconds.

"That's not a theme" nor an artistic statement, lamented Burlingame, longing for the urgency of the "Mission: Impossible" score.

Other title-flashers include ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," which threw out its 26-second theme last year, and "Desperate Housewives" and NBC's "My Name Is Earl," which both switch off between showing the full credits and the logo. New shows — ABC's "Brothers & Sisters" and "Ugly Betty" and NBC's "Heroes" and "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" — display only the logo.

"Almost all shows have music, but it's generic, it's scene-setting, it's short," said Brooks, who estimated that fewer than 10% have "traditional" themes that set up the show.

Clearly, brevity is key. No drawn-out intro or hokey theme. Networks don't have time for that — and neither, prevailing TV thinking goes, do the country's couch potatoes.

"Producers feel, rightly or wrongly, that that interruption, if you will, is going to lose viewers," Brooks said.

"I think one of the things that has squeezed themes out is this relentless kind of move toward tightening everything, making it go right from joke to joke, from action to action, from shootout to shootout, so that you won't press the dreaded remote control."

Thanks to the elimination of commercials between the end of one show and the beginning of another, shows overlap before fickle viewers have a chance to channel-surf to another network. More commercials air within a show, making episodes shorter. Main titles and well-rounded theme songs and scores? Sorry, no time, no money.

Tara Ariano, co-founder of the blog Television Without Pity, isn't sweating it. She thinks a "full-on opening credit [and] theme song is kind of a waste, from a business perspective."

"The networks sort of assume we watch the show, so we don't need to have the premise explained to us each week.... In the era of the DVR, half the people watching the show are just fast-forwarding that anyway," she said.

Another trend, which harks back to the late '80s-early '90s fave "The Wonder Years" and the more recent "Dawson's Creek" and "Laguna Beach," is the use of music by established and new artists as both a theme in the main title and a device within the show.

"Increasingly, it's not music scored for the show, it's pop songs pasted into the show," Brooks said.

CBS' "CSI" opens with the Who's "Who Are You?" Gavin DeGraw's star rose after his radio-friendly single "I Don't Want to Be" debuted as the theme to the CW's "One Tree Hill." And the Fray was, well, just a band on the fringe until "Grey's Anatomy" and others played their songs to underscore dramatic scenes and montages.

All of this makes Jesse Frederick-Conaway, who composed the music to G-rated sitcoms such as ABC's "Full House" and "Family Matters," a little sad. There is, he thinks, "this desire to be super hip."

"Now, the music director is sort of the composer," he said. "It's a different kind of deal."

Burlingame, citing the great intros of award-winners such as NBC's "The West Wing" and HBO's "Six Feet Under," is confident the theme — lyrical, instrumental, whatever — will make a comeback. He'd rather see more original music, but he'll take licensed material if it's good.

"Some producers, I think, want to make a statement, in terms of imagery and music," he said. "It depends on who you get."

Will Smith, back in the '90s, made a hip-hop statement of his own while advising fans to "just sit right there / I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air."

But, in this fast-forward TV world, would they still listen?

'Father Knows Best' actress Wyatt dies

LOS ANGELES - Jane Wyatt, the lovely, serene actress who for six years on "Father Knows Best" was one of TV's favorite moms, has died. She was 96.

Wyatt died Friday in her sleep of natural causes at her Bel-Air home, according to publicist Meg McDonald. She experienced health problems since suffering a stroke at 85, but her mind was sharp until her death, her son Christopher Ward said.

Wyatt had a successful film career in the 1930s and '40s, notably as Ronald Colman's lover in 1937's "Lost Horizon."

But it was her years as Robert Young's TV wife, Margaret Anderson, on "Father Knows Best" that brought the actress her lasting fame.

She appeared in 207 half-hour episodes from 1954 to 1960 and won three Emmys as best actress in a dramatic series in the years 1958 to 1960. The show began as a radio sitcom in 1949; it moved to television in 1954.

"Being a family show, we all had to stick around," she once said. "Even though each show was centered on one of the five members of the family, I always had to be there to deliver such lines as `Eat your dinner, dear,' or `How did you do in school today?' We got along fine, but after the first few years, it's really difficult to have to face the same people day after day."

The Anderson children were played by Elinor Donahue, Billy Gray and Lauren Chapin, and all grew up on the show. In later years critics claimed that shows like "Father Knows Best" and "Ozzie and Harriet" presented a glossy, unreal view of the American family.

In defense, Wyatt commented in 1966: "We tried to preserve the tradition that every show had something to say. The children were complicated personally, not just kids. We weren't just five Pollyannas."

"In real life my grandmother embodied the persona of Margaret Anderson," said grandson Nicholas Ward. "She was loving and giving and always gave her time to other people."

It was a tribute to the popularity of the show that after its run ended, it continued in reruns on CBS and ABC for three years in primetime, a TV rarity. The show came to an end because Young, who had also played the father in the radio version, had enough. Wyatt remarked in 1965 that she was tired, too.

"The first year was pure joy," she said. "The second year was when the problems set in. We licked them, and the third year was smooth going. Fatigue began to set in during the fourth year. We got through the fifth year because we all thought it would be the last. The sixth? Pure hell."

The role wasn't the only time in her 60 years in films and TV that Wyatt was cast as the warm, compassionate wife and mother. She even played Mr. Spock's mom in the original "Star Trek" series and the feature "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home."

She got her start in films in the mid-'30s, appearing in "One More River," "Great Expectations," "We're Only Human" and "The Luckiest Girl in the World." When Frank Capra chose her to play the Shangri-la beauty in "Lost Horizon," her reputation was made. Moviegoers were entranced by the scene — chaste by today's standards — in which Colman sees her swimming nude in a mountain lake.

Never a star, Wyatt enjoyed career longevity with her reliable portrayals of genteel, understanding women. Among the notable films:

"Buckskin Frontier" (with Richard Dix), "None But the Lonely Heart" (Cary Grant), "Boomerang" (Dana Andrews), "Gentleman's Agreement" (Gregory Peck), "Pitfall" (Dick Powell), "No Minor Vices" (Dana Andrews), "Canadian Pacific" (Randolph Scott), "My Blue Heaven" (Betty Grable, Dan Dailey) and "Criminal Lawyer" (Pat O'Brien).

"Father Knows Best" enjoyed such lasting popularity in reruns and people's memories that the cast returned years later for two reunion movies. She also remained active on other projects, such as "Amityville: The Evil Escapes" in 1989, and in charity work.

When Young died in 1998, Wyatt paid tribute to him as "simply one of the finest people to grace our industry."

"Though we never socialized off the set, we were together every day for six years, and during that time he never pulled rank (and) always treated his on-screen family with the same affection and courtesy he showed his loved ones in his private life," she said.

Wyatt was born in Campgaw, N.J., into a wealthy family in 1910, according to McDonald, her publicist. Her father, an investment banker, came from an old-line New York family, as did her mother, who wrote drama reviews. They gave their daughter a genteel upbringing, with her schooling at the fashionable Miss Chapin's school and Barnard College.

She left college after two years to apprentice at the Berkshire Playhouse in Stockbridge, Mass. For two years she alternated between Berkshire and Broadway, appearing with Charles Laughton, Louis Calhern and Osgood Perkins.

While acting with Lillian Gish in "Joyous Season" in 1934, she got a contract offer from Universal Pictures. She agreed, on condition she could spend half each year in the theater.

During college, Wyatt attended a party at Hyde Park, N.Y., given by the sons of Franklin D. Roosevelt. There she met a Harvard student, Edgar Ward. In 1935 she married Ward, then a businessman, in Santa Fe, N.M.

The family will gather for a funeral mass Friday, followed by a private interment, family members said.

Wyatt is survived by sons Christopher, of Piedmont, California and Michael of Los Angeles; three grandchildren Nicholas, Andrew and Laura; and five great grandchildren.

'Friday Night Lights' Gets Monday Tryout

Drama will replace 'Studio 60' for one week

NBC will try to give its struggling drama "Friday Night Lights" an extra boost later this month by airing after the network's most successful new show.

On Monday, Oct. 30, NBC will air an original "Lights" episode at 10 p.m. ET, following "Heroes"; the episode will then repeat in the show's normal 8 p.m. Tuesday spot on Oct. 31. "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," which usually airs at 10 p.m. Mondays (and was scheduled for a repeat that night), will get a week off.

The network has also ordered several more scripts for "Friday Night Lights," which doesn't necessarily mean a life for the show beyond its original 13-episode order but certainly isn't a bad thing. A Monday airing could presumably benefit some from promotion on NBC's "Sunday Night Football" broadcast the previous night.

Through its first three airings, "Friday Night Lights" -- based on the book and movie of the same name -- has averaged only about 6.6 million viewers. It did improve some this week after falling below the 6 million mark in its second airing.

It's hardly alone among NBC's new dramas in its ratings difficulties. The past two episodes of "Studio 60" have fallen below 9 million viewers, and "Kidnapped" has been shunted to Saturdays after drawing 6.5 million viewers in three Wednesday airings.

Only "Heroes," which is averaging better than 13 million viewers and is the season's top new show among adults 18-49, has been an unqualified success for the network thus far. NBC is undoubtedly hoping some of that will rub off on "Friday Night Lights" two Mondays from now.

'Prestige' conjures $14.8M at box office

LOS ANGELES - The magic act "The Prestige" debuted as the weekend's No. 1 movie with $14.8 million, outperforming Clint Eastwood's World War II saga, which opened at No. 3 with $10.2 million.

Holding strong in second place was Martin Scorsese's "The Departed," which took in $13.7 million and raised its three-week total to $77.1 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The previous weekend's No. 1 movie, Sony's horror sequel "The Grudge 2," tumbled to fifth-place with $7.7 million, lifting its 10-day total to $31.4 million.

Box-office analysts had viewed the weekend as a three-way race among well-reviewed films: Disney's "The Prestige," starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as rival magicians in a blood feud; Paramount's "Flags of Our Fathers," dramatizing the Iwo Jima invasion; and the Warner Bros. mob tale "The Departed."

"I'm not surprised that we won the weekend," said Chuck Viane, head of distribution for Disney. "It's just when everybody has such quality films as `Flags' and `Prestige' and `Departed,' that's a great crowd to be running in."

"The Prestige" debuted in 2,281 theaters, 400 more than "Flags." "The Departed" is playing wider, in 3,005 cinemas.

With 70 percent of its viewers under 35, "The Prestige" drew a younger crowd that tends to turn out in bigger numbers over opening weekend. Eighty percent of the audience for "Flags" was older than 30.

"We felt the movie was going to play to the older crowd. It takes time usually for that group to show up," said Jim Tharp, head of distribution for Paramount.

Among other new movies, 20th Century Fox's family film "Flicka" tied "The Grudge 2" for No. 5 with $7.7 million. Based on the children's book "My Friend Flicka," the movie stars Alison Lohman as a teen who adopts a wild mustang.

Sony's "Marie Antoinette," with Kirsten Dunst in director Sofia Coppola's chronicle of the 18th century queen beheaded during the French Revolution, premiered at No. 8 with $5.3 million.

The 1993 animated tale " Tim Burton's the Nightmare Before Christmas" returned to theaters in a three-dimensional version and rang up a strong $3.3 million in limited release of 168 theaters.

"Running With Scissors," featuring Joseph Cross, Annette Bening and Alec Baldwin in an adaptation of Augusten Burroughs' best-seller, opened strongly with $225,000 in eight theaters.

"The Prestige" pits two big-screen superheroes against each other, "Batman Begins" star Bale vs. Jackman, who plays Wolverine in the "X-Men" flicks. The film reunited Bale with his "Batman Begins" director, Christopher Nolan.

"Flags of Our Fathers" lacked that star power, its ensemble cast led by Ryan Phillippe, Adam Beach and Jesse Bradford.

Eastwood's last two movies, 2003's crime drama "Mystic River" and 2004's Academy Awards champ "Million Dollar Baby," both debuted in a handful of theaters. The debut for "Flags of Our Fathers" was in line with the first wide-release weekends for those films, $10.4 million for "Mystic River" and $12.3 million for "Million Dollar Baby."

"I don't think it was a movie that was destined to make a huge opening-weekend splash," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. "`Flags' is a film that definitely has more appeal to older audiences, so I think over time, it'll do well."

Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. "The Prestige," $14.8 million.
2. "The Departed," $13.7 million.
3. "Flags of Our Fathers," $10.2 million.
4. "Open Season," $8 million.
5 (tie). "Flicka," $7.7 million.
5 (tie). "The Grudge 2," $7.7 million.
7. "Man of the Year," $7 million.
8. "Marie Antoinette," $5.3 million.
9. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning," $3.9 million.
10. "The Marine," $3.7 million.

Ford says he's fit to play Indiana Jones

ROME - Harrison Ford says he feels "fit to continue" to play Indiana Jones despite growing older. Ford, 64, said at the inaugural Rome Film Festival on Friday that he was delighted to team up again with directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for the film. Lucas co-wrote and executive produced the earlier films, which Spielberg directed.

"We did three films that stay within the same block of time. We need to move on for artistic reasons and obvious physical reasons," Ford said at a news conference. "I feel fit to continue and bring the same physical action."

"Indiana Jones 4" has been in development for over a decade, but the production has recently gained momentum. Lucas has said he and Spielberg, who would direct, are working on a script, though no details have been disclosed.

Ford played Indiana Jones in 1981's "Raiders of the Lost Ark," 1984's "Temple of Doom" and 1989's "The Last Crusade." In the last film, Jones' father was played by Sean Connery, who Ford said might also appear in the planned fourth feature.

"He's part of the emotional fabric of these films. I think there may be an opportunity, I believe that Sean is still willing and I'd be delighted if he joined us," said Ford.

Connery, who attended the Rome event last week, has said that no offer had been made.

Ford declined to provide details about a shooting schedule or film locations, adding that the directors were not yet finished with the script.

"I think it's a real opportunity to make a film as successful ... as the ones we've made before," he said.

Love Wants Her Throne Back On New Album

Courtney Love is nearly finished with her first album since 2004's "America's Sweetheart," her lone release under a much-trumpeted deal with Virgin. The artist is now signed to producer Linda Perry's Custard imprint; Perry has also been behind the boards on the as-yet-untitled new album, due sometime next year.

"Courtney is the queen of rock'n'roll to me," Perry tells Billboard. "Damn it all to hell. She is the last one." If Perry has her way, the embattled Love will regain her throne. Sober for a year-plus, Love says she's more than ready. After a string of drug and assault charges, she says it was jail or rehab. "I was backed up against a wall," she says. "I had f*ckin' nothing."

Perry and Love first worked together on "America's Sweetheart," a project Love admits was doomed for two reasons: She was high as a kite, and the label didn't understand the album. Perry finally walked out on Love at that time. "I said, 'When you want to make music, give me a call,'" Perry says.

Love called her from rehab. Perry brought her a guitar. "My hand-eye coordination was so bad, I didn't even know chords anymore," Love says. "It was like my fingers were frozen. And I wasn't allowed to make noise [in rehab]. So I'd sit there and try to quietly write and struggle. I never thought I would work again. No one is ever going to talk to me. I'm never going to get a record deal. I'm never going to get on stage again. So, I just kept writing. This is a very personal album."

The set features a sequel to Perry's Christina Aguilera hit "Beautiful" titled "Letter to God," which Perry wrote at the same time as "Beautiful." Love and Perry "Courtnified" the song, recasting it in minor chords and adding what Perry calls "Courtney swagger." Billy Corgan also lent his hand to a few tracks.

"I think we made a beautiful, vibey, magical record," Perry says. "Courtney Love's name should be right next to Bob Dylan when they say best lyricist of all time."

Love says that now that she's clean, she's looking at movie scripts and would consider doing a play in London. She also has a hardcover book of her diaries and letters coming out next month. "It's an insight into how I think. Not sure that's a good thing or not. But it's me."

Furtado to headline Grey Cup

Canadian pop diva Nelly Furtado will perform during the halftime show at the Grey Cup in Winnipeg next month, organizers of the Canadian Football League championship announced Friday.

"The Grey Cup is a national treasure and I'm thrilled to be performing," Furtado said in a statement.

Recent Canadian Idol winner, Eva Avila, a 19-year-old from Gatineau, Que., will sing the national anthem.

CFL commissioner Tom Wright called Furtado, winner of Grammy and Juno Awards, a great Canadian talent.

"The Grey Cup is a Canadian tradition and the largest single-day sporting event in the country," Wright said.

"As part of the Grey Cup entertainment experience, the CFL is proud to present Nelly Furtado in the Rogers Grey Cup Halftime Show. We’re thrilled to have one of Canada’s greatest talents entertain CFL fans everywhere on Grey Cup Sunday."

The 94th annual Grey Cup is at Canad Inns Stadium on Nov. 19 (CBC, 6 p.m.).

Furtado, who rose to fame with 2000's I'm Like a Bird from her record-breaking debut album Whoa, Nelly!, is back atop the North American music charts with hits like Promiscuous and Maneater from her third album, Loose.

The 27-year-old native of Victoria is the latest big act to perform at the Grey Cup, one of the oldest professional sports championships in North America.

Others include:

2005 in Vancouver: American hip-hop group Black Eyed Peas.
2004 in Ottawa: Tragically Hip.
2003 in Regina: Bryan Adams and Sam Roberts.
2002 in Edmonton: Country star Shania Twain.

"Fraggle" to rock big screen with Ahmet Zappa

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Jim Henson's "Fraggle Rock" is coming to the big screen.

The 1980s cult hit TV show is being developed by Ahmet Zappa -- younger son of Frank Zappa -- into a full-length live-action musical fantasy starring the classic characters.

"(Zappa) recently created his own fantasy property ('Mighty McFearless'), and we had him in to talk about books and movies," said Lisa Henson, who serves as co-CEO of the Jim Henson Co. with her brother, Brian.

"During that conversation, I had an intuition that he might be a 'Fraggle Rock' fan. He jumped out of his seat when he heard our idea of making 'Fraggle Rock' into a feature-length movie."

Zappa -- a musician and TV personality who will serve as the project's executive producer -- is developing a treatment in which puppet stars Gobo, Wembley, Mokey, Boober and Red will travel from beneath the Rock and venture into the human world for the first time.

"The Fraggles didn't really get into the human world on the series, so we plan to make the movie more about the intersection between the Fraggles and the humans," Lisa Henson said.

Zappa is informally talking to musician friends about writing original songs for the movie. The original Henson puppets will be refurbished and updated for the film, with little expectation of computer-generated enhancements.

A release date has yet to be determined. Lisa Henson plans to hire a screenwriter and director once an initial treatment is completed.

"We're taking the movie as far as we can independently because the company has a big personal investment in how the movie turns out," she said.

"Fraggle Rock" premiered on HBO in 1983 and over five seasons garnered multiple awards and a global fan following. The show was created by Jim Henson as an international co-production and was adapted for each territory to meet the needs of its audience.

Soldiers, magicians compete at box office

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Clint Eastwood's World War Two heroes will vie for supremacy at the weekend box office with a pair of vindictive magicians.

Industry insiders are all over the map with their prognostications. Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" looks like the top dog with an opening in the $15 million-$18 million range. But with Christopher Nolan's period magician movie "The Prestige" gaining momentum with adult audiences, some believe it could give "Flags" a run for its money.

In addition, Martin Scorsese's former box office champ "The Departed" is entering its third weekend with strong midweek numbers, an indication that it could remain a contender.

There also is a family choice this weekend, with "Flicka," a horse movie starring Alison Lohman, Tim McGraw and Maria Bello. Last weekend's champ, "The Grudge 2," opened with $21 million, but underwhelming grades from audiences could lead to a sharp drop in its second round.

Paramount has high hopes for "Flags," which is launching in only 1,876 theaters. With Eastwood's pedigree and its dramatization of the stories of the men who were photographed raising the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima, the film is likely to play well throughout the fall. "Flags" interprets how the Pulitzer-winning photo turned those soldiers into instant heroes and how the U.S. government used it to influence public opinion of the war.

Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach and Barry Pepper star in the R-rated film. Eastwood's biggest opener was "Space Cowboys," which bowed to $18 million in 2000.

Disney's "Prestige" will open in 2,281 theaters. The film, Nolan's first since last years' "Batman Begins," stars Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as rival magicians in the early 1900s who are obsessed with their craft and try to beat each other at their game. The film has received positive early reviews. It isn't clear where its box office will top out this weekend, but it could challenge "Flags" if people opt for escapism over war.

Fox will open the PG-rated "Flicka" in 2,877 theaters. Adapted from the novel "My Friend Flicka," the family drama is directed by Michael Mayer in a departure from his most recent film, the indie "A Home at the End of the World." "Flicka" centers on a girl (Lohman) who attempts to train a wild mustang, to the dismay of her father (McGraw). Insiders are placing its gross in the $8 million-$10 million range.

Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette," her first film since 2003's "Lost in Translation," will open in just 859 theaters. With its period clothing, rock soundtrack and Kirsten Dunst in the title role, the film offers a clear alternative to the testosterone-packed top three pictures, and could prove more potent than initially anticipated.

Letterman's antics unpredictable

Have you seen Late Show With David Letterman lately? It's like Dave has taken a time machine back to the Twilight Zone. Some recent examples:

- Suddenly, in the middle of a show, Letterman is interrupted by a weatherman. "Hey everybody, is rain gonna put a damper on your morning commute? I'll have that and my five-day forecast coming up in the weather."

"Huh?" Letterman asks bandleader Paul Shaffer. "Who was that?"

Shaffer just shrugs.

- A camera shot suddenly droops to the floor. What gives, Letterman asks. "Oh, sorry," says cameraman Dave Dorsett. "It was so quiet in here I assumed the show was over."

- Letterman is interrupted with a knock. "Housekeeping!" says a hotel housekeeper pushing a cart. She gets half-way to Letterman's desk when the host asks if she could come back in an hour.

Bizarre interruptions have become the norm. A woman (costume designer Susan Hum) approaches the desk and offers "freshly baked turkey pot pie." It's cold, complains Letterman. "You make me want to puke!" she rants.

Another night, Letterman seems trapped in a satellite cross-feed between PBS commentator Charlie Rose and Bob Woodward. It is wacky, unpredictable, unsettling -- and fabulous. This was the Live and Dangerous Dave we all knew and loved 20 years ago. It is great to have him back.

"He has been on a little zany streak lately," agrees Letterman pal Regis Philbin, who spoke to The Toronto Sun on Monday. Philbin mentions that "World's Oldest Page" guy Johnny Dark who keeps interrupting the monologue.

"I kind of admire that about Dave," says Philbin of all the new risks. "It's still the most imaginative show on TV."

Even Letterman's hair has gone retro. Long the butt of his own jokes, he has raked what's left of his greying locks forward. At 59, he looks, well, 49.

What's behind the return to form? In September, Letterman signed a new contract with CBS extending his late night antics through 2010 -- a year after rival Jay Leno's planned Tonight Show exit.

That will also put Letterman's combined NBC/CBS late-night run right behind the 30-year reign of his idol, Johnny Carson.

The new energy has goosed the ratings. Letterman has seen double-digit year-to-year percent increases in total viewers and key demographics. The show now averages 4.02 million U.S. viewers a night.

After a winter and spring where Letterman often seemed listless, bored and out of gas (that free pass he gave Tom Cruise, for example), he's shaken himself out of it by shaking up his show. The approach is not entirely new; people were randomly dangling and shouting from the Ed Sullivan Theater balcony last season, for example. Contrived interruptions have always been part of the mix -- just not to this extent.

Now, besides the nightly Top 10 List, shots at George Bush (those lethal "Great Moments In Presidential Speeches"), Larry King ("Creepier In Slow Motion") and Kim Jong Il (cut to footage of fright-haired "Hello Dere" comic Marty Allen), there is an added nightly bonus of improv theatre.

Opening guests who are clearly not who they claim to be are given the same face time as Alec Baldwin, Robin Williams or Amanda Peet. A guy introduced as "the Turtle Whisperer" stuck little hats onto a box turtle before flipping out and fleeing the stage. Another phony guest, introduced as a former KGB instructor known as "The Dog Wizard," did lame tricks with a Lab. Letterman just played along.

NFL commentator John Madden is introduced, except it is clearly not John Madden, it is some guy (comedian Frank Caliendo) in a white wig pretending to be Madden. Letterman just lets him pretend, getting his Super Bowl picks.

Besides creating an unpredictable comedy environment -- one you want to check out every night in case you miss something -- Letterman is also shredding this whole obsession with celebrity. Celebrity is pointless, Letterman is saying. Be silly. Make everything up. Works for me.