The Simpsons go to season 11

Twentieth Century Fox is back to the business of Simpsons box sets, after a brief hiatus for the movie. The eleventh season of the series is coming later this year.

The set will be similar to past sets including deleted scenes, commentaries on each episode and the featurettes A Line From Matt Groenig and The Many Faces of (D'oh), an animation showcase, and commercials. No mention is made on whether one or more versions of the season finale (which has multiple versions) will be included on the disc.

Like previous sets, the box will be available in regular packaging or in special packaging that seems to go in five year increments. Both bersions will retail for $49.98 and will arrive on October 7th.

XM, Sirius deal closing in on FCC approval: reports

The proposed merger of the U.S.'s two satellite radio broadcasters is expected to be approved after the companies agreed to pay $19.7 million US to settle rules violations.

Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin said Thursday the regulatory agency reached agreements Wednesday night in which XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. will pay $17.5 million and Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. will pay $2.2 million to settle agency violations.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday the deal was all but done after commission member Taylor Tate cast the deciding vote.

"I think it's fair to say an agreement in principle has been reached," Martin was quoted by the Journal on Thursday as saying.

The proposed merger — whereby Sirius would buy out XM in a $3.9-billion US deal — has been in a holding pattern during an FCC approval process that has gone on for more than a year.

Critics of the deal, including the ground-based radio industry and consumer groups, argue the merger would essentially create a monopoly in the satellite radio industry.

It remains unclear how the proposed merger would affect the two companies' Canadian partners, which operate under a separate regulatory structure.

Sirius Canada Inc. is owned by Sirius Satellite, Toronto-based Standard Radio and the CBC. XM Canada is run by Canadian Satellite Radio Holdings, also of Toronto, in partnership with XM Satellite.

XM Canada has maintained that the U.S. development has no immediate implications for Canadian subscribers and that the stated intent of its XM U.S. partner and Sirius is to maintain two separate satellite delivery systems.

Sirius Canada Inc. said it has more than 750,000 paying subscribers, while XM Canada claims close to 400,000 subscribers. Their U.S. parents have 8.3 million and about nine million subscribers, respectively.

An XM Canada spokesperson said the company had no comment, since no official announcement has been made. However, XM Canada has repeatedly stated that a merger would not bring any change in the service for Canadian subscribers.

Sirius Canada spokesman Jeff Roman said the company also wouldn't speculate on the outcome until a decision from the FCC is final.

He said regardless of the outcome, Sirius Canada is a separate company and its subscribers won’t experience interruption to their programming and their radios "will not become obsolete as a result of a merger."

Metallica Reveal “Death Magnetic” Track List

After a sheet music website accidentally revealed (and then deleted) the track list for Metallica’s Death Magnetic earlier today, the band confirmed the ten songs that will appear on their Rick Rubin-produced album, due out in September.

One title immediately jumps out: “The Unforgiven III,” following the Metallica’s “The Unforgiven” and roughly 11 years after ReLoad’s “The Unforgiven II.” The rest of the song titles are packed with common Metallica-esque themes of nightmares, suicides and the apocalypse.

There’s also a song called “The End of the Line,” which shares its title with a Traveling Wilburys song, but we’re assuming it’s not a cover.

Despite reports from earlier in the day, there’s no track called “Death Magnetic” included.

The album isn’t due out for another two months, so you still have plenty of time to figure out if you want these ten songs delivered to you in a coffin box and sufficiently prepare yourself to play “Broken, Beat & Scarred” on Guitar Hero III.

Here is the full track list and proper running order!

“That Was Just Your Life”
“The End Of The Line”
“Broken, Beat & Scarred”
“The Day That Never Comes”
“All Nightmare Long”
“Cyanide”
“The Unforgiven III”
“The Judas Kiss”
“Suicide & Redemption”
“My Apocalypse”

Keitel Set For Life On Mars

Movie tough guy Harvey Keitel has signed up to star in his first TV series after joining the cast of U.S. drama Life On Mars.

The hit British show, which has been recast for American TV audiences, will also feature Jason O'Mara and The Sopranos star Michael Imperioli.

The Piano star Keitel will play the leader of a no-nonsense homicide task force.

The show revolves around O'Mara's cop character, who wakes up in the 1970s after he's knocked unconscious in a traffic accident.

'Wallace & Gromit' to become episodic video game

LOS ANGELES - "Wallace & Gromit" are going on a new adventure.

Telltale Games is creating an episodic video game based on Aardman Animations' Oscar-winning animated film series titled "Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures." The popular stop-motion clay animated franchise stars the cheese-loving, hair-brained inventor Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) and his long-suffering loyal pooch, Gromit.

"We're certainly going for the clay look with this," Telltale Games CEO Dan Connors told The Associated Press. "Clay presents a challenge if you really get into the detail of it. For example, adding fingerprints in a medium where there aren't any is one of the discussions of how far we should go with the game's detail."

"Grand Adventures" will allow gamers to play as both Wallace and Gromit, engaging in zany entrepreneurial schemes and tinkering with kooky contraptions. Connors said "Grand Adventures" will feature more physical and situation-based comedy and would likely follow the distribution model of Telltale's episodic video game series "Sam & Max."

Aardman Animations has produced three Academy Award-winning "Wallace & Gromit" animated short films as well as the full-length feature film "The Curse of The Were-Rabbit," which won an animated film Oscar in 2006. "A Matter of Loaf and Death," a fourth animated short starring the twosome, is currently in production.

The characters previously appeared in the standalone games "Cracking Contraptions," "Project Zoo" and "Curse of The Were-Rabbit."

Connors hopes the new take on "Wallace & Gromit" will be more true to the franchise than previous games.

"The other games captured the personality, but all you ended up doing was running through the world," said Connors. "It was a standard platform game. We feel like the gameplay should be more of an experience. You should be able to interact with the other characters and really feel like you're in the world of 'Wallace & Gromit.'"

Comic-Con: Hugh Jackman's Wolverine Surprise

Los Angeles (E! Online) - In the first twist of this year's San Diego Comic-Con, an unscheduled Hugh Jackman bonded with fans and showcased footage from next summer's prequel, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

"Without you guys, I wouldn't have a career," Jackman told an energized crowd, who had gathered to see Keanu Reeves promote The Day the Earth Stood Still and Mark Wahlberg talk about Max Payne.

The party-crashing Jackman, muttonchops-free and just off a plane from Australia, offered a shout-out to Wolverine creator Len Wein and waded into the audience to shake hands with the comics vet.

Sneak-peek footage from the flick, due May 2009, had a few surprises as well:

Most notable were the glimpses at Wolverine's mutant costars, including Gambit (Friday Night Lights' Taylor Kitsch), Kestrel (will.i.am) and Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds). "You're going to see a lot of beserker rage," Jackman promised the jacked-up crowd, obviously hungry to see more of Wolverine's hard-to-cage anger.

The clip's money shot, according to fan reaction: Wolverine facing off against archrival Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber), and declaring, "I'm going to cut your goddamned head off. See if that works."

Yes, Hugh, in fact it does.

The Hip recording another Rock album

The Tragically Hip thought it went so nice they'd try it twice.

According to a video clip released yesterday on the band's website, the group is working on a new studio album with producer Bob Rock. Rock also produced 2006's World Container, the band's previous studio effort.

The band will continue working on the as-yet untitled album at Rock's home studio in Maui, following its appearance at the inaugural Pemberton Festival in B.C. on Saturday.

"I think after doing World Container we were pretty happy with the results, and it seemed like we just got to know each other as the album was ending," Rock says in the clip. "We kind of figured out what everybody did and stuff. Really it was done three or four songs at a time. We just knew that we had to kind of try to at least raise the bar a bit. We knew we had to come up with something different."

"It's going really well. Bob's been here three times since about April, we've worked out the songs and whittled them down," lead singer Gord Downie says. "We're at about 14 right now and I think that's what we'll continue with."

The band worked on the album at its Bathouse Studio near Kingston following touring in support of World Container last year. According to bassist Gord Sinclair, the group hopes to have the record completed by the end of August.