We’re back this month with Cortney’s TV Digest, everything you need to know about the latest and greatest shows on the tube. This month we’ve got some interesting new shows to tell you about from a bunch of your favorite networks, as well as the resurrection of one show we worried we’d never see again.

Parenthood – NBC

Based on the 1989 film of the same name, this new show is produced by movie and tv genius Ron Howard. The show follows the parenting experience of the Bravemen family: single mom Sarah (Lauren Graham), her brother Adam (Peter Krause) and wife Christina (Monica Potter) whose son is diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, and their headstrong father (Craig T. Nelson). Parenthood premiers March 2nd at 10 PM on NBC.

Southland – TNT

Back in 2009, NBC premiered their new, gritty cop drama, Southland. The show centered around Los Angeles and the members of the LAPD, including The OC’s Ben Mackenzie as rookie Officer Ben Sherman. Shortly before the beginning of its second season, NBC suddenly canceled Southland. It was doubtful whether we’d ever see the six episodes scheduled to air, but TNT swooped in and bought them, effectively saving the show from certain doom. The previous season began airing in January and season 2 starts on March 2nd.

Continue Reading →

From The Hollywood Reporter comes news that AMC, the cable network that has given the world Mad Men and Breaking Bad (we’ll just forget that The Prisoner remake ever happened) has officially picked up the pilot for The Walking Dead.

The show is based off the comic book series, created by Robert Kirkman and published through Image Comics. “Master of all things” Frank Darabont, having made the movies The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, will be joining the project as well.

Darabont is currently attached as executive producer, writer, and most impressively director of the (hopefully successful) pilot.

The comic book series follows a group of survivors after a zombie invasion that has, naturally, destroyed all of civilization, along with the pressures and drama that stem from that. There’s no word on how closely the pilot will stay to the original material, or casting of any of the characters. Unfortunately, and most importantly, there is currently no set date on when I can start watching it!

Fans of the critically acclaimed Breaking Bad are finally getting their wish for more Bryan Cranston. The actor, who picked up an Emmy for his work on the AMC series, has just been signed to fight alongside the titular hero in the upcoming John Carter Of Mars.

Cranston will play a Civil War colonel who clashes with Carter in the early moments of the film. The movie is based on the series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs about a Civil War veteran who is transported to another body on the red planet of Mars, where he embarks on an epic journey.

This is quite late casting, as the film reportedly begins production next week. Cranston will join the ranks of an impressive ensemble cast including James Purefoy, Mark Strong, Dominic West, Thomas Hayden Church, Lynn Collins, Willem Defoe, Samantha Morton, Polly Walker, and Taylor Kitsch as Carter.

The screenplay comes from Michael Chabon (Spider-Man 2) with Andrew Stanton (WALL-E) taking the helm. Disney is expected to give the film a mid-2012 release date.

We get a lot of video sent to us so we don’t always share them here at the site, mostly because in a majority of cases guests on Jimmy Fallon’s show don’t really “wow” us. But when one of our favorite stars from one of the best shows currently on TV does something awesome, we just feel compelled to bring it to you.

Case in point is last night’s appearance by the beautiful and talented January Jones (Mad Men). On the show she talked about the usual stuff as most talk show guests do. She also joined Jimmy in a little game of what we like to call beer pong and we’ve got video of that to share.

Any woman who’s as good looking as Ms. Jones, can play beer pong and comments when her beer isn’t full enough definitely deserves our respect, admiration and affection. Plus, did I mention she’s really great looking?

Check out the video after the jump. Late Night with Jimmy Fallon airs weeknights at 12:30PM on NBC. Mad Men returns to AMC for a fourth season next year. That just can’t come soon enough.

Continue Reading →

Hey, remember the Emmys last year when five different reality show hosts tackled the duties of hosting the show?  Yeah, me either. Dismal ratings required a change of course, and this year the Emmys were…dare  I say it…entertaining! Thanks in large part to Neil Patrick Harris’s impeccable charm and wit, the 2009 Emmy Awards were enjoyable start to finish.

A dapper Neil Patrick Harris (let’s call him NPH for brevity’s sake) was the perfect host.  He started off the show with a musical number that was not awful, and kept the show going at a steady clip throughout the night. His performance garnered accolades from Ricky Gervais and John Stewart, along with millions of us watching at home.  A few highlights from the evening:

Awards were presented in categories.  A genre had all its awards given out before moving on to the next.  Comedy, Drama, Miniseries, Reality and Variety were all represented.  The show producers definitely pushed a comedic theme this year. Hilarious pre-taped clips of  nominees showed them  giving advice or answering a question.

Continue Reading →

People today live in the fast, go get ‘em world where we sometimes can’t be bothered by hours upon hours of a series we want to catch up on. Luckily, the great folks at “the internet” bring us such great gems like Every Week on Entourage that can sum up an entire season or series of a show in a matter of minutes.

The same idea has now been applied to the critically acclaimed series Mad Men, about people working together in a 1960s Manhattan ad agency. The video shows off the diversity of the show, including the authenticity of the dated writing, the use of smoking indoors, and the mysterious past of the main protagonist.

Check out the fan film below, and check out Don Draper and his gang of Mad Men every Sunday night at 10:00 p.m. (ET/PT) on AMC. Be warned, the fan film, though only a minute long, has a few spoilers if you haven’t seen the show. Watch with caution.

Continue Reading →

According to Variety, AMC is not resting on the laurels of its hit show Mad Men or the recently announced Prisoner mini-series and instead is ramping up production on new shows, starting with a huge undertaking in an adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead — produced and directed by Frank Darabont. According to the article, the network is close to finalizing the deal with Darabont to write and direct a series adaptation of Kirkman’s comic. Gale Anne Hurd and David Alpert are also involved in the project as producers.

In the article, Joel Stillerman, AMC’s senior VP of programming, said the project appealed to them because of “the quality of the storytelling” in Kirkman’s work. The series will stay faithful to the tone of the original novels, he said. “This is not about zombies popping out of closets,” Stillerman said. “This is a story about survival, and the dynamics of what happens when a group is forced to survive under these circumstances. The world (in ‘The Walking Dead’) is portrayed in a smart, sophisticated way.”

In case you’re not familiar with the story of The Walking Dead, it concerns a group of survivors of a zombie apocalypse led by a police officer, Rick Grimes. The rag-tag group travels through the devastated waste that once was America in search of a safe place to call home. Along they way they face numerous obstacles, danger, attack, betrayal and death not only from zombies, but from other survivors turned savage and ruthless now that civilization has collapsed.

If this deal comes through and we do eventually see The Walking Dead brought to life by Frank Darabont, I could not be more pleased about it. As a fan of both The Walking Dead comics and Darabont as a writer/director — especially due to The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist — I can’t imagine a better combination. I’m going to be following this one very closely for sure.

Last time on on The Flickcast, your favorite trio of talented talkers discussed a whole slew of topics including the T.J. Hooker movie, the “Red Band” trailer for Jennifer’s Body featuring Megan Fox, rumors of a new, live-action Star Wars TV series and much more.

This week, Chris, Matt and Christina are back and hit the ground running with a brand new episode. Some of the many topics this week include Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern, Natalie Portman in Thor, AMC’s reboot of the classic The Prisoner TV series, the potential Smallville Superman movie and much much more!

The team also makes more picks this week including Christina’s pick of survival show I Survived, Matt’s pick of another BBC called Being Human and Chris’ pick of the movie V for Vendetta, adapted from the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques or offers of sponsorship, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter and at Facebook, MySpace or via email. Thanks for listening.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Podcast: Download (86.2MB)

Here’s a list of some of the new DVD and Blu-ray releases this week. Plus, some old favorites (and not so favorites) coming out this week on Blu-Ray.

Movies:

For All Mankind: Criterion Collection ~ Jim Lovell, Kenneth Mattingly, Russell Schweickart, and Eugene Cernan (Blu-ray)

The Color of Magic ~ David Jason, Sean Astin, Tim Curry, and Jeremy Irons (DVD)

The Towering Inferno ~ Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Richard Chamberlain (Blu-ray)

The Haunting in Connecticut (Unrated Special Edition) ~ Kyle Gallner, Elias Koteas and Virginia Madsen (DVD and Blu-ray)

The Edge of Love ~ Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Matthew Rhys, and Simon Armstrong (DVD and Blu-ray)

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon / Curse of the Golden Flower / House of Flying Daggers Trilogy ~ Ziyi Zhang, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau, and Chow Yun-Fat (Blu-ray)

Horsemen ~ Dennis Quaid, Ziyi Zhang, Lou Taylor Pucci, and Clifton Collins Jr. (DVD)

Van Wilder: Freshman Year – Unrated ~ Linden Ashby, Kurt Fuller, Jonathan Bennett, and Steve Talley (DVD)

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer ~ Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jr. Freddie Prinze, Brandy, and Mekhi Phifer (Blu-ray)

Continue Reading →

I was a huge fan of the original 1960s version of this innovative and hugely entertaining series, which was created, written by and starred the fantastic Patrick McGoohan. So naturally, when AMC announced their new version, I was a bit skeptical because how could an updated version of the show ever live up to the cult classic original? Until now, there hasn’t been much info to go on to see if my suspicions are correct. But fortunately, AMC is poised to unleash a whole lot of stuff about their version of The Prisoner later this month at Comic-Con.

AMC will host a panel at Comic-Con featuring the stars and producers of its upcoming mini-series. Joining the panel will be Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ, Thin Red Line, Pay It Forward), Jamie Campbell-Bower (Sweeney Todd, The Twilight Saga: New Moon) and Lennie James (Jericho). The panel, which is scheduled for Friday, July 24 at 11:30am, also features the shows’ writer Bill Gallagher (Conviction, Clocking Off) and AMC’s Vlad Wolynetz.

Continue Reading →