Just in time for awards season, it looks like celebs and fans will get one more night to celebrate the business of show, as Comedy Central and MTV Networks are putting together the first annual Comedy Awards, set to air this April.

The awards will be as unbiased as other established ceremonies such as The Academy Awards and The Emmys, and given to both big names and up-and-coming workers in the genre of comedy. Here’s the official press release.

A night for comedy of all kinds, “The Comedy Awards” will be taped at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom on Saturday, March 26 and will premiere on Sunday, April 10, 2011, simultaneously across MTV Networks’ COMEDY CENTRAL, Spike TV, TV Land, VH1 and Nick At Nite.

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*** Note – The following Rock Band 3 review does not formally review the Keyboard, the Pro Guitar peripherals or Pro Mode since they were not available to us at the time of the review. This has been reflected in the review score.***

Harmonix began taking the music genre by storm with their work on the initial Guitar Hero. After parting ways from Activision, they took the game to the next level by making drums and vocals the new standard.

They also came up with the idea of the Rock Band franchise as a platform rather than an annualized release like Guitar Hero has taken (Guitar Hero being on their sixth consecutive yearly release with Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock) After two years since Rock Band 2, Harmonix looked to step up their game by adding an additional instrument in the keyboard to the band mix as well as a Pro mode to help players learn how to play guitar, drums and keyboard using music in the game.

They also took concepts from other spinoff titles such as Rock Band: Green Day like vocal harmonies and brought them to the fold as well.

Gameplay:

Not much has changed for Rock Band 3 for the standard band format. Two guitars and a drum set each have a cascading highway of notes down the screen as the vocals scroll across the top.

There is now of course the substitution of a new instrument in the keyboard which can even be used to play the guitar parts of older Rock Band music that hasn’t gotten the keyboard face lift.

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It’s almost unnecessary, writing a review for Jackass: Everyone who’s a fan will see it, everyone who isn’t will ignore it, and those who don’t know what it is will run screaming from the theatre long before Steve-O launches a geyser of defecation up onto a quaint, little forest scene.

For the last group, if they’re curious enough to keep reading after that last sentence,Jackass was a show on MTV that featured a handful of professional skateboarders, stuntmen, and fellows crazy and with a high-enough threshold of pain to engage in a series of dangerous and humiliating stunts, ranging from teeballs to the testicles to taunting rams with tubas to drinking the excretions from some of the most unpleasant bodily orifices.

Why? Because leader Johnny Knoxville and his band of depraved good spirits have a knack for survival, no shame, and an appreciation that, yes, there is a lowest common denominator, and that it has a lot of appeal.

It’s not really a movie so much as a venue to perform the kinds of stunts that even MTV’s censors would not allow—example: one of the stunts features a crewmember using his genitals to hit a golfball (I wonder how many takes were needed to get that final shot). Another involves copious amounts of dog doo. Still another…

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Jersey Shore may be the highest rated show on the network, but that won’t stop MTV from cranking out a whole slew of upcoming original scripted programming for their next upcoming season. It’s important to state that these are scripted, because this is the first time MTV is trying something like this since the days of Undressed back in 1999.

This decision to bulk up scripted programming can most definitely be attributed to the huge success of last summer’s newest program for the network, The Hard Times of RJ Berger. The pilot of the show brought in 2.6 million viewers, which is a network high in nearly two years. Now, with two completely different pilots, MTV is hoping to capture that lightning in a bottle. From THR:

“That Girl” follows a 15-year-old who gains notoriety after an accident leads her classmates to think she attempted suicide. The show was created and executive produced by Lauren Iungerich (ABC Family’s “10 Things I Hate About You”).

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Last night, a brand new season of Adult Swim’s new irreverent hospital drama/comedy Children’s Hospital premiered, and we’re so excited for the new season, that we’re bringing you an ENTIRE WEEK of exclusive interviews with the show’s cast and creators.

Up first is star Ken Marino, who plays Dr. Glenn Richie on the show. Many fans of comedy know Marino from his start as an original cast member of MTV’s The State. Marino went on to do some other great comedies such as Party Down and The 10. He even wrote 2008’s stand out comedy Role Models starring Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott.

Ken plays his role as Dr. Richie a little bit like his character in The 10: very loose and very Jewish. We got the chance to talk with Marino about his character, the ill-fated Party Down and the possibility of a State Reunion.

Check out the full interview after the jump, and be sure to keep it here all week, as we celebrate the return of Children’s Hospital on Adult Swim.

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I know what you’re thinking. What are we, a fairly well respected website that deals with the finest in entertainment news doing bringing you a new trailer for the next Jackass movie? Please bear with me for a moment.

Even though I don’t find all of this necessarily very funny, I know many people do. So, presented without much comment is the latest trailer for the new adventures of a bunch of white guys who like to get hit in the nuts and eat weird shit.

In this one the boys get even crazier, do more dangerous stunts and generally increase the bottom line for various insurance companies. However, I do like the water stunt where someone flips high in the air and people shoot at him with paintball guns. That’s pretty funny.

Check out the new trailer after the break. Look for Jackass 3D to hit you in the balls on October 15th.

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While the Summer might be ending, great television for the year is just beginning. That’s why Cortney’s TV Digest returns to The Flickcast this month, where we’ll be bringing you some great shows from our favorite networks, including Showtime and MTV.

Mad Men

AMC might not have a lot of television shows, but what they lack in quantity they certainly make up for in quality. Breaking Bad just finished up a fabulous third season over the Summer, and that means it’s time for Mad Men. Season 4 started last month but continues on this month, as Sterling, Cooper, Draper and Pryce begin to establish their new, but struggling, ad firm.

Mad Men is on every Sunday at 10/9C on AMC.

Weeds

Our favorite pot-dealing, crime-scheming Nancy Botwin is back, as Weeds enters its sixth season. It’s so hard to write about this show without absolutely spoiling everything, but to be discrete, this episode picks up right after the last one left off, and looks like this season is going to be a doozy as everyone in the Botwin pack deals with the implications of Shane’s actions.

If you’re a new-comer to Weeds, you’ve got about two weeks to catch up on all five of the previous seasons, but the episodes are so good (and, luckily, short) that it won’t take you much time at all to see what all the fuss is about. Weeds begins its new season on August 17th on Showtime.

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It’s that time of the year when the regular award season comes to a halt and those “other” award shows start picking up the slack. The quotes are in place due to the fact that awards like the upcoming MTV Movie Awards are only awards in the sense that the chosen winner gets a trophy. It can’t even be called a popularity contest anymore as it’s more like the “Twilight wins while people promote their upcoming project” awards.

Last year, Twilight collected a record four awards, which is a third of the categories given. This year, there are a few others hoping to knock the shiny vamps off of the hill like Avatar and Alice in Wonderland.

Parks and Recreation star Aziz Ansari is hosting this year, so expect some solid written material for the opening monologue and more. Check out the site to vote for your favorite film and actor/actress, and be sure to catch the 2010 MTV Movie Awards Live(ish) on June 6th at 9PM/8PM Central.

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With their Hills and Tila Tequilas, MTV has never really been considered a leading network when it comes to scripted TV shows. But they’re trying because back in January it was announced that the music network was putting together a reboot of the 1980s classic Teen Wolf for the small screen, and we’re even closer as the pilot is on it’s way.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the series will be a direct remake of the 1985 film starring Michael J. Fox about a teenager who learns that he comes from a long line of werewolves.

“It has a fresh take and is very different from the original,” said Liz Gateley, senior vp MTV series development. “It has more of an ‘American Werewolf in London’ feel to it. It’s a dramatic thriller with two best friends in the center who provide a great comedy element: They are two very relatable characters on the outer circles of popular cliques.”

The series will be written by Jeff Davis, who created the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds. The show will be produced by the individually successful team of Marty Adelstein (Prison Break) and Rene Echevarria (Castle). No word on casting yet, but with MTV behind the pilot, you can expect to see a hot new name riding the roof of a van and getting covered in fur.

On top of Teen Wolf, MTV is expanding their scripted TV department with a remake of the popular-yet-raunchy U.K. series Skins about a group of teens growing up and living life tot he fullest. Somehow, the latter show sounds more like MTV’s style than a teenage werewolf.

Last week on The Flickcast, the team discussed and debated a slew of new topics including Apple announcements from the World Wide Developer Conference, the recent E3 gaming convention, The Hangover, Kirsten Dunst joining Spider-Man 4, movies in 3D and a whole lot more.

This week, Chris and Matt have to go on without Christina but are joined by special guest Rick Marshall of MTV’s Splashpage and Movie’s Blog to talk comics, movies and all things geek. Some of the topics discussed this time around include John Carter of Mars casting, the rebirth of Captain America, why Tim Burton should return to the Batman franchise.

They also talked about Rick’s favorite comic book-to-film adaptations (including Iron Man and Man-Thing), the disappointment of Spider-Man 3, the power of Twitter in movie marketing and upcoming comic-book-to-film adaptations including Whiteout, Scott Pilgrim and Iron Man 2.

Chris, Matt and Rick also made some picks this week including one of Rick’s favorite comics, Sleeper, Matt’s pick of one of his favorite movies called Fortress, featuring Christopher Lambert and Loryn Locklin, and Chris’ pick of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York.

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.

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