American Hustle (Blu-ray+DVD: $24.96)
Captain Phillips (Blu-ray+DVD: $22.77)
Dallas Buyers Club ((DVD: $6.99)
Gravity (Blu-ray+DVD: $22.99)
Her (Blu-ray+DVD: $24.99)
Nebraska (DVD: $16.99)
Philomena (DVD: $18.99)
Winner: 12 Years a Slave (DVD: $14.99)
The Wolf of Wall Street (DVD: ($16.99)

Spike Jonze (Her)

John Ridley (12 Years a Slave)

Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)

Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)

Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)

Jupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave)

Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity)

Frozen

Emmanuel  Lubezki (Gravity)

Catherine Martin (The Great Gatsby)

20 Feet from Stardom

The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life

Alfonso Cuarón, Mark Sanger (Gravity)

The Great Beauty

Adruitha Lee, Robin Mathews (Dallas Buyers Club)

Steven Price (Gravity)

Let It Go (Frozen)

Cahterine Martin, Beverley Dunn (The Great Gatsby)

Mr. Hublot

Helium

Glenn Freemantle (Gravity)

Tim Weber, Chris Lawrence, Dave Shirk, Neil Corbould (Gravity))

I personally found it amusing, the job role of the person who came in to "save the day" at the end. I won't say because I don't want to spoil.

That mess reminded me of similar problems suffered by the production of Gladiator, and what it took to get that film back on track. It's the characters and story. It always is.

Brad Pitt/World War Z

Brad's War

In World War Z, Brad Pitt's first attempt to build himself an action franchise, he would try to save the world from zombie domination. But amid delays, on-set drama, and rumors that the budget had ballooned above $200 million and that Pitt had clashed with director Marc Forster, Hollywood began to wonder if Paramount's thriller was dead on arrival. As the blockbuster finally hits theaters, Laura M. Holson reports on the behind-the-scenes battles, the re-writes and reshoots, and the stakes involved

New TV Shows
Army Wives: Season Six - Part Two Also: Season Six - Part 1 (Now!)	Californication: The Fifth Season (2011) Amazon Streaming Amazon Streaming HD DVD (2-Disc)	Funny or Die Presents: Season Two (2011)
Masters of the Universe - 30th Anniversary Limited Edition	Heres Lucy Season 6 (1968)	House of Lies: Season One (2011) Amazon Streaming Amazon Streaming HD DVD (2-Disc)
The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp: Fan Favorites	The Life & Times of Tim: The Complete Third Season (2011)	Quincy, M.E.: Season Four (1976)
The Sarah Silverman Program: Season Three (2007)	Shameless: The Complete Second Season (2012) Amazon Streaming Amazon Streaming HD Blu-Ray (2-Disc) DVD (3-Disc)

And new movies, also released on the 18th but available for pre-order now (not sure if streaming has to wait until the 18th):

Is there a new Stargate movie related to Stargate Universe on the horizon, a SyFy original inspired by a SGU set piece or prop, or something else entirely? David Hewlett (IMDb, Wiki) teased something along those lines on Twitter, but details are beyond scarce:

I'd prefer the former, would be happy with the latter, but anything written by David has to be better than what's on SyFy these days.

20th Century Fox and the cast are still talking, but the lawsuit remains.

As to comments on the other site, here are some of those issues in no particular order.

1. Modern Family is enormously profitable.

That actually remains to be seen. It's public knowledge that ABC made $164 million in advertising revenue from the show last year. But ABC doesn't produce the show, they just license it from 20th Century Fox. 20th foots the bill to produce the show, which means the real issue is how profitable the show is for them, not ABC.

This is one of the many reasons that people legitimately loathe actors, directors, and other Hollywood celebrities.

A story in THR reports that the cast of Modern Family is endangering production of the fourth season over plain and simple greed. It may be common practice for actors to try to break their contracts a few years after their show becomes a hit, and it may be just as common for studios to put up with it, because everybody wins in the end.

But that doesn't make it right.

These actors are already earning more for a single episode -- a few weeks worth of work -- than the median American household makes in a year. It would take such a household composed of two working adults almost 32 years to earn as much as these people make in a single season.

If I were pretending to be him, I might write this line of dialogue:

"Good things happen to good people. It's not true, you know. But it ought to be."

A few weeks from now, it's going to come true for someone who has more than earned it.

If you mention a certain name to most people, you'll probably draw an uncomfortable but brief blank stare, like they are waiting for the punchline of a joke, followed by a glance at the ground and if you look closely, even a squint or two, as they desperately search their memory for clues. Is this someone who was awesome back in the day, but I missed it because I always miss this crap? Is it someone brand new from a generation removed of pop culture that I'm missing because I always miss this crap?

But if you know that name, then you're already hastily throwing together a shrine made from whatever you can grab that's nearby. Pebbles on the side of the road. A doodle on a napkin. An impressive and distinguished mountain of empty pop cans.

Hallowed quotes thatyou can't get from anyone else in the world will inevitably follow:

"Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back. Wife or no, you are no one's property to be tossed aside. You got the right same as anyone to live and try to kill people."

I'd take issue with this point:

Recent Hollywood history suggests that, "Harry Potter" notwithstanding, sequels work best when the same director stays with them. "Jurassic Park" took a pretty big dive when Joe Johnston stepped in for Steven Spielberg. In contrast, a franchise conceived and helmed by one person over the course of its life tends to turn out pretty well (see under: Peter Jackson and the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy).

This is an old and cheap trick, dismissing a very important exception to the proposed new rule precisely because it disproves the thesis of the author. Especially cheap when you don't give a valid reason for doing it, and Zeitchick didn't. It allows you to spend five minutes on a blog post instead of spending an hour or two doing research to find out why the Potter franchise is a standout exception.

First, this past weekend's box office numbers:

1. The Hunger Games: $21.5 million ($337m total)
2. *The Three Stooges: $17.1m
3. *The Cabin in the Woods: $14.8m
4. Titanic 3D (2012): $11.6m ($44m)
5. American Reunion: $10.7m ($39.9)
9. *Lockout: $6.2m
14. Woman Thou Art Loosed!: $650,000 (limited release)*+
15. Bully: $534,000 (limited release)*+

*New release.
+Limited release.

These are domestic numbers only. The Hunger Games has earned $531 million worldwide between March 23 and April 15th. Here's how the first installment matches up against other freshman franchise films (title, domestic sales, worldwide gross, budget not including marketing):

I just got a press release from FOX that can be summed up thusly:

After much deliberation, the producers of House M.D. have decided that this season of the show, the 8th, should be the last. By April this year they will have completed 177 episodes, which is about 175 more than anyone expected back in 2004.

I'm not sure if House would have hung on much longer with its steady decline in ratings, given how much it costs to produce a show -- any show -- in its eighth season. Ratings this year have ranged from 9.78 million for the season premier back in October to a low of 6.63 million in mid-November, but recovering into the 7's and 8's over the past three episodes. Still, that's pretty far away from its highs last year (12.33 for "Family Practice"), for 2009 (17.25 for second season episode "Broken Part 2"), and the all-time high of 29.04 million that watched season four episode "Frozen" with guest star Mira Sorvino.

The current ratings are pretty close what the first half of the first season, so House has really come full circle in that respect.

Eight seasons is a long time for any show and it appears that the producers and star decided enough was enough, not the network.

Too bad. There's nothing else like House on television and maybe there never will be again.

I've included the entire press release after the jump.

When I first heard of an American version of the BBC's Being Human, my heart sank. My initial thought was "Did we learn nothing from the epic fail that was MTV's Skins?" Mitchell, George, and Annie were some of the most interesting and original characters I have had the pleasure of meeting in a long time - why would want to change them?

My fear was that the conservativeness of American television would destroy any chance the series had of being interesting. Then I sucked it up and sat down to watched it.

There are few things the Hollywood press loves doing more than creating baseless rumors today that they can breathlessly and exclusively report as false and without merit tomorrow. When rumors started flying that Dark Knight Rises might shoot in or near the main Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City, it should have been immediately obvious that this was nothing but a play for attention by starved and ignored media outlets.

Sure enough, a rumor that Entertainment Weekly was more than happy to spread last Tuesday has been shot down this Tuesday, by none other than Entertainment Weekly.

It was nice of them to schedule the false, baseless rumor to be refuted exactly seven days after they themselves spread it to their readers. But maybe next time they could save themselves the trouble of having to investigate and debunk their own poor reporting by not doing such a shoddy job in the first place.

The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20, 2012.

For every Diablo Cody there are hundreds of screen writers trying to emulate her style. The million dollar screenplay deal still exists, but with free movie writing software, everyone and his dog believes they can write a better script than the one you've just seen at the theater. Here's a review of those who have hit the heights so far in 2011.

1. Crazy Stupid Love

Dan Fogelman is usually a screenplay writer you associate with children's movies after Cars, Bolt and Tangled. This movie obviously takes him out of his usual safe habitat as the drama deals with everyday family life where everyone is linked to someone else in the plot.

Sometimes you just feel and know a screenplay is great - this is one of those occasions. It would a really good screen writer to better this for the January awards month. If you're new to writing screenplays, then study the careful plotting in this script.

More (deservedly) bad news for Netflix: despite beating investor expectations on earnings, Netflix lost 800,000 subscribers in the third quarter this year. That was 3.3% of their base that went up in smoke in just the past three months. That's something like 8,800 subscribers calling it quits per day.

To illustrate how ugly this has been, their stock was going for $298 on July 13th. Now it's worth $92/share, down $26 in after hours trading, because of the bad news. And they still expect to lose even more subscribers.

Perhaps it's time to apologize, and roll back the stupid price increase. I would have been willing to pay more because I think Netflix is one of the best deals out there. But not 25% more, with absolutely zero increase in value.

No offense to Reed Hastings who did amazing things until this year, but maybe it's time to get a real CEO running that company now.

The bit where the host "appears" in all of the big shows of the year, wandering from set to set, awkwardly bumping into characters while the host is just playing the host, wasn't that funny when Billy Crystal did it while hosting the Oscars, and isn't wasn't any better from Jane Lynch.

Here are tonight's premiers and some detailed info on the new shows after the jump. CBS has A Gifted Man (series premier), CSI: New York, and Blue Bloods. FOX has Kitchen Nightmares and Fringe (!). NBC has Dateline returning. ABC has Revenge (series premier). The CW has Nikita and Supernatural.

Person of Interest (9pm EST on CBS)
Mr. Finch (Michael Emerson), a mysterious billionaire, has developed a computer program that predicts the identity of people connected to violent crimes that will take place in the future.

However, the program has its limitations: for example, it cannot predict whether the person will be a victim, perpetrator, or witness, nor can it predict when or where the crime will take place.

Unable to stop the crimes on his own, Finch hires John Reese (Jim Caviezel), a formerCIA field officer who is presumed dead, to help stop the crimes from taking place. (via Wikipedia)

There's usually only one reason a television show gets cancelled: money. What determines the magic number separating renewal and cancellation are two things: ratings and age. Take these things into account and you'll understand my answer to this rhetorical question:

@wilw Monday viewers #Alphas=1.39Mil, #warehouse13=1.82Mil, #Eureka=1.87Mil. Yet WH13=renewed and Eureka canceled. Does this make sense?

My answer: yes, it does.

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have confirmed to EW that they plan to adapt their Broadway hit The Book of Mormon for the big screen. "Hopefully it will have a big run and a big tour and then we can do the movie in several years," says Parker, who penned the musical with Stone and Avenue Q co-writer Robert Lopez.

Hollywood Reporter, September 20, 2011:

Countering recent press reports that suggested a movie version of the Broadway show is in the planning stages, Parker says there's no movie in the works at the moment, [..]

Parker explained that the whole idea of an immanent movie came about when a reporter asked the duo if they would ever consider a feature film version of their hit musical. Said Parker with a laugh, "We said, 'Yeah, I think we could do a Book of Mormon movie,' and they were like, "Book of Mormon Movie! It's coming!'"

The sad thing is that this kind of behavior isn't limited to the Hollywood press. Our entire media ecosystem operates this way. The criticism that bloggers weren't fit to sit side-by-side with the traditional media because it's just a bunch of unemployed losers writing in their underwear about what their cat had for breakfast was never fair to begin with.

But the ultimate irony is that many bloggers have more integrity and skill and are better journalists than the "real press" are today, and in so many cases it's not even close.

Mistakes this huge deserve a full retraction and an apology for misleading readers. Any bets on when -- if ever -- we see that?

Update
The title of the EW story best illustrates how much liberty they took with the truth: "Trey Parker and Matt Stone say they will definitely make a 'Book of Mormon' movie -- EXCLUSIVE"

Everyone got down on Netflix for raising prices as much as 60% on all of their plans without providing any increase in value to customers. The excuse was that more free cash for the already hugely profitable company would allow it to buy more streaming content, which is what people really want.

Perhaps that's true, but Starz decided not to renew its deal with Netflix for any price and the net result is that all Netflix plan prices went up and a significant amount of streaming content got an expiration label slapped on it at roughly the same time. Tens of millions worth of content will simply vanish in February 28th of next year and you'll already be paying more money for that benefit.

Reed Hastings admitted that his company didn't handle the price increase very well and yet in the same blog post, promised to screw up even more.

You don't need the crap, so here's the short list of nominations for tonight's award ceremony (8pm EST, FOX). My quick takeaway:

NBC, ABC, and FOX got shutout of the best drama category. All of cable got shutout of the best comedy category. That's an odd setup since dramas cost lots and sitcoms are cheap (unless they go on for a long time). You'd expect the cable networks, which have smaller audiences and less money, to go with sitcoms. But they didn't. And it's paying off because the best dramas (except House) are all on cable.

Everyone had an opinion about what would happen when Netflix raised prices well beyond reason this year. This was a company on the rise, adding customers by the millions with stock going for $200 a share. Everyone in the major content generation business hated them and customers loved them.

I was one of the latter. Then my plan went from $16 per month to almost $21 a month with no increased service value.

If you predicted that Netflix was going to suffer for that greed, then pop a bottle of bubbly and pat yourself on the back. If you own Netflix stock, open a beer and cry in it. Netflix announced it lost 600,000 subscribers in the most recent quarter after estimating growth of 1,000,000. Netflix stock dropped almost 19% today, down $39.46 in after hours trading. That's a loss of about $2 billion in value in eight hours.

Follow the link for the full story at the Los Angeles Times.

Update: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings addressed this mess in a post on the company's blog. His plans for the future include game rental (will cost extra) and other planned screwups.

Update 2: Netflix announced that it lost another 800,000 customers in the 3rd quarter (2012). Their stock has lost over $200 in value since July.

Some small beans actor just pled guilty to spreading films like Black Swan on BitTorrent last year, before they were released in theaters. There's a few things worth writing about here.

First, the specific case of Black Swan is pretty good evidence that piracy of pre-release films doesn't hurt their commercial prospects. Swan cost $13 million to make but earned $329 million at the box office. One could plausibly argue that piracy helped the film instead of harming it.