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Dancing with the Stars – Season 9 Premiere (Part 2)

Yesterday just wasn’t enough. We need two more hours of dancing. Specifically, dancing… with the stars! Tonight is ladies’ night, and they want to make sure we know it. The show starts with a group number featuring the female professionals, to the tune of “She’s a Lady.” It’s like all the bad parts of Solid Gold, and none of the good.

Cut to Tom and Samantha up on the balcony, with Tom blathering about how great everything is, and Samantha staring a hole into the camera with soulless, vacant eyes. And now, the celebrities! Nobody falls down the stairs, so really it’s not worth recapping. Although just like last night, the trumpet player goes absolutely crazy with a solo as we pan down the row of celebs. Trumpet Guy is now my favorite member of the cast.

The ladies will be doing either the Salsa or Viennese Waltz for their individual dances, and the Cha-Cha-Cha and Fox Trot for the relay.

Debi Mazar & Maksim Chmerkovskiy: Debi tells us that she’s an actress who specializes in strong female roles. I hear she’s more than a little bit crazy. She’s tickled pink to work with Maks, and she proceeds to drive him nuts in rehearsal by never shutting up. They launch into their Salsa up on the little stage in front of the band, and the first part is just a bunch of sexy walking. Finally about halfway through they start doing something that looks vaguely like a Salsa, although it appears that Debi keeps forgetting the steps. They do some cool turns at the end, but I just don’t think the content was there. We go to the judges while Debi is gasping and heaving for breath. Len compliments her energy, but notes there’s a lot of work to do. Bruno loves how she works her “bazooms,” and he “got a lot of value out of that.” It’s the most complimentary pervy insult ever. Carrie Ann thinks she’s thinking too much. Then Maks pinches Bergeron’s tush, which is way hotter than Debi’s bazoom-shaking. The scores aren’t shocking: 6-5-5.

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September 23, 2009   2 Comments

ABC Fall Shows begin tonight

Hey, It’s premiere week for primetime shows on ABC. Here’s how to set your DVR.

Monday – 21st
8 – 10 – Dancing With The Stars – Season Premiere
10 – 11 – Castle – Season Premiere

Tuesday – 22nd
8 – 10 – Dancing With The Stars
10 – 11 – the forgotten – Series Premiere

Wednesday – 23rd
8 – 9 – Dancing With The Stars
9 – 9:30 – Modern Family – Series Premiere
9:30 – 10 – Cougar Town – Series Premiere
10 – 11 – Eastwick – Series Premiere

Thursday – 24th
8 – 9 – FlashForward – Series Premiere
9 – 11 – Grey’s Anatomy – Season Premiere

Friday – 25th
8 – 9 – FlashForward – Repeat of Series Premiere
9 – 9:30 – Modern Family – Repeat of Series Premiere
9:30 – 10 – Cougar Town – Repeat of Series Premiere
10 – 11 – 20/20 – New

Looking for LOST or ‘V’? They’re not scheduled to appear until later in the season. I heard ‘V’ is getting a bit of a rework, so perhaps a bit later than originally thought.

As for reviewers, I’m still looking for someone to recap/review Castle, Eastwick, and the forgotten. Any Takers? Drop me a line.

Which show are you most looking forward to? Which do you predict will be the first to be canceled?

September 21, 2009   6 Comments

Modern Family – Pilot

I’d like to welcome back Sharla to The Disney Blog. She’s doing a great job with Modern Family, but I’m still looking for more people to review ABC shows like Defying Gravity, Flash Forward, and V.

I was given the opportunity to watch a sneak preview of the pilot to Modern Family. As I previously wrote, this show looked promising, but I had my doubts. I am happy to say that my doubts no longer exist! The show was quite funny and had me laughing throughout.

Modern Family is a show filmed in mockumentary style, featuring a family with a gay couple, a Latina second (and much younger) wife, and a couple raising three kids. The gay couple has just returned from Vietnam where they adopted a baby. The family patriarch (played by Ed O’Neill) gets mistaken for his young wife’s father and a mall-walker because he is wearing a jogging suit). The more traditional couple consists of an overworked mom and a dad who just wants to be his kids’ best friend, so much so that he leaves all the disciplining to his wife while he texts and tries to use popular slang (and very badly).

It’s hard to do a recap of a show without a central plot, so time will tell if one plot line will surface or if the three separate families will continue to have their own plots while getting together with each other occasionally. Either way, Modern Family had my attention from the beginning and had me laughing the entire show.

The previews I had seen didn’t even lessen the comedic value of the bits because the actual scenes were much funnier than the simple previews lead to believe. The funniest scene (I won’t spoil it here, but it involved a bb gun) wasn’t shown in any of the previews I had seen, which made me laugh even harder.

Modern Family premieres Wednesday, September 23 at 9 pm on ABC amidst what looks like a hilarious lineup of brand new comedy. The bad news- it’s up against the popular and long-running Law and Order:SVU (which had to be moved to make way for Leno’s new show) and Glee, which has been absolutely fantastic so far. The good news is that abc.com has a great streaming site to watch its shows on, so let’s hope that many will choose to watch Modern Family in some fashion.

September 8, 2009   2 Comments

New season of Dancing With The Stars slate announced

Ladies and Gentlemen strap on your dancing shoes, another season of Dancing With the Stars is right around the corner. A new slate of celebrities, some more worth celebrating than others, has just been announced. So without any further ado, here they are:

Tom DeLay – Politician
Natalie Coughlin – Olympic Swimming Gold Medalist
Mya – Singer, songwriter, record producer, actor
Michael Irvin – ESPN radio host and former Dallas Cowboy
Melissa Joan Hart – Actor, Producer, Director
Mark Dacascos – TV host, Kung Fu champion, actor
Macy Gray – R&B singer-songwriter
Louie Vito – Professional snowboarder
Kelly Osbourne – Singer, actress and media personality
Kathy Ireland – Model, actor, author
Donny Osmond – Singer, actor, TV presenter
Debi Mazar – Actor
Chuck Liddell – Mixed Martial Artist and Ultimate Fighting Champion
Ashley Hamilton – Actor, Songwriter and Comedian
Aaron Carter – Singer, Actor
Joanna Krupa – Actor, Model

The show kicks off September 21st with a three night special on ABC.

These last few seasons we at The Disney Blog have been fortunate enough to have the excellent coverage of the show by Mark Baker. Unfortunately, Mark won’t be able to continue his coverage. We’ll miss him, but it means we have an opening for a new star of our own here at The Disney Blog. If you would like to step in and review the show, please drop me an email.

Meanwhile, if you have any predictions you’d like to make now, go ahead and drop them in the comments. Myself, I’m predicting that Donny Osmond will pull out the old purple socks and make it all the way to the finals.

August 18, 2009   5 Comments

ABC ready to burn final episodes of retired shows

Fans of canceled shows “Pushing Daisies,” “Eli Stone” and “Dirty Sexy Money” get ready to set your DVRs. Disney/ABC has announced the finale air dates to burn off the remaining episodes of those shows.

  • “Pushing Daisies” returning to the schedule as of Saturday, May 30 through Saturday, June 13 at 10:00 p.m.
  • “Eli Stone” on Saturday, June 20 through Saturday, July 11 at 10:00 p.m.
  • “Dirty Sexy Money” on Saturday, July 18 through August 8 at 10:00 p.m.

Saturday evening is the Network TV graveyard, so don’t get your hopes up that this means your favorite show is coming back. Disney is just trying to get some return for their money and make the shows fans happy with some sense of closure.

April 13, 2009   1 Comment

Disney cements deal with Google for YouTube Short Subjects

The Walt Disney Company and Google have announced a deal for putting Disney owned short clips (mostly from ABC and ESPN) and videos up on YouTube. This isn’t the same TV and Movie content deal that Disney is rumored to be negotiating with Hulu, rather it’s for clips and other content that Disney will serve on YouTube in exchange for advertising revenue.

I’m interested to see what content Disney decides to serve here. Hopefully we’ll get some of the old classics from the vault and some original content.

(via)

March 31, 2009   Comments Off

The Simpsons spoofs Wall-E

The Simpsons is no stranger to spoofing pop culture. Sunday night WALL-E, the cute trash compactor robot from the Disney*Pixar movie of the same name, was honored with his own 15 seconds of fame.

Do you have a favorite Disney spoof from The Simpsons? Mine is a toss up between the Itchy & Scratchy parking lots and when they fly over EPCOT and Homer says, “It’s just as boring from above.”

December 12, 2008   5 Comments

Legend Of The Seeker Finds Its Way To Your TV This Saturday

30-Minute Preview of Nationally Syndicated Action-Adventure Epic Available as a Free Download Exclusively on the iTunes Store

Action-adventure fans can enjoy a first look of the highly-anticipated epic fantasy series “Legend of the Seeker” before its November 1st premiere weekend. Beginning today, Disney-ABC Domestic Television is offering an extended preview of the nationally-syndicated series as a free download, exclusively available on the iTunes Store (http://www.iTunes.com). The free download, entitled “Legend of the Seeker: A First Look,” will give fans the opportunity to view the first 30-minutes of the upcoming two-hour television event executive-produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, the team that brought the characters of Hercules and Xena to life almost a decade ago. If you’d rather not go through iTunes, you can view watch the first 10 minutes at the official site.

“Fans have been clamoring to get a first look at the series and based on the early response from the clips released on the ‘Legend of the Seeker’ website, we knew this would be a huge success with audiences,” noted Janice Marinelli, President, Disney-ABC Domestic Television.

Shot with the exotic and rugged New Zealand landscape as its backdrop, the one-hour scripted series is an adaptation of internationally best-selling author Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth book series. “Legend of the Seeker” explores the adventures of woodsman Richard Cypher (Craig Horner, “Monarch Cove” and “Blue Water High”), who discovers that he was born to fulfill a prophecy of becoming a guardian hero to oppressed people. With the help of a mysterious woman named Kahlan (Bridget Regan, “Sex and the City” and “Six Degrees”) and a wise old wizard named Zedd (Bruce Spence, “Mad Max 2″ and “The Matrix Revolutions”), he must stop a ruthless and bloodthirsty tyrant named Darken Rahl (Craig Parker, “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers”) from unleashing an ancient evil and enslaving the world.

“Legend of the Seeker” is produced by ABC Studios, marking their first venture into broadcast syndication. Sam Raimi (”Spider-Man,” “Spider-Man 2,” “Spider-Man 3″ and “The Evil Dead”), Rob Tapert (”The Grudge,” “Xena: Warrior Princess,” “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” and “Cleopatra 2525″), Joshua Donen (”The Quick and the Dead”), Ned Nalle (production executive for “Xena: Warrior Princess” and “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys”) and Ken Biller (”Star Trek: Voyager” and “Six Degrees”) serve as executive producers.

“Legend of the Seeker” has been cleared by Disney-ABC Domestic Television in more than 95 percent of the country, including all of the top 50 markets. The series will premiere with a two-hour event the weekend of November 1st (http://www.LegendoftheSeeker.com for times and channels).

October 28, 2008   3 Comments