Celebrity Chatters

Hands down, one of the highlights of my Comic-Con experience was getting to meet Simon Pegg and his Spaced cohorts, despite the brevity of our interaction. I sat down for a quick roundtable interview with Pegg and his costar on Spaced, Jessica Hynes, along with Edgar Wright, Pegg’s frequent partner in crime (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) and the director of Spaced.

In the British comedy, Pegg and Hynes play Tim and Daisy, who rent a flat in London under the pretense that they are a couple. The show is filled with pop culture references and surreal experiences, and if you haven’t already, you ought to get ahold of the newly available Spaced DVDs. For now, check out some of the highlights from our chat.

Q: There are a lot of horror references in Spaced. How did that come about?

Edgar Wright: I think that really is my default setting of shooting everything like it was a horror film, for no apparent reason. I mean, there were definitely a lot of references in the script already, particularly to The Shining . . . The whole style of the show is very stylized and sort of kinetic because the characters are so drenched in pop culture, it’s almost like, if they ever had to describe their mundane lives, this [a horror movie] is what it would look like. So it’s almost like, you’re watching them recount their lives, rather than the actuality.

Simon Pegg: Yeah, ’cause they’re like, “I went to work in a kitchen and it was like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Or, “I walked into the room that time and it was like the f—ing Evil Dead,” you know? And that’s what you actually see. All three of us love the idea of taking very mundane things and turning them into slightly more grand, cinematic things. Which we took forward into Sean of the Dead as well after having learned that on Spaced. Jess and I certainly wanted to have this world that was defined by popular culture, shaped by it.

The trio expounds on this and other things (like their intense admiration of Arrested Development), so

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At first glance, Freaks and Geeks and 90210 wouldn’t appear to have a lot in common. One was a hyper-realistic drama that told quiet stories about high school life and was canceled after a handful of episodes. The other was a massively popular soap that looked at teenage years through a glamorous lens.

But Freaks and this Fall’s bright, shiny reboot of 90210 share one big thing: their writers. Gabe Sachs and Jeff Judah made a splash on Freaks and created the little-seen (but much loved, at least by me) Life as We Know It for ABC. Now, at the helm of one of this Fall’s most highly anticipated shows, the two are looking to reinvent the teen show yet again.

At the TCA press tour, Sachs and Judah talked about what compelled them to take on the project and how they’ll try to keep this round of Beverly Hills stories grounded in reality. Can they pull it off? I’m now more excited than ever to see them try. To see what they had to say about how they plan to meld their style with the CW’s fast-paced glam, just

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This week’s Caption It came from the new comedy Step Brothers:

You guys just might be funnier than the real thing! Here are the finalists:

• “My hair-restoration system is so better than yours!”
• “Listen, using the staple gun to pierce your ears is not a good idea. You should try a nail gun.”
• “I’m not kidding. If you hold it up to your ear like this you can hear a ski slope.”
• “I think if we get one more sponsor our budget and profit will break even.”
• “After taking the Pepsi Challenge, Brennan and Dale decided to stick to water.”

Time to vote!

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures

All of the new DVD releases hit stores (and Netflix) on Tuesdays. So each week in What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday, I sort through the best of the batch and tell you what to add to your queue.

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay
My pal Molly had the honor of heading out to the screening of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay to let the rest of us know how it was. She basically came away feeling that it was a bit on the offensive side of the fence, even for a movie like this. But she also acknowledges that it could be the kind of movie that gets funnier with each viewing, and that Neil Patrick Harris is once again pitch-perfect in his ability to make anything hilarious.

So I’ll be honest: I’m adding this to my queue for when I’m in the mood for some dumb laughs. Also, after enduring that-of-which-we-do-not-speak and an Eddie Murphy bomb in the past month, I kinda feel like I can’t get too picky about my at-home comedy at this point.

Special features include commentary with the directors and stars as well as a featurette titled “The World of Harold and Kumar.”

Two totally fascinating documentaries if you

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Yesterday, I told you about the rowdy panel of filmmaking greats I attended at Comic-Con. Today, I’ve got some notes from the television “Visionaries” event, which brought together showrunners Josh Schwartz (Chuck and Gossip Girl), Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (Lost), and Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies). Here are just a few of the highlights:

• A running joke throughout the panel was teasing Josh Schwartz about Gossip Girl in any way possible. At one point, when the show came up in a question, he said he thought that mentioning it was “a little verboten at Comic-Con,” which led the — considerable! — GG fans in the audience to make their presence known. Later, in response to a question about so-called “genre” shows getting lots of buzz over the past few years, Schwartz quipped: “Serena is now a cyborg.”
• On a related note, plenty of people (rightly) saw the Q&A portion of this panel as their best chance to ask questions of the Lost producers before the mad crush of the Lost-specific event the next day, prompting one panelist (I unfortunately couldn’t see which one, as I was on the other side of the huge line) to point at the questioners and count them down, saying, “Lost, Lost, Lost, Piemaker, Piemaker, Lost . . . [mooney voice] Gossip Girl!”
• Bryan Fuller is just a big bundle of cotton candy and flowers and goodness. Some various quotes summing up the sweetness: “I am a very sensitive soul. I couldn’t do a series like CSI or Criminal Minds where you have to be in a negative headspace all the time. I just wanted to cram a show with as many things that make me smile as possible, like puppies and pie.” And, later, “I think we need more awe.”
• Also, why is the piemaker not, say, a cake baker? “Cake is dry,” Fuller said.

To find out which of these guys likes Project Runway, just

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Welcome to Buzz Brainteaser, the trivia feature on BuzzSugar! Every weekday I’ll test your knowledge about TV shows, music, and movies. If you enter in the correct answer, you win points!

For what 1990 comedy was this the tag line:
America’s favorite dad in a spirited comedy!

Source

• Fox has repeats of Kitchen Nightmares and House
• NBC is new with America’s Got Talent and Celebrity Family Feud and has a repeat of Law & Order: SVU
• CBS has repeats of NCIS and Without a Trace and is new with Big Brother
• ABC is new with Wipeout, I Survived a Japanese Game Show, and Primetime
• The CW has repeats of Beauty and the Geek and Reaper
• MTV is new with From Gs to Gents
• VH1 has I Love Money
• Lifetime is new with How to Look Good Naked
• Bravo is new with Flipping Out
• ABC Family is new with The Secret Life of the American Teenager
• Comedy Central is new with The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report
• Late-night highlights include Kevin Costner, Bob Sarlatte, and Low vs. Diamond on Late Show with David Letterman on CBS; Seth Rogen, Joan Allen, and Third Day on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on NBC; and Jet Li and Belinda Carlisle on Late Night with Conan O’Brien on NBC