Mad rush for Mad Men

Mad Men's Alan Taylor has won an award from the Director's Guild of America.

The show beat out double nominees from The Sopranos and Lost, winning the best directing on drama for his work on the pilot episode.

It follows accolades for the series at the Golden Globe Awards. It is also nominated for a SAG Award. Movie Extra will screen a Mad Men marathon over Easter.

Barry Sonnenfeld took home the comedy directing honors for Pushing Daisies.

Yves Simoneau nabbed the TV movie award for his direction of HBO's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Source: Variety Read more...

Dream pilot comes true

Dream Life by Sarah Daggar-Nickson and Scott Otto Anderson has won the One80Project TV pilot competition run by Optus.

The three-minute film about the unravelling of a perfect family was the top pick of judges Alex Dimitriades, Emily Barclay and Company B artistic director, Neil Armfield.

The first prize includes an opportunity to work with producers at MTV to develop the pilot into a full-length drama to be shown on the music television network and via the Optus Zoo mobile portal.

"There are are a lot of people out there who have really fantastic ideas and it's really hard to get your foot in the door … a competition like this is fantastic because it can facilitate someone making something," said Barclay.

Sources: one80project.com.au, Sydney Morning Herald Read more...

US strike: Australian programming hit list

As Aussie networks juggle their programming grids with the ongoing writer's strike, some shows are being scheduled from very bare cupboards indeed.

TEN will return new eps of the ever popular House with only three new episodes in stockpile. There is no immediate guarantee of any more than five eps. TEN also only has 3 new Medium and 4 new Supernatural eps.

And what about the rest?

Here is a guide to some of your favourite shows and what's in stockpile with Aussie networks when ratings resume on February 10.

NB: With a list of this size it is not a perfect science, please allow a margin of error. Kindly refrain from posting this list in other sites and messageboards, please.

New eps as at 10/2/08 (anticipated total in brackets)

Seven
24: 0 (9)
30 Rock: 21
American Dad: 22 (29)
Bionic Woman: 0
Bones: 19 (22)
Boston Legal: 14
Brothers and Sisters: 10 (12)
Criminal Minds: 13
Desperate Housewives: 10
Dirty Sexy Money: 10 (13)
Eli Stone: 2 (13)
Family Guy: 5 (19)
Ghost Whisperer: 22
Grey’s Anatomy: 11
Heroes: 2
How I Met Your Mother: 11
Lipstick Jungle: 1 (3)
Lost: 1 (8)
My Name is Earl: 7
Prison Break: 3 (5)
Private Practice: 9 (11)
Samantha Who? 9
Scrubs: 6 (12)
The Amazing Race: 16
Ugly Betty: 13

Nine
Big Shots: 11
Canterbury’s Law: 0
Cashmere Mafia: 5
Chuck: 13
Cold Case: 7 (8)
CSI: 11
CSI Miami: 15
CSI NY: 17
Damages: 0
ER: 24
Nip / Tuck: 32 (34)
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles: 4 (9)
Two and a Half Men: 26
Pushing Daisies: 9
Survivor: 13
Weeds: 15
Without a Trace: 6

TEN
Back to You: 6
Burn Notice: 9
House: 3 (5)
Kid Nation: 4
Law and Order: 9 (15)
Law and Order SVU: 14
Law and Order CI: 10
Life: 3
Medium: 3 (8)
NCIS: 11
Numb3rs: 12
Pussycat Dolls: 8
Rules of Engagement: 16
The Simpsons: 18
Supernatural: 4
Swingtown: 0
Unhitched: 0
Women’s Murder Club: 10

SBS
Big Love: 12
South Park: 14

Foxtel
Dexter: 13
Entourage: 0
Gossip Girl: 5
K-Ville: 0
The Riches: 2
Dirt: 4
The Tudors: 10

This list updates.

Kindly refrain from posting in other websites thanks.
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It takes $250,000 for Denyer to drive

Grant Denyer may have to opt out of the V8 supercar series if he can't find up to $500,000 to fund his car.

"The situation is desperate,'' Denyer said.

"My V8 career hangs in the balance because I don't have the sponsorship budget and the reality is it's the most expensive event in the country.''

Channel Seven has given Denyer approval to complete the full V8 Fujitsu Series season but he has only half of the $500,000 with less than a month before the season starts.

Maybe it's time to go on Deal or No Deal? Or better yet he could put his car out as one of the charities on It Takes Two. In fact just get Seven Sport to sponsor him, after all it's one of their most popular sports events. Last shot, how about Mr Stokes?

Denyer's Rising Stars Racing team manager Jim Morton said, "Grant has done his time and if it wasn't for the media I think he could make quite a good career out of motorsport."

Source: Perth Now
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First Review: Rules of Engagement

We've seen them all at one time or another. Single friends (Friends), newly married (Mad About You), long-wedded (All in the Family) and divorced (The Odd Couple). Now it's the missing link: engagement.

Here we have two neighbouring couples, newly-engaged Adam and Jennifer (Oliver Hudson, Bianca Kajlich) and married pair Jeff and Audrey (Patrick Warburton, Megyn Price.

In the middle is single pal Russell (David Spade). Hey presto, there are at least three stages of romance, simply shake until reaching desired effect.

This sitcom is produced by Adam Sandler and created by Tom Hertz (Married to the Kellys, Less than Perfect, Spin City). Directing is Andy Ackerman, a longtime director on Seinfeld, which is pretty obvious with all the establishing shots of apartment building windows. If you blink it almost looks like Jerry's from the outside.

This is all pretty harmless comic fare, but is also fairly pedestrian, offering little that feels new. Lots of fumbling, somewhat chauvinistic, men leering at waitresses or struggling to keep up with what women want. Patrick Warburton's dry, laconic style works well in a world spinning in XX and XY chromosomes, but Spade isn't yet offering much point of difference from his work on the success of Just Shoot Me.

Based on the pilots, Back To You (which follows at 8pm) looks a stronger finished product. But TEN has 16 eps of Engagement and only seven of Back To You, hence leading with this. In between a handful of chuckles (I'm not sure I can quantify them as laughs) I spent much of the time lamenting the current state of sitcoms and remembering the modern classics that are no more. We're left with shows like Two and a Half Men, The New Adventures of Christine and How I Met Your Mother when we could probably find more mirth in a re-run of Seinfeld, Frasier or The Larry Sanders Show. And whatever did happen to Helen Hunt anyway?

There's a few exceptions to that rule (My Name is Earl, The Office, 30 Rock, Curb Your Enthusiasm) of course.

Oh, back to the Rules of Engagement. I guess if you like boysy Adam Sander comedies this might be one for you.

Rules of Engagement premieres 7:30pm Wednesday Feb 13 on TEN. Read more...

Big tick for Nip / Tuck actor

Actor Julian McMahon will tonight receive a special award for services to entertainment as part of the Australian trade promotion G'day USA.

The son of former prime minister William McMahon and Lady Sonia McMahon, he has spent half his adult life in Los Angeles. Prior to finding success in the US on Nip / Tuck he has appeared in Charmed, Profiler, and the soap Another World.

"Obviously, when you first get here you have to build your life here," he said.

"I've had friends who couldn't stand the pressures here, who just couldn't stay here, either emotionally or physically.

"I now have family here and real estate. These things are really important."

Not bad for a boy whose Aussie history includes Summer Bay, The Power The Passion and dating a Minogue!

Nip / Tuck is currently screening on Nine 10:30pm Mondays.

Source: news.com.au
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ABC weatherman joins Nine

Former ABC Sydney weatherman Mike Bailey is returning to television, with Nine's Sydney newsroom.

It follows an unsuccessful attempt by Bailey to unseat Liberal Joe Hockey in the Federal Election.

He has since become a media adviser to the NSW Minister for Lands, Rural Affairs and Regional Development, Tony Kelly.

Bailey will present the weather on Fridays and Saturdays, while Jaynie Seal presents Sunday to Thursday.

His appointment also follows upheaval last year when Majella Wiemers was upset that her stint in replacing Seal (on maternity leave) would not continue.

Sources: MediaSpy, Sydney Morning Herald and Daily Telegraph
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First Review: Back to You

It's genuinely surprising that Kelsey Grammer is returning so swiftly to network television again, and to the unforgiving workload of sitcoms.

But that's just what he's doing in taking on Back To You. Paired primarily with Patricia Heaton (Everybody Loves Raymond), the two forge a strong anchorage as TV News anchors.

What's also encouraging in this zippy, light forum is that Christopher Lloyd is the show's co-creator and James Burrows is director. Lloyd spent many years penning Frasier, and Burrows worked on Frasier, Cheers, Will and Grace, Taxi and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. If anyone can create acerbic, ruthless lines of dialogue for a connoisseur of the English language, Kelsey Grammer, it's Lloyd. Thankfully, it's the audience that reaps the benefits -and there are plenty here.

Grammer and Heaton are effortlessly comfortable here, even if Grammer still looks like he is merely Frasier Crane in another guise. He's still superior to everyone around him, still chasing romance, and still teetering between snappy and crumbling mess. But that's just why we love him.

Pittsburgh replaces Seattle, as Chuck Darling (Grammer) returns to co-anchor the evening news he left ten years earlier. Kelly Carr (Heaton), with whom he had a brief fling years before, is hardly happy with the arrangements. The two squabble off camera as soon as the red light is off (somebody tell Mary Kostakidis and Stan Grant this is on, please?).

Fred Willard, who has provided much mirth in the mockumentaries of Christopher Guest as well as Everybody Loves Raymond, is a joy as the vacuous sports guy and Ayda Field should be good fun as Montana, a Latino weathergirl who insists on being called a meteorologist.

Back to You is also something of a rare breed now - a 3 camera, studio-based sitcom. Most of the new US comedies (The Office, My Name is Earl, Ugly Betty) are single-cam, location based comedies without a laugh track. Back To You is traditional, television theatre from a heritage that knows this terrain like the back of its hand.

If they can sustain the level of nonsense they reach in the pilot, there's every good reason to tune in for the latest bulletin. Frasier is almost back in the building.

Back To You premieres 8:00pm Wednesday February 13 on TEN. Read more...

SBS Nest open for auditions

SBS has now titled its forthcoming observational series about stay-at-home kids who live with their parents into adulthood, as The Nest.

The show, produced by Freehand Productions (Honey We're Killing the Kids, Dancing on Ice, Top gear Australia) is looking for subjects who live in Sydney.

The trend of staying with parents is also the subject of a scripted comedy for Seven, Packed to the Rafters.

If you would like more audition info, read on.

Press Release:

Are you a young adult in your 20s to 30s living at home with your parents? Are you dreaming of “real” independence but wondering how you could afford to move out and keep your current lifestyle? Want some help figuring out how you can do it?

SBS is searching for young adults and their families to be a part of a new television series called The Nest which will air in 2008.

According to the ABS, in 2005 there were 4.2 million people in Australia between the ages of 16-26, two thirds of which were still living in the family home.

This growing trend has recently sparked debate in the media over possible issues associated with remaining in the family home well into “adulthood”.

How will living with your parent/s affect your future?

With experts guiding you through the entire process, The Nest hopes to find the answer to this question and any others you may have about what lies ahead.

SBS is particularly interested in receiving applications from a variety of cultures in the hope that you can bring a unique perspective to the series.

Freehand Productions will be producing the series for SBS and are also responsible for producing the first international version of the BBC hit motoring entertainment show, Top Gear.

If you want to take part in an exciting social experiment, head to the sbs.com.au to find our how you can apply. Read more...

More on that change....

I don't know about you, but I just want to go out and buy me some baguettes and croissants.

According to a new blog looking at all things ABC, the change is due on February 4. Read more...