By far the best thing to come out of Friday's Red Nose Day: Comedy for Cure Kids — you know, besides all the money raised for medical research of life-threatening childhood diseases — was the long-awaited televised reunion of New Zealand's fourth most popular musical act, Flight of the Conchords (and their well-meaning manager Murray Hewitt (Rhys Darby)).
Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement, who clearly didn't learn anything in celebrity school, attempted to disperse the crowd that had gathered around in New York on Monday by splashing everyone with water. Only to have himself splashed back with hot chocolate. [images via Bauer-Griffin]
• The New York Times is gearing up to cut another two dozen positions at the newspaper, but that's fewer than NYT execs were anticipating. [NYP]
• Cancellations: MTV has pulled the plug on Alexa Chung's daytime show; and HBO's Flight of the Conchords is finished after two seasons. [THR, Variety]
• Diane Sawyer and Chris Cuomo bid goodbye to GMA this morning. [ABC]
• NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker, who will remain in charge of NBC after Comcast takes control, has been signed up to a new three-year contract. [THR]
• Ex-Daily News editor Debby Krenek is Newsday's new editor-in-chief. [E&P]
• Stodgy Harvard Business Review is getting a sexy makeover! [NYT]
• Grim stat du jour: 367 magazines were shuttered in 2009. [Crain's]
• More on Dave Zinczenko, the laziest magazine editor alive. [Gawker, DF]
This was supposed to be the beginning of a new era, built around a new kind of pop culture. But when the director of Napoleon Dynamite's new film can't even get a national release, the dream is surely in danger.
With seemingly so little left to live for (or is that just us?), the second season of Flight of the Conchords, and all the "Foux de Fafa" frivolity that implies, seems like it can't arrive quickly enough. But wait! Put down that kebab skewer pressed to your temple! You needn't wait until the January 18th premiere to catch your Brett and Jemaine fix, nor do you even need to hold out until this Monday, when the first episode streams on HBO.com. That's because it's already streaming, at this very moment, courtesy of FunnyorDie.com. We'll see you in half an hour.
The world awoke this morning to the chirping of little birds resembling Kristin Chenoweth and Neil Patrick Harris, perched at a podium in the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, announcing nominations for the 60th Emmy Awards. While most rolled over and tried to get back to sleep, we sat bolt upright as usual and sprinted to the window, our furious note-taking chronicling a few snubs, surprises and plenty of the conventional wisdom we've come to expect from the annual ritual.
The LAT undertakes an important sociological mission today, highlighting the basic costuming differences between two very different breeds of obsessive fanperson: The Sex and the City fan and the Flight of the Conchords fan. While one group leans towards unabashed label-whoredom and pricey slingbacks, and the other towards Little Joy-friendly ironic hipsterwear and All-Stars, they manage to find some common ground in the category of animal prints—though in SATC's case, they're covering Dolce & Gabbana cocktail dresses, and in FotC's, they're literally paying homage to the the ironed-on wildlife prints adorning Bret's sweatshirts.
· The Hiphopotamus will be taking on the Rhymenocerous in a fight to the death when Flight of the Conchords play at Amoeba today. Also on tap, The Black Heart Procession at the Troubadour, Caribou at the El Rey. Bonus video of our favorite FOTC song after the jump!
· The L.A. Times "innovations expert"-turned-editor Russ Stanton speaks tonight about the slipping circulation and slashed budgets that face not only the LAT, but newspapers around the country. At the Steve Allen Theater. Ten bucks says he blames blogs.
· As loyal Defamer readers are well aware, director Errol Morris' Standard Operating Procedure examines the 2004's Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The Hammer screens it tonight, complete with some Q&A action with producer Julie Ahlberg & executive producer Diane Weyerman. [via Flavorpill]
· If Jonah Hill's movie career doesn't pan out, he can always headline mid-sized Vegas showrooms as Andy Milonakis: Insult Comic. [SNL]
· Mischa Barton's next project, the straight-to-video Closing the Ring, features the actress crying in an attic bedroom, wearing a period hairstyle, and completely naked. If that's something you might be interested in, here's an image gallery. [Egotastic]
· Heather Mills is awarded $48.7 million of Paul McCartney's $800 million fortune. We pray this is the last we'll hear of this, but suspect it is not. [Fox News]
· And finally, ladies, we ask now that you remain composed. Please keep your screaming to a minimum. Oh, fine—we give up! The men of Flight of the Conchords, almost naked in the pages of Maxim! [conchords.net]
Every TV nut (well, isn't that all of us here?) has, at one point or another, spent a little time fantasizing about certain fictional characters on their favorite shows. These fantasies tend to be either soft-focus daydreams (say, dreaming up elaborate schemes in which they "bump" into you at a party) or something a bit more hard-core (picturing them while giving your significant other the old in-out). On that note, the clever list-makers over at EW decided to compile a Top 30 reader's choice collection of the small-screen boys and girls who most frequently make cameos in those illicit fantasies. But, with no offense to the site's readers, we have some serious vetoes to charge. After the jump, our picks for who falls under Strongly Agree (the predictable Jim Halpert) and those we brand as a Vehemently Disagree (four words: Bree. Van. De. Camp), as well as the most erroneous, mind-boggling oversight missing from the group:
· 2008's January box office is up 18% over last year, thanks to both newly released, pump-and-dump triumphs like Cloverfield and steadier earners holding over from December, like National Treasure and the Chipmunks movie. [Variety]
· Fox's still-disappointing Moment of Truth (current number of lives ruined by the televised revelation of their past sins: 0) falls off sharply from last week's huge premiere numbers, but still finished behind only American Idol on the night. [THR]
· Where in the world is Oscar-nominated U.N. messenger of peace George Clooney? At U.N. headquarters, trying to convince headshot-wielding staffers to let him put down his Sharpie long enough to fill them in on the atrocities he just witnessed in Darfur. [Variety]
