In what is a cautionary tale for ex-sitcom stars thinking about going the Larry David route, The Paul Reiser Show has been cancelled after two low rated airings. It’s another casualty in NBC’s quest to find a hit for its Thursday night lineup that currently includes widely hailed comedies such as Community, 30 Rock and The Office. Reiser’s show was a replacement for the sitcom, Perfect Couples starring Olivia Munn which premiered in December and was cancelled following its April 7th airing. Right before the cancellation, Reiser talked with entertainment reporter Kim Masters on the LA radio show The Business. He discussed his unlucky career history following after Mad About You and told Masters:

I made six pilots. All dead. I have a lovely cemetary, I have a plot at Forest Lawn where you can visit my lovely pilots. Read more…

Anyone who has listened to Prince‘s last few albums has had the sense that he’s been phoning it in for a while, but he did so literally when he called into Lopez Tonight to announce a 21 night run of concerts at the Forum in Los Angeles that will start on Thursday. Prince’s shift from the androgynous rebel behind the album Dirty Mind to aging spiritualist is old news, but it’s still strange to hear Prince calling out Lopez for cussing in the monologue. Even Lopez didn’t seem to know how to react to that one. Prince is keeping prices low for the shows, with 80% of the house selling for $25/ticket. For fans who want a closer view the price jumps to $205 all the way on up to $781. The price gap is definitely a sign ‘o the times.

[LA Times]

The Cannes Film Festival announced that Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci will receive an honorary Palm d’Or at this year’s event. The award has only been handed out twice before, to Woody Allen in 2002 and to Clint Eastwood in 2009. Surprisingly, Bertolucci has never won an award at Cannes before. When his 1981 film Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man was nominated for the coveted Palm d’Or, it lost to the Polish film Man of Iron and in 1996, Stealing Beauty lost out to Secrets & Lies. His 1972 film Last Tango in Paris, for which film critic Pauline Kael famously wrote:

The movie breakthrough has come. Bertolucci and Brando have altered the face of an art form.

was never even nominated. Read more…

So maybe that headline is exaggerating the case a little. Legendary filmmaker Woody Allen has made so many great movies that, even though his output in recent years hasn’t matched the peaks of his earlier work such as Manhattan and Hannah and Her Sisters, to name only two, it’s impossible to bear a grudge. It’s especially difficult when he has come close to his comedic best in the last few years with both Whatever Works starring Larry David and Vicky Christina Barcelona which featured a revelatory performance from Penélope Cruz who won an Oscar for her role as Javier Bardem‘s  temperamentally challenged ex-lover. Cruz will reteam with Allen on his next movie and she said as little as possible about it in a statement to Entertainment Weekly:

I know [what I'm doing next], but the thing is that I have to ask the director what I can say and what I cannot say. Because he’s very secretive. It’s…it’s a movie with Woody Allen. But I really cannot say anything about the story or the characters. Read more…

Penelope Spheeris, the director of such classic films as Wayne’s World and The Decline of Western Civilation Part I – III and not so classic films like The Little Rascals and The Beverly Hillbillies, started her career in Hollywood as an actress. According to IMDb.com she starred in such unforgettable titles as Naked Angels, The Ski Bum and The Second Coming of Suzanne. She also starred in the 1977 gay erotic classic Brothers, which is curiously missing from her IMDb credits. Go figure. Read more…

As a kid in the early 90s I watched Nickelodeon shows like Clarissa Explains It All starring Melissa Joan Hart, which aired on the network from 1991-1994. The annoyingly catchy theme song, tacky sets and shamelessly broad acting set the template for future Disney Channel hits like That’s So Raven and Hannah Montana. In 1995 the producers retooled the show and filmed a pilot for CBS (posted above) with the lead character embarking on an internship at an NYC newspaper. While it was never shown on CBS, it later aired as a special on Nickelodeon where it probably should have stayed in the first place. Clarissa‘s audience, which may not have been ready for primetime in 1995, is now in their twenties and early thirties and the network that gave birth to the show, and many more like it, is ready to cash in on the 90s nostalgia wave. Read more…