‘The Bionic Woman’ Season 1 DVD giveaway

We’re giving away 10 copies of The Bionic Woman Season 1 on DVD! Forget the short-lived 2007 reboot — we’re talking about the original series, starring Lindsay Wagner (you know, the lady from the Sleep Number commercials?) as Jaime Sommers, a tennis pro who — after a freak skydiving accident — gets a mechanical makeover and becomes a spy! It’s your chance to indulge your pop culture nostalgia and relive a classic television series from your childhood! The DVDs are courtesy of Universal Studios Home Entertainment, and are available while supplies last.

Sure she can run faster than a speeding car, but is Jaime Sommers the greatest half-human, half-machine of all time? From Steve Austin to The Terminator, there are plenty of artificially enhanced characters in comics, television, and movies. Whose powers do you covet the most?

Want to win? Here’s how to enter:

1. Go to our Facebook page.

2. Click “Like” at the top of the page

3. Find the post on our Wall announcing the giveaway, click Comment, and tell us who’s your favorite cyborg pop culture character, and why. (Note: Commenting on this post won’t enter you in the giveaway; see the official rules after the jump.)

4. If you’re a winner, we’ll contact you via Facebook message to request your mailing address.

The giveaway starts NOW!

EW’S “THE BIONIC WOMAN” DVD CONTEST OFFICIAL RULES (NO PURCHASE NECESSARY)

Open only to those to whom this or notice has been addressed, provided that entrant is a legal U.S. resident age 21 or older at the time of entry. Void where prohibited by law. Limited to one entry per Facebook account. The first 10 persons to post a qualifying comment on the related post on our Facebook wall (www.facebook.com/entertainmentweekly) will receive a DVD of The Bionic Woman Season 1, which has an approximate retail value (ARV) of $30. Each contestant must answer the question posed in our Facebook post as directed, or their entry may be disqualified. Where Entertainment Weekly is not the sponsor, it cannot guarantee the availability of any of the items described. Sponsor not responsible for any damage to computer equipment related to participating in this promotion. Items being distributed are not transferable or redeemable for cash. Consumers who obtain items are responsible for any and all taxes. Promotion begins at 7:00 p.m. ET or EST on 10/18/2010 and ends at 12:00 a.m. ET or EST on 10/19/2010. Entertainment Weekly will contact the winners by Facebook message requesting their mailing address on or before 10/23/2010. Winners will have 24 hours to respond, after which time they forfeit their prize. Employees of Entertainment Weekly, Time Inc., Universal Studios Home Entertainment, or any related companies are not eligible to enter or win. Anyone who has won a prize from Sponsor during the previous 90 days is disqualified. The winner(s) may be required to complete an affidavit or eligibility and waiver of liability before prize(s) can be awarded. For a list of winners, visit ew.com/winners seven days after the end of this contest.

View the original article here

NBC gives full seasons to 'The Event,' 'Outsourced' and 'LOLA' - HitFix

Credit: NBC

Sinking ratings be darned, NBC has given full-season pick-ups to "The Event," "Law & Order: Los Angeles" and "Outsourced.""We are pleased with the quality of 'The Event,' 'Law & Order: Los Angeles' and 'Outsourced,' and feel they are an important part of helping to re-build our schedule and our studio pipeline," states NBC Entertainment President Angela Bromstad. "We believe in these new series and the creative auspices behind them."Using Nielsen Media Research's "most current" averages -- a calculation that includes available weeks of live+7 data inexplicable averaged in with more recent weeks of standard live+same-day data -- "The Event" is averaging 9.1 million viewers overall and a 3.0 demo rating. Those numbers are less impressive if you remember that "The Event" averaged roughly 11 million viewers and a 3.7 demo rating in overnights for its premiere and has subsequently suffered extreme viewer attrition in each passing week. NBC notes that time-shifting numbers strongly benefitted "The Event," which  gained 35 percent of its premiere week audience in live+7.It also helps the cause that "The Event" was licensed in 200 international territories before its US premiere."Law & Order: Los Angeles" has averaged a 2.5 rating and 8.7 million viewers, using only live+same-day figures, which remains less impressive if you remember that more than 10.5 million viewers watched the show's premiere. NBC prefers to emphasize the 45 percent viewership increase over "The Jay Leno Show" last fall.With "Outsourced," we go back to "most current" averages to see that the Thursday comedy has averaged 6.3 million viewers and a 3.0 demo rating.These three pickups leave "Undercovers" and "Chase," struggling on Wednesday and Monday nights, awaiting word on their futures. NBC has already stopped production on "Outlaw" and moved remaining episodes to Saturday night, effectively canceling the legal drama.Meanwhile, "LOLA," "The Event" and "Outsourced" join FOX's "Raising Hope" as the first new shows to get full-season orders.

View the original article here

Disney to Distribute Marvel's 'The Avengers,' 'Iron Man 3' - Hollywood Reporter

Paramount sources say the studio stands to profit handsomely from its deal to shift marketing and distribution of Marvel’s 2012 tentpole “The Avengers” and still-unslotted “Iron Man 3” to Disney, which acquired the comic-book company last year.

Paramount will receive distribution fees for both films with a guaranteed minimum of $115 million regardless of how the films perform. 

Paramount insiders say the studio will receive its usual 8 percent distribution fee for “The Avengers” and an increase to 9 percent for the third “Iron Man.” Disney quickly announced a release date of May 3, 2013 for “Iron Man 3.”

The deal gives Disney -- which has faltered at the box office recently -- a chance to benefit from its acquisition of Marvel.

Paramount views the deal as an opportunity “to do no work on ‘Iron Man 3’ and ‘Avengers’ ” and still make more money on the films, according to a source.

That source said Paramount has made $300 million from its Marvel relationship so far. It was studio chief Brad Grey’s first major move, he added, and has now served its purpose of filling the pipeline as the regime readied such other projects as “Star Trek,” its  re-launches of the “Mission:Impossible” series and the Jack Ryan series, which are in progress.

The studio will retain distribution rights to Marvel properties “Thor” and “Captain America.”

Disney will pay Paramount the $115 million on the pics’ release dates and it will serve as “a minimum guarantee against the distribution fees,” the studios said.

View the original article here

Mel Gibson to cameo in ‘Hangover 2′

Image Credit: Frank Masi; Inset: Lester Cohen/WireImage.comMel Gibson is about to get the Mike Tyson Treatment. No, no one’s going to bite his ear off. But the Oscar-winning filmmaker, whose long-controversial reputation was dealt another blow after a wave of threatening profanity-laced voice recordings, will have a role in the upcoming sequel to The Hangover. Sources tell EW that Gibson won’t play himself, à la Tyson, but an outlandish character, à la Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder.

Though The Hangover won’t be released until May, the question must be asked: Too soon? No matter how hilarious the cameo, will audiences still be nursing a grudge? If the role requires that Gibson make fun of his real-life problems, will critics savage him for trying to make light of a serious situation? In his favor is the fact that Gibson can be effortlessly funny. (See: Maverick.) That’s not to excuse his trail of offensive statements over the years, but the man has a funny bone. Still, Gibson figures to be more of a liability right now than an attraction, so I at least give The Hangover folks credit for being ambitious.

How does Gibson’s involvement impact your interest in The Hangover 2?

Read more:
Jodie Foster on The Beaver and Mel Gibson
Gibson’s domestic violence case goes to prosecutors
‘Hangover 2' to get Bangkok dangerous
‘Hangover 2' photos surface: One of these Zach Galifianakis shirts is… just like the others
‘Hangover 2' without Heather Graham… Yeah, we’re okay with that

View the original article here

Freud on Madison Avenue, Where Biology Appears as Destiny - New York Times

Jon Hamm and Jessica Pare, as his secretary and baby sitter, in the season finale of “Mad Men.”

Sunday night’s season finale of “Mad Men” was so full of the unexpectedly bizarre that it seemed to belong to the world of dreams. Did Don Draper, the emotionally disabled advertising executive, actually cast aside his age-appropriate psychologist girlfriend, Faye Miller, and impulsively ask Megan, his beautiful young secretary of the easy manner and French Canadian heritage, to marry him? If you are a certain kind of “Mad Men” obsessive, like many readers posting comments on nytimes.com, you lost a good deal of your Monday evaluating this question.

The latest on the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia extravaganzas and much more. Join the discussion.

Christopher Stanley, as the new husband of Betty (January Jones), scolds her for irrationally firing her long-term nanny.

Although “Mad Men” is a melodrama, it is one artful enough not to submit so resolutely to its soap-opera soul. It feels unlikely that writers committed to psychological realism would have made the decision to descend so unabashedly into Bobby-in-“Dallas” territory, when J. R.’s seemingly dead, do-gooder brother is discovered in the shower, very much alive.

Instead the finale punctuated the extent to which “Mad Men” is a thoroughly Freudian project, no matter how out of fashion that is. Don’s likeness to Tony Soprano lies less in his moral ambiguity than in his near-cartoonish embodiment of the eros/thanatos drive. Don (Jon Hamm) chases sex the way toddlers go after colorful plastic, and he craves the peace of the death state so profoundly that he killed himself — the person he was, Dick Whitman — and took on the identity of a dead lieutenant during the Korean War in the hope of achieving it.

In Megan (Jessica Pare), Don intuits that elusive peace, and that marrying her would be a way to settle his lifelong agitation, for which alcohol has proved so ineffective. Megan is the Serenity Prayer realized: recovery in a great dress. When Don proposes, he offers her as valid and sensible a reason as any for his abrupt and overwhelming desire: she makes him feel the way he always wished he would feel. So what if they have known each other for a cumulative seven minutes?

As Megan shows so impressively during the trip out West, where she accompanies Don as a baby sitter, she is not easily rattled by the chaos of three children; she is able to enjoy them. She can hop in the pool and sing to them in French. During lunch one day, Sally, the eldest, spills a milkshake. Don, so programmed to the hysteria that his ex-wife, Betty, would have unleashed in response to such a mishap, is happily shocked to see Megan blithely cleaning up, with no inclination to reprimand.

That moment was crucial. During this past season “Mad Men” exalted motherhood more than any other series on television. What Don, the son of a prostitute who died in childbirth, wanted in the end was a woman who he believed would serve as a warm maternal presence not only for his alienated children but also for himself.

The outcome was foretold earlier in the season, when Sally, having run away from home to her father’s office, found comfort in Megan’s reflexively gentle composure. By contrast, the careerist Faye, dispatched to watch Sally for a while, speaks to her in a stilted way that puts her viability as the next Mrs. Don Draper in great doubt.

Whether it intended to or not, the show hasn’t merely commented on the reactionary gender politics of the 1960s and ’70s; it has also embraced them, exacting vengeance on Faye for her lack of maternal instinct and visiting cruelties on Betty for her horrific one. Faye doesn’t get the man in the end, and Betty has become an object of disgust to her new husband, who is furious at her for irrationally firing her long-term nanny when it will cause such disruption in her children’s lives.

Women live and die by their value as mothers, the series tells us. The season finale reiterated how hollow corporate victories are for them: Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s superefficient (and now pregnant) office manager, Joan Harris, is promoted but gets no raise. Despite her successes as a copywriter, Peggy realizes that she is, in the eyes of the world, merely a single girl lacking a man. The days of Jill Clayburgh’s self-acceptance as “An Unmarried Woman” are a long way off.

View the original article here

'Glee' first look: 'Horror' pics!

Image Credit: Fox

I shiver with antici…pation for upcoming Rocky Horror episode of Glee. And these exclusive new preview photos are just making the wait worse. John Stamos’ sexy dentist as Eddie is kind of brilliant — “Hot Patootie Bless My Soul” is right in Stamos’ wheelhouse.

Image Credit: fox

Image Credit: Fox

Finn as as Brad is a total gimme, and Kurt as Riff-Raff is going to be great.

Image Credit: Fox

Is madness taking its toll on you, PopWatchers? Or can you remember doing the time warp?

Read more:
‘Glee’: ‘Rocky Horror’ promos get you excited (for more than skin)?
‘Glee’ does ‘Rocky Horror’: Listen to the previews here!
‘Glee’ takes on ‘Rocky Horror’: See Kurt as Riff Raff!

View the original article here