my new plaid pants

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I wish a better clip of this scene were online for me to gif up; alas - that's Seth Gabel sidling up alongside John Hensley on Nip/Tuck; oh that every morning's cornflakes were accompanied by that. That's the prize I want inside my cereal box! Today's Gabel's 32nd birthday and we're wishing him a happy. We previously posted a couple pics of Seth back when he first got cast on Fringe - aww Fringe. I miss it sometimes. Do you guys miss it sometimes? The last couple of seasons were a bit stillborn but I still enjoyed spending time with Olivia & Co. Anyway, let's get back to the real matter at hand - Seth Gabel's butt. Hit the jump for a couple of caps (they're crisper than these gifs, too)...

We missed Bradley's birthday the other week.

Shame on us. Happy belated, Brad!

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Happy 48, Dylan Walsh! Dont worry, the Sexiest Man Alive will

see ya through this one. Just close your eyes and trust Bradley.

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Even though Robin McLeavy steals the show in The Loved Ones, in its wake I have found myself with an appreciation for Twilight actor Xavier Samuel, who plays the aggrieved focus of Lola's psychotic attentions in that film. So I appreciate that new picture of him above that's from new horror flick, Bait in 3D (which is about TIGER SHARKS LOOSE IN A SHOPPING MALL. Have I died and gone to heaven?) (pic via) It co-stars Nip/Tuck's Julian McMahon and is directed by the dude who made the Highlander movies, not to mention Razorback, which I've always wanted to see. Pig trauma!
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Seth Gabel hasn't made that much of an impression on me in the past. I was watching Nip/Tuck when he was on it but I don't really remember him very well (it's been a damn long time since I've really given that show much thought at all, honestly). He had something to do with the b'eyebrow'd son, or something? Gah. And I tried to watch Dirty Sexy Money because, hello Donald fucking Sutherland. But I couldn't get into it (and thankfully didn't, since the network canned it pretty quick). Yadda yadda, don't have much of an opinion on him.

But now he's joined Fringe, sorta, so I guess it's my time to form an opinion of him. (sidebar: How good was last week's episode?) Anyway, do the show right, dude! Here's some nakedness...

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There's a new batch of stills from The Stepfather remake over at BD and I swear they're just effing with my head, feeding my want for this movie to be something it presumably will not be... I mean look at this noise:

Gratuitous Penn-in-the-shower moment! I've brought this up before but in the original film there's a really pervy scene where Terry Quinn, the original Stepfather, spies on his step-daughter in the shower. I've brought this up before because I've expressed a desire, now that the step-daughter role was recast with a step-son played by Penn Badgley, for that scene to remain, only with the homosexual twist this recasting would bring. And now I see they're hinting at the possibility... only inevitably to not go there... I know you're not gonna go there, movie! So stop messing with my head. Ugh.
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Via the film's newly launched website, here are five new pictures from The Stepfather remake starring Penn Badgley and Dylan Walsh.

Am I bonkers for quite liking this poster

I mean sure, it could've shown son Penn Badgely and father Dylan Walsh taking a steamy shower together, but I can just wait for the movie to show that. BECAUSE IT WILL SHOW THAT. I DON'T WANT TO HEAR OTHERWISE FROM YOU, PEANUT GALLERY.

Ahem. Anyway, nice poster. Simple, yet filled with visions of Penn and Dylan tying each other up with stuff. I like it.

Wowza, got a lot to catch up on this morning after stuffing myself silly for five straight days. I trust everyone had a pleasant holiday? Or non-holiday-related five days or so? Good. On we go.

--- Button Reviewed - Moriarty at AICN got to see David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and reviewed it. I did not really read said review because I don't want to ruin too much of the film beforehand for myself (I have never read the story), but I skimmed far enough along (i.e. the second paragraph) to get the basic tone of the review:

"BENJAMIN BUTTON is one of the most piercing, beautiful, eccentric studio movies in recent memory, an exquisitely crafted film about memory, love, opportunity, and the passage of time. Technical wizardry and emotional delicacy combine to create an experience that is, for lack of a better word, magic."

Read the rest here if you dare. I have diverted so much of my remaining hope for falling in love with a movie this year onto this movie it ain't fair to anybody, but it is all the same.

--- Speaking of what's left for the remainder of the year, Joe at Low Resolution gives us Part 5 of his terrifically useful Fall Movie Preview guide. From Benjamin Button to Brothers Bloom and beyond!

--- And speaking further of David Fincher, Slash/Film has got info on his next project, that rumor that floated around last week regarding Keanu Reeves and something to do with a chef... they say:

"'The Untitled Chef Project' is a screenplay by Steven Knight, the screenwriter behind Dirty Pretty Things, Amazing Grace, Eastern Promises, and Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Dennis Lehane adaptation Shutter Island. ... So what is the movie about?

“A Michelin-level chef tries to make a comeback from major personal issues. He gathers his old friends together as his ‘dream team’ and ends up falling in love with the newest member of the group.”

I'm curious about how Fincher would use Keanu... since, well, he is kind of just a prop to be used.

--- Too Sexy For His Adamantium Claws - Via Empire comes another picture of Hugh Jackman in Wolvy garb (seen there to the right, click him to embiggen). And yes, I'll probably post every one I see, just cuz I certainly am never going to grow tired of looking at them.

--- Hey Hey It's The Hobbit - Guillermo del Toro gave out some details on his adaptation of the Lord of the Rings prequel this weekend; he says that it'll be a full year's shoot starting in 2010, and blah blah blah tons of geek-toe-curling details about goblins and shit.

--- Everybody Remember that remake of The Stepfather starring Nip/Tuck's Dylan Walsh and Gossip Girl's Penn Badgley that I drooled over the fictional possibilities of in a terribly salacious manner way back when? Yeah well there's still not much to report - I keep waiting for some pictures or something, but no - but BD does have the film's official synopsis and it's doing nothing to dissuade my pervy mind from the possibilities of filthiness inherent in the premise:

"Michael Harding (Penn Badgley) returns home from military school to find his mother (Sela Ward) happily in love and living with her new boyfriend, David (Dylan Walsh). As the two men get to know each other, Michael becomes more and more suspicious of the man who is always there with a helpful hand. Is he really the man of her dreams or could David be hiding a dark side?"

It'd be such a shame if they don't gay this shit up. Changing the lead from female to male is just begging for it, dudes! Sigh. It's out next October.

--- Good Gutten-Lord - Somebody put a mic in front of Steve Guttenberg and he started jabbering again. Now he says that there is going to be another Police Academy movie! Oh dear I have seen the PA movies too many times in my life. How I loved them as a kid. The Gute also says they'd love for Sharon Stone and Kim Catrall to be a part of the films somehow, since they were each in the films as different points. Uh huh. And then The Gute goes on to say he and Tom Sellack and Ted Danson are dying to do another Three Men and a [fill-in-the-blank] movie. I am sure they all are dying for a job. Ugh! Why can't I stop loving Steve Guttenberg? He will haunt me all my days.

--- And finally, Bad Horse is coming! The DVD of Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog has been officially put up on Amazon for pre-order and Joss Whedon explains why you should pay $13.49 for it. It's out on December 19th, although Joss says they're trying to get it out sooner. Yeehaw lil' doggie!
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--- Daddy Dearest - STYD talks to the director of the remake of The Stepfather, and I'm sorry to say that it appears that my suggestion went unheeded and the titular villain played by Dylan Walsh will spend his time ogling the girlfriend of his step-son (girlfriend played by Amber Heard, step-son played by the smokin' Gossip Girl star Penn Badgley) and not his step-son as I'd hoped. What a waste!

Beyond just fulfilling pervy Walsh-Badgley daddy-son fantasies of my own, I really thought they could've dove into interesting territory making the evil stepfather a closet-case... alas.

They also apparently couldn't afford the original step-pa Terry O'Quinn for a cameo now that he's all high and mighty Locke-britches.

--- The Bushes Senior - Oliver Stone has cast James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn as George Sr. and Barbara Bush in his Bush flick called W, following up that news of Elizabeth Banks landing the role of First Lady Laura. Can I... no, I cannot resist...



--- A Storm Is Coming - Piper at Lazy Eye Theater, inspired by this week's DVD release of The Mist, puts on his Evil Meteorologist Pants and warns us what weather systems mean what to our immortal souls!!!
--- "Never underestimate the power of 3D boobs" - I never shall, Miss Stacie! I never shall. Stacie Ponder o' Final Girl has a delightful piece up at AMC Monsterfest Blog on the resurgence of the 3D horror film.

--- Wicked Gross - I almost threw up looking at the new still they have from The Ruins over at BD, so click on this link only if you're feeling strong. It's not the first picture you'll see, which is bad enough, but if you click on that picture an even more repulsive shot comes up and... I guess any doubts I might've had about this flick going the distance with respect to what was on the page of Scott Smith's horrific book are now gone. Gone with my lunch!
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Okay okay, I already gave my goodbye speech for my long weekend, but I'm actually not out of my office until around 2 today, and I wasn't sure anything would come up that I'd want to post about... but something has. And lucky for all of us, I'm going to make it involve plenty of gratuitousness to get us through my absence.

BD has news on another face joining the cast of the remake of the 1987 horror flick The Stepfather, and I just thought we should take a gander at the male cast for this thing... Dylan Walsh of Nip/Tuck fame had already been cast at the titular villain (taking the reins from Lost's Locke, Terry O'Quinn, of course) and Gossip Girl's Penn Badgley as his rightly suspicious new step-son... now they've gone and added Chris Meloni as Who Cares, This Thing's Now Got A Smokin' Male Cast.


The film I'm working out in my head involves Walsh's stepfather being eeeeeevil because he's a closet-case, and his lust for his new step-son (whom he spies on showering, undressing, so forth, naturally) drives him insane. Meloni would be the rough-trade he picks up at some truck stop and takes out his villainy upon, post-coital of course. See? Who needs writers? These things write themselves!

Aaaanyway, Sela Ward and Sherry Stringfield round out the cast; it starts filming in March.
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We've already got one Alfred Hitchcock biopic in the works - called Number 13, it's less of a biopic than a "What-if" on Hitch's lost film of the same title; it'll star Dan "Balls of Fury" Fogler as the director just starting out - and now comes word that Ryan Murphy (of Nip/Tuck and Running with Scissors - ugh - fame) will be doing a picture on the period in Hitch's life around the time of Psycho, called Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Sir Anthony Hopkins will be playing the man (while Helen Mirren is whispered to be playing Alma, Hitch's wife).

If you head over to MTV Movies Blog you can hear Sir Tony tell this news himself, as well as exhibit his Hitch-voice.

I say the more the merrier! Hitch is so effin' fascinating I could watch movies about a dozen movies about his life. I want one where he's really a vampire next!
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That's it. I am ordering F/X when I get home tonight. Yes, I'm easy.

From Starpulse:

"Julian McMahon shocked his Nip/Tuck co-star Dylan Walsh when he passionately kissed him on the mouth while filming a scene for the show. The pair, who play plastic surgery partners Christian Troy and Sean McNamara, were shooting a scene for a dream sequence when things got out of control.

McMahon explains, "Well, firstly, it wasn't meant to be a kiss. But I was enjoying Dylan's discomfort so much that I went for it. I've always said we should finish the show with this: Someone turns on the shower, and you see footsteps going in the back door (of Sean's house). Someone comes into the bathroom, and it's Christian visiting Sean. These are two guys who are obsessed with each other."

While McMahon claims he's sexually adventurous, he insists his co-star is a bit more conservative and was nervous about the scene. He adds jokingly, "I don't think he's ever gotten it on with a guy before."

This week's fad appears to be making this list - naming your favorite 25 television characters of all time. And now that I'm proficient with the list-making, can do!

I should mention that this seems to have started, or least my interest was piqued by it, with the one the only Joss Whedon making a list of his own... In which he names not a single one of the characters he created. Which sure, tis humble and all, but I call bullshit. Love ya, Joss, which is why I cannot let such a blasphemous list stand!

Now, at times it's seemed as if I watch too much television, but I actually have a pretty limited scope. I watched some as a kid, and then I didn't watch much TV at all through college, really, and then post-college I got into a few specific shows pretty hardcore. The list shall reflect my smaller-than-most (and, yup, decidedly Joss-centric) preferences, then.

There are also rules to making the list. They are as follows:


Anyway, let's get on with it!


25. Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula), Quantum Leap - One of the first shows I was addicted to. I think I was a little bit in love with Scott Bakula. I haven't seen the show since it was on originally, but man was I obsessed.






24. Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox), Family Ties - I was, unfortunately, a child of the 80's, meaning I pretty much wanted to be Alex. P. Keaton in Middle School. I still tear up when I hear that song from the finale ("What do you think / I would giiiive at this moment..."), when Alex had to choose who he loved. God I'm a dork.

23. Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage), The Wonder Years - I may've wanted to be Alex Keaton, but in reality I was a bit closer to Kevin. Which is wonderful, in retrospect. Just replace Winnie Cooper with Sean Jones (...sigh...) , and there ya go.






22. Peg Bundy (Katey Segal), Married... With Children - Okay, so I had this dream while this show was still on that Peg Bundy was my mother and I was sitting beside her in a hospital bed as she died. I still remember her bouffant hair-do all matted down on the pillow and all the tubes... it was awful. Loved her ever since.




21. Darlene Conner (Sarah Gilbert), Roseanne - There was this episode where the whole Conner family was going to be in a commercial for the restaurant, so Roseanne made them all act unlike themselves, and Darlene had to wear some frilly girly dress and her hair in pigtails, and when they finally saw the commercial everyone else had been edited out and it was just this slow-motion shot of Darlene in this get-up smiling and eating a french fry and I swear to god I still laugh uncontrollably just thinking about it.

20. Capt. Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), Firefly - Mmm Captain Tight-Pants.










19. Christian Troy (Julian McMahon), Nip/Tuck - Mmm Doctor No-Pants.










18. Sharon Tyler (Katie Finneran), Wonderfalls - The lesbian sister who stole the entire far-too-short-lived show for me. She turned putting on a seatbelt whilst angry into slapstick gold.








17. Mr. Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), Lost - Jesus-stick!











16. Elaine Benes (Julia Louis Dreyfus), Seinfeld - My favorite Seinfeld moments all involve Elaine. Probable fave - throwing George's toupee out the window, screaming, "I don't like this thing! And this is what I'm doing with it!" Or something like that.


15. President Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell), Battlestar Galactica - Like Joss Whedon said in his own list, this is the role McDonnell was born to play. Yet another reminder that Emmy voters are complete and utter buffoons.


14. Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell), Veronica Mars - Let's not embarrass myself again.






13. Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter), Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Angel - I went into watching Buffy with some sort of completely unfounded hatred of Charisma Carpenter. I'd never even seen her in anything; I just, for a reason I cannot even remember any more, hated her face. It was about the time (Season 3, episode called "Lover's Walk") that she discovered Xander was cheating on her with Willow and she fell through the floor and was impaled by a steel bar that she won me over. Yes, that's what it takes for me to love you! Impaling!

12. Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Willow probably would've placed higher if they didn't do that horrible "magic = drugs" storyline in the 6th season where all she did was breathe through her mouth. Other than that irritating character moment, I adore Willow. Willow and Tara forever! Then not. Sigh.



10/11. Marshall Flinkman (Kevin Weisman), Alias + Chloe O'Brian (Mary Lynn Raskjub), 24 - TIE - Let's hear it for the computer geeks! The two best things about their respective shows. They steal every shot they're in. And when they're in danger, I am more frightened than any other time.

9. David Brent (Ricky Gervais), BBC's The Office - Oh... awkward. Gervais is a genius.







8. Sophia Petrillo (Estelle Getty), The Golden Girls - My favorite Golden Girl, the one with the most inappropriate one-liners to clutter my childhood.

Be well, Estelle!



6./7. Anya (Emma Caulfield), Buffy the Vampire Slayer + Winifred Burkle (Amy Acker), Angel - TIE - My favorite side-ladies of the Whedon 'Verse. Both of whom met horrific ends. Damn you, Joss.

5. Dr. Kimberly Shaw (Marcia Cross), Melrose Place - OHMIGOD SHE TORE OFF HER HAIR. The craziest bitch to ever not really exist.








4. Tim Canterbury (Martin Freeman), BBC's The Office - I am still in love with Tim. Those final scenes of "The Office Special"... goosebumps still.






3. Pee Wee Herman (Paul Reubens), Pee Wee's Playhouse - My childhood personified. Scary, I know.






2. Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris), Strangers With Candy - Inappropriate. Disgusting. Mean. Infected. Clueless. Amy Sedaris, will you marry me?






1. Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Buffy the Vampire Slayer - I could write hundreds of words saying everything I adore about Buffy, but I'll spare us both. She is a perfect creation, an icon for our age, and SMG hit practically every note just right. Love.