Damages

She's not gonna be ignored, Dan!

The second season of "Damages" started this week and, from the looks of the first episode, it seems to be just as dark, twisted and interesting as the first season was last year.

Glenn Close is great as Patty Hewes, a relentless lawyer who will do anything (and she does just about everything) to win her case. She's always been a great actress and really hasn't worked as much as she should...so, it's good to see her playing a juicy role that she can sink her teeth into weekly.



I'm also impressed with, believe it or not, Ted Danson. He played the main protagonist last season and it's a role that is as far from Sam Malone as he could possibly get. He was shot at the end of last season, but appears to be recovering now and still playing an intergral part in this new season too.

William Hurt (who also co-starred with Glenn Close years ago in "The Big Chill") and Marcia Gay Harden have also hopped onboard as new characters that seem to be the main focus of this new season.

So, with a talented group like this...it should be an interesting year of dramatic foreboding Lady Macbeth-y legal madness.



Now, if they could just figure out a way to integrate Denny Crane and Alan Shore into the mix...

That would be heaven....sheer heaven.

She won't be ignored

The first pics of Glenn Close (left) as "Nova-Prime" in the upcoming Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy have surfaced...



She's got quite and "up-do" there on her noggin.



Glenn plays the leader of this motley crew of unusual superheroes...



I don't know anything about this part of the Marvel Universe, but they've pulled together a pretty interesting group of actors for various parts:



Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation and Zero Dark Thirty) as Star-Lord



Zoe Saldana (Star Trek and Avatar) as Gamora



Dave Batista (WWE wrestler) as Drax the Destroyer.



Benicio del Toro as The Collector.



Michael Rooker as Yondu.



Lee Pace (Pushing Daisies and The Hobbit) as Ronan the Accuser.



Karen Gillan (Doctor Who) as Nebula.



And, although it's not "officially" confirmed..the word on the street (and "accidentally" earlier on his Facebook page) is that Vin Diesel is about to be announced as the voice for the tree character, Groot.

Let the "wooden acting" quips begin...

TV in Hell

If there is a Hell, I'm certain that the Emmy Awards ceremony that aired on Sunday would be playing on a continuos loop on every television set in the flame-domain thoughout eternity.

It was painful to watch right from the beginning and, like a bad kidney stone, became more unbearable as the three hour "event" passed into the night.

The only thing missing was Rob Lowe singing with Snow White again.

From the clueless and punchline-awareness-free reality show co-hosts, the badly photoshopped set pieces, the awkward "sock-it-to-me"/"Laugh-In" segment (poor Alan Sues and Dana Delany's dignity), Jeremy Piven's blathering acceptance speech, Josh Grobin's lengthy TV theme song medly, to the mind-numbing finale that focused on the winner of best reality show host...the pungent horse-hockey was piling on quicker than you could shovel it out of your brain.



The only glimmers of light in the night were Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey/ "30 Rock" winning several times, and Jean Smart and Glenn Close nabbing much-deserved awards before, I hope, rushing out immediately to drink the rest of the night's throbbing viewing pain away.

I don't care how much money they need to spend or who they have to sexually gratify to do it, but please, oh PLEASE, drive that truckload of Emmy production cash up to Ellen's house (or Jon Stewart's) and beg one of them to host again next year.

If nothing else, you could probably get Kathy Griffin to do it for scale and a nice hotel room (at least then we'd know the banter would be, if nothing else, memorable).

If the Emmys cared at all about any of us, they would do it.

Emmy Nominations

The funny Kristen Chenowith and Neil Patrick Harris got up early this morning to announce the Emmy Nominations.

They also ended up being nominated themselves, which was a nice surprise to each of them, as you'll see by the clip above. They both made the normally bland reading of the nominations a bit fun for a change.

I'm very happy that several of my favorites got nominated this year. People like Kathy Griffin, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Glenn Close, Jean Smart, Cynthia Nixon, Laura Dern, Tina Fey, Tim Conway, Ellen Burstyn, Sharon Gless, Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Steve Carell, Sally Field, Mary Louis-Parker, Judi Dench, Chandra Wilson, Candice Bergen, Dianne Wiest, Alfre Woodard, Laura Linney, Michael Emerson (Ben on "Lost") and James Spader.

I'm also happy to see that "The Office", "30 Rock", "Brothers and Sisters", "Amazing Race", "Extras", "Boston Legal" and "My Life on the D-List" were all nominated shows in their catagories.

I am VERY happy to see that the horrible remake of the movie "Sybil" didn't get anything.

I do love Jessica Lange, but I hope that she was able to collect a nice paycheck and then take a LONG vacation after that fiasco.

Here is the complete list of Emmy Nominations if you'd like to take a peek.

If only they had

Only in Norway could a TV show, Glyne Tider, manage to gather such an eclectic group of B-D-list "celebrities" to "sing" (and I use that term very loosely) the Beatles classic Let It Be.

Where else will you find Roger Moore, Tonya Harding, Jason Alexander, Ricki Lake, Huey Lewis, Dolph Lundgren, Corbin Bernsen, Glenn Close, Judd Nelson, Alfonso Ribeiero, George Wendt, AND Steve Guttenberg (and that's only in the first minute or two...it gets worse) coming together to sing on a virtual beach? There have to be over 100 celebrities in this thing...how did we not hear of this before?

Enjoy.



I think George Takei sums it up best...

M'lady Fingers

Glenn Close's upcoming movie, Albert Nobbs, looks very good. She definitely makes a convincingly odd, yet somewhat English-looking, older man.



Oscar, can you hear me?

I am Groot

The latest full trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy was released today and it's the best one yet…

Post by Guardians of the Galaxy.

Much more action-focused than the last one. Plus, we finally get to see Glenn Close in this trailer.

She wasn't going to be ignored, Star-Lord.