Video Runway

If you’re interested in submitting a film for Lifetime Movie Network’s Every Woman’s Film Competition, you better get cracking because the deadline is July 8, 2008.  The grand prize is $5,000 in cash and valuable exposure for a talented woman filmmaker.

According to the Lifetime website:

If you win this competition, your movie will not only be viewed by celebrity judges but will also be shown at the Hamptons Film Festival and the Hollywood Reporter Women in Entertainment Breakfast — and you’ll be attending both events as the special guest.

After quoting the disgraceful statistic that “women made up only 15% of all directors, executive producers, writers, cinematographers and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films,” the website had this to say:

Lifetime Movie Network — the only movie channel dedicated to women and the #2 network for women, second only to Lifetime — is working to change those statistics by offering you, the next generation of female filmmakers, the chance to be discovered.

Now if they can just get some of the males in Hollywood to hire some of that female talent they’d really be doing something.

I’ve seen the first two episodes of Showtime’s “Secret Diary Of A Call Girl,” starring Billie Piper and for something that was touted as a sexy romp in the call girl trade, it doesn’t deliver.   Piper plays “Belle” an expensive escort who loves sex, money and the power of having her customers at her mercy.  “Escort, hooker, prostitute, whore.  I don’t care what you call me,” she says.  “That’s just semantics.”

Though it’s supposed to be a comedy, it didn’t make me laugh.  Though it’s supposed to be an exclusive look into the “glamorous” life of the sex trade, it didn’t feel very exclusive, or for that matter very exciting.  Sure, Belle gives us tips of the trade like she uses men’s deodorant because, “a professional never lets her client leave smelling of woman.”

Why does she do it?  “I love sex and I love money.  And what I really like is being my own boss.  Or pretty much my own boss.”  Her boss is an “agent” who vets all her clients and takes a cut for the privilege.

Belle’s normal life is as Hannah, a supposed legal secretary, with a clueless boyfriend and family.  And Belle is very careful to keep pure, sweet Hannah from her impure alter ego.

The show is only half an hour and it’s shot in a kind of washed out haze.  Belle’s oh, so knowing asides to the camera are too smug for words and they only make me want to see her slapped down a peg.  Or Two.  Or three.

Maybe by the end of the series run, the clueless boyfriend and family might catch on to Belle’s act and things may then really heat up.

Your choices for online TV viewing just got wider.  As of today, ABC shows like “Lost,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” and “Ugly Betty” will be available at the online video site Veoh.

According to the ABC Press Release:

Veoh will also offer select short-form programming from ABC via an embedded short-form player, which will launch on the site later this year. In addition, Veoh now features highlights from major sporting events through a multi-sport embedded ESPN video player, as well as original ESPN programming, including “SportsCenter Right Now” — a twice-daily capsule of top sports stories, highlights and breaking news — and clips from ESPN programs such as “Mike and Mike in the Morning,” “Pardon the Interruption” and “Around the Horn.”

After I told a friend of mine about this news he said he’s seriously considering dropping his cable service, since there’s so much he can watch online for free.

I’m not ready to go that far.  After all, as much as I hate writing out that monthly check to the cable company, it’s a little premature to be pulling the plug altogether.  But since my friend is getting most of his sports from ESPN360 and now a lot more of his primetime programming online, I envy him the money he’s going to save by cutting out cable all together.

There were three fabulous moments from last Friday’s Daytime Emmys. The first was Tyra Banks’ win for Best Informative Talk Show and her strident acceptance speech.

Her Emmy clip was about that famous, very unflattering tabloid bathing suit photo from last year.

And though the YouTube clip omits the end—the part where she tells the tabloids to “kiss her big fat ass!”—this clip was what led up to it.

Then when she won her Emmy, she got up on stage, thanked Oprah and her Momma—in that order—and then said when someone tries to belittle your dreams:

“I want you to tell them to kiss your dimply, flat, juicy, bootylicious, skinny, jiggly, saggy…FAT ASS!”

Loved it!

The second best moment of the night was when Kristoff St. John won as Outstanding Supporting Actor for his role of Neil Winters on “The Young and the Restless.”  He’s one of those actors that’s a backbone of the show and it was nice to see him recognized for the second time after all these years.

And speaking of being recognized after all these years, the third high point of the night was when Jeanne Cooper—that’s right the fabulous, older than fire veteran—won as Outstanding Lead Actress.

What a shocker!

It was her first win and she looked sincerely stunned. The first thing she said? “I bet you thought I had died.”  Then she facetiously railed against High Def—the bane of actors and actresses with more than one wrinkle.  She concluded with, “I love you all.  What a great profession.  God bless.  Stay alive, stay well.”

Talk about another “Young and the Restless” backbone.  Congratulations!

You can see all the Daytime Emmy results on the Daytime Emmy website.

Fox is going to rerun the entire first season of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chornicles” in August over four consecutive nights.

Starring Lena Headey as Sarah Connor, the show did well during its freshman season and though I wasn’t able to keep up with every episode, the ones I saw, I liked.  I’ll be able to fill in the gaps starting August 10th-13th and then when the season ending finale airs Sunday August 24th.

“The Sarah Connor Chronicles” follows Sarah Connor and her son John (Thomas Dekker) as they try to prevent the rise of the precursors of the terminators.  Throw in another terminator (Summer Glau) disguised as a teen sent to protect John and the series is action packed.

The second season of “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” starts Monday September 8th.

After three of fall’s high profile TV pilots were leaked this week, there’s now some speculation in the blogosphere that these “leaks” were deliberate publicity stunts by Fox, ABC and HBO to stir up some pre-fall buzz.

The shows in question are J.J. Abrams’ “Fringe,”  David E. Kelley’s “Life On Mars,” and Alan Ball’s “True Blood.”

I’d say the networks aren’t above doing a little leaking for publicity’s sake. And I think the biggest clue is all three of these shows fall within the sci/fi-horror-metaphysical drama type of show that span fervent and loyal viewers who can be counted on to spread the word about something they like.  These are the same viewers who are still trying to save “Jericho” and “Twin Peaks.” Well, maybe not “Twin Peaks,” but you get the idea.

However, as someone who sometimes falls into that category myself, I resent being toyed with.  Being used as a pawn in the great TV conglomerate machine.  Being tempted and then tossed aside.  Being…I wonder if I can still get a glimpse of that “Fringe” episode?

Sigh…what can I say?  For the right price, I can be had.

I’m going to have to be very careful how I write this post, because if you know anything about the current battle going on between bloggers and the Associated Press, I could get into big trouble with the big AP if I don’t word this post just right.

That’s because this post is based on an AP article I read, via Yahoo, via TVTattle.  Last week the AP cracked down on a whole bunch of bloggers because they quoted their articles—with the appropriate links and credit—but they’re not part of the AP licensing network.  In other words, the AP doesn’t see any money from them.  The bloggers are fighting back and boycotting AP articles.

So to put quotes from an AP article right now in a blog post, you’re kind of taking your blogging life into your hands, but what the hell.  You only live once.

Anyway…back to the topic of this post.  According to an AP article “70 Sikh protesters” were arrested in Mumbai after they trashed an MTV office, breaking furniture and smashing windows.

The problem?  A poster promoting the MTV reality series, “On The Job2″ which showed a Sikh girl massaging a man.  In the Sikh culture that’s a no no and evidently highly offensive.  No one was hurt in the fracas and eventually the protesters were “released on bail” according to the AP article.

I’m not a Sikh and I haven’t seen the poster, so I don’t know if the protesters reactions were warranted or not.  But I will say, I’d like to take a baseball bat to the BET offices over some of their videos and the highly offensive images of black women they project.

If that poster in India was anything like those videos here, those 70 Sikhs and I are in total agreement.

Veoh, the online video website that’s determined to give YouTube and Hulu a run for their money have added some new features in the last couple of months. There’s now a Friend Update feature where you can find out what your Veoh friends are up to. What videos they’re watching, uploading, commenting on, and rating.

On the Veoh homepage, all you do is click on the Friends Update tab, right below the search box and you can automatically find out exactly what your friends at Veoh have been up to.

Since I only have one friend at Veoh, this guy Dimitry who’s part of the Veoh staff, he’s the only one I get messages from.

Recently added TV shows include CBS’s new 70’s suburban swingers drama, “Swingtown” and MTV’s reality show “A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila.”

You can also now watch “The Late Show With David Letterman” monologues and top ten lists.  This should all be enough to keep you busy for quite a while.

As you probably know by now Tim Russert, host of NBC’s “Meet The Press” died last Friday of a heart attack. He was only 58 years old and is survived by his wife Maureen, his son Luke and his father “Big Russ.” I watched the breaking news coverage last Friday and was saddened by several things.

One, that the world lost someone so young, two, that the journalism world lost someone who was so good at what he did and three, that a family lost a husband, father and son, who still had so much more life to be lived.

I watched a lot of the televised tributes to Russert over the weekend and he seems to have been a man with a passion for life, but especially for his job.  He took the responsibility of a journalist very seriously and from what his colleagues said, always tried to be tough but fair.

If you ever watched “Meet The Press” you’d have to agree.  Whether they were republican or democrat, liberal or conservative, guests got the “tough but fair” Russert treatment.  He’d ask the questions you at home were thinking about, and if the questions weren’t answered, he’d push the guest until he got one.

That’s what made Russert the best interviewer on television and the one every politician knew they had to face if they were ever to be taken seriously.

He’ll be sorely missed.

Is anybody else as sick of Katherine Heigl as I am? All of a sudden she’s become the de facto star of “Grey’s Anatomy” because she starred in a couple of moderately successful romantic comedies—”Knocked Up” and “27 Dresses” and everyone in Hollywood is touting her as this year’s it girl.

Well now word comes that she took herself out of Emmy contention this year because she doesn’t think her role of Izzie Stevens was worthy of Emmy consideration. As Meg at Bitten and Bound says:

The actress is clearly unhappy with her reduced story line in the weekly scripts that have been written for Season 4. Logic would suggest that last years Emmy winner would get a juiced up script to match her proven acting chops. Heigl’s role this year was considerably diminished and she has decided not to hold back in making a statement that is bound to cause the upper echelon at ABC to see red.

I’d bet ABC and executive producer Shonda Rhimes. What do you want to bet next season Izzie Stevens decides she needs to join Doctors Without Borders and work in the farthest reaches of Africa?  She really won’t have to worry about being in Emmy contention then, will she?