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Fox Hunt in the California Desert
Fox ends 'Ally McBeal' and 'The X-Files'
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN)
The Fox television network is canceling "Ally McBeal" and the "X-Files".
The network said the final episode of Ally McBeal will air May 20, ending a five-year run of the show.
The show's ratings have suffered a major decline this year. Monday's two-hour episode, despite heavy promotion, earned the series' worst numbers ever in the key 18-49 demographic.
Calista Flockhart became a star thanks to the show. Her character was an attorney in a quirky law firm that had a unisex bathroom and romantic relationships between the most unlikely characters. Ally herself was known for agonizing over her relationships. In one famous episode, her concern over her biological clock had her seeing visions of a dancing baby.
The X-Files series finale, which will be the show's 201st episode, will "wrap up many threads that we have developed through the years," Chris Carter said, adding it would be "a celebration of the series."
"A movie is a done deal," he said, adding that Duchovny and Anderson have agreed to star.
Fox Series 'Ally McBeal' to Go Off the Air in May
The Los Angeles Times, by PAUL BROWNFIELD
"Ally McBeal," which helped steer the Fox network brand away from its tabloid image and gave it some of the critical cachet shared by the more established broadcast television networks, will end its five-year run in May, the network announced late Wednesday.
The move means that News Corp.'s television operation will see the departure this spring of two of the biggest hit series in Fox's evolution, as "The X-Files" takes its final bow in May after nine years on the air.
Ratings for "Ally McBeal" have dropped off considerably from peak years. The series also had been under-performing in reruns on News Corp.'s FX cable network.
"Ally McBeal" ... appeared to find fresh legs when the show added Robert Downey Jr., in something of a casting coup, as a recurring character during the 2000-2001 season. It was Downey's first role after being released from Corcoran State Prison, where he had served time for violating probation terms set after previous drug arrests.
His pairing with Flockhart immediately sparked renewed interest in the show and garnered headlines. Two subsequent drug arrests for Downey, however, led Kelley to write him out of the show, at the end of last season.
Fox said the "Ally McBeal" series finale will air May 20. Kelley's relationship with the studio, meanwhile, continues.
TATUM O'NEAL IS BACK!!! SIE KOMMT ZURUCK!
We here at Hollywood Tattler are putting our bets on Tatum O'Neal to be the hot actress of 2002!
She will be playing the lead role of Camille in the forthcoming film THE SCOUNDREL'S WIFE, set in southern Louisiana circa 1942, along with Julian Sands and Tim Curry. The film is directed by Glen Pitre, who grew up in them there parts. The movie will put you in the mood to eat boiled crawfish and pecan tarts. Michelle Benoit, the director's wife, is co-scriptwriter! Don't throw a fit like John McEnroe, simply pay up the ten bucks and enjoy the flick. If you have a friend as messed up as Basquiat, pay his or her entrance too!
We have to admit here and now, our favorite film of the 1900s, was CIRCLE OF TWO, aka OBSESSION, in which two Scorpios showed the world what ecstatic levels sexual communion can reach, even without doing it. This was perhaps Tatum O'Neal's and Richard Burton's finest performance ever. We give this Jules Dassin film [the most admired director of Francois Truffaut], who also directed NAKED CITY and RIFIFI, two arms up touching the clouds in salute to a very fine ass film.
Please direct all your further enquiries to Bryan Adrian, publisher, at bryanadrian@onebox.com, but NEVER ON SUNDAY.
Vol. I, 2002
Sketch ABOVE by BILIANA KRAPTCHEVA, a 38 year old Bulgarian-Canadian artist currently living in Toronto, Canada / email address:
biliana@honson.com [she needs new projects, did you get the hint?]
drawing above by BILIANA KRAPTCHEVA
Disney's and "Hello Kitty's" Cultural DE-CONSTRUCTIONISTS came to Historic NYC Times Square ... and made it into an EMPORIUM OF VULGARITY, rivaled only by the ancient markets of a defeated Argos nation, unfit for Playwrights and human habitation! [but fit for the late Mayor Giuliani's only "constructive" legacy, billions of unsightly and useless scaffolds -- stuck like dog shit all over the main pedestrian NYC strolling areas, disfiguring nearly every doorway and building face in town!
Have you EVER seen anything so REALLY UGLY !!! Soon, the capital of Uzbekistan will have more charm [and more good theatre too].
Manhattan Theatre Club [MTC], long a holdout against the commercial theatre money pit system, ... loved for bestowing succor for decades to serious playwrights and actors, is now in bed with the Times Square Redevelopment Agencies, and probably the Edison Schools System too.
Watch out serious writers and actors! Get ready to land on friendlier territory, after you free fall from MTC, which is at this moment selling you out ... give us that pretty swan dive as you free fall to the pavement! Watch out for those Edison School bankers and lawyers as you pull yourself back up from the streets!
david e. kelley can't write ... and he knows it himself. So why does he even try?? What's wrong with just banking lots of money? NADA! But just don't jive all over our culture like some boney-assed kulture vulture!
"I never even in college thought writing was something I intended to do. I guess I probably had characters in my head as a kid but never thought I'd put them into prime time." --quote from David Kelley, New York Times, March 2, 1998
... [WE FULLY AGREE WITH MR. KELLEY'S OWN PERSONAL SELF-ASSESSMENT ... and we can suggest a few good creative writing classes at Encino community colleges for him to check into, where they might even bend backwards to let him enroll in some starter classes]
Critics gave a tongue-lashing that could make a Catholic school nun blush. David E. Kelley's new Fox drama about a raucous, if not exactly realistic, public high school drew the ire of the Washington Post, which called it a "predictable and punishing tirade." And the Boston Globe quoted real-life Beantown students and teachers, who promptly acknowledged,
"This is so fake."
DAVID E. KELLEY said in the New York Post, April 26, 2001: "We are wrapping up the stories on the final few episodes of ALLY MCBEAL for the season without Robert Downey Jr.
Robert Downey Jr. won a GOLDEN GLOBE for his portrayal of the love interest of a sexless middle aged working woman, portrayed by middle aged Calista Flockhart [37]. Without him on the show now, it is doubtful if the few ALLY MCBEAL viewers left, who tuned in only to see Robert Downey's charismatic performances, will ever return to any FOX television viewing!
from our news archives: [JUNE 20, 2001]: Robert Downey Jr., busted again, and dropped from Ally McBeal. Looks like Ally will have to do a lot more boring toilet scenes!
ADOPT A POSE:
Flockhart was quoted in a January 1999 interview as saying that she wanted "to have a family -- and I don't even have a man in my life."
Some critics don't believe the chemistry between Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe ... Proof of Life, or Proof of Fraud ... only the PR flaks know for sure ... click here ...
Meg Ryan says she DUMPED Russell Crowe because he was too clinging ... in the end, Meg reverted to "friendly terms" with her hubby, Dennis Quaid, after her Russell Crowe fiasco.
MARGI CLARKE
The inimitable Margi Clarke, of CORONATION STREET!!
What do these FOUR actresses have in common?? CLUE: We are NOT speaking of $$$$$$$ !
Peel away the skin, fluoresce the face, and what are you left with? Looks like ET!! Be VERY Careful!
BBRRRRRR! Sure gets cold singing toons and writing ditties in Alaska!
Has anyone seen new films with CAITLIN KELCH, the actress who in 1985 played Jessica Lange's much younger sister in "SWEET DREAMS," the melancholic Patsy Cline story?
The shock waves from the chain reaction of collapsing solar systems will reach Earth in 51 years!!
Francis Ford Coppola cut the Walter Hill original film from 125 minutes to about 85 minutes, as last minute producer/director, so it MUST be good, with such a master's hand in it. Over half a dozen writers gave their best, on and off, for nearly 10 years of development to make this film.
PLOT: the 22nd century medical ship crew lost most of their fuel in an attempt to answer a distress signal from a mining planet - or that they've got just a few hours to pull themselves out of a cosmic whirlpool
This film explores the ability of a ship to "dimension jump"; this can effectively cover light years in moments, provided the crew is safely sealed in protective capsules. Recombinant DNA disasters that can result from such jumps are exemplified in detail.
Persistent use of 1970s "sexy is good" philosophy of life, coupled to ultra-tolerant, on screen, inter-racial foreplay, and erotics, with no holds barred on free love between white, black, and hispanic. Refreshing!! Lots of "zero gravity sex"
A Ship's Captain working on his PhD in "Violence of Cartoons That Shaped Psyches of Entire Generations from 1942 to 2000," that have been banned in his 2200, i.e. (Robert Forster) works on his doctorate in anthropology, an analysis of 20th-century television cartoons and their reconstruction of our psychic patterns into aberrant behaviour.
Chief Medical Officer Kaela [Bassett] ascertains that Troy [sole survivor from a mining planet who sent out a time-bending, multi-dimensional SOS in the name of his father, Basset's former macho x-boyfriend] is undergoing weird genetic restructuring under his skin. Troy's bones are strengthening themselves, his muscle mass is growing and, as Kaela and her crewmates will soon find, every injury Troy sustains is rapidly wiped away by cellular regeneration. Troy is also pretty
creepy, repeatedly changing his story about what actually happened aboard
the space station and the fuel-gathering operation on a planet below it.
James Spader is very buff, more than the young Clint Eastwood; with an after-hours visit to Kaela's quarters, and a bottle of aged pear brandy in hand, she learns at zero gravity just how buff Spader is buff!
The SCRIPT for "Supernova" is heavily loaded with accurate technical jargon
OUR ENEMY: a cocooned "isotropic" explosive ninth-dimensional matter encased in a three-dimensional shell that had been buried by some concerned alien race, in the core of a rogue ice moon, to hide it from all cosmic contact so that it could do no further damage.
This cocooned "isotropic" ninth dimensional matter is encased in a turquoise colored opaque gel that seethes in Mediterranean blue eddies within its phallus shaped cylinder. The cylinder walls are permeable to human finger and head penetration, even though visually the walls appear impenetrable.
The predatory, supra-solar system species, that cocooned this "isotropic" ninth dimensional matter into an avante-garde glass capsule, is "Smart as God," Kaela says, "and a lot less nice."
The artifact starts doing its dirty work, or more precisely, inspiring humans to do all or most of its machinations. That is, Troy, and to a lesser extent Yerzy [Lou Diamond Phillips], lash out in frenzies of violence to protect their narcissistic obsessions with and attachments to the artifact, and, by extension, to their own idealized selves.
This flick is super ionized with MEGATONS of originality!
Benj (Wilson Cruz) plays chess with his true love, the ship's computer, named
"Sweetie" (Vanessa Marshall), who is not "programmed to kill nor harm people". She must watch Benj being terminated by the alien-possessed, device-driven Troy, in a feeble attempt to understand the meaning of death before Benj is killed in cold blood. Benji pleads with her, begging for his life, to shut off Troy's air supply. She repeats her orders to do no harm to nor to kill a human. Benji then implores Sweetie to "simulate I can no longer play chess with you." She grasps new concepts a bit too late and Benji is jettisoned into deep space, dead. Sweetie reported his death to the remaining crew members not yet dispatched by Troy.
This film presents the most interesting and conceivably "real" spaceship design ever presented by Hollywood for intergalactic travel. Rent the video yourself, SOON, and see the ship traverse time and space ...
LIUQUER to kill for! That 35 year old pear brandy, with intelligent explanation of how the large pear got into the bottle. Wish I had some myself, the pear and the brandy.
Troy (Peter "dollface" Facinelli); of course he has in fact been possessed by an alien species bent on universal conquest! The crew, however, doesn't know this at first and we
get to watch them goof off a little more while their "dimension drive" reheats for
the trip back before they are one-by-one executed by Troy and jettisoned into orbit as a "rogue human body".
SYNOPSIS: The Nightingale medical ship receives a distress call from an abandoned mining colony on a distant moon. After "dimension jumping" hundreds of light years to the site of the call, the ship finds itself damaged and in the gravitational path of an unstable blue giant supernova.
At movie's end, the supernova chain reaction explosion is "triggered" by an alien, avante-garde, lava lamp device, which ignites whole solar systems and their suns as a food source of "molecular elements," for their survival. The enormous energy appetites of this alien race that devised the "lava lamp," are larger than a giant shark's in a small YWCA swimming pool. The device that is one of the main characters in the film, a "being" that is telepathically sentient.
The Coppola re-written script makes an "angel" of this supernova gamma chain reaction because "it is a life creating cloud, expanding through space and rejuvenating and replenishing the mysterious units and building blocks of life."
COME 'ON COPPOLA! You expect us to buy this line of bat guano??
The shock waves from the chain reaction of collapsing solar systems will reach Earth in 51 years, a voice over announces, after having destroyed millions of other solar systems en route to Earth and our sun. Will there be a sequel?
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Interview with the "Actress Who Fell To Earth", THERESA RUSSELL ... [click here]
MEG RYAN says: "... something to do for a leisure activity? Dennis is a fly fisherman. I write and I read. I like a
very leisurely, sedentary small life. I'm a mom, y'know. There's not a lot of leisure time."
click here to read about the times Meg and Dennis Quaid REALLY clicked!! The flesh and bones of it all ...
click here for HOT NEW SPEC FILMSCRIPT
"SUPERNOVA" 
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click here for color photos of CALLISTE island and a rundown of the ancient history, tying it to GREENLAND, recent host for a GIANT INTER-GALLACTIC METEOR
click here for interview with AL BIELEK, survivor of the USS ELDRIDGE battleship that disappeared into a WORM HOLE -- this is NOT a movie!