No... don't break up Square and Nintendo! It was painful enough in real life!
Massively Multiplayer: Gaming In The New Millennium
- Thread starter RySenkari
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Aw man, it's sad to see Squaresoft part ways with Nintendo. I do, however, look forward to seeing what Nintendo comes up with to replace it.
Also, Final Fantasy movie? I'd love to see how that plays out.
Spring 2006 (Part 5) - The 2005-06 TV Season + Starlet Update
(Here's the update reviewing the 2005-06 network television season! We will begin covering individual cable shows in the 2006-07 update, when there will finally be enough notable ones to discuss in depth.)
ABC:
The continued critical and ratings success of Lane, which narrowly beat out American Idol by a fraction of a ratings point to remain broadcast television's highest rated show for the third straight year, continues to be the biggest story at the ABC network, which remains #1 on TV. However, a trio of hit rookie shows also made their mark to ensure that the network will likely remain on top for the rest of the decade. Fragment, a show penned by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (who worked on Lost around this time IOTL), becomes a massive sci-fi hit and would employ the "flashback/present" formula that would later be employed on their show Once Upon A Time. It features a young genius computer scientist who develops an AI program that he slowly falls in love with, only to learn that the AI program has predicted a massive natural disaster in the future and can in fact predict other disasters coming much sooner. It has elements of films like TRON, and features some of the best special effects ever seen on broadcast TV up to this point. Another new show, Transplant, is a comedy starring Tracey Ullman as a recent immigrant from the United Kingdom to the United States. It features a wild cast of characters and earned Ullman an Emmy nomination. The other big new ABC show, Dancing With The Stars, has proven to be the year's biggest new reality hit, featuring celebrities performing in a ballroom dancing competition. ABC has also benefited from continued strong performances by Desperate Housewives, Horizon, and Sheffield, among others, and is showing absolutely no signs of slowing down.
CBS:
Though many of CBS' long-time hits saw sharp ratings declines, including shows like Stone and the venerable Mighty Megan, the network was bolstered by strong debuts from a comedy and a drama respectively. Jimbob and James, starring comedian Larry the Cable Guy and longtime actor Dan Bucatinsky, was the surprise hit of the season. Jimbob (played by Larry the Cable Guy) and James (played by Bucatinsky) are two brothers separated at birth, with Jimbob ending up as a surprisingly successful farm owner and James ending up as a failed city lawyer. Rather than poking fun at the urban or rural side of America, the show pokes fun at both, but in a friendly way, with neither character being shown as better than the other, and proves to be popular amongst all demographics, ending up as the year's highest rated new show. Then there's Nature Of The Beast, a police procedural that CBS placed after Heart Of Darkness. The show features a detective who must team up with a troubled but brilliant young woman (played by Christina Ricci) to solve crimes. Though the woman has never committed an actual crime, she's been tested by psychologists who scored her at a "perfect 100" on a so-called "serial killer scale" that predicts the likelyhood that someone will commit murder in the future. Her dark and twisted sense of humor provides the show with some of its most memorable moments, and she becomes one of the most iconic new television characters of the year, as fans ask themselves "is this the week she finally snaps?" CBS has few shows on the year's top 25, but has seen its ratings decline only modestly over the previous season.
NBC:
NBC has seen better days. The network didn't have a single show finish in the top 18, with The Ultimate Challenge being its highest rated show (despite a steep decline in its third season). There's a bit of a silver lining: a few returning shows such as Civility and Law and Order: SVU finished solidly, and there were a pair of new shows that finished just inside the top 25: The Quizmaster, a high-stakes quiz-based gameshow hosted by Alex Borstein, and Startup, a reality show similar to OTL's The Apprentice in which host Mark Cuban attempts to find the next great tech innovator. Both shows performed quite well, with The Quizmaster getting massive buzz after a contestant won $5 million after risking it all on a single incredibly difficult question. But despite a lineup of solid shows, NBC is clearly in decline. There's hope on the horizon: the NFL is returning in the fall, and the network is also planning to debut a high-concept superhero show created by former X-Files writers M. Night Shyamalan and Vince Gilligan...
FOX:
Without American Idol and House, FOX would be in even worse shape than NBC. Their animated shows continue to be consistent performers on Sunday nights, just not strong ones, and they only had one real breakout hit: the action show Score, which chronicles the exploits of a daring group of daredevil criminals and features a dramatic, serialized storyline. FOX can't even push American Idol to #1 overall: despite continued climbing ratings each season, the show can't smash through the ceiling known as Lane. The network is trying a heavy overhaul of its schedule in 2006, nixing reality shows entirely (save for one, a cooking competition show featuring Gordon Ramsay) and going for broke with more high-concept dramas in the vein of Score and Firefly (which continues to pull in acceptable ratings on Wednesday nights).
-
Top 25 Rated Network Television Programs Of 2005-06:
1. Lane (ABC)
2. American Idol (Tuesday) (FOX)
3. American Idol (Wednesday (FOX)
4. Desperate Housewives (ABC)
5. Jimbob And James (CBS)
6. Monday Night Football (ABC)
7. House (FOX)
8. Fragment (ABC)
9. Heart Of Darkness (CBS)
10. Dancing With The Stars (ABC)
11. Nature Of The Beast (CBS)
12. Sheffield (ABC)
13. Horizon (ABC)
14. Road To Hollywood (ABC)
15. The Standard (ABC)
16. Survivor (CBS)
17. Transplant (ABC)
18. Score (FOX)
19. The Ultimate Challenge (NBC)
20. Mighty Megan (CBS)
21. Civility (NBC)
22. Lionheart (NBC)
23. Law And Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC)
24. The Quizmaster (NBC)
25. Startup (NBC)
-
AvatarSpirit.net: We're pleased to bring you this interview with the young actress who will be joining the cast of Avatar: The Last Airbender for its second season. Her name is Taylor Swift, and her credits include shows such as Law And Order: Special Victims Unit and Lane, as well as 2004's film Action Park in which she had a brief but memorable role as a young guest to the park who goes on a go-kart rampage. Thank you for talking to us today!
Taylor Swift: Absolutely!
AvatarSpirit.net: So how did you end up with the role of Toph?
Swift: Well, I have my agent to thank for that, I've been wanting to do voice-over for a while but I hadn't been able to book any parts. It's actually surprisingly competitive, and I wasn't able to book anything I tried out for, but my agent said to give this one a try. This is before the show even came out, so I didn't even know what I was really getting into! I went in to audition and the show and the role were described to me and then I did the best I could and a few weeks later I learned I'd gotten the part!
AvatarSpirit.net: Are you enjoying voiceover so far?
Swift: It's really fun. It's acting, but without the camera, you still have to use your full body and all your skills even if it's just your voice. Actually, there's parts of it that are more challenging because of that, because you have to really put everything you have into your voice to convey all the emotions properly. I had experience with it because I love to sing too, and so I'm used to conveying all that emotion with my voice, but you have to imagine everything that's going on too, you have to put yourself in the scene without any of the characters there with you, so it's definitely more of a challenge.
AvatarSpirit.net: And could you tell us a bit about your character? No spoilers, obviously, but whatever you can tell us.
Swift: Right, well, Toph is a 13-year-old Earthbender girl. She's really strong-willed and really tough. She looks a little bit fragile and she actually has a secret, but I can't quite spoil that yet until the episode airs, but you do learn it right away and the characters do too. It's the kind of thing you really wouldn't expect about her, but it actually makes her all the more powerful in my opinion. She's very brash, she says what's on her mind and isn't always the best with...manners, I suppose? I really loved playing her because it let me explore a side of myself that I don't get to let out very often, which is always a lot of fun!
(...)
AvatarSpirit.net: Besides Avatar, what other projects are you working on?
Swift: I'm in a movie coming up that's called Honor Student, which Hillary Duff is going to be in too so I'm really excited about that since she's kind of an idol of mine. I'm trying to get more voiceover roles, and I'm also spending a lot of time writing songs and playing music. I just got signed to a record deal, so hopefully I'll have an album ready to go sometime next year. I've been really working hard on a lot of different projects, plus school, so there's a lot going on for me right now!
AvatarSpirit.net: Can you tell us what the album's going to be focused on?
Swift: Well, before I started doing acting I was considering a music career, I was really into country music and thought about going to Nashville, but once the acting roles started coming in I had to put that on hold. I've been doing more pop stuff and even a little bit of rock, but my favorite genre to perform is still country, so I think the album is going to be primarily country with some genre fusion here and there, an experimental kind of thing. I'm learning a lot from a lot of different people, so the album will be a reflection of that too.
AvatarSpirit.net: Will you be focusing more on music or acting in the future?
Swift: Wherever life takes me!
-from an interview posted on AvatarSpirit.net on June 22, 2006
-
JD Roth: Troubled actress Lindsay Lohan has been spotted in numerous places around Hollywood with the actor Robert Downey Jr., seeming to confirm rumors that the two are now dating.
Maria Menounos: The two were recently seen coming out of a nightclub, making their way to a limo while avoiding questions from reporters.
Roth: Downey just finished a one-year stint in federal prison for possession of cocaine, while Lindsay Lohan was recently given a $700 fine and 200 hours of community service after being arrested for drunk driving. Lohan recently starred in hit films such as Mean Girls and A Well-Spent Summer, and is also set to star in the action/horror film Intrusion this November. Despite Lohan's recent legal troubles, the film is still expected to be one of the biggest hits of the holiday season, and director Michael Bay stood by Lohan, stating in a recent interview: "She's going through a rough time, but haven't all of us? Give Lindsay her space, leave her alone."
Menounos: Robert Downey Jr., on the other hand, hasn't appeared in a major Hollywood film in four years, with numerous directors and producers considering him too much of a liability and too risky to work with. He was once considered one of the most talented and promising actors in Hollywood, but a string of arrests and jail stints have left him somewhat infamous in the industry, with many seeing him as a cautionary tale.
Roth: The aforementioned Michael Bay has also mentioned Downey at times, and is one of the few directors who have expressed a willingness to give him another chance in the industry.
Menounos: It's unknown when Downey and Lohan began dating, but some people close to the two have expressed worry that they'll get into worse trouble together than they would have gotten into separately.
-from the June 26, 2006 episode of Entertainment Tonight
ABC:
The continued critical and ratings success of Lane, which narrowly beat out American Idol by a fraction of a ratings point to remain broadcast television's highest rated show for the third straight year, continues to be the biggest story at the ABC network, which remains #1 on TV. However, a trio of hit rookie shows also made their mark to ensure that the network will likely remain on top for the rest of the decade. Fragment, a show penned by Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (who worked on Lost around this time IOTL), becomes a massive sci-fi hit and would employ the "flashback/present" formula that would later be employed on their show Once Upon A Time. It features a young genius computer scientist who develops an AI program that he slowly falls in love with, only to learn that the AI program has predicted a massive natural disaster in the future and can in fact predict other disasters coming much sooner. It has elements of films like TRON, and features some of the best special effects ever seen on broadcast TV up to this point. Another new show, Transplant, is a comedy starring Tracey Ullman as a recent immigrant from the United Kingdom to the United States. It features a wild cast of characters and earned Ullman an Emmy nomination. The other big new ABC show, Dancing With The Stars, has proven to be the year's biggest new reality hit, featuring celebrities performing in a ballroom dancing competition. ABC has also benefited from continued strong performances by Desperate Housewives, Horizon, and Sheffield, among others, and is showing absolutely no signs of slowing down.
CBS:
Though many of CBS' long-time hits saw sharp ratings declines, including shows like Stone and the venerable Mighty Megan, the network was bolstered by strong debuts from a comedy and a drama respectively. Jimbob and James, starring comedian Larry the Cable Guy and longtime actor Dan Bucatinsky, was the surprise hit of the season. Jimbob (played by Larry the Cable Guy) and James (played by Bucatinsky) are two brothers separated at birth, with Jimbob ending up as a surprisingly successful farm owner and James ending up as a failed city lawyer. Rather than poking fun at the urban or rural side of America, the show pokes fun at both, but in a friendly way, with neither character being shown as better than the other, and proves to be popular amongst all demographics, ending up as the year's highest rated new show. Then there's Nature Of The Beast, a police procedural that CBS placed after Heart Of Darkness. The show features a detective who must team up with a troubled but brilliant young woman (played by Christina Ricci) to solve crimes. Though the woman has never committed an actual crime, she's been tested by psychologists who scored her at a "perfect 100" on a so-called "serial killer scale" that predicts the likelyhood that someone will commit murder in the future. Her dark and twisted sense of humor provides the show with some of its most memorable moments, and she becomes one of the most iconic new television characters of the year, as fans ask themselves "is this the week she finally snaps?" CBS has few shows on the year's top 25, but has seen its ratings decline only modestly over the previous season.
NBC:
NBC has seen better days. The network didn't have a single show finish in the top 18, with The Ultimate Challenge being its highest rated show (despite a steep decline in its third season). There's a bit of a silver lining: a few returning shows such as Civility and Law and Order: SVU finished solidly, and there were a pair of new shows that finished just inside the top 25: The Quizmaster, a high-stakes quiz-based gameshow hosted by Alex Borstein, and Startup, a reality show similar to OTL's The Apprentice in which host Mark Cuban attempts to find the next great tech innovator. Both shows performed quite well, with The Quizmaster getting massive buzz after a contestant won $5 million after risking it all on a single incredibly difficult question. But despite a lineup of solid shows, NBC is clearly in decline. There's hope on the horizon: the NFL is returning in the fall, and the network is also planning to debut a high-concept superhero show created by former X-Files writers M. Night Shyamalan and Vince Gilligan...
FOX:
Without American Idol and House, FOX would be in even worse shape than NBC. Their animated shows continue to be consistent performers on Sunday nights, just not strong ones, and they only had one real breakout hit: the action show Score, which chronicles the exploits of a daring group of daredevil criminals and features a dramatic, serialized storyline. FOX can't even push American Idol to #1 overall: despite continued climbing ratings each season, the show can't smash through the ceiling known as Lane. The network is trying a heavy overhaul of its schedule in 2006, nixing reality shows entirely (save for one, a cooking competition show featuring Gordon Ramsay) and going for broke with more high-concept dramas in the vein of Score and Firefly (which continues to pull in acceptable ratings on Wednesday nights).
-
Top 25 Rated Network Television Programs Of 2005-06:
1. Lane (ABC)
2. American Idol (Tuesday) (FOX)
3. American Idol (Wednesday (FOX)
4. Desperate Housewives (ABC)
5. Jimbob And James (CBS)
6. Monday Night Football (ABC)
7. House (FOX)
8. Fragment (ABC)
9. Heart Of Darkness (CBS)
10. Dancing With The Stars (ABC)
11. Nature Of The Beast (CBS)
12. Sheffield (ABC)
13. Horizon (ABC)
14. Road To Hollywood (ABC)
15. The Standard (ABC)
16. Survivor (CBS)
17. Transplant (ABC)
18. Score (FOX)
19. The Ultimate Challenge (NBC)
20. Mighty Megan (CBS)
21. Civility (NBC)
22. Lionheart (NBC)
23. Law And Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC)
24. The Quizmaster (NBC)
25. Startup (NBC)
-
AvatarSpirit.net: We're pleased to bring you this interview with the young actress who will be joining the cast of Avatar: The Last Airbender for its second season. Her name is Taylor Swift, and her credits include shows such as Law And Order: Special Victims Unit and Lane, as well as 2004's film Action Park in which she had a brief but memorable role as a young guest to the park who goes on a go-kart rampage. Thank you for talking to us today!
Taylor Swift: Absolutely!
AvatarSpirit.net: So how did you end up with the role of Toph?
Swift: Well, I have my agent to thank for that, I've been wanting to do voice-over for a while but I hadn't been able to book any parts. It's actually surprisingly competitive, and I wasn't able to book anything I tried out for, but my agent said to give this one a try. This is before the show even came out, so I didn't even know what I was really getting into! I went in to audition and the show and the role were described to me and then I did the best I could and a few weeks later I learned I'd gotten the part!
AvatarSpirit.net: Are you enjoying voiceover so far?
Swift: It's really fun. It's acting, but without the camera, you still have to use your full body and all your skills even if it's just your voice. Actually, there's parts of it that are more challenging because of that, because you have to really put everything you have into your voice to convey all the emotions properly. I had experience with it because I love to sing too, and so I'm used to conveying all that emotion with my voice, but you have to imagine everything that's going on too, you have to put yourself in the scene without any of the characters there with you, so it's definitely more of a challenge.
AvatarSpirit.net: And could you tell us a bit about your character? No spoilers, obviously, but whatever you can tell us.
Swift: Right, well, Toph is a 13-year-old Earthbender girl. She's really strong-willed and really tough. She looks a little bit fragile and she actually has a secret, but I can't quite spoil that yet until the episode airs, but you do learn it right away and the characters do too. It's the kind of thing you really wouldn't expect about her, but it actually makes her all the more powerful in my opinion. She's very brash, she says what's on her mind and isn't always the best with...manners, I suppose? I really loved playing her because it let me explore a side of myself that I don't get to let out very often, which is always a lot of fun!
(...)
AvatarSpirit.net: Besides Avatar, what other projects are you working on?
Swift: I'm in a movie coming up that's called Honor Student, which Hillary Duff is going to be in too so I'm really excited about that since she's kind of an idol of mine. I'm trying to get more voiceover roles, and I'm also spending a lot of time writing songs and playing music. I just got signed to a record deal, so hopefully I'll have an album ready to go sometime next year. I've been really working hard on a lot of different projects, plus school, so there's a lot going on for me right now!
AvatarSpirit.net: Can you tell us what the album's going to be focused on?
Swift: Well, before I started doing acting I was considering a music career, I was really into country music and thought about going to Nashville, but once the acting roles started coming in I had to put that on hold. I've been doing more pop stuff and even a little bit of rock, but my favorite genre to perform is still country, so I think the album is going to be primarily country with some genre fusion here and there, an experimental kind of thing. I'm learning a lot from a lot of different people, so the album will be a reflection of that too.
AvatarSpirit.net: Will you be focusing more on music or acting in the future?
Swift: Wherever life takes me!
-from an interview posted on AvatarSpirit.net on June 22, 2006
-
JD Roth: Troubled actress Lindsay Lohan has been spotted in numerous places around Hollywood with the actor Robert Downey Jr., seeming to confirm rumors that the two are now dating.
Maria Menounos: The two were recently seen coming out of a nightclub, making their way to a limo while avoiding questions from reporters.
Roth: Downey just finished a one-year stint in federal prison for possession of cocaine, while Lindsay Lohan was recently given a $700 fine and 200 hours of community service after being arrested for drunk driving. Lohan recently starred in hit films such as Mean Girls and A Well-Spent Summer, and is also set to star in the action/horror film Intrusion this November. Despite Lohan's recent legal troubles, the film is still expected to be one of the biggest hits of the holiday season, and director Michael Bay stood by Lohan, stating in a recent interview: "She's going through a rough time, but haven't all of us? Give Lindsay her space, leave her alone."
Menounos: Robert Downey Jr., on the other hand, hasn't appeared in a major Hollywood film in four years, with numerous directors and producers considering him too much of a liability and too risky to work with. He was once considered one of the most talented and promising actors in Hollywood, but a string of arrests and jail stints have left him somewhat infamous in the industry, with many seeing him as a cautionary tale.
Roth: The aforementioned Michael Bay has also mentioned Downey at times, and is one of the few directors who have expressed a willingness to give him another chance in the industry.
Menounos: It's unknown when Downey and Lohan began dating, but some people close to the two have expressed worry that they'll get into worse trouble together than they would have gotten into separately.
-from the June 26, 2006 episode of Entertainment Tonight
A superheroes show by Gillian and shamlayn , something just would feel like a equivalent, it can end up anything...
I don't know how to feel about Taylor Swift playing toph. On one hand, I could see her playing someone like katara or ty Lee. On the other, maybe working avatar will give her something that could keep her from having the crap romances she's know for iotl.
Will the Shyamalan superhero show feature elements of OTL Unbreakable and Split?
Those two movies are essentially adapted piecemeal into Powers as the seasons go on.
They'd naturally need to recast David Dunn and Elijah Price for the series. Willis and Jackson are too big for a TV series. Jams McAvoy could still work for Kevin. I'm thinking that Elijah "Mister Glass" Price could serve as a mentor for Dunn and potentially other superheroes for a season before his secret is revealed.
Yeah, figured it would be a good fit in the update, though I was going to wait until the 2006 film summary to give you a shoutout (or did you have your own update post planned for it?). But yeah, Honor Student is Unknown's film idea.
The events of the films won't go EXACTLY the same, but yeah, Mr. Glass will show up. I'm thinking he'll be played by Bryan Cranston.
As for Kevin, let's just say this time around he bites off a bit more than he can chew with the three girls he kidnaps *cough*theyallhavesuperpowers*cough*
Ah, okay then, I'll summarize it in the 2006 year end movie post then.
Makes sense. I picture Glass being like "Harrison Welles"/Reverse Flash from the OTL current Flash series. Namely a seemingly kindly mentor who turns out to have sinister motives. Who would play Dunn? I think Jackie Earle Haley could work.
Though naturally the reveal of their superpowers would be a surprise even to them.
We'll see. I think a brief summary of early Powers episodes will be part of the 2006-07 TV update.
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