Season's greetings from Kate Flannery! The Office presents its new, one-hour Christmas episode this week!Christmas is coming, Christmas is coming! The Office Christmas episode is twice as nice! No, I am not referring to my boobs. (It was last season's "Christmas Party" episode when the drunken Meredith went topless in Michael's office.) No, no, it's twice as nice because it's a full hourlong episode. I can't count how many fans have written me on MySpace or commented here at TVGuide.com and said the words, "I wish The Office was an hour." Well? Let me quote Dwight K. Schrute by saying, "It's a Christmas miracle!" This is the deal: It was a fake goose. No goose was hit by Dwight K. Schrute. No birds were killed. Get this: The Office starts at 8 pm/ET instead of 8:30 this week! Set your TiVo or DVR or DVD-burner or VCR or your Greg Brady-style tape recorder (a method I used as a child in the '70s when there was no alternative, except maybe writing it all down as fast as humanly possib...
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Just how much political incorrectness can Michael Scott dispense in double the usual time frame? That question stands poised to be answered when NBC's The Office gifts fans with an hourlong Christmas episode. Per Newsday, the superdupersize holiday outing will be directed by veteran funnyman and filmmaker Harold Ramis. The onetime Ghostbuster isn't the only big name on tap to get behind the mockumentary's cameras, however. The same Newsday piece reports that Lost creator turned M:i:III and Star Trek helmer J.J. Abrams is on board to direct a February-sweeps episode. Ooh, do I foresee flashbacks to when Angela was a crippled, Korean-speaking box-company owner on the run from the law?UPDATE: I just received independent confirmation from a well-placed source that J.J. Abrams will in fact be directing an episode of The Office. To quell any doubters.
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There are a lot of movie directors who spend their entire careers working in a single genre. In a fickle industry where a couple of bombs can lead to prolonged unemployment, there's a certain job security in mining similar subject matter. On the rare occasion when a filmmaker does step out of character, they frequently find themselves chastised by critics and ignored by audiences that are shackled with expectation. Apparently, these concerns didn't weigh heavily on Harold Ramis when he decided to make The Ice Harvest. A dark yarn with a moral compass as slippery as the setting, The Ice Harvest is a far cry from the flicks that made Ramis. In fact, nothing in Animal House, Caddyshack or
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Few have had more influence on the current crop of "guy comedies" than Harold Ramis. The 60-year-old writer/director, whose began his career editing the jokes page at Playboy, is responsible for some of the wildest flicks of the past three decades. Animal House, Caddyshack and Groundhog Day still have dudes quoting lines and debating funniest scenes, but it's the new release of a special slime-covered DVD set of the Ramis-scripted Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II that has the yuk-master giving us the lowdown on his comedy classics, his next project and why
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