Liza Minnell by Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com
During a Thursday Christmas concert in Stockholm, Judy Garland's daughter collapsed, falling clear off the stage. If not for the fast-acting production manager who caught her, the 61-year-old entertainment legend would surely have sustained serious injuries in addition to whatever was already ailing her. She's now back in the States, but her condition remains a mystery.... Grammy winner Rosanne Cash has undergone successful brain surgery, her record label reports.... Discworld author Terry Pratchett has revealed on his illustrator's website that he has a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's. — Ben Katner
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Janet by Michael Yarish/The CW
by Ben KatnerYou'd think that giving a mock bikini wax to Tyra Banks would buy a girl some love from the head judge on America's Next Top Model. But Lady T showed carrot-top-turned-Liza Minnelli look-alike Janet Mills no mercy last week, kicking the 22-year-old aesthetician to the curb with some of the weakest words of encouragement we've yet to hear. How's Janet handling being, er, ripped from the lineup? And scarier still, how does she imagine her slovenly housemates faring without her around to play den mother? To find out, in anticipation of tonight's episode (8 pm/ET on the CW), we put in a call to the Georgia peach.TVGuide.com: Sorry to be speaking to you under these circumstances.Janet Mills: Did you love me or what? You didn't even watch!...read more
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"The following story is fictional and does not depict any actual person or event" (wink, wink) — which of course means: "This episode is based on a true story and features fictionalized versions of real people — but, you know, we don’t want to get sued over it or anything." Gotta love those patented Law & Order disclaimers.Anyway, as we all know, tonight’s Criminal Intent dealt with John Mark Karr’s bogus confession last August to the murder of JonBenét Ramsey. So it was a wise move to acknowledge the source material in the first scene with our JMK stand-in, Simon Fife (who will henceforth be referred to as Sesame Logs), being taken into custody. It definitely felt weird for Goren and Eames to make their arrest at the beginning of the show, but for me, it allayed some of the fears that this would be a been-there, done-that episode because of the case's media overexposure.And man was Sesame Logs creepy – he totally nailed the JMK vibe. And in th...
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Liza with a ZWatching this landmark concert special was simultaneously exhilarating and depressing. As a long-time Liza Minnelli fan (not just in Cabaret, I loved her so much I even saw her in Rent-a-Cop… in the theater), I grew up listening to the Liza with a Z soundtrack. I'd play it over and over and over again until even our gay upstairs neighbor begged me to buy a new record. But I never actually saw it until tonight. Even as Liza has devolved into self-parody, I continue to defend her. She's one of a kind, and I'm not just talking about her iconic look or her manic talent. Liza is the living link between the Golden Age of Hollywood and the Tinseltown we know today. In this 1972 televised concert special she straddled the two eras, appealing to her parents' peers with "God Bless the Child" and "My Mammy" while courting
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Tony Hale
When last we saw Arrested Development's one-handed mama's boy, Buster Bluth, he'd just discovered that the Army wants to send him to Iraq, despite his loose-seal injury. It is but one of several cliff-hangers fans would like to see resolved in tonight's first post-baseball episode (8 pm/ET on Fox) — along with Rita's (Charlize Theron) big secret and, of course, whether enough people will watch the show to grant it a full third season. TVGuide.com rang Tony Hale, Buster's portrayer and apparently AD's biggest fan, to see how he's handling the suspense.
TVGuide.com: What's the mood like on the set these days?Tony Hale: We're just kind of enjoying it, because we don't know — maybe it'll be our last week. We get our scripts pretty late, about two days before we shoot
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I'm gonna live forever: Fame's Ray and Gimpel
Question: I remember watching the show Fame as a kid and really liking it. I know it was based on a movie, but was that movie based on a real school? Thanks.
Answer: That it was, Alma, but exactly how much the movie and, to an even greater extent, the show, were "real" certainly depended on whom you asked. The basics aren't in dispute: The 1980 film and series, which lived on NBC from January 1982 to August 1983 before jumping to first-run syndication for another four years, were set in New York City's real-life School of Performing Arts, better known to its students, faculty and such alumni as Al Pacino and Liza Minnelli as "P.A." (In 1984 the school moved with the High School of Music & Art into a new facility and the two merged to become the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.) But according to
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