HBOlab, an experimental offshoot of the cable powerhouse focused on online programming, is launching a Web video series featuring a cast of the Internet’s most popular entertainers, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Kevin Smith figures there’s one thing wrong with bringing a movie to the Toronto Film Fest: The audiences are way too polite. “In Toronto, nobody turns their nose up at almost anything,” Smith told E!Online “If you tank in Toronto, then something’s seriously wrong with that movie.”
NBC is getting into the holiday spirit with “Letters to Santa — A Muppets Christmas.” Whoopi Goldberg, “The Sopranos” alumni Tony Sirico and Steve Schirripa, Richard Griffiths (“Harry Potter”) and Madison Pettis are set to star in the special along with Muppet regulars Kermit, Fozzie, Gonzo, the rest of the muppets gang, and of course, Miss Piggy.
Stephen Colbert getting his DNA shipped to outer space. Catch our Slice of SciFi show this weekend for full details.
Is Nicolas Cage slipping with moviegoers? If the weekend take for the debut of his latest film, a remake titled “Bangkok Dangerous” is any indication then Cage needs to do something quick to reignite the flame. While it reached number one, it only did so because it had no new competition and saw only $7.8 million at the box office, barely beating out the winner for the last three weeks, “Tropic Thunder,” which took in another $7.5 million for its growing total.
IBM made a major push on Monday to upgrade its computer storage products and services it offers customers struggling to manage mountainous piles of data. The company is announcing more then 30 new or upgraded products or services that are the result of a $2 billion investment over the last three years involving thousands of IBM researchers and eight acquisitions of data storage start-ups.
Universal Pictures has agreed to back rollout of digital cinema equipment in U.S. theaters, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal. Universal is set to throw its support behind the consortium as soon as this week, the paper said citing people close to the situation. The other studios involved in the talks include Warner Bros, Sony and Walt Disney Co. Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount Pictures have already agreed to participate in the digital upgrade.
In space news, bad weather has caused a delay in the launch of Space shuttle Atlantis’ final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. The new date is October 10.
China will launch a three-man space flight this month. This month’s launch will include a scheduled space walk.
The European Space Agency (ESA) obtained its first images of an asteroid some 360 million km (224 million miles) from earth. The purpose of the flyby is to aid scientists understand the origins of the planets. The ESA said the images showed several small craters on the asteroid and two huge ones, one of which is 2 km in diameter, indicating the asteroid must be very old. The Rosetta spacecraft’s instruments are also checking out the asteroid’s orbital motion, rotation, shape and density.
Star Trek alum Colm Meaney said in a recent interview that he is very excited about working on the ABC adaptation of the British hit series “Life on Mars.”
“Well we’ve shot the pilot but with the writer’s strike things slowed down for a while. Now it’s a matter of waiting and seeing what the American audience and networks make of it and we’ll see… It was terrific; myself and another Dub Jason O’Mara play American cops.”
“Life on Mars” premieres Thursdays on ABC at 10/9C this fall.