Hot Off The Press: The Latest TV News and Information - Page 2528

So what else is new. Somebody can save time by posting what cable channel has not went into the toilet.

hbo.....

No, they started off there, hacking up HD movies to fill the teeny, tiny number of HDTV screens there were back at the dawn of the HD age. And they still do it.

FRIDAY's fast affiliate overnight prime-time ratings -and what they mean- have been posted on Analyst Marc Berman's Media INsight's Blog.

Nielsen Overnights
Strong Start For Shark Tank', Grimm' And Chuck' Rise
By Nellie Andreeva, Deadline.com - Jan. 21, 2012

ABC stuck with its reality series Shark Tank despite modest ratings for the first 2 seasons, and it seems to be paying off. The premiere of the show's third season last night drew 1.7/5 in adults 18-49 and 6.2 million viewers, up a whopping 42% in 18-49 and 35% in total viewers from Shark Tank's Season 2 premiere in the Friday 8 PM hour last year. Shark Tank outperformed its predecessor in the time slot, veteran Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which averaged a 1.4 in the demo in its last 2 airings. More impressively, Shark Tank beat Fox's Kitchen Nightmare (1.5/5, 3.9 million) to win the 8 PM hour in adults 18-49. Kitchen Nightmare took a hit in the face-off with Shark Tank, down 12% from last week. ABC had a strong night all around, finishing first or close second among 18-49 in every hour of primetime. At 9 PM, the season premiere of Primetime: What Would You Do (1.6/5, 5.8 million) was in line with its previous season opener, down a tenth in 18-49, up 7% in total viewers. 20/20 (1.8/5, 7.2 million) was up a tenth in the demo from last week. ABC (1.7/5, 6.4 million) won the night in 18-49 and hit season highs in both 18-49 and total viewers for a second straight week.

There was very good news for NBC too, especially in the 9 PM hour where freshman Grimm (1.8/5, 5.9 million) reversed its ratings slide, up 29% in 18-49 and 27% in viewers from last week to tie 20/20 as the highest-rated program of the night in 18-49. It was helped by a 22% ratings jump for the penultimate episode of Chuck (1.1/3, 3.8 million) at 8 PM, proving that with a lead-in, Grimm can do well. Following Grimm, Dateline drew a 1.4/4 and 5.5 million viewers. In their solid performances, NBC's Grimm and ABC's What Would You Do and 20/20 were aided by the fact that CBS' drama lineup was in reruns last night. But that didn't help Fox's Fringe (1.1/3), which matched its series low from last week.

http://www.deadline.com/2012/01/rati...nd-chuck-rise/

And Directv still doesn't have it in HD, yet they own part of it.

I guess we might as well stop watching this show. At some point it will disappear. I guess I'll continue recording the episodes and save them.

Political comments removed.

HBO doesn't crop. They open matte. They add picture.

Here's a screenshot from a 1.78:1 open matte airing of Harry Potter:



Here's from the cropped 2.35:1 home video releases:



I like the non-cropped version better. But alas, all the "original aspect ratio" whiners would rather have solid black bars rather than additional picture, so this is what we get on home video. Just like those idiots buying "full screen" cropped DVDs back in the DVD era, everyone who whines about a film shot on Super35 not being in its OAR is wanting a cropped version.

Sometimes they open the matte, other times they crop & zoom. Just give me the OAR the director chose the film to be presented in; that's what I want to see. Showtime gets it, HDNM gets it. HBO never has.

Who subscribes to HBO for the movies anyway? It's rare for them to air material that's not available on Blu-ray.

This really isn't a big deal. HBO is only useful for their documentaries and original series.

You need to take a basic photography class - you have no clue what you're talking about.

Here's a nice little article that summarizes the issues well.

Filmmakers tend to frame their shots at a desired aspect ratio for a reason, because they have an artistic aesthetic that they're trying to achieve with it. The desire on the part of the home viewer to fill their TV screen is a matter of misplaced priorities. A television, even an expensive HDTV, is just a box. The purpose of the box is to display a movie image, much like a picture frame holds a photograph. If you have a frame that's too big for a photo, you use mattes to hold the picture in place and fill the empty space around it. That's exactly what the black bars do, no more and no less. In the final analysis, it comes down to a decision of which is more important, the picture or the frame. A TV screen doesn't need to be filled to perform its duty properly. The black letterbox or pillarbox bars help it to achieve its purpose.

These days that's mostly true. But back in the early days, when HBO was about the only way to see HD movies, the "crop vs. OAR" debate burned hot & heavy around here.

Not at $20 a month it's not

TV Notes
HBO takes a gamble on 'Luck'
The layered horse racing series 'Luck' is a hard fit for TV. But it has David Milch and Michael Mann in control, and Dustin Hoffman heads the ensemble. So it's got a shot.
By Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times - Jan. 22, 2012

Even before the pilot for "Luck," the new David Milch-Michael Mann series about horse racing, appeared on HBO in December, word began to get around that this thoroughbred however fierce took a while to get around the track. And this was even from people who liked the show. Just wait till episode four, they said. Or five.

If most television even high-toned television is a collection of short stories, "Luck" is a novel. A big, sprawling one, with a layered setting and close to a dozen main characters, some woven together in complex ways and many not who they initially appear to be. It's every bit as ambitious and multifaceted as "The Wire," which also aired on HBO between 2002 and 2008.

But was it really necessary week after week to sketch an intricate ecosystem as complicated as the teeming life of a rain forest from trainers to aspiring jockeys to dead-end gamblers to the dodgy financiers who make the whole thing run? Did Milch, a reputed mad genius, whose "Deadwood" brought Shakespearean soliloquy to the Wild West, consider making a linear show with maybe a single protagonist and a conventional plot?

"Never," Milch said, in a hotel suite with Mann and Dustin Hoffman, who plays an enigmatic moneyman and one of the program's key figures. "I always thought these were lives, and spirits, which interpenetrated even when they did not intersect. One of the gifts of Dustin's performance is his spirit dominates even when he isn't physically present."

Milch, who wrote the screenplay for the series, talks this way a lot a mixture of abstraction, literary terminology and boundless praise for his colleagues. Mann, who oversees the directing side of the program, expresses himself more pragmatically.

"What's fascinating about David's screenplay," he says, "with all these different groups and stories, people's whole life histories and ambitions there are so many of them. And to not have preludes, not have contexts, to just parachute into these lives.... The challenge is, how do you evoke that in ways that the viewer doesn't need Dramamine after 20 minutes?"

Boyhood memories

For Milch, whose temperament is poetic and philosophical, racing and cheating at horses goes back to some of the human race's oldest impulses. But the show's literal origins are a bit more earthbound, dating to his early years as a kid in upstate New York, borrowing his father's fedora to ride along to the track in Saratoga Springs. (He's since become an owner of horses and, by his own admission, a gambler.)

Back then, six decades ago, he got a sense of how richly interconnected the track's sociology was. "Literally from the time I was 5 years old, and the waiter approached me and I told him who I wanted to bet on," he says. "One of the things I think Michael has executed so brilliantly is a sense of the simultaneity of those worlds, so you naturally flow from one to another."

That's for sure. Despite a massive ad campaign that features only Hoffman's guarded and besuited Ace Bernstein character, the term "ensemble cast," which includes Nick Nolte, Dennis Farina, John Ortiz and Jill Hennessy, has rarely been so aptly applied. The story's direction, like the show's emotional center, is all over the place. "I've used the metaphor," Hoffman says, "of the jazz combo, where they can riff off each other but are somehow playing the same tune."

The characters are all orbiting the same patch of land Arcadia's Santa Anita racetrack so they're connected, Mann says, whether they know one another or not. Viewers who stick with the show will see just how true that is.

Hoffman's Bernstein emerges first, returning to the world from a three-year stint in prison with intentions of getting involved in the racetrack, something his felony conviction complicates. ("You get out of prison and what do you want?" Mann asks as he explains how he directed that opening scene. "Sex, and pizza.")

The existing world of the track involves a batch of jockeys (including a young Irish woman aspiring to greatness), a trainer of ambiguous loyalties, a battered old Kentucky horse owner who seems to move with a dark cloud over him and a quartet of lowlife gamblers known collectively as "the degenerates." It's when the degenerates make an unexpected score early in the series that the whole solar system which also includes jockey's agents, security guards, horse doctors, capitalists and others is put into motion.

Power couple

Another thing that makes "Luck" anomalous is its unconventional power-sharing arrangement. Mann and Milch are both executive producers, with Mann in charge of the directing he directed the pilot himself and oversaw the directors of the others and Milch writing everything and retaining the creator credit.

To heighten the tension a bit: Both are known to be strong-willed, and Mann apparently banned Milch from the set while directing the pilot episode. (HBO has conceded some "clashes" despite what it calls an otherwise fruitful working experience.)

Most television shows, of course, have a single chief, with others working as subordinates. "This isn't 'most,'" Mann asserts. "David has shows he's run, I've had shows I've run so this is different. Dave, Eric [Roth, a co-executive producer] and I had lots of conversations about the script, but ultimately that's gotta be [Milch's] domain. Making that world there, making it manifest on film, that becomes what I do from casting, location, interpretation, all that. That goes all the way through to color timing. And David comes in and sees the finished product."

Says Hoffman: "How should this arrangement how could this arrangement be any different than any marriage, or parents with their children? At a certain point, it's an arm wrestle over vision, if you care about what you're doing.... And that's what happens in the house: 'What kind of party is this gonna be?'"

Milch says that despite speculations that two control freaks could never work together, it's been the best collaboration of his life. "We don't always have the experience of being able to trust our collaborators in the most fundamental ways," he says. "And in an exercise of faith, the more you believe, the more you accomplish."

While the show's two helmsmen speak about how much they loved working together, Hoffman begins choking on the water he's sipping and quickly recovers. "He acts that way," Milch says in a soft voice, "when he hears a lie."

Unlikely trio

Jockeys, gamblers, executive producers will viewers have the patience to follow all of these twists and turns? HBO is certainly hoping so: This show was not cheap to produce.

December's pilot drew 1.14 million viewers, losing 62% from the audience for "Boardwalk Empire," which preceded it. And horse racing is hardly a going concern for most 21st century Americans. But in some ways, HBO really is different, and it may be that shows like "The Sopranos" and "The Wire" have stretched the attention span of at least a significant fraction of the television audience.

The cable network likes to boast about its unconventional programming, and many of its shows do smash the medium's orthodoxies. One of the things that's unconventional about "Luck," after all, is that its three main players are in television right now at all.

Milch is revered by many, and his and Steven Bochco's "NYPD Blue" was an unambiguous success. But neither of his last two shows "Deadwood" and "John From Cincinnati" got past a third season. Besides a few cameos, Hoffman has never done a television program. And Mann has devoted his last two decades to movies like "The Insider" and "Collateral" he's not done a major television show since producing "Miami Vice" in the '80s.

He doesn't feel like he ever left the small screen. "I studied film in Europe," Mann says about his early days, in the '60s. "And in the European tradition, directors do opera, they do TV, they do movies.... You're motivated by the material, that's it.

"And it's no secret: The best work, the best content, happening right now is on cable. When we look back at this 10 years from now, we might realize we were fortunate enough to be part of the golden age of television."

Hoffman adds: "Which I think comes from having no committee," and letting show runners, not network suits, really run their own shows. The result is a series, he says, in which he and the other actors are able to feel their way to a perfect scene. "Here you're allowed to work the way a painter, or someone writing a novel, works. You go to work each day, and it starts to lead you to something. That's what they've allowed me to be a part of here."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...,3528636.story

I get it, along with all the other premium channels, included for free in my FiOS TV package.

And at the end of the episode, he tweets about the career of Peyton Manning.

And there's no less expensive package that doesn't have the premium channels?

3D Notes
George Lucas won’t make any more ‘Star Wars’ movies because of grumbling fans
By Ethan Sacks, New York Daily News - Jan. 22, 2012

A Sith storm has erupted on the Internet after George Lucas vowed to never make another "Star Wars" movie — and put the blame squarely on complaining fanboys.

The 67-year-old director, in an interview timed to the release of his new production, "Red Tails," said he was fed up with fans' meanspirited complaining about all the changes he has made to the original "Star Wars" trilogy and their gripes about the prequel trilogy.

"On the Internet, all those same guys that are complaining I made a change are completely changing the movie," Lucas told The New York Times magazine, "I’m saying: 'Fine. But my movie, with my name on it, that says I did it, needs to be the way I want it.'

"Why would I make any when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?"

Fans who grew up with the original “Star Wars” movies have come out in Force to complain that Lucas has

tinkered with their childhood. (There was a time when Han Solo shot first and when Sebastian Shaw played the ghost of Annakin Skywalker.)

Lucas’ condemnation lent even more ammunition to some still getting over Jar Jar Binks.

“Oh please get off the cross Lucas,” posted one commenter on Kotaku.com.

But like it or not, Lucas is well within his rights: He owns the rights to the franchise and has always followed his instincts, studio (or any other) interference be damned.

"There are different types of ‘Star Wars’ fans. There are the type who incessantly b---- at George Lucas over his changes and there are the ones who laugh at what George Lucas does and love him like a cranky grandfather," says Ain't It Cool News founder Harry Knowles, who counts himself in the second category.

"When you really get down to it, a big chunk of what 'Star Wars' has become in the last 15 years — since the release of the special editions in theaters — part of the identity of it is for fans to whine and b----."

Even with Lucas’ “retirement” — and he told The Times he still might work on an “Indiana Jones V” — there is still more “Star Wars” left to debate. All six movies are returning to theaters with a new 3-D treatment, starting with “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace” next month.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertain...icle-1.1008201

TV Notes
Viewing parties accompany passion for buttoned-up drama 'Downton Abbey'
By Aimee Lee Ball, The New York Times - Jan. 22, 2012

NEW YORK -- To much of the civilized world, the "entail" sounds like some part of a cow that Mario Batali might serve alla Romana. But to aficionados of "Downton Abbey," which recently began a second, highly anticipated season on PBS, it is "the great matter," the root of all evil -- and all delight.

The series was introduced last year to a U.S. audience of Anglophiles parched for a refreshment of costume-heavy British soap opera. (It's been a long wait since the 1984 miniseries "The Jewel in the Crown," and the recent sequel to "Upstairs, Downstairs" was widely deemed a bit bland.)

"All the DVD stores have been back-ordered for 'The Forsyte Saga' just to fill in the gap," said Julie Alter, 54, a casting director who grits her teeth at any mention of the entail, "that absurd act of legal theft," as the mistress of Downton calls it, which forbade English women from inheriting property and forms the series' main plotline.

Indeed, passion for "Downton" runs so deep that many die-hard fans greeted the new season as a reason for viewing parties. At the Manhattan home of Kelvin Dinkins Jr., 24, a graduate student at Columbia, friends gathered last Sunday for finger sandwiches, properly made pots of tea and a drinking game: a slog of wine or beer every time the dowager countess (played by the scene-stealing Maggie Smith) delivers a withering one-liner. (Nearly falling out of a swivel chair and informed that it was invented by Thomas Jefferson, she snarled, "Why does every day involve a fight with an American?")

Kate Lewis, 39, an executive director of human resources at Conde Nast Publications, took some license with the time frame (1916) of the second season premiere to prepare an Edwardian feast. (King Edward VII died in 1910.)

"We thought of hiring a butler but decided we could wait on ourselves," Ms. Lewis said. Guests enjoyed cream of parsnip soup, roast pork with chestnut glaze and sticky toffee pudding at her Brooklyn home. "But I don't know if we can ever watch the show together again," she said. "There was a huge debate about Mr. Bates. I love him, but my friends think he's kind of a wimp."

Christina Haag, 51, who wrote the book "Come to the Edge" about her relationship with John F. Kennedy Jr., brought a selection of British cheeses to the party held by her friend, the actress and singer Emily Bergl, 36, in Greenwich Village. "I eat red meat about twice a year, but 'Downton' has given me a craving for it," Ms. Haag said, and Ms. Bergl obliged with steak and Guinness pie, a recipe from her Irish mother.

Dessert was Eton mess, a whipped-cream-and-berries homage to the prep school of Ms. Bergl's English father, who grew up in a Downton-esque home, now owned by Rod Stewart. Bling was provided by napkin rings that resembled large diamonds, and Ms. Bergl burned a briquette of turf, which she poked in the fireplace, exclaiming, "Excuse me, lords and ladies, while I tend the fire."

The last dinner served to first-class passengers on the Titanic inspired a party to be held today in Brooklyn, hosted by Liz Kingman, 31, the membership manager at the American Folk Art Museum. For dessert, Ms. Kingman plans to make the apple charlotte requested in one episode by a suitor of Lady Mary Crawley. "Fancy dress and hats will be strongly encouraged," she said, "as will scheming and marrying for money."

The concept of marriage based on dowry -- a common custom between wealthy U.S. women and cash-poor British aristocracy at the turn of the century -- grates on Elizabeth McGovern, who plays Lady Cora. "Much of my challenge is not screaming about what she has to accept," Ms. McGovern said by phone last week. "I find myself viscerally wound up a lot of the time, without realizing why. It's because the lot of many women at that time was leading such idle, frustrating lives."

Erin Curtis, 31, who provides information-technology support for an engineering company in Houston, is coiled up for a different reason: While visiting the family of her British boyfriend, she watched all of Season 2 in England.

"So I just have to shut up, biting my knuckles, and not give away what happens," Ms. Curtis said. The lemon curd that one friend made for the scones at a viewing party last week tasted more like lemony scrambled eggs, she said, but pitchers of Pimm's Cups helped. For the finale, a traditional liqueur called ratafia is steeping (basically fruit and spices soaked in brandy for a few weeks), and although declaring herself "not crafty," Ms. Curtis is trying gamely to hand-paint teacups.

The eminently crafty Martha Stewart, 70, does not prepare special props or foods for watching "Downton," but the show did engender a recent craving for cucumber sandwiches on white bread.

"I'd never seen Season 1 because it wasn't on at a convenient time," she said. "But then I got sick -- I'm never sick -- so I locked my door, uploaded the entire series onto my iPad and watched all seven hours. I was so depressed when it was over and I had to wait for the next season, but whatever flu-ish symptoms I had were gone."

For Sarah O'Holla, 29, a librarian at the Village Community School in Manhattan, "my British obsession started last year when I woke up at 4 a.m. to watch the royal wedding," she said.

A friend brought back a feathery fascinator headpiece, which she now wears for "Downton" viewing parties. The guests are other librarians and teachers who already had a tradition of reading Bronte novels together and formed what they called the Elegant Ladies' Club (although the viewings now include one man). "We all have the same level of obsession about the show," she said, "and we like any excuse to dress up."

But the award for best costume might go to Patricia Morrison, 65, even though no one will see it. Ms. Morrison, the widow of the rocker Jim Morrison and author of a memoir called "Strange Days," watches "Downton" alone in bed, wearing sweat pants and a tiara. "I happen to have two," she said. "Who knew you could get tiaras on eBay? But I'm deeply disappointed that nobody on 'Downton' has worn one so far."

She was also upset to learn that American audiences have missed some bits of the show broadcast only in Britain. "It's edited here so that PBS can cram in Laura Linney to introduce it," she said. "Lovely woman, lovely actress, but we don't need her. More of 'Downton,' please."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/fa...ref=television

Let me fix that headline:


Translation: within the next decade or so, we'll see more Star Wars movies.

He's only saying he won't make them because of the fans so the craziest ones will tell him they really, really want more. Then he'll make them - with half the cast being CGI.

Yeah I get it too because it's was free for 6 months. When the 6 months is up next month HBO goes bye bye. Charge me $10 maybe I keep it. But no they charge $20 and throw in Cinemax as if it's some kind of bonus. Cinemax mostly shows old movies and then soft core porn late at night. I don't need any soft core porn. And their OnDemand offering is weak weak weak.

SInce they added Cinemax to Ultimate HD tier I have been surprised by how many good movies they have showing that are worth watching. It certainly wasn't like I remember when I had Cinemax ten years ago with DirecTV.

Whenever I look at the guide, there are usually a few movies on Cinemax worth watching. More so than Starz, The Movie Channel and Showtime. Of course ten HD Cinemax channels helps the selection too.

SATURDAY's fast affiliate overnight prime-time ratings -and what they mean- have been posted on Analyst Marc Berman's Media INsight's Blog.

Obituary
Penn State coaching legend Joe Paterno dies at 85
By Jack Carey, USA Today - Jan. 22, 2012

Perhaps the most ironic element when looking at the way Joe Paterno lost his job as Penn State's football coach after 46 seasons is that as a young man, he had his eyes set on law school.

The fallout in 2011 from the child sex-abuse scandal involving Jerry Sandusky, who was an assistant on Paterno's Penn State staff until 1999, prompted the university's Board of Trustees to fire Paterno, then 84, with three games left in the regular season.

Paterno, who died Sunday at 85, was criticized for not going to law enforcement in 2002 once he was told by then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary that McQueary had seen Sandusky allegedly sexually abusing a young boy in a shower on campus.

PHOTOS: The life and career of Joe Paterno
MORE: Paterno family issues statement
COLUMN: Paterno belongs to the ages now

"I didn't know exactly how to handle it and I was afraid to do something that might jeopardize what the university procedure was," Paterno told The Washington Post in January 2012 in the only interview he gave after the scandal broke. "So I backed away and turned it over to some other people, people I thought would have a little more expertise than I did. It didn't work out that way."

Paterno had been in the hospital since Jan. 13 as he dealt with treatment related to lung cancer. On Saturday, his family released a statement saying major college football's winningest coach was in serious condition. Word spread that he was near death. On campus in State College, hundreds of students and fans gathered for an impromptu vigil at his statue across from the football field.

He died early Sunday morning, his family making the announcement in a statement:

"He died as he lived. He fought hard until the end, stayed positive, thought only of others and constantly reminded everyone of how blessed his life had been. His ambitions were far reaching, but he never believed he had to leave this Happy Valley to achieve them. He was a man devoted to his family, his university, his players and his community."

The statement also said, "His loss leaves a void in our lives that will never be filled."

The last 11 weeks of his life were fill with physical and emotional challenges. Days after he was fired in November 2011, it was disclosed Paterno had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

In many eyes, the sordid scandal tarnished the legacy of Paterno, who spent 62 seasons on the Nittany Lions football staff and became the winningest Division I coach in the history of the sport.

Steve Shaffer, a 30-year PSU season ticketholder, who saw Paterno's first win as a head coach in 1966, said days after Paterno was let go that "the whole thing is like finding out there's no Santa Claus."

The end to Paterno's tenure came in a way nobody could have predicted.

It was also a football career that almost didn't happen.

In 1950, while a senior at Brown University, where he played football, Paterno was accepted into the Boston University School of Law. While awaiting graduation, he got an offer from Brown's coach, Rip Engle, to be a part-time assistant, working with the team's quarterbacks.

Shortly thereafter, however, Engle accepted the position as head coach at Penn State. His contract allowed him to bring one assistant with him . He chose an "astonished" Paterno, who followed his mentor to the small central Pennsylvania outpost of State College.

Paterno went on to become the national personification of the college football coach and the public face of Penn State, which made his eventual fall all the more compelling.

After succeeding Engle in 1966, what Paterno accomplished in a 46-year head coaching tenure was winning two national championships, having five unbeaten seasons, victories in all five major bowl games and earning a spot in the Hall of Fame.

He holds records for the most years spent as a head coach at one school and the most victories for a major-college coach, with 409. He was even athletics director at the school from 1980-82.

Building a champion

Paterno became known for his thick glasses, rolled-up pant legs, white socks and football cleats. And as his individual power grew, Penn State's program became a behemoth on the national scene. Beaver Stadium kept expanding to more than 100,000 seats, and fans and alumni flocked to games from all over the northeast.

Penn State's creamery named a popular ice-cream flavor Peachy Paterno, and a statue of the coach was built outside the stadium with plaques mounted nearby listing the year-by-year results of every game he coached.

And few dared tell the man known as Joe Pa what to do.

A 26-33 record compiled between 2000 and 2004 prompted then-PSU president Graham Spanier and athletics director Tim Curley, who later also lost their positions over the Sandusky fallout, to encourage Paterno to retire.

He refused and quickly rebounded in 2005 as his team went 11-1 and won the Orange Bowl. And the Nittany Lions kept on winning, sending Paterno to his second Rose Bowl game after the 2008 season.

"I still enjoy it. I guess I'm dumb," he told USA TODAY shortly before the start of the 2006 season.

"If I'm going to get out of it, what am I going to do? (Ex-Florida State coach) Bobby Bowden had the best line: 'If I retire, what am I retiring to?' The alternative doesn't light me up."

Road to No. 1

Paterno was born Dec. 21, 1926, in Brooklyn, N.Y., the first son of Angelo and Florence Paterno.

While growing up in the 1930s and early '40s, he spent lots of time playing touch football and stickball. He attended St. Edmond's Grammar School and later went to Brooklyn Prep High School.

In 1944, while a senior at Brooklyn Prep, Paterno played on a football team whose only loss was to St. Cecilia's of Englewood, N.J., which was coached by future Pro Football Hall of Famer Vince Lombardi.

After a stint in the Army, Paterno and his brother George headed for Brown, where Joe starred as a quarterback.

It was there that Engle helped steer Paterno toward his life's course.

While an assistant to Engle, Paterno in 1962 married the former Suzanne Pohland of Latrobe, Pa. She is a Penn State graduate as are all five of their children, including son Jay, who was an assistant on his father's staff.

Penn State was one of the East's best programs during Engle's 16-year coaching stint, but it was nothing like what was to come once Paterno took over.

Things got off to a slow start for the new coach as his first team went 5-5. But the Lions didn't stay mediocre for long.

The next year they had eight wins and tied Florida State in the Gator Bowl, and in 1968, Paterno had his first undefeated team. The 11-0 Nittany Lions edged Kansas 15-14 in the Orange Bowl, but it wasn't enough for the national title, as the Lions finished behind Woody Hayes' Ohio State team in the Associated Press media rankings and behind the Buckeyes and Southern California in the coaches' poll.

Paterno, however, was named coach of the year by the American Football Coaches Association, the first of a record five such awards for him from the AFCA.

That season marked the start of a streak of excellence for Paterno and his team that featured perfection on the field but frustration in the polls. The Lions, an independent in those years, had a hard time convincing poll voters that their schedule, which featured other Eastern independents such as Army, Navy, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Boston College and West Virginia, made them worthy of the top spot in the rankings.

They also had a hard time convincing the President of the United States. In 1969, the Lions again posted a perfect record, but President Richard Nixon famously declared Texas No. 1 after the undefeated Longhorns beat unbeaten Arkansas in their season-ending showdown.

The pollsters agreed with Nixon, and the Lions finished second, despite going 30 consecutive games without losing, dating to early in the 1967 season.

More disappointment followed in 1973 when another unbeaten PSU team finished fifth in both polls. The Lions had the consolation that year of featuring Heisman Trophy-winning running back John Cappelletti.

It finally all came together for the coach and his program in 1982 when the Lions won their first national championship after beating Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.

They won another crown in 1986, securing the title with a stunning upset in the Fiesta Bowl against a Miami (Fla.) team many thought was unbeatable. The Lions intercepted Miami quarterback Vinny Testaverde five times in the game.

Not everything went as Paterno planned

Things didn't always go Paterno's way on the field.

In 2002, Paterno voiced criticism of officiating after three of Penn State's losses involved close calls late in the games that went against the Lions.

After an overtime loss to Iowa, Paterno rushed down the field and grabbed an official's jersey to protest two late calls.

During that season, a referee doll was hung from Paterno's front door and was later joined by a Paterno doll that seemed to be poking the official in the chest.

Paterno insisted he did not put the dolls on the door but hinted his wife did. "It was put up there by somebody who is close to me," he said. "You've got to have a laugh once in a while."

In a 2006 game at Wisconsin, Paterno suffered a fractured shinbone and two torn knee ligaments after a sideline collision. He missed the next game against Temple, only the second contest he was absent from in his head coaching career, and was relegated to the press box for subsequent games.

In 2008, Paterno had hip-replacement surgery shortly following the season, after consistent pain when walking forced him to again coach from the press box.

Shortly before his final season started, Paterno was accidentally run over by one of his players at practice and was hospitalized with shoulder and hip injuries. He returned for the season but spent much of the time again coaching from the press box.

Paternos' philanthropy helped mold PSU

Although Paterno posted 11 or more victories in 13 seasons, won a record 24 bowl games and saw more than 250 of his former players make the NFL, he will also be remembered for his philanthropy.

He and his wife and children gave the university $3.5 million in 1998 to endow faculty positions and scholarships and in support of two building projects.

The Paternos contributed more than $4 million to the school during his tenure, and the coach's well-rounded lifestyle, which included interest in literature and opera, was unique.

"How many football coaches majored in English literature at an Ivy League School?" former PSU athletics director and longtime Paterno friend Jim Tarman once asked. " I think the fact that he has such a broad range of interests is one of the reasons our football program has been different."

It all came crashing down in stunning fashion in the fall of 2011, however, causing many of Paterno's critics to cry that the coach had too much power.

In what is regarded as perhaps college athletics' greatest scandal, all the wins and all the bowls weren't enough to allow Paterno to go out on his own terms.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/colle...ead/52737230/1

TV-on-Film Notes
With 'First Time,' the CW comes to Utah
By Steven Zeitchik and Amy Kaufman, Los Angeles Times' '24 Frames' Blog - Jan. 21, 2012

Figures from the television world pop up routinely in Sundance films. But it's rare for a movie to come into the festival with as deep a television pedigree as "The First Time," let alone a pedigree from youth-oriented television.

Nickelodeon, MTV and the CW are all well-represented in the film, a gentle romance that stars Britt Robertson (The CW's "Life Unexpected" and "The Secret Circle"), Dylan O'Brien (MTV's "Teen Wolf") and, in a supporting turn, Victoria Justice (Nickelodeon's "Victorious")

Meanwhile, director Jonathan Kasdan (son of director Lawrence and brother of director Jake) has the ultimate young-adult programming pedigree: he wrote on both "Freaks & Geeks" and "Dawson's Creek."

A movie that's as much about the expectations teens have about love as the appetite they have for sex, "First Time" centers on a budding relationship between high school senior Dave (O'Brien) and junior Aubrey (Robertson), who meet while standing on the margins of a teenage house party.

Dave is pining for the pretty, popular girl (Justice), while Aubrey's romantic idealism isn't being fulfilled by her older slacker boyfriend. Dave and Aubrey clearly have chemistry, but dance around each other with requisite teenage uncertainty (though not, it should be said, inarticulateness; both are eloquent beyond their years). Eventually, they fall for one another as the film builds up to well, their first time.

Kasdan, who's going for a kind of emotional believability not often attempted in high school romances, demands more of the actors than a typical CW show--long, dialogue-heavy scenes between the two leads are common. One standout is the opening, an approximately 10-minute number in which the two volley dialogue back and forth as though in a stage play. It's not exactly Noel Coward, but it's more than is required of, say, the actors on "Pretty Little Liars."

"Coming from television . . . the process of rehearsing and developing the characters [was] amazing," O'Brien said. "This experience is different from any experience I've had," added the actor, who is making his first major film appearance.

A handful of stars have successfully made the transition from the small to the big screen -- Michelle Williams, Blake Lively and Shia LaBeouf, to name a few. But the shift is challenging for many young TV stars, with most teen soaps and comedies not exactly helping actors forge a diverse skill set. And even those who do it successfully can take a long time getting there; witness Williams' turns in gems like "Halloween: H20" before she became an Oscar contender.

The trio of "First Time" actors--all between the ages of 18 and 21--showed a little of their inexperience when they came on stage after the screening. Justice, who no doubt has done her fair share of press as a Nick star, was the most animated, cheerily recounting anecdotes from the set. But Robertson and O'Brien appeared less comfortable, rolling on the balls of their feet and passing off the microphone to other cast members on a few occasions instead of answering questions themselves.

"First Time" is seeking a U.S. buyer, and though the comedy isn't broad enough to merit a studio acquisition--"American Pie" this ain't--the movie's charm could be enough to land it a midsize deal and release.

Many teenage tales fall into either teen cliche or, at the other end of the spectrum, unconvincing adult dialogue. Kasdan said he strove to find a balance between articulateness and authenticity.

"The kids on 'Freaks and Geeks' were so awkward and never said the right thing," he said, referring to one of his past gigs. "And the kids on 'Dawson's' were so cool and always said the right thing. My experience of high school was somewhere in between, and ever since I've been trying to forge a voice between the two."

Kasdan wasn't shy about turning his own pain into comedy. With a stand-up comedian's self-deprecating humor, he said before the screening that when he was in high school he would "stay up writing [scripts], fantasizing that if I could write something eloquent or funny or true maybe the girl I was waiting for would read it and come find me, and then have sex with me."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movi...-festival.html

Well, some of us don't think $20 or $40 a month is a big deal. Isn't that obvious? Never understood why some people critique how others spend their money.

Last night SNL reran the Emma Stone/Coldplay show from November, where "Weekend Update" included some rough commentary on the Penn State scandal.  In retrospect, the timing was discomforting, but it would have been worse to rerun it shortly after Paterno's death than shortly before.

Frankly, I never really liked the original recipe versions all that much. Never really cared for the sequels/prequels either. In fact, I actually fell asleep in the theater during the original run of the movie formerly known as just "Star Wars."