FOX CANCELS ALL BUFFY SING-A-LONGS!

Well, it had a good run and now it will have a good fight to look forward to! The theatre I’ve worked at (The Coolidge Corner Theatre) for almost 3 years was one of the founding fathers of the Buffy Sing-A-Long in part due to our ex-Programming Director Clinton McClung who has since taken the show to NYC and traveling around the country. There’s always been debate about who created the Sing-A-Long but I think everyone will agree that it doesn’t matter who started it, it needs to frakkin’ continue!

From Associated Press:

Lawyers have driven a stake into the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” sing-along.

The TV show didn’t exactly die when the show and its demon-fighting heroine went off the air three years ago. Driven by a fiercely loyal following, fans put together the sing-along event, a la “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” where people turn up for midnight screenings of a musical episode of the show, often dressed up in costume as their favorite characters.

That all came to an end this week when the studio that owns the rights to the show got wind of what was going on.

Lawyers for Twentieth Century Fox Television, a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., told a licensing company that had given the green light for the sing-along events that it had gone beyond limits of the show’s licensing agreements.

All future engagements of the show, including a three-night run scheduled to start Friday in St. Louis, have been canceled.

Chris Alexander, a spokesman for the studio, said that “significant payments” would have to be made to Hollywood unions for the show to be screened in movie theaters, which is a highly unusual arrangement anyway and usually reserved for situations like one-time charity events.

That came as a shock to Clinton McClung, who had organized the sing-along events. “I understand how the entertainment industry works, but I don’t understand why it has to work against me,” he said.

McClung said he had sought and received a licensing arrangement from Criterion Pictures for the events, but Alexander said those permissions went beyond what Fox allowed.
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Okay, so my Thursday night was all over the place and I don’t have a ton of time right now to recap it all so I will quickly say that I watched the Top Chef 3 Reunion I had recorded on Wednesday, caught up on GOSSIP GIRL, and watched THE OFFICE.

TOP CHEF 3 Reunion was pretty dull except I walked away from it with a heavy indication that Padma may have left Salman Rushdie for the dorky yet lovable giant CJ. That’s pretty hot! I was more interested in hearing from the Judges than the contestants because I heart them all. Chef Tom, you’re a sexy large man. Gail, girl you’re nasty great. Padma, obviously I’m in love. Word to the wise though, BRAVO needs to lose the big gay that hosts the reunions because not only are his eyes bothersome, his delivery is poor. Padma should have hosted, period!

GOSSIP GIRL was fantastic as usual. I’m working on a real post for that and I’ll link from here. Is it wrong that I want a shirtless scene between Father and Son/Rufus and Dan Humphrey? Is that wrong?

THE OFFICE was good. Not great, just good. The hour-long episodes need to end NOW! They’re too puffy, too bloated with filler that it doesn’t feel like The Office I know and love.

- Quickly my favorite moments were Phyllis working Angela with her tips on how to deal with difficult people. It gave Phyllis some great work and it gave Angela yet another shining episode! She’s the breakout star this season. I love her more with each and every episode.

- Meredith’s crotch cast was hideous and the scene followed by Jim’s deer in headlights look almost had me throwing up with laughter.

- Classic Jim and Pam messing with Dwight

- Michael’s tight dress shirt. Damn, chesty!

- Darrell and Kelly are the new JAM

- The whole hostage crisis

- Andy’s ABBA Acapella (“Take a Chance on Me”) to Angela.

The Quotes:
Kelly: “Is that from Ryan? Does it say if he has a girlfriend?”

Pam: “Tie goes to the girlfriend”

Angela: “How do you tell someone it’s over? With a notarized letter, right? What if that person is your notary?”

Kevin: “Oh no it’s bad, it’s really bad. It’s like eating a hot circle of garbage.”

Andy: “They say you should never mix business with pleasure. Really, then explain to me how a Putt-Putt golf company operates…”

Holy Frak! RUBY, that stalker demon slaying knife wielding food stealing ketchup loving hunter is A FRAKKIN DEMON herself! I was not expecting that at all! Sam kept asking for her to tell him who she is, so she did! When she closed and then opened her eyes again revealing the black demon eyes, I actually said “Oh My God SHE’S A DEMON” outloud! Call me gullible, call me stupid but I was blown away by that.

I know there’s hatred but I really like Ruby and her cockiness. I like that she’s not afraid to get in Sam’s face and I love that she yet another missing link to the Winchester’s past. After Ruby’s ketchup fit she let Sam know that he’s kind of a legend for his dealings with YED and the psychic friends network and all. Then she drops a bombshell on Sammy, telling him to look into what happened to all of his Mom’s friends.

As the episode goes on, Sam looks into his Mom’s past and realizes that all of her old colleagues and friends died. Ruby kinda-sorta talks about how they all died after Mary and that the connection might be because of Sam and YED. Confusing for confusing sake, I guess. It’s somewhere in these final moments when Ruby reveals her black demon eyes, I scream like a little girl, and Sam questions her.

Sam: “You’re a demon!”
Ruby: “Don’t be such a racist.”

Great line! Ruby explains that even though she’s a demon, not all demons are alike and not all want the same things. She’s tracking Sam because she wants to help him get to the bottom of his legacy and in doing so say’s she can save Dean from his deal with the Devil. Sounds good to me! Rae and I were talking a few minutes ago about all this and I agree with her when she said that Ruby needs something from Sam or needs to understand all the death’s related to YED for some reason. She also mentioned that possibly Mary and the others were also connected to YED and were some of his special friends before Sammy. Can’t wait for this to play out!

On the other end of things, Dean continues on his quest for flesh and visits an old flame named Lisa who he hasn’t seen in 8 years. Conviently enough, Lisa has an 8 year old son that is mini-Dean to a T. He’s got the love for Classic Rock, leather jackets, the wise ass comments, and a love of the ladies. The kid’s a mirror image of Dean and while I so didn’t want Dean to have a kid, I wanted Dean to not freak out about possibly having a kid. It was wonderful to see that he admired the kids ways and wasn’t all douchey about it. Needless to say, settle yourselves ladies… it appears that Ben (aka Mini-Dean) is not his child. Lisa promised… which means somehow down the line we’ll find out the exact opposite. Make the Season 7 please.

The mystery this week revolved around a bunch of mysterious deaths in a small gated community in Indiana. Lisa just happens to live there and lucky for her, Dean’s trying to make a booty call. It turns out that all of the Fathers in this community are dying at the hand of their children who are being taken over by THE CHANGELINGS (these ugly blood sucker looking leech things). The Mother’s are then tormented by their children’s dopplegangers who feed off the Mother’s until they’re eventually drained and die.

It was creepy Village of the Damned business and actually pretty scary and quite gruesome at times. Aside from what those bastard children looked like as their Changeling beings, when the Dad got mutilated by the table saw, WOW that was something not too kid friendly. Loved it!

I also loved the one woman drowing her daughter by locking her in the car and driving it into the lake. The daughter went under without even flinching and it was sooooooooo great to watch! I love evil children. There can’t be enough 666’s on hairlines if you’re asking me.

I know I’m not explaining the whole thing, but you get the idea…

While I didn’t love Dean and Sam being apart through most of the episode (nor that today I’m sure everyone will blame that on the addition of Ruby), I thought over all it was a good episode. There was humor, there was razzing, there was lots of blood, there was sweet Dean, there was YED stuff, there was Mary Winchester stuff and the mystery deepened. This was in no way a throw-away episode.

I was excited to see Sam call Dean out on playing the dying card. Needed to happen because it’s simply too funny that Dean thinks he can use it in any scenario.

Dean: “It’s my dying wish.”
Sam: “How many dying wishes do you get?”

Then I have two other joys from this week’s episode. Dean calling Sam “Wierdy McWierderton” for lying about ordering pizza while he’s already in a diner.

The other was more in my mind and made up into a huge fantasy in my head… When the Dad was in his garage with the wooden rocking horse he was making — I couldn’t stop thinking that he would die from a blow to the head with the wooden horse head. Wooden horse head led me to my childhood and a favorite film of mine… Horse head bookends anyone? A simply genius early 80s horror spoof called STUDENT BODIES? If you know that movie, you’re my new best friend! Please tell me someone knows this film…

Next week we will be introduced to BELA, played by Lauren Cohan. If you haven’t read my interview with Lauren Cohan please do. She was wonderful and I’m psyched to see her square off with the Winchesters.

More to come… I need to work for a bit then I’ll write up something.