The Love Triangle Becomes a Square

Villain vampire Katherine, who once turned the Salvatore brothers into sexy undead fangers, has returned to Mystic Falls — and boy, is she ready to cause some trouble. Vampire Diaries executive producer Julie Plec reveals that while the boys will discover her true identity quickly — since there was that little mix-up in the finale when Damon kissed Elena, but it was really Katherine! — the love triangle will get even more complicated in Season 2. Get the scoop on the new season below:

TVGuide.com: Nina Dobrev will be taking on two characters at the same time in the new season, playing both Elena and Katherine.
Plec: Nina is one of the nicest people in the world, and she makes the joke that Katherine is Nina on a Saturday night. Nina on a Saturday night is definitely feisty, but by no means an evil, manipulative, horrible troll. For her to be able to play both the moral center and soulful, compassionate character, and then the narcissistic, selfish, manipulative, naughty minx is big for her.

TVGuide.com: What is Katherine's goal this season?
Plec: She sets her sights on basically making sure that the Stefan [Paul Wesley] and Elena love story hits a snag. It's going to be fun seeing Stefan and Katherine come up against each other. Obviously it's fun to see Damon [Ian Somerhalder] and Katherine because there's a lot of history there, too, but the triangle becomes the square.

TVGuide.com: How long will it take Stefan and Damon to figure out it's not Elena?
Plec: They both know within the first 15 minutes of the first episode. Damon realizes he was duped, and Stefan comes face-to-face with Katherine. The fun of it is how Stefan responds to the moment, as opposed to how Damon responded to the moment.

TVGuide.com: You spent all of Season 1 leading up to Founders Day. What is the arc of Season 2?
Plec: What I loved about what Founders Day gave us is that we had this small town that was building up to its big anniversary, and the long arc of the show is that history repeats itself. We're going to do something like that this year, but we haven't landed on exactly what it is.

TVGuide.com: What came with the decision to kill off vampire Anna (Malese Jow) in the finale?
Plec: That is something, believe it or not, that Kevin [Williamson] and I never faltered on. We introduced the character knowing that her exit would [have] the most profound impact on Jeremy and Damon. For Damon, it was a glimpse of his humanity in that moment — he wanted to help her. We definitely knew she was there to make our heroes grow to a new level. We did it from a pure place and did it for a real reason.

TVGuide.com: Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen) is now so immersed in the vampire world, so what will we see for him this season?
Plec: We refuse to say what happens to Jeremy other than the fact that he's "alive." Regardless of that, the most important thing for Jeremy is that he's going to come out the other side of this with a much, much deeper and much stronger sense of himself. He's going to be asking what his purpose is on this planet, so to speak. It's all because of all the loss: parents, Vicki, Anna, and then his own desire to end his own human life.

TVGuide.com: How close will you stay to the novels as you carry on?
Plec: The deeper we get into the series, ironically, the more we're going to be taking from the books. That's cool because we strayed so far so quickly, just by definition of trying to shape a good story in the right way for television. To find ourselves naturally returning to the source material and the villains that you met, it's kind of awesome.

The Future of Big Bang

From EONLINE:

We love us some Big Bang Theory. And hey, we know loads of people love Two and a Half Men too.

But lest there ever be a class-off between the stars of Chuck Lorre's two hit CBS comedies, you should hear what BBT's star Kaley Cuoco told reporters today.

CBS rolled out stars from its new and returning fall series in Beverly Hills today, as the 2010 Television Critics Press Tour kicked off, and here's what you need to know about what went down:

The Big Bang Theory: Everyone's beloved Big Bangers made their post Comic-Con appearance today, bringing along even more scoop for the masses. Like what, you ask?

Um, like the return of Wil Wheaton and Wolowitz's onetime ladylove Bernadette. "He's evil," Bill Prady teased of Wil. "He's Sheldon's mortal enemy." And Melissa Rauch makes a comeback, although it's still unclear as to what her relationship with Howard will be.

Speaking of Sheldon, someone braved the topic of Jim Parsons' character having some sexytime with returning love interest Mayim Bialik (Blossom!), and Jim responded: "I don't know the answer to it, but I wouldn't hold anything past anybody at this point. I might have said no for sure six months ago, but I never thought we'd even stumble upon a female that he communicated with. [And] we did that." And all Chuck Lorre would say is, "He'll have a very specific relationship with Mayim." Uh-huh. Sure.

And before you broach to subject of those much-talked about contract negotiations with Kaley or Jim, think again. This cast is far too classy and tactful to discuss such things. Unlike the most recent tactics of a certain Two and a Half star, it seems they'd prefer to keep their bargaining details out of the press.

"We have people that kind of help us with that and take care of it," Kaley responded. "I mean, I'm doing next season for free. I don't know about you guys. I just figure it would make things a lot easier." Like we said, class-ay!

Sneak Peek at Jersey Shore Season Two

Mel Gibson's Trust level is on the same level as Charlie Sheen

Demand for Mel Gibson's mess with his ex girlfriend Oksana has not dipped. At all. Not even a little.

"Interest in the Mel-Oksana story is as strong as ever, at times stronger than ever," Perel says. "Our audio tapes were even responsible for the ratings rise of several syndicated entertainment TV shows that we allowed to play portions of the tapes."

Hear that? The story is so big that it's causing a chain reaction of bigness.

You'd think that Grigorieva might regret the way these leaks have dribbled out; her image hasn't exactly risen in popularity since all this started. Still, it's Gibson's persona that has taken the bigger hit.

Davie Brown Index have exclusively shared their latest data and it isn't good.

Among the general public, Gibson's "appeal" score has plunged by more than 15 points; where he once ranked among fairly likable talents such as Steve Harvey, Gibson now shares the same stratum as Andy Dick, Tiger Woods and Rosie O'Donnell.

In fact, of the 2,540 celebrities in the Celebrity DBI database, Gibson now ranks at No. 2494 in terms of appeal.

When it comes to trust, it's even worse: Gibson now ranks on the same level as Charlie Sheen.

Can Gibson's image sink any lower? I guess it all depends on how many more leaks we see.

Kanye Performs New Songs at Facebook HQ

No word yet why he was at Facebook headquarters, but we get to hear material from Good Ass Job! Rumor is he and Mark Zuckerberg were having a meeting together, who knows what they could be up to. Kanye performed what sounded like 'Chain Heavy' and 'Sweat on My Face'. Looks like that tracklist that everyone thought was fake may actually end up being real. September 14th better hurry up goddammit.

Statistics: Rich People watch Mad Men

Turns out Mad Men has the wealthiest fans in all of cable TV land, according to The Hollywood Reporter: Nearly half of its viewers make a household income of more than $100,000 a year. Though other cable hits garner much higher ratings, none come even close to the acclaimed AMC drama in terms of what portion of their fan base is loaded. For instance, USA’s Royal Pains averages 6.9 million viewers each week, but only 29 percent of them make more than $100,000 annually; TNT’s The Closer garners 5.1 million viewers a week, with only 27 percent passing the $100,000 mark.

It comes as no surprise, really, that Mad Men would blow everyone else out of the water when it comes to its viewers’ bank accounts: It is the TV-taste status symbol of the moment. Drop a Mad Men reference at a cocktail party and watch people trip over themselves to show you that they get it; admit you don’t watch the damn thing, and you’re in for 30-45 minutes of people either implying you’re an uncultured boob or belaboring how you really should immediately consume every single episode lest you miss out on the cultural event of our times. (I have friends who have actually learned just enough about the show to “pass” as viewers, for the explicit purpose of avoiding these uncomfortable confrontations.) People who watch Mad Men are a small but impassioned and homogeneous bunch. It’s the kind of show that, if you watch it and hang out with people who do, you can’t believe it has only 1.9 million viewers. Doesn’t everybody who’s anybody watch it? Well, no — only everybody who makes 100-grand a year.

'Salt' vs. 'Wanted': Angelina's action heat cools off the second time around

I don't know about you, but like so many other moviegoers, when I was trying to figure out if I really needed to rush out and see "Salt" right away, I checked out the trailers for the Angelina Jolie action thriller and basically said -- does this really look better than "Wanted?" And like millions of other moviegoers, I suspect I reached the same conclusion, "Ah, no." As you may remember, "Wanted," which came out in the summer of 2008, was another special-effects and over-the-top stunts-studded thriller that not only gave Jolie lots of action heroics but surrounded her with classy (but non-threatening) male actors (in "Salt," it's Liev Schreiber and Ejiofor Chiwetel, in "Wanted," it's James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman).

Sony has been trying to put as positive as possible a spin on the opening weekend box-office equation, but if you compared the two movies -- since they are so eminently comparable -- you'd have to say that this is yet another example in which trying to recapture the same excitement and revitalize the same action beats doesn't inspire an overwhelmingly positive audience response. You just can't go back to the well that many times. According to CinemaScore, fans gave the film a B-plus, which is a solid grade, but not one that guarantees great second or third weekend legs at the box office.

"Wanted," which cost roughly $75 million, had a $50.9-million opening weekend. It ended up making $134 million in the U.S. and another $206 million overseas. Pretty impressive stuff. But "Salt" cost considerably more to make -- roughly $130 million, according to my colleague Ben Fritz, roughly $100 million according to Variety -- and opened to only $36.5 million. That gives it a long, uphill climb to get into "Wanted" territory, especially with "Inception" siphoning off huge chunks of younger, thriller-oriented moviegoers.

The lesson? If you're going the genre route, and you're spending more dough to bring the movie to market, you're trapped in an arms race where you have to deliver more thrills and more spectacular stunts each time out -- or you're looking at a diminishing series of returns. This will be especially true if Universal ends up making "Wanted 2," which will really have to deliver some serious goods to triumph over what is beginning to look a little like Jolie action fatigue.

Source: LAtimesblog