B = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
ENTERTAINMENT
THURSDAY,MAY 9,2002
Networks plan weekend TV specials,reunions
The Associated Press
Is bigger really better? For dinosaurs, big worked well for millions of years. Now *Dinotopia* is touting its own bigness of scope and expense (six hours, $80 million), all deployed for a TV genre that's following the dinosaurs into extinction; the miniseries extravaganza.
This fantasy-adventure, beginning Sunday at 7 p.m. EDT on ABC, tells of two teen-age brothers who, after a plane crash, find themselves castaways on a lost continent where humans and dinosaurs peacefully coexist. (No Jurassic Park, this!)
Based on the bestsellers by James Gurney, Dinotopia features Tyron Leitso and Wentworth Miller as the lads, along with such notable dinosaur
creations as Zippo — a huge, multilingual Stenonychosaurus—and adorable little 26.
Beware of those mean old carnivores in Waterfall City as Dinotopia continues Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m.
Other shows to watch, or watch out for:
Celebrate Mother's Day on the WE (Women's Entertainment) cable network with Rock 'n Moms, a documentary profiling women musicians who have progressed from rock to motherhood and found a balance between the two. The one-hour film, which airs Sunday at 8 p.m., features interviews with Pat Benatar and her daughter Haley (lead singer of the girl group Glo), as well as Michelle Phillips, the mother of Wilson-Phillips star Chynna Phillips,
and sisters Nancy and Ann Wilson of Heart.
It's a long-ago world that Mary turned on with a smile. Now, 25 years after the Mary Tyler Moore Show ended its seven-season run, Moore reunites with fellow cast members Ed Asner, Valerie Harper, Gavin MacLeod, Betty White, Cloris Leachman and Georgia Engel for a one-hour reunion special Monday at 10 p.m. There's a tribute to the late Ted Knight, who regularly stole the show as pompous anchorman Ted Baxter.
Another worthy get-together comes tonight. No fewer than 10 principals from TV's 4077th are back for The M-A-S-H 30th Anniversary Reunion celebrating the 11-season run of the beloved comedy. It airs on Fox at 8.
He wanted to be remembered for his human-rights record and legacy of a Great Society. Instead, Lyndon B. Johnson became the symbol of an unpopular war that he never wanted to wage. Path to War is the inside story of how advisers to the Johnson administration persuaded the president to pour money and men into Vietnam in 1965, and how these same advisers couldn't figure out a way to end the war once it became clear that their strategies had failed. Directed by John Frankenheimer, this HBO film stars Michael Gambon, Donald Sutherland, Bruce McGill, James Frain, Felicity Huffman and Alec Baldwin. It airs tomorrow at 8 p.m.
'X-Files' star faces end of long-running series
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — After nine years of playing the skeptic on The X-Files, Gillian Anderson is having trouble accepting one last cosmic truth: the drama's end.
"I think on the whole I'm in denial," Anderson said. "There was a point last week when I was driving home from work at about 1 o'clock in the morning and I tried to imagine myself making that trip, imagine it was the last night."
Anderson, 33, who plays scientifically minded Dana Scully on the FoxTV series about alien-hunting, paranormal crime-busting FBI agents, was interviewed shortly before filming wrapped.
Both she and her character have changed since its 1993 debut, the actress said. Co-star David Duchovny, 41, left the series last year but returns in the final, two-hour episode airing at 7 p.m. Sunday, May 19.
"I started out as a kid. I started out as a 24-year-old, pretending I was 29, and then becoming 29, getting into my 30s and having to grow up myself," she said "And the character shifted gradually over time alongside my own maturing process."
Anderson married, divorced and had a daughter, Piper, now 7, during the series' run. She also became a sci-fi siren, with legions of fans and magazine cover stories such as one in Details headlined "Lust in Space with Gillian Anderson."
She has successfully resisted being typecast. The film roles she managed to squeeze in during her "X-Files" years include an early 1900s society woman in "The House of Mirth" and an unlucky-in-love career woman in "Playing by Heart."
This fall, the theater-trained Anderson will appear in the new Michael Weller play "What the Night is For" in London. First, however, she plans some serious relaxation and travel, part of her recuperation from "The X-Files."
"It was physically, emotionally, psychologically exhausting," she said of the show that revealed in demanding action and complex plots. "Co-stars would come on, work with us for the 10 days and say 'Are you out of your mind?' They would be dragging themselves out of their trailer.
ABC faces ratings woes as it unveils new lineup
The Associated Press
NEWYORK — Susan Lyne doesn't think of herself as an exhibitionist.
"The first on his feet to make a toast at a wedding? That's not me," she said.
Yet on Tuesday, Lyne will claim the stage of Broadway's New Amsterdam Theater to unveil ABC's 2002-03 prime-time lineup before a packed house of ad buyers at the network's annual "upfront" presentation.
Heightening the drama, her audience is all too aware of what Lyne — just four months into her tenure as president of ABC Entertainment — is up against with this. her first schedule.
ABC is hurting almost any way you cut it, any night of the week. This season, it has been third in total viewers, down one-quarter from a year ago when it was tied with CBS for first. Among advertisers' most sought-after viewers — 18- to 49-year-olds — ABC ranks a miserable fourth.
A revenue swoon at corporate parent Walt Disney Co. hasn't brightened the mood at ABC, where Lyne, replacing the axed Stuart Bloomberg, is the fourth Entertainment president in five years.
assure everyone that ABC's fall shows will put the network on the road to recovery. And to persuade shrewd ad buyers to climb aboard.
In the short term, the network's woes can be explained by its overreliance on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, which vaulted ABC to No.1 for the 1999-2000 season. While Millionaire blazed, ABC fiddled, content to overlook problems in its schedule that were masked by its hot new game show.
Lyne said ABC also was suffering from a larger identity crisis.
So Lyne's task next week is to
Until a few years ago, "the basic footprint of ABC was pretty clear," she said. "From 8 to 9 p.m.you found family comedies, and from 9 to 11 a mix of somewhat more sophisticated comedies, great franchise dramas, and lighter hours like Moonlighting and Fantasy Island. Beginning in the mid-'90s, we began veering from that. We need to re-establish the ABC brand." Lyne said.
Compare ABC's situation to that of NBC. Despite problems on Tuesday and Sunday nights and the post-Friends half-hour Thursday, NBC leads in every major ratings category. It needs to introduce no more than six new series.
Music writer Otis Blackwell dies at 70 of heart attack
The Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Otis Blackwell, who wrote the signature hits Don't Be Cruel for Elvise Presley and Great Balls of Fire for Jerry Lee Lewis, has died. He was 70.
Blackwell suffered an apparent heart attack Monday night and was pronounced dead on arrival at Saint Thomas Hospital, hospital spokesman Paul Lindsey said.
"I wrote, went home
and prayed." Otis Blackwell songwriter
Blackwell wrote more than 1,000 songs, including Return to Sender and All Shook Up recorded by Presley. Breathless by Lewis, Handy Man by James Taylor and Fever by Peggy Lee. Ray Charles, Billy Joel, The Who and Otis Redding were among those who recorded his songs.
"I wrote, went home and prayed," Blackwell said in an Associated Press interview in 1989. "It makes me feel wonderful for other people to do my songs and have them still be around."
He was credited with writing songs that sold more than 185 million copies.
Blackwell, born in New York City began working as a penny-a-day floor sweeper at a theater and later as a clothes presser.
While recording songs for a small company, he was asked to write songs as well. "I was thrown into it," Blackwell said.
Blackwell often sang the songs himself before they were recorded, and some music historians believe his style influenced Presley, who died in 1977.
Blackwell never met Presley and said in 1989 their relationship was best kept at a distance: "We had just a great thing going and I just wanted to leave it alone."
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