Ah, sad. The talented-ish Eric Roberts has stooped to doing the second season of the Starz Channel's awful series Crash. Based on the awful movie, the awful series features the awful Dennis Hopper as an awful man. The series also stars the awfully unfortunate Julie Warner, who was supposed to be an awful big star an awfully long time ago. [Variety]

Oh, fun. Amy Poehler has been tapped to star in Lunch Lady, a movie based on an upcoming series of graphic novels about a lunch lady who's a secret superhero. Sounds just about perfect for the crazed, whimsical Ms. Poehler. [THR]

Renee Zellweger has left CAA for the newly-formed superagency William Morris Endeavor. She's hoping for more Chicago and less New In Town. So are we. [Variety]

After a brief stumble, Conan O'Brien's Tonight Show ratings are back on top. So, that's over. [THR]

Michael Cunningham, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Hours, has just had a screenplay optioned. No, it's not some sweeping ladydrama. It's a horror movie about a newly-hot high school girl and her murderous, obsessive English teacher. Cunningham told reporters "While I was writing about Virginia Wolff, my mind was never far removed from the idea of girls in bikinis being hacked up by guys wearing hockey masks, and I vowed that if I ever had a good idea, I would write one of these scary movies." Which is kind of fun! And kind of weird. [Variety]

Who cares? We do! Joy Behar, often the lone voice of reason on The View (Whoopi is just too apathetic to be reasonable), will host her own primetime talk show on HLN (used to be Headline News) starting this fall. So you'll get her five days a week in the morning on The Clambake, and then seven days a week at night on The Joy Behar Show. The only way you could get more Joy Behar in your life is if she moved into your spare room. Would you like Joy Behar to move into your spare room? Because it's not out of the question. [THR]

The once-rising Brittany Murphy has joined the cast of Something Wicked, a thriller currently being shot in Oregon. She'll costar alongside John Robinson and Shantel VanSanten. Yes, the Shantel VanSanten. [THR]

Image via Getty

Well, for Poehler at least. The series, which has gone through a whole life of rumors and speculation already—from Office spin-off, to not an Office spin-off to exactly like The Office to just all around sucky—depends on a Steve Carrel-level performance from the SNL alum (and BC grad, go Eagles). And it looks like she delivers—getting mostly strong notices for her performance as Leslie Knope, a painfully optimistic small town public official with dreams of making a Difference.

Alessandra Stanley at the New York Times gushes:

Parks and Recreation ... is charming and funny in its own right and in its own way ... The credit goes mostly to Amy Poehler, who is delicious as Leslie Knope ... The pilot episode isn't perfect, but Ms. Poehler very nearly is.

Daniel Carlson at the Hollywood Reporter is equally praising:

it's Poehler who owns the show, and she proves instantly she's got the comic intelligence to carry a series like this one, which draws its energy from character interactions instead of the broad punch lines you'd get on, say, a Chuck Lorre show. She's awkward but not alienating, and she's eager without being repelling. Most of all, there's a genuine heart to her that gives the comedy a balance and lets it be mocking without resorting to cruelty. It's funny, smart and fast. I hope it sticks around.

Though Brian Lowry at Variety doesn't think Poehler's good work makes up for the rest of the show:

Poehler certainly has acting oblivious down to a wide-eyed science. Yet there's no escaping that this feels like "Office Lite," thrown together (and perhaps this comes from knowledge about its history) as a vehicle for the star rather than out of any grand inspiration ... "Parks" just doesn't quite pop — proving unable to make me care about Leslie's quest, loudly or otherwise.

The show's mostly-negative reviews focus on that same listlessness and lack of sharp edges, which we've always worried would be attendant with a comedy about... building a park in Indiana.

That said, the reviews have done enough to make us curious. We have a strange affection for Poehler—don't you just want to be her friend?—and Greg Daniels is owed at least the benefit of the doubt. Parks sounds like a pleasantly mild affair, made special by that beguiling certain Poehler something. And, in response to the more negative reviews, as Ken Tucker at Entertainment Weekly reminds us (in a B review),The Office took a little while to kick into high funneez gear when it premiered back in 2005. So it's possible (at least we hope it is) that the best of Parks is yet to come.

The buddy flick ships the three socially allergic women off to spring break at South Padre Island, where the eco-idealist political gofer Becky (Posey) is assigned to chaperone her boss's own awkward daughter (Amber Tamblyn). Becky's BFFs Judi (Dratch) and Gayle (Poehler) join up, soon losing — and ultimately finding — themselves in the seasonal co-ed debauchery. It's Revenge of the Nerds meets Sex and the City, with all of the former's giddy depravity and the latter's sharp camaraderie, but with neither film's relative ambition. Director Ryan Shiraki borrows heavily from the '80s playbook of underdog cheapies, with about their same inconsistency and cult potential.

Those margins aren't satisfactory for Warner Bros., which produced Breakdown several years ago, offloaded it to its troubled (now defunct) Warner Independent Pictures label, and now leans toward a straight-to-DVD release. The enthusiastic full house at the Library Theater would disapprove. If only it were up to them.

Meanwhile, Poehler had made the journey to Park City at around 5 a.m. and greeted us with a gape, maybe a half-yawn, we couldn't tell. "Pardon me," she said. "My lips are out of juice." Do we ever know the feeling. But it's the world premiere! Let's celebrate! "The world premiere!" Her eyes alit. "I like that. It was fun. It was kind of a dream world."

Adding to the surreal quality was the likelihood that we were one of five audiences — only at Sundance — who may ever see Spring Breakdown in a movie theater. Poehler shrugged. "Warner's sister is going to put it out. I think?" Really? "Maybe they still will. Like I said, I think there's an arm of Warner Independent or Warner's sister that's going to put it out. It's going to be Warner Independent Independent."

The optimism cooled proportionately as the Breakdown family exited into the freezing Library parking lot, where Shiraki (pictured here with co-writer Dratch after the premiere) declined to discuss its limbo, and one disappointed insider told us even an exuberant Sundance response wouldn't necessarily guarantee the film a theatrical life. It has champions among the brass — including WB production exec Sara Schechter, who was on hand gauging reaction as well — but if Warner Independent couldn't stand by a crowd-pleasing Oscar lock like Slumdog Millionaire, the adage around Park City goes, what odds did an microbudget indie comedy stand? Even (or especially, in the minds of WIP skeptics) with Poehler, Dratch and Posey.

Technically, the jury remains out. But it seems clear enough that if you happen to be among the hardcore hopeful for whom Breakdown is a lost, lamented moviegoing grail, we'd say you have one week in Park City to track it down. That whole "theater near you" thing seems a long shot from here.

[Photo credits: Top, Getty Images; bottom, STV]

It was kind of an obvious pick up at this point, considering its creator and star Tina Fey is just about the only NBC-related thing that people talk about these days. The rest of their lineup, while earning higher ratings, is mostly forgettable and un-buzzworthy. But this is a big change for a show—which still, despite the zeitgeist, languishes in critically-beloved-yet-relatively-low-ratings land—that was a much bigger question mark at the start of the 2008-2009 TV season.

After the Writers Guild strike broke its second season in half, 30 Rock was put on cancellation watch. Though it got a third-season order, going into the fall, it looked like NBC chairman Ben Silverman had left it for dead. After plastering promos for his brilliant idea for a new series, Kath & Kim, all over the Olympics in August, he announced a precariously late premiere date for 30 Rock and the cast and crew were seemingly on the last of their second chances.

But then, a few weeks before its third season debut, Fey went supernova. She became a celebrated national darling with her infamous Sarah Palin impression on Saturday Night Live. Some wondered if she'd take that heat—the magazine covers! the interviews! the glowing, nerdy adoration!—over to Rock. It looks like she did. For now. We're curious to see how long it lasts, as Palin recedes (blessedly) farther and farther into the ruined past.

So that's good news, because the show is wonderful (last night's episode, with zombie jokes!, is below). Also good news, we hope, is that Amy Poehler's new NBC show now has an official start date. The sitcom, created by The Office's Greg Daniels, will drop on April 9th, filling the Kath & Kim slot. That Floridian comedy "may or may not" return to the airwaves (or, I guess they won't be airwaves anymore, will they?) next year. I hope it does come back, because it's actually pretty funny once you get used to its strange, muted sense of humor.

It'd be nice to call the Poehler series "promising," but we don't really know anything about, um, what it's about. (Update: Oh wait! Yes we do!) Though, rumored to be joining the SNL (and Boston College, woot) alum are splendid comedian Aziz Ansari, former Office mate Rashida Jones, maybe Poehler's hubby Will Arnett, and the "New Funny Girl" from New York Magazine's terrifically depressing "New Issue" (Ronan Farrow, swoon), Aubrey Plaza.

Zap2It's Korbi Ghosh was the first to dig up a show premise that wasn't merely a joke idea tossed off by Amy Poehler:

A couple nosy moles tell me that, like The Office, it's basically documentary style. Set in the parks & recreation department of a local city government in some podunk town, Poehler will play a delusional employee, totally unaware that she doesn't work in high ranking politics. And of course there will be supporting players around to make fun of her foolish idiocy. Sound too much like another show we already know? Well, I'm hearing that the writers are currently tweaking the concept a bit, but this is the general idea.

Though the current plot resembles The Office far too much for our liking, there's promise in the setting—if, that is, producers shoot the show like it was a Detroit city council meeting on public access television. Just as the Steve Carell iteration of The Office started by borrowing scripts and plotlines from its British progenitor, scenes of Amy Poehler calling Aziz Ansari "Shrek" could power this non-spinoff though May sweeps, at least!

• Quick TV Fix: Exclusive Details on Amy Poehler Show Concept, Plus '24,' 'House,' '90210,' Etc... [Zap2It via Vulture]

When I heard about the straight to DVD treatment, my first instinct was to cry sexism. I assumed that movie studios were not going to release the film because even after the moderate success of Baby Mama, they believe a woman-led comedy will not sell. But then I thought about it some more, and had another revelation: maybe I'm the one being sexist.

I was raging to a friend about Spring Breakdown not getting a proper release, and he said, "Maybe it's just not very good." That floored me. Maybe it's just. Not. Very. Good. That made me remember a comment made in the post I did about the Bride Wars trailer. If you'll recall, I found the trailer played to all the worst Bridezilla-ish stereotypes, and to that a commenter made some very good points, but then also a very bad one. "It might have gotten dumbed down and crappified, but there might actually be a good movie hiding behind the obnoxious trailer. Wouldn't be the first time. And, like Baby Mama, just the fact that it's a big budget comedy starring 2 women is a big big deal," the commenter argued. I was nodding my head in agreement, until this part: "Hopefully in a few years we'll have tons of good, bad, and mediocre female-driven comedies, but for now don't be so quick to shit on a movie written by, produced by, and starring women."

The idea that we should judge comedies written by, produced by, and starring women by a different rubric than comedies created by men is the worst kind of sexism — it's the sexism of diminished expectations.

Melissa hasn't seen Spring Breakdown, but she's not positive it's a stinker, either, by anyone's rubric. Here's what she had to say:

It's been done forever and I thought it was supposed to come out last spring around spring break which would have been perfect. So the fact that it's been sitting on the shelf for a while is not good news. Many movies, especially women's films have difficulty breaking into the market because there are just not enough theatres so even getting a DVD release is good for some people. This year films by Michelle Pfeiffer (the Amy Heckerling film- I Could Never Be Your Woman) and films that starred Meg Ryan and Diane Keaton have been dumped to DVD.

But those were smaller films. Spring Breakdown is from Warner Brothers which only really knows how to release guy centric blockbusters. I think that the could release it and still make $20 [million] because its a comedy and its got Amy who is almost as big a Tina now. I'm sure there are many political issues that I know nothing about and I don't know if the film is a piece of crap. Baby Mama was good, not great, in my book but made money (and would make so much more now).

With women's films you are screwed either way, first you don't want to release a bad movie starring and about women, especially a comedy because there are so few of those. I can just see the Judd Apatow fraternity rolling their eyes at a bad women's comedy. Why give Hollywood more ammunition to think we aren't a market?

But we don't know if it is bad. I see comedies differently than my male counterparts. Maybe I would think it was funny even though the suits at Warners or the test audiences in Las Vegas or some other place didn't. Who knows?

Melissa also notes that Bride Wars was not written and directed by women — it had women as co-writers (it was directed by Gary Winick and written by Casey Wilson, June Diane Raphael and Greg DePaul). However, she also thinks there should be room for the crappy chick flicks alongside the female-driven comedies and dramas. "We need all kinds of women's movies, just like we get all types of men's movies," Melissa stresses. "I just wish we had more good scripts and more opportunities to see women on screen. Is that too much to ask for in 2008?" No, no it's not.

Spring Breakdown [IMDB]
Women & Hollywood

Earlier: Bride Wars An Insult To Women, Brain Cells
The Stepfordization Of Hollywood's Comely Comediennes

Kind of like The View, but skewing much younger, funnier and less dramatically hormonal, Smart Girls was announced in September as Poehler's paean to "girls who have unique talents and interests." ON Networks originally planned an October launch, later a casualty of Poehler's maternity leave that has since been pushed back to Nov. 17. Expect the last of special guest Tina Fey's Sarah Palin sketches to appear here as well, casting the Alaska governor as a heartening symbol of what American girls can accomplish with even the most modest flute and firearms skills. Until then, the trailer is below.

• ‘Smart Girls at the Party’ to Launch November 17 [Tilzy]

Her brief Rachael Ray impression (video below, warning: bad quality) was amusing. So was that kind of bizarre paraplegic stripper skit she had early last season. But other than that... Well, it's mostly been the straight woman to Wiig's or the boys' wacky! characters. Maybe now that Poehler is gone, she'll get a chance to shine, thus getting more comfortable. Right now she just seems a bit stilted, a bit awkward. She's trying too hard. She needs to rein it in from the stage to fit the television. Also, she cowrote the upcoming Kate Hudson movie Bride Wars, which we're sorta counting as a knock against her (except, you know, good job selling a script, Casey. Hope you bought something nice.)

But! She has a nice face and gave the wicked Sarah Palin a big ol' hug at the curtain call a coupla weeks back, so maybe she's a nice person, too. Now let her be funny! I mean, she got on the show, right? That must mean something! Though, Finesse Mitchell and Jim Breuer got on the show at various points, too. And we all know how well that worked out.

It looks like it's now or never, Casey. Go buy the writers a round of drinks.

Does anyone know her from her UCB days? Was she funny then?

• SNL [NBC]

Who can forget Amy's magnificent satire of her own coming unborn! It's just good to know Steve Holt will have a brother.

And think of Will Arnett! When he was on the set of Let's Go To Prison, could he have imagined he'd be able to afford to see this day?

It was so real when all the ladies were in the show's open that time. Dratch and Rudolph and Wiig and Poehler! Who could ask for anything more?

Lastly, who can forget Amy's poignant run in the legendary sketch troupe Upright Citizens Brigade. This sketch changed the way I view life in general, and Amy 's performance as Charna McMadison is what holds it together. Her acting here in multiple roles is Gilda Radner-worthy.

Then there's Amy's classic Dakota Fanning series. How confusing are these vignettes going to be for young Winston Jammer to absorb?

It Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby [TMZ]

Sadly, our list cut off at eight, so the valuable, deadpan Jane Curtain and the acidic Nora Dunn were among the SNL casualties. Other alumnae — like Sarah Silverman and Janeane Garofalo — have had career success despite their ignoble stints on the variety show, and were therefore left out. Enjoy the clip above, then make a passionate case for the ignored Julia Sweeney down below. [SNL]

Frankly, we've never appreciated a French newspaper more than we love Le Soleil at this moment. Sure, SNL can corner the Palin impression market, but it takes a special kind of postmodern zeal to own such willful ignorance of arguably the most famous female politician going right now. We can hardly wait for the next "accident" attributing mythic, messianic public-speaking genius to Democratic presidential contender Fred Armisen. If it hasn't been published already.

• Oops! Newspapers Around the World Use Palin Pic... [TV Squad via Vulture]

On the off chance this weekend's SNL features a spoof of tonight's vice presidential slugfest, I can tell you who will be playing PBS moderator Gwen Ifill: Queen Latifah. A well-placed source confirms to me exclusively that SNL has gone ahead and secured Latifah's services for Saturday's show. The insider cautions, however, that the debate sketch isn't 100 percent locked — and a final decision might not come down until Saturday. There's also no official word as to whether Tina Fey would be back as Palin.

With Palin herself now appropriating Fey touches like goofy, stalling winks, one would hope Fey would return to cap off what may be a trilogy of SNL appearances spoofing the candidate. Again, though, we have to ask: can't SNL just add a black comedienne to its cast? The show has been on for thirty-six seasons and has only managed to add a handful of black women to its roster of performers. To quote from the parlance of our times, is that change we can believe in, or is it more of the same?

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Casting Scoops: 'SNL,' 'Grey's,' 'Housewives,' 'Damages,' 'Old Christine,' and More! [EW]

The sketch, after the jump:

The monologue, by guest host and Olympic swimming champ Michael Phelps, was to have been built around Obama and would have included an additional cameo by action star Chuck Norris. But Norris, too, canceled because of the hurricane, and William Shatner was enlisted as his replacement. Shatner was already en route from Los Angeles via chartered airplane when Obama dropped out; the monologue was reworked so that it would still include a Shatner cameo.

"It was great of him to do it," Michaels said of Shatner. Michaels said Obama was to have returned briefly for a second appearance, during the "Weekend Update" segment, but that was obviously scuttled, too.

..."His people called and said they felt they had to shut it down because of the storm," meaning Hurricane Ike, Michaels said yesterday by phone from New York. "I pleaded with them to wait and make the decision on Saturday morning, but they felt they had to do it then. There was a sensitivity to how it would be perceived — whether he would be criticized for doing it while disaster struck."

Did he make the right decision? "It was certainly the wrong decision for me," Michaels said. "Do I think there's an oversensitivity in this area? Yes." But Michaels said he would be happy to have Obama appear on a future show, provided a good sketch can be devised. "It was an enormous disappointment," Michaels said, "but they were very pleasant about it — 'Please have us back again' and all that."

Michaels went on to reply, "Oh, we will — and can you bring your wife? We kind of need her!" No word yet on whether Obama will reschedule or whether Fey will be lured back for repeat performances, but at least one thing is known: Palin herself watched the skit while on her campaign plane. Her spokesperson Tracey Schmidt said she found the sketch "quite funny" (though McCain surrogate Carly Fiorina begged to differ), adding that Palin once dressed up as Fey for Halloween. Meta madness!

• Fey-as-Palin Wins the Early Vote On 'SNL' [Washington Post]