Chris Kattan is getting over his brief marriage pretty fast, as he is debuting something he calls “Canine Theater” on MySpace TV. The premise seems to be: things doen with dogs in wigs. He decided to make his first “episode” about a “trio” of dogs that are very obviously Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears circa 2006.

It’s sad that we know that the dogs are replicating real rumors, but that’s how long we’ve been working on the internet.

Hillary Duff is like key lime ice cream to us. We’d never seek it out, and we’d never ask for yours, but if someone force-feeds it to us, we might as well enjoy it as much as we can. We tolerate.

That doesn’t mean we don’t pay attention when bad things happen to her family, especially when it has nothing to do with the Duff herself

From AP:

A judge in Texas has ordered the father of actress and singer Hilary Duff to spend 10 days in jail for contempt of court.

Bob Duff was led away in handcuffs Wednesday during a court hearing after Judge Thomas Stansbury in Houston determined he violated an injunction against selling assets without court approval.

The Houston Chronicle reported in its online edition that Bob Duff must pay into a court repository $367,537 he earned from selling stocks last month.

Bob and Susan Duff are in the midst of a bitter divorce.

Stansbury determined Bob Duff should pay Susan $12,500 for Hilary’s birthday party, which was the subject of the hearing. Her mother wanted $25,000 to pay for a present and party.

Though the entire thing seems rather foolish ($25K for a party and gift?), we did get the giggles to see that AP considers Hilary Duff both a singer and an actress.

Tee hee. Actress.

On the first of August, Dave was in Chicago, news was being handled by other B&U’rs and the four-minute spec presentation to the long-forgotten Buffy The Vampire Slayer Animated series debuted on YouTube.

Bits and pieces exist of this timeline, but best give it you as we find it.

From Wikipedia:

Development began on the show in 2001. Whedon and Jeph Loeb [ED: This pre-dates Loeb’s similar duties on Heroes] were to be Executive Producers for the show, and most of the cast from Buffy would return to voice their characters [ED: Barring Sarah Michelle Gellar, who was in the middle of her “cast me as anything but Buffy again” phase]. However the series soon ran into problems. 20th Century Fox were going to produce the show, and it was initially planned that the show would air on Fox Kids, possibly as early as February 2002. When Fox Kids ceased operations Fox shopped it to other networks. When no network was willing to purchase the series, production halted.

Two years later, in 2004, Fox once again showed an interest in developing and selling the show to another network. Various key actors/actresses including Anthony Stewart Head, did voice work, and artwork was produced to make a four-minute presentation. That pilot was used to try to sell the series to a network. However once again no network was willing to take the risk of purchasing the show. Loeb has pointed out that networks find the show difficult since it would be too adult to air with children’s television, but not suitable to many people in a prime-time slot.

This lead to Whedon making this flabbergasted statement to The Hollywood Reporter (yes, we got to use “flabbergasted,” bonus):

“We just couldn’t find a home for (it). We had a great animation director, great visuals, six or seven hilarious scripts from our own staff — and nobody wanted it. I was completely baffled. I felt like I was sitting there with bags of money and nobody would take them from me. It was a question of people either not wanting it or not being able to put up the money because it was not a cheap show. One thing I was very hard-line about was, I didn’t want people to see it if it looked like crap. I wanted it to be on a level with “Animaniacs” or “Batman: The Animated Series.” And that’s a little pricier. But I just don’t think it’s worth doing unless it’s beautiful to look at as well as fun.

Then, the clip leaked on August 1st 2008, leading to a Facebook group and petition to get Buffy: The Animated Series on the air and find it a home for all to see.

On August 20th, Nicholas Brendon (who played Xander on the TV series), said in his audioblog: ” I know that there’s been talk about the Buffy Animated Series. Which we did, gosh, like, three years ago. You know, to be quite honest with you, I don’t know why it didn’t go further, but I know that there’s been a lot of hububaloo on the old YouTube there, and I checked it out and I almost got a little teary. You know, I hadn’t seen Xander in a while, and it was kind of neat to kind of go back into that library and that into life, and all that stuff. But, yeah. So, listen, I’ll go on the record by saying I would love to do an animated series for Buffy. That being said, I might be the only one. But, I’m not sure. I haven’t had a chance to talk to anybody about it. So, you know, keep your fingers crossed.”

The explosive nature of the YouTube pilot even motivated MTV to track down Jeph Loeb this week, though he must be busy preparing the Heroes onslaught next month, and ask him about the state of Buffy.

Loeb said: “Everything still exists — the designs, the scripts. It’s such a ‘no-duh’ project, so why the hell not? All you need is to draw it. Eight years ago, there was no fascination with ‘Family Guy’ or ‘Robot Chicken,’ but there’s an audience now that could drive to it. You can’t stand in the way of pop culture.”

The series takes place during the events of Season One of the television show, so Buffy is still in high school, the Scooby gang is still working out of the library, but Dawn Summers – a character suddenly added to the show in the 5th season – also appeared in the character art. The show has been dubbed “Episode 7.5” by some of the creative team, and finished 8 story arcs, most fully-scripted, before the project was shut down.

So, is Buffy coming back in animated form?

Who knows? But when was the last time we had some good YouTube-inspired controversy?

There is currently an eBay auction claiming to award the highest bidder with a set visit to Spider-Man 4, a one-hour meet-n-greet with the cast, a walk-on/extra role, a trip to the New York premiere (complete with designer outfits) and red carpet access. This auction was placed by Sony Pictures Entertainment and the profits from the auction will benefit the Stand Up To Cancer charity.

What does this tell us about Spider-Man 4? Absolutely nothing.

Sony most definitely doesn’t have a script that they are banking on, Sam Raimi hasn’t committed to coming back, and if Sam goes, a lot of the cast might go with him.

None of those potential pitfalls will stop Sony Pictures from making a 4th Spider-Man movie, even if they have to cast the thing with Neal Patrick Harris and Bruce Campbell alone. Especially after The Dark Knight proved that other comic book movies could out-perform the Spider-Man franchise. To most that would look like a once-in-a-lifetime film hitting the perfect combination of buzz, tone and a dead co-star giving his career-best performance, but you can bet that someone at Sony just sees it as a new benchmark.

If you want to bid, CLICK HERE. And you best be able to beat the $5K current benchmark.

In response to this week’s hullabaloo about the title of Alan Ball’s latest film Towelhead, the author of the book (with the same title), Alicia Erian, Alan Ball, Warners Independent and a smattering of Doctors and Reverends have released statements to justify why the movie will keep its title and see release this September.

Alicia Erian – Author:

As an Arab-American woman, I am of course aware that the title of my book is an ethnic slur. Indeed, I selected the title to highlight one of the novel’s major themes: racism. In the tradition of Dick Gregory’s autobiography Nigger, the Jewish magazine Heeb, or the feminist magazine Bitch, the title is rude and shocking, but it is not gratuitous. Besides the fact that the main character must endure taunting about her ethnicity (including being called a towelhead), so much of the novel’s plot is fueled by the characters’ attitudes toward race.
I was not contacted by any organization or group when my novel was released in 2005. I don’t know if this was because no one had heard about my book, or because they didn’t feel it would have as much of an impact as a film. Having lived in a world in which my book has existed without protest for the past three years, however, I feel I have at least some view onto what to expect from the public in terms of a response. The bottom line is, never once have I encountered anyone who didn’t understand the seriousness of the word “towelhead” and all its implications.
This is not to say that I don’t find these concerns legitimate — I absolutely do. We live in a racist society, one in which people continue to use ethnic slurs to delineate those who are different than they are. Realistically speaking, though, these people are neither the audience for my book, nor for the film. They will continue to use whatever language they wish whether or not a movie called “Towelhead” is released. For this reason, I am pleased that Warner Bros. is standing by the title.
Towelhead, like its many cousins — nigger, spic, gook, etc. — is an ugly word. The job of the artist, however, has been, and always will be, to highlight that which is ugly in the hopes of finding something beautiful. This charge, by necessity, will at times put the artist at odds with admirable groups such as CAIR. The solution, it seems to me, is not to force the artist to alter his or her work, but instead to use the occasion of that work as an entry point for meaningful debate and discussion

Alan Ball – Writer/Director:

As a gay man, I know how it feels to be called hateful names simply because of who I am. Therefore, I felt it was important to retain the title of Alicia Erian’s novel, in which she so effectively dramatizes the pain inflicted by such language, something many people of non-minority descent never have to face. I believe one of the unintended consequences of forbidding such words to be spoken is imbuing those words with more power than they should ever have, and helping create the illusion that the bigotry and racism expressed by such cruel epithets is less prevalent than it actually is, which we all know is sadly not the case.

The rest below the cut!

Oh, The Telegraph. This is the same paper that had people thinking that Christopher Nolan was going to cast Cher as Catwoman in a movie he hasn’t even thought about yet.

Today, they take on The Muppet Show:

In the movie, written by Forgetting Sarah Marshall star and writer Jason Segel, the Muppets reunite to save their studio with one last variety show.
Should the film go well, it opens up the possibility of a television programme, also written by 28-year-old Segel.

A source said: “Jason is a massive Muppets fan and is seen as the man to finally bring The Muppet Show back to TV.

“It will obviously have all its old fans but Jason’s comedy is hugely popular with youngsters so it will open it up to a whole new audience.”

The source added: “If the movie script is popular Jason will write the TV series too. He is already coming up with ideas for it.”

This is like saying: If Twilight does well, maybe they will make a series out of it. Of course The Muppet Show could come back (it did in 1996 as Muppets Tonight, but only aired 10 episodes on ABC before being relegated to The Disney Channel), but it’s complete hogwash to assume that the Segel script (which is real) is close enough to done that he’s already thinking about boarding a long-running TV series.

He’s part of the Apatow crew, and those guys have no shortage of work right now.

If the new Muppet movie does well; yeah, they might think series. But until then, we’re going to call bullshit on this rumor.

Don’t expect to hear from us for about half an hour as we download and watch the 30-minute behind-the-scenes mockumentary of Tropic Thunder called “Rain of Madness.” When the teaser popped up (read about that HERE) we hoped it wasn’t just viral marketing, now we’re pleased.

Rain of Madness was filmed by the original cast during the production of Tropic Thunder with Ben Stiller, but everyone stays in their movie characters, which – hopefully – means more Steve Coogan.

You can click HERE to download the sucker yourself.