[Televisionary]

American Psycho ... in Los Angeles? Pay cabler Showtime has ordered a script for The Canyons , a soap/drama (with some horror overtones) from exec producer/writer Bret Easton Ellis ( The Rules of Attraction , Less Than Zero ). The series would revolve around a 19-year-old hard-living magazine editor who flees Manhattan with his best friend and new girlfriend to move to Los Angeles. However, when his friend is killed in a rather mysterious accident, he finds himself alone in the most scandalously shallow city on the planet. (Hey, I can say that, I live here.) So where's that horror overtone I mentioned before? Seems that the six main characters--all various Angeleno archetypes including lawyer, art gallery owner, event planner, and bartender--deal not only with the Melrose Place -eque demons of careers and relationships but also with violence and anxiety materialized as monsters and apparitions. (Hmmm, I thought they were called agents.) If that sounds a little too David Lynchian fo

One million dollars certainly buys a lot of moisturizer and styling products. It had to happen. One team had to cross the finish line and win the million dollar prize. You didn't really think this season of The Amazing Race would go on forever, now did you? (As much as it seemed as though it did go on for about a year and a half.) Ultimately, I was just rooting for Rob and Kimberly not to win. As for which of the teams would end up winning the grand prize and the big speech from Phil about "four continents" and all that, I had a feeling that Tyler and James would end up being the first to cross the finish line, so long as it didn't involve another "place the flags of the countries you've visited in the correct order" challenge from last season. Put together a stylish jacket on a mannequin? Sure but I'm not too sure the models/recovering drug addicts would have been able to do that. Teams departed Barcelona for Paris but ended up running around the F

Dust off your Browncoats, true believers. Despite getting unceremoniously cancelled by Fox four years ago (and spawning a kick-ass feature film adaptation that sadly only grossed $25 million at the box office), Joss Whedon's space western opus Firefly is returning in a new and shiny incarnation, this time as an online game, set to hit, er, the internet in 2008. 20th Century Fox, the studio behind Firefly, has announced that it has licensed the rights to Firefly to video game tech company Multiverse, which plans to turn the series into an online multi-player game, part of a push to develop a huge online portal with online games featuring a number of properties. Company will hire a developer to create a game around Firefly and its band of renegade outlaws (headed up by Captain Tightpants, himself, Mal Reynolds). While no deals are currently in place, Multiverse hopes to have some input from series creator Joss Whedon and utilize voice talent from some of the series' actors. Pe

Wow, the very few of you who are actually watching the hysterical 30 Rock may have gotten that title but for the rest of you, looks like you'll have to download the episode from iTunes. Me, I'm pushing that catchphrase as hard as I can. It's simply too random not to catch on. I couldn't let this week end without commenting about the season finale of America's Next Top Model and the crowning of leggy space cadet CariDee as the latest winner of the reality series. I would have been happy, going into the finale, with either CariDee or Melrose taking home the bragging rights to the Top Model title (not to mention the Seventeen mag cover, etc.), but secretly I really was rooting for CariDee to end up trumping Melrose in the end. Who, let's be honest, really did need getting knocked down a peg or two. In looking at CariDee's photos, they were luminous and stunning and when she's made up in a fresh, natural look, she really does seem the epitome of Seventee

Say it ain't so. Could Tim Gunn not be back for the next installment of Project Runway ? It's a chilling thought and, while it might pale in comparison to the real troubles of the world today, it's one that gives this Runway obsessive a bit of a difficulty breathing. (Rest assured, Heidi Klum, Michael Kors, and--say it with me--Nina Garcia are all locks for next season.) This week's edition of industry bible Entertainment Weekly has the story. According to the article's writer Nisha Gopalan, Bravo--the style-hungry network behind Project Runway --is champing at the bit to get started on the fourth season of the sartorial challenge. One speed bump in the road to Season Four just happens to be Tim Gunn himself. Whah? You'd be right to ask that, especially given that I can't imagine a single episode of Runway sans Gunn, much less an entire season. While Gunn's not commenting one way or another, he's a busy guy as the chair of the fashion design depar

With the Los Angeles sun beating down, I was finding it a little hard this year to get into the Christmas spirit. That is, until I watched a mash up of my favorite Christmas television special, A Charlie Brown Christmas , performed by the cast of NBC's Scrubs . While you won't get to see Dr. Kelso do the Snoopy Dance (rats!), feast your eyes (and ears) on the vocal talents of the entire Scrubs gang, including J.D., Turk, Carla, Elliot, the Janitor, and even Dr. Cox... in a stunning performance as blanket-toting Linus. Special thanks to the production crew of a certain non- Scrubs NBC sitcom for sending this my way. It's like a warm mug of cocoa on a cold winter's night.

I never thought I'd live to see the day where Top Chef contestants Cliff and Sam would wind up in the bottom three. These two have proven such strong competitors (not to mention fantastic chefs) so far and I shivered with the thought last night that one of these two talents might be going home. Fortunately, the judges must have felt the same way because they miraculously spared Cliff and Sam (who, let's be honest here, did not have good dishes at all last night) and sent home short-tempered Frank instead. Frank, naturally, dubbed himself a "sacrificial lamb" and surprisingly welcomed all of the contestants and judges to his house. While I'm not sure I follow the metaphor he presented (how was he "sacrificed" any differently than any of the other booted contestants?), the sentiment was in the right place. If anyone does show up, think he'll serve lamb? Last night's episode of Top Chef (can you believe we're seven episodes in already?), "