Put down the merlot! Alexander Payne, director of wine-snob favorite Sideways, has signed on to direct HBO's dark comedy Hung. Apparently the main character is, um, well-endowed. "Think of him like Spider-Man," show creator Colette Burson told Daily Variety last month. "He's an average guy who gets in touch with his innate superpowers." Okay, wait maybe we should keep drinking to watch this one. Variety reports:  read more »

When Ashlee Simpson began her rise to fame (and later infamy) in 2004, the last thing the world needed was another pop star in her sister's mold—which was lucky for Ashlee, who does not have Jessica's vocal range (nor, need it be said, her Barbie looks). Packaged and primed, Ashlee was groomed to be the anti-Jessica, the Pat Benatar to Jessica's Olivia Newton John. With dark brown hair and that nose, she even managed to look the part. She was always more spunk than anything else, which was made abundantly clear when she was caught lip-synching on Saturday Night Live.  read more »

All kinds of people are watching HBO’s seven-part miniseries John Adams, which airs its fifth installment, "Unite or Die," on Sunday night at 9 p.m. Some are HBO loyalists, who will try anything the network puts on the table at least once (even John From Cincinnati, the network’s most glorious failure). Others are people like my parents, who prefer the BBC and PBS and (at least in my dad’s case) war documentaries over edgier network fare. And still others are people more like myself: avid fans of the television, in general, who are bored out of their skulls wandering the post-writers'-strike wasteland of nighttime programming. Is everything on hiatus? Brothers and Sisters, we await your return!

Still, though many young people confess that they are watching the show, nobody seems to talk about it the way they talked about The Sopranos.  read more »

HBO has dropped its Lily Tomlin-fronted dramedy 12 Miles of Bad Road. They had produced six episodes of the show, which starred Ms. Tomlin as the matriarch of a Texas real estate family, according to Broadcasting & Cable. But this death can't be blamed on the writers' strike. HBO executives ultimately deemed it a poor match for the network's sensibilities, according to sources with knowledge of the situation. The show's pilot was executive-produced by Designing Women's Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and her husband, Harry Thomason. The plot, pilot showrunners, and leading lady all seemed a little moldy for HBO, especially when the channel is struggling to fill a schedule left by shows like The Wire (and their new show John Adams seems like a snore too).

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Teen girls aren't the only ones getting into those sexy sexy vampires! Alan Ball, who created the morbidly hilarious Six Feet Under, is making his own show about them, based on Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire book series. Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgard, a son of Stellan Skarsgard (Good Will Hunting, that evil guy in Pirates of the Carribean), has joined the cast of Mr. Ball's True Blood. The show centers on the love story between a vampire, Bill (Stephen Moyer), and Sookie (Anna Paquin, X-Men's Rogue), a waitress who can read people's minds. Mr. Skarsgard, a tall dark and handsome type of course, will play a vampire and Viking who has been alive for more than a thousand years.

On Monday, Feb. 25, Lorraine Bracco—who around here is still better known as the shrieky wife in GoodFellas than for her role as the shrink with a smoky voice on The Sopranos—threw a launch party for her new line of wines at the Hard Rock Café on Broadway and 43rd Street. No matter how you slice it, a TV actor launching an eponymous line of booze at a Times Square theme restaurant on a Monday night in February is a tad depressing. Fugeddaboutit! The event was well attended and star-studded—even Mayor Bloomberg showed up to support the 53-year-old actress and her vino.

“I have a lot of energy and didn’t want to just walk around in my apartment in circles,” Ms. Bracco told the Daily Transom of why she decided to put her name on a collection of wines, which range from Amarone Classico to Pinot Grigio.  read more »

HBO has picked up the rights to air a controversial Oscar-nominated documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, after the doc's content sent the Discovery Channel running. Taxi to the Dark Side, directed, written and produced by Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), focuses on the murder of a taxi driver at the U.S.' Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The homicide is used as a backdrop to investigate American use of detention and condoning of torture in interrogations. Mr. Gibney told Variety that he wanted the documentary to hit the small screen before the end of the election year.  read more »

Whether you thought they were art of the highest form, or just a bunch of tall orange things with curtains hanging from them, chances are you were talking about The Gates three years ago when it came to Central Park as one of the biggest public art installations in history. Commemorating the three-year anniversary of The Gates opening on Feb. 12, 2005, Mayor Michael Bloomberg will host a special screening of the forthcoming HBO documentary film that chronicles “the decades-long effort by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude to bring their ambitious work of art The Gates, Central Park, New York City 1979-2005, to fruition,” tomorrow.  read more »

After 31 years, HBO is finally pulling the plug on "Inside the NFL."

According to Multichannel News, the NFL plans to continue the premier pigskin highlights and analysis show next season on another network.

"There have been discussions with three or four other unnamed outlets, though no deal has been made," reports Reuters. "The show will kick off again in the fall, regardless."