Something next to normal, that's the thing I'd like to try

* Jeremy Renner doesn't need a Hawkeye solo movie because he already has like six other franchises. He also talks about his new movie, Kill the Messenger, and is kind of adorably nuts about his daughter.

* Meanwhile, here's a first look at Adrianne Palicki as his comic book (ex-)wife, Bobbi Morse/Mockingbird, in Agents of SHIELD.

* I didn't get around to linking to Lucy Lawless' interview before the premiere of Agents of SHIELD, which makes her comments about her tenure on the show somewhat curious.

* The creators of The Good Wife talk about this week's season premiere.

* I so want Zachary Levi back on TV in a musical comedy.

* Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn are confirmed as the stars of True Detective season 2? That's a resounding "meh."

* An interview with Jeffrey Tambor about his new series, Transparent.

* Here's what to expect in the new season of The Vampire Diaries.

* Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul are reunited as creepy pawn shop owners in this funny Emmy awards promo with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

* TV renewal announcements: The Strain has been renewed for season 2. I haven't been terribly impressed with the show so far, but I haven't given up yet, either. Finding Carter, which I find endearing in an ABC Family kind of way (seriously, this show belongs in a double-feature with The Fosters on ABC Fam, not MTV), has also been renewed, and Masters of Sex is getting a third season.

* Adrianne Palicki as Mockingbird! YAAAAAAAAASSSSSSS.

* First photo of Paul Rudd in Ant-Man, which added several actors to the cast, including John Slattery, suggesting that the older Howard Stark (as opposed to 1940s!Stark, played by Dominic Cooper) will play a role in flashbacks. Or time travel, who knows.

* Here's a roundup of everything we know about Avengers: Age of Ultron.

* Here's another Homeland season 4 trailer.

* Emma Stone is making her Broadway debut in Cabaret.

* Director Francis Lawrence drops some hints about Mockingjay and splitting the book into two films. 

* Why you should watch You're the Worst. I really did not expect to find this show hilarious, because while I often find terrible people to be interesting to watch, I rarely find them endearing, but I don't know, you guys. Maybe it's that they are terrible in kind of the ways that we all wish we could be terrible but worry about being judged?

* First promo for season 6 of The Vampire Diaries.

* Watch the Parks & Recreation gag reel.

* Enlisted will not be getting a second life from Yahoo. :(

This is like 90% Marvel, so... sorry if you care about anything else, lol. Yesterday was the Marvel Studios panel, so.

* Here's the fully assembled (heh) Avengers: Age of Ultron concept art poster that Marvel had been releasing in pieces.

* Guardians of the Galaxy hasn't even come out yet, but Marvel has already announced that James Gunn will write and direct the sequel.

* Ant-Man roles revealed for Evangeline Lilly and Corey Stoll. And write-up of the Ant-Man panel.

* Attention comics fans: if you've ever wanted to try out Marvel Unlimited, you can get a month's subscription for only 99 cents if you sign up this week during their Comic-Con promo.

* MTV Video interview with RDJ. And Chris Hemsworth. And Mark Ruffalo. And Paul Rudd.

* Mark Ruffalo and Chris Evans are entirely too adorable together. They should be illegal. And another interview with Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, and James Spader.

* Multiple write-ups of the Avengers panel - this one kinda gives a summary by actor, this one is more detailed (including description of the footage shown, so beware if you're avoiding spoilers), and this one also includes a bit on Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy. And of course, here's the video of the panel.

* There's also video of the Agents of SHIELD panel (live-blog linked on Friday).

Other stuff:

* Live-blog of the Orphan Black panel.

* Video for the Hannibal panel, pluscleolinda has a pretty thorough recap of all the season 3 spoilers (mostly new and returning characters) announced this week.

* Vampire Diaries panel live-blog. I'm not sure what's better, Ian Somerhalder revealing that he can write in perfect cursive with his toes, or this: "Paul. We agreed we weren't going to declare our love for each other in public. You idiot." - Ian, of course.

* And finally, if you've never been to Comic-Con and wondered what it's like, here's a diary of a day spent wandering the floor.

OH GOD I HAVEN'T EVEN GONE THROUGH THE NERD HQ VIDS YET. *dies*

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH



I think we all need this right now:



WAIT EVEN THE KITTEN IS A CANNIBAL OMG. THIS REALLY IS THE DARKEST TIMELINE.

Links:

* Christian Borle is the latest actor to be announced as a guest star on Masters of Sex.

* The final episodes of Enlisted will air on Sundays in June.

* Gillian Jacobs will be making an appearance on Girls.

* Post-mortems with the creators of The Americans following Wednesday night's season finale.

* Julie Plec talks about The Vampire Diaries' season finale.

* The Man of Steel sequel finally got a full title - and prompted a great number of legal jokes.

* If you can't wait for Avengers: Age of Ultron, here are some spoilery tidbits to tide you over.

* Also, it appears the Guardians of the Galaxy set visit articles have been unembargoed.

* This is an excellent breakdown of what Agents of SHIELD got right and wrong - especially the way the show was hamstrung by premiering in the fall and then basically marking time until Captain America: The Winter Soldier came out. All they really needed was a six-episode intro arc to establish the characters, the status quo, and get the team working well together, and then blow things up with CA:TWS.

* Edgar Wright is no longer directing Ant-Man.

* Neil Patrick Harris is writing an autobiography... as a Choose Your Own Adventure book, of course.

* Another Jennifer Lawrence article, in which Josh Hutcherson helps cure her hiccups. (He seems oddly practiced at it, lol.)

* The AV Club picks out 10 episodes that demonstrate how The West Wing pwned network drama conventions. Agree? Disagree? Prefer pocochina's must-watch list?

* If you zoom in reaaaallllly close, Natasha is wearing an arrow necklace in the Captain America trailer. To show her love for Clint, obviously. :)

* Do any of these spoilers entice you to watch the upcoming Agents of SHIELD episodes? (I think this week's ep was their best yet - especially this scene - so perhaps they've truly turned a corner.)

* It would be awesome if the Fantastic Four reboot cast a female Dr. Doom (and Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm!).

* Evangeline Lilly might be playing the "female lead" in Ant-Man. Does that mean Janet Van Dyne?

* Tom Hiddleston's been cast in a new film.

* This is a great piece on Shameless and how well it depicts poverty.

* Psych will be ending in March after 8 seasons.

* Check out The Americans season 1 gag reel.

* The Michael J. Fox Show is also probably done, after... much less than that. But we're still going to try the Bill Cosby thing again?

* Linda Cardellini will be joining Kyle Chandler in the new (yet untitled) Netflix series.

* LOL Parks & Recreation's Aziz Ansari wrote Friday Night Lights Super Bowl fanfiction on Twitter.

* OMG I adored Chip 'n' Dale's Rescue Rangers when I was a kid! Apparently, Disney is making a movie.

* And you thought Damon had bad hair before... Good lord.

* From mcmegan: How to piss off someone from New Jersey. This is good advice.

* NBC's next live musical will be Peter Pan.

* The head of NBC has all but promised us another season of Parks & Recreation.

* I don't think I had mentioned that I caught up on Hannibal this winter, but I did, and now there's a new trailer for season 2. JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL.

* Had they not gone for a 9th season, apparently HIMYM would have ended with Victoria as the Mother. Wow, for once I think they actually made a GOOD decision in casting Cristin Milioti instead. I liked Victoria the first time around, but I'd also probably have strangled someone if it turned out the Mother was the first person Ted dated and we spent all this time just needlessly prolonging the story.

* Kyle Chandler is getting a new series on Netflix.

* The boys of The Vampire Diaries talk about the 100th episode and whether or not they're surprised their characters made it this far, lol.

* Jack Gleeson may play a horrible brat king on Game of Thrones, but in real life, he's actually quite thought-provoking and academic when talking about celebrity culture.

* Aaron Paul talks about his new film (and also Breaking Bad, of course).

* Mark Ruffalo talks about having read the Avengers 2 script. Also, Thomas Kretchmann has been cast as Baron von Strucker.

* God help us all if Johnny Depp ends up joining the Marvel universe.

* Agents of SHIELD is trying again to draw in audiences with a Marvel movie crossover - this time with an appearance by Sif.

* Jason Dohring reminisces about Veronica Mars and talks about the upcoming film.

* Some speculation on how they've changed the ending to Gone Girl for the movie, as well as some concerns about messing with such an intricate plot.

* So, Chris Pine went on Jimmy Kimmel and sang very well, so that's one less thing to worry about re: the Into the Woods movie.

* The French trailer for Only Lovers Left Alive is kinda creepy.

* What city should you actually live in? I got London. Yesssssssssssssss. "Let’s be honest, you probably look pretty good in a Burberry trench coat. You’re the type of person who loves city life, but without all the hype. Your ideal day consists of the Tate Modern, a pleasant evening at a nice restaurant, and a hot cup of tea before bed."

Welcome back, y'all. Hope everyone who celebrated something had a nice holiday. I spent the week at my parents' house, with a brief foray to New York to see First Date (more on that in a separate post, and as soon as I figure out how to get pictures off my new phone and into a post) and utterly failed to keep up with the Internet. So here are some links that you probably already saw a week ago.

* A Sherlock minisode in preparation for the new season starting in January.

* The Americans announced a premiere date for season 2. Also, a new trailer!

* Jennifer Lawrence is taking over the world because of her incredible talent, not her propensity for fart jokes. Duh.

* Neil Gaiman talked about strong female characters and why Buffy was so good at it (hint: it has nothing to do with physical strength).

* I'm sure some of you had figured this out already, but apparently Loki is literally in his rebellious teenager phase.

* The cast of House of Lies did a long-form improv at Upright Citizens Brigade. House of Lies is not the greatest show, but it does have a great cast (Kristen Bell! Don Cheadle!) and this involves mpreg and kittens and other weird shit.

* This is really interesting - did you know that you physically feel different emotions in different parts of your body?

* The "Call Me Maybe" chick is taking over for Laura Osnes as Cinderella on Broadway. THERE IS NOT ENOUGH "NO" IN THE WORLD.

* The Vampire Diaries is adding a gay character. I hope he lasts longer than any of their (non-Bonnie) characters of color...

So tell me what I missed! Tell me about your holiday! Or whatever else you want!

Links:

* Kyle Chandler is the reason we are not getting a Friday Night Lights movie, y'all. Not surprising, as he's said before that he thought the series ending was perfect.

* I'm not sure which part of this is stranger - that they are making a musical out of American Psycho, or that Matt Smith is playing the lead.

* Turns out Showtime wouldn't let the writers kill Dexter. Why am I not surprised?

* First song from Idina Menzel's new musical If/Then!

* Aaron Tveit is adorbs, as usual - and also busy, since he's got two movies coming out soon. That's my boy.

* So this is why Rob Lowe is leaving Parks and Recreation.

* Albuquerque Breaking Bad fans placed an obituary in the local paper for Walter White.

* Still finding the occasional Breaking Bad reaction post - this is a good one on the show's portrayal of "toxic masculinity."

* Here in the DC area, lots of people have been debating lately whether to change the football team's name, and finally someone asked actual Native Americans how they feel about it. It's a really good read, and pretty neatly illustrates the privilege inherent in even having the debate.

I've also been watching more fall premieres on TV. Here's how things shake out.

( No spoilers, just long )

[1-35] Hawkeye
[36-48] Hawkeye & Mockingbird
[49-58] Agents of SHIELD
[59-71] Breaking Bad
[72-73] Doctor Who
[74-78] Wicked
[79-80] Parenthood
[81] Nashville
[82] Shameless
[83] The Americans
[84-85] The Vampire Diaries
[86-88] Nina Dobrev

Preview:



( Read more... )

So, this is what happens when I go away for the weekend while Comic-Con is happening? I mean, HEIDI IN NEXT TO NORMAL obviously takes priority, but... yikes.

* Jake Gyllenhaal is no longer playing a Prince in Into the Woods, possibly being replaced by Broadway vet Billy Magnussen. If only Johnny Depp would have a scheduling conflict...

* Ever wonder why all those Hollywood blockbusters seem like the same movie? It's because they are.

* Lots of cool detail work happening in Catching Fire. This just made me SO EXCITED for the movie to come out. I... kind of think it will be better than the first one?

* I have been waiting for someone to put this together since I started watching Game of Thrones, lol.

* Bunheads is officially canceled. :(

* Someone is making 12 Monkeys into a TV series on Syfy. I loved that movie, but... why.

And now Comic-Con:
( This got REALLY long )