FOX is enabling fans to create personalized e-Valentines featuring popular characters from their “Animation Domination” Sunday programming block (The Simpsons, The Cleveland Show, Family Guy and American Dad). The inside of the card can be personalized, while the outside features the character and a witty line, such as:

STEWIE (Family Guy) - “Love, like potty training, is messy, but rewarding.”; or “We all die alone. Happy Valentine’s.”; or “No one’s into you.” [Read more →]

Categories: TV News & Program Updates by RabbitEars
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Tags: American Dad, e-card, Family Guy, FOX, Homer, Lois, Marge, Peter, Quagmire, Rallo, Stewie, The Cleveland Show, The Simpsons, Valentine's Day

Winner Peggy Black with "Simpsons" EP Al Jean

Peggy Black of Orange, CT, has hit it big in yellow and been selected by producers of The Simpsons as the winner of their Character Contest, which called for submissions of new secondary character ideas for the long-running animated comedy. Black created the character Ricardo Bomba (nicknamed “La Bomba”), a smooth-talking ladies’ man from South America with a luxurious black mane, chiseled physique and silky smooth voice. By day, Ricardo works as safety inspector at the nuclear power plant, and by night works Springfield’s singles scene.

Bomba will make his debut in the “Million Dollar Maybe” episode of The Simpsons, premiering Jan. 31 on FOX. In this episode, Homer blows off a date with Marge to buy a lottery ticket. When Homer wins the million-dollar jackpot, he fears how Marge will react when she finds out why he missed their date. Homer keeps his newly inherited fortune a secret, and instead spoils his family with “anonymous” gifts. When Bart finds out, he gives Homer a lesson in looking out for number one. Chris Martin of Coldplay makes a guest voice appearance as himself in the episode, if you need extra enticement to watch.

For winning the contest, Ms. Black won a trip to Los Angeles to meet with Simpsons producers and animators, and work with them to bring her character to life.

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© 2009 Fox Broadcasting. Credit: Ray Mickshaw.

The Simpsons ™ & © 2009 TTCFFC. All Rights Reserved.

Categories: Animation, Comedy, TV News & Program Updates by RabbitEars
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Tags: character contest, La Bomba, new Simpsons character, Peggy Black, Ricardo Bomba, The Simpsons

How big of a Simpsons fan are you? Big enough to sit through some other FOX shows to find Simpsons clues to win a cool prize package? If so, you’ll have your chance next week, Nov. 9-13, when FOX’s first on-air scavenger hunt — tied in with 20 years of everyone’s favorite yellow family — airs.

Each night, you can watch FOX to find Simpsons shout-outs, tributes and clues featured in primetime programming and on-air promos. One winner will receive a prize package including a trip for two to Los Angeles to attend a Simpsons table read, a home entertainment system, Simpsons DVDs and merchandise, and tickets to Universal Studios Hollywood.

Viewers 13 years of age and older who spot Simpsons shout-outs can log on to www.fox.com/scavengerhunt each night to test their knowledge for an opportunity to unlock daily downloadable extras and to enter to win the ultimate grand prize. The deadline for submissions is 2:00 PM ET on Saturday, Nov. 14. Visit the site for complete official rules, guidelines and more information.

Categories: TV News & Program Updates by RabbitEars
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Tags: FOX, on-air scavenger hunt, The Simpsons, The Simpsons scavenger hunt

Whether you’re looking for hardcore horror, family-friendly frights, or something in between, here’s a selection of some of the shows and movies to get you in a macabre mood this Halloween season. For more detail on the scary movies listed here, and to search for others throughout the month, visit our online movie database.

Goosebumps — Cartoon Network, weekdays at 4:30pm ET through Oct. 29. Episodes from all three seasons of the show that adapted R.L. Stine’s spooky book series for television.

The Othersiders – Cartoon Network, Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:30pm ET; entire week of episodes Oct. 26-30, culminating in special episode Oct. 30 at 9pm ET. Twelve new episodes of this series, in which five young friends investigate haunted locations, air this month. In a one-hour presentation on Oct. 30, the gang visits the abandoned prison Alcatraz to check out reports of ghostly activity. [Read more →]

Categories: Family, Horror, Movies, TV News & Program Updates by RabbitEars
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Tags: 13 Nights of Halloween, 13 Scarier Movie Moments, ABC, ABC Family, Alien 30th anniversary, AMC, Animal Planet, BIO Channel, Cartoon Network, Cat People, Celebrity Ghost Stories, Dead of Night, Discovery Channel, Fearfest, FOX, Ghost Adventures, Ghost Adventures Live, Ghost Hunters, Ghost Lab, Goosebumps, Halloween, Halloween programming, Halloween specials, It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, Jeff Pfeiffer, MGM HD, Monsters vs. Aliens Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space, Nickelodeon, Poltergeist, Psycho, Roseanne, Scary Movies, Scream 2009, Starz, TCM, The Haunting, The House of the Devil, The Othersiders, The Silence of the Lambs, The Simpsons, Travel Channel, Treehouse of Horror XX, TV Land, Werewolves: The Dark Survivors, WGN America, Zombiemania

By Stacey Harrison

For the record, he says he'd pick Spock over Sylar in a fight

OK, so Heroes fans are scary. The 11-member panel (yes, Zachary Quinto and Hayden Panettiere were there) drew rabid response from the packed Indigo Ballroom in the Hilton Bayfront. Security was tight and more than one fan asked for a hug and/or autograph (a big no-no in Comic-Con Q&A rules). Not bad for a show that has supposedly fallen out of favor.

But it had some competition. The panel right before it was for Glee, which FOX premiered last spring to an amazing reception. Buzz has been building for months about this quirky high-school set comedy that follows the trials and tribulations of a teacher struggling to assemble a glee club. Reminiscent of Election and Freaks and Geeks — don’t you dare say High School Musical — it seems to answer the prayers of all those musical theater geeks who never had their say. The audience got to see the entire second episode, which didn’t dawdle. A lot of story lines that, on other shows, might have been dragged out for an entire season, took major leaps forward. But as anyone familiar with executive producer Ryan Murphy’s other show, Nip/Tuck, the man is not averse to packing several weeks worth of story into a single episode. [Read more →]

Categories: TV News & Program Updates by sharrison76
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Tags: Comic-Con 2009, Fringe, Glee, Heroes, Morgan Spurlock, San Diego, Sanctuary, Stacey Harrison, The Simpsons, True Blood

By Stacey Harrison

Contrary to initial announcements (and its title), the documentary commemorating the 20th anniversary of The Simpsons will not be in 3-D or on ice. It will, however, be the latest project of provocateur filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, who shot to fame with by chronicling his monthlong McDonald’s-only diet in Super Size Me and conducted other sociological experiments in the weekly FX show 30 Days. He was at Comic-Con in San Diego (where just a few Simpsons fans have been known to gather) over the weekend auditioning superfans and grand impersonators to take part in the project.

Spurlock took time for a quick chat between auditions to tell me his plans for the special, why he wishes he could be more like Mr. Burns, and even broke off a couple of impressive impersonations of Otto and Apu.

What are your plans for the documentary?

“It’s going to be a look at the way The Simpsons sees the world, and the way the world sees The Simpsons. It’s had a global impact at the way we look at other countries, other people, pop culture, so we’re really going to travel around the world to all these different countries, because it’s not just an American phenomenon, it’s an international phenomenon and we’re going to go to a few of the many countries it’s played in and tell stories from those places of people who have been deeply affected by this show. It’s changed the way they see the world. We’re trying to make something that’s funny and different and isn’t just a gladhand strokefest, which they don’t want anyway.” [Read more →]

Categories: Animation, Comedy, Horror, Movies, TV News & Program Updates by sharrison76
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Tags: Comic-Con 2009, FOX, Morgan Spurlock, Stacey Harrison, The Simpsons

By Jeff Pfeiffer

Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me, 30 Days) has been tapped to produce and direct The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special in 3-D on Ice, which will air Jan. 14 on FOX (the 20th anniversary of The Simpsons‘ debut). This documentary special concludes the “Best. 20 Years. Ever” yearlong celebration of the classic sitcom.

The press release does ask us to “Please note the special is neither in 3-D nor on ice.” What it will do is take a look at the cultural phenomenon of The Simpsons, using Spurlock’s unique style, and offer a glimpse into how the world has seen the Simpson family — and how they have seen the world — over the past two decades.

“When they first called me about this,” says Spurlock, “I thought it was a prank and I hung up. And then my agent called back and said, ‘No, no, this is for real,’ at which point I fainted. Then when I woke up, I called everyone I knew because it was the coolest thing I could ever get to do in my career.”

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™ & © 2008 TTCFFC. All Rights Reserved.

Categories: Comedy, TV News & Program Updates by RabbitEars
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Tags: 20th anniversary, FOX, Jeff Pfeiffer, Morgan Spurlock, The Simpsons, The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special in 3-D on Ice

By Jeff Pfeiffer

Woo-hoo! Starting soon, when you write those letters to Die Hard or another one of your favorite movies, you will be able to use a Simpsons stamp to send them! Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie will be commemorated on official First-Class stamps from the U.S. Postal Service personally designed by Simpsons creator Matt Groening. Out of the 50,000 stamp suggestions the USPS receives each year, about 20 are considered, and obviously FOX’s first family made the final cut at long last.

A sneak peek at what the stamps will look like will be made available on April 9 at 8am ET on the Postal Service website. At that time, it will be announced when the stamps will go on sale, and how to pre-order them. Given that we know at this point that the Simpsons stamps will be 44 cents, it can be reasoned that they likely won’t be available until on or after May 11. Yes, that’s the date when the USPS raises the price of stamps yet again, from 42 cents to 44 cents. D’oh!

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THE SIMPSONS ™ and © 2009 TTCFFC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Categories: Animation, Comedy, TV News & Program Updates by RabbitEars
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Tags: Jeff Pfeiffer, Matt Groening, postal increase, RabbitEars, stamp, The Simpsons, The Simpsons stamps, United States Postal Service, USPS

Posted By Jeff Pfeiffer

If your only exposure to the experience of listening to dried fruit sing Christmas carols comes from the Simpsons episode where the family watches the “California Prunes” sing “O Pruney Night” (which happens to be “offensive to Christians and prunes”), then you may not be old enough to remember 1987’s A Claymation Christmas Celebration, which included a guest appearance from then-popular pitchmen … er, fruit … the California Raisins.

The animated singing group was created for a series of commercials by the California Raisin Advisory Board to make sure their wrinkled crop was ingrained in consumer consciousness … and boy, was it. The Raisins developed a product omnipresence that would make Coca-Cola envious, appearing in TV specials and an animated series, and cutting some albums. As with real raisins themselves, you either loved these guys, didn’t really acknowledge them, or were flat-out sickened by them.

They appear in this Christmas special along with other Claymation creations (if talking raisins are too mundane for you, the program features, among others, ice-dancing walruses and be-bopping camels) from Will Vinton, who won an Emmy for the program. No word on whether the show helped raisins replace more traditional holiday fruits that Christmas season, but I wouldn’t be surprised. The California Date Administrative Committee and the California Fig Advisory Board simply had no answer for this marketing powerhouse.

Categories: Holiday by RabbitEars
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Tags: A Claymation Christmas Celebration, California Raisin Advisory Board, California Raisins, Christmas, dates, figs, Jeff Pfeiffer, O Pruney Night, RabbitEars, raisins, The Simpsons, Video, Will Vinton

Posted by Mike

After a summer movie that was, if not great, at least well above average, and a season premiere that was equally solid (at least during the first half), I had almost forgotten just how unbearable a bad episode of The Simpsons can be. Now I remember.

The bad ones usually start out with a ridiculous premise — such as the Simpsons unwittingly crashing a wake after their post-church search for a meal yields only long lines at establishments such as Griddler on the Roof, Thank God It’s Fried Eggs, Luftwaffles, Bodacious Frittata, Buffet the Hunger Slayer and Denny’s. If the writers had spent as much time planning the rest of the episode as they did in brainstorming funny restaurant names, maybe the episode would have recovered. They didn’t, but at least they gave us Homer’s oh-so-appetizing analysis of roast beef au jus: “Mmm … Au jus. Not quite gravy, not quite blood.” I’ll never order anything au jus again.

[Read more →]

Categories: Comedy by Mike
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Tags: FOX, Homer, Recap, The Simpsons