Tag Archives: Italia Ricci

2015 Spring Television Season Preview

John Mayo, of ComicBookPage, and Kay Kellam, of PopArtsPlace, discuss the 2015 spring fall television season.

The short version — the primary focus of this podcast is on the new shows starting up in the spring on “major” networks and cable channels. The shows are in order they are expected to premiere.

With a strong 2014 fall season having resulted in few cancelled shows, the mid-season offerings feel like fewer than expected, for instance iZombie does not yet have a premiere date that we could find.

Keeping that in mind, we covered as many of the December through May offerings we found of interest, and had available to us when we sat down to discuss the upcoming premieres and returning shows: The Librarians, Galavant, Agent Carter, Empire, Hindsight, Expedition Unknown, Melissa & Joey, Switched At Birth, 12 Monkeys, Musketeers, Chasing Life, The Fosters, Justified, Backstrom, Suits, Allegiance, Perception, Rizzoli & Isles, Odd Couple, Vikings, Battle Creek, Secrets and Lies, CSI Cyber, DIG, The Royals, AD, Orphan Black, and Wayward Pines. The episode includes shows from ABC, CBS, CW, FOX, and NBC, as well as ABC Family, History, SyFy, TNT, Travel Channel, USA and VH1.

During the discussion of upcoming mid-season replacements, returning shows, and event series, we also discussed the available trailers, and commercials and how effectively some sold their shows, while others left us needing to find more information.

After recording the episode Kay Kellam discovered PIVOT is moving into scripted programming with Fortitude, just one of many examples of the shows that unfortunately did not make it onto our radar, and the list in time to be included.

Links:
Discount Comic Book Service: http://www.DCBService.com
Comics Podcast Network: http://www.comicspodcast.com
League of Comic Book Podcasts:http://www.comicbooknoise.com/league/

Email us at TheGuys@ComicBookPage.com

Join the discussion on our forum at: http://forum.comicbookpage.com

This podcast episode originated on the Comic Book Page website:http://www.ComicBookPage.com

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Stand Up To Cancer 2014

The Stand Up To Cancer press release says so well what they are about, and what is going on tonight. Normally we avoid the copy and paste approach with press releases… but in this case, the details matter too much, and we want to get it exactly right.

Friday, September 5th (8:00 – 9:00 PM ET/PT) Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), a program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), will stage its fourth biennial fundraising event. Robert Downey Jr., Melissa McCarthy, Steve Carell, Sofia Vergara, Ben Falcone, Kevin Bacon, Anna Kendrick, Tony Goldwyn, Dave Grohl, Hailee Steinfeld, Josh Gad, Giada De Laurentiis, Jaime King, Mira Sorvino, Joe Manganiello, Jordana Brewster, Alison Sweeney, Amanda de Cadenet, Charlie Wilson, and Diem Brown, will be part of the star-studded appeal to help build public support for SU2C’s groundbreaking translational research that can provide patients with new therapies to save lives now. They join previously announced participants including Gwyneth Paltrow, Katie Couric, Reese Witherspoon, Pierce Brosnan, Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, Jon Hamm, Kiefer Sutherland, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Mark Harmon, Rob Lowe, Eric Stonestreet, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Tony Hale, Dane Cook, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Marg Helgenberger, Matt Passmore, Rob Riggle, Italia Ricci, Ethan Zohn and Bree Turner. Special musical performances include: The Who, Jennifer Hudson, Lupe Fiasco & Common, Ariana Grande, and Dave Matthews Band.

Gwyneth Paltrow and Joel Gallen of Tenth Planet Productions will co-executive produce the September 5th broadcast, live from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC, along with ABC Family, American Forces Network, AXS TV, Bravo, Cooking Channel, Discovery Fit & Health, E!, Encore, Encore Espanol, EPIX, ESPNEWS, FOX Sports 2, FXM, HBO, HBO Latino, ION Television, LMN, Logo TV, MLB Network, National Geographic Channel, Oxygen, Palladia, Pivot, SHOWTIME, Smithsonian Channel, Starz, TNT and VH1 are donating one hour of simultaneous commercial-free primetime for the nationally televised fundraising special on Friday. In addition, the show will stream live on both Hulu and Yahoo.

Instead of the traditional phone bank staffed by celebrities, the September 5th telecast will feature a “digital lounge” on the set, hosted by Yahoo News Global Anchor Katie Couric. Stars in the digital lounge will reach out to viewers via phone, Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms through an exciting new campaign called “We’re Calling You” that SU2C’s supporters can sign up for at werecallingyou.org.

In the on-stage digital lounge, Katie Couric will tap into the Facebook Mentions Box, which allows supporters to share their connection to cancer and receive real-time responses from celebrities. Other celebrities in the digital lounge will participate in Facebook Q&As, using their own pages to respond live to fan questions. Facebook and Instagram will also have a presence on the star-studded red carpet on September 5th with a photo experience that will capture the stars as they make their way into the Dolby Theatre, sharing those images and videos with fans. All of this, and much more, can be followed on Stand Up To Cancer’s social media feeds (facebook.com/su2c | Instagram: @SU2C | Twitter: @SU2C).

In addition to Facebook, an array of digital and social media platforms and influencers— ranging from Shazam, reddit, Nerdist, Tumblr, Yahoo, Hulu, AOL, and The Huffington Post— are helping support SU2C this year.

For the first time, there will be a Canada-inclusive co-broadcast of the 2014 telecast, which will air simultaneously on all four major English-language Canadian networks: CBC, City, CTV and Global, along with Canadian services AMI, CHCH, CHEK, Fight Network, Gusto TV, Hollywood Suite and TLN. All funds received from the Canadian general public during the broadcast will be directed towards the creation of collaborative research teams, as well as education and awareness programs conducted in Canada.

The first three SU2C telecasts took place on September 5, 2008, September 10, 2010 and September 7, 2012, and were made available to more than 190 countries. To date, more than $261 million has been pledged to support SU2C’s innovative cancer research programs. Since 2008, SU2C has funded 12 “Dream Teams” of researchers and two translational research teams, as well as 26 young innovative scientists whose high-risk, potentially high-reward projects are aimed at ending cancer’s reign as a leading cause of death worldwide.

There are times when it seems competition and the free market reign supreme, but Stand Up To Cancer is a prime example of an industry pulling together as one united force in opposition to something that touches lives daily throughout the world. As they say on the StandUpToCancer website:

1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes. We can change these odds.

ABC Family – Chasing Life

If it’s been years since you last watched a show on ABC Family, you don’t know what you’ve been missing. Gone are the days of light fluff shows, and frivolous plots. Over the past several years they’ve been dealing with more and more issues in their story lines. Their characters have faced challenges head on — in Melissa and Joey not only did Melissa’s nephew have a pot incident on a school trip, but he ended up having to be home schooled, a situation that lasted beyond the end of the episode. Imagine that, a sitcom that embraced the concept of not only a serious issue in the life of a teen, but went another step further, and embraced the concept of consequences.

On The Fosters a lot of more adult issues are being presented, enough that the show deserves a full discussion unto itself. Teens going through the juvenile detention system, and the consequences that introduces into their life, is just one of many story-arcs The Fosters has explored.

ABC Family has definitely grown up since the days when the Olsen Twins were tweens on the network, and it was attempting to find it’s footing.

Chasing Life is a drama about a twenty-something, April Carver, just starting her adult career, just getting out into the world, about to open her wings and start flying, only to accidentally discover she has Cancer in the form of Leukemia. Consider people can live for YEARS with Leukemia when diagnosed as adults, but it requires treatment, and can impact the quality of life — reducing energy levels being on of the most obvious symptoms.

Another character in the show, Leo, has a brain tumor, his prognosis, as one might imagine, is not being offered in terms of years, but months.

Chasing Life balances the urge to yank on the viewers heart strings as it shows the very real trials and tribulations of being diagnosed with a disease that will change how life is lived from now on, with lighter moments, with finding new love and realizing April has to figure out how to tell this new love she has Cancer. Some of the most honest and entertaining conversations take place in the scenes in a Cancer support group.

Far from being a sad or depressing show, Chasing Life is about fighting to live, chasing dreams and the future and living life to it’s fullest. About understanding that we are only here for a finite amount of time, and being diagnosed with something like Leukemia drives home that point in a way a twenty-four year old, or truly no young person, should ever have that point driven home. The diagnosis is a wake up call of sorts, April wants to build for her future, but she is also at a phase in life where every minute counts.

I come out of each episode wanting to challenge myself to balance the two urges — wanting to both make each hour of my day count more, while making sure I am indeed building for my future and towards my future, and in that respect also making my time count.

Chasing Life inspires on a multitude of levels, in part because even as the viewer knows these characters are not real people, it is so easy to believe they are true representations of Cancer patients. They so beautifully convey the frustrations, the struggles, the desires and hopes of those not only with Cancer, but with many both terminal, and simply life altering diseases that the show is easy to relate to on a fundamental level.

I tune in each week, knowing that while Chasing Life, on it’s surface, seems like it could be a somber and depressing show, I will come out uplifted, inspired, and ready to conquer the world, along with the characters I’ve just spent an hour cheering on.

Chasing Life is adapted from a successful Televisa Spanish-language Mexican television series. Fans of the show may recognize Steven Weber (Uncle George) from Wings, Murder in the First, or one of his numerous other projects, or Mary Page Keller from NYPD Blue or any one of her 60+ acting credits.

Chasing Life airs TUESDAYS AT 9:00PM ET/PT ON ABC FAMILY, catch up with episodes online.