Newly Vocal Cast of the Week
'Quest for Fire'
Actors Ron Perlman and Rae Dawn Chong -- as well as director Jean-Jacques
Annaud -- will record a commentary track for a movie that had no dialogue in
the first place. See for yourself on March 4 if something to say is better
than nothing.
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Without a Trace, Janaury 2, 10PM, CBS
If a woman disappears and no one notices, has she really disappeared? So
high-concept this column is.
Star Trek: Nemesis, the 203rd installment of the movie series, is now officially dead at the box office. Through Tuesday it took in only $27 million, and it's about to exit the Top 10 as new, better movies are being released.
Having only read the dreadful reviews of Nemesis I can't say I'm surprised. But Paramount Pictures' 35-year investment in the Star Trek franchise sort of behooves it, one would think, to revitalize this project and fast.
Next up, logically, would be some combination of casts from Deep Space Nine and Voyager, the two series that followed Star Trek: Next Generation. If Paramount doesn't want to do it, maybe William Shatner can bid it out on Priceline.com.
In Wake of 'Taken,' Sci Fi Ratings Soar
It's called the halo effect, and the Sci Fi Channel basked in its glow during the week after chalking up its best-ever ratings with the two-week, 20-hour "Steven Spielberg Presents: Taken."
For the week ended Dec. 22, following the "Taken" blitz, Sci Fi averaged 838,000 households in primetime, which tied it in 10th place among all basic-cable networks.
Compared to the same week a year ago, Sci Fi was up a strapping 95% among households and 88% among adults 25-54, the network's target demographic.
Sci Fi was gloating because most of its primetime schedule last week consisted of rerun episodes of "Stargate SG-1" and "The X-Files" and movies such as the well-worn "Dante's Peak" and "The Witches of Eastwick" plus lesser-known titles like "Army of Darkness," "Gargantua" and "Epoch."
New episodes of "Stargate SG-1" and "Farscape," heavily promoted to "Taken's" solid audience, won't kick off until Jan. 10. Sci Fi's new show, "Tremors: The Series," originally scheduled for Jan. 10, won't make it to the schedule until March, the victim of delayed post-production due to elaborate special effects.
ESPN dominated the basic-cable primetime scene for the week ended Dec. 22, propelled to an average of 2.136 million households by two National Football League games.
The sports cable network averaged a gaudy 600,000 homes more in primetime than the three networks that tied for second place for the week: Nickelodeon, TNT and Lifetime. USA and the Disney Channel tied for fifth place in primetime. TBS was seventh, Cartoon Network eighth, ABC Family ninth, and Fox News Channel tied with Sci Fi for 10th.
Release date: December 24, 2002
Rating: R
Format: VHS Tape
Amazon price: $34.95