Midnight Ramblings

Show prep! New DVDs:

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (Universal) Epic space opera in which Vin Diesel plays a tough criminal with a heart of space gold who is coerced into fighting back against fascistic space warlords. Widescreen, fullscreen and unrated (15 minutes longer) widescreen director’s cut editions include featurettes, 3D views of the sets, Xbox game preview, and more.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER Season 7 (Fox)
Dawn starts school and Buffy gets a job, but they soon forget all about their little troubles to gather a group of slayers-in-training to battle The First. With commentraks, featurettes, outtakes and more.

ELF (New Line) Will Ferrell is raised at the North Pole as an elf, but comes to New York to find his human roots. Two-disc special edition features commentraks by Farrell and director Jon Favreau, annotation track, featurettes, games, karaoke, and more.

KIDS IN THE HALL: Complete Season 2 (A&E) Another season of excellent sketch comedy from the Kids circa 1990-91, plus commentraks, interviews, more early Rivoli Theater performances, and more.

THE IRON GIANT (Warner Bros.) Special edition of this brilliant tale of a boy who forms a friendship with an amnesiac alien war machine in the 1950s, directed by Brad Bird (THE INCREDIBLES). Includes commentrak, additional scenes, eight deleted scenes, branching featurettes and more. Delayed from September.

Tom Hanks is going to star in the movie version of the DaVinci Code. Ron Howard's going to direct.

The Hollywood Reporter indicates Walt Disney Studios is actively moving ahead with its long-in-discussion sequel to Pixar Animation's two "Toy Story" movies.

Disney is in the process of setting up a digital animation facility in Glendale, not all that far from DreamWorks Animation's digs, that will be used for the production of "Toy Story 3." The project falls under the reins of David Stainton, president of Walt Disney Feature Animation.

Now that the studio is actively beginning the project could make it more difficult for it to resume negotiations with Pixar CEO Steve Jobs to extend Pixar's relationship with Disney which expires next year with the release of John Lasseter's "Cars." Disney holds the rights to do sequels to "Toy Story."

CSI Files reports that starting with episode 101, producers plan to spice up the well-trodden formula of the top-rating show by radically moving around many of the characters.

All of this kicks off in the upcoming ninth episode of the fifth season "Mea Culpa," in which a murder trial is reopened to explore new forensic evidence. During cross-examination, Grissom discovers a previously undetected fingerprint on a matchbook left at a crime scene, meaning that the man who was originally convicted may well be innocent. Rather than focusing on finding the true killer, Grissom's longtime enemy Conrad Ecklie uses the finding to make life for Grissom as painful as possible.

TV Guide reveals that Catherine Willows will be promoted to head of the swing-shift CSI team in "Mea Culpa." Joining her each day at 4:00pm will be Warrick Brown who will now be reporting to the woman he nearly kissed earlier this season.

Meanwhile, Gil Grissom will be left in charge of the graveyard shift, but he'll now have to solve his cases using a B team consisting of rookies such as Greg Sanders, who hasn't even passed his final field proficiency test. To add insult to injury, his team will also be joined by internal affairs officer Sophia Curtis, who is assigned to keep watch over Grissom.