Don’t mess with Penny. That’s Blake Lively’s response to photos that surfaced in June of the Gossip Girl star walking outside in Manhattan with a suspicious stain on her brown minidress. The culprit rumored to be responsible for the mark? Lively’s 3-year-old malti-poo, Penny, whom she carries everywhere.
In fact, Lively blames herself.
(USA Today)

Tammy Haddad left her post as Washington VP at MSNBC over a year ago, and is back covering the conventions in 2008 in a very unconventional way.
As one of the executive producers of the Convention live webcasts for washingtonpost.com/Newsweek last week in Denver and next week in St. Paul, Haddad is looking to make the web the newest way to [...]

Margaret Cho hopes her new TV foray is more satisfying than her last one — 14 years ago.
The actress and comedian stars in VHI’s The Cho Show (tonight, 11 ET/PT), her first series since 1994’s short-lived ABC sitcom All-American Girl, an experience from which the outspoken San Francisco native still appears to be recovering.
(USA Today)
 

With so many TV series hitting the big screen lately (“Sex and the City,” “The X-Files”), ABC is attempting to right the balance.
The network has ordered a pilot for a “The Witches of Eastwick” TV series based on the 1987 movie that starred Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer, Cher and Jack Nicholson, and it also is moving forward on [...]

“Gutter balls only, please!” someone yells during a rehearsal at the Lucky Strike bowling alley for the CW’s new series “90210.” So co-stars Jessica Stroup and Shenae Grimes downplay their bowling skills.
The spin-off on the fabled ’90s teen drama premieres Sept. 2 (8 p.m. EDT). If the show mimics the hot bodies, hip fashion and [...]

Comcast Corp. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. said Tuesday they are teaming up to introduce a video-on-demand channel featuring action movies and TV shows.
Comcast, the country’s largest cable operator, already has a hit with another genre-specific VOD channel and Web site, FEARnet, which features horror movies and thrillers, in collaboration with Lionsgate and Sony Pictures Television. FEARnet [...]

Oscar winner Martin Scorsese is in negotiations to direct HBO’s drama pilot “Boardwalk Empire.”
Scorsese already is exec producer on the project, based on Nelson Johnson’s book, which chronicles the 1920s origins of gambling mecca Atlantic City.
Following HBO’s green light to the Terence Winter-written script last month, there had been some speculation that Scorsese might take [...]

In 1974, in between creating The Godfather and The Godfather, Part 2, Oscar-winning writer-director Francis Ford Coppola made a film that was just as seminal as the Mafia dramas: The Conversation.
It was in many ways a small picture, starring Gene Hackman (in a brilliant performance), and including some people on the brink of stardom, Cindy [...]

Today’s reality shows, far-flung competitions and exotic dramas rely on dangerous challenges. Men climb the masts of a fishing boat in violent Arctic seas, fighting their equipment. Or race through an Indian market, working out a mental puzzle while hauling heavy weights.
And that’s not even the contestants — it’s the camera department.
The jobs of [...]

If you were to go out and look for the quintessential pin-up California sunshine girl, you couldn’t do better than Pamela Anderson.
With a mane of bouncing blonde hair, a Barbie doll shape and perfectly plucked eyebrows, Anderson still fits the bill at 41.
Yet she wants the world to know she is Madam Ordinary, the type [...]