Results tagged “dickwolf”

The revolving door of Law & Order universe rotates again. Producers of Law & Order: Criminal Intent announced Chris Noth is leaving and Jeff Goldblum will be joining the show. Producers and Noth describe the decision as mutual.

It may be hard to believe, but tonight’s episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (10:00 p.m., WNBC 4) is the 200th episode for the first of the Law & Order spin-offs.

In the Law and Order universe there are two separate yet equally important constants: the format of the show and the revolving door of the actors who star in it. So it is not a surprise that Jessie L. Martin who plays Detective Green is leaving the show in the latest cast change. Series guru Dick Wolf says the parting is amicable, with Martin being burned out after playing the same character for nine years.

Law & Order returned for its eighteenth season with two episodes last night. As producer Dick Wolf is wont to do, things on the show have changed. The cast changes have definitely skewed things younger and has made the show seem more like Law & Order: The Next Generation. Which isn't a bad thing, since it seemed more like a natural evolution. And don’t worry, we won’t reveal the endings of the episodes in case you TIVOed it.

Early this morning Hayden Panettiere and other Hollywood elite looked ready to hit the town for a night out even though it was 5:30am. They were announcing this year's Golden Globe nominees, often a good sign for who will be nominated for that other gold statue. All in all New York-based shows and movies fared well as the envelopes were opened sheets of paper were read from. 30 Rock (Best Television Series, Comedy or Musical...

Last night the 59th Annual Emmy Awards took place on the left coast, but New Yorkers made out very well. New York productions/creative types that took home the gold: Late Night with Conan O'Brien (writing), The Daily Show (variety-comedy show series), 30 Rock (best comedy), and Dick Wolf (for producing Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee). In the would-have-been arena, America Ferrera won best actress in a comedy, Ugly Betty, which was originally supposed to shoot in the Big Apple but shoots in L.A. because it's cheaper. We'll also count Rob Marshall, who won for directing the Best Variety-Musical Special, Tony Bennett: An American Classic, since he has Broadway roots.

Now that Law & Order has been renewed for four more seasons, shakeups to the cast have been expected. And the most notable one is that Fred Thompson, who plays District Attorney Arthur Branch, is leaving the show to pursue a presidential campaign. We hope the writers work that in!

Chung chung! NBC and producer Dick Wolf have hashed out a deal to keep Law & Order on the air for the next four years. Variety reports (subscription only) that as part of the deal, Law & Order: Criminal Intent will be moving to USA. Yes, USA (which NBC owns) will now have the first run episodes of Detective Robert Goren's histrionics, and then NBC will air repeats of L&O:CI. Interesting!

In the recent history of television, the people have been given three separate but still gritty police procedurals set in New York City: The police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders in Law & Order, the dedicated Special Victims Unit detectives who investigate especially heinous sexually based offenses in Law & Order Special Victims Unit, and the Major Case Squad detectives who chew scenery as well as they suss out suspects in Law & Order Criminal Intent. But some of their stories may end, as producer Dick Wolf is in the midst of negotiations with NBC over the fate of Law & Order as well as L&O CI.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a building collapse on West 193rd St. in Manhattan, a car in the water at Ocean Ave. and Lincoln Rd. in Brooklyn, and multiple manhole fires on 45th St. in Queens.
• The NYTimes takes a stroll down one-time Indian trail now known as Jamaica Ave. in Brooklyn.
• Neighbors on Mulberry St. are so fed up with the Feast of San Gennaro that Community Board 2 recommended against approving organizers' application to conduct their block party this year.
• Police arrested a man on suspicion of murder after his girlfriend was found thrown from a fourth-story window and impaled on the fence below in the Bronx.
• Only his dad can speak to him like that! Donald Trump's son is suing his condo association board for $50 million after telling him he was fired.
• A look at how much certain New Yorkers earn annually. At the rate they're amassing their fortunes, our next mayor will probably be Jerry Seinfeld or Dick Wolf if either wants the job.
• The eight-year-old girl who was tied up in the downtown hotel with her family during a push-in robbery managed to wriggle free, telephone for help, and free her parents.
• A car involved in a drunk-driving multiple vehicle accident, flew off the West Side Highway and landed in Riverside Park.
• Charles Rangel is excited about the prospect of a Clinton-Obama ticket in '08.

What a strange way for Community Board 5 to decide whether to name 53rd Street at 8th Avenue after Jerry Orbach.

Fans of Late Night with Conan O'Brien are familiar with the hilarious Pale Force cartoons that feature comedian Jim Gaffigan and O'Brien as very pasty crime fighters. But recently, the series hit a new high with the Law & Order: Pale Face story arc.

The NY Times City section has a long feature about Law & Order's dramatization of the Adrienne Shelly murder. It was inevitable that the police procedural warhorse would cover one of the more bizarre and tragic murders in recent memory, and a casting notice for someone to play the illegal immigrant laborer who assaults an woman after she complains about construction noise confirmed that L&O would be tackling the story.

And not only that, they're getting Chevy Chase to star as a star who is anti-Semitic AND has blood on his clothes. What Law & Order season this will be - Cobrasnake-lite, murder victim photographs posted online on Friday's episode - we suppose the sensationalism needs to be extra high now that they are on Friday nights. Producer Dick Wolf said that they are in production for an episode about "a former television star who is arrested for drunk driving," and NBC added, "while wearing blood-soaked clothes, and whose religious prejudice comes out after his arrest." Zap2It says the murder victim is a Jewish producer of the star's show (no word on whether the phrase "sugartits" will be used). Well, it is cool that they got a former television star to play a former television star. Maybe he'll be a former television star with a terrible talk show!

It's not the same as an invisible Snuffleupagus, but there is something very exciting happening with Sesame Street. On August 14, a segment called "Law and Order Special Letters Unit" will premiere, starting with "The Missing M." Hal Boedeker at the Orlando Sentinel reports that the actual cast voices will be used, and Dick Wolf himself said, "I feel like a tobacco company executive, because hopefully we will hook 4- and 5- and 6-year-olds on the brand now." A Sesame Street press release says that there's definitely a Richard Belzer muppet and that plot includes detectives finding "things that start with the letter 'M' such as a cow named Murray that makes mmooo sounds." Hmm, Law & Order: Playground Control Team, anyone? And as we did some searching, we found this cool video of "Law & Order: Special Muppets Unit" on YouTube!

Hold on: Alana De La Garza, last seen as Horatio's dead wife on CSI: Miami, will be playing the new ADA in Law & Order. Which means that recently announced addition Milena Govich will actually be taking over for Dennis Farina, bringing Law & Order its first female detective. (Govich played an ADA on Conviction, so that's why we were confused...now we wonder if she'll reprise her character from Conviction or maybe play that character's detective twin sister!) So now it's clear what NBC and Dick Wolf are doing: Sexing up the show a bit with good-looking women to bring in men as well as female viewers who want someone to relate to. And let's say this much: De La Garza might be the hottest ADA ever, given the Google Images we've seen (they are pretty much SFW, as there's nothing naked, but we still caution you).

as Law & Order SVU used to be on then (and we remember the good ol' Fridays when The X-Files was on at 9PM and then Homicide was on at 10PM). And maybe Govich's ADA character, Jessica "From the wrong side of the tracks" [the elevated train tracks?] Rossi, won't be that lucky - the lady ADA's have a mysterious way of leaving every so often.

] Attractive young actresses who look great in a suit, beware: If you're cast as the new assistant district attorney to work with Jack McCoy, your character might come to some sort of strange end. Last year - yes, just January 2005 - Elisabeth Rohm(bot) left the show and uttered those classic words, "Is it because I'm a lesbian?" and Annie Parisse filled her shoes as ADA Alexandra Borgia. But that's nothing compared to dying from aspirating through your duct taped mouth in a car trunk with blood all over your face, to be found by your boss and other police officers. A poster on the Television Without Pity forum (though not the "Earthy European Sexuality: ADA Alexandra 'Bertha' Borgia" forum) asked if she was forced to leave the show because she was heterosexual. Good question - insurance policies at the DA's office must be crazy. We can't wait to find out who is cast next, so we can write fanfic about how they'll be written off!

Even though the network media upfronts don't mean anything - except to advertisers - because schedules can be shuffled and shows killed between now and fall, Gothamist is still excited, because it's about hope (Tina Fey's new show to be good, Veronica Mars to be picked up) and new seasons of shows we love (The Office, My Name is Earl...and, heck, we can't help but watch Grey's Anatomy). Anyway, there are a lot of NYC-set shows coming in the fall season; NBC has Kidnapped and The Black Donnellys. Things we're wondering about:

Way back in 2004, the city announced its super duper special NYC Tax Credit Program for film and TV producers (as well as commercial, music video, etc.) in order to motivate productions to happen here, versus Los Angeles or (gasp) Toronto. And it worked really well: Lindsay Lohan made a movie, Martin Scorsese shot a set-in-Boston movie mostly here, CBS brought us Love Monkey (then cancelled it), there's another Dick Wolf TV, plus countless others. But now it turns out that the film credits were maybe too much of a good thing: The NY Times reports that the film credit program will be revised because the $50 million allocated for the program over four years has been sapped away in just 13 months! Who knew, a city program that was too good to be true?

- Public school kids who filed for transfers have to stay put

Lots of movement with Gothamist's old, reliable standby, Law & Order. First of all, NBC is moving L&O from Wednesday at 10PM to 9PM. While an hour might not mean much, it actually means our head will explode, with Lost at 9PM on Wednesdays as is Veronica Mars. But this frees up Project Runway at 10PM!! We imagine Dick Wolf is pissed off to have to go head to head with Lost, but maybe that's better than going head to head with CSI: New York, which sucks, but has been putting up a good fight and winning the timeslot occasionally. Or perhaps Wolfie's silence was bought with NBC's go-ahead to his new drama with ADA Alex Cabot (Stephanie March/Mrs. Bobby Flay), Conviction (shh - it's character-driven).

- Nicolette Sheridan does not look over-Botoxed with fish lips!

Gothamist thought that Detective Green's shooting in tonight's episode of Law & Order was just a neat way to let Jesse L. Martin leave the show temporarily while he shoots Rent, but someone on Flickr says that tonight will be his last episode. The episode features a shocking crime, which is a bullet to the chest of Detective Green. Say it ain't so! It's not like L&O producer Dick Wolf would want to show his hand, but this is too obvious. When Jill Hennessy's Claire Kincaid died at the end of season six, we didn't know. And while we knew Serena Southerlyn was leaving, we didn't know she would be a lesbian! Gothamist doesn't want to see Detective Green in a bodybag. And we don't want a Paul Sorvino/Phil Cerreta-like shooting in a buy-and-bust, where he ends up deciding to leave homicide investigations. No!

Yesterday, people from TV, film, and Broadway, as well as the public, gathered to pay tribute to the dearly missed Jerry Orbach. The attendees included Angela Lansbury, Al Pacino, Benjamin Bratt, Chris Noth, Jill Hennessy, Jane Alexander, Karen Ziemba, and Dick Wolf, plus many regular New Yorkers who cherished Orbach's contribution as an actor. Former Mayor David Dinkins was there, and Mayor Bloomberg spoke to the crowd, saying, "Briscoe exuded the life of the city in all its moxie...Jerry came to personify New York in both body and soul." NBC President Jeff Zucker and L&O producer Dick Wolf presented Orbach's widow Elaine with a $1 million check for Sloane Kettering's Cancer research fund as well.

Plus, it had Wendie Malick as the defense attorney. The debate about celebrity chefs makes Gothamist think about the talk at the Museum of Radio & Television with cookbook authors and TV personalities Jeff Steingarten, Mario Batali, Alton Brown and Giada DeLaurentiis. Dan Dickinson reports that the talk got ugly, with Steingarten complaining that the TV personalities had an unfair advantage because they had TV shows. We wish we had seen it.

The forums at Television Without Pity are all a-twitter (""). And the new ADA, Annie Parisse, playing Alexandra Borgia, has her bio up on the L&O site - Gothamist has already started thinking about her exit strategies.