CBS's "Magnum" opus

Blue Bloods, starring Tom Selleck, debuted on CBS in the fall of 2010. Recently renewed for a ninth season, the Friday-night mainstay has now produced more episodes than Selleck's first long-running series for the network, Magnum, P.I. (1980-'88).

"There is one enterprise of national significance that Selleck is happy to weigh in on: the long-gestating Magnum P.I. movie," wrote Robert Moritz in Parade's November 7, 2010, edition. "With rumors flying that Matthew McConaughey and Ashton Kutcher have been considered, Selleck is very clear on his choice to play the lead: Tom Selleck. He envisions an older Magnum in a story line that catches up with events since the series' final episode."

"Look, I'm not being egotistical, but Magnum's in about 100 countries," Selleck told Moritz. "They can't just buy a title and stick some younger guy in it. These things are quite real to audiences."

Of course they can, Tom.

The Magnum movie never happened, but the detective series is returning to CBS next fall, with Jay Hernandez in the title role. (I'm all for colorblind casting, but I hope the writers will provide a backstory for Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV's newly Hispanic heritage.)

Hawaii Five-O aired from 1968 to '80 on CBS—one reason why Magnum was greenlit at the end of Five-O's run was so that CBS could continue to make use of its Hawaiian production facilities—and was rebooted by the network in 2010. Five-O 2.0 premiered the same week as Blue Bloods and, like that show, is still pulling in decent ratings after eight years. Time will tell if the new Magnum, P.I. can also go the distance.

Hearts, not guns, kill people.

Or at least that's the insight I gleaned from the trailer for The Dark Tower, a.k.a. "The Chronicles of N(a)R(ni)A"—now available on Blu-ray!—a coulda-shoulda-woulda summer blockbuster from Sony Pictures with a storyline that, strangely enough, resembles that of Last Action Hero, a high-profile bomb for the studio 24 years ago.

"Not alright alright alright that you don't seem interested in my story, sweetheart."

In an alternate universe a bald, beer-bellied, non-Oscar-winning Matthew McConaughey delivered the monologue from last night's Saturday Night Live to a bored coed in the same bar where he was "discovered" in 1992.

Henry Pollard: Vampire Hunter

In April 2009, halfway through the first season of Starz's short-lived but fondly remembered Party Down, an episode aired in which waiter and "retired" actor Henry Pollard (Adam Scott) runs into Michael (Breckin Meyer), an old friend from acting class who's now an up-and-coming movie star. Michael has been signed to play Edgar Allan Poe in a big-budget film that imagines the 19th-century author as a vampire hunter. And since there's plenty of bloodsucker butt to kick, Poe has a sidekick, young Abraham Lincoln, a part for which Michael thinks Henry would be perfect.

However, Henry can't even manage to land an audition with the film's foul-mouthed producer (J.K. Simmons, equally funny and terrifying), and in the second and final season of Party Down we discover that Channing Tatum ended up getting the part.

Seth Grahame-Smith's novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was published in March 2010, the month before Party Down imagined Tatum as a Nosferatu-killing Great Emancipator. I have no idea who first came up with the idea of our 16th president moonlighting as Van Helsing, or if it even matters, but in that 2009 episode of Party Down Breckin Meyer sounds like he's imitating Matthew McConaughey's laid-back Texan twang. Well, guess who's costarring with Channing Tatum in Steven Soderbergh's male-stripper comedy, Magic Mike, opening this Friday? Alright alright alright ...



Benjamin Walker, who previously played our nation's seventh president in the Broadway musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, takes on the lead role in Twentieth Century Fox's big-screen adaptation of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which opened last Friday to a mixed reception from both critics and audiences. I bet Henry Pollard wouldn't have landed an audition for that film either, but at least Adam Scott will get to wear a Lincoln-like beard in Fox's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, directed by and starring Ben Stiller and set for release in December 2013. (For what it's worth, John Cusack played a serial-killer-hunting Edgar Allan Poe earlier this year in The Raven.)

If the Lincoln movie left you cold* but you're still in the mood for a 3-D hunt of imaginary creatures, Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton star in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, hitting theaters next January. And if you're the kind of person who thinks President Obama is a socialist, please call off your witch hunt and hibernate until March 2014. That's when Disney will release Maleficent, a remake of Sleeping Beauty starring Angelina Jolie and produced by Joe Roth, who's already given us the Tim Burton-directed Alice in Wonderland remake and Snow White and the Huntsman, plus he has Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great and Powerful waiting in the wings for a March 2013 release.

Fairy-tale movies are the new superhero movies. Except Hollywood is still making superhero movies. Once upon a time Hollywood made other kinds of movies, but then an evil financial wizard conjured up a recession that helped kill the home video market, making millions of dollars in yearly revenue vanish into thin air and forcing Hollywood to concentrate its remaining production capital on 3-D gimmickry and "presold" stories and characters that audiences already know and love.

But, in all honesty, if an evil wizard were to take away the powers of speech and texting from moviegoers once they've paid for their tickets and taken their seats, I probably wouldn't care so much about what kinds of movies Hollywood makes. Where are you when we need you most, Voldemort?

* But if you're a vampire you were cold to begin with, right?

Matt doing Matthew

Yet another reason to like Matt Damon ...