newsbits: renew

- ABC renewed Ugly Betty. I think ABC needs to reboot Ugly Betty.

- Cartoon Network is saying "we're sort of Cartoon Network," just like A&E is now "sort of Arts and Entertainment" and AMC is "sort of about American Movie Classics." Scooby Doo is becoming a live action series after a direct-to-dvd video threequel, The Mystery Begins
- Variety has a pretty neat Q&A session with Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof about Lost. My favorite is this nugget at the end: “Lost” would not be possible without the tremendous advances in visual effects technology in the last few years, especially the drop in costs and the ability to do complex visual effects on a TV budget and schedule. The island of Oahu where we shoot the show is very beautiful but also very populated and developed. We remove roads, telephone poles, houses, boats and surfers in nearly every episode. But even more importantly, VFX allow us to make Hawaii look like literally any place in the world. We’ve used our VFX team to turn Oahu into Iraq, Berlin, Paris, Tunisia and even a snowy winter in Red Square. In fact, in the entire 100-plus episode history of the show we’ve only shot four scenes off the island, mainly due to actor availability.

- Rod Blagojevich wants a reality show. He says he wants it to be like The Osbournes, I think its really going to be more like Oz.

- Apparently I'm not the only one anxious to see a trailer for James Cameron's sci-fi return Avatar. "Eight, count 'em, EIGHT trailers have already been made for AVATAR and all of them failed the test with James Cameron. He is hard at work prepping his own trailer for the masses as he knows the first trailer has to be done right."

- I love how Harry Potter and the characts have become so recognizable and iconic, they can absolutely disregard the logo and titles in the new key art.