HBO has cancelled Luck after a third horse died on set

According to TVLine and EW, HBO has cancelled the David Milch horse-racing drama Luck, which was recently picked up for a ten-episode second season, after a horse died on set. This is the third animal that died during production of the show.

“It is with heartbreak that executive producers David Milch and Michael Mann together with HBO have decided to cease all future production on the series,” the pay cabler said in a statement. 

The latest equine casualty was being walked back to its barn by a groom at Santa Anita Racetrack when it reared up, fell backwards and was injured. “Unfortunately, the injury was serious and could not be treated,” says the American Humane Association, which had a representative on the premises at the time. Though the injury was neither sustained while on set nor during the filming of a scene, the AHA went on to demand that “all production involving horses shut down… pending a complete, thorough, and comprehensive investigation.” 

Here's a grisly new Game of Thrones poster for your viewing pleasure

We all know that Game of Thrones is not a show that shies away from graphic violence. But the newest poster for Season 2 (which starts on April 1, people!) is disgusting even by that standard. The poster is the newest entry in a series of five posters based around the "War of Five Kings," each of which was designed by fans. The first Five Kings poster clearly represents Robb Stark:

Photo via EW.

The second poster, which I assume is a nod to Joffrey Baratheon, is not for the faint of heart (although presumably, if you're watching GoT, your heart is not faint), and can therefore be found after the jump.

How accurate was Julianne Moore's Sarah Palin? Judge for yourself!

YouTube user flammable2002 put together this compilation of clips comparing Julianne Moore's performance as Sarah Palin in Game Change to the real thing, and it's pretty damn impressive. (video via Slate.)

Were it not for the fact that Moore is clearly a good bit shorter than Palin, it would be difficult to tell which one is which, although I'm happy to say that the inclusion of the Katie Couric footage has vindicated my criticism the terrible back double who stands in for Couric for part of the interview (you can see my real-time unhappiness in the live blog I did of the film). I suggest that Julianne Moore submit this video as her Emmy reel, because it showcases just how phenomenal her performance is.

Young Danielle Rousseau and Bristol Palin are the same person

Melissa Farman as (left) Bristol Palin in Game Change, and (right) young Danielle Rousseau on Lost.

The young French actress who played Bristol Palin in HBO's Game Change looks uncannily like the real thing. The resemblance is so strong that an audience member at an advanced screening of the movie felt compelled to ask aloud, "Is that Bristol?" when she first appeared onscreen.

Before Game Change, however, USC student and actress Melissa Farman was best known as another pregnant teenager braving hostile conditions. As young Danielle Rousseau in "This Place is Death," a fifth-season episode of Lost, Farman dealt not with the mockery of TV pundits, but with the constant threat of dismemberment by a disembodied smoke monster.

Because I am the sort of person who enjoys conflating different characters played by the same actor - I'm still waiting for Community's Professor Kane to start whistling "The Farmer in the Dell" while cheerfully murdering some drug dealers - this discovery has me theorizing. What if Bristol Palin is, in fact, the smoke monster in disguise? What if the Man in Black has secretly been using Bristol's human shape to groom Sarah Palin for the presidency as part of some nefarious plot to escape the Island and wreak havoc on the world? What if Sasha or Malia Obama is actually a reincarnation of Jacob, fighting with the Bristol-shaped Man in Black to avert the apocalypse? What if it was all true?!

So, clearly that's not the case, and I'm just letting my finals-addled brain run wild. Obviously the real explanation is that Bristol Palin somehow fell through a wormhole and ended up in 1988, with her memory wiped, speaking perfect French and convinced that she was part of a scientific expedition despite the fact that she was seven months pregnant. It explains so much...

Can we stop pretending that women only have female friends?

30 Rock's Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy (courtesy of E! Online) and Up All Night's Chris, Reagan and Ava (courtesy
of Max Updates).

Katie Stroh at TVSquad recently published a piece about the lack of "genuine" female friendships on television. Stroh claims that, since Sex and the City and Buffy the Vampire Slayer went off the air, "there's an undeniably enormous gap between the number of shows with female characters whose lives revolve primarily around men and shows that work the other way around." The only representation of a female friendship that Stroh finds compelling is Leslie (Amy Poehler) and Ann (Rashida Jones) on Parks and Recreation.

Stroh makes some interesting points. She notes that many female friendships on television are defined by "petty backstabbing and competitive cattiness," and also points out that, for all the talk of this season being the year of women on TV, many of the new, female-centric TV shows don't present a good portrait of women's friendships (although I would disagree with her claim about 2 Broke Girls, since the central female friendship is about the only thing it has going for it.) Stroh's argument, however, has two major problems.

The first is her over-reliance on the Bechdel Test. The test is an interesting metric, but its existence at this point is really about shock value. As TV Tropes points out, "A movie can easily pass the Bechdel Test and still be incredibly misogynistic. Conversely, it's also possible for a story to fail the test and still be strongly feminist in other ways." The problem here is that Stroh (and she's hardly alone in this), cites the Bechdel test like its the only metric available for determining feminism. Stroh describes the test as a method of measuring whether "female characters have lives and relationships that don't primarily deal with the men around them." In doing so, she not only leaves out a lot of relevant information about the Bechdel Test itself, but is also working off the assumption that women are only friends with other women.

Does Game Change humanize Sarah Palin?

Julianne Moore plays two sides of Sarah Palin in the HBO movie
Game Change.

Does Game Change humanize Sarah Palin?

That's the question I kept asking myself while watching HBO's original movie about the 2008 McCain/Palin campaign for the second time tonight. I went to an advanced screening on Tuesday night feeling that the movie didn't make Palin look bad, or at least worse than she made herself look. Some moments were too public not to be included, and many of them - the Katie Couric interview, the comment about Alaska's proximity to Russia on Charlie Rose - don't put Palin in the best light.

There were also moments, however, when Sarah Palin the hopeless naif and Sarah Palin the cunning politician took a backseat to Palin the person. Watching Julianne Moore, as Palin, comforting her sobbing daughter Bristol while the media tears the teen to shreds, or the tenseness that creeps into her face while talking to her son Track, fighting in Afghanistan, is to watch a devoted mother trying to grapple with her children's pain. It's heart wrenching. Similarly, watching the kindness with which Palin greets people with Down's Syndrome in rope lines is to understand just why people were so taken with her. It's these scenes that seem to justify the many critics who claimed that the film encourages the audience to empathize with her.

Live Blog - HBO's Game Change

Loyal readers, set your DVRs! Tonight, starting at 9:00 pm CT, I'll be live blogging the HBO original movie Game Change. I had the opportunity to go to an advance screening, so I'll be sharing my thoughts and insights with you while I watch.