I posted/whined previously how annoying and silly I find it when cable channels air movies with “objectionable” words (I don’t object to ANY words) and substitute some non-sense word for the naughty one.

The folks at AMC have taken an interesting approach to this tactic. While showing Fargo, they broke for commercials by putting up a graphic with a bunch of non-sense words beginning with the letter F (announcer voice-over saying these words). The announcer then says something along the lines of “Steve Buscemi said the F-word ten times in that last scene…but that’s okay.”

Almost as though they’re embarrassed by the need to make the silly substitutions and poke a little fun at themselves. Interesting.

Excerpt from New York magazine cover (via Eat the Press) story on Stephen Colbert, written by Adam Sternbergh:

“Of course, I’m not trying to equate Coulter with Colbert. For starters, Coulter is a shrill, abusive demagogue and Colbert just plays one on TV. But with Coulter, there’s always been a sturdy suspicion that she is playing a character (like Colbert) and amping up the obnoxious rhetoric for maximum effect (like Colbert). When I mention the comparison to Colbert, though, he seems surprised, even unnerved. “I don’t really think about her much,” he says. “She’s a self-generating bogeyman. She’s like someone who wants attention for having been bad.” Given that he’s hosted right-wing true believers like Joe Scarborough before, and has often said he’d love to have Bill O’Reilly on the show, would he ever invite Coulter as a guest? “My sense is that she’s playing a character,” he says. “I don’t need another character. There’s one character on my show, and that’s me.”

And here’s an amusing list of statements by either Stephen Colbert or Ann Coulter. See if you can tell who said what:

1. “Even Islamic terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do. They don’t have the energy. If they had that much energy, they’d have indoor plumbing by now.”

2. “There’s nothing wrong with being gay. I have plenty of friends who are going to hell.”

3. “I just think Rosa Parks was overrated. Last time I checked, she got famous for breaking the law.”

4. “Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity, as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of ‘Kill everyone who doesn’t smell bad and answer to the name Muhammad.'”

5. “I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be you Hindu, Muslim, or Jewish. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior.”

6. “[North Korea] is a major threat. I just think it would be fun to nuke them and have it be a warning to the rest of the world.”

7. “Isn’t an agnostic just an atheist without balls?”

You can read the full Eat the Press post here.

Since the beginning of this season of Deadwood, I’ve been wondering if this is the end. Scott points us to the answer at TVseriesFinale.com.

When it was announced that HBO would we cutting the series short after three seasons, fans signed petitions, took out an ad in Variety, sent letters and made calls indicating that they would cancel their HBO subscriptions at the end of Deadwood’s third season (next week). http://www.savedeadwood.net/

As a result, Deadwood will return next season, but instead of a full-blown 12-episode season to complete the series, HBO and (creator) Milch will instead produce a pair of two-hour movies.

Milch has said that he wasn’t in favor of doing a six-episode season because each episode of Deadwood has typically represented one day in the lives of the characters and South Dakota area. Shifting to two-hour movies will allow him to break that format and to be able to complete the storytelling he had for the final season.