We’ve been anxiously awaiting HBO’s original movie Game Change, which is based on the tell-all book about the 2008 presidential campaign by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, ever since we first learned that Julianne Moore would be tackling the juicy role of Sarah Palin. While her version of the former governor of Alaska is far more subtle than Tina Fey’s wink-laden portrayal on Saturday Night Live (for obvious reasons), the end result is so much more powerful. She is fantastic here. In fact, we almost found ourselves feeling sorry for Palin — particularly in those scenes where she seems to be having a total emotional meltdown — while watching this trailer. Will that sentiment last? We’ll just have to wait until Game Change premieres on March 10th at 9pm to find out.

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1. Members of India’s Sikh community are outraged following a joke that Jay Leno made about Mitt Romney’s summer home; it turns out the building in the photo accompanying the bit was the Golden Temple, the holiest site in the Sikh religion. A formal complaint had been lodged with the State Department in Washington. [via AP]

2. Ben Stiller is working with Jonathan Safran Foer on a new comedy for HBO called All Talk; the show, which focuses on a Jewish family in Washington, DC, will reportedly be “politically, religiously, culturally, intellectually and sexually irreverent.” Alan Alda is in talks to star opposite Stiller, who is also planning to direct and executive produce the project. [via THR]

3. NBC just ordered up 10 new pilots (eight of them comedies), news that we find rather overwhelming so early in the morning. Luckily, Vulture has broken it all down for us.

4. The principal cast of The Book of Mormon — including recent Tony winner Nikki M. James — has extended their contracts through February 2013. If you haven’t seen this Broadway musical yet, consider this your cue to finally finagle some tickets to the perpetually sold-out show. [via EW]

5. Carnival Films, the UK film company behind Downton Abbey, are unhappy that PBS has launched a range of jewelery based on two of the show’s characters, Lady Mary Crawley and her sister, Lady Sybil. Apparently, these unauthorized products are a “must have for all ladies of quality.” [via The Guardian]

Bonus Buzz: 12 Cats And Dogs Wearing Top Hats

There are a whole lot of new lady-helmed shows coming to HBO this spring, and the premium channel has just announced when they’ll premiere. We can look forward to Tiny Furniture director Lena Dunham’s Girls, a Judd Apatow-backed half-hour comedy about three underemployed college grads in New York, April 15th. If you’re not as excited about the show as we are, you may want to watch the trailer. Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Veep, which stars the erstwhile Elaine as the vice president of the United States and also features the wonderful Anna Chlumsky, will debut April 22nd. Considering that the team behind the show also made the hilarious film In the Loop, we’re expecting some incredibly snappy dialogue. Meanwhile, Game Change, the HBO original movie that casts Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin, will air March 10th.

Don’t worry, Game of Thrones fans, the network hasn’t forgotten you. Mark your calendars for April 1st, because that’s when Season 2 premieres. [via TVLine]

As much of our recent TV coverage suggests, we are big fans of HBO’s Enlightened. So it is our great pleasure to bring you the news that Laura Dern and Mike White’s sitcom about life post-nervous breakdown has been renewed despite garnering an average viewership of only 210,000. The network’s decision comes less than a week after the Enlightened scored two Golden Globe nominations, one for Best Comedy and an acting nod for Dern. We’re guessing the renewal comes as a happy surprise to White, who told the LA Times last week that he was “happily shocked” by the nominations but that — despite the Golden Globe boost — he still expected he’d have to “grovel” for a second season.

Now for some news we’re not so excited about: our beloved Bored to Death has been canceled (along with Hung and How to Make It in America, which never really did much for us). Apparently, although we don’t remember hearing much about how small its audience was, just 240,000 people were tuning in to any given episode of Jonathan Ames’ Brooklyn-based detective comedy.

We don’t know whether to cheer or cry, so instead we’re just going to focus on how excited we are for what may be the next great HBO sitcom, Girls.

Today at Flavorpill, we fell in madly love with the SNL Christmas card thanks to its delightful Stefon-meets-Rockwell-painting premise. We got a better idea of what 7 billion people looks like. We watched a very hairy Jeff Tweedy do his best impression of a weather dude. We wondered if BuzzFeed had a hard time narrowing down its list of the 20 most important cats of 2011. We were afraid that our Kindles might secretly be spying on us. We hoped that Stephen Daldry’s plans to turn The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay into an HBO miniseries actually pan out. We couldn’t decide which Golden Globes-related tweet we found funnier: the heartbreaking original by Jason Segel or Neil Patrick Harris’ hilarious followup. We read The New York Times’ 1949 review of George Orwell’s 1984 in which the book is referred to as “a work of pure horror, and its horror is crushingly immediate.” We made note of The Hairpin’s helpful advice for festival holiday boundary setting. We were excited to see that Kanye has returned to Twitter. We checked out the latest from Banksy, a pixelated new sculpture called Cardinal Sin. And finally, we decided to end our day with this excellent “at the end of the day” supercut from VH1. We have but one complaint: needs more Mob Wives.

You can keep your New Girl and even (sorry, Kat Dennings) your 2 Broke Girls. We’ve been burned by both of the new, deeply flawed network sitcoms about adorably alternative 20-something women, but we have a really good feeling about Girls. The HBO comedy series, which premieres in April, was written and directed by its star, 25-year-old Tiny Furniture phenom Lena Dunham, with Judd Apatow attached as executive producer. The show will follow three young female friends living in New York and seemingly stuck in perpetual intern/assistant hell.

Since we’ve been anxious to know more about the show since HBO picked it up, over a year ago, you can imagine how excited we are to get a first glimpse of it. The teaser below features everything we’ve come to expect from Dunham: smart, self-deprecating humor, professional frustration, and frequent oversharing. Let us know whether you’ll be watching in the comments. Read More »

Storied showrunner David Milch debuted his long-awaited follow-up to Deadwood last night. (Yes, that’s right, we’re doing him the courtesy of pretending John from Cincinnati never happened.) Although Luck won’t officially premiere until January 29th, HBO ran a sneak preview of the show’s first episode after Boardwalk Empire‘s season finale. And we wanted to like it. We could not, in fact, wait to get a peek at it. But, while we realize great shows can have shaky pilots, we’d be lying if we said we weren’t worried.

Luck takes place in the world of horse racing — a somewhat alien realm for those of us who ignore the Kentucky Derby and have never set foot in an OTB. This means that the distinguished trio behind the series — executive producers Milch and Michael Mann, plus producer/star Dustin Hoffman — needs to quickly find a way to make those of us with no interest in the sport care about the jockeys, managers, and gamblers who populate its world. So it’s confusing that they seem to have so purposely chosen to hold viewers at arm’s length. Read More »

1. Last night HBO debuted yet another enigmatic teaser trailer for Season 2 of Game of Thrones. Watch the very dramatic, yet totally spoiler-free clip here.

2. The trailer for the third installment of the Men in Black franchise — which features Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones reprising their roles, as well as Josh Brolin as young Agent K — has also landed online. The movie hits theaters on May 25th. [via The Daily What]

3. Crime novelist John Sallis, whose book was the basis for Drive, is now working on a follow-up called Driven, which is expected to hit bookshelves in April 2012. Hopefully this means that we’ll be getting a film sequel as well. [via The Playlist]

4. Mike Myers — who recently signed a deal with New Line for a fourth Austin Powers movie — is planning to bring a musical version of the franchise to Broadway; while the actor would be “heavily involved in writing the show,” he does not plan to star in it. [via NYP]

5. The lovely Meryl Streep will appear on the cover of Vogue for the first time next month. At 62 years old, she’s the oldest cover model in the fashion magazine’s history. [via Jezebel]

Bonus Buzz: The 40 Best Protest Signs Of 2011

1. HBO has released some behind-the-scenes footage from Season 2 of Game of Thrones! Watch it here, and then try to deal with the fact that you won’t get to see the full thing until April.

2. Despite some seriously hilarious reviews about how bad it is, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 took in an estimated $139 million over the weekend, making it the fifth largest opening of all time. [via Vulture]

3. RIP: Mark Hall, the UK animator who created the cartoon series Danger Mouse, died over the weekend at the age of 75 following a short illness. [via Guardian]

4. This weekend’s Jason Segel-hosted episode of Saturday Night Live (which we reviewed here) scored the show’s best ratings so far this season. Do you think it had anything to do with that cameo by The Muppets? [via Deadline]

5. The American Music Awards were held last night, and the biggest news of the evening (other than the fact that Jennifer Lopez performed what was essentially a car commercial in what was essentially her birthday suit) was Taylor Swift’s second win as Artist of the Year. [via AP]

Bonus Buzz: Super Mario/X-Men Mash-Up

1. Scarlett Johansson plans to make her full-length directorial debut with Summer Crossing, an adaptation of Truman Capote’s lost novella. The story, which is set in post-World War II New York City, follows “an 18-year-old girl breaking free of her rich, smothering, family to discover her own identity and sexuality.” [via Variety]

2. Emmy Award-winning actor Jim Parsons could be returning to Broadway this spring to star in a revival of the Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy Harvey; whether or not he plays Elwood P. Dowd, a man who claims to be friends with a six-foot-tall rabbit, hinges on if he can juggle the gig with his schedule for The Big Bang Theory. [via ArtsBeat]

3. Deadline is exclusively reporting that Se7en screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker will be reteaming with director David Fincher on his upcoming remake of 20,000 League Under the Sea.

4. Some exciting news for lit nerds and/or fans of period dramas: Vulture reports that HBO is partnering with the BBC to develop a new mini-series based on Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel Wolf Hall.

5. Did you realize that standup comedian and former Grace Under Fire star Brett Butler wound up broke and homeless after a long battle with drug addiction? She’s now hoping to have a comeback of sorts with a reality show about her psychic abilities. [via THR]

Bonus Buzz: Astronomy Photography Of 2011