• Late Show

Is the movie sticking to the TV show's real-time format?

It is. This two hours is two hours in real time and there'll then be 22 episodes. I don't know how they connect it to the first of those 22 episodes but it's literally the third hour...

So it will lead straight into the new series?

Yeah.

Though last season's 24 might have been better off as 16, Kiefer-starved fans will no doubt take this news poorly (to say nothing of the Mary Lynn Rajskub message boards!). Rest assured, though, producers are working overtime to provide even more twists and turns to make up for the season's two lost episodes. Spoiler alert: the Christmas tree was behind it all!

• Robert Carlyle Talks '24: The Movie' [Premiere]

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Mirrors star Kiefer Sutherland and gal pal Siobhan Bonnouvrier attempted to flex their star power muscle at a New York area Apple Store over the weekend. After talking with the store's manager for quite a lengthy time, Sutherland was unable to get his hand on the soon to be release iPhone 3G. Bonnouvrier asked the manager if he knew whom they were dealing and if he's been enjoying all the freedom that Jack Bauer has provided over the last seven years. The manager replied, "I'd gladly give a phone to one of The Lost Boys, but we don't have any yet. My hands are tied on this one." Sutherland asked if he could use the excuse that it's a matter of national security to get the phone, but the manager shrugged his shoulders and said that he could sell them one of the first generation phones and that was about it. Sutherland and his girlfriend left the store while stating that it wasn't over between them yet and that the next time will be personal.

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

[Photo Credit: Bauer-Griffin]

In 2001, 24 debuted. Its premiere episode was nearly pulled because it featured a plane getting shot out of the sky in a scenario eerily similar to the events of September 11th. But viewers who found the terrorists-are-out-to-get-us premise all too believable could relax because Jack Bauer was assigned to protect an African-American presidential candidate. There was no way that was realistic; there weren't even any Black senators. But a funny thing happened. Palmer won the election. We've spent the past six years watching an African-American president. We've seen him handle one ridiculous crisis after another — and he seemed to be doing a better job than the president we actually had. Palmer even had some of Obama's annoying qualities. He always wanted to take the high road, even when the situation merited a Jack Bauer style ass-kicking. He was too trusting of his unscrupulous associates.

The Obama/Palmer connection has been observed throughout the blogosphere and by the actor who played Palmer himself, Dennis Haysbert. Who knows. Maybe Hilary's real problem was that TV's female president is relegated to basic cable on Battlestar Galactica.

The gay marriage-television link is equally strong. While gay weddings were occasional plot points dating back to the Seinfeld episode where Elaine attends a gay wedding, this past season they were parts of the season finales of two of ABC's hits. Moreover, they were presented as ordinary events, no different than heterosexual marriage ceremonies. Brothers and Sisters ended with Kevin and Scotty's wedding, which was attended by a Republican senator.

On Desperate Housewives, conservative, gun toting Republican Bree, who once abandoned her gay son, catered the wedding of Wisteria Lane gays, Bob and Lee. None of the heterosexuals on the block raised an eye brow.

Mere weeks later, the California Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. Coincidence? Probably. But the muted opposition outside of Kern County could be because people are already used to seeing gay weddings on TV.

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While on vacation in Hawaii, former 24 star Elisha Cuthbert let it slip that the producers of the popular action/thriller had been tinkering with applying the 24 format to a story that's both romantic and comedic. Cuthbert suggested that the producers set the show during a college spring break, which provided her the necessary leeway from an accounting perspective to write her trip — and that bikini — off as business expense.

[Photo Credit: Splash Pics]

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In a Forgetting Sarah Marshall inspired moment of honesty, Kiefer Sutherland told his girlfriend, Siobhan Bonnouvrier, that he doesn't care that much for the clothing she picks out for him. Sutherland told his gal pal that he's far more comfortable in a V-Neck from American Apparel than the giant scarves the 24 star has been forced to wear lately. She quickly corrected him, explaining that there's a BIG difference between a scarf and a pashmina. Sutherland started to remove the pashmina and said, "Well, whatever it is, I don't like it and it's spring so why I am even wearing it?"

[Photo Credit: INF Daily]

Among the most deserving members of the group are, in no particular order:

Jim Halpert on The Office: because laughter is everything. Plus, he's tall.
Ned on Pushing Daisies: Tall, too! And he makes pies. While wearing an apron. With perfect hair and dreamy eyes and that tall, lean frame...let's just say we'd forgive him if he accidentally killed us.
Amanda Tanen on Ugly Betty: If we swung that way, this would be our girl (free clothes!), and from our imagined male point of view, well, same thing: free suits!
Michael and George Michael Bluth from Arrested Development: Best. Threesome. Fantasy. Ever. And afterwards, Michael Cera might bake you cookies, while Jason Bateman played you his favorite records!
Lindsay Weir from Freaks and Geeks: Sure, not Swimsuit Issue-worthy (at least back then, but these days in ER, yum), but in a way, Lindsay was the original Juno MacGuff.

And the incomprehensibles:

Jack Bauer from 24: While we genuflect thrice daily to a poster of the real-life Kiefer, we are going to have to strongly oppose the choice of Jack Bauer. Are we the only ones who happened to catch the fact that his wife was tortured, raped and killed? Yeah, dreamboat for sure.
Jack Shephard from Lost: Yes, Matthew Fox is a fox, there is no doubt. And yes, he's a doctor, and sure, he may have saved, oh, a trillion or so lives. But he's got daddy issues, and we're not into being bossed around, even if it means saving the world (or whatever the fuck they're trying to save this season).
Dylan McKay from Beverly Hills: 90210: Again, hot. But as much as Brenda Walsh infuriated us with her teeth and her moody/wannabe actress/princess-y tendencies, we'd have dumped the too-cool-for-school druggie just on the basis of Squint Addiction.
Summer Roberts from The OC: We've been known to act a little high-maintenance from time to time, but this Cali girl took the term to new heights of offensiveness. Plus, she kinda strikes us as one of those high-school girls who'd pretty much just lay there and blab on her cell while you're pumping away.
Bree Van De Camp from Desperate Housewives: Seriously? Of all the (admittedly impossible-to-choose-from) old frumps on this old frump of a show, EW readers want the shrill ice queen in their sack? Thin lips + bony legs = thanks but no thanks.

And finally, the most crucial void on the list, the most adorable, dateable, loveable visage ever to cross our screens, was inexcusably uninvited to join the list of Effables: Bret from Flight of the Conchords. We don't know about you, but every episode has been permanently saved on our DVR and played repeatedly, from noon to night, to the dismay of our roommate. We'll let you tell us who the EW readers scathingly excluded from the list in the comments!

• READER PICKS: TV CHARACTERS YOU'D DATE [EW]

· Re-teaming alert! Jim Jarmusch will reunite his Broken Flowers co-stars Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton in The Limits of Control, a thriller/road movie about a "mysterious loner" up to no good. [THR]
· Jericho finally returns from hiatus, but to ratings close to those that earned it the short-lived cancellation that inspired outraged fans to bury short-sighted CBS executives in several tons of peanuts. Meanwhile, American Idol's two-hour Back to Hollywood episode put up the series' best numbers since its premiere. [THR]
· A cheerily delusional FCC chairman Kevin Martin tells the House of Representatives that he expects the coming transition from analog to digital television will be a smooth one, dismissing fears of nationwide riots induced by the unexpected, simultaneous darkening of millions of TV sets as "somewhat unlikely." [Variety]

He was granted a request to serve his time in suburban Glendale's city jail rather than in the overcrowded downtown Los Angeles County jail. The trade-off was that he could not shave any time off his sentence for good behavior or early release because of overcrowding.

The actor must also serve five years probation and complete an 18-month alcohol education program and attend weekly therapy sessions for six months.

Does this mean we'll never again experience the mixed-with-the-drunken-locals Kiefer of old, who giddily hopped between various Eastside dive establishments where everyone knew his name, and probably would have even if he wasn't constantly saving the world in day-long increments on Fox? Tell us it ain't so, as a Silver Lake bereft of sauced Kiefer sightings sounds to us as desolate as a Valencia after a suitcase-nuke detonation.

• '24' star Kiefer Sutherland released from jail [LAT/AP]

PageSix.com has learned exclusively that Kiefer's pre-screened visitor list has just two people on it: attorney Blair Berk, and his doctor.

That means the soon-to-be 41-year-old actor will be alone for the holidays and his birthday, tomorrow.

So how is he occupying his time? By reading fan mail and doing laundry.

Glendale City Jail spokesman Officer Balian tells PageSix.com that, "Kiefer is a really nice and humble guy, and just wants to put this behind him."

We're concerned: He won't even take a glass-partitioned meeting with his agents? Something doesn't add up. The uncharacteristically low-key star of 24 must have something up sleeve, perhaps planning on lulling the soundbite-friendly Balian into a false sense of security, so he can eventually ambush him with a handful of powdered detergent in the eyes, a rolled-up postcard plunged into his neck, and a daring escape through the tunnel he stealthily dug over the past few weeks with a Tide measuring cap.

• Kiefer's Lonely Days of Laundry [PageSix.com]

· Fox sets a May 1, 2009 release date for Hugh Jackman's superhero franchise spin-off X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a story that will explore the days before the hirsute mutant gave up his evil-combating vocation to pursue a successful career in musicals. [Variety]
· In the event that Hollywood isn't completely burned down before midseason shows arrive, Fox plans to pair the new Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles with 24 in a two-hour Monday night block of unstoppable-freedom-fighter-related programming. [Variety]

· As contract negotiations remain contentious, the studios are instituting a hiring freeze on writers, hoping to make the industry's powerful working scribes remember the days they were as unemployed as most of the WGA's membership. [Variety]
· Chris Pine, whose biggest credit to date was surviving Lindsay Lohan's Just My Luck, finds himself the Next Big Thing, as he's in "discussions" to be J.J. Abrams' Captain Kirk and "negotiations" to join George Clooney in White Jazz. [THR]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, Indestructible Cyborgs Edition: Warner Bros. snags the rights to Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, hoping to reboot the franchise with a new storyline that span over three films. Cameron Diaz to star. [Variety]

That the show is right-leaning, and Garofalo is an outspoken Bush and Iraq War critic is, she says, half-joking, "much to my chagrin. That's why I feel like I'm being punked. I feel like the creators are going to make me say things that cause my sphincter to tighten."

Garofalo says she was surprised to get the job, given her politics. And though she might not agree with some of the dialogue, as the 42-year-old actress points out, "I'm not playing myself."

Hey, a job's a job, and no one's going to blame Garofalo for cashing a fat Fox paycheck. Indeed, she still doesn't even know if she's playing a "good guy" or a "bad guy," so she may never have to experience that unpleasant sphincter-tightening at having to stand in a CTU interrogation room with Jack Bauer and instruct the conflicted hero, "I don't care if you're sure that Mr. Saddiq here had nothing to do with the dirty bomb that went off in the Burbank Costco this morning. America needs you to take this rolled-up copy of the Geneva Convention and stick it so far up his ass he'll admit to every act of terrorism from seasons one through six."

• Janeane Garofalo: "I feel good about counter-terrorism" [Ottawa Sun]
Previously: Casting Shocker! Known Liberal Garofalo Joins Conservative-Run Hit Show! [Defamer]

Senior judges from North America and Europe were in the midst of a panel discussion about torture and terrorism law, when a Canadian judge's passing remark - "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra 'What would Jack Bauer do?' " - got the legal bulldog in Judge Scalia barking.

The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent's rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand. [...]

What happened next was like watching the National Security Judges International All-Star Team set into a high-minded version of a conversation that has raged across countless bars and dinner tables, ever since 24 began broadcasting six seasons ago.

That Bauer—and, by extension, his self-described "right-wing nut job" creator Joel Surnow—should have such an ardent vocal defender in Scalia is not surprising, and yet there's still something inarguably surreal about one of America's most influential jurists carrying on about a fictional character as if he were a real secret agent out to save the world. And while there would be those who'd argue the Justice made some strong points, the same could easily be said of the other side, including a number of towering Canadian legal minds who sagely pointed to the far gentler techniques of one of their own, cherished TV characters, The Littlest Hobo, as the standard to which all renegade heroes should aspire.

• What would Jack Bauer do? [theglobeandmail.com via Raincoaster]

Apparently, the guys at 24 enjoyed the episode, because they sent us one of their prop suitcase nukes couried by a PA, with an attached plaque that read "from your friends at 24" and with a thank you note saying "here's your very own snuke".

needless to say, we freaking LOVE this thing.

Further details are at the South Park production blog, where you can see more photos of Matt and Trey mentally calculating the practical logistics of squeezing a nuclear bomb up a famous woman's sex-parts. The staff's giddy enthusiasm for their shiny, potentially Valencia-eviscerating new toy is positively infectious—like children on a nuclear winter morning!—as is the thought of TV shows reaching out to one another across network lines. Still, we'd caution against phasing out Snookies baskets for suitcase nukes as the congratulatory industry gesture of choice, as all it takes is one curious assistant's finger and the question "What's THIS button do?" for Canada to finally win its chance to swoop in and fill the scorched-earth Hollywood void.

• THE BEST DAY EVER AT SOUTH PARK! [Production Blog]

The East Coast crowd didn't fly into town to pitch another quasi-military action series, but rather to advance a simple plea — Make your torture scenes more authentic.

By that, they did not mean bloodier or more savage. Instead, they wanted "24" to show torture subjects taking weeks or months to break, spitting out false or unreliable intelligence, and even dying. As they do in the real world.

"We're not opposed to having torture on television, but 98% of the time when it is shown it's 'Bing, bang, boom,' and it works," said David Danzig, director of the Prime Time Torture Project for the New York-based organization Human Rights First. "Frankly, it's unrealistic and it's kind of boring." [...]

"The meeting was an eye-opener," said "24" executive producer Howard Gordon. "We hadn't really thought a lot about torture as anything more than a dramatic device."

And in The New Yorker, Gordon explains the challenges of keeping the brutality fresh, so that bored viewers don't roll their eyes and sigh, "Ugh, is Jack gonna cut off another terrorist's head this week?"

Howard Gordon, who is the series' "show runner," or lead writer, told me that he concocts many of the torture scenes himself. "Honest to God, I'd call them improvisations in sadism," he said. Several copies of the C.I.A.'s 1963 KUBARK interrogation manual can be found at the "24" offices, but Gordon said that, "for the most part, our imaginations are the source. Sometimes these ideas are inspired by a scene's location or come from props—what's on the set." He explained that much of the horror is conjured by the viewer. "To see a scalpel and see it move below the frame of the screen is a lot scarier than watching the whole thing. When you get a camera moving fast, and someone screaming, it really works." In recent years, he said, "we've resorted a lot to a pharmacological sort of thing." A character named Burke—a federal employee of the C.T.U. who carries a briefcase filled with elephantine hypodermic needles—has proved indispensable. "He'll inject chemicals that cause horrible pain that can knock down your defenses—a sort of sodium pentothal plus," Gordon said. "When we're stuck, we say, 'Call Burke!' " He added, "The truth is, there's a certain amount of fatigue. It's getting hard not to repeat the same torture techniques over and over."

It remains to be seen how the 24 team might incorporate the Torture Project contingent's notes, but with the entire series predicated upon the idea that CTU interrogators have only minutes to obtain crucial information from tight-lipped malefactors, the best implementation they can probably hope to see involves the Mr. Burke character disclaiming, "Sure, I can shoot him full of chemicals, but it might take weeks for him to spit up even a false lead," an unacceptable evaluation that prompts Jack Bauer to pick up a nearby belt sander and hiss, "We don't have time for your dramatically untenable techniques. Don't worry, after I smooth off all the rough edges on his America-hating face, he'll break."

• '24' gets a lesson in torture from the experts [LAT]
Letter From Hollywood: Whatever It Takes [The New Yorker]

"24 is a heightened drama about anti-terrorism," the statement read. "After five seasons, the audience clearly understands this, and realizes that any individual, family, or group (ethnic or otherwise) that engages in violence is not meant to be typical.

"Over the past several seasons, the villains have included shadowy Anglo businessmen, Baltic Europeans, Germans, Russians, Islamic fundamentalists, and even the (Anglo-American) president of the United States," the network said. "The show has made a concerted effort to show ethnic, religious and political groups as multidimensional, and political issues are debated from multiple viewpoints."

Sohail Mohammed, a New Jersey immigration lawyer who represented scores of detainees caught up in the post Sept. 11, 2001 dragnet, watched the episode depicting the nuclear attack with an Associated Press reporter.

"I was shocked," he said. "Somewhere, some lunatic out there watching this will do something to an innocent American Muslim because he believes what he saw on TV."

The premiere episode isn't doing Fox any favors in deflecting criticisms like this one, as it depicts a neighborhood vigilante, distressed over a wave of supposedly Muslim-initiated bombings, attacking the one Arab-American on his block out of fear he's a terrorist—which, of course, he's quickly proven to be. Fox might need to release another statement clarifying to any viewers with reality-discernment problems that should they stumble away from their television sets with a hunger for vigilantism, the first neighbor they senselessly attack will almost certainly not be somebody who's involved in a hopelessly convoluted terror plot, as such lucky coincidences require months of planning by a highly paid writing staff.

• Muslims Unhappy Over `24' Portrayal [AP]

We pass along the above Fox.com promotional clip for 24's upcoming premiere not only because the idea of Santa Claus using CTU resources to infiltrate a chimney-free stronghold is certainly cute enough to waste two minutes of an already useless pre-holiday workday on, but to point out its missed opportunity to appeal to the series' hardcore fans: When the little girl opens that present in the final frames, it really should've contained the freshly severed head of a terrorist (a double-agent elf who sold him out as part of a convoluted plan to divert a toy shipment to the Middle East?) that Santa had to kill to ensure the completion of his Yuletide mission. Still, not a bad effort.

OK, we'll come clean: This was all just a lame pretext for posting the video of Kiefer Sutherland tackling the Christmas tree again. An encore performance of Drunken Kiefer vs. the Tannenbaum, after the jump!

• "Harold & Kumar" star high on "24" role [THR/Reuters]

So far this season, main characters have died on "Lost," "Smallville," "Las Vegas," "One Tree Hill," "Desperate Housewives," "Battlestar Galactica" and previous episodes of "24." The killing isn't over, either: the casts of "The Shield," "Everwood," "ER" and, again, "Lost" and "24," will be culled by the end of May. And the always-violent "Sopranos," which returned on Sunday, promises to be a bloodbath: its season premiere featured one death by natural causes, and one shocking suicide by hanging.

And repeateth the LAT:

Other important players have also passed away on the show Jack's wife, Terri, at the end of the first season, for instance. But when Almeida became the fifth main casualty in the span of Day 5's first 13 hours, "24" kicked up the ante as leader of a storytelling shift in Hollywood. At the end of Sunday's season premiere of "The Sopranos," Tony (James Gandolfini) was shot in the stomach by his Uncle Junior, leaving unclear the future of the lead character on the HBO drama that helped set the small screen bloodbath in motion. Two of the original survivors on ABC's "Lost," Boone (Ian Somerhalder) and Shannon (Maggie Grace), have died. Even actors on monster hits with lighter tones aren't exempt: The first season of "Desperate Housewives" concluded with the death of one of the husbands.

Accompanying both stories are the requisite showrunner sound-bites about how they'll only kill their darlings when it's a story they believe in and want to tell (The L Word's Ilene Chaiken in the NYT) or to "renew the contract with the audience that anything can happen" (24's Howard Gordon in the LAT), so we can all rest easy that our beloved, fictional family members were not senselessly slaughtered just to appease networks looking for some cheap, Nielsen crack.

• As the Plot Thickens, No One Is Safe [NY Times]
• You are killing us! [LAT]

• Introducing the 24 Jacktracker: Day 5, 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. [Gridskipper]
• [Jacktracker]
• [24 Official Site]
• Previously: Kiefer Sutherland Vs. The Christmas Tree [Defamer]

The full menu is available after the jump for your sneering convenience:

Rotisserie THE NEWS CAFÉ – FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2006 TODAY'S MENU IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY 24 2 NIGHT, 4 HOUR SEASON PREMIERE BEGINS SUNDAY 8PM

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• Previously: Fox News Cafe: I Eat Dead People [Defamer]