Watching The Office

Hi,

This is totally unrelated to The Office, but I am now the new author of the Watching Simpsons site. It is located at www.watchingsimpsons.com.
Come check it out if you’re a fan of The Simpsons. It’s brand new, I’m the first writer, so I need help in promoting it.
Thanks,
Anna

Yes, this another spoiler post, so if you can’t handle it or if you’ve been trying to quit, please turn away now. I will not be held responsible for any regrets.

Okay, here are some photos of a new episode from The Office titled “Safety Training”

Thanks again to JustJared.

Notice in the last one how close Jim and Pam are and where is Karen? Way over to the side, not anywhere close to her beau. Perhaps some forshadowing? I don’t think they’d let anything too big happen, but perhaps we’ll be seeing the beginnings of Pam and Jim reunion.

Andy is back from anger management and wants to make a fresh start with the other coworkers. He also wants to get in good with Dwight it may be for evil purposes. It’s safety training day and we can only guess what Michael is trying to demonstrate by being up on the roof. This episode airs on April 12th.

The Office, NBC, Safety Training, Carell, Fischer, Krasinski, Wilson, Hardin, spoilers

-Anna

According to ComingSoon.net, a never before seen trailer for Carell’s new movie, Evan Almighty, will show during The Office marathon tonight, hosted by our dear friend Toby. The same trailer will also show during the Wednesday and Thursday editions of Access Hollywood.

As a reminder, in Evan Almighty Carell is “Newly elected to Congress, Evan leaves Buffalo behind and shepherds his family to suburban northern Virginia. Once there, his life gets turned upside-down when God (Morgan Freeman) appears and mysteriously commands him to build an ark. But his befuddled family just can’t decide whether Evan is having an extraordinary mid-life crisis or is truly onto something of Biblical proportions…”
Evan Almighty also stars Lauren Graham, John Goodman, John Michael Higgins, Jimmy Bennett, Wanda Sykes and Jonah Hill. The film will be released on June 22, 2007.

In other news, Steve Carell will also be making an appearance at this year’s Nickelodeon Choice Awards. Justin Timberlake will be hosting.

Evan Almighty, Steve Carell, The Office, NBC, Nickelodeon, Morgan Freeman, Lauren Graham, Jonah Hill, Jimmy Bennett, Wanda Sykes, John Goodman, John Michael Higgins

-Anna

I got this article tip from Daniel Morin over at AskMen.com. Thanks Daniel.

Steve Carell, who plays Michael Scott on NBC’s The Office, was featured this week on AskMen.com as one of their men of the week. The article salutes Carell by breezing through his biography and his accomplishments, but it also asked him some interesting questions. Here are a few blurbs that I found interesting.

Steve Carell never expected to become a cultural icon. “Talking to my wife, we stare at each other, saying, ‘How is this happening?’â€? he says. “’Why is this happening? Why now?’ It’s nothing I ever aspired to.â€? Like it or not, Carell is rapidly becoming America’s No. 1 funnyman.

Stardom hasn’t changed the former letter carrier; Steve Carell is still as modest and self-effacing as ever. “I am just a regular Joe,� he says. “As Stephen Colbert once said in an interview, I am ‘beige against a tan wall.’ That’s how he described me [and] I think that pretty much fits. I’m nondescript.�

Steve Carell isn’t your typical leading man: He doesn’t have a chiseled jaw line, he hasn’t been blessed with a marvelous mane of hair, and as his chest-waxing scene in The 40 Year Old Virgin clearly demonstrated, he has more in common with Big Foot than with Brad Pitt.
Fortunately, Carell isn’t looking for love, as he has been happily married to Nancy Walls since 1995.

You can view the rest of the article here.

Steve Carell, The Office, NBC, Michael Scott

-Anna

I found these at OfficeTally.com. They’re great folks over there I tell ya. Here is one video that shows everything leading up to “The Negotiation” and then a little clip at the end is actual footage of the new episode.

Here is link to some clips over at Yahoo. Place cursor here and proceed to click with index finger.

I’m thinking this is too good and I am so excited for this episode. The first video debuncts my thought about Roy never actually confronting Jim. I guess Roy is just to much of an action kind of guy, huh?

Enjoy.

The Office, Michael Scott, Steve Carell, NBC, The Negotiation, Fischer, Krasiniski, Wilson, spoilers

-Anna

This week I choose Sanjaya Malakar from American Idol. I know, I know, he’s not technically a character from a show, but I think after you read this, you’ll agree that he SHOULD be this week’s pick for Tuesday’s Guest Star.

Imagine Sanjaya walking into The Office for his very first day. He is the new temp to take over the position that Ryan left behind. His presence will affect those around him in profound ways. As the new temp, Michael will take a interest in Sanjaya and stare at him for minutes on end through his office blinds. Kelly will undoubtedly flirt with him (who cares about Ryan anymore) because as most people who have the mentality of a 12 year-old will, she can’t help but be mesmerized by his long hair and puppy-dog eyes. Can anyone say, “EWWWW!” Oscar too will have a “more than just co-workers” attitude toward Sanjaya as he is slain too by the above mentioned features. Jim spends the entire episode trying to convince Dwight that Sanjaya is Michael Jackson after yet another massive plastic surgery. Hey, that voice could fool anybody. At the end of the episode Dwight is convinced and stumbles up to Sanjaya, crying mind you, and asks him to autograph his vinyl copy of Thriller. Wouldn’t you cry at the sight of the long-haired Idol. Andy, however, is perturbed by the sudden addition to The Office. Sanjaya will insist on singing to himself while he works, and we all know that’s Andy’s thing. Andy will challenge him to a singing duel and unfortunately Sanjaya will win. Why? For the same reason he’s still on Idol; I have no idea. Jim and Pam will conspire to change his official file at Dundler Mifflin to read El Eskeleto Malakar. They reason that he looks too much like El Eskeleto from the Jack Black hit Nacho Libre to not change it.

And thus, Sanjaya is my pick for this week. His odd run on Idol and his unbearably wide smile makes him perfect to mess with the world of The Office for an episode.
Do you like?

The Office, American Idol, FOX, NBC, Sanjaya Malakar

-Anna

Ed Helms, who plays Andy Bernard on NBC’s The Office, has signed on to play a fellow crew member on board Starship Dave. The premise of the film is that tiny human-like aliens have created a ship that looks like a normal-sized human. The star of the film is Eddie Murphy who plays the commander of the ship and the ship itself. If you remember back to that movie Men in Black where that one alien was just a robot or ship of sorts and that little alien guy was inside. I think it will be like that except there will be many more little aliens controlling this bad boy. Helms will play an uptight second in command alongside Garbrielle Union who plays the chief cultural officer. Murphy’s character ends up falling in love with a human played by Elizabeth Banks and thus problems insue because Eddie Murphy is only a few inches tall.
I can tell you right now that I’m happy for Helms, but if this is going to be like any of Eddie Murphy’s recent movies, I’ll probably pass it up. He’s already playing two of the characters. If he plays anymore, I think the movie is headed for lamesville pretty fast.
Filming begins in a few weeks and the release date is set for May 30, 2008.

The Office, Ed Helms, Starship Dave, Andy Bernard, Eddie Murphy

-Anna

Rainn Wilson speaks about why he took the role of a science teacher in The Last Mimzy and what kind of a student he was while in school. Check out the video here.

Rainn Wilson, The Last Mimzy, The Office, NBC, Dwight Shrute

-Anna

Here’s a clip of Jenna Fischer on her role in Blades of Glory, and she reveals a few tidbits about The Office’s season finale. The clip may be considered a spoiler. So ye have been warned. Check out the clip here.

Jenna Fischer, The Office, NBC, Blades of Glory, Walk Hard, Pam Beesley

-Anna

A post or two ago, I posted some pictures from the episode “The Neogtiation.” From those pictures, I’d like to make some predictions about how the show on April 5th will go down.

Unfortunately, I think most of the focus will be on the road trip to New York with Michael, Darryl, and Toby. This will no doubt be some intense cringe-worthy comedy, but I think a lot of fans are dying to see what will happen with Roy’s threat to kill Jim Halpert. From the pictures of Pam and Roy in the diner, I’m somewhat deducing that Pam will try and speak with Roy before Roy can kill Jim. It leaves the question though if Pam will tell Jim what happened at the bar. Will Pam say anything to Jim about her possible feelings? Of course not, the season doesn’t end until May! Why would they let us be happy like that? I kind of doubt as to whether Roy will actually confront Jim. I’m not sure, but maybe Roy will focus his efforts on making up for his fairly bad behavior from “Cocktails.”

Now for Dwight and Angela. I have absolutely no basis for this prediction, but I think it would be hilarious and a bit dramatic to introduce a juicy story-line in that relationship. I mentioned before in a spoiler post that they might be a pregnancy story-line in the Dwangela romance, but obviously that is not confirmed. Actually, there is some speculation that Jan might become pregnant. If she’s having near meltdowns just dating Michael, I think she might go comatose if she ends up having his child.

I also predict that Toby will have no chance to display his affection for Pam this episode as he’ll be in New York. But one has to wonder if the writer’s intended to really go anywhere with that in the first place. If you’ll remember in “Cocktails”, Toby kind of showed some feelings for Pam, that went entirely unnoticed by Pam herself. It seems that there may be too much going on between Pam/Jim/Roy triangle for Toby to step in. This also brings to mind that Karen will be leaving at the end of the season. So does this mean that the relationship between Jim and Karen will start to dissolve now? Perhaps. So we might see some of that in this upcoming episode.

In the end…who knows. These are my guesses, but I’d love to hear yours.

Predictions, The Office, NBC, Carell, Fischer, Krasinski, Wilson, Hardin, The Negotiation

-Anna

Ed Helms, who plays Andy Bernard from NBC’s The Office, was recently interviewed by Curt Holman at CreativeLoafing .com. They spoke on Helms’ Atlanta roots, his character on The Office, his Daily Show days, and his new role in Evan Almighty.
Here are a few snipits:

The mockumentary format of “The Office” would seem to encourage improvisation, yet it also seems very tightly written. How much of a balance is there?

There’s both. It is very tightly written and yet, depending on the director, there can be a lot of improv, or just a little. They love you to learn a rote version of exactly what’s written, and based on the schedule and what’s funny, you can screw around with it a little. It’s very, very fun for the actors, and a lot makes it into the show.

Some of the funniest moments happen when the characters sing, or try to sing. Are the songs decided in advance?

Mostly, but a few of them are improvised. There’s an episode when Andy’s singing at his desk, off in his own world and annoying Jim, and there was some song written in the script, but we thought, “There’s got to be a more annoying song than this one.” We talked for a while and ended up with the Cranberries’ “Zombie,” because it has that voice cracking on “In your he-ead.” Also, there was an earlier episode when Andy and Jim stay up late getting drunk in the Stamford office, and Andy was half-passed out on the floor singing songs from his a cappella group from college. We had one Indigo Girls song in the script, but Jim wanted to harmonize, so we did “Closer to Fine” instead.

Do you have any stories of things going wrong, or funny things happening on the set?

The Christmas episode was a fun shoot because we did it at a real Benihana with a real Benihana hibachi grill, and two things memorable happened then. First, Jim throws a shrimp at Dwight, who was about 8 feet away, and it bounced off Dwight’s glasses and went right into the cup of water he was about to drink from. It was a one-in-a-million shot that pretty much shut down the set for five or 10 minutes of applause. But we didn’t use it because Harold Ramis, the director that week, thought it would look fake, even though it wasn’t.

How much was doing “The Daily Show” like being a real journalist, and how much was it just doing comedy?

In the preparation and writing, there’s lots of topical awareness, and a lot of the legwork is similar to conventional reporting. At the end of the day it’s really about trying to do comedy, but if you look at it mechanically, it’s almost exactly like being a reporter. You’re scanning the news, sitting down for interviews, traveling around reporting. Around presidential politics and convention time, that’s when we’re probably the most like real reporters.

The rest of the story can be viewed here.

I’m very excited that Andy is coming back to the show. Having him go to anger management was like showing candy to a kid and then taking it away. Don’t forget: No Office tonight, an Office marathon next Thursday and a brand spankin’ new episode title “The Negotiation” on April 5th.

Ed Helms, The Office, NBC, The Daily Show, Evan Almighty, Andy Bernard

-Anna

Here are some photos of the new Office episode titled “The Negotiation.” Thanks to JustJared for the pics.

These last two pics have me wondering. I thought the episode would for sure have Roy storming into the office ready to kill Jim, and maybe that will still happen, but I didn’t think I’d see Roy and Pam calmly sitting in a diner together. We were told they would “ramp up Pam and Jim,” so I hope they hold to that. I really hope Roy fades out. How could Pam even consider him after his episode in the bar last episode? I guess I shouldn’t speculate too much. But maybe I will…in my next post.

The Office, NBC, The Negotiation, Carell, Fischer, Krasiniski, Wilson, Hardin

-Anna

I was searching some news this morning about different cast members of The Office, and Rainn Wilson is all over the place. It’s most likely because his movie The Last Mimzy is going to theaters this Friday, but man, people can get enough of this guy. If you noticed, a lot of my recent posts have been about Rainn, well he is what’s hot.

I stumbled onto one interview that talks about Rainn Wilson’s quest to find a wide range of roles for himself. It also talks about more upcoming films and his own comedy script. Check it out here.

The other article I found spoke on Wilson’s experience making The Last Mimzy and how he brought his spiritual nature to the role. Read that tidbit here.

Rainn Wilson will be very busy this summer and for probably the next year making different films and apparently writing his own. Is it possible that he’ll leave TV and go all out for movies? It seems the public and Hollywood wants him on the big screen. Could The Office survive without Dwight? I personally don’t think so. And neither do some of his fans. Check out this Ode To Dwight.

Rainn Wilson, The Office, NBC, The Last Mimzy

-Anna

This episode is still somewhat sketchy and I’m not sure of the air date, but I found a link to a script page of the episode. It is hilarious to say the least and we get more Darryl screen time; well if the episode actually follows the script.
Check it out here.

Happy spoiling!

The Office, NBC, Spoilers, Safety Training

-Anna

I don’t get to watch this show as often as I’d like, but my choice for this week’s Office guest star would be Jack Donaghy from NBC’s 30 Rock. If you’ve seen the show, you might guess as to why I picked him. Jack is the boss on 30 Rock and as such he is free to be a little eccentric and can comment on people, politics, gender issues, race, management and other such topics with as much tact as Michael Scott can muster up at any one time.
If he were ever to guest star, I see Jack Donaghy as someone from corporate who comes down to visit Dundler Mifflin to ruffle Michael’s feathers. At first the two would get along, but as Jack does on 30 Rock, he slyly insults the people around him. He passes off his sly insults or blunt comments as his word on the subject, not to be taken offensively. For example, view this little montage of Jack:

His quirky personality goes along with the misfits of The Office. Jack to me seems to have adult ADHD. He’ll pay attention to a subject or conversation, until something interesting is seen in his peripheral and off he goes. I can just see him trying to get acquainted with The Office staff and having a really hard time focusing. I think Jack would like Jim the best because he is so easy going that he might be able to handle the sporadic order Jacks deals out.

So Jack Donaghy is my pick for this week. I really do think that having the characters of different shows guest star instead of the actors is what would really be funny. Notice, I don’t nominate actors, I nominate the characters they play. Anyway, tell me what you think.

The Office, NBC, 30 Rock, Michael Scott, Jack Donaghy

-Anna