Disney Channel Fans

Since Demi left treatment a few weeks ago, we haven’t seen very much of her.

On January 31st, she visited an Outpatient Treatment center in LA

She was spotted again on February 2nd…

…and February 3rd.

Then she went to the Cheesecake factory in LA.

And then we didn’t see any more of her until she went to pick up her Gold record for “Don’t Forget” on February 16th.

Personally, I’d have loved to see her attend the “Never say Never” premiere with her besties Selena and Miley, but I guess she’s not up to that kind of press yet.

In my old days at Save Disney Shows, we once had a movement to get disney to produce a High School Musical series for DC. Well, with this announcement that Alyson Reed will reprise her role as Ms. Darbus in the new Pilot Madison High, it looks like Disney is finally doing just that!

Press Release updated 2/25 to reflect new developments, including the addition of G Hannelius to the cast!

DISNEY CHANNEL CASTS PILOT FOR MUSICAL COMEDY “MADISON HIGH”

“High School Musical’s” Alyson Reed to Reprise Role
of Drama Teacher Ms. Darbus

A favorite star from “High School Musical” will be joined by six multitalented performers in a new music and dance-driven comedy pilot, “Madison High” (working title). The series pilot introduces a troupe of theater students led by the melodramatic drama teacher Ms. Darbus, a beloved character from the cultural sensation “High School Musical.” Production on the pilot begins in March in consideration for a Disney Channel series to premiere in early 2012.

To drive the storyline, “Madison High” will feature four original songs written by noted songwriters. They are: Matthew Gerrard (“Hannah Montana,” “High School Musical”), Robbie Nevil (“Hannah Montana,” “High School Musical”), Jamie Houston (“High School Musical”), James Dean Hicks, David Lawrence (“High School Musical,” “High School Musical 2”), Faye Greenberg (“High School Musical 2”), Kara DioGuardi (“Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam”) and J.D. Salbego.

Bill Borden and Barry Rosenbush (“High School Musical” and its sequels) and Lester Lewis (“The Office”) and Paul Hoen (“Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam”) are the executive producers. The pilot was written by Lester Lewis and will be directed by Paul Hoen.

In making the announcement, Gary Marsh, president, Entertainment and chief creative officer, Disney Channels Worldwide, said: “‘High School Musical’ introduced the joys of musicals and musical theater to a whole new generation and kids and families. They embraced the themes explored in those movies — about expressing oneself and following your dreams. And now, with ‘Madison High,’ we hope to give kids a whole new set of characters with whom to engage – along with more great original music, dance numbers and songs.”

Tony Award nominee Alyson Reed reprises her “High School Musical” TV and film roles as Ms. Darbus, the drama teacher at East High School who relocates to Madison High. The pilot will introduce several new characters, including students Devin Daniels, Peyton Hall and Wednesday Malone, played by actors/singers/dancers Luke Benward (Disney Channel Original Movie “Minuteman”), Leah Lewis and G Hannelius (Disney Channel Original Movie “Den Brother”). Additional casting announcements are forthcoming for the characters Cherry O’Keefe, Colby Baker and Harvey Flynn.

At Madison High, the students embark on a journey of self discovery while trying to build a revolutionary theatre program under the tutelage of Ms. Darbus. She casts a diverse troupe of both seasoned and raw actors to create an original musical production based on their lives.

Alyson Reed stars as drama teacher Ms. Darbus, the role she originated in “High School Musical,” followed by its sequel and feature film. The Tony Award-nominated actress starred on Broadway in “Dancin’,” “Dance a Little Closer,” “Cabaret,” “A Grand Night for Singing” and “Marilyn: An American Fable.” She can also be seen as Cassie in Richard Attenborough’s film adaptation of “A Chorus Line,” as well as multiple television guest starring roles.

15-year-old Luke Benward has the lead role of Devin Daniels, a motocross racer looking for a new hobby. The native of Nashville, Tennessee is the son of an actress and a musician, and since age 5 has appeared in commercials, music videos and movies, including the Disney Channel Original Movie “Minutemen,” “How to Eat Fried Worms,” “Doggone,” “Because of Winn-Dixie,” “Mostly Ghostly,” “Dear John” and “We Were Soldiers.”

14-year-old singer Leah Lewis has landed her first leading role as Peyton Hall, a formerly home-schooled tennis champion. Born in China and raised in Orlando, Florida, Lewis has appeared in national commercials for Kraft Cheese, Home Depot and Natures Own Bread, as well as an international commercial for Disneyland Hong Kong.

12-year-old G Hannelius is set to play Wednesday Malone, a precocious starlet in the making. The native of Boston, Massachusetts began her acting career at the age of 8 at the Children’s Theater of Maine. A familiar face on Disney Channel, she starred in the short form series “Leo Little’s Big Show” and “Den Brother,” and has appeared on “Sonny With A Chance,” “Good Luck Charlie,” “Hannah Montana” and Disney XD’s “I’m in the Band.” Her other television credits include a series regular role on ABC’s “Surviving Suburbia.”

Casting will be announced soon for these characters: Cherry O’Keefe — Madison High’s resident queen bee and blogger; Harvey Flynn — the overly officious stage manager and reigning president of the Drama Club; and Colby Baker — the artistic anime fan whose hand-drawn Manga is inspired by his high school experiences.

Disney Channel is a 24-hour kid-driven, family inclusive television network that taps into the world of kids and families through original series and movies. Currently available on basic cable in over 99 million U.S. homes and to millions of other viewers on Disney Channels around the world, Disney Channel is part of the Disney/ABC Television Group.

Wow, it looks like Miley finally figured out how to do “classy” again!

She’s still showing some skin of course…

…but she’s starting to look a little bit like the old adorable Miley again.

Selena, of course, always looks good.

Sel gave us a very classic and elegant look while at the same time being sure to show off her mole.

I love her over the shoulder turning to walk away pose too.

Click any Miley or Selena pic to see more of each girl, respectively.

Who goes to the beach in winter? Well, I guess it’s always nice in Hawaii.

…I’m so glad we made it a state.

My girl Hayden Panettiere has a very nice butt.

She’s somethin’ special, even with clotes on.

Although I don’t approve of her choice of boyfriends. That guy is freakin’ huge! O.o

As always, just click any pic for more.

It’s good to see Disney actually supporting an animated series for once.

Personally, I think to think this series owes all of it’s success to my girl Ashley Tisdale.

SEASON THREE OF EMMY-WINNING ANIMATED SERIES
“PHINEAS AND FERB” PREMIERES FRIDAY, MARCH 4 ON DISNEY CHANNEL

Upcoming Guest Stars include Michael Douglas, Jane Lynch, Tina Fey,
Michael J. Fox, Anna Paquin, Joan Cusack and Jamie Oliver

Mark Your Calendar! Platypus Day is Saturday, March 5 on Disney XD

The smart, sophisticated and good-natured comedy of Disney’s “Phineas and Ferb” continues to attract famous fans who’ve recorded guest roles for the Emmy-winning animated series’ third season, premiering FRIDAY, MARCH 4 (9:00 p.m., ET/PT) on Disney Channel. The series is also seen on Disney XD.

The remarkable lineup of stars who’ve recorded upcoming episodes includes iconic actor and producer Michael Douglas, who guest stars along with his 10-year-old son, Dylan Michael Douglas, when Danville’s scariest haunted house opens for the neighborhood kids; Jane Lynch guest stars as Jeremy’s mother, Mrs. Johnson; Tina Fey plays an eager buyer who seeks to purchase the building which headquarters Doofenshmirtz Evil, Incorporated; Michael J. Fox pays tribute to the cult hit “Teen Wolf” with the Werewolf Michael role; Anna Paquin (“True Blood”) again plays a star-crossed lover in a vampire/werewolf storyline; Joan Cusack guest stars as a train conductor whose can-do attitude just might convince Candace to give up trying to bust her brothers; and renowned chef Jamie Oliver (ABC’s “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution”) judges Danville’s meatloaf competition.

As the animated gem continues to increase in popularity, Disney XD will commemorate Platypus Day, an official day honoring Danville’s favorite pet and secret agent Perry the Platypus (aka Agent P), with a marathon programming event, SATURDAY, MARCH 5 (8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. ET/PT). Disney Channel will also present a marathon of Perry the Platypus (Agent P) episodes (5:00-8:00 p.m., ET/PT). Currently online, both DisneyChannel.com and DisneyXD.com feature an array of Platypus-themed games and activities that challenge users to earn Platy-points to unlock additional bonus features. In the online Platypus Photo Booth, fans can create their own photo with Perry the Platypus and send a top secret Platypus Day greeting card with Perry chatter only friends can decode.

In the U.S., “Phineas and Ferb” ranked as TV’s No. 1 animated series among Tweens 9-14 for the third consecutive year (2008-10). It was also Disney XD’s
No. 1 program in Total Viewers, Kids 6-14 and Boys 6-14, and its No. 1 animated series in Kids 6-11 and Boys 6-11 for 2010. [Source: NTI, US ratings, most current. 2010: 12/28/09-12/26/10. Competitive ranks based on trackage data with minimum 10 telecasts].

The third season’s rollout is:

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25 – Season Three premiere episode, “The Great Indoors”/”Canderemy,” will be available as part of Disney Channel’s on Demand SVOD offering (Cablevision, Time Warner, Verizon, AT&T). In “The Great Indoors,” Phineas and Ferb build a huge biodome to help when bad weather spoils Isabella’s plan to earn a Fireside Girl patch; Candace is in a frenzy trying to figure out what Jeremy likes about her, and at Evil Inc., Agent P must stop Dr. Doofenshmirtz from raining out a big soccer game just so he can watch his favorite telenovela. In “Canderemy,” Candace pays a visit to Jeremy’s house only to hear a cautionary tale from Mrs. Johnson (played by Jane Lynch), and Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s “Combine-inator” creates a strange occurrence. Meanwhile, Phineas and Ferb build a giant robot dog.

FRIDAY, MARCH 4 (9:00 p.m., ET/PT) – Season premiere of “Phineas and Ferb” on Disney Channel, with a mobile simulcast on Sprint TV and MobiTV.

SATURDAY, MARCH 5 (8:00 a.m., ET/PT) – Season premiere episode and Platypus Day marathon (8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m., ET/PT) on Disney XD. Disney Channel will also present a marathon of Perry the Platypus (Agent P) episodes (5:00-8:00 p.m., ET/PT). The season premiere episode will become available on Disney Channel and Disney XD Mobile VOD, iTunes and Xbox.

Starring are singer-actor Vincent Martella as Phineas Flynn, Thomas Sangster as Ferb Fletcher, Ashley Tisdale as Candace Flynn, Mitchel Musso as Jeremy, Caroline Rhea as mom Linda Flynn-Fletcher, Richard O’Brien as dad Lawrence Fletcher, Dee Bradley Baker as Perry the Platypus, Alyson Stoner as Isabella, Jeff “Swampy” Marsh as Major Monogram and Emmy Award-winning Dan Povenmire as the nefarious Dr. Doofenshmirtz.
A fan favorite in every major territory, “Phineas and Ferb” airs on Disney Channels and Disney XD channels in more than 168 countries and in 34 languages, reaching more than 279 million unduplicated Total Viewers worldwide.

Disney Channel is a 24-hour kid-driven, family inclusive television network that taps into the world of kids and families through original series and movies. It is currently available on basic cable in over 99 million U.S. homes and to millions of other viewers on Disney Channels around the world. Disney XD is a basic cable channel and multi-platform brand for Kids age 6-14, hyper-targeting boys and their quest for discovery, accomplishment, sports, adventure and humor. In the U.S., Disney XD is seen on a 24-hour, advertiser supported network that reaches over 77 million households via its basic cable affiliates. Disney XD channels are in the UK, France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Greece, Turkey, Latin America and Japan. Disney Channel and Disney XD are part of the Disney/ABC Television Group.

It’s a little late in the game for Billy Ray to cry foul over Hannah. Miley got the job because it was a “two for one” package. He was there with her for all of the filming. He used the show to rebuild his own career as much as he used it to build up his daughter. He was there on the vanity fair shoot for the first “scandal” which really was nothing, IMHO. To cry foul now? I think he’s just looking for someone else to blame.

Here’s what the GQ interview had to say:

Mr. Hannah Montana’s Achy Broken Heart
These days Billy Ray Cyrus’s life is imitating a bad country song: He’s headed for a messy divorce, his record company just delayed his latest comeback, and his cherished 18-year-old daughter seems destined to rip bong hits at every party in the U.S.A. No wonder he’s muttering about the end times

He has a favorite chair at the circular wooden table in the modest kitchen of his Tennessee mansion where he spends much of his time, and he prefers it here with the lights out. When I first arrive he makes me a cup of tea in the microwave, and we face each other as people generally do, fully illuminated, but after a while he asks me whether I’d mind. He flicks a switch behind him, and sinks into shadow.

The last few months, he’s been living here alone. At the end of August he left the Los Angeles house where his family moved four years ago after his daughter Miley was cast in the Disney teen drama Hannah Montana, the show that would launch her as the pop-culture sensation of her day. He returned to the hundreds of acres of prime Tennessee countryside he had bought with cash in the early ’90s in the wake of “Achy Breaky Heart,” the song that launched him as the pop-culture sensation of his day. In late October he filed for divorce from Miley’s mother, Tish. It’s been a tough year, and it keeps getting tougher. This is exactly where he was sitting five days earlier when he opened a link on his Mac PowerBook and—alongside millions of voyeurs with far less at stake—watched footage of Miley smoking a bong and talking some kind of crazed nonsense in celebration of her eighteenth birthday.1 This is where he was when he tweeted his response:

Sorry guys. I had no idea. Just saw this stuff for the first time myself. Im so sad. There is much beyond my control right now

“My kids learned to color on this table. There’s been a lot that’s went around this table. Waylon Jennings sat right there in that chair and showed Miley the chords to ‘Good Hearted Woman.’ Sitting in that chair. This table’s a bit like life. It’s a circle. And I believe everything in life is a circle. You come into this world a little teeny wrinkled-up fetus…”

This is how Cyrus begins. The first hour I barely speak. After a long soliloquy about the table, he fetches his guitar and tells me he’s written a complete new album in the last three weeks. “Not by choice,” he says. “The one I wrote this morning is called ‘Feels Like Goodbye.’” It’s unexpectedly stark, simple, and beautiful, its opening lines an unacknowledged, desolate, distant echo of the song that paid for this house in the first place:

Cold wind’s blowing
Sat here knowing
My heart’s about to break

When he finishes, he fetches a black-and-white photo of his father’s gospel group, the Crownsmen Quartet, and tells me how his father ended up dying of mesothelioma from working in the steel mill, and about his Pentecostal-preacher grandfather and the Sunday-morning church music of his youth, and describes how shameful it felt back in Kentucky in the ’60s to have parents who got divorced, to be forced to confess in school that he had a half-brother and half-sisters and stepsisters and no telephone. “There was always that misfit-ness,” he says. He points to the picture that sits next to his father’s on the dresser, of Geronimo, and reminisces that as a child he used to spend hours running through the woods on his own, pretending he was the legendary Apache leader. Soon he is telling me his whole origin story: how he wanted, and expected, to become the catcher for the Cincinnati Reds until he won a radio competition for concert tickets while he was working in a Kentucky tobacco warehouse, and how Neil Diamond paused during the song “Holly Holy” to say, “I don’t care if you’re white or black, rich or poor, man or woman, if you believe in your dreams and you live for the light and God’s love, you can be anything you want to be in this world,” and how at that very moment Cyrus felt as though hands were covering his entire body and he heard a voice he took to be God’s telling him that he had to buy a guitar. And how he spent the next decade failing in Nashville and in Los Angeles, unable to fit in either, until on the verge of giving up he talked his way into the record contract that led to the hit single “Achy Breaky Heart” (a song he didn’t write) and the accompanying Some Gave All, the best-selling album of 1992 (most of which he did write). I suspect it is a story that has become more mythic in retelling, with all its magical last chances and desperate down-on-one’s-knees prayers, and not every minute detail of his account chimes with other, messier contemporary versions of his rise, but there seems little chance of, or point in, stemming his flow.

After a while, he circles back to the subject of circles themselves: of birds’ nests, and of tornadoes, and of this table between us, and of himself. “I’m right back where I started—I’m still just sitting here writing bar-band music,” he says, and strums me another. These new works will have to wait their turn, however. First Cyrus has an album of patriotic songs, I’m American, an idea directly sparked by a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009, and for which he has also rerecorded the title track of his first album, the story of the Vietnam veteran who told him, “All gave some, but some gave all.”

That is ostensibly why he is giving this interview—though he’s just been told the album won’t come out until Memorial Day—and for a long time I’m unsure whether the protracted near monologue that has greeted me indicates an unwillingness to engage with recent problems or is his way of getting to them in his own time. More the latter, it turns out. He is talking about money when the conversation swerves.

I’m really dusting off the archive with these scans from the August 2009 issue of FHM Australia.

I love The Veronicas. I saw Lisa and Jess once in 2008 and Again in 2009 just a few days before Ashley Tisdale. That was an epic week.

These girls are amazing. They’re huge in their native Australia and they have a pretty cult like following in the US.

Hottest sisters next to Aly and AJ? Heck, they even know each other. Maybe we can arrange a side by side comparison.

I first wanted tos hare this close up of Miley’s new tat. It looks like a dream catcher

Honestly, I don’t know why she even bothered with the shirt.

Anyway, Miley finally decided to glam it up a little for the Grammys.

Although this time she decided to skip the bra. And oh, what’s that, a bit of a nip slip?

It’s a nice tease, I’ll give her that.

As always, click the pics to see more.

I want to take a moment this Valentines day to wish a  Happy Birthday to my casual acquaintance Miss Tiffany Thornton of Disney’s Sonny with a Chance.

The very talented Miss Thornton turns 25 today. Wow! Tawni still doesn’t look a day over 17.

Again, happy birthday Tiff. And good luck with SWAC season 3!