If you thought reality television was ready to die, you may be waiting for a long time.
Reality television is arguably more popular now than ever. New shows keep popping up. Some people rail against it, but there’s obviously an audience. What’s the appeal of reality television?
I asked my colleagues, Features Editor Paul Lane and Niagara Living Editor Michele DeLuca, to join in the conversation.

Motley Crue’s new album, “Saints Of Los Angeles,” is justifiably being lauded as a return to the group’s classic rowdy hard rock form.
There are probably those who would guess that Motley Crue consciously wanted to make an album that recalled such career-defining albums as “Shout At The Devil” (1983), “Girls, Girls, Girls” (1987) and “Dr. Feelgood” (1989).
The reality, according to bassist Nikki Sixx, couldn’t be much different.

As Chris Rock performed in front of an audience of tens of thousands, comedian Zach Galifianakis watched admiringly offstage.
“I just thought, ‘I will never be able to do this,” Galifianakis joked in an interview at the recent Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival where he performed in a smaller — but thoroughly packed — tent than Rock’s.
Galifianakis’ standup is a more intimate, ramshackle thing. His act includes one-liners accompanied by his graceful piano playing and unpredictable excursions into the audience. Thickly bearded and unkempt (he jokes that he has the body of a third-grader who’s swallowed a panda), Galifianakis isn’t Hollywood at all.

The Australian hometown of the late actor Heath Ledger named a theater in his honor Tuesday for his commitment to acting.
The $87 million, 575-seat Heath Ledger Theater in Perth is a fitting tribute because Ledger was always supportive of other young actors, Western Australia state Premier Alan Carpenter said at a naming ceremony.

A lonely little robot made millions of friends during the weekend — and even outgunned Angelina Jolie.
“WALL-E,” the Pixar Animation tale of a robot toiling away on a long-abandoned Earth, debuted as the No. 1 movie with $62.5 million in ticket sales, with Jolie’s assassin thriller “Wanted” opening in second place with $51.1 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

For the summer of 2008, the Riviera Theatre is going back to 1939.
The historic North Tonawanda theater is featuring films from 1939 during its third annual summer film series. The decision came about after theater staff realized just how many classic films were made in 1939, said David Bondrow, artistic director at the Riviera Theatre.
“It’s not the 70th anniversary of the films,” Bondrow said. “But (we thought), let’s get the jump on it.”

From television to cancellation to DVD and back to television, “Futurama” is surviving, no matter what the medium.
The Matt Groening-created “Futurama” returns this week with a new feature-length straight-to-DVD film titled “The Beast with a Billion Backs.” It’s the second such film, following “Bender’s Big Score,” which was released in November.
Just like the previous full-length adventure, this film will be split up into four regular “Futurama” TV episodes to be shown on Comedy Central at a later date.
Peter Avanzino isn’t sure if the DVD-to-TV path is the best option for the show, but he’s gotten used to the idea. An animation director with Rough Draft Studios, Avanzino is director of “The Beast with a Billion Backs.” He spoke to Night & Day about the new film in a phone interview.

Martin Sexton is in a harmonious place.
Sexton, who started his career as a Boston street musician, has gone from independent artist to major-label musician and back again. The Syracuse native performs tonight at Buffalo’s Thursday at the Square.
Sexton recently spoke to Night & Day in a phone interview from his cabin in the Adirondacks. He talked of painting and enjoying nature, generally sounding like a man who’s comfortable with his current lot in life.

Every art gallery should have an opportunity to present its work the way the Castellani Art Museum is about to present some of its own.
For the project “Currents: Movements in Western Art Since 1830,” opening this weekend, the biggest room in the building will have its walls covered salon-style (meaning paintings clustered together for easy comparison) with work from its permanent collection, and organized so that modern art’s major movements can be identified and compared.

In Zohan Dvir, Israelis have a Hollywood hero — no matter that the soldier-turned-hairstylist played by Adam Sandler represents some of their country’s worst stereotypes.
“You Don’t Mess With The Zohan” looks to be a big hit in the Holy Land. Billboards bearing the leading man’s split-legged, blowdryer-wielding image are plastered across city walls and numerous stories have been written and broadcast in the local media, which has called it the “most Israeli film in Hollywood.”

A grown man wearing a diaper is spun around until he can barely stand, then is made to try an obstacle course carrying pitchers of milk without spilling any. Another man, dressed like an insect, flings himself onto a giant-sized “windshield” with a giant-sized “splat.”
Is American television going crazy? No — American television is going Japanese.

Audiences still get Maxwell Smart.
Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway’s “Get Smart,” the Warner Bros. big screen update of the 1960s spy sitcom, raked in $39.2 million to debut as the No. 1 weekend movie, according to studio estimates Sunday.
But movie-goers did not get Mike Myers’ “The Love Guru,” the weekend’s other new wide release. The Paramount Pictures comedy about a self-help mentor took in just $14 million to open at No. 4.

Western New York has finally gotten “Wicked,” and locals seemed to enjoy every minute.

During high school and half of my college tenure, television for me was strictly football and hockey.
After my son Devin was born in 2006, though, I see myself watching different programming.
Nickelodeon is now the primary station in my apartment, where sometimes it’s better to watch Devin’s reaction than the actual show. And there are more than a few shows that take up our viewing time.

Dewey Bunnell of America admits that he thought the group by the end of the 1990s was probably entering a phase of being a touring-only act.

Another year, another list from the American Film Institute.
Ever since the institute revealed its list of the top 100 American movies in the last 100 years, it has followed up each year with a different list. The organization has counted down actors, comedies, songs, quotes and more over the past 10 years. Just last year, the institute unveiled a new top 100 movie countdown.
On Tuesday night, the AFI grouped great American films into top 10 lists by genre during a CBS special. The top 10s were carved out of a list of 50 nominees for each genre. According to AFI president Bob Gazzale, the shows keep people talking about great films.

James McMurtry never wrote political songs because he didn’t like listening to them much.
His exception was the music of fellow Texas native Steve Earle. When Earle released “The Revolution Starts Now” in the midst of the 2004 presidential campaign, it inspired McMurtry to pick up his pen.
The result was “We Can’t Make it Here,” a sneering, searing indictment of the Bush administration released online just before George W. Bush won a second term. He invited fans to make their own videos, making it a YouTube hit viewed more than 150,000 times and the best-known song of a 20-year musical career.

Steve Carell did not necessarily see the Maxwell Smart in himself. Everyone else did, including co-star Anne Hathaway and the studio behind the big-screen “Get Smart,” which simply called Carell in and offered him the job, no questions asked.
Carell takes on the title role created by Don Adams in the 1960s TV show about a brainy but bungling spy, with Hathaway playing his supremely capable partner, Agent 99, a part originated by Barbara Feldon.

“The Incredible Hulk” was a box-office bruiser, yanking in $54.5 million over opening weekend and laying to rest the stigma of his unappreciated big-screen adventure five years ago.
“The Hulk got a second chance, got angry and came back with a vengeance,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. “This was a big question mark going in. The film had a history or a checkered past.”