Those manatees really know how to keep themselves busy. In one of the more irreverent news items of the day, Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane -- whose voice work is currently on display in Hellboy II: The Golden Army -- has told TV Week that he hopes to get a Family Guy movie off the ground in a year or so. The announcement was first picked up by Ain't It Cool News, where most commenters seem fairly lukewarm about the idea. Honestly, it's hard not to agree with them. Family Guy already has two feature length titles out on DVD, and neither one really raised the bar for the show or even played better than a decent episode.

At least The Simpsons movie had a plot that made sense for ninety minutes. Family Guy, with its incessant randomness, generally works as a series of distractions. In other words, not the sort of thing that really needs to get expanded beyond the half hour structure. Then again, the show has its devout base, which eagerly anticipates each sloppily constructed gag like clockwork, so maybe the new film project is good business sense. Either way, the South Park two-parter that took Family Guy to task remains far more entertaining (and insightful) than Family Guy's entire six-season run.

He goes by "Night," but it's hard to dispute his sunny disposition. Just a few minutes into a conversation with M. Night Shyamalan in a New York City hotel room yesterday, it was obvious to me that the director has managed to occupy such a unique niche in the Hollywood landscape because he's immediately likable. Of course, a little movie released in 1999 called The Sixth Sense didn't hurt, either.

After landing two Oscar nominations and international acclaim for his masterful ghost story, Shyamalan continued to market himself as a brand. Since then, the results have been mixed. Signs was an indisputable hit. Unbreakable has its supporters. Lady in the Water? Not so much. But that failure hasn't prevented the filmmaker from dealing with audacious material: His latest movie, The Happening, finds a married couple (Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel) thrust into a world where people inexplicably become suicidal after getting struck by an ominous, unseen toxin. Forces of evil usually remain unseen in Shyamalan's films, and The Happening is no exception to that rule. I spoke to the 37-year-old Philadelphia resident about the personal philosophies guiding his career choices, the polarized reactions to his work, and what the future will bring.

Wow, I didn't even know there were THAT many. Holy crapola! The fine folks over at Rotten Tomatoes are currently counting down the top 50 TV adaptations of all time, in honor of both Get Smart and Sex and the City. Before we mention a few, here's how they played it: "... these movies are remakes of TV series (i.e. Starsky and Hutch), mini-series (Pennies from Heaven), or sketches (The Blues Brothers). We've also included big-screen adaptations that utilize the series' principal cast members (the Star Trek movies, the Adam West Batman). We've omitted films that, despite having TV incarnations, are derived from other sources (thus, no Superman), but have included others (like The Addams Family) that are best remembered as TV shows." In other words ... they mean business.

Down toward the bottom, you have films like Strangers with Candy, The Rugrats Movie, Josie and the Pussycats and The Naked Gun 2 1/2. I won't reveal their number one pick, but the top ten includes memorable favorites like The Simpsons Movie, The Fugitive ("You find this man!"), Serenity and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

I'm just impressed they managed to throw together 50 half-decent TV-to-Movie adaptations. That, in and of itself, has to be worth some sort of Emmy nod (or would it be an Oscar nod?). Check out the entire list over at Rotten Tomatoes ... and let us know your favorites below.

So who watched South Park the other night? In the episode, internet goes down and the citizens of South Park (as well as other places throughout the country) are forced to live their lives without online access. Of course, in true South Park fashion, everyone winds up in an internet camp, sleeping on cots -- all dirty and disheveled -- as they fight over the 40 seconds of internet each person gets per day. Not only was it hysterical to watch, but it also opened my eyes to the fact that it's becoming difficult to remember how things were prior to the internet, especially for people 30 years of age and younger.

It's almost hard to imagine those days when we wouldn't find out a certain movie existed until the trailer played in a theater, or during the Super Bowl. Now we get teaser posters before the film even goes into production. Remember when a movie only got one poster? To date, we've seen 10, 11 Iron Man posters alone. Posters! As movie marketing has moved online, everything's grown larger -- more trailers, more images, more games, more contests. Now there are entire websites devoted to one movie's viral marketing campaign. It's pretty insane, and even though I do this for a living, it's still real hard for me to keep up with it all. (I'm still waiting for the day when a particular viral campaign is blamed for the unfortunate death of a teenager. C'mon, you know it's gonna happen eventually ...)

We'll be talking a bit more about last night's South Park episode a little later on, but before we go there, you should definitely check out the above clip. Well, if you didn't see the episode, you might not want to watch -- but if you did see the episode or don't care much about South Park spoilers, then do click on the little play button up top. It's shiny. It likes you.

This season, the boys from SP seem to be doing a lot with the internet, and last night's episode was no exception. When the internet goes down in South Park, the town doesn't know how to handle it. Chaos and hilarity ensues. Easily my favorite episode from this season so far, toward the end we also got a nice, hysterical homage to Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind -- except, instead of aliens, the government was trying to communicate with a giant internet router thingy. Classic.

My favorite line from last night (which I've been repeating, to myself, all day long for some odd reason): "We're headin' out Californee way -- rumor has it they may have some internet out there."

Random Thought of the Day: I wonder if last night's South Park episode will be nominated for an Emmy?

There are two things I really hate in this world: Going to a mall on Christmas Eve to buy presents for people, and coming down with a nasty head cold. A close third would be Michael Vick, but he's on a long list of people I'd like to see thrown out of an airplane at 35,000 feet without a parachute. Like most people, I try to avoid both the last-minute shopping and the awful sickness each year, but they always have a way of tracking me down. That said, I have a head cold right now, it's a bad one, and all I want to do is crawl into bed and await a slow, painful death. But there's news to report, and we don't get very many sick days in this business.

Last night, while speaking to Cinematical's James Rocky IV Rules over instant messenger, he suggested I throw on some Malick and let the director guide me into dreamland. Then came the following from James: "Have we ever done a Cinematical Seven on movies to watch when you're sick?" I don't believe we have, and I told James to whip up something for next month, but in the meantime I'd like to hear from some of you: what movies do you like to watch when you're sick? Do you tend to go for the comedy (watching South Park last night made me feel a whole lot better), do you like action-packed popcorn blockbusters, or are you more interested in a slow, quiet indie film -- the kind that puts you right to sleep? Do chime in with suggestions below; trust me, I desperately need them.

You know what this whole "whose gonna be the next Bond Girl" runaround feels like to me? It's like when Beverly Hills, 90210 kept going into its tenth season – long after the departures of Jason Priestley, and Shannon Doherty, and the actors who played the parents, and the broad from Saved by the Bell they had hired after Shannon Doherty left (yes, all of that happened, and yes, the episodes are currently on SoapNET, if you need impirical proof.)

But just in case you're still paying attention, it's my duty to inform you that the producers of Casino Royale have narrowed the supporting actress competition down to four candidates. Based on this Variety report, I'm not sure whether or not Rachael Stirling, sometime pretend lesbian and daughter of Diana Rigg, is actually one corner of the lucky quadrangle, as Martha previously reported. But another quasi-familiar name is floating around: Natasha Henstridge, known to South Park fans as The Chick from Species. But isn't an actress whose standing could be described as C-list at best sort of an unlikely candidate for such a high profile role? Nah. The trade reiterates what we've been saying for ages: no one wants to play Vesper Lynd, because no one wants to slum it in a franchise film if they can't be the bottom-line star. Oh, and the old Halle Berry Curse probably doesn't help.