I’ll start by clarifying the post title: “The Daily Show” is like “The O’Reilly Factor” but without an arrogant blowhard as host and because they cover about the same things.

That’s according to a new study that looked at a year’s worth of “Daily Show” episodes and compared them with “straight” news shows like “Hardball,” “The O’Reilly Factor” and other shows like that.

Their findings? “The Daily Show” is a lot like those shows in content.

The difference between them — aside from “The Daily Show” obviously having the best host of the group — is that “The Daily Show” uses comedy to deliver the news.

Tom Rosenstiel, the project’s director, said “The Daily Show” was a political satire similar to the works of newspapermen like H.L. Menken and Russell Baker. “They’re not making jokes about Dan Quayle is dumb or Gerald Ford is clumsy,” he said. “They’re not making jokes that you could get if you live in the country but don’t read the news … . You can’t get the jokes if you’re not watching the news. The jokes are designed to make you think more about the news.”

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How many more computer animated films can there be?!

The other two are after the jump.

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One of the first reviews of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” has popped up on Ain’t It Cool News.

From the review:

During the whole of the movie, there was not a single moment that I thought our hero Mr. Jones (actually Colonel Jones as he was a hero in WWII now) was in any sort of peril or even significant inconvenience. In most cases, you were so many steps ahead of the characters that it was really just an arduous wait for them to get through it.

If this review is true, I have to say I’m not surprised. I like the Indy movies (from what i remember — it’s been a long time), but “Crystal Skull” has just not registered on my “must-see” list as much as other films have. I think it’s because the whole thing just seems like it was done too late. Oh well. I’ll still see it opening weekend.

New photos of “G.I. Joe” characters have shown up on various movie gossip sites today.

Storm Shadow

Heavy Duty

Destro

Breaker

Baroness

General Hawk

Christopher Eccleston as Destro looks pretty good. I’m curious to see what the metal face will look like. Storm Shadow is a little too literal an adaptation of the character and as such kind of looks like a Halloween costume. Heavy Duty looks right, as does Breaker and Dennis Quaid as General Hawk. And I finally don’t hate Sienna Miller as the Baroness.

With all the anticipation attached to the release of “Grand Theft Auto IV,” the projections for profits and units sold had a wide range.

Today, Take Two, which owns Rockstar, the company that produced “GTA,” announced that “IV” took in $500 million in the week since its release. More than six million units have been sold worldwide.

That total is $10 million more than what “Halo 3″ took in when it was released last year.

The Associated Press stated that “GTA IV” would sell something like 9 million units its first week; I guess they were a little too optimistic.

That being said, “GTA IV” sales were well within expectations, according to the company.

I’ve been watching videos of “GTA IV” on YouTube, and while I’ve been impressed with the game’s graphics and level of interactivity, I’m pretty sure it’s the exact same game as the other “GTAs.” I was strongly thinking about using “GTA IV” as an excuse to buy an Xbox 360, but decided against it.

Source.

I can’t believe these four losers are the last ones standing. None of them are the least bit interesting. Syesha can sing, but is utterly dull. David Archuletta doesn’t even want to sing, but his dad would probably beat him if he didn’t. David Cook is trying way too hard to be Chris Daughtry. Jason Castro is too stoned to care.

That being said, the theme of this week’s show wasn’t bad. I can’t say the same for the performances.

WARNING: For some reason, Fox is taking down the YouTubes for the performances, so these videos might be removed.

I’ll start with the so-called “disastrous” “Mr. Tambourine Man” performance by Jason Castro. It wasn’t that bad; sure, he forgot the words, but at least he didn’t have to start over again like that crazy Brooke White.

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This is my third or fourth superhero movie-related post today. Oh well.

If you saw “Iron Man” over the weekend — and odds are you did, based on the box office — you probably missed this last scene, which ran after the credits. I knew of the existence of this scene, but I decided not to stick around (I was with people, and they wanted to leave).

Anyway, here’s Sam Jackson as Nick Fury. This sets up “The Avengers” movie, which the post that precedes this one discusses. It’s a nice nod to the larger world of Marvel comics.

Fresh off the heels of “Iron Man” raking in more than $100 million over the weekend, Marvel announced the release date of the sequel, “Iron Man 2″ will be April 30, 2010.

The comics company also announced the release dates of other superhero films: “Thor” is set for July 4, 2010. The Captain America movie, titled “First Avenger: Captain America” is out May 6, 2011, and will be followed up by the long-awaited Avengers movie, “The Avengers,” in July 2011.

Next year, Marvel won’t be releasing anything as a movie studio. But “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” will be out one year from Friday — May 9, 2009.

Source

I hesitate to do two Batman-related posts in a row, but this was too much to pass up.

Harvey Dent is in “The Dark Knight” (see my previous post). In the comics, Harvey Dent becomes horribly scarred by acid and turns into a villain called Two-Face. The Joker is the main villain in “The Dark Knight,” but there’s rumblings that Two-Face may appear — possibly at the end.

Alleged concept art for Two-Face has shown up on the Web. Click here to see it.

If this is real — it looks like Photoshop and I have strong doubts — then I’m impressed. The Joker looks pretty impressive, but this Two-Face looks freaky.

In a word: Wow. This trailer shows a lot more of the Joker in this one, and Ledger’s performance looks fantastic (the “Here’s my calling card” bit is great). There’s also a lot more of Harvey Dent, including an allusion to Two-Face with the orange acid being dropped and Harvey saying “NO!” (At least, I think it’s acid being dropped.)

The YouTube is below, but if you want to see it bigger and in HD, click here.

The latest R-rated film franchise to be neutered to PG-13 is the “Terminator” series.

Variety is reporting that the producers of the next “Terminator” film, “Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins” (or whatever it’s going to be called) are aiming for the more kid-friendly PG-13 rating.

Obviously, this move is to push the film into making more money. After all, PG-13 is much more lucrative than an R rating since the all-important kiddies can buy tickets.

I don’t know how to feel about this. The “Die Hard” franchise was given the PG-13 treatment last year and it wasn’t that bad. “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” TV show is nowhere near as graphic as the “Terminator” films and it works. Just because a film is R-rated doesn’t mean it’s automatically superior to a PG-13 film.

Still, though, aiming for PG-13 seems greedy. Movies rated PG-13 make more than R-rated films because kids can buy tickets to them without adults. Not only that, it kind of makes for wimpier films. Sure, “Live Free or Die Hard” wasn’t bad, but it felt like a weaker version of a “real” “Die Hard” film.

I want to start by saying that I hate that “Lost” is on at 10 p.m. — not because I hate being up late, but because I’m forced to watch the last minute or two of “Grey’s Anatomy.” What an awful show.

That being said, “Lost” last night was kind of boring. The Jack episodes are usually a little slower and more character-driven. There’s nothing wrong with this, but I was checking my watch about halfway through. Compared with last week’s episode, this one was kind of a letdown.

Not that it was bad or anything.

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The season of a thousand injuries continues.

As Jeff Probst said, this season has had the most injured contestants in the show’s history. It has taken care of the the little problem of 20 contestants and only 39 days. The original plan was probably to do double tribal councils and throw even more monkey wrenches into the boot order. But with three people being removed without tribal council, they haven’t had to do double tribals.

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The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Nielsen has moved February sweeps for next year to March.

The reason for this is because next February, all TV will go digital. A lot of people will probably have a rude awakening on Feb. 17 when they turn on their old rabbit-eared TV and find nothing but static.

Because of this, the normal February sweeps period will probably be thrown into chaos with many people not having a TV signal. Thus, the networks can’t reconfigure their advertising rates based on their crappy special programming for the month.

I really wish they would just get rid of sweeps entirely. One month where the nets air Very Special Episodes of their most craptacular shows is an inaccurate barometer of the audiences for those shows.