Amber Dubois

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Friday signed three measures designed to bring abducted children home before they fall victims to horrific crimes, like what happened to Escondido teenager Amber Dubois.

“We’re ecstatic, Hopefully this will help,” said Moe Dubois, Amber’s father who sponsored the legislation in her memory.

Amber, 14, was snatched from an Escondido street in February 2009. Her body was found earlier this year.

A convicted sex offender, John Albert Gardner in April pleaded guilty to the crime and also to raping and murdering Poway teenager Chelsea King in February of this year. He is serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole. The latter incident resulted in the broader “Chelsea’s Law” to crackdown on sex offenders.

Earlier this year, Dubois stressed the need for the bills. “When a child is being taken from you a mile a minute, every minute counts.”

He said he will continue to push for more child protection.

“This year we focused on recovery. Next year we will focus on prevention,” he said.

The three measures are:

• Assembly Bill 34 requires the state to report an abduction to a national tracking system within two hours, instead of the current four hours.

• Assembly Bill 33 requires improved law enforcement coordination across jurisdictions to improve responses to abductions.

• Assembly Bill 1022 creates a the position of “director of missing children operations” to oversee programs aimed at reducing abductions.

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When a Stranger Calls Movie

The smartest thing about the remake of When a Stranger Calls is that it strips the original 1979 version to its bare essentials as a primal exercise in stormy-night terror. While taking the original film’s suspenseful first act and expanding it into an 87-minute cat-and-mouse game, screenwriter Jake Wade Wall adds a few clever updates involving cellphones and home-security services, as well as the maze-like menace of a lavish modern home that serves as the setting for mayhem when cute teenager Jill (Camilla Belle, in the role originated by Carol Kane) takes on a babysitting job that she may live to regret. Someone is stalking her in the big, expensive glass palace that her employers call home (a splendid set designed by Jon Gary Steele), and that creepy voice on the phone (belonging to Lance Henriksen, master of doom-laden threat) should’ve been her first clue to grab the pair of terrified kids she’s supposed to be protecting and leave the house ASAP. But no, the script, the overwrought score, and the uninspired direction of Simon West (Con-Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) insist that poor Jill be put through a Halloween-like night from hell, complete with a black cat as an omen of nasty things to come. Kudos to Wall and West for attempting to generate horror through suggestion (by keeping the homicidal stalker mostly off-screen), but let’s face it: the original film is hardly a classic (its TV-movie sequel, When a Stranger Calls Back, is considerably better), and the remake takes too long to yield minimal rewards. Maybe Jill should’ve just unplugged the phone. –Jeff Shannon

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Csi Ny

When 'CSI: NY' returns for its seventh season, it'll be the new kid on the block -- the Friday night block. The series has moved from its former Wednesday timeslot to air Fridays at 9PM ET on CBS.

And that's not the only big change to take place: Original star Melina Kanakaredes, who left the series this summer, is being replaced by Emmy-winning actress Sela Ward. The only thing not changing, it seems, is the location -- still New York, New York.

During a location shoot in Central Park, Ward told us how happy she was to join the veteran hit series. "I'm loving being on the show. I love the character, love Gary Sinise, love all of the cast," she said, adding "It's very different for me, so I'd be lying if I didn't say this may be the hardest thing I've ever done ... but slowly but surely, I think I'll get my sea legs."

Ward and Sinise haven't worked together before, though they'd met on the awards circuit (he for 'Truman,' she for 'Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story'). And when the offer to join 'CSI: NY' came in, Ward couldn't pass up the opportunity to work with the fellow Emmy winner.

"I had made a conscious choice not to do a lot of work for a while while my kids were younger and now that they're older, I was just missing it," she said. "And the offer came in and I thought, "You know what? I've never done anything like this. It'll be challenging and I'd love to work with Gary.'"

Still, joining a tight-knit cast that's been together for seven years must've been daunting. "You would think it would, but no," she responded. "And I really attribute that to the generosity and spirit of this cast and the set and trust me, every show is not like that."

The cast and crew have welcomed her with open arms, and co-star Hill Harper gave her a rave review. "It's been great. Sela is a wonderful actress, she has great spirit," he said. "We're kind of a hard-edged New York show and her character brings all this Southern charm which is really lovely."

So new night, new star -- and a whole new energy, Harper noted. "It challenges the writers to have to think more creatively," he said. "You get used to this character does things this way, this character does things that way. Now you have to create a whole new character [and] you have to create a whole new way that different characters interact. It's pretty special."

Ward loves her character, Det. Jo Danville," for "her humor and her smarts. And I think she's a little mysterious and I like that."

Danville is thrust into a case from her very first step -- when she trips over a corpse in the crime lab. "The character hadn't even been written when I got the phone call," Ward revealed. "When Melina decided not to renew her contract, this all went down very quickly. So we talked a little bit about the character and possibilities for the character and then off they went to write. I think I got a script three days before we started shooting, so it was a real fast track. We're still talking about Jo and who is she, and she's still evolving."

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Sela Ward

Sela Ward didn’t have much to go on when she was offered “CSI: NY,” but one factor made all the difference: Gary Sinise.

The Emmy winner for both “Sisters” and “Once and Again” returns to series work when she joins the CBS crime drama in its seventh-season premiere Friday, Sept. 24. Replacing Melina Kanakaredes — who opted out of the show — Ward is creating a fresh character as forensics detective Jo Danville, giving her lots of interaction with Sinise’s alter ego Mac Taylor.

And that’s something Ward couldn’t resist.

The actress has fond memories of the time she and Sinise shared on the award circuit in the mid-’90s when they were winning honors for cable-movie biographies, she for Lifetime’s “Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story” and he for HBO’s “Truman.”

“We were seated next to each other several times,” Ward tells Zap2it, “and I kept thinking, ‘This is the neatest guy. I’d love to work with him one day.’ In the back of my mind, my experience of him was that he was so gracious. He’s such an accessible, down-to-earth guy, I never forgot how taken I was with who he was as a person.’”

The same could be said of the “CSI: NY” producers’ view of Ward, since they allow her a unique entrance in the season premiere. Jo steps off an elevator into the crime lab that is otherwise empty … except for the slain young woman who has somehow ended up there.

“It actually wasn’t written that way,” Ward reports. “It was originally written so that you see Jo walking down a New York street with her rolling bag and stopping to hail a cab, then this guy tries to pick her up as she’s getting in the cab.

“When she blows him off, he starts to take the cab — and she smashes his foot with her rolling bag. Then our producer Pam [Veasey] said, ‘Why are my guys not the first people she meets?’ So they decided to change that up.”

Ward was cast so quickly after Kanakaredes’ decision to leave, she had no time for research, but she’s looking forward to visiting an actual CSI lab. “I’m still trying to find my way,” she admits several episodes into filming. “It’s not an easy thing to walk into this kind of world if you’ve never done anything like this before. The dialogue alone makes your head spin.”

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Melina Kanakaredes

Gary Sinise returns as Detective Mac Taylor in this Friday's season premiere of 'CSI: New York.' There are a few changes for the season ahead: Not only a brand new time slot but long time star Melina Kanakaredes is out, replaced by Sela Ward. PopEater spoke to star Gary Sinise about the changes to expect for the upcoming season, what goes through his head when he hears The Who, what it's like being mentioned by Ari Gold on 'Entourage' and considers new trademarks in an attempt compete with Caruso's sunglasses.

'CSI: New York' has a big cast member change this year. Melina Kanakaredes left the show, and Sela Ward is replacing her. On a character driven show, this can really hurt.
Well, the franchise is strong. It's a very solid formula on our show. People loved Melina on the show, and I think they're going to love Sela. It's going to be a very seamless transition. I've seen the first episode, and while it's different, it's really, really good. Sela comes into the show as if she's been doing it for a long time.

How often do you actually shoot in New York? I've stumbled upon a shoot here and there, but not anywhere near the amount of times I seen a 'Law and Order' being filmed -- which is almost impossible to avoid.
We only come once a year. We used to come twice a year, but then they started cutting the budgets down, so now we come once a year. We love coming to New York and shooting there. I wish we could do it more, but we are based here in Los Angeles and it's expensive to come.

Do you ever get jealous of David Caruso on 'CSI: Miami' because he's got the whole sunglasses shtick and want to try something of your own? I was thinking that right before it goes to the opening titles, you could say your line and then spit out a piece of gum, or something...
[Laughs] Yeah, I could eat a lollipop like Telly Savalas. Look, he made that into a thing and God bless him. He's turned it into an Internet sensation. No, I'm not jealous of him or anything. We've got a good show going, and people seem to enjoy the characters on our show. Who knows? If our show stays on the air long enough, I might have some funny little thing I come up with.

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Raising Hope

Fox’s back-to-back new sitcoms, Raising Hope and Running Wilde, premiered on Tuesday night, and two more different shows are difficult to imagine.

Raising Hope is from Greg Garcia, the writer-producer who gave us My Name Is Earl. Like Earl, Raising Hope is grungy and low-down, interested in the challenges faced by at least 90% of America: How to take care of your family, make money, find time for love. The premise is a nicely exaggerated one that’s quickly rooted firmly in Garcia’s brand of sitcom reality. A teen (Lucas Neff) acquires a baby from a one-night stand; he decides to keep the kid and raise it, even though he’s still being raised at home by his parents (the terrific Garret Dillahunt and the wonderful Martha Plimpton). Cloris Leachman stumps into the room now and then to utter a hostile non sequitur.DIARY OF THE DEAD (2007)

I thought Raising Hope was sweet and funny — I laugh at its sight gags (the baby rolling around in its untethered car-seat) and think the chemistry between Dillahunt and Plimpton is what every sitcom needs, which is: You have to believe right from the start that these people love each other, fight a lot, and that you’ve known them for years.

By contrast — and the contrast is huge, maybe insurmountable — Running Wilde is conceived as a classically structured screwball comedy, in which a person of high stature is brought low by gentle humiliation and slapstick. In this case, it’s Will Arnett as a rich jerk trying to buy the affection of a woman he’s loved for years (Keri Russell). Russell used her wide eyes to express disbelief at the foolish, spendthrift ways of Arnett’s Steve Wilde. As indigent, professional do-gooder Emmy, Russell also has a clever daughter named Puddle (played by the devilishly good Stephania Owen). This trio is supplemented by two characters who work for Steve, one of whom, Robert Michael Morris, will always be, to me, Mickey the make-up man in Lisa Kudrow’s great, short-lived The Comeback.

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