Ira Glass, Owen Wilson, and Rob Thomas (the Veronica Mars/Party Down creator, not the Matchbox 20 guy) walk into a pitch meeting — but their project is, thankfully, no joke. Variety reports that Glass and his all-star collaborators developing another This American Life-derived series, this time for HBO. Inspired by an incredible segment called “Midlife Cowboy,” which tells the story of a former meth smuggler who turned his life around by rescuing two young victims of a drug-related kidnapping and later became a private investigator, the show’s working title is Thrillsville. There’s no word yet on whether Wilson will be starring or just producing, but this sure sounds like a perfect role for him. With such an impressive team working on such a fascinating project (that we can see having a bit of a Breaking Bad vibe), we’ll be watching either way. [via Collider]

1. Ashton Kutcher has signed on to play Steve Jobs in a new indie film that “chronicles Jobs from wayward hippie to co-founder of Apple and one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of our time.” While it seems like a bit of an odd casting choice, we suppose there is a slight resemblance. [via The Wrap]

2. Here’s your first look at The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin’s new HBO series that stars Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, Alison Pill, Olivia Munn, Sam Waterston, and Jane Fonda, among others. As Pop Culture Brain points out, “It’s like the best parts of Sports Night, West Wing, and Studio 60 rolled into one.” Do you agree?

3. Dirty Projectors are finally releasing a new album! Swing Lo Magellan is due out on July 10 in the US and July 9 internationally; check out the official tracklist here.

4. In other new album news, Patti Smith has announced that she’ll release Banga, her eleventh studio album and first record of original material since 2004′s Trampin, on June 5 in the US. Here’s a look at the tracklist.

5. Are we at all surprised that Adam Sandler’s Jack & Jill — the comedy in which he played his own twin sister — swept this year’s Razzies? “He didn’t play triplets, but he couldn’t have won more awards if he had,” said Razzies founder John Wilson. Zing! [via HitFix]

Bonus Buzz: Dinner Etiquette

You can finally stop chugging the dreamwine — HBO’s Game of Thrones is officially back for its second season, and you’ll want to be as clearheaded as possible for what’s about to go down in the Seven Kingdoms. But before we get into that, how about a quick refresher on where things currently stand? Warning: Possible spoilers ahead!

The long summer is finally drawing to a close. Ned Stark’s head is still on a spike in the King’s Landing, where the only other Stark left is poor, dutiful Sansa, who has been taken hostage by King Joffrey and his mother the Queen Regent; her sister Arya, now posing as a boy and going by Arry, left town with a ragtag group headed up by Yoren, a recruiter for the Night’s Watch.

Meanwhile, her brother Robb Stark, now known as the King in the North, is camping out in the Riverlands with a party that also includes Catelyn Stark, Greatjon Umber, Theon Greyjoy, and Jaime Lannister, who admitted that he pushed Bran out of the window, but won’t explain why. Speaking of the youngest Starks, they’re safely stowed away at Winterfell with Hodor and Osha, while their bastard half brother Jon Snow is preparing to head north of the Wall with Lord Commander Mormont, as well as his Night’s Watch pals Gren, Pyp, and Samwell Tarly.

Across the Narrow Sea, the last we saw of Daenerys Targaryen she was putting catatonic Drogo out of his magic-induced misery, smothering her sun and stars with a pillow, and then later, rising from the ashes of his funeral pyre, with three freshly-hatched baby dragons in tow.

So! Now that we’ve got all of that established, let’s look at how things played out in tonight’s season premiere. As Cersei Lannister once said, “When you play the game of thrones you win, or you die. There is no middle ground.” In that spirit, each week we’ll be ranking the major characters in these high stakes power games, and declaring winners and losers for the episode. Let us know if you agree with our assessment in the comments.

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Every Friday here at Flavorwire, we like to gather up the week new movie trailers, give them a look-see, and rank them from worst to best — while taking a guess or two about what they might tell us (or hide from us) about the movies they’re promoting. We’ve got seven new trailers for you this week, including new films from Nicole Kidman, Clive Owen, Kate Hudson, and a new Johnny Depp-Tim Burton collaboration. Check ‘em all out after the jump, and share your thoughts in the comments.

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Just this morning we reported that the Dustin Hoffman-starring HBO series Luck — which features the veteran actor as an ex-convict who tries to gain control of the Santa Anita racetrack as a revenge tactic — was temporarily suspended after three horses died on set. Now, Entertainment Weekly is reporting that the show has been cancelled outright.

The network said they were heartbroken to announce the cut, but the decision — made with executive producers David Milch and Michael Mann — was necessary. “Safety is always of paramount concern,” the network wrote. “We maintained the highest safety standards throughout production, higher in fact than any protocols existing in horseracing anywhere with many fewer incidents than occur in racing or than befall horses normally in barns at night or pastures.” Since they say they can’t guarantee that accidents won’t happen in the future, they’re making the “difficult decision” to say goodbye. Mann and Milch did say that they plan on collaborating on other projects in the future. Did you see this one coming, or did you think HBO would keep trying?

AUSTIN, TX: When word started to circulate that Girls, the new HBO comedy series from writer/director/star Lena Dunham (Tiny Furniture) concerned a group of young single women living in New York, the lazy Sex and the City comparisons were immediate. We do not know if those musings were already out there when they shot their pilot episode, so it’s impossible to know whether the Sex and the City reference in it was reactive or preemptive. But this much is certain: a character’s obsession with the show (and whether she is “a Carrie” or “a Miranda” or whatever) is used to illustrate how insipid and insufferable she is. Well played, Dunham.

This is all good and well, because Girls is everything Sex and the City wasn’t: smart, honest, grounded, funny, and painful. Yes, it’s about four women in Gotham, and the sexuality is pay-cable graphic. And it is about women who are both sympathetic and kind of awful; the primary difference, of course, is that Girls actually knows that they’re kind of awful.

The first three episodes, which premiered at the South By Southwest Film Festival Monday afternoon, are richly inventive and endlessly quotable; this is the most exciting and promising new comedy series since Community. It would be easy to shrug the show off as a TV continuation of Dunham’s breakthrough film, and to be sure, there are similarities; her character, Hannah, isn’t too far removed from Furniture’s Aura (or, seemingly, from Dunham herself), and her close yet dysfunctional relationships with men and lovers are similarly drawn. But it’s also a crisply executed, professional television comedy, thanks (presumably) to the guidance of executive producer Jenni Konner and her Undeclared colleague, Judd Apatow.

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1. HBO has had to temporarily suspend the use of horses on the set of Luck pending an investigation into the injury (and subsequent euthanization) of its third equine star. PETA’s take on things? “HBO, David Milch and Michael Mann should be ashamed. Three horses have now died, and all the evidence we have gathered points to sloppy oversight, the use of unfit or injured horses and disregard for the treatment of racehorses.” [via THR]

2. Veronica Mars is returning to TV! OK, so that’s a bit misleading. Reruns of the cult favorite will be airing on SOAPnet beginning April 7th, but that’s something, right? [via The Huffington Post]

3. Tomorrow night Lana Del Rey will be taping a performance that will air during an upcoming episode of American Idol. That’s one way to avoid having another Saturday Night Live-style disaster; as Becky Bain at Idolator says, “This may be one of the few times the Idol contestants come off as more experienced than the musical guest.”

4. Here are a few snippets from Tim Burton’s latest Johnny Depp movie, Dark Shadows. The long-awaited first trailer will premiere tomorrow on The Ellen DeGeneres Show of all places.

5. The Eastwoods (as in Clint) are getting a reality show on E!; Mrs. Eastwood & Company, which debuts on May 20th, will focus on “his wife Dina, their teenage daughters Francesca and Morgan, and ‘Overtone’: the all-male, six member South African vocal group that Dina manages.” [via EW]

Bonus Buzz: 15 Things We’ll Miss About ‘Man Vs. Wild’

1. Can you remember the last time that Woody Allen appeared in a movie that wasn’t his own? It’s been over a decade now. That’s why we’re excited to hear that he’ll join John Turturro in Fading Gigolo, an indie comedy which Turturro is writing and directing; they’ll play “cash-strapped best friends who decide to go into the gigolo business together and subsequently attract the suspicion of the hasidic Jewish community in which they live.” Amazing. [via Showblitz]

2. Beach House has debuted a new track called “Myth”, which will presumably be on their forthcoming album, Bloom, due out May 15th on Sub Pop. Give it a spin here.

3. Look out HBO: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is apparently in talks with “some of the largest US cable companies,” about making his streaming video service available to their customers — and in at least one case, it could happen as soon as the year’s end. [via Deadline]

4. Thanks to the $21 million it made in its opening weekend, there’s already a Project X sequel in the works. You can probably guess how we feel about this news. [via THR]

5. “John did not have an eating disorder. Sometimes he slipped and ate a bar of chocolate. His diets included vegetarian diet, macrobiotic diet and, very rarely a juice-only diet. All of the above are internationally approved health diets.” – Yoko Ono denies claims made by a new book that her husband John Lennon was bulimic.

Bonus Buzz: Who Said It: Mitt Romney Vs. Mr. Burns

We’ve been a bit perplexed, to be honest, that we haven’t heard more about HBO’s upcoming comedy series, Veep. Created by the team behind the fantastic 2009 British political satire In the Loop and starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as America’s vice president, it seems to have all the elements of great TV — and its election-year debut is fabulous timing. But Veep seems to have been overshadowed by the network’s other spring fare, like the 2008 election movie, Game Change, and Lena Dunham’s Girls.

Thankfully, we’ve finally got a proper trailer, and the show looks fabulous. There’s witty banter, dirty language, wonky political humor, hints of entertaining drama between the president and the VP, and a whole lot of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer attempting to be charming but just coming off as awkward. Splitsider predicts that Veep will turn out to be a sort of West Wing/Arrested Development combo, and while we certainly see elements of both (yes, that’s Buster, aka Tony Hale), Selina is reminding us quite a bit of 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon. And that’s not especially surprising — Tina Fey has often mentioned Louis-Dreyfus as a big influence on her acting. Watch the preview after the jump, and tell us whether you’ll tune in when Veep premieres April 22nd.

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As big Tiny Furniture fans, we’ve been closely following the progress of Lena Dunham’s new Judd Apatow-backed HBO series, Girls, from development deal to teaser to premiere-date announcement. Now that the show’s April 15th debut is less than two months away, the first substantive trailer has surfaced, and it’s pretty great. We see Dunham’s 24-year-old character get cut off by her parents, engage in some awkward sex with a dude who treats her like crap, endure the slings and arrows of a dozen friends who want her to get over herself, fall on her face, and dispense such post-college-Angela-Chase-like observations as, “My entire life has been one ridiculous mistake after another.” All of which is to say that Girls is shaping up to be essential viewing. Check out the trailer after the jump, and let us know if you’re equally enthused.

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