News Bullets

• The British Channel Five has announced that it will begin airing the original CSI's fifth season on Tuesday the 1st of February. Thanks go out to Mel for this!

• CSI lost out in the Best TV Drama category at this weekend's Golden Globes, where the prize was nabbed by FX show Nip/Tuck. But at least there was still a small CSI connection to the award: it was presented by CSI: New York's Melina Kanakaredes (Stella Bonasera), along with fellow CBS actor Anthony LaPaglia (Without a Trace). Several photos of Kanakaredes in her long silver gown can be found here at Yahoo.

• Danica Lo at the New York Post wasn't a fan of Kanakaredes' dress. "Note to CSI: New York star Melina Kanakaredes," she wrote in her showbiz column, "Leave the stripper style to Paris Hilton. "

• The Long Beach Press Telegram's Joe Segura reports that in December, CSI: Miami filmed scenes at the RMS Queen Mary - a former ocean liner turned historic attraction.

• Meanwhile, Los Angeles as a whole is benefiting from the film industry. According to the Los Angeles Daily News, total location production days in LA totaled 52,707 in 2004, almost a 20% increase over the previous year. The amount of production days spent on television series actually climbed more than 25% to 18,257 days, a ten-year record. According to the article, this is partially due to shows such as CSI shooting many of its studio and location scenes in the LA region.

• The American Society of Cinematographers has nominated two episodes from the CSI franchise in the Episodic Category of their yearly ASC awards. The award candidates are original CSI cinematographer Nathan Hope, for "Down the Drain," and CSI: New York's Chris Manley, for "A Man A Mile." The awards will be presented on the 13th of February in the Grand Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland.

• CSI: New York may not be the runaway success that the first two CSI shows were, but in at least one city in the US, it's a superhit. The Wichitage Eagle reports that a full 21% of all households in Wichita, Kansas, watched the latest CSI spin-off in November. That made New York the second-most popular show in Wichita, ahead of CSI: Miami, which landed in third place with an 18 rating. But when it comes to the most popular show on television, Wichita audiences still conform with the national average: the original CSI took that spot by attracting close to a quarter of all Wichita households in November.

• This week's article about CSI inspiring students to look at forensics majors comes from RedNova.com. "It's an intrinsically interesting field of study," Dr. William Walkenhorst of the Department of Chemistry at Loyola University in New Orleans is quoted as saying. "We have seen a strong increase in interest that is due to the popularity of the CSI shows."

• Reviewer 'The Rabit' at WorthPlaying recently tested the CSI: Miami computer game to see if it was, uh, worth playing. His conclusion is that CSI: Miami looks good, but as a game, it falls short:

  369 Interactive has done a good job at creating an interactive show of sorts, bringing in the best elements of all sides—the gilded upper crust, the struggling not-quite-so-rich folks, and the criminal element that bands them all together. As an episode, this would be quite entertaining to watch once or twice. As a game, however, it doesn’t manage to get the job done, falling way too short on actual substance and gameplay.

  Read on here.

• The WorthPlaying review isn't an exception: none of the computer games have managed to win much praise for reviewers. And according to an article on GamesIndustry.biz, fans may have caught on to that as well. The site notes that the CSI game Ubisoft recently released for the Xbox console has failed to make it onto any of the sales charts.

• The William Petersen Appreciation Page has been updated with new screencaps from "Snakes," all of them of course featuring Gil Grissom.

• More screencaps from "Snakes" are available at Jorja Fox: Online, showing Sara Sidle inside the crime lab.

• New photos showing Eddie Cahill (Don Flack) at the People's Choice Awards can be found here at Eddie Cahill online.

Discuss this news item at Talk CSI!
 Add CSI Files RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a Desperate Housewives fan? Then visit GetDesperate.com!