News Bullets

• Spike TV is now running a poll asking viewers which CSI episode it should air on Friday the 27th of January: "Eleven Angry Jurors," "Committed," "The Accused Is Entitled" or "Play with Fire."

• The German-language CSI Presse & Clips site has been updated with a transcript of an English-language interview with Eric Szmanda (Greg Sanders) in the January 2006 edition of InStyle magazine. "I love the set decoration on the show -- especially the lab, with its sterile atmosphere and beakers of colored liquids," Szmanda said in the interview, which mostly dealt with his new Los Angeles home. "That's probably where a lot of my inspiration comes from. If I'm at a store and see cool vases that look like test tubes or medical things that share the same kind of clean aesthetic that we have on the show, I'm drawn to them. There is definitely a connection." For more from Szmanda, read on here.

• Recent "Werewolves" guest star Leisha Hailey, usually a regular on The L Word, yesterday told Starry Constellation Magazine why she wanted to appear on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: "Well, I wanted to do some different things on my hiatus, we have about six months off. I didn't want to just hang around waiting for the word, if we're getting picked up or not. So, I started going out on auditions for guest spots and I got the CSI and I also got a Grey's Anatomy episode. I am planning on auditioning still for lots more." The actress added that it took about two and a half hours to apply her make-up, but also said that "it's fun for anyone to play the sort of monster character, it's just another form of an outcast and I really find that interesting."

• Just over a week from now, Marg Helgenberger (Catherine Willows) will be one of the presenters at the 12th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, airing on Sunday the 29th of January on TNT and TBS. Thanks go out to MargHelgenberger.com for this!

• Variety has posted a review of Courting Alex, the new Jenna Elfman-starring sitcom that will debut right before CSI: Miami this coming Monday. "Jenna Elfman hasn't lost any of her Dharma charm, but her new CBS comedy otherwise feels like very old news," wrote reviewer Brian Lowry "[It's] an inoffensive but not particularly distinguished half-hour about a career-driven woman trying to introduce romance into her juggling act. Not bad as pilots go, but it's hard to envision the plot for episode No. 3."

• Shelley Fralic of the Vancouver Sun (via Canada.com) recently blasted crime shows for reaping ratings by making women victims. "[Violence] against women is back on the tube. In a big, ugly way. It's hard to surf the small-screen universe today without being flashed by gruesome images of women being raped, stabbed, beaten, drugged, prostituted, tortured, bludgeoned, mutilated, electrocuted, choked, stalked, burned or otherwise treated in a way that invokes the word slaughter. Not that men get off that easy on the crime-victim front, but the scales of gender-based injustice are indeed tipping toward the distaff side these days."

• According to the European CSI Forum, the fifth-season finale "Grave Danger" of the original CSI will air in French-speaking Belgium on the 1st of February on Rtl-Tvi. A week later, the same channel will begin airing new episodes of CSI: New York.

• And the same site recently reported that season six of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation will begin airing on the British Channel Five on Tuesday the 31st of January.

• The Utah-based Logan Herald Journal recently ran an article on the crime lab of the local police squad. "Most of the stuff you see on CSI is downstairs," a proud Logan Police Sgt. Bret Randall told the paper.

• In Indiana, students of Columbia City High School will be putting on a parody of CSI as part of a school-based variety show. Details can be found in the Post and Mail.

• Screencaps from the first new CSI: New York episode of 2006, "Wasted," are now available at Eddie Cahill (Det. Flack) fan site Behind Blue Eyes.

• David Caruso Online has posted several new Spanish-language articles focusing on Miami's Horatio Caine actor.

• And finally, 768 screencaps of the original CSI's "Daddy's Little Girl" are available at Erica's.

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