Well folks, the Ellen DeGeneres era on American Idol is, thankfully, over.

The stand-up comic and daytime talk host was out of her area of strength on Idol, and her departure will hopefully mean that Fox will have a judge panel next season who all have music backgrounds. That was the biggest and most legitimate critique of DeGeneres – her lack of a music industry background.

Personally, I’d love to see Ellen join the judges panel of the next season of NBC’s Last Comic Standing; she’d immediately become the top judge and draw of the show, and has way more credibility and humor than any of this season’s judges. The woman knows comedy, not music, and could help make Last Comic Standing a way more legitimate show.

That aside, it’s a relief to have her off Idol, where she was outside her area of expertise.

Now to the rumor mill: word is (and no, I have no security cameras at Fox) that Idol has come to terms already with Jennifer Lopez as Ellen’s replacement. Huge improvement; while J-Lo needs an image boost after being dumped by her record label and her latest movie bombing, she’s an ideal Idol judge due to being a legit pop star – just as Paula Abdul was.

Simon’s replacement is still in the works; I’d love to hear that Apprentice winner Bret Michaels is the choice, although the rumor mill has Steven Tyler as more likely. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if it was Nigel Lythgow himself, who is returning to Idol after a couple seasons as just on So You Think You Can Dance.

The remaining questions are these: will Fox retain Kara DioGuardi as a fourth judge? The word is, she’s already been told she won’t be returning, and her deal was a year-to-year contract.

The bigger question is whether Fox will retain Randy Jackson as a connection to Idol’s past, or if they want to clean house and start fresh. Hard to say.

Personally, I’d love to see Idol free up Randy; that way, when Simon Cowell’s X-Factor debuts in 2011, he could potentially re-team with both Paula and Randy, reuniting the original three-judge panel that worked so well for years on Idol.

Now if only we knew when Ryan Seacrest’s contract was up, and whether he’d consider re-teaming with Cowell on X-Factor, or if CNN is in his future instead.

In the Glee season finale, Emma revealed to Will that she was over him and dating her dentist now. Spoiler alert, but rumors all around the internet are that former “Uncle Jesse” actor John Stamos has been pegged to join Glee next fall as said dentist.

Stamos should prove a worthy rival to Schuster; even if he plays the role with a hint of villainy and is closer in age to Sue Sylvester than Emma, he still comes off with the charm of a guy who’s spent hours in the gym after downing some particularly effective vitamin supplements.

Could a sing-off between the two suitors be far behind? This is Glee… what do you think?

Scripter Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven are together again for SCREAM 4, and while most people now know that Neve Campbell, David Arquette and Courtney Cox – the survivors of the previous trilogy – will likely appear, it will only be to hand things off to a next-gen cast.

Now, it appears that some of the actors on the Williamson-Craven wish list are becoming apparent. Included in the rumor mill are HEROES alumn Hayden Panettiere, Twilight’s Ashley Greene, Boy Meets World graduate Rory Culkin, and Surface/Boston Legal survivor, Lake Bell.

All this is intriguing, but a Lipofuze review might be more interesting until more is known about the plot. Alas, it’s largely under wraps… at least for now. Let’s hope it’s a case of talent well-used, not wasted.

Summit Entertainment’s two-movies-from-one-book finale of the Twilight saga, inspired by the Stephanie Meyer book series, Breaking Dawn, finally has a director: Bill Condon.

A quick credit report on Condon reveals he was the director behind Dreamgirls, Kinsey, Gods and Monsters, and even scripted the movie version of Chicago. So he’s directed a lot of well-received movies but has no genre direction credits to speak of.

Still, he’s a big name and that counts for something; in fact, he’s probably the most established and decorated director to take on the teen angst vampire series to day. And considering the decidedly adult content of Breaking Dawn, it might be just the sort of director-to-material match the series needed at this point. Time will tell how well his treatment of the material is received.

The man known as both Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone – actor Fess Parker – died a couple days ago on March 18, 2010. He was 85. I grew up enjoying Parker’s Daniel Boone on weekday after school television as a young whipper-snapper, so this is a sad day indeed.

Word is that Marvel Studios has offered Chris Evans the role of Captain America in their upcoming flick, The First Avenger: Captain America. Evans is best known for his two appearances as Johnny Storm a/k/a The Human Torch in two Fantastic Four flicks.

Evans isn’t necessarily excited about stepping into a second superhero role, but that’s likely a bargaining position. He looks the part, since he’s not exactly in need of weight loss supplements, and he has experience from his Fantastic Four flicks.

The big downside for Evans, though, is that Marvel is offering a low-ball figure and demanding a three-picture deal with no less than nine additional options. Talk about playing hardball over an American icon!

It appears the reality show Survivor producer Mark Burnett is creating centering around former Alaska governor and GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin may land on A & E or Discovery Channel; all of the major broadcast networks passed on the show.

The series will run around $1 million per episode for whoever lands it; and it will revolve around Palin, her husand (not a candidate who needs a fat burner for men), and their daughters as they explore the lesser-known reaches of her home state.

Apparently, Burnett would ultimately like to launch Palin into the daytime talk show fray, feeling her ability to connect with middle Americans would make her successful; however, that may depend on whether she decides in favor of a 2012 White House run or not.

Palin wouldn’t be the first to set aside political ambitions for media success and its generous pay days; fellow GOP candidate Mike Huckabee’s career as followed a similar path.

24 may be shopped to NBC from Fox, but it will do so without showrunner Howard Gordon. Gordon, who has been with 24 since its inception, is leaving the real-time drama to work on a new project, tentatively titled Patriots, which will focus on three Iraq War vets who were thought dead but re-emerge from a cave ten years later.

While part of the show is sure to focus on the discombobulation of how things have changed in 10 years (the switch of presidents from Bush to Obama, the shift in attitude against the war, the introduction of Skechers Shape Ups and whatnot…), the concept is actually drawn from an Israeli TV show, Prisoners of War, which recently finished its run. Gordon is hoping the show will be picked up during the upcoming pilot season for a Fall 2010 pickup.

David Goyer, the writer-producer who helped create the SF drama based on Robert Sawyer’s novel, is out as show runner for ABC’s FlashForward. Goyer was preceded by Mark Guggenheim, who was brought in to help the less-experienced Goyer, but stepped away last fall to work on other projects.

No replacement for Goyer has yet been named; the show is currently shooting episodes 17 and 18 of a 23-episode order this season, but all these behind-the-scenes shake-ups can’t be good for a show in its first season. It also probably isn’t much of a testosterone booster for Goyer.

Michael C. Hall, start of Showtime’s hit drama Dexter, in which he plays a serial killer who works as a Miami blood spatter analyst, has been diagnosed with cancer, according to multiple sources; fortunately for the 38-year-old, it is Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a highly treatable form of cancer from which many patients fully recover and remain cancer-free, and he will not require exotic treatments like glucomannan.

“I feel fortunate to have been diagnosed with an imminently treatable and curable condition, and I thank my doctors and nurses for their expertise and care,” Hall said in a press release.

Hall will attend both the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards, and so long as there are no setbacks in his treatment schedule, is on track to return to his role as Dexter Morgan later this year, when the show is scheduled to begin shooting its fifth season.

Both Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes and kids flick Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel did terrific at the box office over Christmas weekend, but like the best diet supplement, Avatar held on to its top spot at the box office.

Avatar posted $75 million in domestic box office, a drop-off of less than three percent from last weekend, and brought its domestic take to $212 million. Add in foreign markets and Avatar raked in another $402 million, making for a global box office take of $615 million in only 10 days of release. Even with its lofty budget of $300 million, plus another $200 million in global marketing efforts, Avatar is now safely in the black.

The next question will be how long it can hang on.

Sherlock Holmes drew $65.3 million in its opening bow, which would be more than enough to earn the top spot most weeks, but this time out was only good enough for a strong second place. Alvin and the Chipmunks was also surprisingly strong, garnering $50.2 million in its opening bow and $77 million since its early release last week.

Proving that this weekend’s choices were all worthy of moviegoers’ attention, even the iffy romantic comedy It’s Complicated did well, drawing $22.1 million in box office and securing the fourth spot. Going into wide release, Up In The Air posted an $11.75 million weekend to take the fifth spot away from The Blind Side, which still managed $11.73 million in its sixth week of release.

Twilight Saga: New Moon dropped all the way to 11th place, adding only $3 million domestically to its $280 million take so far, and with $381 million from foreign markets, that puts New Moon at $662 million, or just slightly ahead of Avatar. Of course, I’d rather have New Moon’s profit margin; that flick cost only $25 million against $662 million in global box office, compared to Avatar’s $500 million plus against $616 million in global sales.

Not many new flicks expected next weekend, so the horse race should prove interesting among all the contenders currently on the board.

In terms of forthcoming new releases this weekend, there’s not a lot to look forward to, other than the ridiculously over-the-top disaster movie, 2012, by director Roland Emmerich. If anything like this movie ever happened, insurance marketing would collapse, but we’d all be dead so who cares, right?

Granted, the special effects are custom-built for the big screen and it’ll even look good on 1080p HDTV sets, but the whole escape from LA sequence is just too ridiculous for words. How can everyone but ONE GUY be getting killed when the destruction is that close behind him? Just not credible… kinda like the global warming theory Emmerich’s previous flick, DAY AFTER TOMORROW, was built around.