Neil has made it past the first round of the PopSugar 100, beating Russell Brand to win his place in round 2. He’s now up against Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas, so be sure to vote for him and make sure he makes it to round three! Voting for this round is open until Wednesday, April 21st.

As we first posted last month, Neil has narrated a documentary for PBS focussing on service dogs. ”Through a Dog’s Eyes” will air next Wednesday on PBS, check your local listings for times.

To promote this, Neil will be appearing on both the CBS Early Show and The View next Monday, April 19th.

While in Vegas for the CBS Films Luncheon at ShoWest (a film/cinema distribution trade show), Neil talked to Tony Potts from Access Hollywood about his directing future and his work on Glee, as well as a little playing a blind man about Beastly, the movie Neil was there to promote. We’ve got a bunch of photos from the event, featuring Neil, Vanessa Hudgens and Alex Pettyfer, in our gallery.

Dracula’s Daughter’s Vs. The Space Brains had its world premiere at the Cleveland International Film Festival on Friday, and by all accounts was a massive success! Clevescene talks to director Frank Ippolito ahead of the premiere and had this to say of Neil’s casting:

Casting Harris, whom he knew through the magician Teller (the subject of the Teller shorts) wasn’t difficult. “He likes quirky things,” Ippolito says of Harris. “Most of the stuff I see him do is a little weird so he thought it was cool. It wasn’t a struggle to get him to say yes.”

I’ve added a Glee page to the television appearances section of the site. More and more spoilers for Neil’s Glee appearance are being released, but I understand that a lot of people might want to remain as unspoiled as possible. So we’ll update all Glee spoilers here, to give you the choice of reading it or not. We’ll continue to let you know here when that page has been updated, though.

Neil recorded an episode of Celebrity Jeopardy late last week, competing against CSI New York’s Hill Harper and former basketball player Rebecca Lobo. We’ll keep you updated with when that will air.

John Cho talked with Collider about the in-development third movie in the Harold & Kumar series:

The good news for fans of the Harold and Kumar series is the sequel is still moving forward and Cho said the plan is to film this June!  He said they’re currently figuring out who will direct the third installment and Neil Patrick Harris is supposed to be in it.  He said the film picks up a few years after the second film and it’s a legitimate holiday movie.

Finally, if you didn’t managed to view the Oscars opening before it was removed from the Oscars website, you can view it officially on YouTube, or PopSugar.

You may have seen Neil’s recent Tweet, in which he commented that he’d seen a lot of negative reactions to his opening number for the Oscars. While we don’t really think he’ll ever see this, we wanted to put together a bunch of the best reviews, for your reading pleasure. If you know of a review that we missed, please get in touch and we’ll add it to the page!

“NPH opened the show with a rousing, Broadway-style musical number. He was on fire, a vibrant presence on that stage and — as we soon learned — an impossible act to follow for co-hosts Baldwin and Martin.” ~ MTV

“An outstanding song-and-dance number from Neil Patrick Harris trumped the ho-hum opening monologue of hosts Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.” ~ LA Times

There were understandably a lot, so we’ve given them a page of their own. You can read the rest here!

Despite Tweeting to the contrary following rumours earlier in the week, Neil did indeed perform the opening number at tonight’s 82nd Annual Academy Awards. He technically didn’t lie, as Martin Short was nowhere to be seen; though it’s thought that Mr Short was supposed to join him but a recent family emergency kept him away.

We’ve started to add pictures to the gallery, and the album will be updated as more come in.

It’s all over the internet; Neil has officially signed on to guest-star in an upcoming episode of Glee. Confirmed by eonline’s Watch with Kristin yesterday, the episode is currently being written and will see Neil star as ‘a character who is “really funny and really mean.”‘ Ultimate Gleeks adds that Neil has confirmed his role will be one episode only.

And confirmed today is the news that we posted about two days ago; Neil has officially been confirmed to direct three performances of Rent at the Hollywood Bowl in August this year. The performances will take place August 6-8. The cast is yet to be announced, but Tim Weil has joined the production as musical director. The Hollywood Bowl tickets page is here, however tickets are not currently available until the Hollywood Bowl box office reopens in the spring.

Now for the news roundup I promised:

• Michael Ausiello from Entertainment Weekly reports that CBS has signed off on Neil’s guest appearance on FOX’s Glee. The only remaining hurdle is making sure that it can fit into Neil’s already hectic schedule!
• Popeater is reporting that Neil is being lined up to star in a new revival of “Barnum” on Broadway. Neil has talked many times about his interest in that role, though he has stated that he’s still too young for it. This new report reveals that Neil is the producer’s “only choice” – what isn’t clear, however, is the timescale in question. It’s likely this won’t be taking place imminently, but simply that whenever it does, Neil is a shoe-in for the part.
• The Superbowl is on CBS this year (this coming Sunday, Feb 7) and there’s some HIMYM related cross-promotion happening on Twitter. Craig and Carter go into a little more detail in this interview from the time of the 100th episode promotion.
• The Best and the Brightest, which Neil shot this summer, is now on Twitter and you can become a fan on Facebook. They’re calling it a “social media explosion” and they’ve been posting pictures and holding contests so far, so check them out!

Finally, there’s a lot of talk in the media that Neil should replace Simon Cowell as a full time judge on American Idol when he leaves at the end of this season. His guest stint was loved by the critics, but what do you think about him taking on the role full time? I think that without Simon, and knowing that Neil is good friends with both Ellen and Kara, there might not be enough differences of opinion to keep it interesting. And that’s before you even think about working it into his schedule, especially now with the news that HIMYM has been renewed for season 6.

Neil has recorded a part in Nickelodeon’s hit series, The Penguins of Madagascar. He will voice the character of Dr Blowhole, a “malevolent dolphin who also happens to be the penguins’ longtime nemesis”.

The Penguins of Madagascar is a spin off of the hit film, Madagascar. Neil’s episode will air on Nickelodeon, Feb 15th at 8pm, and is the show’s first Nickelodeon special.

“The Penguins of Madagascar has been a huge success in transferring from film to television,” said Brown Johnson, President, Animation, Nickelodeon and MTVN Kids and Family Group.  ”We’re thrilled to give fans this fantastic TV special featuring the multi-talented Neil Patrick Harris as a hilariously disgruntled dolphin.”

In “Dr. Blowhole’s Revenge,” Dr. Blowhole, tired of the penguins foiling his plans to rule land and sea, has returned to annihilate the band of brothers so he may take over the world once and for all.  The first step in his plan is to kidnap King Julien, who Dr. Blowhole mistakenly thinks is Skipper’s best friend.  The penguins set off to rescue their annoying lemur neighbor, only to find they have waddled right into a shocking double-cross.  Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private must escape the trap and save the planet before Dr. Blowhole succeeds in flooding the Earth’s surface in an effort to wipe out the existence of all land mammals.

PR Newswire has the full press release.

Exclusive news from Entertainment Weekly’s Michael Ausiello!

Remember that giant scoop I told you (via Twitter) I had gotten at the Golden Globes? This is it: Neil Patrick Harris is nearing a deal to appear in the May sweeps Glee episode that’s being helmed by his Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog director, Joss Whedon.

In retrospect, maybe I should’ve called this particular scoop “ginormous.” I think it’s warranted, don’t you?

Anyway, Harris wants to do it, and Glee creator Ryan Murphy sure as hell wants him to — he’s creating a role especially for the How I Met Your Mother scene-stealer. And yes, the part includes a little song-’n’-dance. In fact, the gig not only would reunite Harris with Whedon, it’d also reteam him with Zachary Woodlee, who choreographed the musical number in HIMYM’s recent 100th episode.

The one possible snag — and there’s always one, isn’t there? CBS has to OK its MVP’s appearance on Fox’s breakout hit. But at least since HIMYM and Glee are both produced by 20th Century Fox, there’s no conflict on their end.

So what do you think? Stoked, or stoked beyond belief? Try to describe your level of anticipation below. I know I can’t describe mine. At least not adequately.

“Nothing Suits Me Like A Suit”, the musical number from HIMYM’s 100th episode, is available to purchase on iTunes ahead of the episode’s premiere this coming Monday. It’s available internationallyas well as in the US – this link is to the UK store, where the song costs £0.79 – and has a 2 minute 50 second runtime.

Also newly available is an official audio copy of the Commentary! The Musical soundtrack. It too is available internationally on iTunes and as an MP3 download from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

We’ve added a selection of photos from the 100th episode celebration held at the Paley Centre on Thursday night to our gallery, and you can watch the cast being introduced in this YouTube video.

The cast have been hitting the promotional circuit ahead of the landmark episode, and there are various behind-the-scenes clips and interviews around, in addition to the Entertainment Tonight video we linked earlier this week. The following articles all contain some spoilers for the “Girls vs Suits”: ChicagoNow has a short interview which includes the first 40 seconds of the musical number, TVOvermind have internationally viewable versions of all the CBS behind-the scenes videos, Zap2it talk to Neil and the rest of the cast, as do IGN.

Eonline’s Kristin Dos Santos caught up with Neil and the rest of the cast at the Paley event, while The Futon Critic and The TV Addict both provide fantastic recaps.

Finally, Neil will join Snoop Dog and Niecy Nash in stopping by the Wanda Sykes show tonight, at 11/10c on Fox.