Name Dropping

THE SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AWARDS

2011-02-01T13:11:00.000-08:00

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Screen Actors Guild Awards

Come home, Ricky Gervais, all is forgiven.
Honestly now, as movie-awards shows go, and of course we can never have enough of THEM, has there ever been a duller one than the 17th Screen Actors Guild ceremony? Telecast simultaneously on TWO basic-cable outlets, no less. This show didn’t sag, it sank.
Apart from the fact that there was no time wasted on lesser Hollywood craftspeople, you know, minor contributors like, say, writers, directors, cinematographers, editors, costumers and art designers; and apart from the fact that the broadcast had the feel of a union rally—albeit one with a spiffily dressed audience membership, one considerably more well-heeled, you can be sure, than the nearly 100,000 active members of SAG nation-wide who voted; and apart from the fact that there were neither hosts nor any traditional entertainment segments to inject the proceedings with actual fun, I am now formally and unapologetically rethinking my position on having even an incendiary host such as Gervais to ignite any kind of spark to leaden affairs such as this.
There’s not much that can be said of the show-biz value of the 17th SAG Awards telecast, but you can give it this: how many telecasts would give several shout-outs to the Teamsters? Jimmy Hoffa would have been proud.
The awards themselves only confirm what Oscar prognosticators already know—that the winners of the four major individual SAG awards provide an air of inevitability to their collecting the gold at the Feb. 27 Oscars. Those four are lead actors Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) and Natalie Portman (Black Swan); and supporting actors Melissa Leo and Christian Bale ( both for The Fighter). Further, the ensemble award for The King’s Speech, the night after its director Tom Hooper won the DGA Award (The Social Network’s David Fincher had been considered the strong favorite), lends added proof that this superb historical drama (with 12 Oscar nominations), and not The Social Network (with eight), is the consensus front-runner for Best Picture and numerous other Oscars, though Aaron Sorkin still appears to be a lock for adapted screenplay.
As for SAG’s TV awards, Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife) and Steve Buscemi (Boardwalk Empire) were entirely deserving, individual comedy wins by Alec Baldwin(30 Rock) and 89-year-old Betty White (Hot in Cleveland) were minor surprises, and Boardwalk Empire’s ensemble-drama triumph broke the two-year streak of Mad Men. Modern Family won the TV ensemble comedy award (undoubtedly ticking off fans of Glee who probably considered it, along with Jane Lynch, shoo-ins for prizes).
If the SAG telecast did have one highlight, it was the 47th annual Life Achievement Award to 94-year-old Ernest Borgnine, presented to him by Morgan Freeman (who appeared with him in Red) following a somewhat rambling, and definitely unfunny, introduction by his old McHale’s Navy costar Tim Conway. “There are millions of those in the world who would love to be in our shoes,” said Borgnine, who was visibly moved by the honor. “We are a privileged few who have been chosen to work in this field of entertainment.” A 1955 Best Actor Oscar winner for Marty who’s made more than 160 films, Borgnine has been one of our great unsung character actors for more than half a century. The SAG Awards was nothing to cheer about, but the heartfelt, long-overdue standing ovation for Borgnine was something any movie fan could applaud.

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: 2011 Oscar Nominations by Alan Appel

2011-01-25T21:57:00.000-08:00

The first gasp from the over-caffeinated audience at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills came shortly after 5:40 AM (Pacific Time) with the very first announcement in the 2011 Oscar nominations. Javier Bardem, a supporting-actor winner a few years back for No Country for Old Men, received a Best Actor nod for Biutiful. Be honest now, who saw that coming? How many of you, in fact, have even SEEN this art-house film? A surprise like this meant two things: good news for the Bardem entourage, but disappointment for two other nomination-worthy actors who were pushed aside—in this case Ryan Gosling for Blue Valentine and Mark Wahlberg for The Fighter.

The Wahlberg omission is interesting. Let me see if I understand this: The Fighter gets nominations for Best Picture, Director (David O. Russell), Supporting Actor (Christian Bale), Supporting Actress (Amy Adams and Melissa Leo), Film Editing and Original Screenplay, but Wahlberg, giving the performance of his career in this gritty boxing drama, is shunted aside (though he is a producer of the film)?

His wasn’t the only snub. The box-office hit Inception gets a Best Picture nomination, but it is primarily the vision of one of Hollywood’s most boldly imaginative directors, Christopher Nolan, yet he is overlooked. Crazy. And what of The Social Network, which received eight nominations? Jesse Eisenberg did score a Best Actor nomination, but some (including myself) feel two things about this film. 1) It is wildly overrated and 2) The best performance of the film was given by Andrew Garfield, who was considered a shoo-in for a supporting nod—and didn’t get one.

Here’s the good news in the Supporting Actor category: the great Mark Ruffalo did indeed score his first nomination for The Kids Are All Right, though probably hasn’t a shot in hell of winning. Bale and Geoffrey Rush (The King’s Speech) are the favorites. Another highly touted contender was Mila Kunis for Black Swan in the Supporting Actress category. She didn’t get a nomination, and that now calls into question whether her costar in the film, Natalie Portman, is really such a lock-solid sure thing for winning the Best Actress prize. Momentum does seem to be building for two of her rivals, Annette Bening (The Kids Are All Right) and Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine). The good news in the Supporting Actress grouping is that young Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) received a nomination; the bad news is that Julianne Moore (The Kids Are All Right) didn’t.

Steinfeld’s nomination was one of 10 for True Grit, proving once again that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which shut it out completely at the Golden Globes, is something of a joke. Jeff Bridges, who won last year for Crazy Heart, is nominated again for the Rooster Cogburn role that won John Wayne the Best Actor Oscar in 1969, and also well deserved are the directing and writing nominations for Joel and Ethan Coen. James Franco, a co-host of the Oscar ceremony this year with Anne Hathaway) also received a Best Actor nomination, for 127 Hours.
The nominations champ, however, and what I’ve long contended is the film of the year, is The King’s Speech, with 12 nods. Nothing is ever certain in these Oscar derbies, but if Colin Firth doesn’t win Best Actor on Feb. 27, there will be even louder gasps (and, I would suggest, calls for a vote recount). Director Tom Hooper probably hasn’t much of a chance against The Social Network’s David Fincher, but The King’s Speech, now with a dozen nominations in the bank, has a legitimate shot at Best Picture.

Finally, might this at long last be the year when an animated film—in this case, Toy Story 3--wins Best Picture? Probably not, and not so long as the Academy continues to have an animated film competing against itself. Can someone please explain to me the point of having an Animated Feature Film Oscar (where Toy Story 3 is competing against How to Train Your Dragon and The Illusionist), with the same film showing up in two best-picture categories?

Originally appeared: http://technorati.com/entertainment/film/article/oscar-emmy-watch-musings-misgivings-2011/#ixzz1C7Lbm8AF

Please see: http://namedropblog.blogspot.com, Alan Appel's blog on entertainment.

Predictions- Oscars Nominations Tuesday January 25

2011-01-22T17:59:00.000-08:00

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Predicting the Oscar Nominations

In the wake of all the furious yapping and debate over Ricky Gervais’s performance last Sunday as Golden Globe Awards host—was he hilariously on the edge or hopelessly off the wall?—you’ll understand if few in Hollywood, a week later, still care a lick about that particular tempest. Or, for that matter, if they even remember who the night’s winners were. For Tinseltown’s movers and shakers, there are greater anxieties on the immediate horizon. Studio executives and stars, along with their agents, publicists, accountants and herbal therapists, can now officially break out the bottles of Maalox and steady their nerves awaiting the announcement of 2010 Oscar nominations on Tuesday morning, Jan. 25.
For the nominees, of course, it’s a big career boost followed by all the attendant press hoopla and interviews in which most utter—unconvincingly, to be sure--the even bigger lie: “It’s an honor enough just to be nominated.” Well, yes, it is an honor of sorts—just not enough of one to make up for not actually winning the big prize. And for those depressed souls shut out of a nomination, it’s a case of wait until next year—maybe. Award-worthy parts don’t come along often, and has been noted in this column before, even all-time greats such as Edward G. Robinson and Fred MacMurray went an entire career without a single acting nomination. So if, for example, the oddly underrated Mark Ruffalo, who’s never really given a bad performance in a solid career, misses out on his first nomination for The Kids Are All Right, who knows when, if ever, his next opportunity will come.
That being said, and having brewed the requisite tea leaves, here is how I see the six major categories shaping up:

BEST ACTOR
1. Colin Firth ,The King’s Speech
2. James Franco ,127 Hours
3. Mark Wahlberg , The Fighter
4. Jeff Bridges , True Grit
5. Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine
*But watch out for: Robert Duvall, an Academy favorite, for Get Low. And is it really possible that Jesse Eisenberg will NOT be nominated for The Social Network? Being part of an ensemble film sometimes costs. There’s invariably one out-of-nowhere Indie that grabs major nominations—I’m thinking this year it’s Blue Valentine and that it propels Gosling. It does appear, however, that everyone but Firth is playing for second place. If there’s a sure thing come Oscar night (Feb. 27), it’s him.

BEST ACTRESS
1. Natalie Portman, Black Swan
2. Annette Bening , The Kids Are All Right
3. Michelle Williams , Blue Valentine
4. Jennifer Lawrence , Winter’s Bone
5. Julianne Moore , The Kids Are All Right
*But watch out for: Moore showing up in the supporting-actress category, with her spot here taken by Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole. This shapes up as a two-woman race between Portman and Bening.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
1. Christian Bale, The Fighter
2. Geoffrey Rush, The King’s Speech
3. Jeremy Renner, The Town
4. Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
5. Andrew Garfield, The Social Network
*But watch out for: a sentimental nod to the late Peter Postlethwaite for The Town, or, if you like equally long shots, Guy Pearce for The King’s Speech or Matt Damon for True Grit. Maybe the single most competitive category—Bale’s the slight favorite, but they all have a legitimate shot.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
1. Melissa Leo, The Fighter
2. Helena Bonham Carter, The King’s Speech
3. Amy Adams, The Fighter
4. Mila Kunis, Black Swan
5. Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
*But watch out for: whether Julianne Moore does indeed land in this category and push out the young Steinfeld. Leo gave the performance of her career and is the one to beat.

BEST PICTURE (10 nominations)
1. The King’s Speech
2. The Social Network
3. The Fighter
4. Inception
5. Black Swan
6. The Town
7. The Kids Are All Right
8. Toy Story 3
9. Blue Valentine
10. True Grit

BEST DIRECTOR
1. David Fincher, The Social Network
2. Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech
3. David O. Russell, The Fighter
4. Joel & Ethan Coen, True Grit
5. Christopher Nolan, Inception
*But watch out for: Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan. Darker horses: Ben Affleck for The Town, and Lisa Cholodenko for The Kids Are All Right

OSCAR AND EMMY WATCH: MUSINGS & MISGIVINGS:Golden Globes Debacle

2011-01-17T11:56:00.000-08:00

Well, we know this much at least—if last night’s Golden Globes telecast was a train wreck, Ricky Gervais was the engineer.

There’s bawdy and then there’s bad. Not that overlong, self-inflated telecasts like the Golden Globe Awards can’t occasionally use a dash or two of bad taste, nastiness and even outright offensiveness (as opposed to the sometimes blinding garishness of, say, the Oscar ceremonies). But, c’mon now, stale, almost uniformly unfunny, way-past-their-expiration-date and at times cringingly unkind jokes about Charlie Sheen, “gay Scientologists,” the “airbrushed” cast of Sex and the City (“girls, we know how old you are. I saw one of you in an episode of Bonanza), Hugh Hefner as “the walking dead,” and even Robert Downey Jr.’s past legal and drug troubles are supposed to pass for entertainment? “Hugely mean-spirited” is how Downey described the proceedings at one point, and he had a point.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association deserves what it gets, and if Gervais wants to kid about corruption and bribes being the only explanation for the nominations for The Tourist, who’s to say he’s wrong. That’s called an easy target, and Gervais clearly had no intention of playing it safe, which is entirely fine. Shows like this need unscripted, on-the-edge spontaneity and unpredictability. The problem wasn’t the talented Gervais; it was his tone-deaf material. And why exactly he seemed to disappear for about an hour midway during the show (prompting Twitter jibes that he may have been either a) drunk or b) fired mid-broadcast) is a question that no one seems able to answer. “I want to do either such a bad job I’m not invited back,” Gervais earlier told the Chicago Sun-Times, “or such a good job that I don’t want to do it again.” Choose choice one.

If Gervais’s stand-up left much to be desired, what then to make of Robert De Niro’s odd speech accepting (from Matt Damon; what, Martin Scorcese couldn’t fly in from London for the event?) the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement. Apparently channeling his inner Rupert Pupkin from The King of Comedy, De Niro, struggling with the cue cards, had his own ideas about being funny. “I’m sorry more members of the foreign press aren’t with us tonight, but many were deported right before the show along with most of the waiters. And Javier Bardem.” Leave it to the Golden Globes—suddenly Robert De Niro is Jim Carrey.

As to the other awards, there were hardly any major surprises, though the prizes for Al Pacino (You Don’t Know Jack) and Claire Danes (Temple Grandin) for best performances in a TV movie or miniseries were almost afterthoughts inasmuch as both won Emmys for their roles six months ago. What the Golden Globe movie winners foreshadow in terms of Oscar-nomination projections seem clear: The Social Network is the Best Picture to beat (along with its director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin); Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) and Natalie Portman (Black Swan) are heavy favorites in the lead actor categories; and The Fighter, gaining momentum by the week, has a strong pair of supporting-actor contenders in Melissa Leo and Christian Bale. Best Oscar dark horse: The Kids Are All Right and Annette Bening, both Golden Globe winners.

Finally, if the telecast had a single grace note and emotional high point, it was the appearance of Michael Douglas to announce the final award. “There’s just got be an easier way to get a standing ovation,” said Douglas, and for once, the applause and cheers from the audience seemed heartfelt and genuine.

Read more: http://technorati.com/blogging/article/oscar-and-emmy-watch-musings-misgivings1/#ixzz1BK8RefZ9

Oscar&Emmy Musings: Manage the Odds on The Golden Globes

2011-01-16T07:33:00.000-08:00

We will certainly be watching NBC’s telecast of the Golden Globes on Sunday, Jan. 16, and wondering if the most accurate predictions of this glitzy 68th annual event may be coming from . . . bookmakers? Yes, in a culture where we can seemingly bet on anything, the Vegas odds-makers have established clear Golden Globe favorites, and where money is involved, attention must be paid. Let’s break out the seven major movie categories:

Best Actor/Drama: Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) is their 1-4 overwhelming top choice, and nowhere here (or in the Oscars, rest assured) is there a surer thing.

Best Actor/Comedy or Musical: Johnny Depp (for Alice in Wonderland; he’s also nominated for The Tourist) is the 3-2 favorite in a very weak field, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a 7-2 long-shot like Kevin Spacey (Casino Jack), a two-time Oscar winner and a fave with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, wins the prize and rides it to another Oscar nomination.http://static.technorati.com/11/01/11/24881/NATALIE-PORTMAN-BLACK-SWAN.jpg

Best Actress/Drama: No suspense here. Natalie Portman (Black Swan) is the 1-3 choice, and I’m thinking that three of the nominees here—Portman, Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine) and Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole) have Oscar nominations in their future.

Best Actress/Comedy or Musical: Annette Bening (The Kids Are All Right) is the strong 1-3 top selection, and, along with Portman, may be an Oscar favorite. Her costar in the film, Julianne Moore, is also a nominee, but more likely to get a Supporting Actress nod for the Oscars.

Best Picture/Drama: The Social Network is the 3-2 favorite, but I’m picking an upset here, the 3-2 second choice, The King’s Speech. Expect all five nominees in this category to get five of the 10 Oscar Best Picture nominations, these two, as well as The Fighter, Inception and Black Swan.

Best Picture/Comedy or Musical: An easy win for future Oscar nominee, The Kids Are All Right.

Best Director: David Fincher (The Social Network) has already won numerous prizes, including those from New York and Los Angeles Film Critics, and this past week earned a Directors Guild of America nod. He’s the 1-3 man to beat here, but Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech), another DGA nominee, is a strong second choice.

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Holiday Presents

2011-01-10T20:06:00.000-08:00

I’m as list-addicted as the next guy, but rather than yet another of those ubiquitous best-of-2010 compilations, and in the spirit of holiday giving, we’ll instead reflect in this last column of the year on two particular video gifts--one a repeat of a September conversation with a television icon, the other a barely remembered movie from 1937 without a single star--that have much to say about, in the first instance, a celebration of life, and in the second, the dissolution of family ties. Both telecasts may have escaped your attention but shouldn’t have. See them and they will stay with you. And maybe change you.

The TV show was CNN’s Christmas Week repeat of a conversation between its Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and actor Michael J. Fox . It’s a remarkable, life-affirming one-on-one broadcast in which Fox talks with considerable clarity, courage, grace, optimism and even humor about his coping with, and work on behalf of, Parkinson’s disease, which he’s had for 19 years.

“It’s the gift that keeps on taking,” he says, “but it is a gift because it’s opened me up to a more compassionate, curious, risk-taking person. I wouldn’t call the [Parkinson’s] foundation my magnum opus, but it’s definitely the most important thing I have ever done or will probably do in my life.” What do doctors know and not know about the disease? What medications work—and for how long? What of stem cell research? And brain surgery? Fox is inspiring and has a lot to say and to teach us about helping others, and appreciating even in the most trying circumstances, what we have.

The “forgotten” classic that TCM showed Christmas Eve (and is also now available on DVD) was 1937’s Make Way for Tomorrow. Leo McCarey won the first of his two directing Oscars for The Awful Truth (the second came in 1944 for Going My Way), but even he acknowledged that Make Way for Tomorrow is the superior film and perhaps the best thing he ever did. Few saw the film then and not many know of it today for two simple reasons: no stars and its downbeat subject matter--old age. “My God,” Orson Welles told interviewer Peter Bogdanovich. “That is the saddest movie I have ever seen.” You may feel the same way.

The story deals with a devoted elderly couple, Lucy and Barkley Cooper (brilliantly portrayed by two of Hollywood’s all-time character actors, Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore), who lose their house to a bank foreclosure. None of their five children who have left the nest can take in both of them, so each parent reluctantly goes to live, hundreds of miles apart, with a different child. What follows is an alternately disturbing and tender tale of a long, loving marriage shattered by times that are hard and grown children, even some well-meaning ones, who are unable to square their parents’ needs with their own. As the story unfolds there are no false sentiments or facile judgments; no one is necessarily to blame.

What happens to the Coopers—suddenly losing not only one another and then, as time passes, shreds of their dignity and control of their own destiny--seems both painful and inevitable. The timeless role-reversal message it imparts about how to truly honor our mother and father when their independence is gone and they’ve become our dependents is as emotionally relevant and wrenching today as it was more than 70 years ago. During the climactic scene on a railway platform, it will be difficult for you to not shed a tear.

And on that cheerful note, a happy New Year to all!

Read more: http://technorati.com/blogging/article/oscar-emmy-watch-musings-misgivings-holiday/page-2/#ixzz1AhE22G2t

OSCAR AND EMMY WATCH: MUSINGS & MISGIVINGS--Make Em Laugh!

2011-01-10T20:02:00.000-08:00

It’s a time for holiday cheer, so I figured I would get in the mood by canoodling around the house humming two of the Golden Globe-nominated songs from that magnum opus Burlesque, “Bound to You” and “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me,” until I remembered, who the hell has ever HEARD of these songs much less knows how to sing them?
No, let’s try another tack—all the laugh-out-loud comedies of 2010 that have given us such a rollicking time and provided much needed belly laughs,

Maybe if I recall the good times we all had at the screen hilarity that lightened our heavy loads, that would definitely put me in a more convivial frame of mind. Until, I thought, has there really BEEN a single comedy this past year that has been any good? Not really, even when a Hollywood heavyweight like James L. Brooks—the guy, after all, who gave us Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets-- produces such a tepid Reese Witherspoon -Paul Rudd-Owen Wilson-Jack Nicholson vehicle like How Do You Know, we know it’s been a tough year.

Funny, but James L. Brooks will likely get another pass, but when an enduring master like Woody Allen produces genuinely funny, if inconsequential, films like, say, Hollywood Endings or Whatever Works, he’s harpooned again for producing “just” another mainstream comedy, and not another masterpiece like Annie Hall, Manhattan or Hannah and Her Sisters. The double standard is alive and well in Hollywood and simply making audiences laugh is apparently no longer enough.

But it was certainly enough for two wonderful comic artists who recently died—actor Leslie Nielsen and writer-director Blake Edwards . Nielsen, a sturdy, nondescript movies and television leading man of the 1950s and ‘60s, reinvented himself as a brilliant, deadpan farceur with 1980s’s Airplane! a relentless exercise in sight gags, puns, non sequitors and manifest foolishness. As many of us do, Allen was among those who copped to having a soft spot for Airplane! And Nielsen surely--whether or not you call him “Shirley”—helped showcase this new genre spoofing disaster, cop and other films.

One of the better Mel Brooks comedies, 1981’s History of the World: Part I, has a delicious vignette on the French Revolution, complete with memorable lines (“don’t get saucy with me, Bearnaise!” and, of course, “it’s good to be the King”). You’ve got to hand it to those down trodden late-18th-century French; they knew how to settle a score with the aristocracy. Now, during these profoundly hard economic times, when avaricious corporate/financial interests and dunderhead politicians are turning millions of hurting middle-class families into the new peasant class, I suppose we should be grateful that no one today is storming the Capitol.
But I do wonder: do they still have guillotines?

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Make 'Em Laugh!

2010-12-25T14:37:00.000-08:00

It’s a time for holiday cheer, so I figured I would get in the mood by canoodling around the house humming two of the Golden Globe-nominated songs from that magnum opus Burlesque, “Bound to You” and “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me,” until I remembered, who the hell has ever HEARD of these songs much less knows how to sing them?
No, let’s try another tack—all the laugh-out-loud comedies of 2010 that have given us such a rollicking time and provided much needed belly laughs, Maybe if I recall the good times we all had at the screen hilarity that lightened our heavy loads, that would definitely put me in a more convivial frame of mind. Until, I thought, has there really BEEN a single comedy this past year that has been any good? Not really, even when a Hollywood heavyweight like James L. Brooks—the guy, after all, who gave us Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets-- produces such a tepid Reese Witherspoon -Paul Rudd-Owen Wilson-Jack Nicholson vehicle like How Do You Know, we know it’s been a tough year.

Funny, but James L. Brooks will likely get another pass, but when an enduring master like Woody Allen produces genuinely funny, if inconsequential, films like, say, Hollywood Endings or Whatever Works, he’s harpooned again for producing “just” another mainstream comedy, and not another masterpiece like Annie Hall, Manhattan or Hannah and Her Sisters. The double standard is alive and well in Hollywood and simply making audiences laugh is apparently no longer enough.

But it was certainly enough for two wonderful comic artists who recently died—actor Leslie Nielsen and writer-director Blake Edwards . Nielsen, a sturdy, nondescript movies and television leading man of the 1950s and ‘60s, reinvented himself as a brilliant, deadpan farceur with 1980s’s Airplane! a relentless exercise in sight gags, puns, non sequiturs and manifest foolishness. As many of us do, Allen was among those who copped to having a soft spot for Airplane! And Nielsen surely--whether or not you call him “Shirley”—helped showcase this new genre spoofing disaster, cop and other films.

And Edwards (a recipient of an honorary Oscar in 2004), who helped make his name with such classics as Breakfast at Tiffanys, Days of Wine and Roses, 10 and Victor/Victoria, left behind perhaps a more indelible—or at least funnier—mark as the creative force behind the Peter Sellers Pink Panther films.

One of the better Mel Brooks comedies, 1981’s History of the World: Part I, has a delicious vignette on the French Revolution, complete with memorable lines (“don’t get saucy with me, Bearnaise!” and, of course, “it’s good to be the King”). You’ve got to hand it to those down trodden late-18th-century French; they knew how to settle a score with the aristocracy. Now, during these profoundly hard economic times, when avaricious corporate/financial interests and dunderhead politicians are turning millions of hurting middle-class families into the new peasant class, I suppose we should be grateful that no one today is storming the Capitol.

But I do wonder: do they still have guillotines?

Oscar & Emmy Musings: Golden Globe Nominations on the Radar

2010-12-17T15:12:00.000-08:00

Post-mortems on the recent announcement of the Golden Globe nominations for movies and television were predictably less about the heavy favorites that predictably got much of the love (The King's Speech, the nominee leader with 7, followed by The Social Network and The Fighter with 6 each), then several critical darlings that got royally screwed. Foremost among them are the Coen Brothers’ expansive remake of True Grit, which was shut out; and Ben Affleck’s gritty bank-robbery drama The Town, which scored but a single nomination (Jeremy Renner’s supporting turn).
And then, of course, came the howlers—out-of-left-field nominations for performances and films that seem to make no sense whatsoever, until you remember that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, an assemblage of less than 100 entertainment journalists and freelancers, is not taken all that seriously. And it never will be when it produces multiple nominations for the likes of pedestrian works such as The Tourist and Burlesque. As predictors for eventual Oscar nominees and winners, the Golden Globes has a mixed record—its Best Picture last year, for example, was Avatar, while the Oscars chose The Hurt Locker), but what Globes recognition does yield is enormous promotional value for print and broadcast Oscar campaigns. As for the television selections—for shame HFPA for overlooking Blue Bloods—in terms of influencing the Emmys, less so.
If there is one odds-on, overwhelming Oscar favorite this year, it is Colin Firth as Best Actor for The King’s Speech. It is a stunning, richly textured and emotionally charged performance (as England’s future King George VI, suffering from a severe stammering problem) in a handsomely mounted, crowd-pleasing film that doesn’t leave many dry eyes in the house. No less effective is Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue, the unorthodox Australian therapist who helps the monarch.
Rush (a previous Best Actor winner for Shine!) will almost certainly get a Supporting Actor nomination, and that will beg the question for many as to why exactly Rush, who shares above-the-title screen credit with Firth and seems to have as much screen time as him, shouldn’t be nominated in a lead rather than supporting category. But then we know the answer, don’t we? The producers won’t want to split the vote.

And that, in turn, may likely hurt the nomination chances of a true supporting male performance in The King’s Speech that has not gotten nearly enough attention. Guy Pearce, an always interesting and occasionally eccentric actor with those wonderful John Malkovich-like dramatic tics, gives one of his most complex and understated performances as King Edward VIII, whose affair with Baltimore divorcee Wallis Simpson scandalizes the royal family and leads him ultimately to abdicate the throne for “The woman I love.”
When you get right down to it, actual performance time in a film hardly seems to matter one way or another. Several supporting Oscar winners triumphed despite being on screen in their films less than 10 minutes (Anthony Quinn in Lust for Life, Beatrice Straight in Network and Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love), so if Rush doesn’t mind having his meaty role—one that could well carry its own film, say, The King’s Speech Therapist—relegated to a supporting category, it probably makes strategic sense. Because there’s no way he—or anyone else—is beating Firth.

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Hit and Myth

2010-12-17T15:10:00.001-08:00

In today’s lesson, biding our time while the year-end movie-critic awards begin to roll in — expect ample recognition for The Social Network and not enough for The Town -- we’ll try and dispel some myths about myths surrounding the Emmys and the Oscars.
First we’ll concentrate on the Emmys, some of whose officials, during my years at TV Guide Magazine, were relentlessly pushing the idea that their prizes reflected what industry professionals and audience members already knew, that today’s television fare — in its sheer diversity (a fractionalized programming universe with hundreds of channels will do that), graphic treatment of even the rawest subject matter (thanks to premium cable, anything goes, and who says that’s such a good thing) and pure entertainment value — constitutes the medium’s real golden age. “What is it with this nostalgic haze,” a CBS executive asked me at one Emmy ceremony in the ‘90s, “lamenting the shows of the ‘50s and ‘60s as if they were truly superior to today’s programs?” The so-called 1950s-‘60s golden age of television, went the argument, is a myth.
But I wonder if that itself is a myth, and whenever I took up the golden-age-then-or-now question (a generational one, I grant you, relevant only to viewers of a certain age) with a veteran actor whose work spanned many decades, as I once did with Jackie Gleason and Jack Klugman , the conversation generally pivoted on two words: live television. There were giants indeed among the writers and directors working in live TV during the ‘50s — Chayefsky, Mosel, Foote, Serling, Mandel, Rose, Cook, Mann, Hill, Frankenheimer, Lumet, Pollack, Schaffner and Nelson among them. “There will never be another time like that,” said a wistful Klugman at a press tour event in Los Angeles. Like many of his contemporaries such as Jack Lemmon and Charlton Heston, Klugman got his start and honed his craft doing countless live TV anthologies, including Playhouse 90, in the ‘50s. Live television was America’s national theater.
So where are the new, trend-setting writers and directors who might energize the medium today? There are a handful of true innovators (J.J. Abrams and Matthew Weiner among them), but so many more toil invisibly in a steady churn of dramas and comedies that come, go and register with few.
That is, if they can find a scripted show, at least on network television. Scripted shows once dominated the medium and there was also a time in the ‘70s and ‘80s when the long-form miniseries and a full slate of made-for-TV movies flourished and gave next-generation artists like Steven Spielberg a chance to grow. Now TV thrives as a niche-driven, specialized-content-for-every-conceivable-taste landscape populated with an ungodly number of reality series (filling one-quarter of network line ups according to one estimate), a few of them — such as the reigning Emmy reality winner Top Chef, Amazing Race (which won the prize the preceding seven years in a row) American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and Project Runway -- earning loyal followings.

Once viewers watched TV stars and now they want to be them. Reality shows are hardly new (Candid Camera, Divorce Court, Queen for a Day and You Asked For It were early favorites); the problem today is their unchecked proliferation — seriously, how many of us ever thought that any reality show could call itself The Biggest Loser? And be a hit. Now we have Skating with the Stars. What next -- Sleeping with the Stars? After The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, how about something with a Yiddish flavor, The Balabusta. Network honchos say they want to celebrate the diverse passions of real, everyday people, young and old; their pluck, perseverance, resilience, ambitions and talents. Of course, what they actually celebrate is the bottom line — cheap programming. Viewers are the biggest loser.
Scripted dramas and sitcoms may be doing a slow vanishing act, but here’s the good news: we still have Turner Classic Movies (the best damned channel in the universe) and lots and lots of sports. And recent times have given us the likes of The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Nurse Jackie, Boardwalk Empire, Dexter and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Cable, premium and basis, has become what network television once was. Only now we’re paying for it.
If network television, following the era of live television, was “a vast wasteland,” then what is it now? Not more dynamic or original, for sure, not in these crushing, impossible-to-fill 24/7 programming days. But maybe the long-ago “golden age” of fewer channels and more iconic talent has just burnished our memories. Holding a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Gleason, in Manhattan in the early ‘80s to promote a TV movie with Art Carney titled “Izzy & Moe,” laughed that familiar raspy laugh at the notion that he, The Honeymooners or any other beloved show or performer in television’s formative years were part of a golden age. “The truth, pal,” he said, is that “they were part of OUR, not a, golden age.”

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Rookie Hosts for PR Value

2010-12-17T15:08:00.000-08:00

“I see a lot of new faces, especially on the old faces”—host Johnny Carson scanning the audience at the Oscars
So now that they’re named two new faces to host the 83nd Academy Awards telecast—Anne Hathaway and James Franco —the pairing has been announced as one that, say the producers, “personifies the next generation of Hollywood icons.” Their selection is clearly designed to serve and attract a younger viewing audience, and that’s all well and good, but can we please not liken these talented and pleasant young actors to icons. Icons are always stars, but not all stars are—or ever will be--icons. It’s about indelible personality as much as artistry, awards or longevity.
True icons, the for-all-time legendary faces that would be carved on Hollywood’s Rushmore, are—from the sound era--the likes of Grant and Gable and Davis and Garbo and Stanwyck and Crawford and Fonda (the elder) and Cooper and Garland and Rooney and Stewart and Astaire and Bogart and Cagney and Welles and both Hepburns and Peck and Wayne and Douglas (the elder) and Lancaster and Tracy and Monroe and Holden and Brando and Taylor and Dean and Newman and Redford and O’Toole and Eastwood and Streep and Pacino and Poitier and Streisand and Nicholson and De Niro and Freeman.

And then there’s the class of cross-generation possible-icons-in-waiting (depending on your own particular grading curve), which might include a select few from among Roberts and Hanks and Keaton and Beatty and Duvall and Bridges and De Caprio and Damon and Washington and Clooney and Cruise and Pitt and Depp. Our young hosts are a long way from either group, but it does invite the question as to whether the right host, any host, solo or in partnership, can elevate the Oscar from a tedious, self-congratulatory affair with way too much industry business to conduct (and awkward acceptance speeches to endure) into a bona fide entertainment showcase that does the movie business proud.

I have my doubts, but every circus does need an affable ringmaster and even if you can’t get the likes of a modern-day Will Rogers (the host in 1934), we would benefit from one with a comedic bent who can deliver a sharp monologue and has the ability to toss out an ad-lib or two—18-time host Bob Hope (“How about the pictures this year? Sex, persecution, adultery, cannibalism—we’ll get those kids away from TV sets yet”) and eight-time MC Billy Crystal (“a billion people are watching tonight, except for Linda Tripp—who’s taping it”) having set the standard.

If we fess up to the fact that the primary reason we once liked watching the Oscar telecast—to see old-style Hollywood glamor and real icons (such as those listed above) is now as relevant as black and white movies, then we can admit to ourselves that the present-day ceremonies, say beginning with those in the 1980s, are basically about six things: 1. The office Oscar pool. 2. The red-carpet pre-show in which nominees would have us believe (we don’t) that “it’s honor enough just to be nominated.” 3. The gowns. 4. The hair styles. 5. Wondering who's had plastic surgery. 6. The shots of the major-category nominees in the audience, their faces impassive and seemingly frozen, and our wondering whether any of them might visibly express what they really feel—abject mortification?--when their names are not announced as a winner.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were a tandem with good chemistry last year (Martin: “There’s that damn Helen Mirren.” Baldwin: “That’s Dame Helen Mirren”), but you can’t fault the producers for going young this time. So let’s give the kids a chance—maybe Hathaway and Franco, with good material and stage presence, are the freshness the show needs, plus if both score Oscar nominations—Franco is the better bet for a Best Actor nod for 127 Hours and Hathaway less of a sure thing for Love and Other Drugs--well, it would give the show a little more juice. And even if they don’t work out, remember, even disappointing one-time hosts can leave us with something memorable. In David Letterman’s case, in 1995, four words that live in Oscar infamy: “Oprah, Uma. Uma, Oprah.”

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OSCAR AND EMMY WATCH: MUSINGS & MISGIVINGS— Snub Hub

2010-12-17T15:06:00.000-08:00

“What art? What science?”—D.W. Griffith

In the annals of prizedom, there have been, of course, momentous screw-ups. After all, the Oscars and Emmys wouldn’t be much fun without them. I’m not talking your traditionally nutty, are they-KIDDING? brand of head-scratchers—say the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ unfortunate and occasional habit of bestowing Best Director statuettes on favored actors in their membership, two particularly egregious examples being Robert Redford’s 1980 win for Ordinary People (beating out Martin Scorsese or Raging Bull) and Kevin Costner’s a decade later for Dances with Wolves (burning Scorsese again, this time for GoodFellas)—but rather those of the apocalyptically mindless variety that forever stains the Oscars’ credibility, rooted perhaps in a bias against East Coast filmmakers and so-called “popcorn entertainments,” or, as was the case for example in the 1980s, in a bias FOR politically correct epics.

Looking back, it’s hard to discern exactly how voters justified the director’s 1982 win for Richard Attenborough (another actor) for the fairly unwatchable Gandhi over Steven Spielberg —who had previously been denied winning for Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Raiders of the Lost Ark—for the much loved (by critics and audiences alike) E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Spielberg would, in 1985, become the focal point of Oscars’ most celebrated snub ever when The Color Purple received 11 nominations and he, its director, was shut out. OMISSION IMPOSSIBLE ran one headline, and the Academy, in a clear demonstration of brazen envy from those in its ranks, seemed to again be punishing him for possessing, at so young an age, prodigious talent and from having honed it in--horrors!--television. The Color Purple did not receive a single win.

Being a wunderkind in Hollywood, therefore, isn’t necessarily wonderful; it can inspire craven pettiness (see also: Orson Welles). In 1986, the Academy gave Spielberg the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award (which is a producer's award, the Academy thinking perhaps that, well, an award is an award is an award). His competitive Oscars as director would come in the 1990s, when Spielberg was segueing from Young Turk into Old Guard, for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.

Back to Scorsese. The classics for which HE should have won Best Director come to mind because both starred his favorite actor, Robert De Niro, who, as it happens, will at long last be receiving the Cecil B. De Mille Award for lifetime contributions at the 68th Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 16 (Scorsese was so honored at last year’s ceremony). Presumably the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will get around to Woody Allen--if he'd bother to actually show up and accept the award--or Michael Caine or Meryl Streep before they're 90, and what's with the fact that only one minority, Sidney Poitier in 1982, has gotten the DeMille; Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones are long overdue. For De Niro, I suppose, it's better late than never and at this stage of his distinguished career, he does seem today to be coasting in a series of harmless “Focker” and “Analyze” comedies (with sequels), threatening to become the next Fred MacMurray (himself a great star with a long, ever-evolving career who, you should know, never received a single competitive nomination. But then again, neither did Edward G. Robinson. Nor Donald Sutherland. Nor Spike Lee (at least, not as director). Nor Mia Farrow. Nor Jerry Lewis. (The Emmys has its own share of shameful oversights—like the Great One himself, Jackie Gleason, being a non-winner—and we’ll get around to them in a later column.)

The various newspaper critics awards will start rolling in soon, and the Golden Globe nominations will be announced on Tuesday, Dec. 14. Sometimes they’re a good predictor of Oscars, sometimes not. But for sure, it’s then that Oscar campaigning seriously begins and we draw closer to wondering about the next great snubs.

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Early Award Favorites

2010-11-27T16:52:00.000-08:00

By Alan Appel
Television ratings were once HUGE, but audience interest for Oscar broadcasts in recent years does seem to be plummeting faster than Harrison Ford’s career. Maybe if more sophisticated, crowd-pleasing films were nominated, and maybe if the Academy could settle on a quick-witted, continuing-year-to-year host (come home, Billy Crystal) , and maybe if telecasts didn’t have painfully long running times to accommodate lame performance segments and lamer acceptance speeches for even the minor awards, there would be hope. I’m not holding my breath that this year’s 83rd ceremony, slated for Feb. 27 at the Kodak Theater, will be an appreciably livelier or better-paced affair.
On another gloomy front, there’s yet another film adaptation of The Great Gatsby in the works, this one to star Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan and directed by Baz Luhrmann. Listen up, old sports: some Great American Novels simply defy adaptation; five previous versions didn’t work, and if Francis Ford Coppola’s script couldn’t save the Robert Redford-Mia Farrow Gatsby from 1974, then just give it up. Another remake in production, however, does have intriguing possibilities—Colin Firth in a big-screen version of John LeCarre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which got a spectacular six-part adaptation back in 1979 on PBS’s Great Performances franchise.

When this year’s nominations are announced on Jan. 25, it may certify that this may, in fact, be Firth’s year; he’s pretty much a sure thing to nail a Best Actor nomination (and be the odds-on favorite to win) as England’s George VI for The King’s Speech, a “payback award” for the Oscar he might have won last year for A Single Man if his competition didn’t happen to be Jeff Bridges, a long-overdue winner (after four previous nominations) for Crazy Heart—and, look out, Colin, the same potential rival being talked up again for the Coen Brothers’ remake of True Grit. The “reverse payback” victim for The King’s Speech could be Firth’s costar Geoffrey Rush, playing the speech therapist helping the monarch deal with a debilitating stuttering problem. Rush will likely get a Supporting Actor nod, but voters who remember him winning the Best Actor prize back in 1997 for Shine (and somehow beating Ralph Fiennes for The English Patient) might be inclined to say, not this time. If you want another solid “payback” Supporting Actor bet, take Jeremy Renner —great in The Hurt Locker last year but another loser to Bridges—for The Town.
Finally, back to DiCaprio and what to forecast for Inception? Both a critical and box-office success, it will surely nail one of the 10 Best Picture nominations, and probably recognition for DiCaprio and director Christopher Nolan. But do many in the Academy actually understand the film? Some more early questions—will The Social Network overwhelm all in its path (let’s hope not); will Annette Bening and Julianne Moore —two more “payback”-worthy candidates--split the Best Actress vote for The Kids Are All Right and allow another (we’re thinking of you, Natalie Portman, for Black Swan) to grab the prize?; and, as long as small, art-house indies seem to be all the rage, will someone, please, invest a marketing buck or two for Andy Garcia’s City Island?
Next week; history was made last year when Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director. Now, will animation at long last break through and get the big prize, for Toy Story 3?

Reverse Payback Phenomena of The Best Picture Oscar Win

2010-11-27T16:50:00.000-08:00

By Alan Appel
Sometimes, more isn’t actually less; it’s effectively more . . . and better. That came to mind as I watched HBO’s telecast of Avatar. James Cameron’s
boldly imaginative and technically eye-popping fusion of sci-fi adventure and ecological fable set on the planet Pandora is—even in a televised non-3D format—an epic for the ages.
Yes, it won three second-tier Oscars (for art direction, cinematography and visual effects) and has become the highest grossing movie of all time (presently at $760 million, and that’s only domestic, and counting), but it was not last year’s Best Picture. Nor was Cameron the Best Director. Those honors went to The Hurt Locker and its gifted director Kathryn Bigelow (Cameron’s ex-wife). That movie is the lowest grossing Best Picture of all time.
Which demonstrates, once again, that audience approval, even on a globally grand scale, sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t in forecasting the Oscar for Best Picture. Or maybe the Academy just doesn’t get sci-fi films. I mean, we all love Annie Hall, but beating out Star Wars in 1977?
What the critical consensus is for the Most Important Picture can be a better barometer. Here, story and cast do count, but a weighty message—and the artfully visceral way it’s delivered—can seal the deal. And make no mistake, The Hurt Locker, an almost unbearably intense chronicle of a U.S. Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team in Iraq—how they defuse devices, why they do it and, if they survive, how it leaves them—is an important piece of work. More meaningful, for sure, but in what impressively ambitious technical or narrative sense was it more Oscar-worthy than Avatar?
And that’s the odd, totally unpredictable (and irritating) thing about the Oscars and what exactly “Best” means. Cameron gets jobbed last year, yet won the big prize more than a decade ago for Titanic, a soggy romance with a pair of dream boats in the leads. Call it “reverse payback.”
That is, belatedly rewarding the veteran, even legendary, actor (or director or writer) for a lesser film to make up for past oversights (how else to explain John Wayne for True Grit or Paul Newman in The Color of Money or, yes, even Sandra Bullock last year for The Blind Side), is one thing (and makes only sentimental sense), but the Academy, getting all guilty conscience on us, is occasionally wont to stiff an artist for superior work if that person somehow previously copped an underserved prize. Maybe that explains Cameron’s loss last year and, never mind how he must have felt--it screwed up our Oscar pools.

So what’s the Best Picture outlook for 2011, sprawl vs. small? Expensively mounted (and mega-hyped) studio entertainments vs. provocatively themed smaller, independent films? Next week we’ll size up the early field of favorites—including one much-touted drama that pairs prime candidates for “payback” and “reverse payback” Oscars.
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Oscar & Emmy Watch: TV Time Slots Still Matter

2010-11-27T16:49:00.000-08:00

By Alan Appel

There have been a handful of long-ago significant exceptions along the way (Dallas, The Rockford Files, Miami Vice and The Brady Bunch among them), but generally speaking, Friday night, in terms of viewer numbers, is a graveyard for TV shows. Yes, it is marginally better broadcasting real estate than Saturday night but that’s not saying much. So what’s a network to do when it suddenly strikes ratings (and critical) gold with a Friday show—as, for example, CBS did in the fall of 1990 with a little number titled CSI , which became the first TV crime series ever to be No. 1 in the Nielsen charts (and explains why it continues to spin off a seemingly unending parade of other CSI hours)?

As in the case of the original CSI, it quickly expanded its audience by moving it to another night, and while the official network line at present is that there are no plans to shift the Tom Selleck drama Blue Bloods, don’t bet against it. The series is just too artfully written, performed, directed and photographed (in New York), and it along with Selleck—whose one and only Emmy came more than 25 years ago for Magnum P.I. —will not likely be forgotten when it comes to end-of-season nominations.

The show handlers (and writers) Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green —yet two more veterans of The Sopranos who have gone on to a follow-up success—like to describe the multi-generational Blue Bloods as an ensemble family series melded with a police procedural, and there’s something to that. But the greater truth is that Selleck—as widowed Police Commissioner Frank Reagan, whose sons (played by Donnie Wahlberg and Will Estes are also cops, daughter (Bridget Moynahan) is a prosecuting attorney and own father (Len Cariou) is a former police official—is its wise if somewhat rigid center, investing a commanding multi-layered character with a raw emotional depth that seems to lift the series around him.

Like few other male TV legends (only James Garner comes to mind), Selleck’s easy charm, a mix of humor and vulnerability, has largely defined his three-decade-plus durability as a star. He never really got his due on the big screen (check out, in particular, a terrific performance in Quigley Down Under and wonderful comedic turns in 3 Men and a Baby and In & Out), but charisma together with fan loyalty goes a long way and now, in Blue Bloods, we’re reminded once again of just how accomplished an actor he is.
Go to: http://technorati.com/entertainment/tv/article/oscar-emmy-watch-musings-misgivings-blue/

Mad Men's Emmy Drama by Alan Appel

2010-11-27T16:47:00.000-08:00

Will Mad Men win the Best Drama Emmy for the fourth consecutive year?
Probably, though its season finale two Sundays ago was a real head scratcher, what with Don Draper somehow deciding that ravenous secretary Megan was worth marrying based on the romantic epiphany that, hey, any woman who could remain composed and calm in the face of his kid spilling a strawberry
shake was someone to spend the rest of his life with.
In my book, that’s worth giving an engagement ring (even if it once belonged to another woman, the wife that Don adored of a man whose identity he took! You Mad Men neophytes have a lot of catching up to do.) Plus, where exactly has partner Bert Cooper gone? Will jilted Dr. Faye tell her mob-connected father?
And what ever did become of Sal? Still, why quibble—Mad Men, in all its opaque brilliance, is rightly in the pantheon of Great Shows We Love and will return
next season.
Not so the AMC series Rubicon that preceded it on Sunday nights, and whose renewal is up in the air. Here is the perfect candidate for the Woody Allen-coined (in his film Manhattan) Academy of the Overrated. Really, has there ever been a more highly praised (though, let’s be honest, cheap-looking) conspiracy thriller with more loose ends, false leads and red herrings?
Ordinarily, any series in this genre that plants clues in a DVD copy of Meet Me in St. Louis would have my attention, but Rubicon goes down so many blind alleys with so many bland, button-down types constantly shuffling papers (or folders) that nothing dramatic ever seems to happen. There was one intriguing mystery, however: why the show’s best character actor, the wonderful Harris Yulin, was killed off in the first episode and given virtually nothing to do?

No, come Emmy-nomination time, there will be two new faces in the Best Drama field, and Rubicon, despite the hype, if there’s any justice, won’t be one of them. One of the newcomers is a chalk pick, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire (more about it in a later column) and the other demonstrates that while even a great star (like Jimmy Smits in Outlaw) cannot save a deeply flawed series), sometimes an icon (Tom Selleck in Blue Bloods) can elevate a solid ensemble cop drama into a bona fide keeper. Now let's see if CBS is smart enough to move it from its graveyard Friday-night slot.

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Boardwalk Empire

2010-11-27T16:43:00.000-08:00

Has there been a better character actor than Steve Buscemi over the past two decades? Not really. A wiry and weirdly endearing presence in a spate of Independent films, and a favorite of filmmakers including Quentin Tarantino (beginning with Reservoir Dogs) and the Coen Brothers —he was the bungling kidnapper deposited head first into the wood chipper near the end of Fargo.
Buscemi is a uniquely riveting and idiosyncratic performer, making an art of portraying characters who seem somewhat menacing, if forlorn, wild-eyed eccentrics. I love the range he has and his dramatic sense, and also his sense of humor, Martin Scorsese (who directed him in the first episode of HBO’s sensational Prohibition-era drama Boardwalk Empire) told a gathering of TV critics this past summer. There’s something that’s very, very strong on camera. . with Steve as a character, whatever he plays.

Buscemi has been Emmy-nominated before. He was Tony Soprano’s doomed trying-to-go-straight cousin in The Sopranos , and he directed several episodes in that series, including the much-acclaimed season-3 Pine Barrens. Considerable Sopranos writing and directing talent is involved with Boardwalk Empire, and halfway through its 12-episode first year (a second season is on order), it seems almost a foregone conclusion that the next round of Emmy nominations will present the lion’s share of nominations in all major categories, including Best Drama, to (again) Mad Men (created by another Sopranos alum, Matthew Weiner) and Boardwalk Empire.
Veteran character actors can sometimes make the sudden leap to top-line star. Certainly James Gandolfini did just that in The Sopranos, and on the big screen, Anthony Quinn and Walter Matthau are among a handful who used an Oscar win to instantly propel them to marquee attractions. In Quinn’s case, a revitalized career followed supporting Oscars for Viva Zapata! and Lust for Life; for Matthau, it came after a supporting Oscar for The Fortune Cookie. By the same token, some of our best character actors remained forever just that—wonderfully invaluable, below-the-title performers essential to their films. But unable to carry them.

So the question is, does Buscemi—a good bet to score a Best Actor Emmy nomination as Atlantic City Treasurer Nucky Thompson—have enough leading-man charisma to go with his strong acting chops to carry Boardwalk Empire? The evidence so far is, yes. Buscemi is the sturdy center, but this ambitious and expensive ensemble series also has its own dynamic supporting players in Michael Pitt (as Jimmy Darmody), Kelly Macdonald (Margaret Schroeder) and Michael Shannon (Agent Nelson Van Alden). There will be plenty of Emmy glory to go around, and the odds are that the top-billed and too often underrated Buscemi—for once projecting strength and savvy, not strangeness--will finally get his long-overdue prize.

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: On Our Radar

2010-11-27T11:44:00.000-08:00

ZUCKERBERG UNBOUND

The flagrant gushing for The Social Network is way over the top. Can one day pass without the media reflecting on director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s cautionary tale of "Young Adult Genius" (and world-class nebbish) Mark Zuckerberg and the birth of Facebook?
Even the otherwise sensible David Denby in The New Yorker has opined that Sorkin writes the sharpest movie dialogue since Ben Hecht and Preston Sturges.
C'mon now. Better than Billy Wilder? John Huston? Ernest Lehman? Robert Towne? Never mind. People, the film is largely fictional. The presumed life lessons about corporate ambition and personal betrayal that so many feel that the film yields can be taken with a veritable shaker of salt.
In that sense, it's not unlike Citizen Kane to which The Social Network has been foolishly compared.
Here's the difference: In its textured look (by cinematographer Gregg Toland), memorable music (Bernard Herrmann) and multi-layered narrative and performances, there never has been a film quite like Citizen Kane.Whereas, the considerable chatter and debate re The Social Network seems to turn on a single shopworn question: what price success?
The Social Network has already been anointed the Oscar pony to ride in the Oscar derby because it so dominates the national conversation and invites questions about whether the brilliantly precocious but socially disconnected Zuckerberg is to be pitied, thanked, admired, blamed or ignored for giving us what Facebook has become.
Which is the point, its fans say. Here at last is a film we can argue about. Yes it’s entertaining, but controversy is what’s made it a critical darling. True, as its poster suggests, you can’t have 500 million friends without making a few enemies along the way, but in the case of Citizen Kane, one titanic enemy--publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst—was enough.

Oscar voters can be--what's the word?--stupid. The Oscar rolls have famously been littered with awards that made perfect sense (say, Glenda Jackson for Women in Love), awards that made no sense (say, Glenda Jackson for A Touch of Class), awards that were paybacks for better performances in other years (say, Jimmy Stewart for The Philadelphia Story), outright embarrassments (say, the Best Picture nod to The Greatest Show on Earth), and enduring performances that didn't even net a nomination (say, Anthony Perkins for Psycho).
So don't jump on "The Social Network" bandwagon just yet. Its box-office grosses have been good, not great, and hey, let's be honest, it's not even the best film so far this year. I'll take The Town and The Kids Are All Right, and there's more good stuff (like The King's Speech) to come.