In Contention

Tag: Emmy Awards

  • Emmy goes to the movies

    We don’t normally pay much attention to the Emmy Awards, this being a site primarily devoted to the bigger screen. But when the recently unveiled nomination list contains such film heavyweights as Todd Haynes, Olivier Assayas and (twice) Martin Scorsese, it’d be remiss not to mention it — and the fact that the line between cinema and television is becoming an increasingly pliable one.

    Indeed, there’s still disagreement over which category one of yesterday’s nominees falls into. Assayas’ five-hour stunner “Carlos” may have been produced for French television, but it’s a bit difficult to define a vast work from one of world cinema’s leading auteurs, one that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was theatrically released on the arthouse circuit, as merely a TV miniseries.

    Most haven’t — it won a slew of film critics’ awards last year (and indeed made my 2010 Top 10) before more finicky eligibility rules kept it out of the Oscar race (I know, I know, as if) and in the TV races at the Globe and SAG Awards.

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  • Miss January

    Kris already drew your attention to today’s Emmy nominations, and since we don’t really do TV here at InContention — and since the Emmys are quite possibly the most eternally frustrating of all major showbiz awards — we won’t go into a detailed bitching session about how the voters cocked this or that up. Anyway, there were pleasant surprises to be had: “The Flight of the Conchords!” Sarah Silverman! Hope Davis!

    Kris highlighted Denis Leary as his pet snub of the morning, but I can’t be the only one baffled that, amid the 16 well-deserved nominations for the best show on TV, there was no room for its standout performer of the season. Hell, make that the standout performer of the season. January Jones, we salute you.

    January Jones in Mad Men

  • 7/16 Web Round-up

    Emma Watson• Emmy nominations unleashed, Denis Leary robbed again. [Emmys.tv]

    • Xan Brooks and the “Antichrist” debate.  One more time around. [The Guardian]

    • Jonathan Romney, meanwhile, tries to break down the mind of Lars Von Trier. [The Independent]

    • 25 new faces of independent film. [Filmmaker Magazine]

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  • More with Leary

    Denis LearyJust before I ducked out on vacation last week (big thanks to Guy for keeping the boat afloat), you might have caught my interview with comedian Denis Leary of FX’s “Rescue Me.”  Even though TV isn’t something we cover much around here, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to chat with a personal favorite of MTV’s glory years and the star/co-creator of one of my favorite cable shows.  We talked about “Rescue Me,” of course, but we dived into MTV’s decade-long funk, Leary’s Emerson background and NFL football, among other things.

    Over at the LA Times, Choire Sicha has taken some time out with Leary, with Thursday’s Emmy nominations looming ahead (Leary has been nominated twice for the show but has not won the award yet).  Most of it is softball stuff, the questions pretty pat on the whole.  But it’s branded a “Sunday Conversation,” so I guess a little froth is okay.  As expected, however, Leary offers bizarre insight even if the questions lack it, such as one random (but oddly precise) reaction to a question about his son recently shipping off to college (also at Emerson), a moment he describes as “a combination of jealousy, rage, envy, fear.”

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  • “To a place where we know we are loved”

    This may be a movie awards site, but it would be remiss of us not to acknowledge that the Emmy awards take place tonight. I find it difficult to get invested in the Emmys when they so brazenly ignore landmark television on a yearly basis — this is the group that waited until “The Sopranos”‘ fifth season to give it the gold, and never even got around to rewarding such shows as “Six Feet Under” or “Homicide: Life on the Street.”

    Suffice to say that if they snub “Mad Men” tonight — as I suspect they will — I’ll care about the Emmys even less than I already do. Still, my fingers are crossed for Matthew Weiner’s magnificent series, not because it needs any kind of validation, but because anything that might raise its viewing figures is to be welcomed.

    As a tribute to the show, here is a fascinating scene from the first season’s finale that neatly summates the show’s numerous virtues: the rigorous intelligence and economy of the writing (there is so much going on subtextually in these three minutes), the refreshingly languid pacing, the impeccable production values and the galvanizing star presence of Jon Hamm. (Could he be the next George Clooney?) Watch and savour: