missmediajunkie

If you missed "The Artist" in theaters, it's finally coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray this week, along with smaller art house titles like "Oranges and Sunshine" with Emily Watson, Belgian crime drama "Bullhead," and the Turkish murder mystery "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia." It's the same thing every year. While the majority of high-profile studio films reach home media within three to four months of their initial release in theaters, the independent and foreign titles can take much, much longer. I saw "The Artist" on the silver screen back in November, and it's taken seven months to reach DVD, where it's going to be sharing shelf space with fellow new releases "Mirror, Mirror," and "Wrath of the Titans," which just came out in March.

My Top Ten of 2011 list is still very much a work in progress as a result, and I figured that I should write out a list of the titles (mostly Academy Awards contenders and festival favorites) I'm still waiting for, and when I expect them to be available in the US over the next few months. I think people could use a reminder that some of these movies exist, and that somebody is still anticipating them. DVD release dates don't tend to be nailed down very far in advance, so some of these are only estimated ETAs. Also, I'm choosing the totally arbitrary cutoff date of October, because that's when I'll be writing my Top Ten list. There are plenty of good 2011 releases that won't be released by then, if at all. For instance, the 2010 Swedish comedy "Sound of Noise," about a gang of percussionists who stage illegal performances, is finally hitting Region 1 DVD this week, after a very limited US release by Magnolia Pictures.

July

The Kid With a Bike - The latest from France's Dardenne brothers. Grand Prix winner at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and Best Foreign Film nominee at the Golden Globes.

Margaret - The notoriously long-delayed Kenneth Lonergan drama. Several critics vocally championed "Margaret" during the last awards season, but it was almost impossible to see the film because it had almost no studio support and a practically nonexistent theatrical release. There were accusations that the distributors were trying to bury "Margaret." Then there were lawsuits. Some called it the best film of the decade. Many others disagreed.

The Turin Horse - The latest from Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr, one of those uncompromising artistic minds that the most pretentious cinema nuts absolutely love and regular mortals find impenetrable. I'm somewhere between the two. This one is a bleak period drama about an incident with a horse that gave Friedrich Nietzsche a nervous breakdown, so I'm expecting something psychologically heavy and probably narratively incoherent. Well, it worked for "Werckmeister Harmonies."

Footnote - Israeli domestic drama and Best Foreign Film nominee at the Oscars. I try to watch all the nominees, even though I know there's always controversy over the biases and the best contenders not even being submitted. I don't see enough foreign films as it is, and this is my attempt to at least cover a bare minimum.

August

Kill List and Headhunters - A pair of crime films, one British and one Norwegian, that have gotten a huge amount of buzz from festivals and other special screenings. The genre fans get behind one or two of these every year. I don't know much about either of them, but prior experience suggests that I probably don't want to, so I can enjoy whatever surprises they have in store.

Juan of the Dead - A Cuban zombie film. Yes, that's right. A Cuban zombie film, one that gets into political and social satire, as all the greatest zombie films have. I first heard abut this one after the Toronto Film Festival last year, when AICN started championing it. Focus Features will be releasing "Juan" on DVD and VOD simultaneously, but it should already be available in the UK.

Monsieur Lazhar - One more for the Oscar nominee pile.

A Separation - And here at last is this year's Best Foreign Film Oscar Winner, which was also a surprise nominee for Best Screenplay. The critical bona fides are endless. Roger Ebert and Joe Morgenstern both declared it the best film of 2011, and it took home the Golden Bear from the Berlin Film Festival. Iranian films and filmmakers have become more prominent lately, and I have been dying to get a look at "A Separation" for myself.

September

Polisse and The Intouchables - Here's where we start getting into technicalities. But these are 2012 releases, I hear you cry. Nope. I count release dates by the years that they were released in their home countries, which matters quite a bit to things like awards consideration and critical analysis. "Polisse" and "The Intouchables" were both released in France in 2011. "Polisse" nabbed the Jury Prize at Cannes and all the major critical discussion of it happened last year. "The Intouchables" only got as high profile a launch in the US as it did because the film was a monster hit in France in 2011.

Chico & Rita - "Chico & Rita" was one of the two foreign animated films that surprised industry watchers by landing nominations for Best Animated Fim at the 2011 Academy Awards. Before that, it was probably best known for popping up on UK critic Mark Kermode's list of the Top Five films of 2010, as the Spanish language "Chico" was released in the UK in November, 2010 several months before it premiered in Spain.

We Have a Pope - From Italy, Nanni Moretti's comedy-drama about a new Pope who suffers a breakdown and ends up in psychiatric treatment.

And Still MIA

A Boy and His Samurai
Alois Nebel
Alps
Tatsumi (available in the UK)
This is Not a Film

I am an Oscar devotee. I engage in all the mad speculation over potential nominees months before the ballots even go out. I do my best to watch every nominee that I can, or at least be in the know about all their facts and stats. I read over reams of analysis by more seasoned Oscar race prognosticators. And every year, without fail, the vast majority of my predictions are completely wrong. I still have a lot of fun, though.

With the Emmys, it's different. I watch the award ceremonies, and I enjoy them. However, I can't think of any year where I was significantly invested in who the winners and losers were. Right now we're in the middle of the nominating period for the 2012 Emmys. Nominees will be announced in July, and the Emmy telecast will broadcast in September. I certainly have my favorites, like "Community" and "Breaking Bad," who I'd love to see make appearances as nominees this year, but I'm not really paying attention to how the various races are shaping up. It's not that I don't value television as much as movies, or that the Emmy races can't be as exciting as the Oscar ones, but the Emmys are a lot tougher to get involved in for many reasons.

First, television requires a lot more investment to follow than movies, so I watch fewer of them to begin with, and I end up being completely clueless about the majority of the nominees when they're announced. A dozen movies would take me a week to burn through, but familiarizing myself with a dozen television shows would take months. I haven't seen many of the major critical favorites like "Modern Family," "Homeland," "Justified," "Downton Abbey," "Parks and Rec," and "Boardwalk Empire," not for the lack of interest, but because of the time commitment. Maybe I'll get around to them after I finish "The Sopranos." And "The Wire." And the original "Star Trek."

Then again, I usually end up missing a bunch of the Oscar nominees too, because of limited releases and other factors. I didn't see "War Horse" or "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" until their DVD releases, and I'm not sorry I waited in either case. But then at least I had decent proxies by way of all the reviews and discussions about the films. There wasn't a film critic out there who wasn't writing "Memos to the Academy" or "If I Picked the Winners" pieces. Television critics are a much rarer breed, and I've only just started finding a couple of good writers who are actually knowledgeable about a broad spectrum of television shows, such that they can have similar conversations about the Emmys that the movie critics have about the Oscars. Again, there's the sheer volume of material is an issue. There are so many shows, most TV critics can only follow and write about a handful in any depth.

Even if you are watching all the right shows, you're not watching them the way that the actual Emmy voters are watching them. Mindful of the time it takes to evaluate all these different programs, submissions are made in the form six of episodes picked from the most recent season, and individual actors send in the ones that they feel best highlight their performances. These submission decisions aren't highly publicized, and if you're not a close industry watcher or an insider, then you wouldn't know which six episodes your favorite shows are actually being judged by, or which episode a performance is being judged by, which means it's harder to analyze them against each other in a way that's actually relevant to what's going on at the Emmys.

And in the end, a lot of it's just personal preference. The Primetime Emmy Awards aren't as exciting or have as much cultural cachet as the Oscars. I've never gone out of my way to watch a show simply because it won an Emmy. There are also a lot of entrenched biases in the organization, that means the more daring, more innovative cable shows often get passed up for more palatable network fare. "Louie" and "Community" have never even been nominated for Best Comedy. And then there are the multi-year winners, like "30 Rock" and "Mad Men" both taking home top awards four years in a row. If I really got into some of these races, results like this would be frustrating as hell.

So I only stay minimally involved, hoping Lena Dunham gets some sort of recognition for her work on "Girls," and that Giancarlo Esposito will be remembered in the Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series category. And I can just sit back and watch the spectacle for the spectacle, and enjoy the luxury of not caring about the outcomes.
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Reading up on the Oscar aftermath, I came across a couple of pieces about the "Bigelow Effect," the idea that Katherine Bigelow winning the Best Director Oscar for "The Hurt Locker" back in 2010 would open doors to more female directors. Salon had a good one, and so did The Washington Post. The problem with the whole idea of a Bigelow Effect is that if there is any impact, it's far, far too early to make any assessments. Gender disparity in mainstream commercial filmmaking is a systemic issue, and two years is far too short a time for anything to effect the kind of positive changes that would yield more female Best Director nominees and winners.

And yet, in the past couple of years I have been seeing more female directors emerging, in smaller indie films, in documentaries, and especially directing television. In fact, one of the most under reported entertainment stories of the past few years is probably the inroads that female directors have been making at the Emmys. The Primetime Emmy Award directing categories have gone through a lot of permutations over the years, ranging from two to six awards depending on how the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences was feeling that year. However, to keep things simple, let's compare the categories that are the most analogous to directing award for the Oscars - Directing for a Comedy Series, Directing for a Drama Series, and Directing for a Miniseries, Movie, or Dramatic Special.

Including Bigelow, there have only been four female nominees for the Best Director Oscar in total. The others were Lina Wertmüller in 1976, Jane Campion in 1993, and Sofia Coppola in 2003. The Emmys also had their first female nominee for a directing award in 1976, Joan Darling for the classic "Chuckles" episode of "Mary Tyler Moore." She was nominated again the next year for "M*A*S*H." The first female winner of a directing award came in 1985, Karen Arthur for an episode of the police drama "Cagney & Lacey." For the rest of the 80s and 90s, across those three Emmy directing categories, there were one or two female nominees in the mix, more often than not. 1992 was a banner year, with one female director nominated in the Comedy category and two in Drama. Betty Thomas won in 1993 for the HBO comedy "Dream On," and Mimi Leder won in 1995 for "ER." Leder has been nominated for five directing Emmys to date, and went on to direct several feature films, including "Deep Impact," "The Peacemaker," and "Pay it Forward."

In the 2000s, however, the nominations dried up. From 2002 to 2005 women directors went totally missing in the categories for any dramatized material, though they were maintaining a good foothold in the Directing for a Variety, Music, or Comedy Series/Special and Directing for a Informational/Nonfiction Program categories. If you'll permit me a quick digression, in 2005, four of the five nominees in Nonfiction, including winner Kate Brown, were women. Other notables here include Eleanor Coppola, who won for her "Hearts of Darkness" documentary in 1992. Patricia Birch, won in the Variety, Music, or Comedy category twice for "Great Performances" in 1988 and 1992. Ellen Brown has been nominated six times for directing "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," and Beth McCarthy-Miller, one of the only four directors of "Saturday Night Live" since its inception, has picked up four nominations for her efforts on that show, plus another for the 9/11 telethon. A long story short, there are a lot of good female directors working in areas people tend to overlook.

And in recent years, they're become more and more prominent in the bigger categories. From 2006 to 2008, the Emmys were back to consistently having one or two female directors nominated per year in the Comedy, Drama, and Movies and Miniseries categories. Then things took a turn. In 2009, Millicent Shelton and Beth McCarthy-Miller were both nominated in the Comedy category for two different episodes of "30 Rock," while Susanna White with "Generation Kill" and Dearbhla Walsh with "Little Dorrit" were up for Movies and Miniseries, a category that Walsh won. In 2010, there were three female nominees up for the Directing for a Drama Series Emmy, probably the closest thing to the television equivalent of the Best Directing Oscar. They were Michelle MacLaren for "Breaking Bad," Lesli Linka Glatter for "Mad Men," and Agnieszka Holland for "Treme." This whole post came about because I've been catching up on "Mad Men," and noticed multiple credits for female directors. And Oscar watchers should note that Agnieszka Holland's recent feature, "In Darkness," was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film this year, representing Poland.

2011 was the best turnout for female directors at the Emmys yet. In Comedy, we had Pamela Fryman for "How I Met Your Mother," Gail Mancuso for "Modern Family," and Beth McCarthy-Miller for "30 Rock." This puts Beth McCarthy-Miller at seven directing Emmy nominations, the most of any female director. In drama, Patty Jenkins was nominated for directing the pilot episode of "The Killing." She's probably best known for directing Charlize Theron to an Oscar win with "Monster," back in 2003. Finally, the husband and wife team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini were nominated for directing the HBO made-for-television film, "Cinema Verite." They've done several documentaries and features together, including "American Splendor." That adds up to five nominations out of the fifteen for these categories. It's not parity, but the numbers are starting to look pretty significant.

Now what bearing does all this have on the mainstream movie world? Television and film have traditionally been very separate universes, but lately that's becoming less and less the case. Patty Jenkins was up against Martin Scorsese and Neil Jordan in the Drama category, while Berman and Pulcini's fellow nominees in Movies and Miniseries included Olivier Assayas, Todd Haynes, and Curtis Hanson. The track record of women at the Emmys also puts to rest the claims that there are no female directors out there worthy of note, or that women aren't interested in directing, or that the subject matter of their work has to be radically different from the men are doing, or that there's no audience for the media that they create. Show of hands - how many readers out there didn't realize that women were responsible for directing so many episodes of "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men"? Or "Mary Tyler Moore," for that matter?

Now, there are some differences in how a television director and a film director are positioned. On a television series, the showrunners tend to have more control, and it's the writing that tends to drive the shows. But when you get down to basics, the directing jobs are the same. Telelvision directors may be less visible and wield less clout, but they do just about everything that a feature film director does. And more than a few great film directors got their start in television. The rise in female directors in television is a very good sign that we may see a similar trend in films - not immediately, since the film world has a lot more hurdles to overcome and the culture is far behind the times in many ways - but in the not-too-distant future. Clearly something has happened in the past few years that have allowed female directors to gain some momentum.

I don't think it was the Bigelow Effect, but that sure didn't hurt anything.
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Finally, for your perusal, a list of every woman nominated for a directing Emmy - compiled from IMDB:

1976

Comedy
Mary Tyler Moore - Joan Darling (CBS)

1977

Comedy
M*A*S*H - Joan Darling (CBS)

1981

Comedy
Archie Bunker's Place - Linda Day (CBS)

1984

Comedy
Buffalo Bill - Ellen Falcon (NBC)

Movie/Miniseries
Something About Amelia - Randa Haines

1985

Drama
Cagney & Lacey: "Heat" – Karen Arthur (CBS) - WINNER

1986

Drama
Hill Street Blues: "Two Easy Pieces" – Gabrielle Beaumont (NBC)

1987

Drama
Cagney & Lacey: "Turn, Turn, Turn, Part II" – Sharron Miller (CBS)

1988

Drama
L.A. Law: "Handroll Express" – Kim Friedman (NBC)

Informational
Great Performances: Patricia Birch (co-director) (PBS) - WINNER

1989

Variety/Music/Comedy
The Debbie Allen Special - Debbie Allen (ABC)

Informational
Destined to Live - Linda Otto (NBC)

1991

Drama
China Beach: "You, Babe" – Mimi Leder (ABC)

1992

Comedy
Murphy Brown: "Send in the Clowns" - Lee Shallat-Chemel (CBS)

Drama
China Beach: "Rewind" – Mimi Leder (ABC)
The Trials of Rosie O'Neill: "Heartbreak Hotel" – Nancy Malone (CBS)

Variety/Music/Comedy
Great Performances - Patricia Birch (PBS) - WINNER

Informational
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse - Eleanor Coppola (co-director) (Showtime) - WINNER

1993

Comedy
Dream On: "For Peter's Sake" - Betty Thomas (HBO) - WINNER

Drama
Sisters: "Crash and Born" – Nancy Malone (NBC)

1994

Comedy
Mad About You: "Paul Is Dead" - Lee Shallat-Chemel (NBC)

Movie/Miniseries
My Breast - Betty Thomas

Variety/Music/Comedy
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno - Ellen Brown (NBC)

1995

Comedy
The Nanny: "Canasta Master" - Lee Shallat-Chemel (CBS)

Drama
ER: "Love's Labor Lost" – Mimi Leder (NBC) - WINNER

Variety/Music/Comedy
Barbra: The Concert - Barbra Streisand (director for stage) (HBO)
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno - Ellen Brown (NBC)

1996

Drama
ER: "The Healers" – Mimi Leder (NBC)

Movie/Miniseries
The Late Shift - Betty Thomas

Variety/Music/Comedy
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno - Ellen Brown (NBC)

1997

Movie/Miniseries
Bastard Out of Carolina - Anjelica Huston

Variety/Music/Comedy
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno - Ellen Brown (NBC)

1999

Drama
Ally McBeal: "Those Lips, That Hand" - Arlene Sanford (FOX)

Movie/Miniseries
The Baby Dance - Jane Anderson
Dash and Lilly - Kathy Bates

Variety/Music/Comedy
Saturday Night Live - Beth McCarthy-Miller (NBC)
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno - Ellen Brown (NBC)

2000

Movie/Miniseries
Introducing Dorothy Dandridge - Martha Coolidge

Variety/Music/Comedy
Saturday Night Live 25 - Beth McCarthy-Miller (NBC)
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno - Ellen Brown (NBC)

2001

Drama
The West Wing: "Shibboleth" – Laura Innes (NBC)

2003

NonFiction
Journeys with George - Alexandra Pelosi (co-director) (HBO)

Variety/Music/Comedy
Saturday Night Live - Beth McCarthy-Miller (NBC)

2005

Variety/Music/Comedy
Elaine Stritch: At Liberty - Chris Hegedus (co-director) (HBO)

Nonfiction
Jockey - Kate Davis (HBO) - WINNER
Queer Eye - Becky Smith (BRAVO)
American Masters - Susan Lacy (PBS)
The American Experience - Laurie Kahn-Leavitt (PBS)

2006

Drama
The West Wing: "Election Day, Part 1" – Mimi Leder (NBC)

Movie/Miniseries
Mrs. Harris - Phyllis Nagy

Variety/Music/Comedy
Saturday Night Live - Beth McCarthy-Miller (NBC)

Nonfiction
Children of Beslan - Ewa Ewart, Leslie Woodhead (HBO)
All Aboard! Rosie's Family Cruise - Shari Cookson

2007

Movie/Miniseries
Jane Eyre - Susanna White

Nonfiction
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib - Rory Kennedy (HBO)
Thin - Lauren Greenfield (HBO)

2008

Drama
Boston Legal: "The Mighty Rogues" – Arlene Sanford (ABC)

Nonfiction
The War - Lynn Novick (co-director)(PBS)
Autism: The Musical - Tricia Regan (HBO)

2009

Comedy
30 Rock: "Apollo, Apollo" - Millicent Shelton (NBC)
30 Rock: "Reunion" - Beth McCarthy-Miller (NBC)

Movie/Miniseries
Little Dorrit (Part 1) - Dearbhla Walsh – WINNER
Generation Kill - Susanna White

Nonfiction
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired - Marina Zenovich (HBO) - WINNER

2010

Drama
Breaking Bad: "One Minute" – Michelle MacLaren (AMC)
Mad Men: "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency" – Lesli Linka Glatter (AMC)
Treme: "Do You Know What It Means" – Agnieszka Holland (HBO)

Nonfiction
By the People: The Election of Barack Obama - Amy Rice, Alicia Sams (HBO)

2011

Comedy
30 Rock: "Live Show" - Beth McCarthy-Miller (NBC)
How I Met Your Mother: "Subway Wars" - Pamela Fryman (CBS)
Modern Family: "Slow Down Your Neighbors" - Gail Mancuso (ABC)

Drama
The Killing: "Pilot" – Patty Jenkins (AMC)

Movie/Miniseries
Cinema Verite - Shari Springer Berman (co-director)

Variety/Music/Comedy
Lady Gaga Presents: The Monster Ball Tour at Madison Square Garden - Laurieann Gibson
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Well, you know who won all the awards by now, but how was the big Oscar show this year? Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.

Billy Crystal returned for his ninth appearance as the host of the Academy Awards, and did his usual intro, where he's worked into clips from the Best Picture nominees, and a few of the year's other big films. Then he came out and sang his usual medley, and told some very old jokes, and no small number of them fell flat. And I don't know if it was the nostalgia on my part or the pretty bad ceremonies that we've had these past few years, but I was very glad to have Crystal back. Even if his material wasn't great, he was such an old hand at being emcee, rolling with every awkward moment and owning every good one. It made all the difference to have a comic there who knew how to work the crowd. I started smiling the moment he started singing "It's a Wonderful Night For Oscar."

The rest of the show was mostly following the format of last year's. There were more presenters handing out multiple awards each, the Governor's Awards and technical awards had separate ceremonies that we saw brief highlights for, and instead of clips from all the Best Picture nominees being presented during the course of the show, there was one big montage at the end before the winner was announced. There was still the odd segment here and there, like the inclusion of a "why we love the movies" clip package early in the first hour, that had clips of "Twilight" alongside "Titanic," but didn't see fit to include anything older than "Midnight Cowboy." Even if Crystal made fun of the notion in the intro with Justin Bieber, the Oscar telecast is still after younger eyeballs.

However, I liked that most of the subsequent clip packages were of actors and directors talking about why they loved movies, and talking up their personal favorites. Who would have thought that Reese Witherspoon was such a fan of the Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn comedy "Overboard"? And Robert Downey Jr.'s unwitting intro to Werner Herzog was great. All in all, the talent was much better used this year. The comedy bits, like Melissa McCarthy cornering Billy Crystal in a dressing room was obvious, but it worked. And then there was the totally unexpected "rare footage" of an old test screening of "The Wizard of Oz," where the audience was populated by Christopher Guest and some of his regular cohorts, who proceeded to nitpick the Munchkins and sing the praises of the flying monkeys.

The presenters were also livelier. Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez set the tone, posing and giggling for the Best Makeup category. Robert Downey Jr. spent most of his appearance annoying co-presenter Gwyneth Paltrow before handing out the Best Documentary honors. Emma Stone nearly stole the show during Best Visual Effects. Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis brought a pair of cymbals apiece for the Best Music categories. And then the cast of "Bridesmaids" took the stage, booze in hand. I was disappointed that the Muppets were only there to introduce the Cirque du Soleil act, but to their credit the Cirque folks put on quite a show, providing a good boost of energy as the ceremony moved into its second half. I sure didn't miss the song numbers. The show moved quick, there was very little drag, and it was consistently entertaining.

There were still the weak spots, as there always are. The In Memoriam segment seems to get more perfunctory every year (Where was Michael Gough?!) The presenters for the Best Actor and Best Actress gave personalized intros for each nominee's clip again, which doesn't work so well when the intros are longer than the clips. I'd have much rather seen more of the actual performances, especially in the case of Glenn Close, Michelle Williams, and Demian Birchir, who appeared in movies most viewers probably haven't seen yet. The winners themselves were pretty good about their speeches, even with so many of "The Artist" winners struggling with English. One nice thing about the extended awards season gauntlet is that by this point, all the winners have their speeches down pat. The only one who seemed genuinely surprised was Octavia Spencer, though she's been collecting statuettes for months.

One thing I also learned was that it's much more fun to watch an Oscar ceremony if you haven't been subjected to all the hype and blather leading up to the ceremony. After the nominees were announced, I pretty much went cold turkey on all related media. I didn't see any of the usual Oscar specials or the other award shows like the SAG or AFI awards, so I wasn't watching the same clips and the same speeches being delivered over and over again. From some of the commentary I was following during the show, apparently many of the same anecdotes and turns of phrase kept coming up during the season – which is perfectly understandable, but I get why it could diminish the experience. Instead, I had a pretty good time watching one of the better Oscars of recent years. I think there could still be some tweaks, but the format and the talent were both just about right this year.

And that gives me hope for future Oscar ceremonies to come.
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With the Academy Awards on the horizon, and entertainment writers trotting out their old grudges over Oscar ceremonies past, the inevitable topic of the most undeserving Best Picture winner has come up, as it always does. I'm about ten films shy of having seen all the Best Picture winners, and I doubt I've seen half of all the nominees over the years, but I'm well aware of the most notorious bad calls: "How Green Was My Valley" over "Citizen Kane," "Going My Way" over "Double Indemnity,""The Greatest Show on Earth" over "High Noon," "Rocky" over "Network" and "Taxi Driver," "Ordinary People" over "Raging Bull," "Shakespeare in Love" over "Saving Private Ryan," and "Crash" over "Brokeback Mountain." Most, I agree were bad choices, but not all of them. And one of the most egregious cases hasn't gotten much press, though I think it's only a matter of time: "The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King," winning the 2003 Best Picture award, over "Lost in Translation," "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," and "Mystic River." For the record, the fifth nominee that year was "Seabiscuit," which I never saw.

Now I'm as much of a "Lord of the Rings" fan as anyone. I loved the first two movies and wouldn't have voiced any complaints if either of them had taken home Best Picture in 2001 or 2002. "Return of the King" is a different matter. It was clearly the worst film of the trilogy, overlong yet badly rushed. There were more than a few grumbles from critics and audiences alike about the multiple codas and uneven pacing. Personally, I was not happy that so much of the film's emphasis was on the spectacle of the battle scenes at Minas Tirith instead of in Mordor with Sam and Frodo, undercutting a lot of the dramatic tension from the books - "Return of the King" was always my favorite of J.R.R. Tolkein's novels. Now there were plenty of things in the film that I enjoyed, enough that I can declare Peter Jackson's adaptation a satisfactory ending to the film trilogy, but certainly not everything that it could have been. Subsequent rewatches over the years have cemented my opinion that "Return of the King" is often painfully mediocre. And yet, this was the "Lord of the Rings" installment that the Academy decided to heap eleven Oscars upon - including Best Picture.

The common assumption was that the awards were really being awarded for the whole trilogy in aggregate. The Academy often takes past consistency into account, and will try to make up for notable snubs by awarding lesser work down the line. It's also notoriously wary of anointing newcomers too quickly, lest they only turn out to be a passing fad. It makes sense that voters would wait for the final film to stick the landing before elevating the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, but it's still "Return of the King" that appears on all the winners' lists, and that the footage for retrospectives and clip montages will be taken from. Imagine if the Academy voters had used the same approach with "The Godfather" trilogy. Imagine "The Godfather, Part III" being awarded Best Picture with the understanding that it was really making up for the Academy overlooking the first two, the undisputed classics. It doesn't make up for the initial snubs and only results in more snubs that will have to be made up for later on down the line.

There's also the little matter of the competition. The 2001 race was pretty decent, with Todd Fields' "In the Bedroom" and Robert Altman's "Gosford Park" in the mix, but I thought "Fellowship of the Ring" was a pretty strong contender, and was aghast when all three pictures lost to the saccharine "A Beautiful Mind." I don't think "The Two Towers" matched up to "The Pianist," but it certainly had more going for it than "The Hours," "Gangs of New York," and the eventual winner, "Chicago." But in 2003, the unseen "Seabiscuit" aside, there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that "Return of the King" should have been on the bottom of the heap. "Lost in Translation" remains Sofia Coppola's best film, and Bill Murray was robbed of that Best Actor statuette. I say this even though I liked Sean Penn in "Mystic River," one of Clint Eastwood's best films to date. And if the Academy was in the mood for epic filmmaking, Peter Weir's "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," delivered on every front.

Oh well. Hope springs eternal. Maybe they'll get it right this time. But why do I even care? Well, everyone likes to pretend that they don't pay attention to who wins on Oscar night, but any serious film fan does. It's inevitable. Like it or not the Academy Awards have cred with the public, and remain a constant point of cultural reference. I expect that some of the most heated arguments about the 2011 Best Picture race won't take place until the winner is announced, at which point the rest of us can pen our reactions and responses, putting our own spin on what it all means. I want "The Tree of Life" to win Best Picture, but I know it's not going to. Yet, the small possibility that it might is currently holding my invective in check. But when they hand the Oscar to "The Artist" or "Hugo" or "The Help," I'll have something solid and definite to rail against.

'Til then. Happy watching.
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The acting races are always the most fun because they can be such contests of personality, and sometimes it's not so much about the single role, but about that role with in the context of people's careers, and who has the best narrative, and all sorts of other intangibles that have nothing to do with the actual performances. I admit that I'm also susceptible to the hype and the drama, and frankly I don't think I'm as good a judge of acting as I am with other filmmaking disciplines, so I always find it a challenge to form my own opinions about these categories. Let's get down to business.

The 2011 Best Actor nominees are Demián Bichir for "A Better Life," George Clooney for "The Descendants," Jean Dujardin for "The Artist," Gary Oldman for "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," and Brad Pitt for "Moneyball." I've already gotten into a few arguments about Brad Pitt's performance, which I find too close to his regular screen persona for comfort. At no point did he convince me that he was playing Billy Beane rather than just another variation of good guy Brad Pitt. Surely playing someone closer to your real self is harder than playing a more obvious, distinct character, like George Valentin or George Smiley, but in those cases it means the performance just has to be that much better to come across well. I don't think Pitt measured up, certainly not in comparison to George Clooney, who also wasn't stretching that hard to play a father in crisis, but had to handle some really difficult emotional moments and some delightfully absurd ones, all in the same movie.

But when it comes down to it, the performances I'm really going to remember came from Demián Bichir, Gary Oldman, and Jean Dujardin. Birchir's quiet Latino father has such a great presence, the troubles he suffers are immediately more relatable. He also delivers a final monologue that is just a killer, one that plays a huge part in making the end of "A Better Life" work. "The Artist" wouldn't have been the same with anyone but Dujardin as George Valentin. He's not just adopting the silent era acting style, but embodying it. As for Gary Oldman, his George Smiley is a coolly minimalist wonder, practically radiating unblinking paranoia in every frame. I'd be happy if any of the three of them won, but the one who stands up to the most scrutiny, and I mean that literally, is Gary Oldman. I have never seen a performance that intensely cerebral, where so much of a film hinges on watching a man simply observe other people, and think and reason his way to the truth. Gary Oldman for Best Actor.

The Best Actress contenders are Glenn Close for "Albert Nobbs," Viola Davis for "The Help," Rooney Mara for "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," Meryl Streep for "The Iron Lady," and Michelle Williams for "My Week with Marilyn." This category isn't nearly so tough, because I haven't seen "My Week With Marilyn" yet, and didn't like "Albert Nobbs" or Glenn Close's performance in it. Rooney Mara made a good impression as Lisbeth Salander, but her work was not what I'd think of as awards worthy. That leaves Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher and Viola Davis as Abilene. The roles are so different that it's akin to comparing apples to piccolos. Streep had more of a technical challenge playing a widely recognized historical figure and dealing with old age make-up in many scenes. Her performance is showier, more complicated, and more iconic. It reeks of importance, which is why I think I like Viola Davis's work a bit better. Abilene is in her own way, a great woman, and Davis makes her small, but vital moments of self-realization far more moving and genuine than any of Thatcher's speeches. Viola Davis for Best Actress.

I'm afraid I'm not in a good position to say much about Best Supporting Actor, because I haven't seen either Kenneth Branagh in "My Week with Marilyn" or Max von Sydow in "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." But based on the other three performances, this appears to be a remarkably weak year for the category. Jonah Hill didn't get on my nerves in "Moneyball" the way he usually does, but what about his performance landed him here? There was barely anything to the character of Peter Brand beyond serving as a banter buddy for Billy Beane. I also fail to see anything all that interesting about Nick Nolte in "Warrior," where he plays the deeply troubled father of a pair of MMA fighters, trying to make good. Who's left? Christopher Plummer gets a few moments in the spotlight as Hal, a gay man who comes out of the closet in his golden years, shortly before becoming terminally ill. It was a nice performance, but again, not an especially impressive one. Of the three, however, Plummer comes out ahead. Christopher Plummer for Best Supporting Actor.

And last, but surely not least, is the Best Supporting Actress category. I've seen all the nominated performances for this one. Janet McTeer makes a more convincing man in "Albert Nobbs" than Glenn Close does, but that's not saying much. I still think that Bérénice Bejo was miscast in "The Artist." She's a little too old and much too modern-looking to pass for a 1920s ingenue. She tries her darnedest to make up for it though, so I don't begrudge her the nomination. It's good to see Jessica Chastain from "The Help," though of all the roles she's played this year, I'm not sure this is the one most deserving of being singled out for praise. Octavia Spencer would seem to be the obvious choice here, as the sharp-minded maid who gets sweet revenge on a bad employer in "The Help." Then again, I also liked Melissa McCarthy in "Bridesmaids," more than I think I should. She is such a bright spot in that film, and plays such a positive, funny character, without becoming a stereotype. Comedy is always harder than it looks, and the Academy never gives comedians enough credit. Oh, what the hell. Melissa McCarthy for Best Supporting Actress.
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Usually I haven't seen enough of the Oscar nominees to be able to do one of these posts in the past, but this year I've had the unusual good luck of being able to view almost all of the contenders in the six major categories for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, and Original Screenplay. I think that should be enough to give an informed opinion, or at least to say something substantive about each race. I'll cover the writing, directing, and Best Picture categories in this post, and the acting categories separately in the next one.

Let's start with the big one first: Best Picture. I haven't seen "War Horse" or "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" yet, but among the rest there are four titles currently sitting on my in-progress list of my favorite films of 2011. That's always a good sign. I thought it was a perfectly fine year for contenders, though I don't agree with some of the titles that are up here. I don't understand the critical support behind "Moneyball" or the popularity of "The Help." I'm happy for Martin Scorsese, but the more I've had a chance to mull over "Hugo," the more problematic it becomes. The dialogue is especially grating - maybe Scorsese would have been better off making "Hugo" as a silent film like "The Artist," the current frontrunner. But then, I'm not too keen on "The Artist" winning either. It's a significant filmmaking achievement no matter how you slice it, but it's hard to get around the fact that so much of its effectiveness is about breaking down the audience's resistance to the fact that it's a black and white silent movie. It expends so much effort recreating something old, but aside from a few interesting uses of sound in the narrative, does little to add anything new. I have the same complaint with "Midnight in Paris," which I adore, but I can't shake the fact that Woody Allen has made this kind of film so many times before, and it feels like he's backsliding a bit, relying heavily on nostalgia to carry him through.

That leaves me with "The Descendants" and "The Tree of Life." Alexander Payne makes the kind of small-scale, awkward comedies that are too often overlooked by the Academy, and he's due for some recognition. And after subjecting myself to an endless stream of indie films this year about dysfunctional families, I know all too well how hard it is to get a story like "The Descendants" to come off right. I'd be very happy to see it win. However, there's "The Tree of Life," which some Oscar prognosticators thought might be too artsy and inaccessible to be a nominee. I have some issues with the film, particularly the bookend sequences with Sean Penn and the silly dinosaurs, but that middle section is without question, the most stunning piece of cinema I saw in 2011. The level of filmmaking and the scope of director Terrence Malick's vision just dwarf everything else in the field. "The Tree of Life" is really the only one of the nominees I believe will survive the test of time and still be well regarded in another decade or two, that manages to transcend the modern-day sensibilities that color the other nominees' takes on the past. I know it won't win, simply because there are too many members of the Academy who will be unable to get past its difficult nature, but as far as I'm concerned this is an easy pick. "The Tree of Life" for Best Picture.

In years past, the Best Director nominations would usually mirror the Best Picture nominations, because the director is considered the creative mind most responsible for the finished film. With an expanded Best Picture nominee list, the Best Director nods can help to determine who the actual frontrunners are. In this case, we have Woody Allen for "Midnight in Paris," Michel Hazanavicius for "The Artist," Terrence Malick for "The Tree of Life," Alexander Payne for "The Descendants" and Martin Scorsese for "Hugo." And it was this list that convinced me that it was okay to skip "War Horse" for the time being, because Steven Spielberg is noticeably missing. Pretty much all of my arguments for the Best Picture nominees can be applied to their respective directors, though I'd give the edge to Woody Allen over nearly everyone else here, because of the wonderful, delicate mood he manages to conjure up for his fantastic bygone dreamscapes of Paris, which have so much more magic in them than Scorsese's. "The Descendants" depends more on its writing and "The Artist" depends more on its performances, but without Woody Allen's touch, you simply couldn't have "Midnight in Paris." But again, I'd hand the statuette to Malick in a second. Terrence Malick for Best Director.

The writing awards are always fun because you often get a few good titles in the mix that don't appear in any of the other categories. In Best Original Screenplay, we have "The Artist" and "Midnight in Paris," but also "Bridesmaids," "Margin Call," and the Iranian film "A Separation," which is a dead giveaway that "A Separation" will take home the Best Foreign Language Film award this year. I think this is a pretty weak roster, as I'm middling on "Margin Call," and found much of "Bridesmaids" uneven. "The Artist" is up here for the way it wrote around the limitations of having so little dialogue, which I can appreciate, but it's not enough for a win. Meanwhile, "Midnight in Paris" had absolutely fantastic dialogue in about half its scenes, those dealing with a spoiler I'm not going to give up here, but too much involving Owen Wilson's interactions with Rachel McAdams' character was lackluster. "A Separation," which I have not seen, but have read enough about to understand that it's a particularly complex and nuanced social drama, kind of takes this by default, because I don't think any of the other nominees deserve it. "A Separation" for Best Original Screenplay.

In the Best Adapted Screenplay category are Best Picture nominees "The Descendants," "Hugo," and "Moneyball," along with "The Ides of March" and "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." Now this is a much more interesting race. I think I've made my opinion of "Hugo" pretty clear. It's not that it's a bad film, but I found the script was surprisingly weak in some important spots. The writing was the best part of "Moneyball," but it never succeeded in getting me invested in the character of Billy Beane, which may be more Brad Pitt's fault than the writers,' but I'm going to assign equal responsibility. "The Ides of March" was an interesting peice of work, a nice, mean little political thriller than gave George Clooney and Ryan Gosling a lot of choice banter to chew through. I'm more impressed with "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," though, for taking such a radically different approach to its complicated spy story than most would dare. However, I have to go with "The Descendants" for handling some really tough subject matter about as well as it could possibly be handled, and still being an enjoyable watch. "The Descendants" for Best Adapted Screenplay.

More to come.
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The 2011 Academy Award nominees are over here. Let's get down to business.

The Best Picture nominations were pretty much what everyone expected, though it was probably close with "The Tree of Life," but there was one nominee that had a lot of people in arms today: "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." Largely scorned by critics and shut out of almost all the earlier awards races, most awards prognosticators had written this one off. I was hoping "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" might squeak through, but I knew it was a lost cause. From the negative buzz, however, I would have thought that the chances of "Extremely Loud" were much worse. Still, there were those reports from the member screenings back in December, that the film hit home for enough of the people who mattered most – the Academy voters.

No surprises in the Best Director race, but there were in some of the acting categories. Gary Oldman landing his first nomination for Best Actor was far from certain, and I was happy to see his name this morning. Demian Birchir from "A Better Life" was a long shot, but he showed up in the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) nominations, and that's usually one of the major early indicators of support from the acting community. It was a good, underseen performance and I'm happy for him, but this left Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Fassbender, and Michael Shannon on the sidelines, along with their films – "J.Edgar," "Shame," and "Take Shelter" were all shut out. There were some grumbles about the omission of Tilda Swinton from the Best Actress category and Albert Brooks from the Best Supporting Actor race, but this wasn't unexpected considering their track records this season.

Usually the Screenplay nominations closely mirror the Best Picture nominations, and any deviations are a good indication of who the runner-ups for the big prize probably were. So it's here that we predictably find "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," "Bridesmaids," and "The Ides of March." However, the unexpected appearances of "Margin Call" and Best Foreign Film nominee "A Separation" suggest that these two had more support than most people realized, despite not being very high profile. But when you look at the big categories and who consistently got nominated for what, the front runners are pretty clear: "The Artist," "Midnight in Paris," "Hugo," "The Descendants," and "Moneyball."

In the smaller categories, we find more former Best Picture hopefuls "Drive," "W./E.," and "Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2," which are up for Best Sound Editing, Best Costume, and Best Art Direction/Best Makeup/Best Visual Effects respectively. "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" failed to secure the most important nominations for Picture and Director, but it grabbed Best Cinematography and Best Editing nods, good enough to boost its total haul to five nominations, more than "The Help" or "Midnight in Paris."

But there were two races in particular with nominees that have left people scratching their heads: Best Original Song and Best Animated Feature. I don't understand why there are only two Best Original Song nominees despite 39 eligible tunes, but the convoluted voting rules and the notoriously capricious voting members of the Academy's Music Branch probably have something to do with it.

Even more surprising, but in a much better way, are the nominees for Best Animated Feature. "Cars 2," "The Adventures of Tintin," and "Winnie the Pooh" were all snubbed in favor of two traditionally animated foreign language films, "A Cat in Paris" from France and "Chico & Rita" from Spain. The latter will almost certainly be the first R-rated nominee in the category. It's a shame the new Pooh isn't up here, but this is an incredibly bold move by the Academy, and may get the category taken more seriously in the future.

Finally, a few personal observations – Michael Fassbender and Ryan Gosling were the movies' MVPs this year, no question, and I'm not happy that neither one of them managed to secure an acting nomination. And while I'm glad that "The Tree of Life" made the cut, it deserved far more than its three nominations. It had some of the best sound design and visual effects of last year, for starters. And I'd rather see Brad Pitt up for his performance in "Tree of Life" than the middling "Moneyball."

All in all, it has been a very strange year. I'm still boggled that "Hugo" and "The Artist" are the frontrunners. While I liked and appreciated both films, I have a hard time thinking of them as Best Picture winners. Frankly, I wouldn't bet against there being more surprises in store on Oscar night.
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Well, another Golden Globes ceremony has come and gone. As awards shows go, it wasn't as good as last year, but still a much more entertaining spectacle than any of the recent Oscar or Emmy broadcasts. Ricky Gervais, who swears he's not coming back next year (we'll see) wasn't nearly as acerbic or badly received as the last time, but he was working with a different crowd. Most of the room was prepared for the worst this time, so many presenters had good retorts for him, or were at least much better sports. If Gervais was playing it safe, he didn't show it. He looked like he was having a ball for the whole night, ragging on Johnny Depp, Colin Firth, and NBC.

The awards themselves are easier to sit through because there is a lot less self-important filler. No montages, no musical numbers, no accountants. Aside from Morgan Freeman being given the Cecil B. DeMille Award, trophies were handed out very quickly, one after the other. Bad speeches, bad dresses, and awkward reaction shots were pretty constant all evening, but it felt like they all went by much quicker than usual. The only thing I found really galling was the really heavy-handed bleeping of profanity. We lost whole sentences and jokes instead of just one or two words, and there were some pretty foul mouths in the room.

Well, on to the winners. On the television side, I don't have much to say. I meant to come back to "Homeland" after the first episode but I haven't gotten around to it. Ditto "Downton Abbey," "American Horror Story," "Boss," and "Mildred Pierce." However, it was great to see Idris Elba get some recognition for "Luther," and Peter Dinklage for "Game of Thrones." I have to say that the TV awards have always felt like more of an afterthought at the Globes because you don't see writer or director trophies being handed out. It was hard to take this year's nominees seriously when there were such obvious omissions like "Breaking Bad" in the Best Drama Series category. Also the Globes have always had a weird penchant for freshman shows like "Episodes," and "American Horror Story," which have both been widely panned by the usual critics.

On the movie side, the races look to be much more in tune with the wider Hollywood awards season vibe. George Clooney and Jean Dujardin won Best Actor trophies, and will be battling it out for top spot at the Oscars. Michelle Williams won Best Comedy/Musical Actress, and Meryl Streep took home Best Drama Actress, but there's still a good chance that Viola Davis could be a spoiler at the Oscars. Octavia Spencer and Christopher Plummer have the supporting awards all but locked up though, and I expect the same will hold true for Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese, who were honored for writing and directing respectively.

However the big question of who is going to win the Best Picture Oscar remains a mystery. As many have pointed out, it hasn't been a great year and there haven't been any real standouts films. "The Descendants" won the Best Drama Golden Globe, which was a nice surprise, but there's no guarantee that the win will translate to more momentum in the Oscar race. "The Artist" won Best Comedy/Musical, and seems to be right on track for Oscar glory, but the Academy is far more timid and conservative than the Globes. More accessible crowd pleasers like "Hugo" and "Midnight in Paris" are still definitely in the race.

I tend to agree with today's Slate article, that points out that the Globes is sometimes a far better barometer of quality than the Oscars. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association may be unscrupulous, and we know they can be bought, but it does have the benefit of operating outside the system and have proven time and again that they have very different tastes and ideas than Hollywood does. They're far less prone to the regional politicking and legacy picks, and their choices often mirror the critical consensus to maintain what little credibility they have. This year's Best Film winners, "The Descendants" and "The Artist," are definitely critical rather than commercial favorites.

It's going to be very interesting to see what the Oscars are going to do. Will they follow the Globes' lead and elevate films that will be a challenge for audiences, or will they fall back on safer material? The Oscar nominations won't come out until Tuesday, January 24th, and with the race so wide open this year, we'll almost certainly see a few titles in the mix that the Globes snubbed. Will "The Tree of Life" be back on the table? Will "Drive" or "Melancholia" break through?

We only know one thing for certain. With fresh wins for "The Artist" and "The Iron Lady" under his belt, Harvey Weinstein is back, baby!
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It's been over six months since The Day I Killed the TV, and I thought I'd follow up. I'm still mostly living without live television. I do have an antenna on the new TV, but it works so poorly that I only get reception for two of the major networks, FOX and CBS, and not in very good quality. With awards season in full swing, I'm worried about how I'm going to be able to watch the Golden Globes, which are on NBC, and the Oscars, which are on ABC this year. On the other hand, this is literally all the live television that I'm interested in watching for the foreseeable future. I watch everything else online.

I didn't realize how much television I was watching until suddenly I wasn't. I've stopped watching morning shows, most late night shows, and the programs I was following just because they happened to fit a particular open time slot that was convenient for me. I've cut down TV viewing hours by at least 60%. I'm down to a handful of regular network shows - "The Daily Show," "Community," "House," "60 Minutes," "Person of Interest," "Grimm," "Castle," and "Nikita" - and everything else I'm seeing through subscription services, rented discs, or pay-per-episode options - "Louie," "Breaking Bad," "The Walking Dead," etc.

So I'm still watching a lot of television by my own admission. The biggest difference is, I'm only watching a fraction of the advertisements, and in some cases, no ads at all. It's the same with movies. I skip through the previews unless I'm in a theater, and have been watching fewer and fewer trailers. I use the internet with ad blocker programs, so most print media is also coming to me mostly ad free. Sure, I still get those sidebar ads and Google paid links, and the occasional click-through screen, but it's very limited in comparison to the inundation of ads I used to be regularly subjected to by magazines and newspapers.

I've noticed the most dramatic difference is with the television ads, though. It's been a very bizarre couple of weeks for me, with no commercials to remind me about Black Friday deals or the fact that I only have a few more shopping days until Christmas. It's only when someone turns on a radio that I get hit with bursts of holiday marketing chatter. Lately, when people talk about particular marketing campaigns or ads, more often than not I don't know what they're talking about. Does this disconnect me from the popular media experience somewhat? Sure, but after a couple of months without all that background noise, I wouldn't give it up for anything.

Advertisements are designed to be distractions, to steal away your attention from other things, even when you're no longer looking or listening to them directly. How many times have you had some tuneless fast food jingle stuck in your head? ("$5 - $5 - $5 foot looooooong") How many times have you unconsciously found yourself associating a company or brand with their zippy slogans? ("Taste the rainbow!" "Just do it!" Or else!) I still think of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" as the United Airlines song, which is just wrong on so many levels. So it's such a relief to be able to avoid the most obnoxious ads almost completely now.

And it's not just the usual corporate advertising for products and services either. I used to dread election season, with all those awful, misleading attack ads raising political tensions to a boiling point. Now I just read the summaries of the candidates' latest hijinks on news sites, and can look ahead to next November without fear. And I'm not sure why I ever thought that the nightly American newscasts were ever as informative as print, with all those commercials disrupting the flow of information every few minutes.

Now I can just hear the old media guard wringing their hands. But media business models are primarily advertisement based! How on earth can we sustain our television operations if you're not willing to watch ads anymore? Well, as I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, I'm willing to pay for the privilege of not watching ads. I pay for Netflix and Hulu and Amazon and iTunes. Yes, I know there are ads on Hulu, even on the paysite portion. And I hit mute, minimize the window, do something else while the ads are running, and just scroll back to the start if I come back in late. Streaming video's great like that.

So NBC, ABC, I'll gladly fork over a few bucks if you guys can work out a way to stream your kudocasts live online this year. Louis CK just put up a brand new hour-long special for $5. Your awards shows aren't nearly as entertaining, but considerably longer. So, I'd be willing to pay up to, oh, $10 apiece for them - with no commercials of course. Maybe add another buck or two for the Golden Globes as a premium, if you turn off tape delay for Ricky Gervais. What do you say?
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As a movie fan, I am the opposite of a trend-setter. I'm never a proponent of the big, new something, because my tendency is always to gather more information about whatever I want to talk about, to research, to contextualize, and to analyze. I'm also a notorious completist. When it comes to "Best of" lists, I love making them, but I usually wait about ten months after everybody else's has gone public, and after I'm relatively sure I've seen everything I feel is relevant to making a decision. And I mean .

So I've been viewing the maneuverings of the various critic groups and awards organizations with some incredulity as they jostle to be the first to hand out honors to 2011 films. The Gotham Independent Film Awards announced a tie between "Beginners" and "The Tree of Life" for Best Feature on Monday. The New York Film Critics Circle went with the silent film, "The Artist." The Gotham Awards are only for indies, so their choices had limited impact, but there was some drama over the New York critics bumping their announcement date two weeks earlier than last year, when they crowned "The Social Network" on December 13th. This year they had to delay voting deadlines for a day to allow its members to screen David Fincher's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," but some contenders didn't make the cutoff time. Stephen Daldry's star-studded "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," isn't expected to start making the rounds until Friday. Is being first really so much more important than these critics seeing all the films that they're supposed to be judging? Do they realize that it's still November?

The line of thinking goes a little something like this. Awards, or even the buzz for potential awards, mean attention and money for prestige pictures. The smaller groups that hand out their awards early can influence the long race that ultimately ends on Oscar night. So the first awards announcement, in this case made by the New York Film Critics Circle, is guaranteed more attention and importance than those of groups of relatively equal prestige, like the Los Angeles and Boston critics circles, who are handing out their awards later in December. Studios and distributors, happy for more chances to campaign for their pictures, have exacerbated the whole situation, turning many of the minor guild awards and the awards handed out by obscure organizations into major events. Look at the rise of the Golden Globes, which is handed out by the sketchy Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The kudomania has resulted in a gauntlet of awards and ceremonies and marketing that stretches from December through February. Some film organization, like AFI, have created their own awards just to be able to get in on the action.

So as all these awards keep jockeying for position, the scheduling has become a very important factor. The trend has been to push for earlier and earlier announcements, with everyone trying to get their oar in before a consensus of opinion solidifies, the winners start becoming predictable, and awards fatigue sets in. If the Oscars get moved up as some organizers have suggested, say to late January, then it'll cause even more chaos as everyone else scrambles to readjust their schedules. Voting deadlines for many kudos could be moved up even further, which means we'll be seeing more films getting left out of contention - in the short run, anyway. The practice of waiting until the tail-end of December to get many prestige films into theaters might reverse, if potential contenders can't make the deadlines for awards consideration. This might alleviate the pressure on critics and other voters who often have to resort to marathoning films. Of course, it could also result in more rushing on the filmmaking end, and compromised, weaker films.

I still daydream about being a professional movie critic for one of these big organizations sometimes, actually participating in the awards process and having access to all the newest, most anticipated films. On the other hand, I'm grateful that I don't have to watch them all in the same week. But I really appreciate these guys and what they do. A long awards season may become a slog, the most deserving films rarely win, and the politics can be infuriating, but this keeps the focus on the quality of films instead of the box office for a little while, and ensures that the smaller films with otherwise limited commercial prospects will find their way to you and me eventually. And that they'll make more next year.
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I debated with myself whether I should wait and let the situation cool down a little before adding my two cents about Brett Ratner pulling out as the producer of the Oscars yesterday, and Eddie Murphy pulling out as host only a few hours ago. But, well, I doubt any opinions I have about the situation now are going to change in the next few days, and I might as well get what mileage I can out of the drama while it's still fresh and bloody.

I didn't find Ratner throwing around vulgar language and a gay slur particularly shocking. I mean, "gay" itself was an accepted epithet throughout most of 90s and 00s before the culture changed for the better, and internet message board shenanigans have inured me to pretty much all forms of harsh language and shock tactics. The term Ratner used seemed a little on the extreme side, but otherwise pretty much in keeping with the slick, hyper-masculine, homophobic, frat-boy culture that's always been endemic in certain parts of Hollywood. You know, the same mindset that lets Michael Bay make the world's sleaziest toy commercials and provided "Entourage" with seven seasons worth of material. I figured that after Ratner's immediate apology and the slap on the wrist that came from the Academy a few days ago, that would be the end of it.

And I'm kind of pleasantly surprised that it wasn't. Hollywood has a high tolerance for jackasses, but it's also extremely image-conscious. And the Oscars, which are nothing if not about maintaining an image, put Ratner in a higher profile role than he wasn't prepared to handle. Oscar hopefuls may thrive on controversy, but it's anathema to the actual establishment that runs the whole show. Even though Ratner's comments were made during his promotional appearances for "Tower Heist," and they reflected an attitude of thoughtless flippancy more than outright malice, his association with the Oscars put him in the spotlight. And the remarks were unacceptable to enough people that they had consequences this time. Casual homophobia is no longer a laughing matter to the mainstream, and Ratner's resignation can be seen as a barometer of the changing culture.

Now I don't have any particular beef with Brett Ratner. He's crass and he's graceless, but he's always seemed harmless enough. He's known for good-natured buddy comedies, cutesy Mariah Carey music videos, silly action films, and actually made a better Hannibal Lecter film than Ridley Scott did. He may well be a hack, as some have claimed, but he's not without talent. When it was announced that he would be producing the 2012 Academy Awards ceremony back in August, I thought it was a good move. Ratner may not be synonymous with the kind of films that the Oscars usually honor, but he'd surely be able to liven up the moribund Oscar telecast, which could use a good infusion of more populist razzle dazzle, especially after last year's disaster.

To be honest, I was more worried about Eddie Murphy. The Oscar host gig has long been a haven for comedians past their prime, such as Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, and Steve Martin. However, Murphy isn't just past his prime, he's known to an entire new generation as an abrasive talking donkey, and even that wore out its welcome ten years ago. Now as a child of the 80s, of course I know that Murphy is a comedy legend and should be treated as such. And after James Franco and Anne Hathaway bombed, I'm glad for any comedian to get the hosting job again. But I can't remember the last time I saw an Eddie Murphy performance where he wasn't phoning it in or trying much, much to hard to revive his 80s mojo without much success. Murphy as Oscar host could have been great, but I thought it was equally likely that it would have been cringeworthy.

So now it's about four months to the ceremony, and the Oscars have no host and its big name producer is out. Fortunately longtime awards show producer Don Mischer is still hanging in there, and with all the attention, there's a good chance that bigger names might get interested and offer to lend their services. I'd like to see a more current comedian like Tina Fey or Steve Carrell try the hosting gig. Maybe lure in a celeb producer with a more substantive resume. Losing Ratner and Murphy at this stage is inconvenient, but there's still plenty of time to regroup.

As far as I'm concerned, one good thing has already come out of this - we have a new F-word that people now understand is not to be used in polite conversation. And with any luck, all the remaining little homophobic asides and insinuations that are still far too common will be totally passe by February.
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As it's November in Hollywood, and as this year's Oscar race is starting to take shape, the first "For Your Consideration" ads are starting to make the rounds. What surprised me is that I've been seeing a pretty heavy push for the "Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows Part 2," the final "Harry Potter" film that was released this summer by Warner Brothers. And by surprising, I mean that my immediate, knee-jerk response was to dismiss the campaign as hopeless and the film as having next to no chance with Academy voters.

I understand why Warners is doing this. The "Potter" franchise has been one of its best performers over the last decade, and they want to send it off with a bang. And a boost in Oscar publicity would help spur DVD and Blu-ray sales, and all the usual ancillary merchandising. On the other hand, the "Potter" series is part of the fantasy genre, which the Academy traditionally shuns. It's also blatantly commercial in the way that most prestige films aren't - its entire existence is due to Warners wanting another summer tentpole for 2011, which lead them to split the final "Potter" installment into two. It also didn't do much new or innovative with effects or filmmaking technique, which tipped the scales for past genre nominees like "Avatar" and "District 9" in the past.

But then, I remembered "Return of the King," which was not only nominated for a raft of Academy Awards in 2004, but pulled off a sweep that year. It managed this in spite of being somewhat less well-received than the previous installments of "Lord of the Rings," weathering audience grumbles that the picture was too long and had too many endings. You're not going to find many people who pick "Return of the King" as their favorite of the trilogy. Most observers speculated that Academy voters were really rewarding all three films that night, as "The Lord of the Rings" was a watershed series, unmatched at that time in their scope, ambition, and critical and financial success. You could easily draw parallels with the "Harry Potter" series, which managed to maintain a wonderful consistency of quality through eight films. The "Potter" and "Lord of the Rings" film franchises even debuted the same year, with their first installments premiering barely a month apart in late 2001.

However, none of the previous "Potter" films has won a single Oscar, and has only collected nine nominations over seven films, mostly in technical categories. "Lord of the Rings" had already won six statuettes before the "Return of the King" sweep, and all three films were nominated for Best Picture. The Academy very well may want to recognize the "Potter" franchise in aggregate, but do the eight "Potter" films in aggregate match up to the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy? I have my doubts, especially since there were some pretty mediocre "Potter" films, like "Chamber of Secrets" and "Goblet of Fire" that tend to drag down the others. Also, none of the individual films really pushed boundaries or set standards. The first "Harry Potter" actually had pretty poor CGI effects, even for the time it was made.

On the other hand, eight "Potter" films might match up to an "Avatar" or an "Inception." The Oscar race has changed in 2004 in some significant ways that need to be taken into account. Since the number of nomination slots for Best Picture nominees was doubled a few years ago, "Deathly Hallows Part 2" has a far better chance of getting a slot than it would have five years ago. Also, this year's crop of prestige films hasn't been very strong so far, with few clear contenders coming out of the fall film festivals. If there are enough disappointments in December, "Deathly Hallows Part 2" might have a shot. The Academy does like rewarding consistency, and there's not much out there more consistent than "Harry Potter." Also, it would give younger viewers something to be excited about, and the Academy's been chasing their eyeballs for years.

But I think the trouble is what other categories you could justify nominations for beyond the usual technical nods. "Deathly Hallows Part 2" was very well reviewed, with better notices than just about any other wide-release film this year. However, like "Return of the King," it's clearly not the best "Harry Potter" film. When you try to break down its accomplishments, none of the performances really stood out, the directing was only so-so, and the script has some weak spots. The "For Your Consideration" ads list Art Direction, Editing, and Cinematography as possibilities, along with the usual Sound and Visual Effects categories. However, I definitely don't see it picking up any bigger nominations, and without those, "Deathly Hallows Part 2" won't be much of a contender.

Of course, the hype may be a factor. Warners is putting a lot of dollars behind this, and the series is old enough that it might kick up some nostalgic sentiment, or parents and grandparents might be swayed by cajoling kids. The film's box office is certainly nothing to sneeze at. However, it's also important to remember that the "Return of the King" sweep was seen in many circles as rather embarrassing overkill. Even if it gets the nominations, fans shouldn't get their hopes up - "Deathly Hallows Part 2" likely won't win a thing. But nominations alone should be fine for Warners' purposes. It'll get "Potter" into the awards conversation, and bring plenty of attention with it.

Then maybe, finally, they can let the "Harry Potter" franchise go away for a little while. I don't know about you, but I'm just about Pottered out.
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So how did this year's telecast measure up? As awards ceremonies go, this was a pretty good one, though with some big caveats.

Jane Lynch was a perfectly serviceable Emmy host. The years that FOX gets the ceremony are always crapshoots, since they don't have any late night talent or daytime fall backs. They were responsible for the awful "Emmy in the Round" experiment, and made the grave mistake of letting Ryan Seacrest host the last time. I was hoping they might ask Conan O'Brien this year, who was always very good when he hosted for NBC, but Lynch was fine. She sang, she snarked, and losing her category didn't faze her. If anything, she got funnier as the night went on.

I thought the opening sequence was over-produced and got the show off to a pretty tedious start, but the rest of the pre-taped segments were decent. The "Office" sketch was far more tolerable than any other potential tribute to mark the ending of Steve Carell's run on the show. "The Jersey Shore" bit was totally unnecessary, but at least it was executed well, and got better the longer they kept it going. Ricky Gervais was there exactly as long as he needed to be. I wish these segments hadn't been so front-loaded, but since most of them were only relevant to the comedy categories, it was inevitable.

The live bits were even better than the taped ones. The Lonely Island medley was a lot of fun. I initially rolled my eyes at the Emmytones, which consisted of a collection of random stars, Kate Flannery, Taraji P. Henson, Zachari Levi, Cobie Smulders, Wilmer Vaderrama, and Joel McHale, presenting each of the category montages as an a capella group, but then the whole thing paid off when LL Cool J showed up. And of course, the Amy Poehler masterminded beauty pageant is going to go down in Emmy history, and probably boost her chances in next year's race. If you can shake up an interminable awards ceremony, the industry will love you forever for it. I was hoping for another Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert bit, but they weren't on the presenter list this year. Aside from the In Memoriam, there were no other tribute pieces either. Alas, no cheesy Stephen J. Cannell montage to assuage our pain.

As for the actual awards, there was a lot of excitement and drama, but only if you were fairly knowledgeable about the Emmy race. On the surface it looked like business as usual, with "Modern Family" cleaning up in the comedy categories, and "The Daily Show," "The Amazing Race," and "Mad Men" adding more trophies to their existing heaps. However, there were major upsets left and right in categories for less popular programming. HBO's "Mildred Pierce" was heavily favored in the Outstanding Miniseries or Movie categories, but lost all but two acting awards to "Downton Abbey." "Mad Men" may have gone home with the Outstanding Drama Series statuette, but won no other major categories. Instead, the eternal underdog, "Friday Night Lights" nabbed Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Lead Actor for its last eligible year, "Boardwalk Empire" got Outstanding Direction," and "Justified" and "Game of Thrones" picked up an acting trophy apiece.

Even in the otherwise predictable comedy categories, the Lead Actor and Actress races had major surprises. Laura Linney and Amy Poehler were the frontrunners for Best Actress, and Steve Carrell was favored for Best Actor, as he had never won for "The Office," and the expectation was that voters would reward him for his work in aggregate. Instead, Melissa McCarthy of "Mike & Molly" was literally crowned Miss Emmy Lead Comedy Actress 2011, and Jim Parsons of "The Big Bang Theory" is officially having a streak. It wasn't a good year for NBC comedy in general, with previous Emmy darling "30 Rock" going home empty handed, and lots of chatter about how deserving "Parks and Recreation" and "Community" stars were snubbed in favor of the "Modern Family" juggernaut.

There were dull and mock-worthy moments, as always: the awful Canadian Tenors singing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujiah" during the In Memoriam, Julianna Margulies' attempts to do comedy, and a pandemic of bad microphones all night. Shilling for new shows wasn't too obnoxious this year, but the "Charlie's Angels" apperance was an embarrassment, especially as they were handing out one of the major acting awards and announced the winner's name in incomprehensible squeals. I'm not sure why the announcers were still doing John Hodgman's schtick without John Hodgman. Oh, and Charlie Sheen showed up and behaved himself, which was exactly as exciting as it sounds.

But all in all, this was among the better awards shows that I've seen recently. There was a consistent feeling of effort in the writing and production, and even if all the jokes and ideas didn't work, at least few of them were outright stinkers. The Oscars might want to poach a few of the writers for February. And this was one of the most unpredictable and interesting Emmy races I've seen in a while, once you got past "Modern Family." It's getting my hopes up for next year.

Until then, happy watching.
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Continued from previous post.

6:39PM - Hmmm. EW says that Alec Baldwin walked out of the Emmys after a Rupert Murdoch joke got quashed. Ah, he was supposed to play the President of TV in the intro, and Nimoy was substituted at the last moment.

6:40PM - Loretta Devine and Paul McCrane, the Outstanding Guest Star winners, present Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. Neil Jordan and Martin Scorsese are in this category. Scorsese wins! I wouldn't voted for him, just to get this upcoming speech.

6:43PM - Nothing very interesting from Scorsese, but still good to see him.

6:44PM - Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. With no Aaron Paul, who's going to take it? Peter Dinklage for "Game of Thrones"! Eeeeeee! And the fanboys rejoice!

6:51PM - Hi Anderson Cooper. This may be the best thing anyone has ever done with the cast of "The Jersey Score."

6:53PM - Bryan Cranston and Katie Holmes (wha? Oh, the Kennedys miniseries) present Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Emmy goes to Julianna Margulies. Wait, her dress isn't bedazzled. Upon closer inspection, it appears to be spawning.

6:56PM - The leads of the new TV "Charlie's Angels" reboot and Drew Barrymore from the movie "Charlie's Angels" reboot appear. Passing the torch? Oh come on. Some of the original Angels are still around.

Outstanding Lead Actor Emmy goes to Kyle Chandler. Chances of a Best Drama upset are looking more likely.

7:05PM - Oooh, LL Cool J joins the Emmytones. They needed that. Onwards to the Miniseries/Made for TV Movies Montage! Hey, "Luther"! And "Carlos"! And "Sherlock"!

7:07PM - Okay, Jane Lynch just had the best line of the night. I can't wait to forget "Entourage" ever existed. Best Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries, Movie, or Dramatic Special Emmy goes to Julian Fellowes for "Downton Abbey." Have to remember to watch that one. Used the word "grandiloquent" in his speech, which pretty much assures that it is grandiloquent.

7:10PM - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie Emmy goes to Maggie Smith for "Downton Abbey." She's not here. Oh well.

7:17PM - Wow, Paul Abdul is tiny, and the mikes are so off. The accountants get their moment. Melissa McCarthy and Amy Poehler are making everyone so wonderfully uncomfortable. Outstanding Actor in a Miniseries or Movie goes to Barry Pepper. He's not here.

7:20PM - Outstanding Directing in a Miniseries or Movie nominees include Todd Haynes, Olivier Assayas, and Curtis Hanson. None or them win, because "Downton Abbey" is on a roll. Brian Percival, here's your moment. Enjoy it.

7:22PM - Here comes the In Memoriam. I hate that they've been turning these into stealth musical numbers lately. Bye Columbo, and Mr. Cunningham, and "Touched by an Angel" guy.

7:32PM - Here come David Boreanz and Anna Torv to present Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Movie. Emmy goes to Guy Pearce, who actually is here. And he's making raunchy jokes and being awesome.

7:35PM - Hugh Laurie and Claire Danes and Hugh Laurie's accent come out to present the Helen Mirren memorial Emmy (Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie) to Kate Winslet. Yeah, who saw that coming?

And now she proceeds to demonstrate exactly why she won, by injecting some much needed energy into the final stretch. Thanks Kate.

7:44PM - Jane Lynch's material is getting better. The voice of Don Cheadle presents the Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries or Movie to "Downton Abbey." "Mildred Pierce" and HBO are denied. Mr. Grandiloquent is back! I like him.

7:46PM - Maria Bello and William H. Macey have terrible presenter lines, but everyone's paying attention because they're presenting Outstanding Drama Series. Emmy goes to "Mad Men"! No writing award, no Hamm victory, but they still walk away with the big one.

7:48PM - I wish they had a live orchestra to play the shows' theme music as they're going up on stage like they do at the Oscars. I found myself straining to hear the "Mad Men" theme, but no such luck.

7:54PM - Jane Lynch is a trooper. Last award is being presented by Gwyneth Paltrow. Outstanding Comedy Series goes to "Modern Family." How could it not? Nice going on the heartfelt speech Mr. Levitan.

8:00PM - There were some nice surprises, but the overwhelming love for "Modern Family" was getting a little nuts, and I don't understand how Steve Carrell lost to Sheldon again. With this crowd, though, I get why shows like "Community" and "Louie" got overlooked, and probably will be again in the future.

Oh well. There's always next year. Congratulations to all the winners and should-a-wonners. Good night!
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Heaven help me. I'm doing this again. Twelve minutes to the madness!

5:00PM - Bye bye Nancy O'Dell. Good riddance.

Opening sequence features Leonard Nimoy as the "President of TV." I'd have gotten Henry Winkler. Good use of Kevin Nealon and Jeremy Piven, but the longer bits with "Big Bang" and "Man Men" couldn't have been over fast enough.

5:07PM - Jane Lynch sounds better live than in the taped segment.

5:10PM - Oh, poor Joel McHale. Don't get nominated for an Emmy, end up in the "Emmytones," announcing pool. Looks like they're also going with category specific montages this year. The guys who did the "Comedy" one (and it earned those quotation marks) should seriously reconsider their profession.

5:14PM - Jimmies Fallon and Kimmel have a good bit with mild homoeroticism and roughhousing. Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series goes to Julie Bowen from "Modern Family."

5:17PM - Julianna Marguiles is wearing a bedazzled toothpaste tube and appears to be heavily medicated. Ty Burrell from "Modern Family" gets the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series award.

5:26PM - Jane Lynch gets to make a concession speech. Ricky Gervais! The gag with the censored pre-taped speech went on for exactly as long as it should have. You laugh, but I'm getting flashbacks to what FOX Kids did to "One Piece." Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series goes to Michael Allen Spiller for "Modern Family."

5:30PM - Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series is being presented by Will Arnettt and Zooey Deschanel. Good luck with the new sitcoms guys. Steven Levitan and Jeffrey Richman win for "Modern Family." This evening is getting terribly predictable. Are the drama categories up soon? Variety shows? Miniseries? Something "Modern Family" isn't nominated for?

5:34PM - "You won't believe who's on the Emmy stage next!" Maybe you shouldn't have shown us that shot of Charlie Sheen adjusting his tie right before cutting to commercial.

5:39PM - "Welcome back to the 'Modern Family' awards!" Jane Lynch can't seem to decide between abrasive and charming, so she's going for obvious.

5:41PM - Uh oh. Charlie Sheen's having a moment.

5:42PM - Oh good. It didn't last. Onward!

5:42PM - Jim Parsons wins Outstanding Lead Actor again for "The Big Bang Theory."

5:43PM - Sofia Vergara and Rob Lowe present for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. Amy Poehler doesn't wait for the winner to be called, and heads for the stage. Ooh, she may have started something. There goes Melissa McCarthy. And Martha Plimpton.

Please tell me this wasn't planned. That would make it even more awesome.

Melissa McCarthy wins! Group hug! And a tiara and roses materialize. Yup, it was planned. Still pretty awesome.

5:50PM - I am fixing typos.

5:54PM - I'm not sure what this "Office" sketch is about, but it was nice to see Aaron Paul and John Slattery. Okay, and Cee-Lo and his chair from "The Voice" was cute. Ashton Kutcher gag was obvious, but well done.

5:57PM - Reality/Variety montage time. Wonder why the Kennedy Center Honors and the Oscars didn't warrant identification.

6:01PM - Why a David Spade and Kelly Cuoco pairing for Best Reality Program presenters? Oh well. "Amazing Race" wins, after "Top Chef" ended its last streak last year. How long will they hang on to the title this time?

6:04PM - I always love the Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music, or Comedy Special nominees. "Daily Show" writers on Newsweek covers! Jimmy Fallon writers as puppies! A peek into the writers' rooms of "Colbert" and "Conan"! "Daily Show" wins. Speech amusing and also brief. Best kind of Emmy victory.

6:12PM - Lonely Island and Michale Bolton take the stage to start off an "SNL" nominated song medley. Why are they wiggling their genitalia at William H. Macey? Forget it. I don't want to know.

6:16PM - Had to Google Ian Somerhalder, which confirms I'm old. He and Lea Michele present Best Directing for a Variety, Music, or Comedy Special to Don Hall for "SNL." Guy is dripping with class. Wow.

6:18PM - Either Anna Paquin is very tall or Scott Caan is very short. Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Special goes to "The Daily Show" for the ninth time. Fallon's mugging, and it's adorable.

6:26PM - Yay! Drama montage! I'm starting to appreciate these just for the clips of shows that wouldn't get nominated in a million years otherwise.

6:29PM - John Cryer and Ashton Kutcher present Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series. Emmy goes to - "Friday Night Light"?! Is this the beginning of an upset, or just a fluke? And will this be the only time we'll every here someone thank DirecTV in an Emmy speech this evening?

6:31PM - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series goes to Margo Martindale for "Justified." Someone help that woman up the stairs! I love it when normally under-the-radar character actors get these moments. I have heard very good things.

We're at the halfway point. Continuing in second post.
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It's been a while since I did an update post, and there are several prior entries that I think need an addendum, including the Oscar Post Mortem I wrote up on Monday. Without further ado, here are some additional thoughts on subjects discussed in previous posts.

Oscar 2011 Post-Mortem - This year's ceremony turned out to be one of the shortest in the last thirty years, and apparently there was a lot of chaos going on behind the scenes. At least two production numbers and an appearance by Shrek were cut, the latter due to technical difficulties. Excised "Grease" and "Evita" segments of the intro montage can be found online, and a clip of James Franco murdering a Cher song from "Burlesque" was recently yanked. The jury's still out on whether this was a good decision or not, but I think the whole crew should have spent less time cutting those spiffy ABC promos for the ceremony, and actually worried about the ceremony itself. And I'm guessing one of the reasons why Franco looked so distracted all evening was because he was sending out live Tweets all night. Oy.

My Holiday Wishlist - So far, so good. The MGM bankruptcy is going well and all the delayed projects I was interested in are going forward. They even managed to get Sam Mendes back for the next Bond movie. We also got a very promising new version of "At the Movies" currently airing on PBS, and this year's "Doctor Who" Christmas special was pretty darn kickass. Alas, Hulu's new deal with Criterion means that Netflix is going to be more depleted of older prestige titles in a few months, and I haven't had any luck tracking down any of the obscure titles I listed. I was also dismayed to realize that all the major rental services only carry domestic releases, meaning that it's impossible to get my hands on titles like Luis Bunuel's "Los Olvidados" and Roberto Rossellini's "Stromboli," which are only available through foreign distributors. Also, no flatscreen and Michael Bay remains sad and alone.

The Battle For Thursday - You know, maybe if Charlie Sheen's ongoing hissy fit does end up shutting down "Two and a Half Men" permanently, they'll send "The Big Bang Theory" back to Mondays and I won't have to choose between watching "Big Bang" and "Community" live. Sigh. I know it won't happen, because CBS has been doing so well with its new Thursday comedy block, but a gal can dream, can't she? I dropped "Big Bang Theory" for "Community" completely over the winter break for a few episodes, but I'm slowly falling back in to the same old pattern of watching "Big Bang" live and "Community" on Hulu. I can't help it. I've totally fallen for the frumpy charms of Mayim Bialik's Amy Farrah Fowler. Even Troy and Abed (in the morning!) are no match for her.

The Problem With Mary Jane - One nice thing about this new spate of fairy-tale themed movies is that it means a lot of new female lead roles. Amanda Seyfried will be headlining "Red Riding Hood," Gemma Arterton star with Jeremy Renner in "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters," and there are no less than three different "Snow White" projects gearing up, one with Kristen Stewart. However, the biggest plum role in the pipeline is Katniss of "The Hunger Games," an upcoming action film based on the young adult novel by Suzanne Collins. It's being geared up to be the next big film franchise, and already has a sizable fan base that's been buzzing about potential candidates for months. As for Alphonso Cuaron's "Gravity," after months of drama and a list of contenders as long as my arm, the lead role appears to finally be going to Sandra Bullock.

The Search for the Mom-Friendly Movie - Next year may be easier to find suitable movies for my parents, as there have been several news articles pointing out the resurgence of older audiences at the movies again, and making Oscar fare like "The King's Speech" and "True Grit" into bona fide blockbusters. While mid-range films are unlikely to make a comeback, there's been a welcome trend toward older stars in genre fare. Liam Neeson just had a good turn in "Unknown," which was much better than his last action two films, "The A-Team" and "Taken." Also, Meryl Streep shows no sign of slowing down. This year she'll be playing Margaret Thatcher in the bio-pic "The Iron Lady," and no doubt gunning for Oscar nomination number seventeen come December.

And finally, remember Disneyland: The Movie?! It's still moving forward, along with plans for - I kid you not - a Jungle Cruise movie starring Tim Allen and Tom Hanks.

Let's get one thing out of the way first. I'm terrible at guessing Oscar winners. I only picked half the categories correctly, just one more than my friend at the viewaing party who hadn't seen any of the movies this year. There were some good surprises in the smaller races - Wally Pfister won in Cinematography, a non-PIXAR short went home with a trophy, and "The King's Speech" didn't have anything close to the sweep that some were predicting. It got four Oscars last night, the same as "Inception," which had mostly wins in technical categories. "The Social Network" wrestled away a Best Editing win, netting three statues. All the acting awards went to the same actors who have been winning them all season. Though I disagreed with many of the winners, only one really disappointed me - that the Best Director Oscar went to Tobe Hooper for "The King's Speech" over David Fincher for "The Social Network." Hooper did a fine job, but Fincher turned the much-belittled concept of a "Facebook movie" into a critical awards juggernaut, and he's overdue for Academy recognition, dammit.

The ceremony itself tried to be a lot of things, and mostly turned out to be an awkward ordeal, but lets get to the positive changes first. I blogged a few suggestions for improving the awards telecast last week, and it turns out I was on the same wavelength as the showrunners about a few things. This year there were fewer presenters handing out more awards, the audience got to see more clips of the nominees' work, and the orchestra mostly behaved. Probably the biggest improvement, structurally, was removing the individual clips for the Best Picture nominees, opting instead to have a single montage at the end of the night. And using a single presenter to shower kudos on the Best Actor and Actress nominees with a longer intro was a much better alternative to that five-presenter set-up they tried a few times.

Sadly, the special honorary Oscars and the Irving J. Thalberg Awards have been permanently banished to the newly created Governor's Awards ceremony, and they will no longer be part of the usual telecast. Last night a summary of the event was included, similar to the one for the technical awards ceremony. I have to grudgingly agree with their exclusion for the sake of better television, though frankly I would have rather sat through the telecast of that ceremony - honoring Francis Ford Coppola, Jean-Luc Godard, actor Eli Wallach, and historian Kevin Brownlow - than this one. Three of the four got to come out for a cameo, the exception being Jean-Luc Godard of course, because Jean-Luc Godard does not put up with this kind of Hollywood nonsense.

There was a lot of downright cringeworthy business going on last night. Most of the attempts at pre-taped pieces fell utterly flat, including the traditional cameo-riddled opening sequence where the hosts pop in and out of scenes from nominated movies, and a bit where clips from blockbusters like "Harry Potter" and "Twilight" got the autotune treatment. The ideas weren't bad, but the execution was horrendous. It felt like the show's producers had slapped the comedic segments together over the weekend and the writers had abandoned the hosts to flounder with hastily scribbled banter and ad libs. Instead of coming across as young and hip, the Oscars came across as trying very hard to be young and hip, and doing a lousy job of it.

As for poor James Franco and Anne Hathaway, I've read various dissections of their perforaences, and the overwhelming sentiment is that they were unfortunate choices for hosts. I thought that Hathaway came off better because she was trying so much harder, bumbling her way through a solo dance number in ridiculous shoes, and keeping up the energy in the latter half of the show while James Franco seemed to be in the early stages of rigor mortis. On the other hand, her continuous nervous laughter and odd mugging antics weren't winning her many points. Hathaway and Franco can be charming and funny, but I think they cracked a bit under pressure, and they clearly did not have the chops to save the lousy scripted material. Nowhere was this more apparent than when Billy Crystal showed up to tell a few tepid jokes and had the entire theater on its feet.

Bringing the Best Song performances back was also a mistake, especially this year when the nominees were uniformly mediocre. I have no idea how the logic of the nomination process works, if they bumped a Cher performance in favor of the "Tangled" duet (they should have picked the upbeat "Tangled" barfight number). But the mundane performances didn't stop there. It's now apparently a tradition to get a pop singer to come out to perform alongside the "In Memoriam" segment, a practice I find incredibly distracting. Celine Dion was up there this year singing "Smile," which was predictably dull. This would have been the perfect place to feature some music from the recently departed John Barry, who was listed in the segment, but had no other tribute. Getting a children's choral group to come out and sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" at the end of the ceremony was also unbearably twee.

The new virtual backdrops were nice, if needlessly distracting. The special effect that allowed Bob Hope to briefly return to the stage as the Ghost of Oscars Past was a neat trick, and might be a way to widen the talent pool for future presenters. And speaking of the presenters, several had good moments. It was good to see Kirk Douglas, Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law were effortless, and Helen Mirren and Russel Brand did their best to convince me to see the "Arthur" remake. The winners had their moments too, especially the actresses, Melissa Leo and Natalie Portman, Randy Newman lamenting his win-to-loss ratio, and film student Luke Matheny picking up the Best Short award while sporting the best hair of the evening. All the usual award show business was fun and watchable. It was the spectacle that crashed this time around.

So the most sinister moment of the telecast was the Academy's announcement that they had renewed their broadcast deal with ABC through the year 2020. If the future Oscar shows are anything like this year's, we may be in serious trouble. But all hope is not lost. In some ways, I though the producers were going in the right direction. They should keep the time-saving format changes, but boot the Best Song performances and the entire current writing staff. And please, please, please, next year hire a real comedian to host. David Letterman, Steve Martin, Neil Patrick Harris, somebody. It was a good year for movies, and there's no reason why it had to be such a bad year for the Oscars.

In this tumultuous entertainment news cycle, when the Oscars are only a few days away and Charlie Sheen is indicating that he hasn't hit rock bottom just yet, there's been one news tidbit that has largely escaped unnoticed. Yesterday, word came in from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences that they're merging the miniseries and made-for-television movie categories. The networks had been lobbying for the past several years to weasel out of broadcasting htese categories, since they can't be bothered to produced long-form programming anymore, so the awards in these categories predominantly go to cable. I posted in the past that I was worried about this happening, because television, particularly HBO, is one of the last bastions for certain mid-range film projects that we would never see otherwise, like "Temple Grandin," which was a big Emmy winner last year.

Instinctively, I don't like the decision because it's taking away the spotlight from some lesser-seen television that isn't eligible for other major awards and would seem to be speeding the decline of the miniseries and made-for-television movie formats. On the other hand, the decision may be out of the Academy's hands. For the past two years, the miniseries categories only had two nominees apiece. This year, it was HBO's "The Pacific" against PBS's "Return to Cranford." Last year, it was HBO's "Generation Kill" up against PBS's "Little Dorrit." With dwindling numbers of potential contenders, the miniseries category might go away on its own in a few years without any intervention. All the other categories for miniseries and made-for-television movies have been merged since their inception. Originally, these were much more amorphously defined, with everything that wasn't honoring a regular series lumped in under the amorphous heading "Specials." Eventually the dramatic presentations were separated out from the variety shows, award ceremonies, and non-fiction programs. Best Miniseries trophies started being given away in 1973, and the Best Made-for-Television Movie category was inaugurated with "The Miracle Worker" in 1980.

The Miniseries and Made-for-Television Movie races are so intertwined, it would be difficult to separate them out, but if I were running things, I wouldn't be so quick to lump them together. Looking at the last few nominees for the Best Miniseries category, I think it would make for a much more interesting race if they were added to the Best Dramatic Series category instead. After all, structually "The Pacific" and "John Adams" are much closer to serials like "Mad Men" and "Dexter" than single presentation made-for-television movies like "Temple Grandin" and "Grey Gardens." No doubt, producers would argue that the miniseries have an unfair advantage in being higher budgeted, with fewer format rules, and only having to worry about a far smaller number of episodes. However, since cable started getting into the drama business, with their shorter seasons and more variable scheduling, this is no longer the case. Sure, "Return to Cranford" was only four hours long over two installments, but "The Pacific" ran for ten hours and "Little Dorrit" for fourteen. This year's Best Drama winner was "Mad Men," which had thirteen hour-long episodes. Other nominees included "Breaking Bad," "Big Love," and "True Blood," all at twelve or thirteen episodes apiece.

I can't help thinking that the merger decision is short-sighted. Sure, miniseries are out of style now, but that doesn't mean that the pendulum couldn't swing back in a couple of years. There was a boom in fantasy miniseries after "Gulliver's Travels" in 1996, and I used to love wasting afternoons whenever the Sci Fi Channel would marathon them. You'd think that the lack of competition in the category right now might spur some of the networks to push a few new projects into production, just to make their offerings look more diverse. Unfortunately, original productions are expensive, and everybody is getting more risk-averse these days. Miniseries and made-for-television movies are scarce outside of cable now, being pushed aside for cheaper reality fare. A few big projects will still slip through every now and then, which gives me hope. ABC is looking into a "Wicked" miniseries and the History Channel's troubled Kennedys project finally found a home on ReelzChannel. But you have to go to premium cable for the good stuff, like the miniseries prequel to Starz's "Spartacus" series, and HBO's new version of "Mildred Pierce" with Kate Winslet.

The miniseries is such a versatile format, and I'm sorry to see its decline in American television. As a movie nut, I often find best movie lists sneaking in the great miniseries like "Fanny and Alexander," "Berlin Alexanderplatz," and "The Kingdom." Prominent on my current to-watch list is Olliver Assayas's "Carlos." I don't know if we're ever going to see the days of "Roots" again, when a miniseries could keep a rapt audience for eight consecutive nights, but the potential for great television still remains. I hope Hollywood won't lose sight of it completely.

On Sunday comes the king of all award shows, the Academy Awards. Its ratings have dropped over the years, and many people have pointed to the show's length and format as potential culprits. The Oscars usually run in excess of three hours, and its bylaws require that every competitive award it gives out be included in the televised broadcast, something the Grammys and Tonys don't have to worry about. The MTV Movie Awards, by comparison, scarcely run two hours, though MTV's video awards ceremonies and many other kudocasts rival Oscar's running times. In recent years, various producers have tried to make the show faster, leaner, and more appealing to younger audiences. Best Song performances have been cut to save time, but on Sunday they're staging a comeback. Montages were all the rage in 2010, but in 2011 they're out. We've seen experiments with different presentation options, scripted segments, pre-recorded videos, monologues, and all manner of wacky set designs. Some have come out better than others. And of course, like any random passerby, I have my own suggestions.

Cut down the number of presenters. I know that the Oscars are supposed to be a prime opportunity for stargazing, but there's no reason why you need different presenters for every single award, clip package, tribute, memorium, nominee spotlight, and to introduce Academy president Tom Sherak and the accountants. Every time you have a new presenter you need a new introduction, a new bit, and have to wait for that acknowledging round of applause. In some cases an introduction of a presenter can be longer than the presenter's actual appearance. Better to shift some of those duties to the hosts and the announcers instead of bombarding us with cameos by every bankable star in the Hollywood. Quality counts more than quantity. Fewer presenters also means that the ones who do get picked for the honor will have more time to actually do something memorable onstage. Besides, the endless Oscar red carpet preshows give audiences plenty of stargazing opportunities already.

Show, don't tell. Some Oscar telecasts have turned themselves into mini-film schools, explaining what certain categories are meant to honor, especially the more obscure technical ones like "Sound Editing." The categories for Best Shorts came under fire recently, and some suggested that they ought to be eliminated. This led to an Oscar telecast segment with familiar directors explaining why the categories were important and should be kept. It was a nice gesture, but highlights a key problem I have with the approach. I used to anticipate seeing the Animated Shorts category every year, because they would show brief clips of the nominees. In many recent broadcasts these have been eliminated, along with clips from other smaller categories, taking away the only chance for the national audience to see a couple of seconds of what's actually being nominated. The Oscars seem terrified of simply letting the work speak for itself, which is a shame. I'd rather look at the costume designs, production artwork, and special effects reels for a few moments more instead of listening to a presenter awkwardly try to convince us why these categories are worth our time.

Stop rushing. There's nothing that makes an award ceremony feel overlong than the people on stage trying to hurry their way through material and the orchestra being on a hair-trigger, ready to go off at the slightest sign of an acceptance speech that may go longer than twenty seconds. By all means, be jerks and cut people off in the name of expediency, but every time the music swells the audience is left straining to hear the poor recipient, and unconsciously expecting something climactic to happen. Maybe the orchestra cues could be replaced with the flashing light system from political debates. Or Charlie Rose calling time once they hit the limit. Or semaphore signals. And if the show is running long, for pete's sake, pretend that nothing is wrong. That extra five or ten minutes will go by a lot faster if the host doesn't suddenly stop quipping, and the presenters aren't rushing around like headless chickens. Some of those poor actresses simply can't move very fast in the getups they wear on Oscar night, and I'm always worried someone is going to take a spill. And then the show is just going to be longer, isn't it?

Loosen up a little. I'm all for tradition and I'm all for preserving Oscar's legacy of good taste and Hollywood elegance, but there's no reason why the atmosphere has to be so stuffy and self-important so often. An award show should be entertaining, be it through pageantry or jokes or just sheer star wattage. Instead of trying to micromanage the time it takes to hand out the awards, why not just insert a few more purely frivolous segments to keep the show's momentum going? Add a halftime show, like the similarly lengthy Superbowl uses to break things up. This doesn't necessarily mean song numbers and dance routines. Pretaped comedy segments, mashups, running jokes and parodies have worked in the past. There's no reason why the fun stuff has to be confined to the opening number, and they may work better if interspersed throughout the show. If montages are out, send Tina Fey and Will Ferrell on stage to re-enact the year's best moments in comedy. Or have the nominated directors quickly remake each other's films on the fly for laughs. Offer to have professional award recipients fill in for those winners who are too overwhelmed to talk coherently. With all this talent in the room, why not use it?

Finally, if the Academy Awards producers want to pander to the Internet generation, they should take a little inspiration from their target audience. Right now enterprising Youtube remixers do a better job of presenting the nominated material in ways we haven't seen before. Everyone's familiar with the same few clips of "The King's Speech" and "The Social Network" by this point. I know I'm sick to death of Jesse Eisenberg's "Do I have your full attention?" scene. Instead, when spotlighting "The Social Network," why not intercut his takedown with one of Colin Firth's stuttering fits as King George VI? Why not recruit the actors and shoot a quick alternate ending that reveals Facebook was the product of an "Inception" job by Leonardo DiCaprio? It's silly, sure, but it's the kind of material that keeps the audience on its toes and boredom at bay. One of my favorite Oscar skits in recent years was Seth Rogen and James Franco, as their marijuana-loving "Pineapple Express" characters, watching and commenting on the 2008 nominated films. At one point they convince celebrated cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (with his Oscars in tow!) to join them on the couch. The Academy could stand to poke more fun at itself, and a little irreverence never hurt anybody.

Or they could always hire Ricky Gervais to host. And duck.

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Entries tagged with awardshow

Still Catching Up on 2011

Why I Don't Predict the Emmys

Where Are the Female Directors? In Television!

2012 Oscar Wrap-Up

And the Oscar Shouldn't Have Gone to...

If I Picked the Oscar Winners, Part II

If I Picked the Oscar Winners, Part I

The Nominations Are Out!

Another Golden Globes

Life Without TV Ads

It's Awards Season! Yay?

Oscar Drama Comes Early This Year

The "Harry Potter" Oscar Push

2011 Emmy Wrap-Up

2011 Emmy Liveblog Part II

2011 Emmy Liveblog Part I

The Follow-Up Post, March Edition

Oscar 2011 Post-Mortem

Emmy Merges Best Miniseries and Made-for-Television Movie Categories

Ways to Shine Up the Oscar Telecast