Looking for Justice at the 2015 Emmys

StarGazer

        HBO aired the finales for its spring lineup this past Sunday, which means that the 2014-15 TV season has officially ended and the race for the Emmys is about to kick into full gear. While the actual nominations won’t be announced for another month, there’s no better time than the present to make the case for the shows and people I hope to see recognized come July 16. As I’ve mentioned in my previous Emmy wish-lists, these aren’t predictions, and given voters’ past tendencies, I imagine the majority of them have next-to-no chance of happening, but one must never despair when it comes to pop culture awards, not even in the face of inexplicable FX snubbing and Downton Abbey love. Until the final verdict comes out, possibilities for surprise abound, so if they know what’s good for them, voters should take a peek at this list:

Drama

The case: Mad Men for everything

The argument: It’s hard to think of Matthew Weiner’s iconic show about the ad industry in the 1960s as an underdog or long shot, but in recent years, its reputation as an awards darling hasn’t exactly matched with reality. Most awards bodies, like the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild, seem to have forgotten about its existence, last recognizing Mad Men in 2013. Even the Emmys, which often seems to lavish the show with attention out of rote habit (see: the continued noms for Christina Hendricks and Robert Morse despite the lack of actual material for both actors in the latest seasons), only gave it four nominations, and no wins, for the stellar first half of its seventh and final season. Add in the fact that not a single member of its large, hugely talented ensemble cast has ever won an Emmy, and maybe you can understand why I’m a bit nervous about Mad Men’s prospects, though it will presumably benefit from not having to compete with Breaking Bad anymore.

        It would be easy to argue that Mad Men deserves Emmy recognition simply because it’s Mad Men and it only seems proper to give such a seminal work of art one last hurrah. However, the show is too good, its merits too many, for me to resort to such a shallow, sentimental appeal. While the last seven episodes weren’t the strongest of its run, they still provided plenty of indelible moments, from Joan threatening to burn it all down to Peggy sauntering into the McCann-Erickson offices and Don driving off into the sunset, and a fitting conclusion to the saga of Don Draper and friends. As impeccably crafted as always, Mad Men stayed true to its ambiguous, elliptical nature, preferring hard-won, frequently temporary victories over immediate gratification. The dissolution of Sterling Cooper put all of the show’s major characters at crossroads and, as a result, proved to be the perfect storyline to drive home the series’ core themes of identity, change, expectations versus reality, and the unstoppable march of time. Layered performances by Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss and January Jones in particular ensured that Mad Men’s impending absence would be deeply felt.

The evidence: “Time and Life” (ep. 11), “Lost Horizon” (ep. 12), “Person to Person” (ep. 14)

Me to the Emmys, probably 

Why the Oscars Have Nothing to Do With Art

StarGazer

        Now that the Golden Globes have passed (Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosted the uneven ceremony Sunday night) and the Oscar nominations are set to be announced this Thursday, the 2015 movie awards season is officially reaching peak frenzy. As intense as this time of the year can be for film fans, I haven’t felt a great need to write about this year’s race, in part because the majority of my thoughts, hopes and gripes aren’t all that different from last time; the dynamics of each season are essentially the same, just with a new set of names in the spotlight. While the particular debates and controversies this time around haven’t piqued my interest, I have found myself lately thinking a lot about what it really means to be “Oscar-worthy”, or even what it means for art to be good in general, and what, if anything, that says about our interests and values as moviegoers and a society.

        The phrase “Oscar-worthy” gets tossed around a lot, but there’s rarely any explanation of what that actually means. Though it’s often said with some level of derision or irony, it seems to be used as a sincere marker of artistic quality just as often, even by those who turn their noses up at the Academy. It implies some kind of standard that movies must live up to in order to be deemed deserving of awards consideration, though no one ever articulates exactly what those standards should be. To what extent should a film’s technical/aesthetic prowess, cultural or popular impact, or political, social or moral significance be taken into account? Do Academy members have any greater responsibilities to the industry or the public when making their selections or should they simply choose what they legitimately liked the most based on their own personal preferences? For the most part, it’s agreed that the Academy has little actual credibility as a tastemaker, and the Internet has made it too easy to follow industry politics and the PR campaigns specifically designed to influence voters for even the most naïve person to believe they’re completely unbiased. I keep wondering why so much time, money and effort is invested not just by the industry itself, but by critics and moviegoers on awards that few treat with anything other than contempt. I’ve suggested before that the awards season is worthwhile because it provides an opportunity to celebrate filmmaking, even if the specific objects of celebration aren’t always the most laudable, but perhaps what really makes it worthwhile is that it forces us to consider and articulate why we think certain films deserve wider recognition and why others don’t. It pushes us to interrogate our own ideas of what makes some art great instead of just taking our gut instinct of “I liked/didn’t like this” at face value.

Wrestling with Masculinity and Oscar Hype

WordMaster

             As several media commentators observed earlier this year, the blockbuster season, not too long ago confined to summer and Christmas time, has begun to swell like No-Face from Spirited Away, consuming May and April and threatening to spill over into March, November and perhaps even beyond. It’s a disconcerting trend for those of us who would like to go at least a couple months without having to hear the word “superhero”. Arguably, however, the same thing has already happened with Oscar season. Although the films themselves still usually come out sometime between October and December, thanks to festivals and a proliferating, rather dubious field of online pundits, you start seeing predictions for next year’s Oscars before this year’s ceremony even airs. This is also not a particularly good thing.

             Take Foxcatcher, Bennett Miller’s based-on-real-life story about Olympic-wrestler brothers Mark and Dave Schultz and their disturbingly wealthy benefactor, John du Pont. The movie debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May to mostly strong reviews, and ever since then, it’s been a mainstay on award prognosticators’ lists. On one hand, taking the festival circuit route allows Foxcatcher to build up hype; voters tend to go for sure bets (i.e. what they already know they’re supposed to like), so once something cements its status as an Oscar contender, it generally remains there. But at the same time, being labeled “Oscar-worthy” comes with certain expectations. Oscar-worthy movies have prestigious actors whose roles demand some amount of yelling and/or crying. They involve more dialogue than special effects but are large enough in scope that they don’t feel “slight”. They say Important Things about Important Stuff, like slavery or the film industry, striking a comfortable balance between serious and cathartic. The earlier you put yourself out in the open, the more time people have to realize that you fail to meet those expectations and the likelier it is that the initial goodwill will fade and you’ll experience a backlash.

             It’s probably unfair to review a movie by talking about its hype and awards potential, since that says nothing about its actual quality, but I can’t deny that I went into Foxcatcher with a specific vision in my head and left feeling somewhat let down, disoriented for reasons I couldn’t quite pinpoint. The truth is, this is not an Oscar movie. Sure, it’s based on a true story and has an Oscar-nominated director at the helm, two elements that never hurt your chances. Yet despite having guided both of his previous efforts to Best Picture nominations, Bennett Miller is hardly a household name; like J.C. Chandor, another rising talent who thrives on quiet adult dramas, his style is too understated to garner the kind of devotion inspired by David Fincher and Paul Thomas Anderson. The cast is more well-liked than prestigious (of the three main actors, only Mark Ruffalo has an Oscar nomination), and although it contains not-particularly-subtle messages about the danger of American exceptionalism, this isn’t exactly Selma as far as Important Stuff goes.

A Historic Snoozefest

StarGazer

        Last night, millions of people around the world gathered in front of their TVs to watch Hollywood’s biggest, grandest pizza party awards ceremony. Hosted for the second time by Ellen DeGeneres, the three-and-a-half hour long fête of movies and the people who make them saw talent recognized, asses kissed, egos inflated, and history made. Yet, as fantastic as the slate of nominees was and as glamorous as everyone present looked, it was a night that became less devoted to celebrating, or even acknowledging, films from the past year and more interested in taking the world’s most popular selfie (see pic above). The Oscars turned into a giant slumber party, one the rest of us ugly mortals – and even most of the people in the actual auditorium – didn't seem invited to.

        It’s an unpopular opinion, particularly for a woman, but I generally liked Seth MacFarlane’s hosting job last year. Sure, he was on the crass side and had several questionable jokes that didn't land, but he seemed interested in trying to put on a show, and I thought it was a mostly entertaining night that breezed by with relative ease. At the very least, he got people talking, a rarity in our social media-saturated age of short attention spans. Apparently, the Academy didn’t approve of the controversy (some of which consisted of actually worthwhile discussions), because they selected Ellen, who’s the definition of likable but bland, as a follow-up. While she provided one or two good yuks, Ellen seemed oddly ill-prepared and lifeless. She was often absent from the stage whenever the show returned from the commercial breaks that interrupted it every five minutes and spent most of the time when she was around making halfhearted comments about costume changes and rubbing elbows with a select handful of celebs seated in the front rows.  Offering pizza to starving A-listers and (successfully) trying to break the Twitter record for most retweeted tweet are all well and good for one-off bits, but when you stretch it out over three hours instead of moving on to more engaging and inclusive material, it becomes lazy, self-indulgent, and worst of all, mind-numbingly dull.

Obligatory Oscar Post Part 2: The Real Meaning of Awards

WordMaster

            Like any annual celebration, the Oscars come with a few traditions: the bitter, media-fueled rivalry between two Best Picture contenders, minor political controversies blown way out of proportion, Armond White insulting someone at the New York Film Critics Circle dinner, think pieces contemplating how the Academy has lost touch with the public and/or reality, and so on. But perhaps the most obnoxious of these rituals is the inevitable surfacing of awards misanthropes – you know, those people who proudly proclaim (usually via the Internet) that the Oscars are meaningless and self-congratulatory and they don’t care, so anyone who does is clearly an idiot. Isn’t it just another excuse for a bunch of rich celebrities to pat themselves on the back?

            Well, I guess if you boil it down to the fundamentals, yes. Despite the hullabaloo that surrounds the ceremony and the hundreds of millions of dollars thrown at campaigns each year, everyone is well aware that the Oscars are petty and arbitrary. They’re by no means an accurate, definitive barometer of quality, because that doesn’t exist; like all art, film is subjective, so no matter what wins Best Picture, someone’s always going to be unhappy, and the notion of comparing radically different works in the first place is kind of nonsensical. Parading around your disdain as if you expect a trophy or something doesn’t exactly make you original or clever. Besides, if you really didn’t care about the Oscars, you wouldn’t be commenting on them in the first place. As it is, you just seem like those people that show up every once in a while on pop culture message boards to ask why the writer of such-and-such article isn’t discussing [insert urgent political issue here] or, even worse, to simply say, “Slow news day, eh?”

It’s not like the Super Bowl is some earth-shattering event, yet you never hear football fans derided for their choice in entertainment.

            Personally, I have mixed feelings about the Oscars. On one hand, it can be frustrating and disillusioning to know that the whole thing basically amounts to an expensive, over-hyped P.R. stunt that stretches from one February to the next, and with all the speculation preceding the actual awards, the winners are rarely all that surprising. But every year, I still find myself getting genuinely excited to watch the tacky-glamorous ceremony, to see who gives the best speech, who accidentally lets loose an F-bomb on network TV, who wears the dress I most wish I could afford, etc.

My 2013 Emmy Wish-List

StarGazer

        Another year of TV has come and gone. The 2012-13 season was an eventful one, as it marked the end of such landmark shows as The Office, Gossip Girl and 30 Rock, and introduced the world to new attractions like Hannibal, Orphan Black and 1600 Penn (hey, I didn’t say they were all good). Along with the impending final season of Breaking Bad and whatever else the summer TV slate has in store, this warmer weather signals the approach of those all-important Emmy nominations, which will be announced three days from now on July 18^th. This means I get to make another list of things I’d love to see the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences do.

        Like last time, keep in mind that I’ve only watched so many TV shows, so I know there’s a lot of good stuff out there that I won’t mention, and these are things I want to happen, rather than things I think will happen. Also, there are a couple of wishes from last year that carry over to this year, like my feeble hope that the Emmys will give Fringe some recognition and my desire to see Walton Goggins and Vincent Kartheiser included in the Supporting Actor in a Drama category, but in an effort to avoid being repetitive, I won’t put them on my new list. Lastly, I feel the need to confess that I don’t actually put much – or, really, any – stock into the Emmys, but they provide a good excuse for me to gush about the TV shows I love. So, without further ado, let’s get this show underway:

Drama

        Hannibal for Outstanding Drama Series. With so many perennial contenders for this category still jousting for a slot (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and Downton Abbey, just to name a few), it would be easy to go with familiar names and overlook the handful of worthy new shows that emerged over the past year. Foremost among these rookie challengers, probably along with BBC’s Orphan Black, is Hannibal. I’ll be the first to admit that, when I heard NBC had picked up a show based on the younger years of the iconic, people-eating villain, I rolled my eyes and quickly declared the idea depressingly unoriginal, a massive failure just waiting to happen. Besides, it would be impossible to find an actor who could fill Anthony Hopkins’s Oscar-winning shoes for the title role. As it turned out, I was wrong. Although I still prefer Hopkins’s openly menacing yet charming take on the character over Mads Mikkelsen’s perpetually unruffled, debonair inscrutability, the show itself ended up being a dark, twisted psychological thriller with its own unique voice. Showrunner Bryan Fuller gives it just enough stylized flair to keep the procedural format from growing too monotonous and populates the world initially created by author Thomas Harris with complex, unpredictable characters brought to life by a talented group of actors. For my money, Laurence Fishburne, who plays Jack Crawford in a tour-de-force performance and was weirdly, disappointingly not submitted for Emmy consideration, and Lara Jean Chorostecki as the mysterious crime reporter Freddie Lounds are especially impressive. Touching on themes of identity, mental health and the nature and effects of violence, the first season of Hannibal provided a strong bedrock for what could hopefully become one of the next great TV shows in an age bursting at the seams with great television.

       CHECK IT OUT: “Potage” (Ep. 3), “Entrée” (Ep. 6), “Savoureux” (Ep. 13)     

The Lady in the High Tower

WordMaster

             To put it lightly, this has been a rough time for feminists. Yes, we have made significant progress since the Mad Men Era (aka the 1960s, when people still legitimately believed that schizophrenia and autism were caused by negligent parenting), but misogyny remains sadly prevalent in our allegedly post-feminist society, as evidenced by various recent events. First, there was the Sandra Fluke-Rush Limbaugh controversy, which really hasn’t gotten any less infuriating over time. Then, we had the even more B.S. “legitimate rape” comments from (ex-)Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin and this quote from author Bret Easton Ellis, among various other sexism-related controversies. And just last week, the Oscars were greeted with outrage over host Seth MacFarlane’s intentionally provocative “We Saw Your Boobs” bit, in which an all-gay male choir sang about female nudity in movies.

             I could fill a novella with my feelings about the reaction to MacFarlane’s joke, which, in all honesty, bothered me infinitely more than the joke itself. Don’t get me wrong: “We Saw Your Boobs” is of questionable taste at best, and if anything, the response to it shows that it failed to get across whatever satirical point MacFarlane was trying to make. But maybe because I’ve watched way too many talk shows (where this brand of comedy is more or less the norm) or maybe because, even though I don’t care for his work in general, I genuinely wanted MacFarlane to succeed as Oscar host (partly since everyone else, for whatever reason, wanted him to fail), I can’t force myself to share the sense of moral indignation that lit up the Internet after the ceremony. Were some of the jokes offensive? Probably. Did all of them land? Definitely not. Worst Oscar host ever? Do you even remember James Franco and Anne Hathaway? This is a textbook example of the penchant for hyperbole that characterizes the Internet Age – everything is either the best thing ever or a crime against humanity, and everyone is either a “perfect human being” or an insufferable dickwad. Although I would never deny anyone’s right to be offended, at a certain point, I feel like you have to be able to say, “That was distasteful” and move on - or at least provide some insightful, introspective commentary to go along with your self-righteous moralizing. Personally, I would rather spend my time ranting about the aforementioned Sandra Fluke episode or even the ludicrous comments that have been made about Best Actress nominee Quvanzhané Wallis (one of which was, to be fair, followed up by a rare public apology that actually seems sincere), but then again, I'm not going to stop people from expressing their own thoughts and opinions.

Why I Still Care about the Oscars

StarGazer

       The Hollywood awards season coming to a close for the year. After months of campaigning, press tours and precursors ladled out by everyone from the National Board of Review and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (otherwise known as those weirdos responsible for the Golden Globes) to the Screen Actors’/Directors’/Writers’/[insert other random film industry profession here] Guilds and the recent BAFTAs, we’re finally approaching the queen bee of awards ceremonies: the Oscars. The star-studded, at least three-hour-long event will be held tonight at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles at 7:00 PM EST. For those who follow or are involved in these sorts of things, the arrival of the Academy Awards will probably come as something as a relief, the end of an exhausting and seemingly endless process that began in October with the announcement of the Gotham Independent Film Award nominees and that, by the end, will have spanned roughly five months; if you really want to get into it, awards season arguably starts in January of each year with the Sundance Film Festival.

        There was a time when I followed the movie awards season with an obsessiveness that I now mostly devote to baseball, spending hours on end scouring the Internet for even the most trivial bit of news and memorizing useless facts (can you name every Best Picture winner since 1988? ‘Cause I still can). I paid attention to the film festival circuit, watching eagerly to see which movies garnered the praise and buzz needed to propel them into the front of the Oscar race and which ones would be worth catching in theaters whenever they eventually arrived. I kept up with the latest “expert” prognostications from Variety, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, Indiewire.com and all those other entertainment magazines and websites, and I read about the controversies and industry politics. I even used to come up with my own awards predictions, sometimes months in advance, and to argue about all these things on Internet message boards. Long story short, I was a total nerd.

                                                                                                                                                       

        I’ve gotten beyond that phase now, though it’s not because I have any more of a life (trust me, I really, really don’t); I just channel all that pointless geekiness in different directions. Let’s face it: the Oscars are a glorified celebrity ass-kissing party masquerading as an important, prestigious celebration of film. The amount of time, money, hype and effort that so many people put into this self-indulgent event, and the fact that an entire industry still essentially revolves around it, is rather incredible. Besides, the awards season often seems to contain as much political maneuvering as actual political campaigns, complete with studio-paid For Your Consideration ads, special screenings and luncheons for Academy voters and press tours filled with magazine covers, interviews and talk show appearances. It’s a media circus that renders the whole affair a cynical publicity stunt and undercuts the idea that the Oscars are supposed to be about artistic merit and achievement.

The Shoulda-Been Contenders

WordMaster


                On February 24, at 7:00 pm EST, ABC will air the 85^th Academy Awards in a lavish, star-studded and sure-to-be underwhelming ceremony that will be watched by many but not enough. This is Election Day for awards prognosticators – the culmination of twelve long, exhausting months of predicting, theorizing, arguing and overanalyzing. Could Argo possibly be the first film to win Best Picture without a Best Director nomination since Driving Miss Daisy in 1990? Will the talented and gorgeous Jennifer Lawrence defeat the equally talented and gorgeous Jessica Chastain for Best Lead Actress? Which widely respected Caucasian veteran will bring home Best Supporting Actor? What are the odds that Daniel Day-Lewis will leave empty-handed? These are a few of the burning questions that will finally be put to rest on Sunday (spoiler alert: the answer for the last question is zero).

Behold, a god among men.

                But I’m sure you don’t want to read another speculative essay about how the controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty destroyed its chances at Best Picture. Or about how there’s no conceivable way that Seth MacFarlane can surpass Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who co-hosted a witty, heartfelt and all-around enjoyable Golden Globe ceremony earlier this year. As tempting as the latter proposition is, I would rather take a moment to recognize the shoulda-been contenders: the films and people that were, for whatever reason, overlooked this awards season. While I don’t necessarily think all of them should have been Oscar nominees (though some are certainly worthy), they deserved to be in the conversation, if not as serious awards contenders then at least as quality movies and performances.

                (FYI: I’m not including highly buzzed-about snubs like Ben Affleck and Kathryn Bigelow since, as admirable as they were, it’s hard to argue that they were genuinely ignored rather than just pushed out due to the limited number of slots. I am also not including performances and movies that I haven’t been able to see yet, so chances are, there are tons of worthy contenders missing from my list.)

                So, without further ado:

  

My 2012 Emmy Wish-List

StarGazer             

                It’s that time of the year, folks. In just two days, on July 19, 2012, Kerry Washington and Nick Offerman will announce the nominations for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ 64^th Primetime Emmy Awards. The lineups will no doubt be swiftly met with much scorn and bickering over the snubs, surprises and undeserving nominees, so in anticipation of all that, I’ve decided to grace you with my personal Emmy wish-list. Note that these are not predictions, so don’t expect them to be at all logical or realistic, and as amazing as I imagine they are, you won’t be seeing any Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones mentions here, because I can only watch and keep up with so many TV shows. If you have your own ideas of what you’d like to see from the Emmys, feel free to share them in the comments section. Now, with those disclaimers out of the way, let’s get down to business: