Emmy Predictions: Drama

The ballots are out now for this year's EMMY nominations and I have decided once again to tag team the big awards show with fellow entertainment guru and standout substitute Kiel Servidedo. However, he is not getting excited for the topic, so has decided to just donk around. Feel free to lampoon his blog and tell him to get his ass in gear by clicking here. But not now, do that later. Here is some thoughts on the Drama category.

There are six possible nominees with a possibility of a seventh if the voting is close. I'd be lieing to you if I have told you I've seen all the episodes that the networks have submitted for consideration so I will take a stab at the ones I think are in serious contention. Does this invalidate my opinion, you bet. Lets get on with it.


WRITING AND DIRECTING

Expect to see a lot of Mad Men in the writing department, there was a lot of complaints that nothing happens in the series. Probably because the characters spend most of the time facing internal conflicts rather than the external conflicts we are used to seeing. Time to cash in with some awards for all the inaction that took place last season. Also expect the finale of Lost to be represented in both categories. When you can move an audience to tears you can expect some awards for it. And those voting usually only vote for individual episode so the academy often does not care if they never got answers about Walt.


DRAMA GUEST ACTOR

John Lithgow decided to not enter as a lead actor but rather as a guest actor since he was only on Dexter for one season. The man was chilling and helped to make this season one of the best. Expect Michael J. Fox to get one for Rescue Me and maybe James Earl Jones in House, but it doesn't really matter as this award is all Lithgow's


BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Has anyone seen Treme or know what the show is about? Well apparently Khando Alexander is a shoe in to get nominated, any information on the series would be appreciated. Elisabeth Moss and Christina Hendricks will both get nominations for their performances in Mad Men. Moss for the strong female role against the male psyche and Hendricks for the way she walks in and out of a room. Chloe Sevigny should also get a nomination for her portrayal in Big Love, she is definitely the strongest of the three wives and the only bright spot in a bad season.



BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Is it possible to nominate three actors from Lost? Probably not and the odd man out will probably be Nestor Carbonell who did fantastic in the episode Ab Aberneto but his long eyelashes will probably have to bat longingly as he watches Terry O' Quinn and Michael Emerson receive nominations as they have become regulars on the stage and each coming out with an award. O' Quinn did great work performing in two different roles, and Emerson switches between hero and villain during almost every episode. Martin Short will get nominated for a fantastic performance in what seems to be opposite Glenn Close, yet he still asked to be considered a supporting character. And AMC will round out the list as Aaron Paul gets a nomination for Breaking Bad, which I need to devote more time to. Then there is John Slattery as Roger Sterling who is one of the coolest old men there is. I want to be him when I grow up, no doubt.


BEST LEAD ACTRESS

Glenn Close and Julianna Margulis are the best reasons why Damages and The Good Wife respectively will get nominated for Best Drama so of course they should both be favored in this category. I never thought that Bryan Cranston would need assistance to make Breaking Bad a better show but Anna Gunn is giving it to him anyway. Kyra Sedgwick will once again be nominated for The Closer. Since Elisabeth Moss is competing in the supporting category that opens up the chance for January Jones to receive the obligatory Mad Men nomination. Mariska Hargitay should round out the list for SVU.


BEST LEAD ACTOR

Bryan Craston obviously leads the very talented field of men for this year. Just think he used to be the dad on Malcom in the Middle and now he could win the award three times in a row. Michael C. Hall will also obviously receive a nomination if only for that final scene. Hugh Laurie will once again be nominated, but this time he deserves to be on the list with a highlight reel from the first and last 2 episodes of this past season. A series finale of a hit show is usually a guaranteed way to get some EMMY hype, but for 24 this may be the only serious nomination they get, and yet Kiefer Sutherland is still on the bubble. Maybe if he got his personal life together he'd have a better shot. Expect to see Jon Hamm on the list and the night of the awards expect to see a drooling Tina Fey on the red carpet closely behind him. God I want to see Kyle Chandler on the list for his role in leading the East Dillon Panthers to glory on Friday Night Lights. He is certainly getting a big push from Direct TV and fans alike who are begging the committee to take this show seriously. This is the probably the shows best chance for a big award but I suspect that Simon Baker and his dreamy eyes will get the spot instead. Damn those dreamy eyes.


BEST DRAMA SERIES

The first four picks are easy to make. You have Mad Men, the two-time champ. Dexter with two champion actors. Breaking Bad which is only getting better and better with each passing season. And the superb cast of Damages giving the show its third straight nomination. I said that Julianna Margulis was good enough to get her show nominated and I am sticking with that prediction for The Good Wife. History dictates that extra long series finales are usually shoe-ins for EMMY consideration. It helped the Sopranos and the finale for Lost was talked about just as much. The episode was certainly strong enough to be considered and that's what should give it the edge. If the show had to be selected for the entire season, I don't think it would make the cut, but the selections are only made for one episode so I think that gives it the edge.

Feel free to hit me up with your thoughts as we have till June 8 th to discuss the issues.

Sex and the City 2

I usually try and do my reviews for the movies I see the next day, but I thought that wouldn't be fair to this particular movie. I am not the movie's target audience. This movie is made for women and gay men who loved the series. So I thought it would only be fair to get the opinions of the audience it was intended for as well before sitting down to write the review.

There were two differing viewpoints I received. One group liked seeing all four characters back together that was enough for them to enjoy the movie and one group thought the movie was garbage. Whew, now I won't feel as bad for roasting this movie.

The show used to mean something, it used to be edgy. The women would have honest conversations about life, the problems they face in society, and the difficulties in their romantic life. They would do it in high fashion but at least the content could still connect with the show's audience. It is clear that the characters and writers have lost touch with their audience. Though I do find it impressive that a movie that runs two and a half hours long (that's right, two and a half hours!) still has nothing to say.

It has been two years since we last saw the ladies all together and three of the ladies are going through some legitimate problems. Miranda deals with the difficulties of a hostile work environment; Charlotte finds motherhood to be more difficult than originally anticipated, even with a full time nanny; and Samantha is going through menopause. Rather than having frank and honest discussions about their issues the four friends, who seem to be trapped in the ninties, instead exchange awful zingers with one another.

And then there is Carrie, she has written another book, has a fabulous new apartment, and has married the love of her life. What's her biggest problem, she doesn't hit the town as often as she used to. At some point you wish Mr. Big wasn't a one dimensional character and tell her to stop bitching for the sake of filling time.

Not only are there puns that would make the James Bond cringe and unflattering plot lines, but there is an awful lot of pandering in this movie. I think the writers knew that the only way to guarantee applause in this movie would be to throw a shout out to all the moms out there who don't have a nanny or to engage in a karaoke version of a women's empowerment songs.

Has it ever bothered anyone else that these women and the people around them never seem to be affected by the economic crisis happening all around them. Half way through the movie they are flown across the world to a hotel costing more money a night then I am sure to make this year. Any mention or chance of an honest conversation on the issue is quickly cut to more shopping or another Cosmo.

And shopping was key as these women are in new dresses every 1o minutes or so. How do I know, it is clear the lighting director is more concerned about the fashion then they the actors. Maybe that's for the better as these women once in their twenties have finally been caught by father time, except Kristin Davis who still has a couple years left in there.

This review will not stop the three or four female readers I have from falling in that first group of women I talked to once the credits rolled. Let me just say this isn't a movie you should drag your boyfriend to, this is a movie to go to with the girls. And then afterwards apologize to you girlfriends for having dragged them to a movie that tried desperately to grab hold of its nineties relevance only to come up with a shabby overused plotline about an exotic vacation. F

LOST: The End

There are blogs out there that are entirely devoted to the series of Lost. An examination of the characters, the mythology, how the entire world connects. I thought that by doing a post on the series would be a discredit to what others were doing. I was saddened to hear that people didn't like the series finale of Lost. This post will not change the minds of people who did not like it, but rather provide a defense as there was no other way to end the series.

If you plan on starting to watch now that the series is wrapped and you can watch it without all the nonsense spewing from all the Lost fans then I feel sorry for you. Half the fun of the series, as it is with any mystery, is the debate with friends and fellow viewers. Sure the fans are annoying as all hell and I really couldn't care that Wallace is number 108 at the lighthouse, but the dissection and the conversations that took place is why this series became so important.

In the world of Hulu and the Internet and DVR you no longer need to watch a fictional series in real time. Lost did what reality TV has been able to get away with and created must see TV, if you miss it you know you are going to get it spoiled for you. If you miss Community and find out that Jeff and Brita had sex its not that big a deal because while that's spoiled for you you will most likely still be able to enjoy the series. If you hear about the reveals on Lost well that's gonna destroy it for you. And there were a lot of them.

The series that started 6 seasons ago was unsure they were going to make it out alive but with the pilot costing somewhere between 10 and 14 million dollars you knew that ABC was going to give it a fair shake. The show has been imitated several times Ala Invasion and Flash Forward but has never been duplicated.

J.J. Abrams relates this series to Jaws. I found this link in one of my favorite blogs on the series. While it may be too late to really enjoy his stuff as the show has ended you might want to check out some of the later posts of Doc Jensen, some of the stuff he does can be really funny. Jensen found the clip of Abrams talking about the mystery of Lost and he equates it to Jaws. What most people try to do when taking from the movie is they steal the most famous scenes the very beginning when the girl gets taken under, or the final scene when the shark takes down the boat. But J.J's favorite scene is when Chief Martin Brody is sitting at the dining room table reflecting on all that has happened and his son is sitting with him imitating his movement, this character development and the attachment we feel is what make the shark scarier. If we don't connect with our characters then the members of the audience won't feel as if anything is on the line, and I think that is what has been done so well with Lost.

Did they know where they were going from the beginning, I believe they did to an extent. I think they knew that the story was going to serve as redemptive properties and that there were going to be many allegories and you see that with the inclusion of Adam and Eve. But in the same breath by knowing the big picture they didn't know how to include all the details they were leaving for themselves. Such as having a doctor state that the skeletons are about 50 years old and then later revealing they are more like 2000 years old. That's quite a discrepancy. I don't think that was a detail that was ever supposed to be included. But its tough to have your cake and eat it too. The series created such a fan following that sites like Lostpedia can thrive, but then demand answers like who are Adam and Eve. So while Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse may not want to, they owe the fan base that created them some answers and they get jammed in a corner. That may be why that the episode "Across the Sea" didn't work, it gave the answers. I think that's why the Peanuts cartoons always bothered me, when I was young I used to imagine how Charlie Brown and Lucy sounded but when the cartoon came out and the voices they were given didn't match how I imagined they would sound.

Luckily Cuse and Lindelof have been able to have fun with the demand for answers, like finding Shannon's inhaler in "The Lighthouse" when she lost it in "Confidence Man" or by having Hurley state popular fan theory about Adam and Eve. The only resolution that they felt compelled to answer were questions their characters had and the relationship of the sideways world and the island world. Lost in the wayside are why Walt was so special, and why the women have pregnancy complications in the second trimester. In my estimation these are the fans that felt disappointed in the series finale. But I rather enjoy the contemplation about it, I'd rather make theories on Walt being similar to Myles and Hurley as they have a gift, but him being so young he still needed to develop it. Or my belief that the women's inability to have a baby on the island was due to Jacob and his brother's debate on human culture and any addition to the sample group they had taken may have thrown off the study, so instead Jacob made it so it can no longer happen. The viewers who became burdened with the mythology forgot what originally made them fall in love with the show. The characters.

SPOILERS AHEAD LOOK AWAY NOW FOR FUTURE ENJOYMENT

The finale was a perfect wrap to the series. It took a second viewing this morning to get that the sideways world (and not the island world as many suspected) was purgatory and them coming to grips with death. There was no present for them in the sideways world, some had died earlier like Boone and the Kwon's and some would go on to live much longer lives like Sawyer and Kate. This would be the most important part of their lives and had the biggest influence on them. But people like Walt escaped the Island earlier and his connections and impacts were much different. And for a man like Richard Alpert who lost his gift of eternal life, for him the passengers of Oceanic 815 were just a tiny blip of his radar and he did not need to move on with them.

If your first love is the characters then this finale was probably something you enjoyed. You were able to get emotional with the island enlightenment of the characters. For many of you it may have been the Sawyer and Juliet meeting, but for me it was the Kwon's as their connection and sub plot drove their characters plot line for years and fated them to die together. And if you didn't feel a bit of relief to know that Vincent was still there to comfort the survivors and laid down next to Jack or the symmetry of the series ending on Jack's eyes closing then you may never get to enjoy the brilliance of the writers creativity when allowed to write the show they wanted to write.

The show had it all, the commercial breaks felt well timed and left us dangling with Jack and Smokey about to face off on the cliffs in the pouring rain. Or the Kwon's getting their enlightenment with each having tears in their life together. It felt like the episode was well paced and I'm appreciative that ABC gave the producers another 30 minutes to work with as I don't know what they could have possibly left out before the additional timing. I also appreciate that the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Board of Governors has allowed this episode to be Emmy eligible as I'm sure there will be actors that receive nominations and I'm certain that Michael Giacchino will win an Emmy for his musical composition for the series as his score was beautiful and worthy of constant praise.

Do I feel frustrated about some of the direction the finale took, sure. Like why did Sayid feel his biggest love connection in his Island life was Shannon and not Nadia. How about the writing, you bet. Many of you may not agree with me but I don't like Hurley becoming the new Jacob. It seems like a great idea to have the character most concerned with love to take over the job, but doesn't he deserve more, especially since he states that he doesn't want the job. But I do like that Ben helps him realize he can run it his own way and doesn't need to follow the rules Jacob created. His new reign as the man in white can send Des back to Penny and baby Charlie. But I do still feel confused as to why Ben remained outside the church. Is it because of his need to still be forgiven by his daughter and Rousseau before he can move on? Or is it the guilt of how he treated the survivors and maybe his own belief that he doesn't deserve to move on with them? Either way I enjoy the future conversations I'm sure to have with fellow fans about it.

SPOILERS OVER

I feel bad for people who couldn't get past the mythology and the need for answers and everything to be wrapped up in a nice little package. So rarely in life does that kind of satisfaction ever come to pass so most shows feel the need to wrap things up nicely. I feel much more satisfied with the way they left it, with the remains of the original flight still scattered on the beach. The series is left open to interpretation. And hopefully in a few months when you can get over it or when you buy the season 6 DVD set and go to the special section where the producers have agreed to answer some of the remaining questions you will be able to appreciate the series and its last act. I personally will not be making this purchase as I like the way it ended and the producers vision of the series. Some answers are better left unsolved and I enjoy the feeling I get by knowing that somethings I may never totally understand but will never stop trying to figure them out.

Big ups to BU in the Morning as without that show I may never have felt the need to catch up and engage you all in this conversation. Namaste! A-

Iron Man

The summer movie season has begun with the first big blockbuster of the season. And it is everything you expect it to be. For better or worse.

Lots of CGI action sequences: Check

Lots of star power: Check

Hot women: Check

Mickey Rourke covered in tattoos: Check

Like many sequels it seems that director Jon Favreau doesn't quite know where to take his story so instead includes almost every possibility. The movie is overrun with different story lines and doesn't seem to focus on one for very long. The same can be said for the cast. If you don't like the interactions between Don Cheadle and Robert Downey Jr. just wait ten seconds till Scarlett Johansson comes walking out in something tight and black (not that there is anything wrong with that).

The beauty of the first movie was keeping it simple, and it is often easy to do with an origin story after that they need to find other stories from the comic book series. "Demon in a Bottle" seems to lend itself to being the next story but then you run the risk of alienating your audience by forcing your character to deal with something real, like alcoholism. So we see glimpses of the alcoholic playboy, and get pieces of his history with S.H.I.E.L.D., and slight nods to the Avengers without a whole lot of detail to any of it.

As a side note The Avengers movie is really starting to look great. Fanboy favorite Joss Whedon is set to direct, and many of the actors staring in their own movies look like they will be tagging along in this movie as well, including Downey Jr. as Iron Man. While Ed Norton still looks iffy the signings of young actors on the cusp of super stardom like Chris Evans as Captain America and Chirs Hemsworth as Thor (both due out in 2011) is brilliant as you can get them for less money and sign them to longer contracts. But I digress

The characters really are the ones that save this movie. Justin Theroux (Tropic Thunder) has some sharp writing where if you tune out for one second you may miss several zingers. I'm not sure how much chemistry there is between Robert Downey and Gwyneth Paltrow but the exchanges are solid. Poorly done romantic comedies should jot down some of the screenplay techniques used. He also does well writing strong female characters for a genre that usually leave the women on the sideline.

But the show stealers are Sam Rockwell as industrial rival Justin Hammer and Mickey Rourke as Ivan Ranko (a mixture of Whiplash and the Crimson Dynamo from the series). Rockwell as Hammer is charismatic, unknowing, and tired of being one-upped by Stark. Rourke is all kinds of bad ass, his fight sequences at the end and during the INDY car race scene are short, which is unfortunate as this is the only time we ever really see Stark in trouble. It would've been nice to get them more screen time but with so many characters to deal with it seemed like too much of a challenge.

Iron Man 2 does its part for opening the summer movie season by being not too much to chew on and visually solid. As long as you don't expect it to live up to the original you should be able to enjoy the flick. C+/B-