The EMMY AWARDS could hardly have gone more emphatically HBO’s way, with wins for Best Drama, Comedy, Limited Series and Made-For-TV Movie, not to mention many of the acting, writing and directing awards that went with them.  It was a night with a lot of exciting new winners, but the show itself was very much […]

Projected weekly network ratings in prime time (based on four days of official nationals and three days of fast nationals).   The return of the NFL regular season pushed NBC to the top of the heap (with not one but two prime time games, on Thursday and Sunday).  NBC matched the same week last year with […]

  Like presidential politics, the Oscar race doesn’t really stop anymore; one campaign gets underway before the last has even ended.  Argo had yet to collect its statuettes in February before we were already hearing about the awards chances for movies screened at Sundance the month before, especially when Oscar savant Harvey Weinstein bought the […]

  If it had happened, losing the Best Drama award at last night’s Golden Globes might have been the best thing that could have happened to 12 YEARS A SLAVE–while winning the award in the way that it actually did helped the film very little, if at all. Bear with me here. Remember last year, […]

  Provocative, almost existential questions have circled this year’s Oscars since seconds after the nominations were announced.  Should the awards, and the Motion Picture Academy’s voting membership, mirror the actual state of the film industry, which is overwhelmingly dominated by older white men, or a Platonic ideal embodying a more diverse vision of what the […]

  Say what you will about the Golden Globes, on the TV side they’re often more open to acknowledging new talent and shows than the Emmys (let alone this week’s stodgy SAG Award nominations) tend to be.  That’s the case again with today’s nominees, particularly in the acting categories. BEST DRAMA SERIES BREAKING BAD (AMC) […]

Following up on Mitch Salem’s Best Picture overview, here’s an updated look at the odds for the major Oscar categories. After its winning streak at the various guild award ceremonies, Argo has traded places with Lincoln as the favorite for Best Picture.  London bookmakers would pay $1.15 on a $1 bet if Argo wins, a movement of +6 in […]

  The National Board of Review is an organization whose members are largely unknown (and the opinions of whom are of zero interest), with an existence that gets noticed on exactly one day of the year, like that one groundhog whose shadow is checked each February.  (Put another way, it’s the Hollywood Foreign Press Association […]