As long as Lost and Brokeback Mountain won the big awards, which they did, anything else that happened at the historically random (and often, randomly hilarious) Golden Globes was gravy to me.
What I love about the Golden Globes as a TV show is the rare opportunity to see movie and TV stars — or, in the case of Felicity Huffman, one and the same — share the spotlight. After all, where would a multinominated movie star and director like George Clooney be without TV having made him what he is? And then there's Geena Davis, resplendent in red and accepting her Commander in Chief Globe with a hilarious mock anecdote of how inspiring her presidential role is to some little girl she made up. She has gone from TV to movies (and an
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Question: The Golden Globes are my favorite awards show, mainly because they put TV and movie stars all together under one roof — and give them lots of booze. They can always be counted upon for great moments! But if one thing always irks me, it's the supporting actor TV category, which doesn't differentiate between drama, comedy or miniseries. And we end up with a field like this for Best Supporting Actor: Naveen Andrews, Lost; Paul Newman, Empire Falls; Jeremy Piven, Entourage; Randy Quaid, Elvis; Donald Sutherland, Commander in Chief. Seriously? We're putting Jeremy Piven's delightfully shallow superagent up against Andrews' painstaking dramatic portrayal of a tortured (no pun intended) former Iraqi soldier? In the same category? I am sure they must do this to get the time down on the program, but if they must lump TV-movies and miniseries together, can't they at least separate between comedy and drama (two drastically different media)? That would only add two awards to the program, ...
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Question: I can't believe that Ian McShane did not win best actor in a drama at the Emmys! Do you think Deadwood is overlooked because it is on early in the year, or just not enough people watch it? It is a fantastic show, the characters are not one-dimensional, but I don't think it gets the respect it deserves.
Answer: One of the less remarked-upon aspects of the Emmys was HBO's relatively poor showing, especially in the series categories. (One of the night's more pleasant surprises was the dreary Empire Falls losing to Masterpiece Theater's much superior The Lost Prince.) Deadwood is a great show and got even better in its second season, but the problem with it (or its star) winning isn't so much when the show airs as, I'm guessing, the tone of the show itself. It's dense and slow (in terms of the ongoing narrative) and, to many, distractingly and self-consciously profane, and might not translate all that well to stand-alone tapes submitted to voters in that category. I get you ...
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If it weren't for Lost, you might never have known what year was being honored at Sunday's Emmy Awards.
James Spader and William Shatner— didn't they win last year? A Raymond sweep — haven't we seen that before? Tony Shalhoub winning again? Wake me when it's over.
I think Felicity Huffman (prior to her own surprise, but not undeserved, win) summed it up best when she muttered, "Clunk."
She was referring to some lame banter during a joint presentation by the five main Desperate Housewives, but she could have been talking about the night itself. Poor Ellen DeGeneres did her droll best to keep this bloated show afloat, but not even the second coming of Johnny Carson (who was paid generous, if solemn, tribute by David Letterman) could have rescued this long, unsatisfying evening.
Few awards are as capricious and as maddening as the Emmys. Even when you s
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Ed Harris doesn't like the M-word.
"Someone called it a miniseries, and I wanted to throw up," says the star of HBO's Empire Falls. "It's not a miniseries — it's a damn movie!"
If so, we hope Harris doesn't see the cable network's promos, which bill the star-jammed adaptation of Richard Russo's Pulitzer-winning novel as a "miniseries event." In any event, HBO will split the three-hour-plus small-town drama over the evenings of May 28 and 29 — all the better to qualify for a best miniseries Emmy.
You can't blame Harris for his unfamiliarity with TV terminology: He hasn't appeared on the small screen in nearly 10 years, since his 1996 TNT Western Riders of the Purple Sage. "I've been asked to do a bunch of TV stuff, and I came close a couple times," Harris explains. "But nothing quite grabbed me as much as I needed to be grabbed."
Then came Empire Falls' Miles Roby. When Harris first read the novel, he
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