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July 2010

Primetime Emmy Nominations 2010

No, I didn’t wake up at the crack of dawn to hear the Emmy nominations. I just went to a bunch of websites to look up the nominations. In case you haven’t seen them and care, the partial list below is from EW.com. The ceremonies will be held on August 29, hosted by Jimmy Fallon and airing live on NBC.

A few things I’m excited about:

  • Jon Hamm getting two noms, for lead of Mad Men and guest star on 30 Rock. I like him much more as a comedic actor so I’m rooting for him for 30 Rock. Besides, Hugh Laurie should get his criminally overdue Emmy for lead dramatic actor in House.
  • Archie Panjabi getting nominated for supporting dramatic actress for The Good Wife. I don’t love this show, find Julianna Margulies’s character rather cold, but Panjabi is electric and steals every scene she’s in.
  • JANE LYNCH!! I’m also happy for Modern Family‘s Sofia Vergara and Julie Bowen but really, they should just practice their game face for when the presenter calls out Lynch’s name instead of theirs as the winner in the supporting comedic actress category.
  • Mike O’Malley for guest actor on Glee as Kurt’s dad. Sure, O’Malley’s role is extremely well-written, but O’Malley really knocks it out of the park as one of the most loving, compassionate, coolest TV dads EVER.
  • Speaking of Kurt, I’m so happy to see Chris Colfer get a nomination. He does the pain cover-up really well.
  • Betty White for hosting Saturday Night Live. Other than her deserving it, I want her to win so we can hear the sure-to-be hilarious speech she’d give.
  • Elizabeth Mitchell finally getting a nomination for Lost but as guest actress. It’s as if Emmy voters didn’t realize how good she was until she wasn’t a regular anymore.
  • Tina Fey’s reaction to her nominations: “This seems like an appropriate time for me to announce to NBC that I will not be renewing my contract,” the seven-time Emmy winner joked in a statement, “with my gym.” On a short-lived serious note, Fey says that the cast and crew are “grateful” for their fourth straight nomination, adding that today is “the fifth anniversary of the day NBC forgot to cancel us.”

For other nominees’ reactions, click here.

What do you think of the nominations? Think Jimmy Fallon will make a good host? Do you even care about any of this?

DRAMA
OUTSTANDING DRAMA
Lost
Breaking Bad
Dexter
Mad Men
True Blood
The Good Wife

OUTSTANDING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA
Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife)
Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit)
Glenn Close (Damages)
Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer)
January Jones (Mad Men)
Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights)

OUTSTANDING ACTOR IN A DRAMA
Jon Hamm (Mad Men)
Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights)
Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad)
Hugh Laurie (House M.D.)
Michael C. Hall (Dexter)
Matthew Fox (Lost)

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA
John Slattery (Mad Men)
Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad)
Martin Short (Damages)
Terry O’ Quinn (Lost)
Michael Emerson (Lost)
Andre Braugher (Men of a Certain Age)

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA
Sharon Gless (Burn Notice)
Christine Baranski (The Good Wife)
Christina Hendricks (Mad Men)
Rose Byrne (Damages)
Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife)
Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men)

OUTSTANDING GUEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Beau Bridges (The Closer)
Ted Danson (Damages)
John Lithgow (Dexter)
Alan Cumming (The Good Wife)
Dylan Baker (The Good Wife)
 Robert Morse (Mad Men)
Gregory Itzin (24)

OUTSTANDING GUEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Mary Kay Place (Big Love)
Sissy Spacek (Big Love)
Shirley Jones (The Cleaner)
Lily Tomlin (Damages)
Ann-Margret (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit)
Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost)

COMEDY
OUTSTANDING COMEDY
Glee
Modern Family
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Nurse Jackie
30 Rock
The Office

OUTSTANDING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY
Lea Michele (Glee)
Tina Fey (30 Rock)
Toni Collette (The United States of Tara)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus (The New Adventures of Old Christine)
Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie)
Amy Poehler (Parks and Recreation)

OUTSTANDING ACTOR IN A COMEDY
Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm)
Alec Baldwin (30 Rock)
Matthew Morrison (Glee)
Steve Carell (The Office)
Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory)
Tony Shalhoub (Monk)

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY
Chris Colfer (Glee)
Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother)
Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family)
Jon Cryer (Two and A Half Men)
Eric Stonestreet (Modern Family)
Ty Burrell (Modern Family)

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY
Jane Lynch (Glee)
Kristen Wiig (Saturday Night Live)
Jane Krakowski (30 Rock)
Julie Bowen (Modern Family)
Sofia Vergara (Modern Family)
Holland Taylor (Two and A Half Men)

OUTSTANDING GUEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Mike O’Malley (Glee)
Neil Patrick Harris (Glee)
Fred Willard (Modern Family)
Eli Wallach (Nurse Jackie)
Jon Hamm (30 Rock)
Will Arnett (30 Rock)

OUTSTANDING GUEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES
Christine Baranski (The Big Bang Theory)
Kathryn Joosten (Desperate Housewives)
Kristin Chenoweth (Glee)
Tina Fey (Saturday Night Live)
Betty White (Saturday Night Live)
Elaine Stritch (30 Rock)
Jane Lynch (Two and a Half Men)

VARIETY, MUSIC, OR COMEDY
OUTSTANDING VARIETY, MUSIC, OR COMEDY SERIES
The Colbert Report
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Real Time With Bill Maher
Saturday Night Live
The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien


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THE KIDS ARE Just ALL RIGHT

I couldn’t make a recent screening of The Kids Are All Right but my trusty contributor, Eric Edwards, was kind enough to cover it for me.—PCN

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Director Lisa Cholodenko, working from a script she co-wrote with Stuart Blumberg, poses the question of what really makes a parent a parent in her latest film, The Kids Are All Right (opening July 9). What’s most shocking about it is how it became a theatrical film rather than a Lifetime movie of the week.

Teenage siblings Laser and Joni (Josh Hutcherson and Mia Wasikowska) decide to contact the sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo) used to impregnate their lesbian parents, Nic and Jules (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, respectively). As expected, this causes a few problems between the happy couple, even making one of them briefly question her sexuality when she finds herself falling for the handsome lothario responsible for her children’s existence. These plot points aren’t exactly groundbreaking but they are handled with care and sensitivity by Cholodenko and the actors she brought together for this film.

And yet, as the end credits spooled, I wondered why I felt let down by a film with so much promise in its title, premise and cast. One of the characters behaves in a completely implausible and baffling way. And I took offense at the blatant rip-off of a scene from Love Actually in which Emma Thompson’s character has a heartbreaking moment while a Joni Mitchell song plays in the background. There’s plenty of Oscar-worthy acting delivered by Bening, Moore, Ruffalo and Wasikowska, but the ending is anticlimactic and flat, making this film just all right instead of great.

At the screening I attended, Cholodenko, Moore, Ruffalo, Hutcherson, and Wasikowska showed up to do Q & A. Some information gleaned:

  • Ruffalo jokingly wishes he had discovered sperm donation back when he was a struggling actor. Felt he wasted a real talent.
  • He tracked down Cholodenko after seeing her film, High Art, and said he wanted to work with her. When she came to him with Kids, he wasn’t available and another actor was cast. Ruffalo thought the other guy probably would have done a much better job. Fortuitously, that actor later fell out when Ruffalo was available.
  • He has completed directing his first film, Sympathy for Delicious, starring Laura Linney and Noah Emmerich, and is waiting for a distributor.
  • Co-writer Stuart Blumberg has been a sperm donor.
  • When asked what the younger actors might’ve learned from the more experienced ones, Moore said with a laugh that Hutcherson and Wasikowska learned how to keep their lines on their hands.
  • Cholodenko doesn’t see herself as a gay director. She simply wanted to tell a good story with meaning and didn’t want to be political or traffic in stereotypes.
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Summer Nights

Just got back into town after 5 days in Sonoma where I think I surpassed my personal best in laziness. I made sloths look like speed freaks. Hung out with my sister and her family and on the drive home, I thought about all the family summer vacations we took when we were kids. There were some crazy times but as with most things from childhood, I remember them fondly.

Some highlights:

  • My father bought a tent for us to go camping our first summer in America but didn’t realize we also needed sleeping bags (there’s no camping in Viet Nam). So all eight of us crammed into it at night, lying every which way on the ground with no padding or covers, waking up with indentations of rocks on the side of our faces or twigs jammed into our backs. We couldn’t understand the allure of this American pastime.
  • We were once at a site with shower facilities but no hot water. We kids would sit outside and laugh at the shrieks from people taking cold showers inside. Until it was our turn.
  • My aunt walked into a gift shop on Virginia Beach right after swimming in the ocean. Since she was still dripping water, she asked the store owner in her limited English, “Okay I wet here?” The owner, seeing the small puddle at her feet, asked us to leave.
  • One year, we went to Busch Gardens amusement park in Williamsburg. My uncle took one look at the Loch Ness Monster roller coaster and declared it wasn’t the least bit intimidating. After he got off the ride, his face was devoid of color, he was listing to the right and promptly vomited. As usual, we kids pointed and laughed.
  • My mom always brought rice on our trips, rolling it into balls so we could eat them with our fingers. She tried to cook it in a pot over a campfire once but that didn’t turn out well.
  • We rented a mountain cabin one summer but the electricity went out during a storm so we had none for a day or two, except for the static kind on the toilet seat that zapped us every time we sat down. We were so cold at night, we’d put on every item of clothing we brought (I wore 5 shirts and 3 skirts) and all sleep in the same bed for warmth.
  • My law-abiding, 55-driving dad would sometimes rent a car for our road trip, then proceed to take corners on two wheels, zigzag through traffic on the highway, doing 80 and beyond. When Mom, hanging on for dear life, asked why he was driving like that, he’d say, “It’s a rental.”
  • Every Fourth of July, Dad loaded us into the Ford LTD station wagon to go see fireworks on the National Mall. It always took 2 hours there (the drive into D.C. normally took only 15-20 minutes from our house) and 3 days back due to traffic, but there’s nothing like seeing fireworks explode over the Washington Monument.

One of my best friends once told me part of her job is to create happy memories for her children. My parents certainly did their job and then some.

What are some of your favorite family vacation memories?

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Book Review: THE BLIND CONTESSA’S NEW MACHINE

Though it’s about a blind girl, Carey Wallace’s debut novel, The Blind Contessa’s New Machine, is alive with vibrant imagery and enough lovely details to stimulate the reader’s other senses.

Set in Italy in the 1800s, the story is about the contessa Carolina slowly losing her sight. She tells her husband Pietro before their wedding but he doesn’t believe her. Neither do her parents. The only person who takes her seriously is her childhood friend, the quirky inventor Turri. He invents a writing machine—a prototype for the typewriter—so she can still send notes to her friends and family. The gift triggers a love affair that doesn’t end the way we’d like but perhaps the only way it could.

The 206-page novel’s plot may be slight but the characters have emotional weight. Carolina is quite an independent girl for her time and accepts her plight with an admirable lack of self-pity. Turri is a singular character, not overtly romantic but sweet in his reticent ways. Pietro, however, starts out dashing but ends up rather hypocritical.

Wallace doesn’t need a lot of pages to impress with eloquent language that reminds us of the beauty that surrounds us every day. The following describes Carolina’s joy from getting a custom-made dress when she’s six year old:

When the gown was complete, three days before the party, Carolina worried that she might die of joy. The old woman hung it on her wardrobe, where it shone in the morning sun like a piece of the sky. For those three nights, Carolina slept only fitfully. Often she crept out of bed to make certain by touch that the gown was still there and that she was not being misinformed by her dreams.

Though no longer a little girl, I suddenly wanted a dress just like that.

When Carolina could no longer see beautiful things, Wallace makes us feel the loss, but she also makes us grateful we can still experience the pleasure of a good book.

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