A Series of Award-Worthy Complaints. Part II, Television Edition.

Now to take a look at the television nominees for Golden Globes. I have surprisingly few complaints!

In fact, when it comes to Best TV Series / Drama: no complaints! I haven’t seen Dexter or True Blood, but it’s my understanding that they’re both excellent—and Mad Men, House, and Big Love are all totally deserving. On the acting side, I think it’s bogus that January Jones was nominated for Mad Men over Elizabeth Moss. Her Betty Draper is a pitch-perfect mannered ice queen, but seeing her on SNL revealed that January is just…that person. Even watching Love Actually over the holidays made me realize that she doesn’t have much of a range—she’s just sort of lucked into a role that lets her play that person every week.

Now, comedy. Entourage. Again. It’s still on, you guys. I’m basically reiterating my position on The Hangover, but I think my point still stands—it does not take talent to write this show. I find it totally impossible to care about the characters, they don’t make me laugh at all. And Piven. The fucking Piven. I’ll concede that when this show first came on, there was something appealing and original about his manic, high-energy performance. But it’s old now. Stale. Boring. We’re totes over it. He’s not nominated, so I don’t know why I’m so annoyed at him, but here we are. Given the caliber of shows that Entourage is up against—30 Rock, The Office, Modern Family, and Glee—if it somehow pulls off a win tonight, I will fly to LA myself and kick Mark Wahlberg in the nards.

Looking to the brighter side, Glee makes this year’s nominations more interesting than usual. The Golden Globes’ weird and inexplicable choice to lump comedies and musicals together (because they’re totally the exact same thing…?) usually has no effect on the television nominations, because nobody makes musical TV shows. Or at least, nobody was nominating Cop Rock for anything. (Oh my God, except apparently a bunch of Emmys? What the fuck, Emmys?) But now Glee is going up against the comedies, and I find that it’s really tough to call who’s going to win, because they each do different things really well. Glee definitely has brilliantly funny moments, but its strong suit is letting the main characters belt out some kick-ass numbers. I don’t think it’s as funny as 30 Rock often (though admittedly not always) is, but the shows are kind of like apples and oranges. I think Best Comedy and Best Actress will come down to these two shows, and making the call between Tina Fey and Lea Michele is, again, a tricky one. Ultimately, I think I have to give the edge to Michele because Fey’s main strength is her writing rather than acting. 30 Rock is fantastic because of its sharp, quick wit and manic pace; and while Liz Lemon is brilliant and I totally want to be her best friend—it’s not a stretch for Tina Fey to play this person. She’s writing & producing one of the best comedies on television in a while, but I don’t think her acting is necessarily the show’s strong suit. I do think she’s a funnier lady than Lea Michele, but! The weirdness of the combined comedy/musical category pushes Michele over the edge for a win, because goddamn, can that girl sing.

Meanwhile, I hope that 30 Rock is being considered not only as a comedy, but for its top-notch musical offerings as well:

“Muffin Top”

“Werewolf Bar Mitzvah”

“Midnight Train to Georgia”

And let us not forget Liz Lemon’s unique contribution to the world of dance.

A Series of Award-Worthy Complaints. Part I, Film Edition.

Golden Globes time! As promised, I’m here to offer my thoughts on the nominees before tonight’s awards ceremony. I thought about going through and doing a full analysis of all the major categories, but for one thing, I haven’t seen nearly enough of the nominees to make any sort of fair judgment. Also, the Globes separate the drama & comedy categories, so that would be, like, double the effort on my part. I’ll focus my energy on bitching about what seems important to me.

Films first—I’ll save my take on the TV nominees for a new post.

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to point out that I have seen…two of the movies that are nominated in big categories. Avatar and The Hangover. Let’s start with those.

Avatar. Obviously this was nominated. There’s been such a fuss over how James Cameron spent a thousand years making this masterpiece, so that was inevitable. Should it win? I think that comes down to which criteria determine what makes a movie the best. Ordinarily, I’d say that the story and acting are the most important factors, and that things like special effects are little extras that get their own separate awards. But if you take filmmaking seriously as an art form, there’s no way to separate the visual element from the rest of it. I think if you consider innovation & originality as crucial parts of what separates one film from another, then has a lot going for it. Cameron really did create something new and exceptional in the way the movie was created—he gets major points for that. But apart from that, Avatar was just…fine. The acting was adequate, the story was predictable—and in fact, didn’t totally hang together in my opinion. I don’t think that Jake’s motivations were clear, and there wasn’t a clear explanation for why he withheld information from the Na’Vi until literally the last possible second. I think it played out that way to get the Major Betrayal reaction, and that didn’t feel genuine to me. So…we’ll see. I wouldn’t have a problem with it winning, per se, but I don’t think it was so exceptional outside of the innovative filmmaking.

The Hangover. Oh boy. I think I have to restrain myself here, if only because I’m going to be saying a lot of the same things about Entourage in the next post. Am I alone in thinking that this movie was seriously over-hyped? It was funny…ish, but I think it was mostly Wacky! WTF?!?! humor. In other words, the kind of thing that a couple frat boys could have written. I personally don’t think we should be giving out awards to a movie whose script is essentially, “OMG, these guys get sooooo drunk! They steal a cop car! And then one of them marries a hooker! [Played by Heather Graham, because apparently that is the full extent of her range] Oh, and dude! There should be a craaaaazy Asian gangster! And a fucking tiger!!” Was there more to the movie than this? Am I missing something? There weren’t really any quotable lines, either—only a couple days after seeing The Hangover, I’d already forgotten almost everything about it. Don't get me wrong; I don’t mind crude, silly humor—but compare this to Wet Hot American Summer, a veritable font of toilet humor, but far superior to The Hangover in almost every way. It’s witty & tongue-in-cheek, with lots of small jokes so that it doesn’t bash you over the head with the sophomoric zaniness. Just look at Paul Rudd pronouncing “journal” with a hard G, Michael Showalter’s quick “I want you inside me…I mean, hey, what’s up?”, and Amy Poehler as an amazingly bitchy and over-serious director of the camp talent show. Not to mention that Bradley Cooper is much more…compelling in Wet Hot American Summer. Ahem.

Sorry, did I get distracted? My point is, there’s nothing special about The Hangover. It’s not as witty as Wet Hot…, and it’s not even as quotable as Old School or Dodgeball. It’s watchable enough if you have nothing else to do, but let’s not give it any awards.

A few other brief thoughts on film nominations.

Up in the Air looks like exactly the kind of movie that was made to win awards. Overly earnest & impressed with its own importance. Yawn.

Sandra Bullock, nominated in two categories? Really? I’m so utterly unimpressed with her—I don’t think the woman has ever done a movie that stood out as something special. She’s the Sheryl Crow of the movie industry: basically unobjectionable, usually watchable, but she never surpasses expectations. Like The Hangover, she’s not awful, but not an award winner either. Certainly not for Sports Movie of the Moment or Romantic Comedy #47729. Maybe I’m just bitter that Betty White wasn’t nominated for that one.

Was Precious actually good? I got the feeling that it was just a huge guilt trip set up by Oprah to make us cry about how terrible this girl’s life is. Whatever. At least Mariah Carey’s not nominated.

Addendum

In response to my December 11 post:

Danny. Nope, no way, it is no longer in any way plausible that Liz Lemon is a sad person who is unlucky in love. Bullshit.

I have things to say about the Golden Globes. I promise to say them before the show Sunday night.