Emmy Curio: Will Kevin Kline Triple-Crown via "Bob's Burgers"?

by Nathaniel R

Can Kline win two big showbiz prizes in one year? (Tony for Present Laughter / Emmy for Bob's Burgers)

Voice acting has only been a regular competitive category since 2009 at the Emmys so we don't quite have a ten year history to work from. Before then the prize was juried with a winner announced. The newish category split into two categories in 2014 to have a separate award for voiceover narration as opposed to voice acting (in short, the Emmys have way too many categories). Nevertheless despite this very very specific craft having two categories all to itself the voting body still make super weird choices. Consider that Archer, which has one of the all time best voice casts, and could well fill up the entire category each year, has only been nominated for this category once for H Jon Benjamin, who voices Archer himself.  

This year's nominees for voice work include two newbies, two previous winners, and one Kevin Kline who could triple crown if he wins this since he already has an Oscar and three Tonys... 

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OTD: The Whisperers, Marlee Matlin, and "The Power of Love"

On this day (August 24th) in showbiz-related history...

1890 "Father of modern surfing" and part time movie actor Duke Kahanamoku born in Hawaii. We've written about him before. Where's his biopic?

1967 The Whisperers premieres in London. It's about an old poor woman living in solitude who is beginning to lose her grip on reality. Dame Edith Evans sterling work was instantly lauded - she won Best Actress at Berlinale and from such disparate groups as the NYFCC, NBR and the Golden Globes. She landed her third and final Oscar nomination in the Best Actress lineup (sadly only the winner, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner's Hepburn, was less than superb in that shortlist!). At the time Evans was the oldest Oscar nominee of all time in any acting category having just turned 80 years old. That record has since been undone but she's still the third oldest lead actress nominee after Jessica Tandy for Driving Miss Daisy (also 80, who won) and Emmanuelle Riva for Amour (who was 85).  Have you ever seen The Whisperers? It's haunting and quite a time capsule of contemporary British cinema of the time. [And check out Nick Davis' 5 star review of this legendary performance]

1985 Huey Lewis and the News hit #1 with their theme from Back to the Future "The Power of Love". The music video had a cameo by the car and Christopher Lloyd's "Doc" though it was mostly just the band playing in a bar. Best Original Song was one of the film's 4 Oscar nominations (it won for sound effects editing).  In case you haven't yet heard, 1985 will be our "year of the month" in September as we build to the next Smackdown.

2012 Remember that movie where Michael Shannon was evil (wait, that's not helpful) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt was a bicycle messenger (now that's more specific). Premium Rush opened on this day. Isn't it weird how some movies, like that one, feel much more ancient than they actually are while others from years earlier feel fresh as daisies? 

Happy Birthday to Them!
← Oscar Winner: Usurper of Kathleen Turner's and/or Sigourney Weaver's Best Actress statue. More generously we must admit that it's super impressive that Matlin trailblazed by refusing to be a one hit wonder, turning that splashy debut into such an unlikely but full career. She's been working ever since!
Oscar Nominees: Ava DuVernay (13th), Anne Archer (Fatal Attraction), Ronee Blakley (Nashville), Robert Pulcini (American Splendor)
Cool Talents: Actress Elizabeth Debicki, Wit Stephen Fry, Auteur Takashi Miike, Novelist A.S. Byatt
80s Touchstones: Steve Guttenberg (Cocoon, Can't Stop the Music, and so many more) and Gordon Wanecke (My Beautiful Laundrette!)

Ask Nathaniel

I recently hosted a gay book club where we talked "Call Me By Your Name" (click for the cute pic) and the one guy who'd seen the movie refused to say anything about it. Argh. So that forthcoming adaptation is foremost on my mind. What's on yours? Give me some questions to answer, won'cha? Bonus points if the topics are romantic films and/or book adaptations. I'll select two handfuls to answer in forthcoming posts.

[Convalescence update: as some of you have heard I somehow threw my back out which accounts for the spare posting of late. It's hard to sit and type when you're in pain but I think I'm coming out of it now and dying to get back to movies. You can only watch so much This is Us and Younger and Defend--nah, that's too boring -- and eat so much ice cream and alternate so many heat pads and ice packs before you start to lose your GD mind.]

Emmy Review: Drama Supporting Actress

We've been reviewing various Emmy categories as the Academy completes their voting (ballots due Monday). Here's Spencer Coile...

It is an exciting change of pace to see the Drama categories actually become competitive this year. No race demonstrates this better than the Drama Supporting Actress category. After last year's batch of mostly Game of Thrones ladies (with Maggie Smith still sleepwalking her way to another victory), the six ladies this year feel fresh, new, and all worthy of discussion. Uzo Aduba is the only returning nominee (after missing the year before), so all six of the contenders in this category feel viable for the statue. Only one can be victorious...

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Soundtracking: "The Bodyguard"

Whitney: Can I Be Me debuts this Friday on Showtime. Chris Feil takes a look at the icon's biggest soundtrack...

The Bodyguard doesn’t deserve its iconic mega-selling soundtrack. Granted, most of us have never pretended that that the film was even a whiff as good as all that glorious vocal dexterity Whitney Houston lays into her six tracks. But rest assured: the movie itself is even worse than you remember.

Among its many sins, the most egregious is how it ignores its own musical assets. The Bodyguard exists in a world where you can enter someone’s home and just happen upon an extended dance sequence being shot for a music video - but it also presents a world where that isn’t anywhere near as fun as it sounds. It spends the first act under the illusion that we give a crap about five or six things more than we do about Whitney’s voice. Why go to the creative effort to cast one of the biggest music acts of the era (and in a quasi-musical!) if you don’t know how to use her?

No sweat for Whitney, even if her acting performance netted her some harsh reviews. As ever, her musical contribution remains untouchable...

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