Emmy Ballots Due: Which old fav would you sacrifice for a newbie?

Emmy nomination balloting ends today for the 68th annual Emmy Awards. Cross your fingers that we actually get a few shakeups this year. Yes, cross your fingers even if you love all 10 of the shows that are normally swimming in nominations. Why? Well, the Emmys really should reflect how competitive television is and not suggest that there have only been 10ish good shows on the air for the past half decade plus.

Comment Party! On that note please do tell us in the comments which 3 of your old favorites that you still love you'd be willing to sacrifice for 3 who have not been recognized. Make your Sophie's Choice in the comments and let us all pray that Emmy voters do the same. Nobody deserves 5+ nominations for the same thing when that means someone else can't even get ONE for something arguably just as good! The catch is that you can't ditch someone you don't love or think is unworthy who is always nominated. I'll go first as truly painful as this is:

I'd be willing to trade Michelle Dockery on Downton Abbey (who I totally think is the MVP of that entire series (if you blend all seasons together - otherwise there are different MVPs each year as there are for most quality shows) for Shiri Appleby's deep-digging as ambitious self-destructive Rachel on UnReal; Hell, I'd even be willing to trade Taraji P Henson (my preferred winner last year for Empire) if it meant I could have Eva Green's genre genius in Penny Dreadful in the mix (my winner this year). I'd even be willing to trade my beloved Titus Burggess on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (who I thought should have easily stormed to the win last year) if we could give a chance to another delusional show-stealer like Jamie Cavill in Jane the Virgin (who should have been Titus' main competition last year) or another outspoken gay like Noah Galvin from The Real O'Neals both because he's brilliant on his show and to stick it to ABC for even threatening to cancel that gem. (Yes, I know they think Noah is entitled and 'difficult' and yadda yadda yadda but they would never think of threatening and publicly humiliating a straight actor who was the MVP of a similarly acclaimed show.)

I expect zero nominations for THE REAL O'NEALS but I legit think it deserves multiple nods

The point is that many previously nominated shows and people are still deserving but it makes so much more sense to spread the wealth each year. If you don't spread the wealth it sends two messages ... 1) That you're not paying attention to what's eligible or even what happened on your favorite show that year and merely voting based on loyalty to your "favorites" and...  2) That TV's 'golden age' is really just a clever PR campaign for 10 shows and history won't mark it as anything particularly special. 

ICYMI Our Emmy Balloting Pieces
SHOWS: Emmy Drama Ballots |  Emmy Comedy Ballots | Girls | The People vs OJ Simpson; PERFORMANCES: Amy Landecker in "Transparent" | Donna Lynn Champlin "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" | Eva Green & Helen McRory in "Penny Dreadful" |  Constance Zimmer "UnREAL" | Boyd Holbrook "Narcos" | Noah Galvin "The Real O'Neals" | Gillian Jacobs "Love" | Riley Keough "The Girlfriend Experience" | Jeremy Allen White "Shameless" ; MISCELLANIA: "Mr Robot" leads TCA Nominations | Ten Nominees? | More TV MVPs (earlier in the season)

American Pastoral's Poster & Trailer Are A Beauty

Manuel here. American Pastoral, adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Philip Roth has a trio of leading performers that I find myself often rooting for—despite early buzzy career moves, each have become underrated and/or undervalued players: Jennifer Connelly, Dakota Fanning, and Ewan McGregor who's doing double duty here. American Pastoral marks his directorial debut.

I initially wanted to share the beautiful new poster for it which is haunting and simple; a perfect example of a one sheet that establishes quickly the mood of the piece. Roth's title and the film's tagline "A radically ordinary story" surely help. This is the American Dream engulfed in flames which means the nuclear family at the core of McGregor's film (Connelly playing his wife, Fanning his daughter) will be anything but ordinary.

And then I found the trailer had dropped and 30 seconds in I was already sold (which would've made a YNMS an exercise in nitpicking because even as it uses the emo song montage trailer template I immediately wanted to catch the film). I also didn't want to spoil it since, for those us of unfamiliar with the Roth novel, that initial sequence in the trailer packs a heavier punch. The trailer looks gorgeous—Norman Rockwell filtered through 1960s hazy and backlit paranoia—no doubt because DP Martin Ruhe (of Control and The American fame) is behind the camera. Also, don't be dissuaded by the creepy "VFX de-aged McGregor" greeting you below.

Though perhaps I'm burying the lede: the main reason to watch this trailer other than to hear yet another haunting version of "Mad World," is to see Fanning in full 60s radical rebel girl mode: 

But what does everyone else think? Will Dakota remind us what made her such a powerful screen presence? 

The Furniture: The Venomous and Fanatical 'Embrace of the Serpent'

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber... 

Embrace of the Serpent, Colombia’s first-ever nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, contains multitudes. Ciro Guerra filters the Amazon Basin into a tremendous cinematic document, a rich cornucopia of unexpected tableaux. The choice to confine this colorful landscape to black and white would be uncanny enough on its own, but the narrative is also unmoored by transitions between the two timelines. Long before the final hallucination, our perceptions are overwhelmed by the range of complex images.

And, of course, the work of production designer Angelica Perea, art director Ramses Benjumea and set decorator Alejandro Franco is an essential component. The best example of their work comes right at the film’s midpoint, with a pair of profoundly unsettling episodes that interrogate the role of Catholic missionaries in Colombia’s colonial history. [More...]

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Emmy FYC: The Actresses of "Penny Dreadful"

Our Emmy FYC series concludes with Nathaniel's final plea for Penny Dreadful...

When Penny Dreadful aired its surprise series, not season, finale a week ago, the event felt as dark to fans as Vanessa Ive's increasingly fatalistic worldview. In its 3 short seasons the series grew quickly from a gimmicky concept -- all your favorite monster myths thrown together! --  with rich visual panache (Season 1) to a complex, increasingly focused, and confidently disturbing drama (Season 2) to a rushed and scattershot but even more thematically daring and superbly acted grande finale (Season 3). By the Season 2 premiere it had become abundantly clear that the blood-pumping heart of this gothic universe, belonged to its haunted, dangerous, three-dimensional women...

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Interview: Rising Star Boyd Holbrook ("Narcos")

Boyd Holbrook © Flaunt magazine, Fe Pinheiro, photographerI regret to inform you that I cannot begin this story with the sizzling lede I'd intended. But the redacted story, of where Boyd Holbrook called me from and the new project he's working on -- were nevertheless a good reminder that he's been an exciting talent to watch. That's not just because he's so engaging onscreen but because he doesn't want to get stuck in a rut; it's hard to guess where his creative muse will take him next.

So let's jump to our real topic. Boyd Holbrook was calling to discuss his role as DEA officer Steve Murphy in the Netflix series Narcos. The debut season was nominated for Best Drama Series at the Golden Globes and before its second season airs, it's undoubtedly hoping for Emmy to follow suit (balloting closes tomorrow). The story revolves around the drug lord Pablo Escobar (Wagner Moura, Globe nominated for Best Actor) and the attempts of DEA agents Steve Murphy (Boyd Holbrook) and Javier Peña (Pedro Pascal) to bring him down. Though it's somewhat of a three-lead series, Holbrook and Peña are both on Emmy's Supporting Actor Drama ballot since Escobar is the subject matter. Holbrook's character is our window to the story and a handy historical reference guide as narrator. The early episodes have to impart a ton of information we couldn't be expected to know about both Colombia and the US in the late 70s and early 80s as well as technological limitations of the time in hunting and surveillance of your prey.

I talked to Boyd about the peculiar demands of the part, half-exposition and half-character work, but we begin with what I suspect is his multi-hyphenate inner artist [Interview after the jump...]

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