Emmy Reactions: Why Wasn't This Nominated?!

Now that we have had a little bit of time for the Emmy nominations to sink in, the afterglow of our favorite nominees has faded enough to reflect on what missed out. This year had quite a few stings for what we expected to be a more open playing field. Recurrent outsiders like The Leftovers and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend have long been on our lips here at The Film Experience as criminally ignored by awards bodies, and this year was no different! Here's what missed out this morning that has us lamenting:

JORGE - Rita Moreno is destined to win an EGOT twice and they just delayed it. Truly upset about her snub for One Day at a Time.

DENNY - It's clear the voting body watched Black Mirror: San Junipero. So why wasn't Bryce Dallas Howard nominated for her tremendous, go-for-broke performance in Nosedive? The arc the episode traces for her character (desperately trying to boost her favorability rating to attend a wedding) is hilarious, terrifying, and all too relatable, and Howard's mad commitment is key to the episode working as well as it does. For my money, she probably should have WON the trophy.

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Emmy Reactions: Our Favorite Nominations!

Since the Emmy nominations announced today, some celebration is in order! We polled our lively Team Experience for their thoughts on today's results, starting with their favorite nominees across any of Emmy's umpteen categories. Before we bemoan what got left out, let's pop a cork and spend some time on the many exciting nominees that made the cut:

What nomination made you the happiest?

JASON - LAURA DERN, OBVIOUSLY. I mean what am I, an animal?

LYNN - B.D. Wong as Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Mr. Robot). While Emmy voters cooled on Mr. Robot this year - a shame, since I maintain the second season was actually stronger than the first - I'm happy to see they did recognize one of its standout turns: B.D. Wong as the enigmatic White Rose.  Whether appearing as the female leader of the Dark Army or the male Chinese Minister of State Security, he was always absolutely mesmerizing to watch, offering glimmers of insight but never full access to the character's agenda and putting a slyly subversive spin on the old trope of the "inscrutable Oriental."

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It's Too Darn Hot!

It's almost 90 degrees in NYC today. How do you stay cool on a day like this? 

The Emmy Nominations!!

The 69th Emmy nominations have been announced! HBO need not worry that Game of Thrones wasn't eligible this year, as they landed the most nominated drama anyway with Westworld. The early-in-the-season genre hit tied Saturday Night Live for 22 nominations each, followed by Stranger Things and Feud tying for second place at 18 each.

Most of the nominations follow Emmy's expected players despite the openings left by departed perennials like Thrones, though this year isn't without surprises or fresh faces. The major breakthroughs this year were Hulu (finally in the major races thanks to the success of The Handmaid's Tale) and our beloved RuPaul's Drag Race (scoring 7 nominations, plus one for Untucked).

The team will be sharing their favorite nominations and frustrations on what missed the cut later today, but our dream ballot should give you a hint of our thoughts. Here are the nominees in the top categories:

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DVD review - Smurfs: The Lost Village

Tim here. 2017 is shaping up to be a less-than-inspired year for movies in general, but particularly dire for animation (apologies to the Cars 3 superfans, I'm sure there's at least a couple of you in this world). The bar has fallen low enough that I even managed to convince myself that there might be some merit to checking out Smurfs: The Lost Village, which arrived on DVD this week. The first of three Sony Picture Animation features to come out in 2017 (the second, The Emoji Movie, is mere weeks away, and boy does it look like it will be bad), The Lost Village is the latest attempt to keep the small blue woodland homunculi called Smurfs in English, Schtroumpfs in the original French, viable as a marketable brand.

In an astonishing twist, it is not very good.

At least we can say this in favor of the film: it's entirely animated. The last two Smurfs features made by Sony (otherwise unrelated to The Lost Village) were live-action hybrids, in which little animated Smurfs came out to horrifyingly deal with the real New York City. Now, they're where they belong, in a busily designed magic forest, facing a proper cartoon villain and his cartoon cat. So far as that goes, honestly, The Lost Village is even a pretty nice film to look at...

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