Oscar Non-News, Taye Hewdig-Diggs, and Link Roundup

Before we get to the link roundup a bit of Oscar Housekeeping. There are no significant changes to the rules this year so we're stuck with "somewhere between 5 and 10 nominees" in terms of Best Picture (I'd been hoping for a set number, no matter what that set number was, as I like the awards to have proper comparative pleasures in the grand scheme of history). Wisely though in minor changes, the visual effects category gets an expanded finalist list before nominations (smart), and  the shorts category get longer finalists lists to choose from and the number of nominations per category is set at a concrete five (it's usually five but sometimes it's less depending on how voting goes, currently). I do like the consistency but I wonder why they're still holding out on Makeup and Hair -- EVERY FILM USES IT which is more than you can say for a lot of categories. The makeup branch should get 5 nominated slots like every other Oscar branch category. Sucks to be them.

Links
MNPP Flaunt and Jason try to convince us to love Aaron Johnson. Hey, no one else will.
A Fistful of Films reviews Inside Out from a parental perspective and cries all the way through it 
Dissolve David Tennant takes over a Robin Williams voice role in the animation adaptation of Chew. I didn't actually know they were making this but that comic, which a friend of Anne Marie's turned me on to, is SO good and weird. So I'm excited for this 
Towleroad somehow I missed this Magic Mike XXL clip of Matt Bomer singing. When perfect gets more perfect it's just so not fair, you know?
Kenneth in the (212) RIP Dick Van Patten. Remember "Eight is Enough"?  
Mike's Movie Projector looks back at Dirk Bogarde in 1960
Movie Mezzanine looks back at The Blues Brothers (1980) -- I knew so many people who loved this movie growing up but I never "got" its appeal
The Hot Blog David Poland talks Inside Out's "Bing Bong" 

Screen to... Other
Theater Mania 45 years after Love Story (1970) Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neal are working together again -- they'll tour with the play "Love Letters" which had a short run on Broadway recently with rotating older celebrities
AV Club Fight Club (1999)... for kids? 
Playbill Michael C Hall (Dexter) will star in a new Off Broadway David Bowie musical based on The Man Who Fell To Earth this fall. It's called "Lazarus"
Deadline Emmy winning Laurie Metcalf, so brilliant currently on the underseen sitcom Getting On has replaced Elizabeth Marvel in the upcoming Broadway adaptation of Misery (1990). So she does the Bruce Willis hobbling honors now

Showtune to Go...
The first photo of Taye Diggs as Hedwig has been released to excite you for his theatrical run in one of the great roles! So naturally our Showtune to Go this time is a Hedwig toon.

Team Experience: Collective Emmy Ballot, Drama

Part 1 of 2... DRAMA!
Part 2 -- Comedy 

Eleven members of our team* turned in full Emmy ballots. I've compiled the results for you here. This is a very limited pool versus the thousands from the Television Academy who will vote on the actual Emmys but I thought it might be interesting for readers who are invested in this 'new golden age' of television. 

REMINDER: THESE ARE NOT PREDICTIONS

What follows is what we communally hope for when the nominations are announced. Voting on the nominations for the real Emmys ends this Friday, June 26th. The nominations will be announced on July 16th (what takes them so long to tally it?) and the ceremony happens on September 20th. It's a ridiculously wide spread of time -- nearly double the Oscar voting spread.

OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES

• The Americans (FX)
• Empire (FOX)
• Game of Thrones (HBO)
• The Leftovers (HBO)
• Mad Men (AMC)
• Masters of Sex (SHO)
• Orange is the New Black (NETFLIX)

Twenty-two different series received at least one vote but there were no votes at all for two Emmy regulars in this category (Downton Abbey & House of Cards). No series made every ballot though Mad Men and Masters of Sex were out front together in that regard. I forgot to hold a tiebreaker vote between The Leftovers and The Fall for the final slot so I made the choice myself, and erred on the side of way more ambition though The Fall was arguably more consistent. The nearest misses were The Affair and Agent Carter. The Agent Carter contingency surprised me even though I adore the show but then we're friendlier to non-prestige genre shows here (The Flash, Orphan Black and Daredevil also received votes). We shouldn't bring up the painful years of snubs for Battlestar Galactica and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, two of the finest shows TV ever produced. Neither of which could get arrested by Emmy voters in major categories. (sigh)

Acting Categories after the jump...

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The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

We're looking back into 1948 ahead of this weekend's Smackdown. A world away from all of those women, though, John Huston was making one of cinema's most famous films about men. Here's David...

It was evident from the gilded treachery on display in The Maltese Falcon that John Huston was a filmmaker fully aware and largely in thrall to the darker side of human nature. World War II changed him, as it did millions of American men. An adaptation of B. Traven’s 1927 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was the first feature Huston made following his time making war documentaries for the U.S. government, and while its setting and subject are quite estranged from the war – three men mining for gold in 1925 Mexico – it betrays the even grittier experiences Huston had witnessed abroad. If the film is about greed, as has long been celebrated, it just as much about the deep insecurities of masculinity.

More...

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HBO’s LGBT History: Gia (1998)

Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions...

Last week we looked at the tender In the Gloaming, Christopher Reeve's directorial debut starring Glenn Close. And while that film ultimately focused on Close's character (her gay son is dying of AIDS), today, for the first time since we started this project, we get to focus on an LGBT protagonist that isn’t a gay man!

We follow instead a gorgeous woman (Angelina Jolie) who's as sexually adventurous as they come, leading on men and women alike, lighting the modeling world on fire, and falling hard (to the point of stalker-ish behavior) for a certain make-up girl that'll be all too familiar for all of you LOST fans.

Angelina Jolie's "Gia" breakthrough is after the jump...

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FYC: Thomas Middleditch for Best Lead Actor in a Comedy

Team Experience is sharing their dream picks for the Emmys. Here's Michael C with our final acting FYC before we wrap up with a couple of other things...

The central comic conceit of Silicon Valley is that the tech industry has created a dynamic where the most power is now in the hands of those with the least social skills. Thomas Middleditch (perhaps best known previously for getting his gold fish eaten by Jonah Hill in Wolf of Wall Street) embodied this idea so perfectly in the beginning he barely seemed to be doing any acting. He just is that guy. He need only show up in scenes with his wide-eyes, his stammer, and his never-seen-the-inside-of-a-gym physique and we instantly got the joke. That "Richard Hendricks" quickly graduated from being a type to a character is a credit to Middleditch, in particular his keen comic timing capable of shading the many subtle levels of Richard's ever-present anxiety, from basic discomfort all the way up to full-blown meltdown.

Were Silicon Valley a typical network sitcom Middleditch could spin variations on the same comic beats for nine or ten seasons, probably to much acclaim, but the stellar second season of Mike Judge's HBO show immediately upped the ante for Richard. The triumph of the first season finale dropped him into the deep end of the pool, swimming with the tech equivalent of great white sharks. Where before he could succeed with a bolt of lightning burst of genius. the new season requires him to be not just a brilliant programmer but a brilliant leader, a renegade capable of inspiring his team and strategizing against the big boys on a tiny fraction of their budget. That Richard has floundered at every step of this process may have obscured the fact that Middleditch has succeeded in subtly evolving the character at pace with the show. The Richard Hendricks from the season two finale ready to burn his business to the ground (read: delete it) rather than see it stolen out from under him, was a far cry from the nervous nelly of the pilot who nearly had a breakdown trying to decide if he should just sell it and run. That Middleditch pulled off this incremental transformation believably (and hilariously) is an achievement that easily warrants inclusion among the five nominees for Best Lead Actor in a Comedy. I'm tempted to say he deserves the win.

Previously:
Supporting Actress Specials!!! Cara Seymour & Ann Dowd
Series Drama The Americans and The Leftovers 
Series Comedy Jane the Virgin 
Actress (Comedy) Lisa Kudrow, Amy Schumer 
Actress (Drama) Ruth Wilson
Actor (Drama) Jon Hamm and Michael Sheen 
Supp. Actor (Drama) Matt Czuchry (Comedy) Tituss Burgess
Supp. Actress (Comedy) Lauren Weedman and Melanie Lynskey