Emmy FYC: "For All Mankind" for Drama Series

by Lynn Lee

If you’re old enough to remember the Challenger explosion – my earliest memory of watching a national disaster on TV – you may, like me, see it as the de facto end of the Space Age.  Not that NASA abandoned its mission or that space ever completely lost its grip on the public imagination.  One need only look to the Mars Rovers and the recent advances made by SpaceX and Blue Origin for evidence to the contrary.  But even the most exciting breakthroughs no longer command the universal attention that the Apollo missions or, yes, the Challenger debacle did back in their day.  There’s also a growing sense that space travel has become the province of the ultrarich, and that as a species we should– taking a page out of Gil Scott-Heron – maybe think about fixing our problems here on Earth before laying claim to other worlds.

For those who hold onto the ideal of outer space as a gauntlet for human progress, there’s a tendency to look back wistfully at the golden age of space exploration, notwithstanding the more uncomfortable facts underlying the myth...

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Judy Holliday @ 100: The Oscar Winner's Fascinating Career

by Brent Calderwood

I’m just going to say it. I’m glad Judy Holliday won the Best Actress Oscar for the 1950 comedy Born Yesterday. I’m not saying she should have won—I’m not even saying I would have voted for her if I’d been a member of the Academy. But if I could have been there when the winner was announced on March 29, 1951, I would have been cheering the loudest.

Today—100 years after Holliday’s birth and 56 years and two weeks after her untimely death—Holliday’s Sea Biscuit victory over frontrunners Bette Davis for All About Eve and Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard is still a topic of discussion and debate...

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The many versions of "Anna and the King of Siam"

by Cláudio Alves

Seventy-five years ago, Anna and the King of Siam premiered in theaters. The film was adapted from a book by the same name, which purported to present a fictionalized, yet historically-based, account of the years spent by Anna Leonowens in the court of King Mongkut of Siam - present-day Thailand - in the 1860s. Novelist Margaret Landon based her work on Leonowens' memoirs, creating a window into an otherworld that dazzled readers and moviegoers of the 1940s. Over the years, the story's popularity persisted, and it has been retold in several different mediums. On the anniversary of its first cinematic adaptation, let's look at the four movie versions from the Oscar-winning costume drama to a forgotten animated catastrophe…

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Emmy Watch: Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series

By Abe Friedtanzer

Hannah Waddingham and Juno Temple in "Ted Lasso"

Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series may actually be the most competitive Emmy category this time. At the very least it's the one with the largest number of high-caliber candidates who deserve a spot. The list of returning possibilities is about as short as in any other category this year. Two-time winner Kate McKinnon (Saturday Night Live) is angling for her eighth consecutive bid. Cecily Strong (Saturday Night Live) was nominated last year, and Aidy Bryant (Saturday Night Live) is a previous honoree who could return again. Though it’s not technically for the same show but for the same role, Laurie Metcalf (The Conners) is a past nominee, and a three-time winner. There’s also Bette Midler (The Politician), who earned her show’s only major nomination last year as a guest and is now eligible here. Let’s go over the rest of the field…

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Emmy FYC: The directing of “The Handmaid’s Tale”

by Juan Carlos Ojano

It’s probably an odd thing to say that I love The Handmaid’s Tale so much, given how challenging it can be for its audience. I even wonder why I love it sometimes. There is never an episode of the show that can be considered easy. And yet, there is also something deeply cathartic about watching its main character June (Elisabeth Moss) as well as the other characters survive, persevere, and even fight the institutionalized misogyny in the Republic of Gilead.

One thing that I always go back to is the top-notch filmmaking in the show...

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