Emmy Category Review: Guest Actor in a Comedy

By Juan Carlos Ojano

Three men from Saturday Night Live, a “regular” guest actor in a Comedy Series frontrunner, a lead in an anthology series episode, and a comedy veteran receiving a posthumous nomination. These are the men nominated in this category. SNL has had at least two nominees in this category since 2013, peaking last year with four of the seven slots. Their last winner was in 2017. Meanwhile, performances from Comedy Series have bagged the last two wins. 

Let’s consider each nominee...

Click to read more ...

Curio: Viola and "Firsts" on Vanity Fair Covers

For this week's Curio let's talk the history of magazine covers rather than fan art.

Isn't the new Vanity Fair cover a beauty?! Viola Davis's profile has gotten a lot of attention but so has the fact that this is the first cover in VF's history to be shot by a black photographer. The name of that very talented man is Dario Calmese and he's previously shot George MacKay and Billy Porter for the magazine.

There's a lot of outrage online: how can this be the first after 100 years? Because we grew up as magazine junkies (before the internet *gasp*) this factoid is interesting and indeed outrageous but also a bit misleading. We'll talk about that in a hot second but first let's focus on the beauty and power of VIOLA DAVIS who we're so proud to have been stanning right here since 2002 when we gave her a gold medal in our annual awards six years before the world at large caught on. Our awards were only celebrating their 3rd birthday then.

How time flies. Now she's a superstar and who is more deserving? No one...

Click to read more ...

Celebrity IOU: Brad, Melissa, and Viola.

by Eric Blume

And now for something completely different.  Not sure how many folks have caught it yet, but a few weeks ago, HGTV, center of home improvement and home selling shows, launched a new program called Celebrity IOU.  The concept is that a famous person treats a loved one to a home/property makeover, working in conjunction with the network’s twin “Property Brothers” Jonathan and Drew Scott. 

Usually we wouldn’t write about this here at TFE, but HGTV got some really big guns for their first three episodes, all recent Oscar winners or nominees.  Episode one featured Brad Pitt; episode two was Melissa McCarthy; and episode three, Viola Davis...

Click to read more ...

Night of the Linker

• Los Angeles Times Thoughtful terrific interview with Merrit Wever on HBO's Run and Netflix's Unbelieveable
• Vanity Fair Brad Pitt teamed up with the Property Bros? What?
• Florence Pugh has a message for all the toxic "fans" out there -- it's not your place to comment to bully celebrities about who they love! Hear hear.

Roger Deakins, Broadway woes, Natalie Wood, Disney furloughs, Beetlejuice, Missi Pyle in Ma, and more after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Acting "Fight Club"

by Cláudio Alves

Fight Club is an exhausting film. Years of heated discourse and malicious fandom have made it so, its miscalculations laid bare by the legacy it has earned. Inheriting the pulp narrative of Chuck Palahniuk's source novel, the movie is a failed satire, critique made incoherent by cinematic idioms where the visceral appeal of style is at odds with necessary intellectual remove. The love many feel for it is still easy to understand, whether it's masked by irony or proudly defended. David Fincher's bravura filmmaking makes toxicity seem cool, kinetic and self-aware. Though, Fight Club seduces too well and, in the end, is unable to bat away its lovers with some feeble pretension of dissected masculinity.

If 4chan had a cinematic embodiment, here it is, as gloriously enraged as it is putrid and entitled, shallowness dressed in a costume of depth. Quite frankly, it's even exhausting to write about the thing. Maybe because so much has been written already. After so much discussion of its theme, intent and Mephistophelean stylings, I propose we discuss an element of the picture that's rarely examined – the art of acting Fight Club…

Click to read more ...