NYFF: Elisabeth Moss's Primal Scream in "Her Smell"

Jason Adams reporting on the New York Film Festival which kicks off Friday

On The Handmaid's Tale Elisabeth Moss is all internalized feminist rage - a sublimated sneer, her Offred says one thing ("Under His eye"), but her eyes, the curl of her mouth, (and also her voice-over) say quite another. But what of her smell? Oh no, Handmaids don't get to stink. They are clean and holy vessels, scrubbed raw of female afflictions. Rock Stars, on the other hand... the real world ain't Gilead (not quite yet anyway) and we're still gonna scream and stink and scream. And Alex Ross Perry's Her Smell screams. Primal screams. This is the rage we've been waiting for...

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Who will win the Emmy for Leading Actress in a Drama?

By Spencer Coile 

The Leading Actress in a Drama Series category has been an embarrassment of riches this past decade. With previous winners including Glenn Close for Damages, Julianna Margulies for The Good Wife, Claire Danes for Homeland, and Viola Davis for How to Get Away with Murder, the Emmy’s are giving the gays everything they want. 

This year is particularly competitive, an eclectic diverse group of actresses at the top of their game. We have two previous winners, two who only have one last chance to win, one on an HBO blockbuster, and one making history as the first Asian American actress in the category. In a perfect world, they would all be victorious. Yet only one can win...

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Review: "The Seagull"

by Jason Adams

Nina (Saoirse Ronan) is sweetly exasperated by Konstantin (Billy Howle), whose avant-garde play she has just acted (and flopped) in for a small crowd of friends and relations. "Nothing happens in your play," she says. "It's all people talking. You ought to add a love story."

Anton Chekov, who wrote the maybe-you've-heard-of-it 1895 play The Seagull upon which this movie is based, was of course making a joke at his own expense --The Seagull is really nothing but talk and love stories. Half a dozen love stories are all twisted up, a gordian knot of romantic entanglements...

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The Handmaid's Tale: Season 2 Begins

By Spencer Coile

What one word would you use to describe the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale? Bleak, visceral, angry… timely. Take your pick – they all apply. And returning for its second season, it becomes abundantly clear that the series is not shying away from its difficult subject matter.

Set in Gilead, a dystopian future where only a handful of women are capable of conceiving children, The Handmaid’s Tale (based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name) is a grisly yet empowering exploration of femininity and feminism in a time when women’s bodies are viewed as mere vessels. Season one was righteous, searing, and highly acclaimed earning eight total Emmy Awards and a place in the cultural zeitgeist. Can the second season keep the momentum going?

The Handmaid’s Tale’s first season loosely followed the plot of Atwood’s novel, but the second must conjure a life of its own...

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Emmy Nerd Trivia: Will Julia Louis-Dreyfus win again?

by Nathaniel R

Final Emmy voting starts on Monday and the most exciting thing is that for the first time in ages, the Emmy voters will be forced to choose at least one major new winner (Drama Series). One could argue that only one incumbent is considered the frontrunner to win again making this a potentially unusual Emmy night -though knowing the Academy they'll probably deliver more repeats than people expect. That leading incumbent would be Julia Louis-Dreyfus, she who is already buried in trophies.

For the record she has seven Emmys, five of them consecutively for Veep's first five seasons. If she wins a sixth for the sixth season she breaks her tie with Candice Bergen (Murphy Brown) as most lead actress wins for the same series, drama OR comedy. But Louis-Dreyfus is already the record holder for most lead wins, drama or comedy (overall) and most lead nominations in a comedy (overall).

You know what all of that means --> TRIVIA after the jump!

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