Emmy Predictions. Who Are You Rooting For This Weekend?

Giant all caps disclaimer coming at'cha: I AM NOT A TELEVISION PUNDIT. I have never claimed to know what I'm doing with predicting Emmys though occassionally I try. I watch way more TV than I did a decade ago mostly due to the invention of the DVR and also probably because TV got more cinematic and thus better. I am not a TV pundit but I like to watch and you know I like to opine. It's an action verb. 

Herewith my poorly informed predictions regarding Sunday nights award's. Plus a few comments and trivia notes.

DRAMA
The Nominees: Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, Homeland, House of Cards, and Mad Men
I'm Rooting For: Mad Men. Always. It's literally the only show I've ever watched as it aired that I'd hand the best series prize to for each and every one of its seasons (thus far). For example: I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer like life but I would've handed the top prize to a couple of different things and different times during its 7 year run.
Prediction: Given Emmy's prospensity/habit to repeat winners, you have to consider Homeland a threat for a second consecutive win even though you'd be hard pressed to find one person alive who thinks the second season measures up to the first. Downward sloping quality both true (Downton Abbey) and perceived (Mad Men isn't as "enjoyable" as it once was but it's still challenging meaty triumphant television) rules them out as well. Which leaves us with House of Cards and Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, the latter of which I think is winning the internet the Emmy for the first time.

comedy series and 8 acting categories after the jump...

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Linking Time

Hollywood Will the ending of August Osage County screened at TIFF be the ending it has in theaters? The film might not be "locked" just yet
Pajiba on social media, celebrity, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Town & Country & BuzzFeed suddenly the internet noticed Clint's son Scott Eastwood (also an actor). I think he looks like a douchey fratboy but the internet don't care. The internet wants what it wants. Weirdly T&C claims he's channeling leading men of the sixties but the only movie star I'm seeing in the photos is a bit of Young Clint Eastwood... the nose mostly.

Awards Daily helps you keep track of the upcoming awards calendar
Sketchy Details yes! another Short Term 12 convert. We must grow and grow, the Short Term 12 fan club.
New York Post check out this Taiwanese movie theater and it's hand painted movie posters
Vulture the final season of Mad Men will be split in two. Mad Men until 2015!  Anything that makes it last longer is A OK by me but I've been reading nasty comments online about it. A lot of "that show has outstayed its welcome" comments (some by people who admit they don't watch it). Sigh. This is why we can't have nice things. If every show on tv was even a third as good as Mad Men at its weakest,  television would be an infinitely better place.
Variety in other Mad Men news, Oscar winner Robert Towne (Chinatown) has joined the writing table for the final season 

Must Reads with a Longer Running Time
New York Times Terrific insightful confessional by Lisa Schwarzbaum on Blue Jasmine, an old Lucille Ball television movie, modern women's picture and "fear of baglady-dom" 
IndieWire surveys critics on the best of TIFF 13. I love seeing survey results but it usually mightily depresses me since as insightful as critics can be I find that they're usually not very strong when it comes to judging acting. Even if Gravity grows on me (possible) I am 99.9% likely to maintain that the star performances are serviceable but ungreat and obviously so. And yet Sandra Bullock has a higher rank in Best Lead performance than Huppert, Gheorghiu, Streep, or Chastain? Absurd.
Peter Taggart very funny conversation about this year's forthcoming Emmy awards and who should win.

Creative Arts Emmys: Lily & Melissa & Liberace

The Emmys have 5 bajillion categories so they can't announce them all on their PrimeTime ceremony (next Sunday! We'll live blog or something?) so last night they did their 'not ready for primetime' prizes for shows on... uh... primetime

And the winners are...

Guest Actress, Comedy: Melissa Leo as "Laurie" on Louie
Guest Actress, Drama: Carrie Preston as "Elsbeth Tascioni" on The Good Wife
Guest Actor, Comedy: Bob Newhart as "Arthur Jeffries/Professor Proton" on The Big Bang Theory
Guest Actor, Drama: Dan Bucatinsky as "James Movack" on Scandal
Voice Over: Lily Tomlin, An Apology to Elephants (HBO) 

File it under "if only it were a triple crown". Before 30 Rock popularized the notion of the "EGOT", the only multi-prize haul that the general public cared about by nickname was "The Triple Crown" (Oscar, Tony, Emmy) which still makes more sense as an aspirational haul for celebrities. Anyway, Lily Tomlin adds another Emmy to her trophy haul which includes 2 Tonys and a Grammy so the only thing preventing her EGOT is that she lost the Oscar for Nashville... (sniffle).

The LEOgend, Liberace, and more more more after the jump

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Short Link 12

Awards Daily early twitter reactions to Gravity
Gold Derby uncovers a beautiful piece of trivia I totally didn't know (that happens less often than I'd like with awardage). If Homeland's stars both win Emmy again it will be the first time ever for a dual lead consecutive win! 
Film Doctor 12 unanswered questions about The World's End. I haven't spoken much about the movie but I thought it was the weakest of its trilogy, funny in parts and especially strong in its middle but I thought the opening and closing acts were weak.
Pajiba on Mandy Patinkin (Holla!) coming to grips with his past bad behavior. True little known story: I am a huge Mandy Patinkin fan so this renaissance has been wondrous for me.

Deadline the HFPA have made the wisest of decisions and have asked Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to host the Golden Globes again. Let's all pray they say yes because the alternatives (*cough* Ricky Gervais) have been ghastly!
Forbes Madonna tops the biggest earners list in Hollywood this year with Steven Spielberg in runner up position
CHUD the Pompeii teaser, skewered in two sentences.
Pop Bytes Alexander Skarsgård is an awesome drunk cheerleader. På Svensk!
Guardian President Obama joins the plus column for Lee Daniels' The Butler
Cinema Blend wonders who Joss Whedon will kill off in The Avengers: Age of Ultron 

Finally...
I don't normally post straight up advertisements as news as most movie sites do (it feels shameless and also "abuse-me!" crazy since the studios aren't paying you but you're still airing their commercial!) but I hope this week's double feature from Paramount is really successful so I'm sharing it!

click on the pic to investigate this 2 for 1 offer

(Is this their sneaky way of getting WWZ over the $200 million mark which its been inching towards for weeks)

Double Features, which you almost always have to program yourself as Unofficial pairings, are one of the great joys of moviegoing. It's one reason we use to twin them up in that Best Pictures series. It would be so perfect if they became a thing again in theaters. Two movies for the price of one! I missed Star Trek Into Darkness (not that I felt its absence) but I liked World War Z far more than my review indicates. I must have been so crabby when I wrote that because it's one of the stickiest movies from summer 2013 with many strong sequences that more than make up for its wobbly seams and the rather blank protagonist... at least he's got the face of Brad Pitt! 

And while I'm providing free adspace please know that Short Term 12 (my pet cause of the summer) expands in or to all of these 12 cities on Friday...

Click on the pic for the official site

So do the right thing, make me proud, and round up 12 friends and go see it.

for entertainment purposes only
while we're on the subject of 12, here's an, uh, 13th link, for a 12 year old vine genius. The cat licking vine is the best thing evah.

TV Character Mashup Fantasies

Andrew was kind enough to poll Team Experience about their joy, bafflement, and dreams regarding last week's Emmy nominations but we saved one question for last since their was so much to read and parse already. We asked one final question of the team and we thought we'd share it with you here. Bonus points to the reader who comes up with the best spec script to make any of these fabulously impossible unions happen!

Which Emmy-nominated TV characters would you love to see paired up?!? 

The Dowager Countess was a constant presence in the answers...

mashup fun after the jump 

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