Smash 1.1 "Pilot"

NBC's new musical drama "Smash", a behind the scenes showbiz drama about Broadway musical theater and our enduring Marilyn Monroe obsession, premieres tonight. If pilot quality and series promise equal ratings, the show will make good on its title. The internet has had a good laugh about its relentless ad campaign and the absurd "Introducing... Katharine McPhee" angle (American Idol being underground experimental television that only 5 people have ever seen, don'cha know) but the show is smartly written enough to use McPhee's familiarity as an opening gambit to throw you into an unfamiliar world.

Reintroducing... McPhee's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"

"Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is long since the most oversung song in the popular canon and a song McPhee was already known for from her original introduction years ago.  But this cozy dreamy showtune reverie is interrupted by a cel phone, snapping us back to plainclothes everyday New York where McPhee's "Karen" is auditioning for god knows what. The casting director is decidedly unmoved and takes the call. 

Dreamy musical outbursts screeching to a halt for reality-check comic purposes is as familiar a cliché as Somewhere Over the Rainbow but "Smash", as it turns out, isn't actually going to coddle us. Continued after the jump.

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Yes, No, Maybe So: Nicole vs. Juli. September 2012

Since there weren't enough prizes in the world for Claire "Temple Grandin" Danes and Kate "Mildred" Winslet, who will be our next "Her, again?" awards gobbler?

Will it be Nicole Kidman in Hemingway & Gellhorn vs. Julianne Moore in Game Change? The last time they faced off in awards season (2002) they were actually co-stars and Nic' won for The Hours (Julianne losing for Far From Heaven and The Hours albeit in two separate categories) . Or will they both be trumped by someone we're not thinking of yet when the Emmys role around in September 2012 and this whole awards circus begins anew? 

In this corner, Nicole Kidman as Martha Gelhorn in Hemingway and Gellhorn...

Yes - Philip Kaufman is directing and he's made some amazing films in the past like The Right Stuff and Henry & June. The last time Nicole Kidman lowered her voice this noticeably to play a ballsy writer, she won the Oscar.

No - Isn't there a danger of this gorgeous Star strolling through the rubble of war reminding people of Australia? They didn't much like that one. Four minute trailers always have the problem of making the oncoming product seem overstuffed, unduly episodic and desperate for attention. "And then this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened. Interested? No?" Uh... [Cue: flop sweat, razzle dazzle] Uh... Oh... okay the first part is shit but the second part is REALLY nifty! Ok.... she'd go ♫. I'd go ♫. we'd gooooo. ♫"

Maybe So - The success of this may well rest on the chemistry between Clive Owen and Kidman. Do they have it? And can Clive Owen work his way around the very vivid recent memory of Corey Stoll in this role via Midnight in Paris?

In this corner Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin in Game Change... 

Yes - It might be fun to watch Juliannne Moore attempt biopic mimicry because it's not the sort of thing she's known for. And at this point we'll take anything that might win her an award. Has there ever been an actress as major who hasn't won any major prizes? She wins nothing. No Emmys, No Globes, No Oscars. 

No - "Fair and balanced" has been wiped clean of all meaning ever since Fox News took over the world, but where will this film fall on the scale of fair representation? On the one hand, it might be super to watch a take-down of Sarah Palin. But then again, the target is just so easy so it might feel way too cheap shot-like. On the other, excessive humanization of seemingly soulless political monsters through the magic of warm actresses (see also The Iron Lady) comes with its own queasiness, the humanization of dehumanizing idealogies.

Maybe So - Will anyone be ready to sit through more Sarah Palin when she's been so torturously around ever since 2008?  And can Juli work his way around the very vivid recent memory of Tina Fey in this role via Saturday Night Live?

"I have to win this thing. I so don't want to go back to Alaska!"What kind of bet are you laying down?  

Better yet, do you see awards attention beyond our leading ladies for these HBO Movies? Both have amazing casts. Hemingway & Gellhorn is giving us Clive Owen, Parker Posey, Robert Duvall, David Straithairn, Rodrigo Santoro and Molly Parker (in awards bait position of scorned wife). Game Plan is giving us Woody Harrelson, Ed Harris and Sarah Paulson and a ton of others in small roles.

Be brave in the comments and make some Emmy calls now!

10th Anniversary Top Ten: "Once More With Feeling"

One of the all time best episodes of anything ever turned ten just a week(ish) ago... but I wanted to celebrate on a Tuesday.

Dawn's in trouble? Must be Tuesday."

That means for the past week and for many weeks after circa 2001 I had the songs from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Once More With Feeling" in heavy rotation in my head and or ipod. 

One of my favorite moments of any awards season, obscure though it be, is the moment during the AFI's one and only televised award ceremony in January 2002 (anyone remember that? They combined TV and film like the Globes do) when Buffy the Vampire Slayer was nominated for best drama series. When they announced the category a clip from this very episode played proudly alongside clips from its three fellow nominees, all traditional awards heavyweights: The West Wing, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. This is the sort of company Buffy should have been keeping during its run though Emmy voters just couldn't see it*.

For today's top ten, because I can never find a good excuse to talk about my #1 favorite TV series of all time, here's a top ten of that historic episode, in chronological order because the episode is so beautifully constructed.

TEN BEST MOMENTS IN "ONCE MORE WITH FEELING"

• Intro Once More With Feeling proclaims itself 'a very special episode' immediately, dispatching the usual credits for an overture style opening credits with each cast member smiling inside the (spot)light of the moon. It then surprises by 'going through the motions' of a typical day without dialogue before getting to its first number "Going Through the Motions", instantly recalling the gold standardepisode Hush. It's a ballsy confident move and, as it turns out, telling: Aren't those two episodes essentially fraternal twin classics, each riffing imaginatively on the difficulty of truly communicating with the people we love most?

• "Going Through The Motions" manages to answer all the complaints about Season 6's Sad Sloggy Buffy Summers and respond with a knowing and compelling cry for help. And it performs this dramatic spell with hilarious little sung asides (Demon Just Realizing He's Been Killed: "She's not even half the girl she --owwww!" | Hot Guy Rescued: "How can I repay... " Buffy: "Whatever...")

♫ I don't want to be... going through the motions
Losing all my drive
I can't even see, if this is really me
And I just want to be
Aliiiiiiiiivvve ♪" 

The best part is the ending which reworks a now excessively familiar sight, a vampire being dusted, into something newly magical; Buffy emerges from the cloud singing beautifully, like it's fairy dust not ashes. 

8 other 'best' moments & grudge-holding Emmy bitching

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Small Screen: Prime and Suspect Pilots

I promised a bit more TV talk this year and though I haven't seen any show that would inspire me to cover it weekly (Mad Men and True Blood are rare beasts, as interesting to write about as they are to watch) here's a quick overview of first impressions of new series. 

PRIME SUSPECT
A bit strange to watch this one in the receding shadow of last weekend's Emmy Awards. The whole time I kept thinking "Oh... here's one to shake up the Best Drama Series field next year if it can be shook. And Best Actress, too!"

But then, immediately after it ended, I felt ashamed of this inner golden-winged monologue. Great acting is no promise of statues after all. I must must must remember my own mantra -- difficult as it is to remember whilst enthusiastically prepping for Oscar season -- Great Work Is Its Own Reward. And Maria Bello is her own reward (and so rewarding, too).  Which is as it has to be given the cold shoulder from Oscar in the past (The Cooler, A History of Violence).

Prime Suspect, her new show (adapted from the now 20 year old Helen Mirren series) details the murder investigations of the smart abrasive Jane Timoney, the only woman in her homicide department. The first hour had a few script and performance beats with the zing of those 'Clarice Starling surrounded by tall men' visuals in The Silence of the Lambs but Bello just refuses to shrink. Though procedurals never really capture my imagination, character studies do and Bello demands that I keep watching. Her detective is funny without feeling scripted-quippy and unusually capable without seeming infallible (such a danger for protagonist roles in TV and film). Best of all she shades all of Timoney's more typically admirable qualities like confidence, cleverness, intelligence, and femaleness in such a way that they throw shade; her confidence curdles into arrogance, her cleverness veers towards the reckless, her intelligence has zero warmth and her vagina is both interference and scapegoat. Yes, her department is sexist but isn't her cold arrogance and lack of sympathy for co-workers (who have justifiably open wounds in this episode)  more than half of the problem in being welcomed into their club?

Click for more on Prime Suspect plus Revenge, Charlie's Angels and two more newbies.

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Red Carpet Convo: Emmy Reds, Midriff Blues

In this edition of Red Carpet Convo Nathaniel talks to Mark Blankenship of The Critical Condition and our resident fashion obsessive Jose. 

Nathaniel: Is it too late to talk about the Emmy divas and their dresses. This pop culture wheel does spin madly these days -- knocking me right off my axis sometimes.
Jose: We're only a day behind E!'s own red carpet talk (not that comparing onself to E! is any sort of compliment.)
Mark: We can think of it as a gift we're giving to a busy world. Sit back. Relax. Fondly remember days gone by... Sunday gone by.

Karen, A Good Wife, Crazy, Gwynnie, Skinny

Nathaniel: Well, it's horrible to follow Joan Rivers but then our purposes are never quite the same with our red carpet coverage. We're here to talk about the ladies and we're less bitchy and we're allowed to discuss actual careers, too. If we're so moved. I think we should start with this "Worst" collection and get the negativity out of the way.
Jose: You did NOT just put Gwynnie in your worst list.
Nathaniel: I did. Left to right. Megan Mullaly. I instantly regret putting her here because at least there are colors other than reds but it reminds me of this one tie I wore back when I thought loud colorful ties were fashionable simply because men's clothing was such a sedative.
Jose: I didn't even know she'd been to the Emmys. I have nothing against the dress at least it's a change from her usual black pant suit look.
Mark: The dress is kind of overwhelming. Like, you expect to unfold it and discover it's actually a giant, silk screened print of an Impressionist painting.
Nathaniel: Damnit, now I like it more.

Nick & MeganMark: Is she on television now in the absence of Party Down?
Nathaniel: She does guest stints on Parks and Recreation where she plays the demonic ex-wife of her actual husband Nick Offerman. They're hilarious together.
Jose: Wait, she's married to Nick Offerman? *mind explodes* I can not for the life of me, wait to see what she and Patty Clarkson come up with to mess with poor "Ron Swanson". [Editor's note: Patty Clarkson will be on Parks and Recreation this year.]
Nathaniel: That show is so great. Okay, Julianna Marguiles, The Good Wife or as she's known in some quarters The Wife With the Goodly Hot Husband. Thank youuuu, reaction shots.

Mark: See... look, I don't hate this dress. I don't mind that she took teardrops from an old chandelier and put them on her bosom. I find it whimsical.
Nathaniel: I just don't understand it. I keep wanting it to be really abstract and structural with the way it juts out up top like it's decolettage that wants to be a stiff collar or a Disney cliff.
Jose: I applaud the risk she took by going with Armani Privé (these people design like they're dressing up astronauts for dinner parties) but I laugh at her terrible choice, it's just too fugly. Maybe she wanted to carry on the "arrive by way of eggs" tradition established by Björk and Gaga.
Nathaniel: But see that's just my objection to it. If you're going that way, GO that way. It looks much weirder and therefore better from far away.
Mark: For me, seeing it in motion made it kind of fascinating but just staring at this picture makes me like it less.

Who's the  woman in the pink and why is she wearing a mud mask?
Nathaniel: LOL. That's Paz de la Huerta who is insane.
Mark: !!! That's who that is? She's unrecognizable. And I watch Boardwalk Empire for chrissakes.
Jose: This is what happens when you take an oompa loompa out of the chocolate factory and send it to Extreme Makeover. 
Nathaniel: She's been doing that weird lip thing for awhile. If it's not the chocolate factory it's those easter candies that color your mouth.
Mark: Either that or like someone who just strolled out of a nuclear meltdown. Isn't that kind of how your skin looks if it's burned by an A-bomb?
Nathaniel: I wouldn't know.

Mark: This image reminds me of how frustrating she is on the show; all affect, all the time.
Nathaniel: I don't watch the show. Every time I try I think Sopranos During Prohibition. Yawn.
Jose: Ugh no. The Sopranos rocked, this one is just "important", I watched the entire first season to see if it was about more than prestige and winning awards and no, it wasn't.

Nathaniel: Since Jose and I are in disagreement about Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark you must break the tie.
Mark: About her look or her work? Jose do you like her in general?
Nathaniel: Her look. We both like her work. 
Jose: I'd like to coerce you to like this Pucci dress by suggesting that it was paying homage to this.

Mark: Ha! yes. Although I thought she was tipping her hat to Madonna's Shanti/Ashtangi period.
Nathaniel: Again I repeat. If you're going that way, GO that way. None of this half-assedness. Half-assed and midriff, no relation.
Mark: Zing!
Jose: I ADORE Gwynnie. She is the only reason I subject myself to Glee and why I have gotten into so many bar fights about the 1998 Oscars.
Nathaniel: LOL.
Mark: I really like her too. I think she's talented and charming and reasonably aware of how ridiculous she can sometimes be. That said, loving someone means telling them the truth and truthfully, this outfit is bad news. If it were all one dress, then maybe, but the midriff is just awful. The top looks poorly cut to me and slices up her body in a strange way. I agree that she should have gone further here. Farther?

Nathaniel: I don't like any dresses that risk making super skinny women look like they've put on lbs because that's CLEARLY an optical illusion. Gwyneth has a great body.
Mark: Either way show me some bellybutton or cover it up altogether.
Jose: I shall go the grave defending this look, it's just perfect to me!
Mark: I hope this is not the rift that ruins our blossoming friendship, Jose.
Nathaniel: I sense trouble. "1998 OSCARS!" *runs*
Jose: lol. Let's discuss  Jayma Mays before you two continue to break my heart.

Mark: Well she looks like a lamp. Or a bottle of cheap bourbon dressed as a Southern Belle.
Jose: I loved her. She looked a hundred years younger than the actually younger Glee girls. Did y'all see what Dianne Agron was wearing? Yikes.
Nathaniel: Well the younger Glee girls are always trying so hard.  I think they're scared of life after Glee. But the tiers on this dress are so weird like a pepto-bismol wedding cake. And I think when you're as delicate as Jayma, something that looks flimsy, easily torn or flammable if placed over a lightbulb is not a good idea.
Mark: Has her character gotten any better on Glee? I stopped watching partway through Season 1.
Nathaniel: Let us not discuss "character" and Glee in the same sentence lest you kill my buzz for the season premiere tonight.
Mark: Fair. But has her random collection of weekly, contradictory impulses gotten any more coherent? I know the answer before I...
Jose: lol.
Nathaniel: I SAID NO. DON'T KILL MY BUZZ.

Jose: I hate Glee but I shall respect your wishes, Nat.
Nathaniel: I hate myself for loving it but love it I do. Let's move on to BEST ACTRESSES!
Mark: The Best Comedy Actresses, you mean? 
Nathaniel: Same difference. Best Actress Drama doesn't count until they stop nominating Mariska Hargitay.
Mark: Hahaha!

READ THE REST for best actress comedy, best dressed and a few men.

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