Congratulations, Lily Tomlin!

Photographed by Sebastian Kim for Interview

Lily Tomlin will be honored with SAG's Lifetime Achievement Award at this January's ceremony. SAG is strong with the actress-loving (unlike Oscar). This marks the 4th year in a row that the award has gone to a woman following Carol Burnett, Debbie Reynolds, and Rita Moreno.

We celebrated Lily a lot here last year with a look at her filmography, my own top 10 choices amongst her performances and I was proud to be on the poster for Grandma extolling her virtues so we've already had our say. I only ask that during the clip reel they show something from I ♥️ Huckabees (2004) because I'll never get enough of that character. I wish she and Dustin Hoffman could do a whole series about them or at least occasional webisodes of the further adventures of Vivian and Bernard, Existential Detectives.

The Faces of Jude

Here's abstew on one of TFE's very favorite actors

This past Wednesday saw the limited release of the British film Dom Hemingway about a safecracker that is recently released from prison after serving 12 years. The marketing material is also quick to point out that he's played by Jude Law because it's not immediately apparent.(The film also stars The Mother of Dragons herself, Emilia Clarke, as his...daughter! Well, at least she's not the love interest. At least, I hope not.)

Sporting a couple gold teeth, the craziest mutton chops not normally seen outside of a Civil War reenactor, and more girth than usual (Law gained 30 pounds for the role and it's not even Oscar bait!), the role is certainly a departure for the man that was once Dickie Greenleaf. (Although he's still kinda sexy as Dom. Am I crazy?)

Even in his early roles it was often noted that Law was a character actor trapped in the body of a movie star. Although he's been named People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive before, he's hardly an actor to rely solely on his good looks. Throughout his career he's been allowed to embrace the character actor aspect of his roles and experiment with his appearance along the way.

Let's take a look back at some of his most memorable looks!

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Podcast: Our Favorite Films by This Year's "Best Directors"

It's a special edition of the Podcast. And by special I don't mean "filled with sound problems for which I apologize" but that we're not staying in the now but looking back. Joe and Nick join Nathaniel to discuss this year's Best Director Nominees... but not for their new films. We each choose our favorite film by the five artists nominated.

We throw in a few Oscar party food tips as well...

00:00 Oscar Fatigue and Scheduling
02:30 The Films of Steve McQueen
07:45 The Films of Alexander Payne 
16:00 The Films of Alfonso Cuarón 
20:25 The Films of David O. Russell
28:30 The Films of Martin Scorsese 
39:30 Tangent: The Departed and Modern Day Scorsese
43:00 Oscar Parties - Do We Go? Do We Have Them?
47:00 Choosing Oscar Party Food Items

You can listen to the podcast right here at the bottom of the post or download the conversation on iTunes. Continue the conversation in the comments! Hunger, Shame, I Heart Huckabees, Taxi Driver, King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambíen, 

Director Filmographies

Q&A: Small Screens & Sex Workers

Since there were so many television centric questions in last week's "Ask Nathaniel" insert, I figured we'd have to give them their own Q&A post. We'll get to the movie questions on Tuesday. But for now let's handle all these questions involving smaller screens than we usually go for.

BENSUNCE: Like George Clooney, which current television actors would you see having a successful career on the big screen?

Expecting anyone to have Clooney-sized silver screen success after switching from the small screen is, well, a recipe for disappointment if not disaster. He's a 1%er. Most of the people I enjoy on TV now already had their movie shot and have gone small screen for better / bigger roles than they were getting at the movies. But the current small screen actors I think absolutely deserve and would ace major big screen opportunities are Christina Hendricks and Jon Hamm (Mad Men). On a riskier pipe dream note I hope Harry Shum Jr (Glee) gets at least one romantic comedy opportunity both because he's adorable and because Hollywood really needs to end their strange delusion that Asian men can't be romantic leads... or leads at all. 

SEAN D: If you were in charge of the Emmy awards how many nominations/wins would Buffy the Vampire Slayer have received?

I knew talking about Buffy earlier this month would get send us all spinning back in time to Sunnydale. It's always difficult to answer questions like this because so much of what should have been nominated and won in any given year in any given artform is contingent upon the competition that year. But I will say that I think Buffy's second, third and sixth seasons had no business whatsoever not being nominated for Best Drama Series and I think they should have won the Best Series Emmy at least once for Season 3. I'd probably have nominated the show itself for seasons 2 through 6 consecutively though I get why people have issues with seasons 4 through 6. But the standard lines of complaining about those seasons are wrongheaded ("it should have stayed in High School") and short sighted ("it got too depressing!"). In the first short season Buffy The Vampire Slayer was merely finding its footing and establishing its identity and the last season was a badly paced mess with a couple of wonderful moments but the rest is gold. As for writing Emmys, it's inexcusable that "The Body" and "Once More With Feeling" didn't have writing and directing nominations and in both cases you could make strong arguments for actual winged statues, too.

Shouldn't "Doppelgangland" have secured Alyson Hannigan an Emmy nod?For acting the show deserved the following nominations at least (Season #)

Actress, Drama
Sarah Michelle Gellar (2, 4, 6)
Supporting Actor, Drama
James Marsters (2), Anthony Stewart Head (6) 
Supporting Actress, Drama  
Allyson Hannigan (3,4), Emma Caulfield (5, 6)
Guest Actress, Drama 
Juliet Landau (2), Eliza Dushku (3)  
Guest Actor, Drama
Harry Groener (3) 

TOM M: Which recent film would make the leap to television and prove a MASH-ing success? And which television series has the bones to make a great film?

Crazy difficult question. The mediums are so different despite all the crossover these days. I don't know about M*A*S*H* level success ratios for anything but I would love love love or should I say I would ♥ a series based on I ♥ Huckabees that focused on the existential detectives Vivian (Lily Tomlin) and Bernard (Dustin Hoffman). I would fill my DVR with that nonsense and delete every other show taking up too much room. I could see a series based on Inception working fairly well and I think Scott Pilgrim vs. The World should have been a TV series to begin with.

Nathaniel's dream television series

MORE AFTER THE JUMP...

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