Category Analysis: Can Morgan Freeman take down a quartet of "SNL" performers?

Team Experience will be taking a regular look at the episode submissions for major Emmy categories until the big night. 

Will Morgan Freeman win an Emmy for casually stopping by an acting course?

Saturday Night Live usually cleans up in the guest acting categories, but this is a whole new level of dominance. Four of the five nominees in Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series come from the legendary sketch comedy juggernaut. Morgan Freeman is the odd man out in this category, contending for his work in The Kominsky Method. 

Which SNL actor will prevail? Could they split the vote, leaving Morgan Freeman a chance to win? Let’s dig into the nominees...

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The 25 Oldest Men Ever Nominated for Best Actor

by Nathaniel R

John Wayne just misses the list. Denzel almost double dips. And Hopkins tops the list setting a new recordWe did a "Youngest Best Actor" list a few years back so we thought we should balance it out with their counterparts given the return of Sir Anthony Hopkins this year at 83 years of age with The Father. He makes history in the process as the oldest nominee ever in this category. As we all know Oscar likes some years on his men (as opposed to how he feels about women) but that doesn't mean the golden years. Oscar loves men to be in their late 30s through mid 50s (whereas with women they prefer late 20s through mid 40s) but ageism  works against men, too. Just not as severely as it does against women. The roles still dry up at a certain age... though perhaps that's more on filmmakers and studios than the Oscars themselves. 

LIST HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH MINOR CORRECTIONS. (04/02). And a surprising piece of trivia about this list. Only one of the top 25 oldest nominees in this category actually won the Oscar. Not a strong success rate for senior men. Oscar likes to bid them farewell but doesn't feel the need to send them off with the statue (or a second statue)...

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Horror Actressing: Gwyneth Paltrow in "Se7en"

by Jason Adams

The glimmers of hope that shine through the dank squalor of David Fincher's serial-killer masterpiece Se7en, which is turning 25 today, are so few and far between that we find ourselves clinging to them like life-rafts bobbing down a turbulent sewage drain. One of the library's security guards says, "We got culture coming out of our ass," and then they do, as the gentle strings of Johann Sebastian Bach's "Air Suite No. 3 In D Major" fill the golden-hued dungeon where Detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) does his dark research. Similarly Brad Pitt's Detective Mills finds some peace at home playing with his beautiful lively puppies, all locked into a small room lined with newspapers where the dogs do their own important business. Happiness looks like it smells bad!

This nameless city is torrential rain and moldy wallpaper most of the time -- when it's not simply carved-up bodies rising to the surface -- and so Gwyneth Paltrow, ever-chic and resolutely blonde as sunshine, she stands out the first second we see her, coming as she does nuzzled up against Brad Pitt's wall of themselves golden abs. Now this, this right here...

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1991: Robin Hood Prince of Thieves

by Lynn Lee

- Locksley…I’m gonna cut your heart out with a spoon!

-Why a spoon?

-Because it’s DULL, you twit, it’ll hurt more!”

If you remember anything about Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, it’s probably those lines.  Or, more generally, Alan Rickman’s scrumptiously hammy turn as the villain who bellows them.  Or perhaps you remember Kevin Costner’s complete failure to master anything resembling an English accent.  If you’d just as soon forget Costner ever played Robin Hood, you’re not alone: consensus opinion generally holds that Rickman was the only good thing about the movie, which received tepid reviews at the time of its release and hasn’t exactly aged into a classic. 

It’s worth noting, however, that a lot of people really liked Prince of Thieves at the time...

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Thoughts I Had... Rewatching "The Dark Knight"

by Nathaniel R

Why so serious? Yes, you're 10 years older on this anniversary of The Dark Knight's release and probably watching the world burn with significantly less glee than The Joker would but still. Lighten up! At least we have the movies! I was commissioned to write a piece about The Dark Knight's Oscar history elsewhere but I jotted down more film-centric notes during a recent rewatch and will now share them here.

This a chronological skip through the movie. It made such a cultural impact you surely remember its release and maybe even the circumstances in which you saw it. If so, do share in the comments. Ready? Let's press play...

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