Tribeca 2022: Ray Romano’s Directorial Debut ‘Somewhere in Queens’

By Abe Friedtanzer 

Nearly two decades after the end of his beloved, Emmy-winning sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray Romano continues to churn out consistently solid work. His follow-up TV shows include Men of a Certain Age and the just-cancelled Made for Love. He also starred opposite Mark Duplass in the underrated Paddleton, which you can stream on Netflix. And now he’s stepped behind the camera to direct himself in the very funny Somewhere in Queens, featuring a very loud family of Italians with plenty of spoken and unspoken issues.

The role Romano plays is one that tracks with his resume, that of a moderately awkward husband and father who hasn’t achieved much success in his life...

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Emmy Watch: Supporting Actor in a Movie or Mini-Series

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

Tim Blake Nelson is surely a shoo-in for Watchmen

This category is arguably the weakest of the acting races in the limited series or TV movie fields this Emmy season, but that’s only because this TV season was filled with so many fantastic female characters. That’s a reason to celebrate, surely, but it does means that this particular category is wide open. Still, it's a good bet, in the absence of a strong field of performances, that multiple nominees will come from the most widely watched or admired shows. You'd have to go back to 2012 to find a lineup that didn’t feature at least one series or TV movie with multiple nominees in this particular category....

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Review: The Big Sick

by Lynn Lee

Judging from its early reception, The Big Sick has all the markings of a sleeper hit.  Directed by Michael Showalter (My Name is Doris, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp) and written by comedian Kumail Nanjiani (best known to TV audiences as Dinesh on Silicon Valley) and his wife Emily Gordon, the movie’s loosely based on the stranger-than-fiction true story of how the couple overcame the dual barriers posed by his traditionalist Pakistani Muslim family and her medically induced coma.  That’s a story you couldn’t make up, or imagine mining for laughs rather than melodrama.  And yet here it is: a crowd-pleasing romantic comedy (though it’s really more of a dramedy) about a girl in a coma that’s equal parts funny and poignant without feeling the least bit exploitative.

Nanjiani plays himself, a tricky job he handles deftly, with a beguiling Zoe Kazan as the on-screen Emily, 

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"The Big Sick" is Coming for Your Heart

Chris here. Summer movie season isn't complete without one solid romantic comedy (or four, or ten, wishful thinking). This year's winner could very well likely be Sundance sensation The Big Sick.

The film stars comedian Kumail Nanjiani (who also cowrote the semi-autobiographical film with Emily V. Gordon) and Zoe Kazan as a young lovers on the outs thanks to the pressures of their interracial coupling...

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