Emmy Predictions: Limited/Anthology Series & TV Movies

By Abe Friedtanzer

Lizzy Caplan and Jesse Eisenberg in Fleishman Is In Trouble

Maybe it’s just been a busy year, but I feel like I’m very out of the loop with this whole slate. As is my practice  I watched the first episode of just about everything, but with a few notable exceptions, like Fleishman Is In Trouble, The Patient, Ms. Marvel, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, I didn’t actually make it to the end of many of this past seasons contenders for limited series. In most cases, it wasn’t lack of interest but rather time. That’s going to make for an unusually hectic summer when I’m inevitably going to try to finish up all of the eventual nominees. Fortunately, I have been paying attention to the heavy hitters in awards buzz. That doesn't help narrow down the contenders much, though, since the field feels wide open.  

The surest things across the board in the limited categories are Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and Black Bird, both of which performed well at the end of last year for those awards groups that aren't quite on Emmy's timetable...

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A Marilyn Monroe Top Ten

by Cláudio Alves

In June, we don't just celebrate Pride. For those in the know, it's also the time to honor the immortal memory of Marilyn Monroe, born in the dying breaths of spring, June 1926. As a birthday present to her fans, the Criterion Channel organized a sampling of the actress' best films, making a delicious collection everyone should check out. Inspired by that list, here's my own selection of Marilyn's peak, her ten most excellent performances in a career, a life, cut tragically short. After all, one mustn't confuse the iconographic impact with a lack of substance beyond the surface. Too many have done that already. 

Marilyn Monroe was a tremendous thespian, so seamless that people, in her time and our own, still assume character and interpreter were one and the same. In any case, let's forego defensiveness for joyful exultation. Without further ado, here's the Marilyn Monroe top ten, in chronological order, unranked…

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Kelly Reichardt's "Showing Up" is one for the fans

by Cláudio Alves

As the resident Kelly Reichardt fanboy around these parts, it's my duty to inform the TFE readership that Showing Up is currently available on PVOD, and it's another smashing success from the director. Admittedly, such effusive verbiage is at odds with the film proper. You see, Reichardt has produced a film of such self-evident smallness it seems to arrive pre-labeled as a minor work in the auteur's canon. Then again, all of the director's features could be similarly described by those misaligned with her insularly specific wavelength. No Kelly Reichardt film feels big, not even when containing sprawling landscapes, multiple storylines, or the ghost of past lives haunting present earth.

And yet, Showing Up takes things to another level, closing itself in a cantankerous mood and hyper-precise milieu, playing with anti-dramatics to the point it feels like a provocation directed at those who don't get it. In other words, this may be Reichardt's version of 'one for the fans'...

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TV Musicals: Schmigadoon (Apple TV+) & Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies (Paramount+)

By Christopher James

TV is embracing the musical. Just this week, two new musical series premiered on different streaming services - season two of Schmigadoon (now tackling 60s/70s darker musicals) on Apple TV+ and Grease: The Rise of the Pink Ladies on Paramount+. Both series use previous musical IP as a launching pad for new stories, one a parody and one an “origin story.” While the level of success varies between the shows (hell, sometimes it varies episode-to-episode), it is wonderful to see new musicals with original songs streaming on our TVs in the same week...

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Review: "No Bears" is new on VOD

by Cláudio Alves

One of 2022's most essential films, a title that will probably continue to accrue power in retrospect, is now available on VOD. It's none other than No Bears, Jafar Panahi's latest feat of illicitly-made cinema, premiered in Venice just as the director faced another period behind bars. He's since been released after announcing a hunger strike in protest. As with all of Panahi's creations since the 2010 sentence that resulted in a 20-year ban on moviemaking as decreed by the Islamic Revolutionary Court, it's challenging to approach No Bears as just another film. Well, that's logical since it's not just another film...

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