Emmy Actors - Who Would You Vote For?

Though we've been reviewing various Emmy categories our team isn't nearly big enough to cover everything and who should suffer. Why the men of course since they just aren't as exciting as the actresses. But let's not just ignore them all together. That would be rude!

Who would you vote for in the male drama acting categories? Make a case for them in the comments. Let's discuss after the jump...

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Best Supporting Actor 1963: Melvyn Douglas in "Hud"

The Film Experience is taking a brief trip to 1963 for the forthcoming Smackdown. That year's supporting Actor winner was Melvyn Douglas in Hud... 

by John Guerin

Paul Newman as Hud makes me forget everything else. All my attention is funneled into those blue-grey eyes, the nucleus of Newman's swaggering energy. Hud emerges from this drowsy Midwestern tapestry like a geyser springing up from a desert. Why look anywhere else? The film hardly forfeits narrative or photographic attention from Hud, but he's not the only performer doing expert work in Martin Ritt’s 1963 masterwork. There's Patricia Neal's Alma, an iconic intersection of Southern exhaustion and eroticism. There's also Melvyn Douglas' Homer, which, to my constant surprise, remains perhaps the films best performance...

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Actor Chart Updates: Who will repeat?

Having just had a lively discussion about Best Actress and Supporting Actress possibilities, let us turn our attention to the men.

Though I'm not currently predicting any women from last year's 20 honored thespians to repeat this year, it's not uncommon for that to happen. So let's try out a Denzel Washington post-Fences prediction and see how it feels. He's headling Roman Israel, Esq. a Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler) picture about a lawyer in crisis and conflict with his new law firm. Colin Farrell co-stars. The film was called Inner City during filmmaking but now goes by the name of Denzel's character. The film takes place in the 1970s so Denzel has a fro!

1970s are popular in cinema this year. Also working early 1970s looks this year are the stars of two true stories. Spielberg's The Papers is already causing a buzzy stir. Less discussed but also scheduled to open this season is the Ridley Scott drama All the Money in the World about the famous kidnapping of a young man from a wealthy family (busy actor Charlie Plummer). Kevin Spacey is the grandfather billionaire who won't pay the ransom, Michelle Williams is the mother, and Mark Wahlberg is a CIA operative but it's tough to know who is lead or supporting or whatnot since it sounds like an ensemble picture. Incidentally the role played by Michelle Williams was originally offered to Angelina Jolie and then they sought out Natalie Portman. It's tough to know what they were looking for for that role (beyond stardom) because those three actresses have such different onscreen personas and talents.

Both of these movies could easily be something closer to box office hopefuls than gold-statue hunters given their mainstream stars and plots but you never know with holiday season releases. Check out the updated charts and report back...

ACTOR CHART UPDATES
Denzel & Daniel & Tom (all multiple Oscar winners!) on the rise
SUPPORTING CHART UPDATES 
A ton of movement here since we still know relatively nothing about what might happen in this category yet. Upward movement for mother!'s Javier Bardem, Call Me By Your Name's Michael Stuhlbarg, and Dunkirk star Fionn Whitehead who will next be seen in a big role opposite Emma Thompson in The Children Act. 

Martin Landau (1928-2017)

Landau at an event honoring Tim Burton last yearWith well over 100 credits to his name no one can say that Martin Landau didn't have a fine and enduring career. But for such a fantastic talent, perhaps he remained undersung. After a brief stint as a cartoonist, he found his calling with acting and nabbed his first TV guest spots in the mid '50s. By the end of the decade he appeared in his first classic (Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest) but it wouldn't be his last. For the remainder of his long long career he toggled between TV (most notably three seasons in the mix of Mission Impossible in the 60s and leading the cult favorite Space 1999 in the 70s) and intermittent movie success.

You can't call it his late 80s/early 90s success a comeback, given that he never quit working, but it was a revival and a rediscovery...

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"Being There" -- Essential Viewing For the Right Now

by Nathaniel R

Hal Ashby’s Being There (1979) is a fortune teller. And the future it foretells isn’t rosy. The classic film about a TV-loving cypher who Forrest Gumps his way into history is approaching its 40th anniversary, but its essential viewing for the right now.  Don't wait until 2019 to see it.

Among the film’s many queasy previews of life in the early 21st century is the proliferation of screens. Here that takes the shape of television, with Ashby frequent crosscutting to whatever is on the TV in a given scene. Though the content we see is recognizably dated, its intrusion is evergreen. 

Hidden within the prophecy of multiple screens replacing actual experience, is an even sharper notion of the screen as a mirror...

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