Last week, this year’s Emmy Award nominees were announced with AMC’s drama, Mad Men, coming away with more nominations than any other show. What a pleasant surprise, since AMC is a little-watched network — and also because the first season of Mad Men was one of the most remarkable shows on television, not only for 2007, but in the past decade. Whether the series is able to sustain its quality will be answered in the coming months when its second season begins (the season 2 premiere is next Sunday, 7/27). Still, I shouldn’t be all that surprised that Mad Men and FX’s Damages both received a fare share of nominations. This isn’t a knock against either show (I also thoroughly enjoyed Damages), but both were created by people who worked on perennial Emmy darling The Sopranos. The Emmys have always had a tendency to throw their hats with their favorite sons and daughters — how the hell else can you explain Boston Legal and Monk getting nominated yet again? Boston Legal is well written, true, but is it better than Friday Night Lights? Hardly. And Monk barely has the laughs of My Boys or How I Met Your Mother. Yet it seems that every year Tony Shaloub, William Shatner and James Spader are nominated, along with their shows.

The truth is there is too much television to watch (as the 1,000 Emmy award categories indicate). I wager to say that you could find at least one show on any of the hundreds of channels available to keep your interest for an hour once a week. But the nominating committees aren’t responsible for watching every episode of a series to make their final call — that would be next to impossible. Instead, these judges see a couple of select episodes that highlight a particular writer or certain actors. Thus, the Best Series award isn’t really about how a show progressed (or went downhill) over the course of a season, or how well an actor made his character three-dimensional through 13 or 22 episodes. Is that fair? I say no. I say that if a show is going to be nominated for best series, the committee should be required to watch every single one. It’s sad that judges aren’t even willing to spend a short time in the hardcore world of The Wire or the naturalistic Texan life in Friday Night Lights, as evidenced by the lack of nominations for both exemplary programs.

In the end, I’m not sure if the Emmy awards mean much to anyone outside of the immediate television industry. The awards ceremony isn’t even broadcast live in Los Angeles, where all the networks reside. Unlike the Oscars, Tony Awards and Grammys, an Emmy win doesn’t necessarily boost the popularity of a winning series — just ask the producers of Arrested Development. (more…)

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Popularity: 6% [?]

Watching a superdeluxe presentation of The Dark Knight unfold across the eight-story-tall IMAX theater in Manhattan, I had a nagging question: why was the mayor of Gotham City wearing eyeliner and mascara? The movie has anvil-sized matters on its mind, like duality, and good and evil, and guilt and expiation — enough weighty themes to overstuff a Dostoevsky novel. But I latched onto that one stupid detail, a clear Bat-signal that the Caped Crusader had returned but wasn’t doing that much for me.

The next morning I had my answer: the actor is Nestor Carbonell, who apparently looks much the same on Lost. I’m sure that’s a fine islander look (I wouldn’t know, as I don’t watch the show), but it was curious for a stuffed shirt in an urban jungle. It kept throwing me out of the bigger picture that cowriter and director Christopher Nolan had made to follow up Batman Begins, the one that fanboys have been salivating over since 2005. Maybe it was the fault of the towering IMAX process, which enhances what works in a film — here, a semi-superfluous trip to Hong Kong distinguished by death-defying visuals when Batman takes flight in its glass-and-steel canyons, and a truck flip that lands in your lap — but amplifies what doesn’t, like an offbeat makeup job. You might not even notice it at your garden-variety multiplex, which is where I had planned to see The Dark Knight an additional one or two more times. Once may be enough, though. With apologies to those with tickets in hand for the weekend, and those so engorged on the hype that dissenters must be rooted out and punished by the time the weekend tally rolls in, I can no longer beat about the Bat-bush, and must announce that The Dark Knight is the most disappointing movie of the year.

It was not supposed to be this way, and I’m as crushed to report this as you may be to read it. Nolan, the creator of the mind-bending Memento (2000), rescued Batman from the ash heap of the Joel Schumacher era (1995’s Batman Forever and 1997’s Batman & Robin), which made the Adam West TV series look like Strindberg by comparison, and Batman Begins is one of the more confident “origins” stories, a slate wiped clean for renewal. True, it is fairly ponderous, and heavy with portent; the Gothic fun of Tim Burton’s contributions (1989’s Batman and 1992’s Batman Returns) was missed, and I’ll say up front that I prefer Burton’s fantastic touch. (Sit me down in front of Batman Returns and I won’t budge for two hours.) By bringing the Joker back onto the scene, The Dark Knight promised to shake off some of the gloom and get its freak on. But it has a serious case of the glums and progresses at a lurching, dawdling pace — it’s the Atonement of superhero sagas.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

Harrison Ford turns 66 today. (Are you impressed with how I trivialize the category of Current Events in this space week after week? I know I am.) This summer the actor is starring in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth film in the lucrative franchise created by producer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg on a beach in Hawaii in 1977 the week Lucas’s Star Wars opened. So far it’s earned roughly $310 million, only a few million behind Iron Man, making them the two leaders at the summer box office up to this point. Both films were distributed by Paramount Pictures, a studio that’s happy to have something to celebrate along with last year’s Transformers and Shrek the Third after a long box-office dry spell earlier this decade, but I wonder how much money they’re making off of Crystal Skull and Iron Man. The former was financed by Lucasfilm Ltd., the latter by Marvel Studios, meaning those companies — and particularly Lucas, Spielberg, and Ford for Crystal Skull — will reap most of the profits, not Paramount. Similarly, Transformers and Shrek the Third were inherited by Paramount after it bought DreamWorks (Spielberg’s a cofounder and co-owner) in 2006, meaning they can’t call those their own either, not to mention this summer’s animated DreamWorks hit, Kung Fu Panda. But they can take full credit for Mike Myers’s latest comedy, The Love Guru! Oh, wait, that one bombed. Sorry, Paramount. (If you had no interest in that tangent about Paramount and its box-office bragging rights, then you should be done singing “Happy Birthday” to Mr. Ford right about now, so we can move on.)

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Popularity: 6% [?]

It’s summertime in New York City and that means two things: more motivation to get off your butt and do stuff, and more house guests coming to visit. Get some culture and impress your friends by checking out some top-rated theatre this summer with the help of Theatre Is Easy’s helpful Best Bets guide, July edition. Click on a show title below to read the Theatre Is Easy review.

Take your parents: Gypsy
One of the best American musicals ever, with a tremendous cast and a trifecta of Tony-winning performances from the three leads.

Take a date: In the Heights
A terrific show that won the Tony last month for Best New Musical. Yes, it’s absolutely the obvious choice, but it’s also endearing, sweet, and will make you feel all warm and gooey inside.

Before it closes: Stitching
A very cool storytelling experience in a great downtown space. (It closes next Saturday, July 19.)

Best off-Broadway play: Fuerzabruta
Why did it take us so long to see this show?

Most exciting new cast member: Beth Leavel in Young Frankenstein
The show is still selling out despite mediocre reviews, but as most of the leads leave this summer the cast gets some fresh blood, and Beth Leavel is sure to be a rockin’ Frau Blucher.

Because you know you should see it: August: Osage County
Yes, it’s a long, talky drama, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t damn entertaining! See this stellar Pulitzer- and Tony-winning production before it’s gone.

Check out theatreiseasy.com for more reviews and information about the New York theatre scene.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Like the humans who misjudge or underestimate the big red lug on the big screen, I must apologize to Hellboy. Our first encounter, in 2004, was not a happy one. His debut film lurched about in fits and starts, and was compromised by obvious concessions to make him accessible to audiences, as he had tried to win over his peers by filing his satanic horns down to stumps. It didn’t work, and I yawned over the prospect of the sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

But what a difference four years makes. It’s true that comic book follow-ups, like Spider-Man 2 and Batman Returns, do tend to improve upon the originals: the cumbersome, usually overly reverent and fanboy-ish “origins” are dispensed with, and a more definite tone is established by a returning director who has played a winning hand and is all the more confident the second time out. This is true of the second Hellboy, which for me was the first to show something of the character’s uniqueness. But there is a greater alchemy at work here. With Pan’s Labyrinth, director Guillermo del Toro emerged as a true master of the macabre; that deftness, present but only fitfully visible on Hollywood assignments like Mimic and Blade II, has a transformative effect on this sequel. A movie I thought I’d catch on cable turns out to be one of the best and more satisfying films I’ve seen all year. I’m not worthy, Hellboy.

Given a freer hand, del Toro has made sensible choices. Extraneous human characters are gone or whittled down to size. There is a suggestion that the fantastical ones we spend more time with and come to care more about will free themselves from a plot crutch if the movie gods and demons favor us with a third installment. True, there are some things not even great talent can do. The structure of summer action movies is set in stone, with a whomping event imposed every 20 minutes to so to keep the allegedly impatient audience on its toes. But del Toro has the facility to up the ante, with astonishingly rich and engaged visuals that bear repeat viewings. Where Stephen Scott’s terrific production design, and the masterly art and set decoration, end and the CGI begins I could not tell, so seamless is the work, and the makeup and digital effects are equally fluid. More importantly, the writing, while it has its iffy patches on the comic side, is stronger in emotion, giving the inhuman and grotesque heart.

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No, it wasn’t a nightmare. I was surrounded by jive-ass talking cartoon animals, and so were you.

The dictum of great animation is that it gives us something a straightforward film cannot. It can show us visions that would be impossible in reality, if not just ridiculous looking. Animation affords an instant degree of suspension of reality, that magical bit of stuff that allows us to empathize with photos projected in succession. It’s an unwritten pact between the maker of those images and the person who spent $10+ for the ticket — take me out of reality for an hour and a half. For many years that pact has been, if not broken, arguably fudged and cheated. It’s the only way I can explain 2005’s Madagascar, 2006’s The Wild and Over the Hedge, this summer’s Kung Fu Panda, and even the upcoming CG-tweaked horror of Beverly Hills Chihuahua. It’s as if the studios all gave up writing and just agreed to make animals yammer and yap for a couple decades.

Pixar, the little CG studio that could, wasn’t immune either. In their defense they were able to work the worlds of insects (1998’s A Bug’s Life), fish (2003’s Finding Nemo), and culinary rats (2007’s Ratatouille) with a lot more finesse and intelligence than their competitors, in both the visual sense and the sheer commitment to story. Fortunately I didn’t get railroaded by hippos, rhinos, roaches, cats, dogs, and amoeba spouting the latest catchphrase in pop culture, rapping, or other such unforgivable acts, and I didn’t have bovine herds congratulating one of their own with “You go, cow girl!” Pixar always seemed intent to keep the fauna among themselves. Regardless, there were still talking animals.

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sit•com n. Informal
A situation comedy; a television comedy series involving a group of regular characters in everyday situations, often set in the home and/or workplace

For three seasons, Weeds was the very model of a modern pay-cable sitcom. Set in the fictional, cookie-cutter L.A. suburb Agrestic, it centered on widowed housewife-turned-pot dealer Nancy Botwin (played by goddess of stage and screen Mary Louise Parker) and her expansive circle of friends, family and…um…business associates, from her best customer Doug (Kevin Nealon) to her ambitious supplier/grower Conrad (Romany Malco). Neatly balancing Nancy’s dual roles as suburban soccer mom and dabbler in the seedy (no pun intended) world of illicit substances, Weeds was hilarious, sexy, sometimes even moving, and always good for a contact high. It also was (seemingly) confident in the one element that must, by definition, ground any situation comedy: its situation.

Beginning with last fall’s Season-Three closer, however, Weeds has audaciously – and, so far at least, disastrously – loosed itself from its sitcom moorings. Creator Jenji Kohan didn’t just shift the show’s setting; she burned the motherfucker down, destroying all of Agrestic’s “Little Boxes” in an inferno neatly tied to last year’s horrific California wildfires. Unfortunately, while most of the major characters survived the blaze, Kohan and the show’s writers seem to have left the funny behind along with the “MILFweed” in Nancy’s growhouse; as a result, Weeds has gone sadly (and with all apologies to Cheech & Chong) up in smoke. (more…)

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Elvis Mitchell is one of the preeminent film critics and interviewers of our generation. Since 1996 his NPR radio show, The Treatment, has been a stomping ground for popular culture’s most talented and important individuals, where they can speak freely about their craft without the pressure of feeling like they’re “promoting” their work. Mitchell’s cool and laid-back style seems to place all of his guests at ease, including his listeners. It’s not just his ability to conduct an interview but his vast knowledge of information that makes him such a pleasure to listen to. In addition to The Treatment, Mitchell is also the entertainment critic for NPR’s Weekend Edition With Scott Simon, a job he’s held since the show’s debut in 1985. His extensive list of credits includes hosting Independent Focus for the Independent Film Channel, guest-hosting for Charlie Rose on several occasions, and a four-year stint as film critic for the New York Times, beginning in 2000.

Tonight at 8 PM ET (with a repeat at 10:30), Turner Classic Movies premieres Elvis Mitchell: Under the Influence, the network’s first interview program. In the first installment, taped last year, Mitchell talks with the late Sydney Pollack, and in coming weeks he sits down with Bill Murray, Laurence Fishburne, and Quentin Tarantino, among others, to discuss the art of filmmaking and just to listen to these craftsmen share their stories. More than your typical interview show, Under the Influence has the feel of overhearing a wonderful conversation in a restaurant or at a party, and therefore is a natural extension of Mitchell’s radio show. Whether you’re familiar with Elvis Mitchell or just being introduced to him, Under the Influence is a treat for fans of movies and those of us who simply enjoy an intelligent discussion between two knowledgeable people. I had the opportunity to speak to Mitchell via telephone in early June; throughout our conversation I found myself intently listening to him but at times forgetting that I was the one doing the interview. He has that way with people. Although he professed to being as nervous as the interviewee, it never came across that way.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

BOTTOM LINE: Tragedy befalls a young couple and they’re left to pick up the pieces. The story is told in nonlinear vignettes, so the audience actively tries to stitch the pieces together themselves. Stitching is well executed in performance and production, but the subject matter is pretty disturbing. If you’re okay with squirm-inducing theatre, this is most definitely a play to see.

Stitching comes to New York from a successful run in London. The story involves a couple, Abby and Stu, who are dealing with their tumultuous relationship after experiencing a tragedy. Both are scarred and scared, and the audience learns the nature of each character as we see them deal with what’s thrown at them. The story is told in a brilliant nonlinear way, and though it’s easy to follow, questions always linger in the air as to which character is the victim and what’s really going on. Playwright Anthony Neilson weaves a clever story complete with a moment of clarity when you realize the truth was always right under your nose. This is truly exciting theatre and well-crafted storytelling.

The play stars Meital Dohan (Abby) and Gian-Murray Gianino (Stu), two actors with extensive credits and experience. Dohan is Israeli and is most recognized in the States from her role on Showtime’s Weeds as Yael Hoffman, the sexy rabbinical scholar; Gianino is a seasoned American stage actor, most recently seen in Eurydice at Second Stage. Because these actors are so talented in their art, they’re able to make their characters palpable; their chemistry is hot and their attention is intense. This is important, since the actions these characters go through are extreme and could easily fall into the trap of unbelievability.

Stitching is referred to as “in-yer-face theatre,” a new British genre whose name was coined by a UK critic. It’s not quite as recognizable in America, though modern playwriting over here is frequently confrontational and aggressive in the same sort of way. A play that’s in-yer-face is one in which what happens on the stage and in the story is disturbing, sometimes gruesome, and usually uncomfortable. The idea is to include the audience on the emotional ride and ask intense questions about life and morality. In-yer-face theatre is often thought-provoking and interesting, and it’s definitely not passive; Stitching is certainly confrontational and makes the audience personally invested in the story. Regarding the original British production, Time Out London’s critic wrote, “I left the theatre with my pulse, and my mind, racing.” That’s a pretty accurate description of how Stitching gets under your skin.

I really enjoyed it, and I had a lot to talk about when I left the theatre. I definitely recommend it to anyone who likes intriguing storytelling that keeps you engaged and leaves you affected when it’s over.

Stitching plays at the Wild Project, 195 E. Third St. between Aves. A and B, through Saturday, July 19: Mon-Tue 7 PM, Wed-Fri 8 PM, and Sat 2 and 8 PM. Tickets are $45 and can be purchased at ovationtix.com or by calling 212-351-3101. Student rush tickets are $10 and available for purchase at the box office (cash only) two hours before each performance. Visit stitchingtheplay.com for more info, and for more New York theatre reviews and information visit theatreiseasy.com.

Popularity: 6% [?]