Monday, January 14, 2008 Rant Archive
We’ve got the complete list of winners from this year’s
Golden Globes Awards. If you’re looking over the list, you’re pretty much getting the same experience that the five people who actually watched this year’s
“ceremony” got. All in all, there was little fanfare, and even fewer surprises among the Globe winners. Special Kudos should go to Tina Fey, for being the sole winner from a network television show for her role as Liz Lemon on “30 Rock”. Cable TV chocked up an unheralded amount of awards, especially for networks FX, and Showtime. HBO took home a stack of trophies, as usual.
Check out the list of winners inside!
Monster-takes-Manhattan flick CLOVERFIELD has been generating buzz ever since a teaser trailer shocked audiences with a shot of the Statue of Liberty’s head crash-landing into Soho. The film recently earned a rave
review, and some
analysts are already predicting that its lean budget, modest marketing costs, and impressive Internet hype, will make CLOVERFIELD the most profitable film of 2008. However, despite having so many things going for it, come Jan. 18, CLOVERFIELD’s success will ultimately hinge on its most closely guarded secret: the monster. Spoiler alert! Check inside for more.
COMANCHE MOON (the novel on which this mini-series is based) is a prequel to LONESOME DOVE, Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize winning book. I know, I know. You hear the words “Pulitzer Prize” and your eyes start to glaze over. I need you to trust me here. It was a book so great that not even TV could ruin it. So going in you know that the chances are that COMANCHE MOON (as did STREETS OF LAREDO and DEAD MAN’S WALK) will pale in comparison to LONESOME DOVE. But the truth is that while serviceable, COMANCHE MOON does more than pale. By comparison it’s almost an albino.
Shane McCutcheon has very quickly become my idol. She is clearly the chick magnet I always wanted to be. In fact, I’m convinced Shane is just her nickname; it’s short for Insatiable. And she certainly is. Her business, Wax, has gone up in flames. She’s just broken up with a woman she had planned to move in with (and probably driven this woman to revenge arson). But nothing stops her. Shane gets a last-minute gig doing the hair for William Halsey’s (Wallace Shawn) daughter’s wedding. But the wedding becomes a side show for her escapades with two bridesmaids (each believing she is Shane’s one true love) and almost the bride herself.
Last week I spoke a little about the lack of broad recognition for THE WIRE, though it is widely considered one of the two or three top dramatic series on television. David Simon, the show’s creator, once told me that part of the problem may be that the show is heavily African American in its themes and its actors. Whether or not there is at least a subconscious racism when it comes to voting for the popular awards is a discussion way above my pay grade. But I can’t think of a program that is more sympathetic to the plights of black Americans than THE WIRE.