Connect with us

Entertainment

Emmys 2024: Who's going to win in the drama categories?

Published

on

Emmys 2024: Who's going to win in the drama categories?

When Emmy FYC events began in March, FX’s “Shōgun” was in the midst of its acclaimed run, with viewers tuning in weekly to lap up the court intrigue, feudal politics and, yes, those tense tea ceremonies.

At the time, everyone figured that “Shōgun” would be an Emmy powerhouse — in the limited series categories. The 10-episode adaptation of James Clavell’s 1975 historical novel told the book’s story from beginning to end. It was a brilliant, nuanced rendition. And it was complete. It doesn’t get more limited than that.

But then, a week after the Emmy submission date, FX announced that “Shōgun” would return for “likely” two more seasons. And just like that, “Shōgun” shifted to the Emmys’ drama categories because, you see, it’ll be back. Someday. So, to put “Shōgun” in limited series would be disingenuous. Of course, someone at the network might have surveyed the competition in the drama categories and seen a barren landscape, ripe for the taking. Why not move it?

To which I have only one thing to say: Thank you!

Advertisement

It’s unthinkable now to imagine the Emmy drama categories without “Shōgun.” What series would have won? I heard from readers after the nominations wondering how programs like “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” “The Morning Show” and “3 Body Problem” could possibly have been nominated for drama series. What? You wanted Marvel’s “Loki” or “Star Wars: Ahsoka” instead? Thanks to the strikes, this was the weakest group of contenders in decades.

So get ready for one of those Emmy nights where five shows win just about everything. And one of the shows will be “Shōgun.” As for nearly everyone else, in the immortal words of Hiromatsu: “You will know what it is to be denied.”

DRAMA SERIES
“The Crown”
“Fallout”
“The Gilded Age”
“The Morning Show”
“Mr. & Mrs. Smith”
“Shōgun”
“Slow Horses”
“3 Body Problem”

Winner: “Shōgun”

If you’re going to complain that “Shōgun” isn’t a drama series, I’m going to assume you don’t think “The Bear” is a comedy either. OK. But then doesn’t the high camp of “The Gilded Age” mark it squarely as a comedy? What’s it doing here? And if half the audience is tuning in to “The Morning Show” purely to hate-watch, shouldn’t that disqualify it as a drama, even if the Primetime Emmys don’t have a soap opera category?

Advertisement

LEAD ACTRESS
Jennifer Aniston, “The Morning Show”
Carrie Coon, “The Gilded Age”
Maya Erskine, “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”
Anna Sawai, “Shōgun”
Imelda Staunton, “The Crown”
Reese Witherspoon, “The Morning Show”

Winner: Sawai

For a while, it felt like the only person who could take this Emmy over Sawai was Emma Stone, who won her second Oscar earlier this year for “Poor Things” and might have been even better in “The Curse,” in which she and Nathan Fielder played hosts of a home renovation show. But then Stone wasn’t nominated. And neither was “The Curse” — for anything. That shutout feels more cringe-inducing than anything this weird, disquieting show offered.

So that leaves Sawai, who probably would have won easily anyway. Maybe her breathtaking turn as Lady Mariko will prompt more people to watch “Pachinko,” which returns on Aug. 23 for a second season. She’s terrific in that too, playing a young woman trying to be taken seriously in the corporate world of late-1980s Japan.

LEAD ACTOR
Donald Glover, “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”
Walton Goggins, “Fallout”
Gary Oldman, “Slow Horses”
Hiroyuki Sanada, “Shōgun”
Dominic West, “The Crown”
Idris Elba, “Hijack”

Advertisement

Winner: Sanada

Oldman has enjoyed a brilliant career, and the foul-mouthed, flatulent, booze-soaked veteran secret agent Jackson Lamb might be the best thing he has ever done. It was nice to see him — and “Slow Horses” — finally receive some love from Emmy voters. Could he go on to win? Not with Sanada in the category. Here’s another actor with a stellar résumé and plenty of accolades from his native Japan. It’s his moment.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Christine Baranski, “The Gilded Age”
Nicole Beharie, “The Morning Show”
Elizabeth Debicki, “The Crown”
Greta Lee, “The Morning Show”
Lesley Manville, “The Crown”
Karen Pittman, “The Morning Show”
Holland Taylor, “The Morning Show”

Winner: Debicki

How does “Shōgun” pull in 25 nominations but not one for Moeka Hoshi? Were voters behind some sort of “eightfold fence” when they were watching the show?

Advertisement

Looking at the nominees, it is strange that they hail from just three shows. I found it difficult to predict which women from “The Morning Show” would be nominated. Voters’ answer? Everyone! Meanwhile, Gary Oldman and Jack Lowden made it in for “Slow Horses” but not Kristin Scott Thomas. It makes for a weird slate.

Debicki stands as the overwhelming favorite for her sensitive portrayal of a melancholy Diana on “The Crown,” but castmate Manville might be more deserving. You know this if you saw Manville’s showcase episode, “Ritz,” the gorgeous, devastating highlight of “The Crown’s” final season. It’s Manville’s first Emmy nomination. Debicki was recognized last year, ultimately losing to Jennifer Coolidge for “The White Lotus.” Voters likely will elevate her this year.

SUPPORTING ACTOR
Tadanobu Asano, “Shōgun”
Billy Crudup, “The Morning Show”
Mark Duplass, “The Morning Show”
Jon Hamm, “The Morning Show”
Takehiro Hira, “Shōgun”
Jack Lowden, “Slow Horses”
Jonathan Pryce, “The Crown”

Winner: Crudup

Say what you will about “The Morning Show,” but even the people who watch it to complain about how bad it is have nothing but love for Crudup and his charming, chaotic Cory Ellison. For many, Crudup, who won an Emmy for the series’ first season, is the only reason they still tune in. And “The Morning Show” did haul in 16 nominations, including nine for acting. Clearly, someone loves all that emoting.

Advertisement

Movie Reviews

Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

Published

on

Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

I am a sucker for all those straight-to-video slasher movies from the 90’s; there was just a certain point where you knew the acting was terrible, however, it made you fall in love. I can definitely remember scanning the video store sections for all the different horror movies I could. All those movies had laughable names and boom mics accidentally getting in the frame. Trucker seems like a child of all those old dreams, because it is.

Let’s get into the review.

Synopsis

When a group of reckless teens cause an accident swroe to never speak of it.  The father is reescued by a strange man. from the wreckage and nursed back to health by a mysterious old man. When the group agrees to visit the accident scene, they meet their match from a strange masked trucker and all his toys with revenge on his mind.

Roll on 18 Wheleer

Trucker is what you would imagine: a movie about a psychotic trucker chasing you. We have seen it many, many times. What makes the film so different is its homage to bad movies but good ideas. I don’t mean in a negative way. When you think of a slasher movie, it’s not very complicated; as a matter of fact, it takes five minutes to piece the film together. This is so simple and childlike, and I absolutely love it. Trucker gave us something a little different, not too gory, bad CGI fire, I mean, this is all we old schlock horror fans want. Trucker is the type of film that you expect from a Tubi Original, on speed. However, I would take this over any Tubi Original.

I found some parts that were definitely a shout-out to the slasher humor from all those movies. Another good point that made the film shine was the sets. I guess what I can say is the film is everything Joy Ride should have been. While most modern slashers are trying to recreate the 1980s, the film stands out with its love for those unloved 1990’s horror films. While most see Joyride, you are extremely mistaken, my friend; you will enjoy this film much more.

Advertisement

In The End

In the end, I enjoyed the entire film. At first, I saw it listed as an action thriller; I was pleasantly surprised, and Trucker pulled at my heart strings, enveloping me in its comfort from a long-forgotten time in horror. It’s a nostalgic blast for me, thinking back to that time, my friends, my youth, and finding my new home. Horror fans are split down the middle: from serial-killer clowns (my side) to elevated horror, where an artist paints a forty-thousand-year-old demon that chases them around an upper-class studio apartment. I say that a lot, but it’s the best way to describe some things.

The entire movie had me cheering while all the people I hated suffered dire consequences for their actions. It’s the same old story done in a way that we rabid fans could drool over, and it worked. In all the bad in the world today, and my only hope for the future is the soon-to-end Terrifier franchise. However, the direction was a recipe to succeed with 40+ year old horror fans like me. I see the film as a hope for tomorrow, leading us into a new era.

Trucker is set to release on March 10th, 2026

 

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Entertainment

Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

Published

on

Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

The lovely, funny “American Classic,” premiering Sunday on MGM+, is a love letter to theater, community and community theater. Kevin Kline plays Richard Bean, a narcissistic stage actor. He’s famous enough to be opening on Broadway in “King Lear,” but he has to be pushed onstage and is forgetting lines. After he drunkenly assails a hostile New York Times critic — caught on video, of course — he’s suspended from the play, and his agent (Tony Shalhoub) advises him to get out of town and lay low until the heat’s off, as they used to say in the gangster movies.

Learning that his mother (Jane Alexander, acting royalty, in film clips) has died, Richard heads back to his small Pennsylvania hometown, where his family — all actors, like the Barrymores, but no longer acting — owns a once-celebrated theater. To Richard’s horror, it has, for want of income, become a dinner theater, hosting touring productions of “Nunsense” and “Forever Plaid” instead of the great stage works on which he cut his teeth.

Brother Jon (Jon Tenney), running the kitchen at the theater, is married to Kristen (Laura Linney), Richard’s onetime acting partner, who dated him before her marriage; now she’s the mayor. Their teenage daughter, Miranda (Nell Verlaque) — a name from Shakespeare — does want to act and move to New York, as her mother had before her, but is afraid to tell her parents. Richard’s father, Linus (Len Cariou), is suffering from dementia, though not to the point he won’t actively contribute to the action; every day he comes out again as gay.

Across the eight-episode series, things move from the ridiculous to the sublime. Richard’s attempt to stage his mother’s funeral, with her coffin being lowered from the ceiling, while “Also sprach Zarathustra” plays and smoke billows toward the audience, fortunately comes to naught; but he announces at the ceremony that he’ll direct a production of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play “Our Town” at the theater, to “restore the soul of this town.” (His big idea is to ignore Wilder’s stage directions, which ask for no curtain, no set and few props, with a “realistic version,” featuring a working soda fountain, rain effects and a horse.) Fate will have other plans for this, and not to give away what in any case should be obvious, the title of the play will also become its ethos, with a cast of amateurs, including Miranda’s jealous boyfriend, Randall (Ajay Friese), and ordinary people standing in for the ordinary people of Wilder’s Grover’s Corners.

The series has a comfortable, cushiony feeling; it’s the sort of show that could have been made as a film in the 1990s, and in which Kline could have starred as easily in his 40s as in his 70s; it has the same relation to reality as “Dave,” in which he played a good-hearted ordinary Joe who takes the place of a lookalike U.S. president. The town is essentially a sunny place, full of mostly sunny people, to all appearances, a typical comedy hamlet. But we’re told it’s distressed, and Mayor Kristen is in transactional cahoots with developer Connor Boyle (Billy Carter), who wants clearance to build a casino on the site of a landmark hotel. (Much of the plot is driven by money — needing it, trading for it, leaving it, losing it.) He also wants his heavily accented, bombshell Russian girlfriend, Nadia (Elise Kibler), to have a part in “Our Town.”

Advertisement

As in the great Canadian comedy “Slings & Arrows,” set at a Shakespeare Festival outside of Toronto, themes and moments and speeches from the play being performed are echoed in the lives of the performers, while the viewer experiences the double magic of watching a fine actor playing an actor playing a part. Kline, of course, is himself an American classic, with a long stage and screen career that encompasses classical drama, romantic and musical comedy and cartoon voiceovers; the series makes room for Richard to perform soliloquies from “Hamlet” and “Henry V,” parts Klein has played onstage. He brings out the sweetness latent in Richard. Linney, who played against her sweetheart image in “Ozark,” is happily back on less deadly ground (though she’s tense and drinks a little). Tenney, who was sweet and funny on “The Closer,” and who we don’t see enough of these days, is sweeter and funnier here, and gets to sing. (All the Beans will sing, except for Linus.)

As a comedy, it is often predicable — you know that things will work out, and some major plot points are as good as inevitable — but it’s the good sort of predictability, where you get what you came for, where you hear the words you want to hear, ones you could never have written yourself. “American Classic” is not out to challenge your world view in any way but wants only to confirm your feelings and in doing so amplify them. Shock effects are fine in their place — and to be sure there are major twists in the plot — but there is a certain release when the thing you’re ready to have happen, happens, whether it brings laughter or tears. Either is welcome.

Continue Reading

Movie Reviews

‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

Published

on

‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

It’s funny how this film is marketed as the first Scream movie in IMAX, yet it’s their sloppiest work to date. Williamson accomplishes two decent kills. My praise goes to the prosthetic team and gore above anything else. The filmmaking is amateurish, lacking any of the tension build and innovation in set pieces like the Radio Silence or Craven entries. Many slasher sequences consist of terribly spliced editing and incomprehensible camera movement. There was a person at my screening asking if one of the Ghostfaces was killed. I responded, “Yeah, they were shot in the head; you just couldn’t see it because the filmmaking is so damn unintelligible.” 

Really, Spyglass? This is the best you can do to “damage control” your series that was perfectly fine?

I’m getting comments from morons right now telling me that I’m biased for speaking “politically” about this movie. Fuck you! This poorly made, bland, and franchise-worst entry is a byproduct of political cowardice.

The production company was so adamant about silencing their outspoken star, who simply stated that she’s against the killing of Palestinian people by an evil totalitarian regime, that they deliberately fired her, conflating her comments to “anti-semintism,” when, and if you read what she said exactly, it wasn’t. Only to reconstruct the buildup made in her arc and settle on a nonsensical, manufactured, nostalgia-based slop fest to appeal to fans who lack genuine film taste in big 2026. To add insult to injury, this movie actively takes potshots at those predecessors, perhaps out of pettiness that Williamson didn’t pen them or a mean-spirited middle finger to the star the studio fired. Truly, fuck you. Take the Barrera aspect out of this, which is still impossible, and Scream 7 is a lazy, sloppy, ill-conceived, no-vision, enshittification of Scream and a bloody embarrassment to the franchise. It took a real, morally upright actress to make Ghostface’s knife go from metal to plastic. 

FINAL STATEMENT

You either die a Scream or live long enough to see yourself become a Stab.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending