Results tagged “emmys”

A seemingly innocent appearance by Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Late Night with Conan O'Brien last night turned into a segment on actress-envy and Emmy-theft! The actress was up against Tina Fey for an Emmy this year; Fey won and took home her 5th statue, whereas Dreyfus was left going home to her two old, dusty ones. In her speech, however, Fey noted how she channels Dreyfus at times...meaning the Emmy really belongs to them both, right?

One question: Did Josh Groban owe the Emmy producers a huge favor? Because his performance of a medley of various TV theme show songs (The Simpsons, Friends, The Andy Griffith Show, Gilligan's Island, Golden Girls, South Park, Happy Days, The Jeffersons) was excruciating. He did deserve the applause, if only for fortitude...or maybe the applause was for Animal from The Muppets, who dropped in to play the drums. Still, that plus the host idea (five hosts- Ryan Seacrest, Howie Mandel, Jeff Probst, Tom Bergeron and Heidi Klum) ...terrible, terrible, terrible.

The Emmy nominations have been announced, and Variety reports it may be the Year of Basic Cable! AMC's Mad Men and FX's Damages (both NY-based) were amongst the basic cable shows to get nods, and they go down in Emmy history as "the first basic cable series to get best-series bids." Other New York shows that got a slew of nominations include 30 Rock and Ugly Betty; Tina Fey was nominated for her role as Liz Lemon and also for her SNL hosting gig earlier this year, and Mariska Hargitay is up for best actress in a drama for Law & Order: SVU. Meanwhile, Broadway star Audra McDonald was nominated for her on-screen performance in Raisin in the Sun. See the full list of nominations here. The 60th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards take place on September 21st.

Next Wednesday a cornucopia of comedians (Dave Attell, Louis C.K., Artie Lange and more) will gather at Town Hall for the The Gerry Red Wilson Foundation Comedy Benefit. Greg Fitzsimmons is one of the comedians responsible for putting together the show, which will raise awareness about meningitis (a disease that struck three people in his life, one of which was Gerry Red Wilson). You can buy tickets here.

Last night the 59th Annual Emmy Awards took place on the left coast, but New Yorkers made out very well. New York productions/creative types that took home the gold: Late Night with Conan O'Brien (writing), The Daily Show (variety-comedy show series), 30 Rock (best comedy), and Dick Wolf (for producing Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee). In the would-have-been arena, America Ferrera won best actress in a comedy, Ugly Betty, which was originally supposed to shoot in the Big Apple but shoots in L.A. because it's cheaper. We'll also count Rob Marshall, who won for directing the Best Variety-Musical Special, Tony Bennett: An American Classic, since he has Broadway roots.

Covering Coverage

A look at some noteworthy television this week:

This past Sunday night at the 50th Annual New York Emmys, WNBC was the big winner with 13 awards. The big wins for the station were for its newscast which won three – Morning Newscast for Today in New York, Daytime Newscast for Live at Five, and Evening Newscast (under 35 minutes) for the 11p.m. newscast. WNBC’s Senior Vice President, News and Station Manager Dan Forman said about the wins, "We are particularly proud of the team awards....our local newscasts were judged best in the morning, early evening and 11 p.m. This is quite a feat."

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association voting pool for the Golden Globes only consists of 83 members, but every year their mainstream tastes become one of the potential early prognosticators for the Emmys and the Oscars. Over in Beverly Hills today, the stylists are putting the finishing touches on the stars' couture, that long red carpet is being laid and some assistant is double checking the seals on the envelopes. Here in New York of course, we get to play the more enviable armchair critic job hashing out who might be taking home this year's statues after tonight's telecast [8 - 11 pm on NBC].

Over a million people packed into Times Square to ring in 2007. The weather probably encouraged even more people to wait and party for hours. Mayor Bloomberg, clad in his festive American flag sweater, pushed the button to released the Times Square ball with ten members of the armed forces. One woman who traveled from Venice, Italy to celebrate in Times Square told the AP, "This is the center of the universe. There is no other place to be."

After last year's mess of an awards show and this year's joke of nominations (where is love for Lauren Graham, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences?), we were going to swear off this year's Emmys. But then we realized Conan O'Brien was hosting, so we must watch and liveblog. And there's the hope of a good Steve Carrell bit, not to mention awkward reaction shots of Candy and Tori Spelling during the Aaron Spelling tribute.

Did anyone see Tim Gunn on Late Night with Conan O'Brien last night? If anyone puts the clip on YouTube, let us know, but he was super charming and funny and a good foil for a very manic Conan. Tim admitted it was hard that Project Runway lost at the Emmys last year, and then he said, "Maybe we're like cilantro. You don't know what it is at first, but then you want it again and again." (Or something like that - the heat is making our head fuzzy.) Project Runway - the cilantro of reality television! Except we love PR much more than cilantro. If you listen to Tim's podcast about episode 4, you'll hear how the producers decided to handle kicking Keith Michael auf - they knew about the books independently of the designers. It's very touching - Tim felt very bad for Keith and it proved how Tim is a good guy.

Josh Selig, Little Airplane Productions

- Nicolette Sheridan does not look over-Botoxed with fish lips!

New York magazine brings the funny this week with a cover story about Conan O'Brien as well as some other NYC-comedy features. The Conan story delves into his "unsuave" persona and the possibilities of bringing his style to the rest of America when he takes over the Tonight Show (he says, "I’m open to going to L.A. Mostly because it won’t be my choice."). Gothamist highly recommends you read it, but we have pulled out his thought about the city:

"New York is a social experiment—the results aren’t in yet, it may not have worked, they took way too many people with a large disparity of wealth, stacked them on top of each other, and sprinkled bagels over the whole thing. Contrast breeds comedy, and the more extreme the contrast, the better the comedy."

Good lord. It's not even five minutes into the Emmys and Gothamist (and friends Aaron Dobbs of out of focus and a Gothamist contributor, and Margaret Lyons, formerly of Chicagoist) is very very frightened. There is no reason why Taboo from the Black Eyed Peas should force Doris Roberts to dance with them. Doris needs to get the AARP to fight the fight with her. Welcome to Gothamist's attempt to liveblog the Emmys, until the show drains every single molecule of life from us, which we believe will happen in the 10PM hour.

- Bob Denver passed away at age 70; Gothamist spent so many hours of our youth watching Gilligan's Island on Channel 5 that we really feel like we've lost a bumbling friend who looked great in the color red

Desperate Housewives and Will & Grace both received 15 Emmy nominations today, proving that like every other awards organization, Gothamist just doesn't jibe with the voters. Sure, we're happy that Arrested Development, Scrubs, and Lost got some recognition. But there is no love for programs we'll actually stay at home to watch: Veronica Mars, Nip/Tuck, Gilmore Girls. Even The O.C., which faltered last season - you have to give Peter Gallagher some credit. And why won't the Academy acknowledge the brilliance of America's Next Top Model? But of course we'll watch because Gothamist we can't wait to see the expressions of the Desperate Housewives that don't win.

We hope you're been checking out our wonderful sub-blogs: Gothamist Arts & Events, Ask Gothamist (for advice), Gothamist Food, Gothamist Interview, Gothamist Sports, and Gothamist Weather. Plus the week in full.

As the news of recent Emmy winner Cynthia Nixon having a girlfriend these past 10 months, after splitting up with her longtime partner and the father of her two children, Gothamist wants to chip in our two cents: We love you and want you to be happy, Cynthia. [We do have a caveat of "happy means not hurting people in a Michael Jackson-Courtney Love-Robert Blake kind of way."] Cynthia has been acting for a long time, and we're better for it. Gothamist has always identified with all of the Sex and the City girls at various points, but Miranda Hobbes has always been our kindred, take-no-bullcrap, tough, reactive, tough on the outside-soft as a marshamallow on the inside spirit.

http://upcoming.org/event/8730/">Columbus Circle/Time Warner Center Border tomorrow at 8PM to read from and sign copies of the book. He'll most likely bring the funny.

Circa 7PM: We were pretty excited that Joan Rivers and Melissa Rivers were off Red Carpet duty for E!, because if there's one word we don't care to hear on Hollywood-congratulates-itself night, it's "Missy!" But we have our new Missy: It's "Al," as in Al Reynolds, Star Jones' "fiance." Star, who took over E!'s red carpet hosting duties (with some fashion guy named Robert), kept referring to her upcoming marriage and fiance throughout the evening. Eh. And what Star lacks in the bitchiness that Joan brought, she does make up for it in being able to be "black" with black. But still, hearing about Star watching TV in bed with Al makes Gothamist tempted to scream, "Bring back Joan and Missy, those horse faced, plastic-surgeried bitches!"

You can read all of Gothamist by using the Digest. And we look forward to the Emmys this Sunday and will bring you our minute-by-minute (okay, maybe 10 minute by 15 minute) coverage on Monday.

Gothamist doesn't know why we bothered with the 2005 Emmy Nominations because they were boring, except that we're ruthless TV watchers and awards show fiends, so we're painted into the corner. The actors, actresses, and programs nominated were all fine and very talented, but it's the same crew every year! James Gandolfini...Allison Janney...The West Wing...Will & Grace - which wasn't even as good as the subpar non-nominated Friends this past season...four writing nominations for the Sopranos...blah blah blah. David Chase has a death grip on the Academy, even with Cousin Tony! This is almost as bad as when Helen Hunt and Candice Bergen would...keep...winning...even after their characters and shows lost steam seasons ago. There was even a posthumous nomination for John Ritter! Yes, he's a great comic talent, but come on. There needs to be a way for newer shows to get their feet in the door, like Nip/Tuck, The Gilmore Girls, The O.C., and Scrubs. But here are some nominations we were happy about: