Considerations
Covering the annual film industry awards races, with sharp commentary on the pictures, the players, the money, and the spectacle. by Tyler Coates
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Colbert, Kimmel, and the Battle of Late Night
While covering the Academy Awards may have its challenges, the Emmys are a much bigger venture. Twenty-three awards will be handed out at the Primetime Emmys on September 14, honoring nominees across the comedy, drama, and limited series categories, plus variety and reality competition shows. Meanwhile, about 100 more Emmys are awarded in craft-focused categories (and, randomly, guest acting) at two Creative Arts Emmy ceremonies a week before the main show. If all of this weren’t enough to keep up with, the Television Academy’s ever-changing rules and regulations also mean its award categories are in constant flux. Take, for example,… Read more
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Hacks and The Comeback Beat the Odds
The Comeback always seems to coincide with a new existential crisis facing television. In 2005, the HBO comedy series—created by Michael Patrick King and Lisa Kudrow, and starring the then recent Friends actress as a former sitcom star desperate to return to the spotlight—was a cutting satire about reality TV, which threatened to cheapen the medium with its low costs and tabloid-friendly drama. The show’s initial limited run garnered a cult following, and HBO revived it in 2014 when reality TV had achieved a certain level of legitimacy—but the industry was on the cusp of an overhaul with the impending streaming wars, churning… Read more
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The Spinoff Comes of Age
Showrunner Bruce Miller admits that when he first read The Handmaid’s Tale, he thought the ending of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel was a little unsatisfying: “I was like, ‘Well, I hope there’s a sequel!’” Two decades later, Miller was at the helm of the Hulu series based on Atwood’s book. The show was an immediate hit—it premiered in 2017, during the first Trump administration, at a moment when its themes were particularly resonant. The evocative image of the red cape and white bonnet donned by star Elisabeth Moss and her fellow handmaids became not only an image of subjugation, but one… Read more
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Widow’s Bay and the Genre Jump Scare
In recent years, a trend has emerged in horror: auteurs have moved into the genre after first establishing themselves in sketch comedy. In 2018, Jordan Peele of Key & Peele won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Get Out, his feature directorial debut (which he would follow up with 2019’s Us and 2022’s Nope). This year, Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress for her devious turn in the horror film Weapons, the second feature from Zach Cregger (after 2022’s Barbarian), a founding member of the comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U’ Know. There’s clearly a connection between comedy and horror. Both genres succeed by getting a response—a laugh… Read more
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Ready or Not, the Emmys Are Coming
To quote Schitt’s Creek’s Moira Rose: My favorite season? Awards. And for some of us, it’s a year-round venture. Weeks before the Academy Awards took place on March 15, I began tracking the dozens of shows that would soon be campaigning for Emmys. The Emmys take place each year in September, but like its cinematic counterpart, the preparation begins many months earlier. After all, Oscar futures are currently being debated as Cannes rolls into its second week. Similarly, the Emmy luncheons, billboards, screenings, and Q&As have been in the works for a long time already. But we’re now in the… Read more
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For Once, the Oscars Are Unpredictable
As we come to the end of a long awards season—the Oscars are, miraculously, less than two weeks away, and final voting closes this Thursday—it’s remarkable that the race feels as up-in-the-air as it did many months ago, before the contenders began screening for pundits and voters. The sure-things have now become the maybes; there’s only one performer whose acting trophy is a sure thing. I take pride in my ability to predict the winners at the Academy Awards. It’s a dubious skill I’ve been honing ever since I won my local video store’s Oscar pool back in high school.… Read more
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How a Controversial BAFTA Broadcast Scrambled the Oscar Race
The Academy Awards are still three weeks away, but this is a vital week for the contenders. We’re approaching the end of campaigning, with the final Oscar voting opening on Feb. 26 and closing March 5. In between those dates are two key precursors: the Producer’s Guild Awards on Feb. 28 and the Actor Awards (formerly the SAG Awards) on March 1. Both events have strong—though not infallible—track records of foretelling the eventual Oscar winners. If Sunday’s BAFTAs ceremony proved anything, it’s that surprises and upsets can still happen. I’m not talking about the controversy that overshadowed the ceremony when… Read more
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The Indie Spirits Flip the Oscar Script
In a big studio-backed awards season, it’s rare to see much overlap between the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Oscars. A west coast cousin of sorts to the Gotham Awards, the Indie Spirits often celebrate the movies that the Academy skipped over with its nominations. The ceremony itself is also more fun (there’s some day-drinking involved) than the more staid guild awards that dot the homestretch ahead of the similarly serious Academy Awards. Having said that, the Indie Spirits still matter quite a bit to campaign strategists and the people who employ them. They take place in the heart… Read more
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The Quirks of the Best Documentary Category
Best documentary has become the toughest Oscar category to predict in recent years, especially when it comes to nominations. The documentary branch has become famously quirky in recent years, passing over such populist, acclaimed, and decorated titles as Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, American Symphony, and Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. Past performance is no guarantee of success—I’ve even heard rumors that some voters will refuse on principle to nominate a film by a previous Oscar winner—and geography is not destiny. Even as the best international feature category has skewed more European in recent years, the documentary branch has gotten… Read more
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How Politics Affects the Oscars, and Vice Versa
It’s only been five days since the Oscar nominations announcement, and campaigning for Phase 2 hasn’t kicked into gear quite yet. There have been a lot of other things to focus on: the final Park City Sundance Film Festival, where many 2027 Oscar contenders may debut (six features from last year’s festival earned Oscar noms this year, including best picture nominee Train Dreams); a massive snow storm blanketing half of the country from the Midwest to the East Coast; and the ongoing horror in Minneapolis that gets unbearably worse every day. It feels a little trite, to me at least, to… Read more
