The DGA nominations for television have been announced. They’re a little weird.
In drama, two of the five slots went to “Severance” on AppleTV. The other three were “Ozark,” “Euphoria,” and “Better Call Saul.” Nothing for “The Crown.” And nothing for broadcast TV.
In comedy, the shows were The Bear, Barry, White Lotus, Mrs. Maisel, and Wednesday. Again, nothing for broadcast, not even Abbott Elementary.
Full list coming…
The return of the Golden Globes tonight will be an uphill battle for viewers.
Airing opposite the returning awards show are two hours of “The FBI” on CBS, and two hours of “The Rookie” on ABC. They’re each hit shows with core followings. It’s doubtful their audiences will peel away to watch the Globes.
The other problem is lack of big stars. There may be some in the audience, or at least on the red carpet. But the presenters are by and large pedestrian. Completely absent will be Tom Cruise, who turned back his Golden Globe statues two years ago when their racism scandal broke out. Brendan Fraser won’t be there because he’s had a sexual harassment problem with the Globes. Mostly there will be TV performers who are not a big draw on a Tuesday night.
The Globes also lack any good will from anyone. They added 103 non member voters this year from around the world including half a dozen from Nigeria. None of them were invited to the show– they couldn’t afford to come and the Globes didn’t offer help despite net assets of $79 million. Most of the new members I’ve been in touch with had no idea why they were asked to vote — they didn’t know about the Globes’ diversity issues. The Globes-HFPA members we may see on screen are the same 90 or so people who caused the problem in the first place.
The show is leaning heavily toward putting non-white celebrities on their stage. For some reason the pianist Chloe Flower is going to perform, although the Globes have no music on their show ordinarily. Maybe she’ll play medley of the Best Song nominees. That should be strange since she’s not a vocalist and not really a world famous pianist. She is Asian, however, and that checks a box for the mostly white Globes.
The show will also have a Black, gay host in Jerrod Carmichael, who is very funny in his shows but hasn’t been so far in the NBC promos. He checks a couple of boxes, too. But will he draw an audience? He’s not Ricky Gervais or Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Will he take jabs at the HFPA? Will anyone care? We’ll find out tonight.
It’s happening again.
Last year Netflix caused Kate Bush’s 1985 song, “Running Up That Hill,” to become a monster hit thanks to its inclusion in “Stranger Things 4.”
Now Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary” is at number 11 on iTunes. Why? The obscure 2011 song is in the hit show “Wednesday.” And it took off about three weeks ago. There’s a speeded up version which Lady Gaga endorsed by dancing to it on TikTok. She’s not stupid. She’ll take an 11 year old song turning into a hit.
Now it’s a meme, all the kids want to hear it, and we’re back in Kate Bush land. Music supervisors and publishers must be clamoring to get their old songs placed in Netflix hit shows. What do “Wednesday” and “Stranger Things 4” have in common? Both times a young girl was identified with the music. We can only wonder what song it will be in the next seasons of each show.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is back on Twitter.
She claimed she was locked out all afternoon after getting into a copyright battle with Dr. Dre. She’s used his music for appearances. He sent her a cease and desist letter. Then Greene ever doing it. But Twitter disabled a video she posted with Dre’s music.
We know she’s an unrepentant liar and inventor of alternative facts.
There isn’t a single word of truth on her Twitter account. The platform should lock her out for good. But you know, she’s a constant trainwreck looking for attention.
If Greene– who should be Taylor now since her husband divorced her — doesn’t comply with the legal letter, let’s hope she’s sued into the next century. Dre has the money to do it. He made half a billion dollars selling Beats headphones to Apple.
Two more years and maybe we can flush Greene, Boebert, Gaetz and their like out of Congress for good.
The great rapper and headphone entrepreneur Dr. Dre has had it with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. He’s sent her a cease and desist letter to stop playing his music at her rallies and on social media. Dre joins a lot of other artists like the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen who’ve demanded politicians not use their music to endorse their campaigns and platforms. In this case, the song is “Still D.R.E.” You can read Dre’s letter here. The best line is: “One might expect that, as a member of Congress, you would have a passing familiarity with laws of our country.” I think he overestimates her understanding of anything.
Quinn Redeker has died at age 87.
Redeker is best known to TV audiences as a soap opera star and an actor who appeared on dozens of prime time shows. He was also the Oscar nominated writer of a screenplay.
Redeker wrote the screenplay for Michael Cimino’s “The Deer Hunter,” the 1979 Oscar nominated film. He wrote it with Cimino, Deric Washburne, and Louis Garfinkle. He must have been a writer at heart. A screenplay he co-wrote last year called “The Minefield,” won a bunch of awards and is waiting to be produced.
At the same time, Redeker was well known to soap audiences from long runs on “Days of our Lives,” and “The Young and the Restless.” He always played suave, sophisticated guys with good haircuts. He was obviously a mult-tasker. “The Deer Hunter” is about 180 degrees away from a soap opera.
Redeker died on December 20th, but his death was just announced. Condolences.
UPDATED TUES 11AM: The Whine and Dine with Prince Harry brought in over 11 million viewers when everything was counted up. That’s an increase of about 15% over the newsmag’s average football season numbers. He should come back next week so Anderson Cooper can ask him how many he has in staff at his Los Angeles home, who makes the food, does the gardening and dusting. How about it?>
EARLIER: Nothing like airing a little dirty laundry to get the ratings up.
Last night, Prince Harry’s kvetch fest with Anderson Cooper added a little over 1 million viewers to the average “60 Minutes” ratings. Total viewers came to 10.5 million. That was an increase of 13.6% since last week.
“60 Minutes” averages around 9 million total viewers coming off of the weekly Sunday football game. When the season is over, “60 Minutes” comes in around 6 to 7 million a week.
Last night’s ratings don’t include delayed viewing or YouTube hits. CBS has a bunch of clips on there as well.
Harry’s hitting all the shows this week, throwing his family under the bus over and over. He can’t go home again, but at least he’s got a $30 million mansion to roam around in, in Los Angeles. No more meat pies! Just a lot of kale! And tons of “lettuce” (money).
Tom Cruise is only taking his producer’s hat seriously when it comes to the Producer’s Guild, but not for the phony baloney National Bored of Review.
Last night, Cruise skipped the annual fan based gala thrown by the NBR even though they named “Top Gun Maverick” their Best Picture. The NBR thought they’d get Cruise as a big celebrity guest. But he was too busy working on “Mission Impossible 17” to fly in for the event.
The biggest star at the NBR dinner was Steven Spielberg, who won for directing “The Fabelmans.” Spielberg was accompanied by wife Kate Capshaw and, truth to tell, he deserved the award. But didn’t he direct the Best Picture, also? (It’s possible Cruise stayed away since he and Spielberg reportedly didn’t see eye to eye on “War of the Worlds” back in 2005. Cruise set up Scientology booths on the set.)
You’d think if Tom had felt there was some importance, he could have flown in on one of his Air Force jets!
The NBR was easily overshadowed by events last night in Los Angeles: a Netflix event for the Critics Choice Awards featuring Kate Hudson and Guillermo del Toro, a Universal Focus party for Cate Blanchett and “Tar,” and a Warner Bros. birthday party for “Elvis,” with star Austin Butler. You see, Hollywood doesn’t take the NBR seriously either. On Saturday night, most of the people mentioned were getting awards at the famous Palm Springs Film Festival.
Baz Luhrmann, Riley Keough and Austin Butler #elvis #happybirthday pic.twitter.com/6UNt2UlMPt
— Jazz Tangcay (@jazzt) January 9, 2023
I’m sorry it took so long for me to get to LaTanya Richardson Jackson‘s “The Piano Lesson.” Now that I’ve seen her take on August Wilson and Lloyd Richards’ groundbreaking work, I have only three weeks to see it again.
That’s how mesmerizing and satisfying this first Broadway revival in 30 years is — when it ends, you want it start all over. And that’s a lot to say considering when it opened in 1990, “The Piano Lesson” starred S. Epatha Merkerson as Bernice, Rocky Carroll as Lymon, and Charles Dutton as Boy Willie. I wonder what happened to all of them?
Now the director’s husband, Samuel L. Jackson (about whom you have heard), is Uncle Doaker, in whose Pittsburgh house Berniece (the dazzling Danielle Brooks ) lives and holds forth with her young daughter Maretha after the death of her husband. Berniece is living with the ghosts of her parents and family, holding onto the past through a hand carved piano she inherited from them.
Into the mix comes Berniece’s shady brother, Boy Willie, now in the person of John David Washington, and his pal, Lyman (Ray Fisher) who’ve driven north to sell watermelons out of the back of a truck, then use the freed space to transport the piano and sell it so Boy Willie can buy some questionable farmland. If Boy Willie can’t convince Berniece to sell the piano, he says he’ll cut it in half.
August Wilson wrote ten plays in what he called “The Century Cycle,” each documenting a moment in his own Black history. They are the equivalent in our time to what Shakespeare did, and it’s amazing achievement. “Fences” and “Jitney” are among the others, all popular and well-studied, but “The Piano Lesson” is sort of the key to the whole set. This is where you start. And it’s held up perfectly since its debut.
This is a tug of war between history and the present, art and commerce. When Boy Willie says the land he wants will go away but anyone can buy a piano, you see Berniece nearly fall over. And that’s the essence of the argument. It’s one for the ages.
The excitement in the Barrymore Theater is that Samuel L. Jackson and Denzel Washington have worked together so much at the highest level, and now Jackson is acting with Denzel’s son John David, who — despite his recent movie roles — was not a totally proven entity. As Boy Willie, he levitates to Jackson’s level, and it’s thrilling. I loved his dogged determination to get that piano– he is relentlessly emphatic even though he knows he’s not going to get it. Berniece tells him so every five minutes, and you know she’s not playing around.
The rest of the cast is the best you can find anywhere. Danielle Brooks, who has so many theater credits, but this is her breakout moment. Berniece is the center of this family, and Brooks takes that position magnificently. Michael Potts, also a theater veteran, is the miserably charming family friend Wining Boy, a former small time recording artist who drifts to Berniece’s house when he’s need of extended family. Ray Fisher is perfectly hilarious as the goofy but smarter than you think Lymon. April Matthis is the very capable comic relief as Grace, an unwitting local girl who gets pulled into the family debate.
LaTanya Richardson Jackson is a well known actress who is making her Broadway debut as a director. She’s got a very famous choreographer for the wonderfully inventive music numbers she’s added in Otis Sallid, a legend who’s back on Broadway for the first time since 1995’s “Smokey Joe’s Cafe.” She’s got an assistant director, as well, in Evan Coles. But you can tell this is her project, a labor of love that she’s imagined fully. I wish this “Piano Lesson” could play all year. In June it will not be forgotten for Tony Awards, but I also hope they film it before the last performance on January 29th. This one is for the books.
I once asked Daniel Day Lewis if he was watching “Downton Abbey.” He replied, astonished: “No! Are you kidding! I always wanted to get away from the class system!”
And so now Prince Harry replied to Anderson Cooper’s question tonight on “60 Minutes” about his warring family by saying: “I don’t watch Game of Thrones!”
He was very insistent but you could also it was an unplanned revelation. He’s living Game of Thrones, he doesn’t have to watch it. (You sort of think he might be Jamie Lannister.)
Harry has a sad tale to tell about his mother’s death and his life afterwards with a cold father and brother and an evil stepmother. The first segment tonight was very moving and sympathetic.
But the second part didn’t quite make sense. He grew up learning all the ups and downs of his position. He saw what the Palace did to his mother. So why was he so naive about the relationship between the Palace and the press? Why did he marry someone who clearly had no interest in giving up her life for royal duty unless he knew what the repercussions would be?
Plus, to get the $100 million deal at Netflix and another $50 million from Random House, he seems more than eager to throw his whole family under the bus. He says he wants to repair the relationships. But how would that work exactly? Camilla will never speak to him again. Charles will never hear the end of all this from her. William and Kate won’t be having the Sussexes over for dinner any time soon.
So he doesn’t watch “Game of Thrones.” Harry would have been wise to watch “The Crown” in the earlier seasons. He would have learned a lot about his great grandfather, great grand uncle, aunt Margaret, and so on. I feel like we, the readers and viewers, have more tools to deal with the Palace than Harry. And that’s pretty strange.