The Seventh Annual Andy TV Awards: Comedy Series

Time to continue my picks for nominees and winners for the past year of television, as though I actually have the ability to grant awards. If you missed it, here’s the first post of the series picking the Comedy Acting categories.

The Seventh Annual Andy TV Awards: Comedy Acting

If you want to see how these went last year, and how infrequently I blog, scroll down just a bit.

It’s that time of year again when I finally update my blog, pick the very best in the world of television. While most of the TV internet is using the opportunity of the Emmys to pick from the Academy’s flawed list of nominees, I use my time wasted watching too much TV judgement to pick the most deserving nominees AND winners for the acting and show categories. Unlike the Academy, I base my decisions on entire seasons worth of television, and not just submitted episodes (since, you know, no one is submitting episodes to win fake internet awards).

The Sixth Annual Andy TV Awards – Drama Acting

I’ve now covered the guest acting and comedy acting awards, time to move on to the drama awards. I pretty much watch all the dramas that matter besides Treme and Fringe, but the Academy went ahead and nominated some people from shows that don’t (or no longer) matter as well. Those include actors from Dexter, House, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Harry’s Law, and The Killing (which I believe I saw four episodes of). So while it’s possible those performers are doing bang-up jobs on shows I don’t want to watch, you won’t see them nominated here.

Read on to see who you will see nominated, and who would win in a perfect world. Yes, my definition of a perfect world is one where I am the sole authority on arbitrary media awards.

The Sixth Annual Andy TV Awards – Comedy Acting

Now that the intro and guest acting awards are out of the way, let’s get to some of the categories you may actually care about. Shows that the Academy nominated here I don’t watch include Glee, Two and a Half Men, Mike & Molly, Hot in Cleveland, The Big C, and Episodes, because I was too busy watching good TV shows. I have seen a few episodes of Raising Hope and enjoyed them, but not enough to nominate anyone from it.

Read on for my nominees and winners in the supporting and leading actor and actress categories.

The Fifth Annual Andy Movie Awards – Part Two

Here’s part two of the big extravaganza (read part one here), wherein I present the major awards, and a few more minor ones…

The Fifth Annual Andy Movie Awards – Part One

It’s time once again for one of my signature posts: the fifth (and probably final) Andy Movie Awards, where I select not only who I think should win the awards being handed out this Sunday, but also who should’ve been nominated with those winners. There’s a lot of posts around this time of year where writers predict who they think will win Oscars, and some about they think should win. But unless you’re the only person in the world who agrees completely with the Academy’s nominees, it’s a false choice. What if your winner wasn’t nominated? What if you’re forced to choose the only worthy nominee in a group of junk?

Instead, I write a super-long post that basically amounts to a series of specified year-end lists, not only for the big awards that people care about, but also the other awards that most people don’t. The only Academy Award categories for feature length films that the Andy Awards don’t cover are Best Achievement in Editing (because I don’t know enough about the process to pass judgement, as with most viewers, I only notice editing when it’s bad), the two sound categories (as it’s not something I notice while watching movies), and Best Original Song (because it’s a stupid award. Instead, I’ve substituted it for my own award).

To make my decisions, I’ve seen 66 films that had a North American release date in 2008. The Academy nominated a total of 36 feature length films, of which I’ve seen 27 (75%). When you take out the ten films nominated in the foreign language and documentary categories (only four of which were released outside of LA/NY… I caught three of those), I’ve seen 24 out of 26 (92%), with the exceptions being Defiance (nominated for Original Score) and Australia (nominated for Costume Design). Thus, whenever my nominations divulge from the Academy (other than in those four categories), it’s because I disagree, not because I don’t know. Which brings me to why this very well may be my last post of this nature: I can’t imagine myself finding the time in the upcoming years to watch this many movies again.

So read on for part one of the end of an era…

2008 Oscar Nominations: Initial Reactions

Why so serious?

The Oscar nominations for 2008 were announced today (posted here). As always, my more complete thoughts on what were the year’s best will appear in both my year-end top ten movies list (which looks to be pushed back to early February this year) and the Andy Movie Awards, which should appear the week of the ceremony. But I thought I’d get some initial reaction on what the Academy snubbed, what they foolishly recognized, and what I have yet to see in my annual, catch-up-on-Oscars viewing checklist.

The Third Annual Andy TV Awards

The Emmy Awards are this weekend, and once again, the list of nominees are wrong. It’s impossible to please everyone, but the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences make it especially hard. It’s interesting: while the Oscars have drawn heat of late for the fact that their nominated pictures aren’t widely seen productions, the Emmy people continue to baffle critics by insisting on nominating popular (and inferior) shows like Two & a Half Men or Boston Legal. But it wasn’t all bad this year (you can see the Academy’s full list of nominees here, although you’re probably better off with an abridged version, like the one here), as they got around to recognizing some smaller cable shows like Dexter and Mad Men.

But rather than be one of those people who complains about the snubbing of one show or another, I’m one of those obsessives who will come up with my own list of nominees and winners to show just exactly who was snubbed and who wasn’t. In doing so, I do have some sympathy for Academy voters, as even an avid TV viewer such as myself can’t manage to watch every great show (although I do like to think that I watch more than the average Academy member). Among the highly-acclaimed shows that I haven’t seen (and thus will not be eligible for awards) include Battlestar Galactica (I know, I know… I will check it out eventually; at this point, I think it’s best to wait for the whole series to come out on DVD), Breaking Bad, Brothers & Sisters, Doctor Who, House, and Nip/Tuck.

Some ground rules: to qualify for nomination, a show must have aired most of its season, including its season finale, in the past 12 months. Unlike the Emmys, each category is limited to five nominees each (the Academy wimps out a few times with six nominees on occasion). To decide what shows belong where, and which actors belong where (i.e., comedy vs drama, lead vs supporting), I used the official ballot for performers (which you can see here), even in situations that don’t necessarily make sense. Also, my votes are based on entire seasons, not single episodes (except when appropriate). And best of all? No awkward monologue to start the show…

The Fourth Annual Andy Movie Awards – Part Two

Welcome to part two of the Andy Movie Awards, filled with the major awards that people care about, and the lesser ones they sneak in between while the stars are off doing interviews and such. Don’t think of this as an overly long post stuffed with filler, think of it as 18 year end lists for the price of one!

To see part one, go here.

The Fourth Annual Andy Movie Awards – Part One

It’s that time, once again, where your’s truly breaks down who would be nominated for and win film awards if I were the only voter. As the title suggests, this is the fourth year in a row I’ve done this, with each year growing a bit bigger and more obsessive. This year, there were 39 different feature-length movies to receive Academy Award nominations, not including the Best Foreign Language category (which was made up exclusively of films that have yet to be released in North America). Of those 39, I saw 31 of them, which roughly equals 80%. The ones I missed include Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, Taxi to the Dark Side, and War Dance in the documentary category, as they haven’t come to my neck of the woods yet, Enchanted and August Rush in the Best Original Song category (because I don’t accept it as a legitimate category), Best Original Score nominee The Kite Runner (the only film I missed that I might have seen if I had a bit more time), Best Makeup nominee Norbit (because, well, come on), and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, nominated for Best Makeup and Visual Effects (since I haven’t seen any of the Pirates movies). In all, I’ve seen 73 feature length films that were released in North America in 2007 (see the full list here, which probably makes me a more informed voter than most of the Academy.

To make this a little easier on readers (and thus, hopefully, create some readers and maybe even commenters), I’m breaking this year’s awards up into two posts. So take in part one now, then come back for the finale, which will include the winner for Best Picture. For now, let’s get all the seat-fillers in place, and start the show…

Oscar Nominations

The Academy Awards Nominations were released yesterday, and I wanted to blog about it, but then lost my motivation with the sad Heath Ledger news. But since there’s no law that states that I can’t write about day-old news, I think I shall go ahead and do so.

If you haven’t yet, you can check out the list of nominees here: http://www.oscars.org/80academyawards/nominees/index.html (which is a better list than imdb’s if for no other reason than it’s all in English). As of right now, I don’t really have any major gripes with the nominees. Sure, my list will look different, but there isn’t any Crash or Babel on the list that makes my blood boil (although it’s possible that something equally sucky has been nominated that I haven’t seen yet). Yes, it’s crazy that Norbit got a nomination, but it’s for Makeup, so whatever.

There’s some movies and performances that I think were snubbed, but they’re the ones I figured would be snubbed, so no shocker there. All in all, I think I could pick out a satisfying winner in every category, so I’ll take it.

The Third Annual Andy Movie Awards

And now, the real reason I make so much effort to watch any and all Award-type movies: so I can compile my own list of winners, making as informed votes as possible for someone who has to pay for every movie he sees (unless I’m with someone who pays for me), and find the time to watch them in between a job and life that are not in the movie critics field (well, not yet anyway).

To qualify for an Andy Movie Award, a movie had to A) be released theatrically in North America within the calendar year of 2006, and B) be seen by me. These rules made 54 movies eligible (one of which I just watched 6 hours ago), but leaves out a couple documentaries I saw from HBO and Showtime. As for movies that were actually nominated by the Academy, there were 43 different feature length movies nominated for an award by the Academy, of which I saw 28 (65%). The percentage increases if you take the Documentary and Foreign Language categories out of the equation, as I missed 6 of them (3 each) for the simple matter that they haven’t been available in my part of the world (well, one was made available last week, but has only shown maybe 7 times since then). That would bring my percentage up to 73% (24 of 33), which would be the percentage of Oscar-nominated movies that I had the ability to see and did see, which ain’t bad if I do say so myself.

Here, I will present my nominees and winners in the same categories, and in the same order, as the Academy did on their telecast, with the exception of short films (which I saw none, but do have three downloaded to maybe watch later), the categories I don’t know enough about to make nominees (Editing, Sound, Sound Editing), or the category I think is completely fucking stupid (Best Original Song). But enough with the introduction, on with the show…

Andy’s TV Awards

Since the Andy Movie Awards 2005 were such a big hit, and because we all know I know more than those who give out awards, I’ve decided to do the Emmy’s one better, and list MY nominees and winners for the past TV season. Of course, unlike the Oscars, where I make a concerted effort to see all Oscar-baiting movies, I didn’t see every show of last year, or even all the critically acclaimed ones. Unlike the Academy, I’m basing my awards on all the episodes I’ve seen from last season of a particular show, instead of just one or two episodes that were submitted.

To be nominated, I had to have seen at least part of last season’s shows of the series. Thus, 24 and Arrested Development, two shows I’ve seen on DVD and enjoy, are not nominated because I haven’t seen season five and three respectively. Other critically-acclaimed shows that I do not watch include The Sopranos, House, Curb Your Enthusiasm, any CSI or Law & Order shows (actually, no procedurals at all), The Office, Six Feet Under, The Shield, or Boston Legal. Despite not having seen any of those shows, I still think I did a better job than the Emmy people.

NOTE: I’ll only being doing major categories, and for two of them, I won’t have nominees. Because I’m not judging single episodes (too hard), I won’t be doing any writing or directing awards. Also, no mini-series or TV movies.