Hey, That’s My Name

I don’t generally put a lot of stock in what wins Best Picture each year. As I mentioned in a previous post, I tend to look more fondly at the winners and nominees of the screenplay awards. There’s usually at least one nominee in this category that disappoints, but this year, the Academy has excelled at mediocrity in the their list of the five best films of the year. I don’t think it was a particularly great year for film, but I still think that even they could have done far better.

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Newly minted Oscar nominee (and fellow my Chicagoan) Michael Shannon will be co-starring a new HBO pilot from Martin Scorsese titled Boardwalk Empire. The project will also feature are Vincent Piazza, Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt. The show takes place during the Prohibition era with Buscemi’s character running a liquor distribution ring and Shannon an agent in the Treasury Department tasked to control bootlegging.

Hopefully this show will bring some of the credibility back to HBO’s television lineup which has been suffering since the ending of its major shows like The Sopranos and The Wire.

Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada) and Jason Segel (How I Met Your Mother, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) are in negotiations to join the cast of Gulliver’s Travels. The film is already set to star Jack Black. Nicholas Stoller, the director of Sarah Marshall was one of the screenwriters on the project.

Blunt would play the island’s princess and the love interest of Horatio, Segel’s character, a Lilliputian who befriends Gulliver.

[From Emily Blunt, Jason Segel seek 'Travels']

Variety is reporting that ABC has nabbed the pilot Let It Go, starring Gilmore Girls alum Lauren Graham. Graham will be playing a recently dumped talk show host unable to follow her own advice.

I’m excited to see Graham return to television, though ABC doesn’t have the best track record of taking care of good shows (*cough* Pushing Daisies *cough*). I hope the show is good because the lady definitely deserves something worthy of her comedic talents.

This one is pretty transparent. Not to minimize some of the other nominees (well, actually, I will be doing that with at least two of them), but this is one man’s Oscar to lose. Continue Reading »