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Your Emmy picks — and ours

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 13:00:00 +0000

We asked, and nearly 4,000 of you voted on our creatively altered Emmy ballot. We've ranked your choices in each category in order of preference. (Nominees in red were additions by Salon, and not official Emmy nominees.) Our choices are at the end of each selection. And we'll add the official Emmy winners after they're announced on Sunday night. (Update: Go here for the full list of the actual winners.)

Outstanding Comedy Series
1. Arrested Development * Fox
2. The Office * NBC
3. Weeds * Showtime
4. Scrubs * NBC
5. Curb Your Enthusiasm * HBO
6. Reno 911 * Comedy Central
7. Will & Grace * NBC
8. Two and a Half Men * CBS

Our pick: Although "The Office" was consistently entertaining and the omission of "Weeds" from the nominees is nothing short of a disgrace, "Arrested Development" was unreasonably funny in its final season, outshining every other comedy in big, hearty laughs per minute. If only those nasty Bluths were returning to our loving arms this fall!

The Buffy

Sat, 17 Sep 2005 21:21:00 +0000

The awarding of last year's Buffy, our first-ever award for the most underappreciated show on all of television, was an easy choice. "The Wire" is simply everything we want out of a TV show: We bond forcefully with the characters of David Simon's Shakespearean urban drama and become deeply invested in the plot; the violent death of thug kingpin Stringer Bell last season left us feeling giddy, sad, enlightened and anxious -- just as a searing dramatization of the dynamics behind poverty, the war on drugs, and the class/race ceiling should. Our Sunday night HBO votive burns as bright for "The Wire" as it does for all those other shows -- and frequently, much brighter.

The Emmy graciously bowed to The Buffy's wisdom this year, offering a belated nomination to "The Wire" for outstanding writing. A token gesture, sure. But at least they're learning.

The Emmy winners — and your picks

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 22:11:00 +0000

We asked, and more than 10,000 of you voted on our souped-up Emmy ballot. We've ranked your very, very smart choices in each category by order of preference. (Nominees in red were additions by Salon, and not official Emmy nominees.) The actual winners, along with our choices, are at the end of each selection.

Outstanding Comedy Series
1. Arrested Development * Fox
2. Curb Your Enthusiasm * HBO
3. Scrubs * NBC
4. South Park * Comedy Central
5. Reno 911 * Comedy Central
6. Desperate Housewives * ABC
7. Two and a Half Men * CBS
8. Everybody Loves Raymond * CBS
9. Will & Grace * NBC

Emmy winner: "Everybody Loves Raymond."

Our pick: "Arrested Development" is terrific, but "South Park," also nominated below under Animated Series, is bigger than that: It's the most consistently funny show on TV. Need a reminder?

Your Emmy ballot

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 19:23:00 +0000

This year's Emmy choices weren't all that terrible. After all, they finally nominated "Deadwood" and "Six Feet Under" (which wasn't eligible last year) for best drama, and Ian McShane of "Deadwood" finally got recognized for his scene-stealing brilliance. In other words, they took a lot of our suggestions from last year.

But then there are those desperate housewives, three of them. Felicity Huffman is certainly worthy, but ... Teri Hatcher? Oh, how we dearly wish "The Comeback" was eligible this year (it began after the Emmy deadline) so that Valerie Cherish (er, Lisa Kudrow) could be taking this award home to display in her brand-new yoga room.

We all have our own opinions on these things, and we'd like to know yours. So consider carefully, and cast your choices on the Emmy ballot below by Thursday, 5 p.m. EDT. The choices in red are the ones that the Academy left off -- some of whom deserved to win, and others who earned only our scorn. But we'll leave that decision up to you.

Then on Friday, we'll announce your picks (at 5 p.m., PDT) -- and ours!

The sizzling sleepers of summer

Fri, 01 Jun 2001 17:08:00 +0000

As the mainstream press promotes "The Mummy Returns," "Pearl Harbor" and the other vacuous, shrieking offspring from its news-tainment corporate parents, a more skeptical part of the audience has quietly been taking in more adventurous sorts of films. Below, Salon's critics take a look (in some cases a second look) at the season's most compelling, if less hyped, films: "The Circle," "With a Friend Like Harry," "Under the Sand," "Memento" and "Amores Perros."

"Amores Perros"
Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
Starring Emilio Echevarría, Gael García Bernal, Goya Toledo, Alvaro Guerrero, Vanessa Bauche

The films of Quentin Tarantino are a blast and a goof -- they're caustic and mischievous, filled with in jokes, self-referentiality, a mordant wit and tour de force imaginations in scene setting. But as time goes on, his movies grow thin. His most memorable contentions -- gangsters are stupid, crime is absurd, even that Pam Grier has enormous dignity -- in the end are mere reminders of things we know already.