If you're anything like me, you hear the word "guild" and you start thinking about ancient, secret societies of blacksmiths, and then you start thinking about a sweaty dude in an apron slamming a giant hammer into an anvil amid a hail of sparks, and then you start thinking about hammers in general, and then you start thinking about how surprising it was that the movie Thor slayed as hard as it did. And so if you are anything like me, you are an idiot, and you should wipe all that from your brain, because right now we're talking about the Writers Guild Awards, a.k.a. the WGAs, which in actuality have really very little to do with sweaty dudes in aprons.
Soooooo? How'd we all do in our MTV Movie Awards pools? Guys, I really thought teenagers would be more enamored of The Artist! That's $500 I'll never see again.
Grantland’s complete reaction to last night’s Grammy Awards is forthcoming later today, but for now, below, here’s a partial list of the winners. As you may have heard, Adele dominated, both through her widely praised performance of “Rolling in the Deep” and through her uncanny ability to mind-meld her name into basically every envelope that was opened. The other story of the night was, of course, the tributes to Whitney Houston, most notably Jennifer Hudson’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You.” But if there’s one other thing that people will be talking about, it’s Justin Vernon’s acceptance speech.
Perhaps the most revealing (and damning?) aspect of the Emmy nominations announcement ceremony — held, as always, just before dawn on the West Coast in order to allow Nikki Finke to watch them live before retreating to her coffin — was the manner in which they were broadcast to the majority of the world: via Ustream, an upstart web-video service that is (a) one of the many threats to traditional broadcast television, and (b) mostly known as the go-to place to watch NFL players distractedly answer fan questions while flying cross country. (Maybe TV was secretly trying to prove a point: The feed conked out midway through the announcements. Luckily, it was when they were talking about miniseries.)
Anyway, much respect to announcers Joshua Jackson and Melissa McCarthy (whose surprise nomination for her work in Mike & Molly wasn’t so much of a surprise when you consider that she’s now a movie celebrity and TV people are nothing if not hung up on movie celebrity — it’s a little like how Chicago is obsessed with New York but the feeling is rarely mutual) who, perhaps in deference to the hour, raced through the categories like Usain Bolt after a visit to Walter White’s Winnebago. Leading this year's nominations are Mad Men with 19, Boardwalk Empire with 18, and Modern Family with 17. Below, our instant, coffee-deprived thoughts.
