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That horrible screaming sound you may be hearing now is your local Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, because the Emmy nominations have been announced and Buffy only scored a couple of nominations in technical areas. As I noted a few days ago, I don’t watch Buffy, so I can’t join in the anger, but there are some other bones that need picking on this year’s Emmy’s. (Or is that “Emmies”?)

I mainly feel the need to complain about the acting nominees. The West Wing is my favorite show, but does it really deserve seven acting nominations? Dule Hill is a fine young actor, but this season was probably his least effective year on the show, mainly because he really didn’t have as much to do as he has in the show’s previous two seasons. He seemed to drop into the role vacated by Kathryn Joostyn when her character, the President’s beloved secretary Mrs. Landingham, was killed off at the end of Season Two. Now, though, Lily Tomlin is apparently going to be cast as Mrs. Landingham’s replacement, so perhaps Dule Hill’s Charlie Young will have more to do next year. Also, I have never much liked Mary Louise Parker — she seems, to me, to drawl her way through nearly every role she does with the same laconic tone. Richard Schiff (Toby Ziegler) and Allison Janney (C.J. Cregg) were excellent as always, and it was nice to see Emmy recognition for Bradley Whitford (Josh Lyman) and John Spencer (Leo McGarry). I guess what it comes down to is, even with the acting on The West Wing being as good as it is, is it really that much better than all the other acting on TV these days? On NYPD Blue, Dennis Franz and Charlotte Ross somehow managed to make believable what should have been one of the most unlikely TV romances in years. William Petersen is the core of CSI. On ER, Noah Wyle (John Carter) has executed his character’s growing maturity nearly perfectly (though his season was marred by another unbelievable romance and the greater attention paid to the departure of Anthony Edwards). And surely someone in the entire cast of Ed warrants a nomination. Ditto the cast of Scrubs — either John McGinley (whose Dr. Cox is the best new character on any show last year), or even Neil Flynn, whose psychotic janitor is just dead-on perfect. There is a ton of wonderful acting on television, and it seems a bit unfair to bunch up the nominations all for a single show (The West Wing), or to keep nominating the same people over and over again (Patricia Heaton, for example — though I violate this statement with my above mention of multiple Emmy winner Dennis Franz….).

Ah, well….the whole purpose of these award shows, as William Goldman has noted, is to give us something to talk about. There really is no “best”; just a lot of very, very fine work. Congratulations to all the nominees, and to those who deserved it.

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A Scottish music critic has collected a list of the top 100 music albums of all time. It’s a fascinating list, complete with commentary on each selection. (It’s also a testament to the awesome array of music out there that out of my slightly more than 600 CDs, I apparently own exactly three of this man’s picks.)

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The good news from the Tour de France is that Lance Armstrong has begun his usual tactic of using the mountain stages to seize first place; he assumed his first lead of this year’s Tour today and, if all goes according to plan, should begin adding to that lead as the more difficult mountain stages loom ahead.

The bad news, however, should come as no surprise to anyone who has watched coverage of the Tour on television, noting the hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of spectators that line the narrow roads traversed by the Tour and its escort vehicles. Huge numbers of spectators in reaching distance of a hundred plus bicyclists plus a number of cars, all traveling at respectable speeds, has always struck me as a recipe for potential disaster — which came to pass yesterday, when a small child was struck and killed by one of the automobiles in the Tour convoy. Apparently, something similar happened two years ago as well.

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Courtesy of TFN, Kevin Smith has some entertaining commentary on Attack of the Clones in FilmComment magazine. It’s nice to know that there are apparently seven people alive who bought the love story in Clones….

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Over on AICN, there is some consternation over the choice of writer/director that has been attached to the project ALIEN vs. PREDATOR. Now, I haven’t seen any of Paul Anderson‘s films, so I can’t comment on his status as a “hack” (or as an “auteur” or anything else); what is baffling me is just why anyone thinks that Alien vs. Predator is a good idea for a movie in the first place. Perhaps my heart just isn’t in the right place, but I can’t see how even a director of, say, John McTiernan’s or James Cameron’s caliber working from a script penned by, oh, William Goldman could make anything interesting out of a crossover between these two franchises. When people are clamoring for a project like this, and bemoaning the director who has “won” the assignment, it clears up a lot of the mystery as to why a lot of fanboys don’t like Star Wars any more.

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Six proposals for redeveloping the World Trade Center site were unveiled today. I prefer the “Memorial Promenade” version, with its two towers of equal height surrounded by a ring of smaller buildings and plenty of land set aside for memorial space (and I’m pretty sure this design is one of those that does not actually build on the two spots where the original Towers stood). From the Hudson River, it would look like this:

Click on the link for more information on this plan, and the other six that have been submitted for public comment.

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I saw the trailer for The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions yesterday as well (there is one trailer for both films, viewable here). I hope this was just a teaser trailer, because it did little to really whet the appetite for these two films. As far as I could tell, it consisted solely of Morpheus saying something mystical-sounding followed by a series of effects shots that look like extensions of the fight scenes from the original film. There was no hint of story at all, except to refer to a “war”. These films aren’t due for another year, so presumably this isn’t the last of the trailers for them.

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I went to see Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones again yesterday, for the first time since seeing it three times during its opening weekend. Once again I was struck by the film’s level of visual invention, noticing this time things like how in the opening scenes, on cloudy Coruscant, you can faintly see the lines of air traffic moving through the haze. I still find the acting quite acceptable and the dialogue mostly fine (although I still think Obi Wan says “my very young Padawan learner” way too much). I did, though, spot a couple of things that I think would have improved upon the proceedings:

:: George Lucas is such a visually oriented storyteller that sometimes his subtleties are lost in the midst of so much other stuff going on, but he missed an opportunity with regard to Anakin’s dreams about his mother’s peril: he should have actually shown one of the dreams. It would have worked better if, say, just after the scene where Palpatine suggests that Obi Wan and Anakin be assigned to Amidala’s protection, we cut to the shot of Anakin awakening from his nightmare and then being summoned by Obi Wan for a new assignment. Then, later on Naboo, as the dreams grow in intensity, Lucas could have actually inserted a few of Anakin’s visions into the film — maybe showing her being roughly taken by someone (he wouldn’t have known it was the Tuskens), or showing her agony — or perhaps a less literal vision, but still harrowing nonetheless. Show, don’t tell is a cardinal rule amongst storytellers. Here Lucas could have helped his cause by showing a bit, thus drawing us in more to Anakin’s turmoil.

:: I also think the Anakin-and-Padme section of the film would have worked better if there had actually been another attempt on Padme’s life on Naboo. Perhaps Anakin would not have told her about the dreams of his mother, and then used an attempt on her life — which he would have foiled — as his excuse to disobey Obi Wan, leave Naboo, and take her with him. Thus he would be indulging most of his more dangerous instincts and being deceitful — even if well meaning — to boot.

I also noticed a nifty parallel to the classic trilogy: during Shmi’s burial, R2D2 comes rolling up, beeping away, and Threepio says: “He has a message from an Obi Wan Kenobi.” Owen Lars is standing there, so he hears this. Later on, in A New Hope, Luke informs Uncle Owen that the R2 unit they’ve bought “says he belongs to an Obi Wan Kenobi”. Owen’s “Uh oh” glance at Beru is now much more understandable.

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Speaking of Millennium, the lead role of Frank Black was played by Lance Henriksen, who in my view is one of the more underutilized actors working today. He is also a man of some surprising talents: he makes and sells pottery on the side.

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