Movie Box Review

Mad Men - 1:2

Boardwalk Empire - 11:4

The Good Wife - 5:1

Game of Thrones - 14:1

Friday Night Lights - 16:1

Dexter - 33:1

Mad Men - 1:1

Boardwalk Empire - 7:5

Game of Thrones - 5:1

The Good Wife - 8:1

Friday Night Lights - 11:1

Dexter - 20:1

Mad Men has won 3 years in a row:  can it match The West Wing and Hill Street Blues with 4?  Maybe so, but it's going to be an awfully close race against HBO's Boardwalk Empire  Mad Men's not-so-secret weapon may be its episode The Suitcase, the 2-hander for Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss that was one of the best hours the show has ever aired; but this being an industry award, it could be hurt by the extended and very public AMC/Matthew Weiner travails that didn't leave a good taste in anyone's mouth.  Boardwalk could also be hurt by the support for HBO's other nominee Game of Thrones (although that's probably too much of a genre show to win outright).  The Good Wife, a marvelous show in its own right and the only pure network nominee (Friday Night Lights being an NBC/DirecTV share), is a possible dark horse here.  Friday Night, which richly deserves a statuette, is probably getting an "attaboy" pat on the back on its way out the door.  Dexter's season was markedly inferior to its previous one with John Lithgow as the monstrous Big Bad, and is probably out of the running.

Jon Hamm, Mad Men - 4:11

Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire - 23:10

Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights - 14:1

Michael C. Hall, Dexter - 14:1

Timothy Olyphant, Justified - 16:1

Hugh Laurie, House - 20:1

ShowbuzzDaily Odds:

Jon Hamm, Mad Men - 8:5

Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire - 3:1

Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights - 6:1

Timothy Olyphant, Justified - 12:1

Hugh Laurie, House - 14:1

The most important name here is the one that's absent: because of AMC's scheduling, Bryan Cranston wasn't eligible for Breaking Bad after 3 wins in a row, opening the way for what will probably be a tight race between Hamm (who's never won) and Buscemi.  The knock against Hamm has been that his Don Draper is too self-contained to appeal to Academy voters, who like their Oscar counterparts prefer their performances big; here again, Mad Man's Suitcase episode may make the difference.  If Friday Night Lights has a chance for any surprise win, it's would be Chandler here.  Olyphant was even better on Justified this season than he was the year before, but it's not an award type role.  Laurie will have a better shot next year if this turns out to be the show's last.  Hall will be hurt by Dexter's sub-par year--and by the fact that he plays, you know, a serial killer. 

Bookie Odds:

Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife - 15:20

Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men - 3:2

Kathy Bates, Harry's Law - 6:1

Mireille Enos, The Killing - 12:1

Connie Britton, Friday Night Lights - 16:1

Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order:  Special Victims Unit - 25:1

ShowbuzzDaily Odds:

Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife -1:1

Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men -2:1

Kathy Bates, Harry's Law - 8:1 

Connie Britton, Friday Night Lights - 12:1

Mireille Enos, The Killing - 25:1

The biggest shock of last year's Emmys was Kyra Sedgwick's win over Julianna Margulies; The Good Wife continues to be a superb show, Margulies is a well-respected former winner, and it's likely the Academy will make amends for its oversight.  Moss has the best chance of unseating her, once again because she's got that episode of Mad Men that could almost have been designed as an Emmy showcase.  One can never underestimate the Academy's attraction to performers of a certain age, which puts Bates in the running as a dark horse.  Britton has deserved this award every year Friday Night Lights was on the air, but no one ever said awards were fair.  Enos has little chance of winning for a show whose finale left many viewers angrier than they'd been since the end of Lost, and Hargitay has won already, with no one seeming to think she needs another.

Oren Moverman's first film as a director, The Messenger, was a beautifully contained, emotionally detailed story about soldiers assigned to deliver tragic news to the families of the deceased.  In his new film RAMPART, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, Moverman is more ambitious and, unfortunately, a victim of the sophomore jinx.

This time, Moverman co-wrote his film with celebrated novelist James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential, among many others), and for better or worse, the script is very much an Ellroy work.  The title refers to the Rampart Division police scandal of 1999, but other than thematically, that's very much in the background of the story.  The film concerns Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson, also star of The Messenger), a classic Ellroy protagonist:  a mix of good and bad cop--utterly dedicated, but prone to violence and heedless of the consequences of his actions.  He has a dismal personal life--his informal version of a Big Love lifestyle, having married first one sister (Cynthia Nixon) and then the other (Anne Heche), and now living with both--is falling apart.  And he's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.  

Like many other Ellroy protagonists before him, Dave is the victim of a shadowy conspiracy taking place far above his head.  And as in many Ellroy novels, that conspiracy stays shadowy, complex and mostly undefined.  The idea seems to be that Dave is being made a pawn so that those in power can condemn him and distract the public from the larger Rampart scandal, but that's never confirmed or explained.  Similarly, characters turn up enigmatically--especially Robin Wright in an incomprehensible role as a woman Dave picks up one night in a bar--and their roles remain frustratingly opaque, except that they cause trouble for Dave.  The movie becomes busier and emptier as it goes along, with an inconclusive ending that resolves absolutely nothing.

It doesn't help that Moverman has come very late to the "urban thriller means jittery handheld camera" party, and the movie, powered by Bobby Bukowski's derivative digital photography, is downright annoying to watch.  (If the concept was to use that style because in 1999 it would have been state of the art, it's a stylization that doesn't work.)  Nor that the grittiness of the subject matter is constantly upstaged by the all-star cast (Look, it's Sigourney Weaver!).  

Even in these less than ideal circumstances, Moverman retains his skill with actors.  Harrelson is playing a more familiar character than the one he had in The Messenger (he's a more victimized version of Vic Mackey in The Shield), but he plays the role with all-out conviction and sly humor.  Most of the supporting actors--Weaver, Wright, Nixon,, Heche, Steve Buscemi as a weaselly DA, Ben Foster (also from The Messenger) as a homeless informant, Ice Cube as a version of Mary McDonnell's IA cop from The Closer, Ned Beatty as Dave's wired-in and possibly untrustworthy mentor, Brie Larson as Dave's bitter daughter--get some pungent dialogue from Ellroy and Moverman, and run with it.  On a scene by scene basis, the picture is often enjoyable, even if the pieces never fit together.

Rampart is a failure, but it's a quality one; Moverman aimed high and missed.  In his next try, he'd be better off developing his own vision than subordinating it to that of another creative mind, even one as talented as James Ellroy's.  This time around, he got lost in the labyrinthine streets of Ellroy's personal fictional city.