Emmy Live Blogging: Swine Flu Fever Edition (Pt 2)

part one
refresh screen regularly

9:03 I recently flew home to visit my parents who were moving out of my childhood home. One of my brother's friends was living in their basement. Killing time one night, I watched How I Met Your Mother on the ancient TV system. It only seemed to carry the broadcast networks. It's like the TV had absorbed my parents refusal to join the modern world. Anyway... while watching the show, my brother's friend comes in the room and says "this is a funny show but you know what the funniest show is? Two and a Half Men. I LOVE that show."

This is why people like Jeff Probst win "Best Host of a Reality TV Program"

9:07 Gilles Marini is thrusting so often on that clip from Dancing With the Stars I feel like he should be punished on an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

9:14 Shohreh Agdashloo wins Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie blocking Marcia Gay Harden's attempts at the triple crown. If Shohreh Agdashloo worked a sex phone line I would go bankrupt calling it. That voice!

Too much information I know. I'm sick. You're required to put up with me.

9:15 We're over an hour in and we've only had two Kanye West jokes. This is a surprising development.

9:28 It's hard to tell what is my fever and what is Patricia Arquette and Jennifer Love Hewitt standing before me. It's a chicken and an egg situation, surely. The cold sweats have set in.


Sadly, I'm not joking.

9:34 I just realized that both Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange can't win for Grey Gardens because they rightly considered them both leads. No category fraud here. It's Jessica Lange. I'm happy for her but quite honestly I thought Drew deserved it. Didn't you?

9:46 I'm dying here. Little Dorrit keeps winning things and I could have sworn that was an Oscar movie in the 80s. I'm starting to hallucinate. The Year in Variety. Like varieties of flus? HA? Avian? H9N2? I could have sworn I just saw a cross dissolve wherein Will Swenson from Broadway's Hair lept at me with his legs spread until he was Barack Obama.

9:57 If you have any antibiotics I could borrow, please convert them into comment form so I can absorb them before it's too late.

10:02 They have a Original Music category at the Emmys? Hugh Jackman's number from the Oscars wins. I love that the Emmys are always giving awards to other awards shows. Hollywood Inbreeding. It stops only for Hollywood Back Patting! Inbreeding is the theme of the weekend (see also: previous post).

I wish other blogs would give me awards but patting my back right now might not be a good idea. I can only imagine what I'd cough up.

10:11 I can't go on without more comments. The pillows are singing their siren song. Say something damnit.

10:17 NPH was just standing next to Dianne Wiest and he neither acknowledged her nor fell to his knees in worshipful genuflection. This is the first time I've ever been disappointed in NPH.

10:21 They're speeding things up. Michael Emerson wins Best Supporting Actor for Lost. Cherry Jones wins Best Supporting Actress for 24. WAIT! Where is Sarah Paulson??? First no NPH / Burtka kiss and now I'm denied girl on girl action with my ladies? What the hell... I have a fever. I deserve my televised gay love.

10:27 Sarah McLachlan sings "I Will Remember You" for the in memoriam. There's no way to cover this adequately whilst liveblogging. So I won't say anything other than 2009 has been a real death bummer, no?

10:38 Mad Men wins Best Writing for "Meditations in an Emergency" -- that was the second season finale about the Sterling Cooper merger and Betty's pregnancy

Close of the fierce back and faulty memory

10:40 Best Actress in a Drama Series goes to... Glenn Close Damages. Kyra Sedgwick is bummed. Elisabeth Moss is robbed. Glenn is confused... claiming that Patty Hewes is "maybe... the role of her lifetime". As NoNo smartly says in the comments: "Glenn hasn't seen herself in Fatal Attraction lately". Right? "Or Dangerous Liaisons!", I'd add. Time to pull those DVDs out of storage, Glenn.

10:50 Best Actor in a Drama Series goes to Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad. (I don't even know what that show is about). Best Comedy Series goes to 30Rock.

11:01 I think it's shameful when awards shows that are running over time go to commercials before the final award. I mean, really. Screw the advertising dollars, think of the audience with the flu watching at home.

11:02 SIGWEAVIE! A vision in red. And Mad Men wins best series. Good night. Thanks for watching with me from your homes, through the internet where you can't catch my flu virus. Only other kinds.

Good night, and good luck.

Shohreh: Smart, Stunning, Sexy, Sophisticated

This is RC from StrangeCultureBlog.
It's no secret that actresses, particularly middle-aged actresses, have a challenge finding great roles in our current movie system. Stories tend to be male heavy, and even younger females seem to have better odds at a gig with teen films, horror flick, and chatty rom-coms.

But where is the dramatic meat for a woman? Some years predicting supporting actress nominations takes heavy devotion to even try to figure out what films have viable roles for supporting actresses.

But end of rant, let's turn to praise, for an actress I consistently enjoy, who not only is a middle-aged woman (57 years old) but also is Iranian.

Who do I speak of, but the lovely and talented Shohreh Aghdashloo.

Aghdashloo's name is probably most known for her Oscar nomination for the foreclosure meets cultural challenge film The House of Sand and Fog, where Shohreh was deservedly nominated for an Oscar for her exceptional performance. (Oddly enough, she soon reprised the Sand and Fog role with her on-screen son Jonathan Ahdout in season four of 24 with a very similar relationship.)

Shohreh's filmography is apt to make you think she will take any role that's offered, and might just be the ideal type-cast for any middle-aged middle-eastern woman, whether Elizabeth in The Nativity Story, or an archaeologist in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.

Aghdashloo has a prestige film in circulation right now, The Stoning of Soraya M, about a true and tragic story of a stoning in modern Iran. I hope with the success of Slumdog Millionaire, there will be a desire to tell more stories that play on modern international themes, and perhaps Shohreh won't just have to settle for roles in films like American Dreamz, and X-Men: The Last Stand, but instead could use her artistic skills to inspire.

I can think of few actresses today that are as smart, stunning, sexy, and sophisticated as Shohreh Aghdashloo. Now she just needs to find the right roles in the right films.