We don’t normally pay much attention to the Emmy Awards, this being a site primarily devoted to the bigger screen. But when the recently unveiled nomination list contains such film heavyweights as Todd Haynes, Olivier Assayas and (twice) Martin Scorsese, it’d be remiss not to mention it — and the fact that the line between cinema and television is becoming an increasingly pliable one.
Indeed, there’s still disagreement over which category one of yesterday’s nominees falls into. Assayas’ five-hour stunner “Carlos” may have been produced for French television, but it’s a bit difficult to define a vast work from one of world cinema’s leading auteurs, one that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was theatrically released on the arthouse circuit, as merely a TV miniseries.
Most haven’t — it won a slew of film critics’ awards last year (and indeed made my 2010 Top 10) before more finicky eligibility rules kept it out of the Oscar race (I know, I know, as if) and in the TV races at the Globe and SAG Awards.
This is the first time I can remember a TV movie rising to the top of my “gotta see it” pile, but how can you not be excited for the forthcoming Todd Haynes four-hour