Zoren: Emmys missed some truly fantastic performances
The first thing I did after the 2020 Emmy nominations were announced last week was look to see if some shows missed the cutoff to be included.
The first category I looked at was ‘Best Comedy Series.” Nowhere did I find any nods for “The Great,” the Hulu spoof on the court of a Russian czar and his reluctant wife, Catherine the Great.
Nothing was listed under “Best Limited Series” either.
I could see that “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s” third season or the revived “Curb Your Enthusiasm” might eclipse Tony McNamara’s clever lampoon of royalty and politics among the comedy shows and that the wonderfully surprising “Mrs. America” could exceed “The Great” among limited series, but I was dismayed that insulin-inducing programs such as “The Good Place,” a witless show such as “Dead to Me,” or “Watchmen” could be preferred ahead of it.
I thought star Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult were clumsily denied nominations, not to mention supporting players such as Phoebe Fox, Douglas Hodge, and Sacha Dhawan.
Although I thought the Emmy nominations were fair in general, the absences caught my attention more than those selected to compete for the award when it presented Sept. 20.
Particularly striking was finding the stars of “Better Call Saul,” Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn, both of whom had exceptional seasons, missing. Then, after seeing how attracted nominators were to “Little Fires Everywhere” and “The Morning Show,” I wondered where a major cog of both, Reese Witherspoon, was. There were performances in “Hunters” and “The Plot Against America,” two shows I watched in spite of thinking they missed their mark, that rated recognition, especially Kate Mulvany of “Hunters” and John Turturro from “Plot.”
Categories are strong. Thank goodness Laura Linney of “Ozark” and Cate Blanchett of “Mrs. America” made the cut. And Kate McKinnon of “Saturday Night Live.”
Opera Philadelphia finding ways to entertain
Several arts organizations, realizing they cannot present their programs in safety during the coronavirus pandemic, have been creative about using streaming to bring some entertainment to an audience starved for theater and musical performance, but none has been so clever as Opera Philadelphia.
In the late spring and summer, unable to go ahead with its planned productions, Opera Philadelphia provided five of its finest recent works to YouTube and other audiences for free. One of its shows was broadcast on Channel 12.
Now Opera Philadelphia is getting more innovative. With its annual September opera festival, “O20” cancelled, and realizing it is unlikely to be able to stage anything live until next spring, Opera Philadelphia has launched the Opera Philadelphia Channel.
In lieu of the works that would have graced the Academy of Music and other stages this fall, Opera Philadelphia has inaugurated a global broadcasting platform that brings its shows into people’s homes via streaming on televisions and mobile devices. At least five individual productions will be available on known, easily accessed streaming sites such as Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, and more. Unlike its previous streams, the programs on the Opera Philadelphia Channel comes with a fee, $99 for a subscription to the entire season. Speaking as someone who has attended opera constantly for more than 45 years, that price is a small amount to pay for the programs the Opera Philadelphia Channel has announced for airing.
The productions to be shown are cinematic presentations of the solo song cycle exploring the realities of a contemporary Black man’s life, “Cycles of My Being” by composer Tyshawn Sorey and librettist Terrence Hayes starring Lawrence Brownlee who was so exciting a few seasons back as Charlie Parker in Opera Philadelphia’s production of “Yardbird” and in 2018 in a one-nightonly performance of “Cycles;” one of the pieces scheduled for “O20,” “El Cimarrón,” with music by Hans Werner Henze and a libretto by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, about a Cuban who escapes the slavery he was born into, fights, after surviving in the jungle, for Cuban independence from Spain, and lives to relate his story before dying at age 113 as sung by bass-baritone Sir Willard White accompanied by a guitar, flute, and percussion; a multimedia show that brings the realities of war to the stage, “Soldier Songs,” which composer David T. Little wrote based on documentary interviews with people who faced combat and needed an outlet to express their experiences, as acted by a baritone, Johnathan McCullough, with an assist from a child actor who plays his character as a boy; a series of four short digital works commissioned from today’s most dynamic composers; and the 2015 Opera Philadelphia production of “La Traviata,” featuring the exquisite Lisette Oropesa as Violetta, a role she debuted in Philadelphia and has since made her own via performances in major houses throughout the world. Including last week in Madrid where Oropesa made history by doing an encore of one of her arias.
In addition, the Opera Philadelphia Channel will present a series of round table conversations, lectures, panel discussions and educational programming.
While announcing the enticing lineup for Opera Philadelphia Channel, the company spoke about its future and its rerouting of planned productions to next year and as far ahead as 2023.
Opera Philadelphia has been an innovator in finding an ambitious and wide-ranging way to keep bring its art of its audience, and new ones who could watch from anywhere on Earth.
Other companies are also busy figuring out ways to stream. The Kimmel Center will co-present a concert featuring “Hamilton’s” original George Washington, Christopher Jackson, known to TV audiences as Chunk Palmer on the CBS series, “Bull,” at 8 p.m. Saturday, August 15. Jackson’s show, called “Live from the West Side” and featuring music by LinManuel Moreno, is a fundraiser for COVID 19 relief. A $40 donation supports the Kimmel Cultural Campus’s COVID 19 Relief Fund and includes access to Jackson’s livestream performance in addition of a 72-hour window to watch it. Donations will be accepted starting tomorrow by visiting www.kimmelcenter.org.
Vai taking retirement
Vai Sikahema, who came to Channel 10 when it was a CBSowned station but who has been a staple figure at WCAU-TV since it became an NBC outlet in 1995, will retire in November.
The morning news anchor with long-tenured Tracey Davidson, Sikahema came to Channel 10 as a weekend sports reporter and was a weekend anchor before his decades-long tour on the 4-7 a.m. newscast.
Sikahema came to Channel 10 following a career as a defensive back and special teams player in the NFL. The Eagles was the last club for which Sikahema, the first Tongan in professional football, played. He was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals (before their move to Arizona) and played with them and the Green Bay Packers
before coming to Philadelphia.
‘Clear the Shelters’
Channel 10 and Telemundo 62 want to get animals out of shelters in the best way.
The sister television stations want to find all eligible animals homes while helping shelters attain funds that keep their rescue work and adoption process going.
To make this happen NBC 10 and Telemundo are staging a month-long pet adoption campaign, “Clear the Shelters.”
The format for showing pets and linking them with potential owners takes a different twist this year from other years. From Aug. 9-31, the stations will provide virtual access for their viewers to more than 30 participating rescues and shelters. “Clear the Shelters” also allows people to donate gifts to facilities of their choice. Those interested should visit www.cleartheshelters.com to find out more.
This year marks the sixth that Channels 10 and 62 have conducted this campaign. Since 2015, the stations have helped more than 20,700 pets find homes.
Among returning partners in the “Clear the Shelters” effort are WeRescue and GreaterGood.com. Among the new shelters is 24PetWatch. WeRescue will help folks find an adoptable animal near their zip code. GreaterGood.org makes it easy to donate to a rescue program or shelter. 24PetWatch helps people find shelters.
Book recommendations from Morning TV
Today’s” Hoda Kotb is a fluid conversationalist that comes off as real.
On Friday’s “Today,” Kotb’s co-host, Jenna Bush Hager, was about to interview author J. Courtney Sullivan, whose novel, “Friends and Strangers”
was Hager’s recommended book for July. (She reveals her pick for August today between 10-11 a.m. on Channel 10.) Among some smart chatter about writing and how one comes up with stories for a book, Hager asked Sullivan to recommend five books she liked.
Morning television elevated exponentially when the first book Sullivan selected was “Girl, Woman, Other,” a co-winner with Margaret Atwood’s “The Testaments” for England’s 2019 Man Booker Prize, the most important
award a writer in the English language can be given in my never-humble opinion.
Bernardine Evaristo’s novel, which traces and interweaves the lives of a dozen woman, all with different points of view and different paths through life but united in determination to make something of their lives, might the most exciting new work I’ve read since Marlon James’s “A Brief History of Seven Killings.” It was rife with wit and observation. I could be critical of our times and some
attitudes while embracing the individuality of the fictional women Evaristo profiles.
‘Girl, Woman, Other” is knowing and smart. It swirls with astute observations while interesting you in lives that negotiate their times and do so on strong terms. For some reason, I’ve read several books this spring and summer that use Evaristo’s paradigm of telling individual stories that mesh into one (Tommy Orange’s “There,” Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” Toni Morrison’s “Jazz” for examples)
but no one, not even the great Ms. Morrison, showed the perspicacity and knitting skills Evaristo does.
Hager, Sullivan, and Kotb redeemed morning television for 10 minutes because I heard the kind of intelligent, truly expert information I crave but am usually denied, even from newscasts. It was a refreshing and exhilarating relief, and I felt lucky I was tuned in to see it.