Team Experience: 2015's Best Emmy Nominees

Andrew here with some more Emmy treats.

In anticipation of Sunday's big night for TV, the television lovers at The Film Experience are bringing to you a special Team Experience top 10 list.Sure, each year a handful of Emmy nominees leave us scratching our head in confusion, but we wanted to celebrate the citations that the voters got right this year and compiled our list of favourite nominees. Unlike usual Team Experience top 10s, though, we're offering you a look at each of our individual top 10s.

Nathaniel always points out how interesting individual ballots in awards tends to be more dynamic than the final tally and to celebrate the wide range of nominees in the prizes still to be handed at Sunday's ceremonies. So, we disregarded the already decided on categories from the Creative Awards ceremonies and from the 26 categories to be decided on Sunday, our twelve person team each submitted their favourite of the nominees.

Unsurprisingly, our individual ballots were full of Actresses. Go below the jump to see them all.

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Team Top Ten: Back to School Edition

Amir here, bringing you Team Experience’s latest top ten list.

It’s hard to think of a genre that gets less respect than the high school film, but try contemplating a list of the best high school films of all time and a never-ending stream of classics seems to rush forward. That’s exactly what our team decided to do this month, and to make things difficult for ourselves, we expanded our horizons to include school films about kids of all ages, from all countries. After all, teenagers aren’t the only ones going back to school next week. What about the younger kids?

As it turned out, our team was more enthusiastic about this poll than any we had done before. With more ballots and more votes than ever before, this list was a real hoot for me to compile; and the range and quality of the films that were left off the final ten only serves to highlight the wealth of options at our disposal. From bonafide classics like Splendor in the Grass and If…, to influential foreign films like Zero for Conduct and Where Is the Friend’s Home?, to more recent films like Elephant and Perks of Being Wallflower, to documentaries like Hoop Dreams, back to school gives everyone with any cinematic taste something to savor. And those are just the stuff that didn’t make the cut! Well, those along with Grease, Boyz n the Hood, American Graffiti, Heathers, Wet Hot American Summer, Back to the Future, Dead Poet’s Society, and… you get the picture.

So, without further ado...

 Team Experience’s Top Ten School Films

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The Team on TV: Masters of Sex S3

Last week we kicked off a new weekly series in which we assemble a few rotating members of Team Experience to discuss various TV shows. Here's Dan, David, Deborah, and Manuel on discuss Masters of Sex - Editor
 

Dan: Hello everybody, welcome to our roundtable discussion on Masters Of Sex. I want to begin with a general topic: How do you all respond to time jumps in TV shows? Masters of Sex does this a lot, with several months often taking place offscreen either in between episodes or even during a single episode (S2's "Asterion" comes to mind). The second season ended in 1961, and this season began in 1966, skipping anything dealing with finding a publisher and marketing the study as a book. Did that throw you? Did you miss anything that would have been covered in the years we didn't get to see?

I was taken aback when it turned out Isabelle Fuhrman was Virginia's daughter Tessa, because last we saw Virginia had given up custody of her kids and Tessa was still a little girl. Now she's all grown and sneaking alcohol and drunkenly attempting to kiss Bill.... what happened to our sweet girl?

Deborah: Hi Dan and all!  I'm a Mad Men fanatic, so I don't mind time jumps in theory. But Masters of Sex has been clunky with it. A big time jump at the halfway point of a season (Asterion) is awkward. At the time, I wrote "Halfway through Season 2, Masters of Sex decides 'to hell with this.'" It was strange. Jumping forward between seasons is a more elegant way and it makes sense. Here's what doesn't make sense: The show clearly wanted to get to the publication of the book, because all the years of research for the book were bound to become repetitive. That being the case, now that they've brought us to the book, why put so much attention on Virginia's kids and Bill's marriage?

More...

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Team Experience: Collective Emmy Ballot, Comedy

HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT: RED SHOES WILL BE UP IN THE MORNING. RUNNING LATE !

See Part 1 for Drama
Here's Part 2 of 2... COMEDY!

Eleven members of our team, those most excited by television, turned in full Emmy ballots. So here is what we communally hope for when the real Emmy nominations are announced. Nomination ballots are due tomorrow, June 26th so if you happen to be an Emmy voter, check out our FYC series (shameless plug).  The Emmy nominations will be announced on July 16th though who knows why it takes them over three weeks to tally the results. Slackers. 

Comedy Series and acting races after the jump...

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Team Experience: Collective Emmy Ballot, Drama

Part 1 of 2... DRAMA!
Part 2 -- Comedy 

Eleven members of our team* turned in full Emmy ballots. I've compiled the results for you here. This is a very limited pool versus the thousands from the Television Academy who will vote on the actual Emmys but I thought it might be interesting for readers who are invested in this 'new golden age' of television. 

REMINDER: THESE ARE NOT PREDICTIONS

What follows is what we communally hope for when the nominations are announced. Voting on the nominations for the real Emmys ends this Friday, June 26th. The nominations will be announced on July 16th (what takes them so long to tally it?) and the ceremony happens on September 20th. It's a ridiculously wide spread of time -- nearly double the Oscar voting spread.

OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES

• The Americans (FX)
• Empire (FOX)
• Game of Thrones (HBO)
• The Leftovers (HBO)
• Mad Men (AMC)
• Masters of Sex (SHO)
• Orange is the New Black (NETFLIX)

Twenty-two different series received at least one vote but there were no votes at all for two Emmy regulars in this category (Downton Abbey & House of Cards). No series made every ballot though Mad Men and Masters of Sex were out front together in that regard. I forgot to hold a tiebreaker vote between The Leftovers and The Fall for the final slot so I made the choice myself, and erred on the side of way more ambition though The Fall was arguably more consistent. The nearest misses were The Affair and Agent Carter. The Agent Carter contingency surprised me even though I adore the show but then we're friendlier to non-prestige genre shows here (The Flash, Orphan Black and Daredevil also received votes). We shouldn't bring up the painful years of snubs for Battlestar Galactica and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, two of the finest shows TV ever produced. Neither of which could get arrested by Emmy voters in major categories. (sigh)

Acting Categories after the jump...

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