The biggest surprise of the 2022 Emmy awards is that there were almost no surprises at all. Category after category, the nominees awards experts expected to win, did win — and in several cases, won again. The three shows with the most nominations — “Succession,” “Ted Lasso,” and “The White Lotus” — all won the top prizes in their respective categories (though one of those wins was a bit more surprising than others). For most of the telecast, the most unexpected moments came in the winner speeches (Sheryl Lee Ralph! Jennifer Coolidge!), and in the show itself (the “Good Burger” reunion!).
Ultimately, the night fell in line from the 2021 Emmys, when mega-wins by “The Crown,” “Ted Lasso” and “Mare of Easttown” made the winners at the ceremony fairly predictable as soon as the nominations were announced. Still, there were some disappointments, especially for freshman shows that broke into the nominations with a lot of...
Ultimately, the night fell in line from the 2021 Emmys, when mega-wins by “The Crown,” “Ted Lasso” and “Mare of Easttown” made the winners at the ceremony fairly predictable as soon as the nominations were announced. Still, there were some disappointments, especially for freshman shows that broke into the nominations with a lot of...
- 9/13/2022
- by Kate Aurthur and Adam B. Vary
- Variety Film + TV
A close-up of textures and floating tendrils dance around the screen as the cast names come on screen. As the camera zooms out, the viewer realizes the images are in fact macro close-ups of a human eyeball. Director Michael Mohan wanted to throwback to erotic thrillers such as “Basic Instinct” and “Body Heat” for the title sequence to his new film, “The Voyeurs,” now streaming on Amazon Prime. The familiar florid font was inspired by the book covers of romance novelist Danielle Steel.
Mohan worked with title director Teddy Blank to put the sequence together. “The Voyeurs” stars “The White Lotus” actress Sydney Sweeney as optometrist Pippa. With her boyfriend Thomas (Justice Smith), the two become unreasonably consumed with watching the randy across-the-street neighbors.
Mohan and Blank breakdown the title sequence and how it almost didn’t happen.
What were some of the initial conversations you had surrounding the title sequence?...
Mohan worked with title director Teddy Blank to put the sequence together. “The Voyeurs” stars “The White Lotus” actress Sydney Sweeney as optometrist Pippa. With her boyfriend Thomas (Justice Smith), the two become unreasonably consumed with watching the randy across-the-street neighbors.
Mohan and Blank breakdown the title sequence and how it almost didn’t happen.
What were some of the initial conversations you had surrounding the title sequence?...
- 9/10/2021
- by Jazz Tangcay
- Variety Film + TV
An esteemed up-and-coming actor known for turns in films including Patti Cake$, Unicorn Store and The Front Runner, Mamoudou Athie recently earned his first Emmy nomination for short-form series Oh Jerome, No, though he could never have anticipated this result.
A recurring segment within Cake—a short-form comedy anthology, which premiered on Fxx last fall—the series centers on Jerome, an overly sensitive young man living out a series of bizarre scenarios in New York, who goes through his fair share of trials and tribulations in his quest for love.
Written and directed by Teddy Blanks and Alex Karpovsky, the project began its life as a one-off short, with seemingly little chance of leading to anything else. A couple of years ago, while wrapping the Patti Cake$ shoot, Athie got an email from the writer/director duo, asking if he’d like to be involved. “I was a little confused,...
A recurring segment within Cake—a short-form comedy anthology, which premiered on Fxx last fall—the series centers on Jerome, an overly sensitive young man living out a series of bizarre scenarios in New York, who goes through his fair share of trials and tribulations in his quest for love.
Written and directed by Teddy Blanks and Alex Karpovsky, the project began its life as a one-off short, with seemingly little chance of leading to anything else. A couple of years ago, while wrapping the Patti Cake$ shoot, Athie got an email from the writer/director duo, asking if he’d like to be involved. “I was a little confused,...
- 8/10/2020
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
With a title like “Oh Jerome, No,” the series was always building to the point where its title character turned that phrase on himself. When it happens in the opening segment of the two-part finale, Jerome (Mamoudou Athie) laments his inability to follow through on a New Year’s Eve idea.
Over eight episodes of Alex Karpovsky and Teddy Blanks’ series about one man’s emotional highs and lows, that tussle between expectations and reality happens a lot. “It was important for us to have a character that gets into all sorts of wacky and absurd and sometimes full-on ridiculous situations, but ultimately it’s coming from a person that’s always relatable,” Karpovsky told IndieWire. “You don’t want to stretch it too far where we feel like this person exists in a completely sci-fi universe. The fact that the show is so Pov-driven and driven, we can really...
Over eight episodes of Alex Karpovsky and Teddy Blanks’ series about one man’s emotional highs and lows, that tussle between expectations and reality happens a lot. “It was important for us to have a character that gets into all sorts of wacky and absurd and sometimes full-on ridiculous situations, but ultimately it’s coming from a person that’s always relatable,” Karpovsky told IndieWire. “You don’t want to stretch it too far where we feel like this person exists in a completely sci-fi universe. The fact that the show is so Pov-driven and driven, we can really...
- 11/13/2019
- by Steve Greene
- Indiewire
Fxx describes its new series “Cake” as a “comedy showcase.” It’s an apt description, especially because trying to sum up the show in any more than two words is a much harder task than you might expect.
To follow the food metaphor the show’s title invites, “Cake” is the product of a number of ingredients all working together to produce a distinct flavor. To torture that metaphor further, “Cake” is something closer to a sugary casserole, an energetic mixture of disparate comedic styles that aren’t so much whipped up into batter but presented with large chunks still intact in each bite. In an entertainment world that’s increasingly supported by algorithms, “Cake” doesn’t allow viewers to get silo’ed into one headspace – and that’s the glory of the show.
Each half-hour episode throws together a cross-section of live-action and animated shorts. “Cake” makes reducing things...
To follow the food metaphor the show’s title invites, “Cake” is the product of a number of ingredients all working together to produce a distinct flavor. To torture that metaphor further, “Cake” is something closer to a sugary casserole, an energetic mixture of disparate comedic styles that aren’t so much whipped up into batter but presented with large chunks still intact in each bite. In an entertainment world that’s increasingly supported by algorithms, “Cake” doesn’t allow viewers to get silo’ed into one headspace – and that’s the glory of the show.
Each half-hour episode throws together a cross-section of live-action and animated shorts. “Cake” makes reducing things...
- 10/23/2019
- by Steve Greene
- Indiewire
Most times, when a movie or TV show features a fictional band, it takes months or even years for an enterprising artist to design fake merchandise for sale on an unaffiliated third-party apparel outfit. For “Her Smell,” the recent indie drama starring Elisabeth Moss, that wait is a lot closer to non-existent.
As the film makes its way through various theaters across the country, “Her Smell” now has an official merch store, complete with music and apparel from the world of the movie. Directed by screenwriter (and burgeoning awards pundit) Alex Ross Perry, the film follows the trajectory of fictional punk singer Becky Something (Moss). As she navigates the twin burdens of addiction and artistic expectations, the movie tracks Becky’s evolution, as well as those of her band Something She and ascending colleagues The Akergirls.
The collection is a mirror of the merch design in the film. There’s...
As the film makes its way through various theaters across the country, “Her Smell” now has an official merch store, complete with music and apparel from the world of the movie. Directed by screenwriter (and burgeoning awards pundit) Alex Ross Perry, the film follows the trajectory of fictional punk singer Becky Something (Moss). As she navigates the twin burdens of addiction and artistic expectations, the movie tracks Becky’s evolution, as well as those of her band Something She and ascending colleagues The Akergirls.
The collection is a mirror of the merch design in the film. There’s...
- 5/5/2019
- by Steve Greene
- Indiewire
Though the stigma around mental illness persists, many are working to change that. Among them are Alex Karpovsky and Teddy Blanks, collectively known as Spielbergs, who’ve just debuted their short-film series “Shrink.” All six installments feature brief testimonials from the likes of Sarah Silverman, Lena Dunham, and Natasha Lyonne. Watch below
Read More:Sarah Silverman on Trying to Unite The Country With Hulu’s ‘I Love You, America’
“I remember my therapist just saying, ‘Look in the mirror less,’” says Silverman, who credits “so much of the best of me” to her therapist. “It got me starting to stop talking shit about myself, lovingly correct myself when I do, like, ‘Oh, look at my thighs are disgusting!’ And then I go, ‘My thighs are strong and they work and I love them.’”
Read More:Jimmy Kimmel Welcomes Back Sarah Silverman — What to Watch Thursday, June 1
Tanlines composed an original score for the series,...
Read More:Sarah Silverman on Trying to Unite The Country With Hulu’s ‘I Love You, America’
“I remember my therapist just saying, ‘Look in the mirror less,’” says Silverman, who credits “so much of the best of me” to her therapist. “It got me starting to stop talking shit about myself, lovingly correct myself when I do, like, ‘Oh, look at my thighs are disgusting!’ And then I go, ‘My thighs are strong and they work and I love them.’”
Read More:Jimmy Kimmel Welcomes Back Sarah Silverman — What to Watch Thursday, June 1
Tanlines composed an original score for the series,...
- 9/25/2017
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
Disclosure: I’ve never done therapy, although it has certainly been suggested over the years. Any recent therapy-curiosity was tempered by watching a couple of episodes of the Naomi Watts/Netflix series Gypsy, which made seeing a therapist seem like being the unwitting subject of a Sophie Calle art piece. Offering a point-of-view both more optimistic and realistic is, timed to National Therapy Day, a set of six new shorts from directors Alex Karpovsky and Teddy Blanks in which five women and one man discuss their various experiences in therapy. Director Kimberly Peirce talks about an experience in couples therapy, author Susan […]...
- 9/25/2017
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
1. CosmosAdam Maida’s silent scream for Andrzej Zulawski’s swansong Cosmos is a poster that cries out to be noticed. Channeling the starkest of Polish poster design—think Mieczyslaw Wasilewski or Andrzej Pagowski—Maida’s design is as deceptively crude as it is beautifully executed. I love everything about this poster, down to its hand-lettering, that tiny hanged bird and the even tinier—nice if you can get away with it—billing block. Maida’s witty, diagrammatic work has already graced Criterion covers for Nagisa Oshima’s Death by Hanging, John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate, and Costa-Gavras’s The Confession and State of Siege, but it is his eye-catching black-and-white editorial illustration/montages for the New York Times that this most reminds me of. You can see more of his work here.2. The HandmaidenTrees and a hanging also feature heavily in my second favorite poster of the year: an...
- 12/23/2016
- MUBI
The second season of Amazon’s Golden Globe–nominated comedy Mozart in the Jungle opens with classically arranged strains of Phoenix’s song “Lisztomania,” just like the first season did. But this time, there’s a twist. Each of the ten episodes features a different short, playfully abstract animated title sequence, created by designer Teddy Blanks, co-founder of Brooklyn’s Chips Design Studio. “The idea I pitched was to make colorful animations inspired by abstract geometrical classical album covers from the '40s and '50s, particularly those designed by Alex Steinweiss,” Blanks wrote by email. Swirling lines intersect with blocky shapes, each keyed to a specific instrument in the score. The titles for earlier episodes are more spare, but as the episodes near the season finale, they become more complicated, eventually combining for a culminating, richly orchestrated — and animated — final sequence. Watch the intros for all ten episodes above.
- 1/4/2016
- by Alissa Wilkinson
- Vulture
The success we’ve had in preserving and distributing art of the past has had a somewhat calcifying effect on the present. This is not to say good work is not being done now; in the province with which we are primary concerned, dozens of very good (and a few truly great) films are made every year. How many of them truly belong to us? So many of our great modern films are meditations on the past – chiefly the 20th century – contextualizing or embalming an experience that is becoming, in more ways that strictly chronological, more and more removed from the present every day. How many more films, no matter how great, do we need about World War II or the late 1960s? How often do we need to be reminded of the giants of cinema courtesy of new filmmakers eager to revere them through imitation?
These thoughts occurred to...
These thoughts occurred to...
- 8/18/2015
- by Scott Nye
- CriterionCast
Project Name: Strangers
Asking For: $15,000 on Indiegogo
Amount Raised Thus Far (At Time Of Post): $7,365
Days Remaining In Campaign (At Time Of Post): 29
Description: A good comedy web series needs its fair share of weirdos, and what better place to find those weirdos than on Airbnb? The room renting service is the central plot device for Strangers, an upcoming web series from creator Mia Lidofsky.
Strangers centers around Isobel (Zoe Chao), a young, frenetic woman who is forced to rent out a room in her apartment after breaking up with her boyfriend. She proceeds to find her home occupied by a rotating procession of colorful characters, who drive the plot in each episode. "There will be a birth, there will Tinder dates, there will be so much dancing, and lots of love, and a lot of pain," explains Lidofsky in her pitch video.
Creator Bio: Lidofksy cut her...
Asking For: $15,000 on Indiegogo
Amount Raised Thus Far (At Time Of Post): $7,365
Days Remaining In Campaign (At Time Of Post): 29
Description: A good comedy web series needs its fair share of weirdos, and what better place to find those weirdos than on Airbnb? The room renting service is the central plot device for Strangers, an upcoming web series from creator Mia Lidofsky.
Strangers centers around Isobel (Zoe Chao), a young, frenetic woman who is forced to rent out a room in her apartment after breaking up with her boyfriend. She proceeds to find her home occupied by a rotating procession of colorful characters, who drive the plot in each episode. "There will be a birth, there will Tinder dates, there will be so much dancing, and lots of love, and a lot of pain," explains Lidofsky in her pitch video.
Creator Bio: Lidofksy cut her...
- 5/13/2015
- by Sam Gutelle
- Tubefilter.com
In Alex Ross Perry's acclaimed new comedy Listen Up Philip, Jason Schwartzman plays an author so utterly convinced of his own genius that he regularly upbraids the people in his life (including his patient-till-now girlfriend, Elisabeth Moss) for failing to meet his unreachable, unreasonable standards of living. If he ever let anyone get a word in edgewise, Philip would doubtlessly deserve a talking-to, and in this exclusive, delightfully illustrated new poster for the film (painted by Anna Bak-Kvapil and designed by Teddy Blanks of Chips, who also created all the book covers in the film), you can meet some of the characters who have a bone to pick with our prickly protagonist. Find out whether they can get through to Philip when the film comes out October 17 in theaters and on VOD and iTunes October 21.
- 9/22/2014
- by Kyle Buchanan
- Vulture
It is tempting to say writer-director-actor Joe Swanberg has had a busy 2013 given he released his most high-profile film to date in the form of Drinking Buddies and superlatively portrayed a tool of an older brother in the sadly underseen horror film You’re Next. However, every year is a busy one for Swanberg, who has directed well over a dozen movies over the past decade and acted in many more.
“But what’s he done for us recently?” you cry. Good question. The answer is All the Light in the Sky, his latest comedy-drama which stars Jane Adams (Hung,...
“But what’s he done for us recently?” you cry. Good question. The answer is All the Light in the Sky, his latest comedy-drama which stars Jane Adams (Hung,...
- 11/21/2013
- by Clark Collis
- EW - Inside Movies
By Dollie Banner
When I came of age in the eighties and nineties, cinema art houses were filled with American independent films, most of them gems. It seemed that then movie lovers could see nearly every film released. In the years since the number of independent films have grown exponentially, and I often worry that I’m bypassing, or even worse completely ignorant, of some worthwhile films that get lost in cinematic obscurity.
The Exhibitionists (2012), the second feature from director Michael Melamedoff is such a film, a compelling chamber piece about seven characters revealing their true desires over the course of two nights. At the heart of the film is fragile Regina (Pepper Binkley), who we meet nervously awaiting the arrival of her husband Walter (Richard Short), an agent provocateur filmmaker just returned from a cross-country film shoot. In tow he brings fellow crewmember Gordo (Daniel London), whose dutiful wife...
When I came of age in the eighties and nineties, cinema art houses were filled with American independent films, most of them gems. It seemed that then movie lovers could see nearly every film released. In the years since the number of independent films have grown exponentially, and I often worry that I’m bypassing, or even worse completely ignorant, of some worthwhile films that get lost in cinematic obscurity.
The Exhibitionists (2012), the second feature from director Michael Melamedoff is such a film, a compelling chamber piece about seven characters revealing their true desires over the course of two nights. At the heart of the film is fragile Regina (Pepper Binkley), who we meet nervously awaiting the arrival of her husband Walter (Richard Short), an agent provocateur filmmaker just returned from a cross-country film shoot. In tow he brings fellow crewmember Gordo (Daniel London), whose dutiful wife...
- 5/15/2013
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
We've been talking about Alex Karpovsky's Rubberneck for a while now, and with its VOD and limited theatrical release quickly approaching, Tribeca Film has finally unveiled its poster art by designer Teddy Blanks.
Rubberneck will be available nationwide on VOD starting February 19th. It will also screen in a double feature with Karpovsky's road trip comedy Red Flag at Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center starting February 22nd, complete with opening weekend Q&A's with the director.
Rubberneck is directed and co-written (with Garth Donovan) by Alex Karpovsky, who also stars in the film. A slow-burn character study-turned-psychosexual thriller, Rubberneck is a chillingly believable story of workplace romance gone wrong that co-stars Jaime Ray Newman and Dennis Staroselsky and was produced by Donovan, Michael Bowes, and Adam Roffman.
Synopsis:
Paul Harris is a scientist at a small research facility on the outskirts of Boston.
Rubberneck will be available nationwide on VOD starting February 19th. It will also screen in a double feature with Karpovsky's road trip comedy Red Flag at Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center starting February 22nd, complete with opening weekend Q&A's with the director.
Rubberneck is directed and co-written (with Garth Donovan) by Alex Karpovsky, who also stars in the film. A slow-burn character study-turned-psychosexual thriller, Rubberneck is a chillingly believable story of workplace romance gone wrong that co-stars Jaime Ray Newman and Dennis Staroselsky and was produced by Donovan, Michael Bowes, and Adam Roffman.
Synopsis:
Paul Harris is a scientist at a small research facility on the outskirts of Boston.
- 2/6/2013
- by The Woman In Black
- DreadCentral.com
Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture, is the kind of film that makes you remember all the shitty parts of your life with a sort of wistful, romantic nostalgia. It doesn't shy away from the pessimistic and the awkward, but at the same time, it draws you in to it's dark corners and let's you enjoy being there. It's about the wallowing days after college graduation where your hopes and dreams crash against the callous indifference of the world. As Lena puts it in our interview with her, the "disappointments of life as you imagined it versus life as it actually is." Teddy Blanks, who also did the music (which you can download for free here) and credits for the film, brings this juxtaposition to life in the movie's one sheet. Using bold type over the prostrate and depressed main character, Teddy captures both the universal theme of despair with the...
- 11/20/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
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