It’s been almost a year since Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux went public with their romance, and things appear to be going swimmingly (if prepping to move in to a $21 million Bel Air mansion together qualifies as "swimmingly").
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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, seen here at its first organizational meeting in 1927, remains largely white and male. (Hulton Archive / Getty Images)
February 19, 2012
When the names of winners are revealed on Oscar night, months of suspense give way to tears, smiles and speeches. Yet when the curtain falls, one question remains: Who cast the votes?
About 37 million people tuned in to the Academy Awards last year, and a great deal rides on the show’s outcome. Winning a golden statuette can vault an actor to stardom, add millions to a movie’s box office and boost a studio’s prestige. Yet the roster of all 5,765 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a closely guarded secret.
Even inside the movie industry, intense speculation surrounds the academy’s composition and how that influences who gets nominated for and wins Oscars. The organization does not publish a membership list.
“I have to tell you,” said academy member Viola Davis, nominated for lead actress this year for “The Help.” “I don’t even know who is a member of the academy.”
A Los Angeles Times study found that academy voters are markedly less diverse than the moviegoing public, and even more monolithic than many in the film industry may suspect. Oscar voters are nearly 94% Caucasian and 77% male, The Times found. Blacks are about 2% of the academy, and Latinos are less than 2%.
Oscar voters have a median age of 62, the study showed. People younger than 50 constitute just 14% of the membership.
The academy calls itself “the world’s preeminent movie-related organization” of “the most accomplished men and women working in cinema,” and its membership includes some of the brightest lights in the film business ? Tom Hanks, Sidney Poitier, Meryl Streep and Steven Spielberg, among others. The roster also features actors far better known for their television acting, such as Erik Estrada from “CHiPs,” Jaclyn Smith of “Charlie’s Angels” and “The Love Boat’s” Gavin MacLeod.
The academy is primarily a group of working professionals, and nearly 50% of the academy’s actors have appeared on screen in the last two years. But membership is generally for life, and hundreds of academy voters haven’t worked on a movie in decades.
Some are people who have left the movie business entirely but continue to vote on the Oscars ? including a nun, a bookstore owner and a retired Peace Corps recruiter. Under academy rules, their votes count the same as ballots cast by the likes of Julia Roberts, George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Reporters John Horn and Nicole Sperling give an introduction to the Times’ look inside the academy.
To conduct the study, Times reporters spoke with thousands of academy members and their representatives ? and reviewed academy publications, resumes and biographies ? to confirm the identities of more than 5,100 voters ? more than 89% of the voting members. Those interviews revealed varying opinions about the academy’s race, sex and age breakdown: Some members see it simply as a mirror of hiring patterns in Hollywood, while others say it reflects the group’s mission to recognize achievement rather than promote diversity. Many said the academy should be much more representative.
The Times found that some of the academy’s 15 branches are almost exclusively white and male. Caucasians currently make up 90% or more of every academy branch except actors, whose roster is 88% white. The academy’s executive branch is 98% white, as is its writers branch.
Men compose more than 90% of five branches, including cinematography and visual effects. Of the academy’s 43-member board of governors, six are women; public relations executive Cheryl Boone Isaacs is the sole person of color.
The full roster of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has never been published. Times reporters confirmed the identities of more than 5,100 Oscar voters — more than 89% of all active voting members — and found that they are:
Source: Times Reporting.
Data analysis by Doug Smith.
Robert Burns, Khang Nguyen Los Angeles Times
“You would think that in this day and age, there would be a little bit more equality across the board, but that’s not the case,” said Nancy Schreiber, one of a handful of women among the cinematography branch’s 206 voting members. “Being a cinematographer should not be gender-based, and it’s ridiculous that it is.”
Academy leaders including President Tom Sherak and Chief Executive Dawn Hudson said they have been trying to diversify the membership but that change is difficult because the film industry is not very diverse, and slow because the academy has been limiting membership growth for the last decade.
“We absolutely recognize that we need to do a better job,” said writer-director Phil Alden Robinson, a longtime academy governor. But “we start off with one hand tied behind our back…. If the industry as a whole is not doing a great job in opening up its ranks, it’s very hard for us to diversify our membership.”
Independent studies of some film crafts show that the academy’s demographics mirror the industry’s. Women make up 19% of the academy’s screenwriting branch, and a 2011 analysis by the Writers Guild of America, West found that women accounted for 17% of film writers employment. The academy’s producers branch is about 18% female, and the directors branch is 9% female, figures comparable to those in a study by San Diego State University’s Martha Lauzen. She examined the 250 top-grossing movies of 2011 and found that women accounted for 25% of all of the films’ producers, and 5% of all their directors.
“Is most of commercial narrative filmmaking the product of mostly white men? Sadly, the answer is yes,” said Alexander Payne, the director and co-writer of best picture nominee “The Descendants” who belongs to the director branch.
In 1996, the Rev. Jesse Jackson organized nationwide protest over the absence of black and minority Oscar nominees. (Frederick M. Brown / AFP / Getty Images)
Age and gender have also prompted questions. Sony Pictures executives said last year that they believed their Facebook film “The Social Network” lost the best picture race to “The King’s Speech” because older Oscar voters didn’t relate to the Internet story. This year, some believe that Stephen Daldry’s 9/11 drama “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” made the best picture shortlist because it appealed to middle-aged men.
“The film is about men trying to be good fathers, sons trying to be good sons,” said Terry Press, a member of the public relations branch who for years has helped mount Oscar campaigns for filmmakers. “It’s about unfulfilled conversations with your father and that’s an extremely middle-aged man thing. It’s like ‘Field of Dreams.’”
African American actress and academy member Alfre Woodard, 59, cited the sexually explicit “Shame,” which got no nominations, as an example of a film whose Oscar hopes may have been doomed by the academy’s demographics. “Maybe if the median age was 45 to 50, a film like ‘Shame’ might show up, which I thought was a brilliantly rendered piece but a subject matter that you don’t expect a certain older demographic would flock to see,” she said.
Woodard, who joined the organization in 1985 and has been active on academy committees, said she often encourages women to apply for membership in the academy, believing the best way to effect change is from within. “It’s like sitting out an election,” she said. “The country is only going toward its ideals when people participate.”
But others have lost patience. Academy member Bill Duke, a black actor and director, said: “The black community sees the academy as an entity that ignores the needs, wants, desires and representation of black directors, producers, actors and writers. Whether it is true or not, that is how it’s perceived ? as an elitist group with no concern or regard for the minority community and industry. And there doesn’t seem to be any desire to change that perception.”
Some academy critics believe the organization, through its membership and Oscar picks, reinforces a lack of diversity on screen and in studio decision-making.
“People of color are always peripheral,” said veteran African American character actor Bernie Casey (“Under Siege”), who said he recently quit the academy because he was disenchanted with its racial makeup. “Asians, Latinos, black people ? you never see them. We are 320 million people in America and about 48 million black people and the same of Latin descent ? but you would not believe that based on what you see in films and television shows.”
This year, several minorities did land nominations in the acting categories: Davis and her fellow cast member from “The Help,” supporting actress nominee Octavia Spencer, and Demi?n Bichir, a Mexican-born performer who starred in “A Better Life.” All of the year’s five nominated directors are white men, and none of the 21 producers of the nine best picture nominees is a person of color.
Were there more Latino academy members, Bichir said, opportunities for Latinos would improve. “That would mean there would be a lot more roles for Latin actors,” the actor said, “and a lot more movies for [Latin] cinematographers.”
Growth and change
The academy was founded in 1927 with two aims: to mediate labor disputes and improve the movie industry’s image. Louis B. Mayer, the legendary head of MGM, initiated the idea and invited an elite cadre of professionals, including actress and United Artists studio co-founder Mary Pickford, director Cecil B. DeMille and producer Irving Thalberg, to join.
The academy’s membership grew steadily over the years as the organization moved away from labor management issues to focus on film preservation, research and the Oscars, first presented in 1929 in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
Today, the academy oversees more than $196 million in assets and dispenses more than $20 million in grants and scholarships a year, including to Streetlights, a job training and placement group that works to promote ethnic diversity in Hollywood. It donates $750,000 annually to film festivals around the country and sponsors an annual screenwriting competition that rewards winners with $35,000 fellowships. According to its tax filing for the 2009-2010 fiscal year, the Oscars generated $81.3 million in total revenue for the organization.
The academy grew rapidly between 1990 and 2000, adding close to 800 members. Former executive director Bruce Davis alerted the board to the steep increase and noted there had not been a commensurate growth in the film business. The organization attributed the membership surge to a relaxed attitude toward admission.
India’s Resul Pookutty, who won an Oscar for sound mixing on “Slumdog Millionaire” in 2009, was invited to join the academy a year later. (Indranil Mukherjee / AFP/Getty Images)
“The guilds are a democracy. If you have credits, nobody asks how good you were,” said Davis, the executive director from 1989 to 2011. “But the academy has to be different.”
In response, the organization in 2004 began limiting membership growth to 30 per year, not including those admitted to fill vacancies created by deaths, resignations or retirement. It also clarified and stiffened its policies for admittance. The available slots are allocated among the 15 branches and the academy’s at-large division.
There are three ways to become a candidate for membership: land an Oscar nomination; apply and receive a recommendation from two members of a branch; or earn an endorsement from the branch’s membership committee or the academy staff.
The membership committees then vote on the candidates; those who get a majority are invited to join. The academy says almost everyone accepts the offer.
Actors, for example, now must have three significant credits to be considered for membership, and producers need two solo producing credits or the equivalent. Such criteria benefit people with more experience. “The academy is always going to be slightly older ? if just because you have to have about five years of credits before you’re even considered,” said Joe Letteri, a four-time Oscar winner for visual effects.
In practice, the bar for admittance varies widely from branch to branch. Last year, actress Rooney Mara and visual effects supervisor Tim Burke were among 178 invitees academy wide. Mara had had small roles in “The Social Network” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (she had yet to star in her current Oscar-nominated role in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”). Burke, in contrast, had won an Academy Award a decade earlier for his work on “Gladiator.”
The academy began making public the names of its invitees in 2004, but does not say which ones accept and become members.
The more than 1,000 people invited to join since 2004 include black actors such as Jennifer Hudson, Mo’Nique and Jeffrey Wright. But overall, the group was only slightly more diverse than the academy it was joining ? 89% white and 73% male. Sherak pointed out that in 2011, the invitees were 30% female and 10% nonwhite.
The academy’s overall composition before and after the 2004 policy shift remained close to 93% Caucasian and 76% male, and its median age dropped from 64 to 62.
As part of the 2003 tightening of membership rules, Davis urged that a wider circle of potential invitees be considered. In 2009, he suggested to the sound branch committee that it had overlooked India’s Resul Pookutty, who won an Oscar that year for sound mixing on “Slumdog Millionaire.” Davis admired the technician’s work and was moved by his emotional acceptance speech on Oscar night. (The committee extended the invitation a year later.)
“When I got the letter from them saying they would like to invite me into the academy, I was literally screaming in the studio,” said Pookutty, who flew from Mumbai to Los Angeles to attend the new member luncheon. “It means a great deal. More than the pride of it, I feel that my whole fraternity in India has been recognized and honored.”
Sherak and other academy officials said they’re eager for more applications from women and minorities, and more involvement from those who are already members.
“I’m hoping your story runs and 7,000 phone calls break the lines here,” Sherak said. “We’ve been trying to reach out to the constituency and we’re looking for help. You want to be on a committee? Tell us what committee. If you are sitting waiting for us to find your name in our make-believe book and we are going to call you, we are not going to do that. Come to us, we’ll get you in. We want you in. That would help us a lot.”
john.horn@latimes.com
nicole.sperling@latimes.com
Times staff writers Jasmine Elist, Deborah Vankin, Reed Johnson and Emily Rome contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1924582/news/1924582/
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Smartphone sales at Nokia dropped by almost a third in the fourth quarter as initial sales of the key Windows Phone platform failed to counter a slide in shipments of its older operating system.
However, the sharp decline was not as bad as analysts had predicted, even if the initial relief bounce faded to leave the Finnish company?s shares 2.7 per cent higher at ?4.16.
Nokia posted an operating loss of ?954m, compared with a profit of ?884m last year, which reflected a ?1.1bn writedown in its location and commerce division. There was a 21 per cent drop in sales to ?10bn in the fourth quarter.
Smartphones, most of which still use the old Symbian software, fell by about a third from a year ago to 19.6m handsets.
Stephen Elop, chief executive, said the fourth quarter was a ?significant step in Nokia?s transformation? but declined to give an annual target for 2012.
Nokia is forecast by analysts to have lost as much as 7 percentage points of global market share, to about 24 per cent, as its older smartphones struggled and its market-leading handsets in emerging markets met fierce competition from Chinese low-cost phones.
Even so, the company gave the first indications of a fightback for the high-end smartphone market ? crucial for the group?s long-term future ? after revealing that initial sales of handsets introduced in partnership with Microsoft last year exceeded 1m.
Nokia has so far launched two phones in Europe and Asia, including the flagship Lumia 800, as well as its first handsets in the US this year.
Mr Elop said: ?From this beachhead of more than 1m Lumia devices, you will see us push forward with the sales, marketing and successive product introductions necessary to be successful.?
The booming smartphone market has increasingly become an two-horse race between the Apple iPhone and Android?s many manufacturers, in spite of attempts by Nokia to claw back ground using the Windows Phone platform under a partnership agreed with Microsoft this time last year. This gulf has become particularly apparent this week given stellar earnings from Apple on Tuesday.
Nokia had been left behind in an unforgiving and swiftly moving market, a fact that led Mr Elop to declare the company to be on a ?burning platform? this time last year as he undertook extensive restructuring and pledged its smartphone future to the Microsoft platform. However, the results of this turnround strategy have yet to materialise, leading Mr Elop to declare 2012 as another year of transition.
Even so, the company shipped about 113.5m mobile devices globally in the fourth quarter, down about 8 per cent from last year. Nokia remains a popular brand of low-cost, reliable ?feature phone? handsets in emerging markets.
This week analysts at Kantar confirmed that the Lumia 800 had failed to break into the top 10 smartphones sold in the UK and the Windows platform had not taken more than 2 per cent of any market around the world.
The initial response from operators has been lukewarm in spite of their desire to see greater competition in the market.
The number of customer returns are reported to be several times higher than for the equivalent iPhone, although Nokia said it had addressed battery concerns by issuing a number of updates, and that consumer feedback had been positive.
Analysts also expect Nokia will gain ground during 2012 as the platform becomes more widely accepted, even if the dominance of Apple and Android looks unlikely to be challenged.
More News From Financial Times
Source: http://techcircle.vccircle.com/500/windows-platform-fails-to-curb-nokia%E2%80%99s-slide/
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NEW YORK (Reuters) ? From the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street movement, “The Protester” was named Time magazine’s 2011 Person of the Year on Wednesday.
Time defines the Person of the Year as someone who, for better or for worse, influences the events of the year.
“Is there a global tipping point for frustration? Everywhere, it seems, people said they’d had enough,” Time Editor Rick Stengel said in a statement.
“They dissented; they demanded; they did not despair, even when the answers came back in a cloud of tear gas or a hail of bullets. They literally embodied the idea that individual action can bring collective, colossal change,” he said.
On almost every continent, 2011 has seen an almost unprecedented rise in both peaceful and sometimes violent unrest and dissent.
Protesters in a lengthening list of countries including Israel, India, Chile, China, Britain, Spain and now the United States all increasingly link their actions explicitly to the popular revolutions that have shaken up the Middle East.
Admiral William McRaven, head of U.S. Special Operations Command and overall commander of the secret U.S. mission into Pakistan in May that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, came in at second place on the Time list.
Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, whose 81 day secret detention by authorities earlier this year sparked an international outcry, came in at No. 3, followed by U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.
Britain’s Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, who married Prince William in April, rounded out the Time short list.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
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“New Year’s Eve” is the second in a remarkably shallow series of holiday-themed, celebrity-stuffed confections from director Garry Marshall and screenwriter Katherine Fugate, following their 2010 “Valentine’s Day” collaboration. Of course, the really good stuff will come once they get to “Columbus Day,” or maybe, just maybe, “Ash Wednesday.”
Many of the elements are the same as they were for “Valentine’s Day,” just moved back on the calendar a few weeks, with the script again weaving together a dozen or so plot lines that crisscross a holiday prone to sentimentalizing.
If there is some kind of world record for schmaltz, this may have set it. Included here are first kisses, midnight rendezvous, dying fathers, newborn babies, husbands at war and trapped strangers. It’s narcotic mawkishness, with notes played on heartstrings like a 12-string guitar.
Though it’s pure, rosy fantasy on screen, this is cynical, paint-by-the-numbers entertainment, sold with a gaggle of stars spread across its movie poster like a telethon lineup.
The threads of romance emanate from ? where else? ? New York’s Times Square. Hilary Swank plays a character running the ball drop festivities, at which a famous rocker (Jon Bon Jovi as “Jensen”) is to perform, and where various police keep watch, including one played by Chris “Ludacris” Bridges.
Some of the footage from these scenes came from last year’s New Year’s in Times Square shot by cinematographer Charles Minsky. This, surely, is the film’s biggest accomplishment: The atmosphere is very true to the Times Square celebration.
Katherine Heigl plays a chef catering a pre-party featuring Jensen, who happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Her sous chef is Sofia Vergara of “Modern Family.”
Abigail Breslin, now a teenager, is hoping to join her friends in Times Square, but her mother (Sarah Jessica Parker) won’t let her. Jessica Biel, with husband Seth Meyers, is going into labor, competing for the new year’s first baby against a rival couple (Sarah Paulson, Til Schweiger).
Michelle Pfeiffer plays a meek office assistant who quits her job (John Lithgow plays her record-label executive boss, a good bit of casting that should have spawned laughs) and hires a courier (an ultra-confident Zac Efron) to help her accomplish a list of resolutions.
Ashton Kutcher, as a bearded grouch, gets stuck in an elevator for hours with backup singer Lea Michele. (I crossed my fingers that bathroom needs would spoil their budding romance, but alas.) Most incredulous, perhaps, is the pairing of nurse Halle Berry and dying Vietnam veteran Robert De Niro.
En route to love and new beginnings, the many characters run around familiar New York tourist attractions and pair off predictably.
Editor Michael Tronick deserves credit for stitching all of these corny story lines together smoothly. None of the characters are more than cardboard cliches, but the cast is likable and pretty enough (there are some rom-com pros here, including Heigl and Josh Duhamel) that most are able to swallow the pallid dialogue without causing inadvertent laughs.
The cameos keep coming until the end, with even Mayor Michael Bloomberg dropping by. After all, this is as much an ad for New York as it is a movie. And I’m pretty sure I spotted Knick Amare Stoudemire as the credits rolled. Obviously, the NBA lockout was very hard on players.
And it’s during these lighthearted extras and outtakes at the end of “New Year’s Eve” where the first and only honest moment of the film occurs. Carla Gugino, who plays the OB/GYN delivering the expected babies, hints at the crassness of the enterprise. In a gag, she emerges from between Biel’s legs with not a child, but “Valentine’s Day” DVDs.
Congratulations. It’s dreck.
“New Year’s Eve,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for language, including some sexual references. Running time: 117 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.
___
Motion Picture Association of America rating definitions:
G ? General audiences. All ages admitted.
PG ? Parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.
PG-13 ? Special parental guidance strongly suggested for children under 13. Some material may be inappropriate for young children.
R ? Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
NC-17 ? No one under 17 admitted.
DALLAS (AP) ? The average major league salary increased 2.7 percent this year to nearly $3.1 million, the largest rise since 2008.
The 913 players on Aug. 31 rosters and disabled lists averaged $3,095,183, the Major League Baseball Players Association said Monday in its annual report, up from $3,014,572 last year when the average topped $3 million for the first time.
The average figures to go up next year, with the minimum salary rising from $414,000 to $480,000 under the new labor contract.
The New York Yankees had the highest average salary for the 13th consecutive season, but at $6.54 million it declined for the second straight year, down from a peak of $7.66 million when they won the World Series in 2009.
Philadelphia was second at $6.44 million, followed by Boston ($5.21 million), the Los Angeles Angels ($4.58 million) and the World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals ($4.47 million). AL champion Texas was 15th at $3.01 million.
Among other playoff teams, Detroit was ninth at $3.96 million, Milwaukee 11th at $3.41 million, Arizona 22nd at $2.12 million and Tampa Bay 28th at $1.54 million. Commissioner Bud Selig has pointed out several times that changes to baseball’s labor contract in recent years have increased competitive balance.
Kansas City was last at $1.34 million, just behind San Diego at $1.35 million. Pittsburgh, which was last in 2010, rose to 27th at $1.73 million.
Among regulars at positions, designated hitters took over as the highest average at $9.3 million, followed by first basemen at $8.9 million. With the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez spending time on the disabled list and failing to play 100 games at third base, that position’s average dropped from $6.5 million to $5.2 million.
Outfielders were at $5.6 million, second basemen $5.2 million, starting pitchers $4.9 million, shortstops $3.9 million, catchers $2.6 million and relief pitchers $1.9 million.
The commissioner’s office will not determine its final figures for a few weeks. Management’s numbers usually differ slightly because of different methods of calculation.
Associated Press
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LOS ANGELES ? “Mad Men,” the sharply observed drama of a changing 1960s America, captured 19 Emmy nominations Thursday to lead the series pack, with the melodramatic miniseries “Mildred Pierce” starring Kate Winslet grabbing a top 21 bids.
“Mad Men” has a chance to repeat for a fourth consecutive year as best drama. “Modern Family,” last year’s top comedy series, was the most-nominated sitcom with 17 bids.
Other leading contenders include the Prohibition-era drama “Boardwalk Empire” with 18 nominations, “Saturday Night Live” with 16 and 13 bids each for the sex-and-swords fantasy “Game of Thrones” and the sitcom “30 Rock.”
“OK, keep it together,” a surprised nominations co-announcer Melissa McCarthy said when she realized she was a nominee for her sitcom “Mike & Molly.”
It’s been a sweet year already for McCarthy, the one-time “Gilmore Girls” cast member who’s drawn critical raves for her turn in the box office hit “Bridesmaids.”
The controversial miniseries “The Kennedys,” which was dropped by the History channel and given a second chance by the lesser-known ReelzChannel, received 10 nominations, including best miniseries and acting bids for Greg Kinnear as President John F. Kennedy, Barry Pepper as Robert Kennedy and Tom Wilkinson as family patriarch Joe Kennedy.
Familiar faces have a chance to claim ? or reclaim ? Emmys, including last year’s lead comedy actress winner Edie Falco of “Nurse Jackie” and Jim Parsons, best actor for a comedy for “The Big Bang Theory.” Both were nominated this year, with Parsons’ co-star Johnny Galecki earning his first bid for the show.
“Project Runway” was nominated in the reality category for the seventh consecutive year and host Heidi Klum got the happy news while filming an upcoming episode. The show has never won, but Klum said getting nominated proved it is still relevant.
“What I always say when I talk to my designers, ‘One day you’re in and the next day you’re out ? as quick as that.’ There’s always great new shows that come in, and they can kick you off just as easy as you came on. Therefore, we’re very happy to be nominated again.”
Jon Hamm received his fourth lead acting bid for “Mad Men,” and this time the competitor who denied him the award three times before isn’t in the category. Bryan Cranston and “Breaking Bad” weren’t eligible for this year’s awards because the series took a break between seasons.
Hamm’s new competition includes Steve Buscemi, who received a Golden Globe for his performance as an Atlantic City political boss in “Boardwalk Empire.”
Steve Carell earned a best comedy actor nomination for his final season of “The Office,” his last chance to win an Emmy statuette for his role as TV’s most clueless boss.
Matt LeBlanc, best known for his role as Joey in “Friends,” received a lead comedy actor bid for playing a screen version of himself in the satiric show business series “Episodes.”
“I knew I was on some prediction lists and stuff like that, but it’s not the kind of thing you expect,” he said by phone. “You just work hard. If you get recognized for it, that’s great, but if not, it’s OK, too.”
And proving that the Betty White phenomenon still has legs: The 89-year-old wonder nabbed a best supporting actress bid for the sitcom “Hot in Cleveland.” If she wins, it would be her eighth Emmy.
“I am so thrilled. How lucky can an old broad be?” she said by phone a few minutes after her agent woke her. “I wasn’t even thinking about the nominations because I didn’t even think there was a chance.”
There were fresh faces as well, including best drama actress nominee Mireille Enos of “The Killing” and best drama actor Timothy Olyphant of “Justified.”
Kyra Sedgwick of “The Closer,” last year’s best drama actress winner, found herself closed out of the category this year.
“Glee” stars Lea Michele and Matthew Morrison failed to repeat their acting nods, but Chris Colfer and Jane Lynch got second consecutive nominations and there was Emmy love to spare for “Glee” guest actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Kristin Chenoweth and Dot-Marie Jones.
Chenoweth was fast asleep when her manager called with the news and didn’t want to predict her chances of winning: “I’m sure people will be speculating, but honestly, I have zero idea. I consider the nomination the win and an excuse to put on a cute dress.”
Lynch, who was a winner last year for her role as an obsessive cheerleading coach, is hosting this year’s Emmy ceremony. The awards air Sept. 18 on Fox.
Ed O’Neill, who was snubbed last year for “Modern Family,” this year received a supporting actor bid for his role as the family chief. His co-star, Eric Stonestreet, who plays Cameron, was nominated as a supporting actor and tweeted that he was in Belgium and so his reaction would be in Flemish: “wauw!” the message began.
Conan O’Brien’s switch to TBS after a bitter departure from NBC didn’t hurt him in the nominations: “Conan” earned a bid for best variety, music or comedy series and will compete with, among others, perennial winner “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” A writing nomination also went to “Conan.”
NBC’s late-night pick, Jay Leno, was snubbed in the categories, as was CBS’ David Letterman.
“Sarah Palin’s Alaska” was submitted by TLC in four categories, including best reality series and cinematography, and was blanked. Shows that made the reality series cut include “Hoarders” and “Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List.”
Two Oscar winners, Winslet and Melissa Leo, have a chance to score an Emmy for “Mildred Pierce.” Leo, who also appears in the New Orleans drama “Treme,” received a supporting actress bid for the miniseries.
Emmy voters have a chance to flaunt their risk-taking side with “Game of Thrones,” given the usual resistance to rewarding genre shows such as fantasy or science fiction.
The series based on the George R.R. Martin novels scored a best drama nod but only a single acting bid, for Peter Dinklage in a supporting role.
Other best drama contenders besides “Game” and “Mad Men” are “Boardwalk Empire,” “Dexter,” “Friday Night Lights” and “The Good Wife.”
“Modern Family” is competing with “The Big Bang Theory,” “Glee,” “The Office,” “Parks and Recreation” and “30 Rock” for the best comedy crown.
The nominations, which were announced by McCarthy and Joshua Jackson of “Fringe” at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences,” sets up a clash in a new category that combines the previously separate movies and miniseries.
The contenders besides “Mildred Pierce” and “The Kennedys” are “Cinema Verite,” “Downton Abbey,” “The Pillars of the Earth” and “Too Big to Fail,” about the 2008 U.S. fiscal crisis. Snubbed in the category was the new incarnation of “Upstairs Downstairs,” which found its turf poached by the other British class drama, “Downtown Abbey.”
“Let’s all dress like Mildred Pierce for the Emmys,” Mindy Kaling of “The Office” joked in a tweet about the mid-20th century drama based on the James M. Cain novel.
Besides Bates and Enos, other best drama series actress nominees are Connie Britton for “Friday Night Lights,” Mariska Hargitay for “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” Julianna Margulies for “The Good Wife” and Elisabeth Moss for “Mad Men.”
Hamm, who plays the darkly conflicted Don Draper in “Mad Men,” is competing in the lead drama actor category with Buscemi, Olyphant, Kyle Chandler of “Friday Night Lights,” Michael C. Hall of “Dexter” and Hugh Laurie of “House” ? who has yet to receive a trophy after five previous nominations.
On the comedy side, McCarthy and Falco will be vying for best comedy series actress with Laura Linney of “The Big C,” Martha Plimpton of “Raising Hope,” Amy Poehler of “Parks and Recreation” and Tina Fey of “30 Rock.”
Louis C.K. of “Louie” and Alec Baldwin of “30 Rock” are nominated for best actor in a comedy along with Parsons, Carell, Galecki and LeBlanc.
“American Idol,” which has yet to win in the reality-competition category, is competing with “The Amazing Race,” “Dancing With the Stars,” “Project Runway,” “So You Think You Can Dance” and last year’s winner “Top Chef.”
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AP Entertainment Writers Derrik J. Lang, Sandy Cohen and Ryan Pearson, and AP Television Writer Frazier Moore contributed to this report.
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Online: http://www.emmys.tv
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