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The Emmy landscape has changed drastically in the past two decades. Going in to the 54th Emmy Awards, which took place on Sept. 22, 2002, it was a broadcast network — NBC — that led the nominations with 47. Emmy powerhouse HBO came in second with 38. FX and VH1 earned their first nominations while the first major streaming series, Netflix’s “House of Cards,” was still 11 years away. Several of this year’s contenders for Emmy gold were either nominated or won 20 years ago.

Laura Linney, who has been nominated nine times and won four statuettes, is nominated this year for her lead role in the final season of Netflix’s “Ozark” and as co-executive producer of this drama series contender. Two decades ago, she won her first Emmy for her lead role in the Showtime telefilm “Wild Iris.”

HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm, which has been nominated 51 times and has won two Emmys, is...

From the first time I saw it until this moment, two days before what might just be the most important, potentially resonant (for good and ill) American presidential election since the days of the Civil War, no other movie has expanded in my view more meaningfully, more ambiguously, with more fascination than has Robert Altman’s Nashville. We often hear of movies which “transcend” their genres, or their initial ambitions or intentions, and often built into that alleged transcendence is a condescension to said genre, or those ambitions or intentions, as if the roots were somehow corrupt or unworthy, in need of reconstruction. If the form of Nashville transcends anything, it’s the shape and scope of the multi-character drama as we’d come to know it in 1975, which was dominated at the time by disaster movies and their jam-packed casts filled with old Hollywood veterans and Oscar winners. But...

Former United States Senator, and Presidential candidate, George McGovern.

In 2005, I had the good fortune to interview former Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern for Venice Magazine, in conjunction with the release of Stephen Vittoria's documentary "One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern," which looked at McGovern's ill-fated 1972 bid for the White House. During our interview, and during a lengthy dinner at Kate Mantilini in Beverly Hills several months later, (which happened to fall on what would have been the 80th birthday of his close friend, Robert F. Kennedy), McGovern was thoughtful, direct, and kind-hearted; a gentleman and a gentle man. When we raised a glass to toast Bobby Kennedy's memory, Senator McGovern said quietly "Bobby made us all want to be better people." A more fitting valediction of George McGovern couldn't be said. Rest in peace.

George McGovern Shines On

By

Alex Simon

Editor's...

Edwin Newman, who served NBC News for 32 years and was one of the most respected journalists in broadcast news, has died, the network announced Wednesday. He was 91.

Newman died peacefully of pneumonia Aug. 13 in Oxford, England, his lawyer Rupert Mead told Reuters. His wife and daughter wanted to wait before announcing his death to come to terms with the loss, Mead said.

Newman was regarded as a master journalist -- a newsman, a commentator and an esteemed critic. He received the George Foster Peabody Award in 1966 for "wit and depth of understanding" for his radio news broadcasts.

Beginning in 1961 and until his retirement in 1984, Newman was an indefatigable force in network news. In addition to his commentary, he narrated numerous documentary specials for NBC -- at one point, he acknowledged that he had, perhaps, made more TV docs than anyone. He also moderated two presidential debates: Ford vs. Carter in 1976 and Reagan vs.

By Steven Mikulan

 

At the end of a three-week preliminary hearing that was as hard-fought among attorneys and prosecutors as though it were a full-blown trial, Judge Robert Perry found enough evidence existed to bind Howard K. Smith, Dr. Khristine Eroshevich and Dr. Sandeep Kapoor over for trial on charges the three conspired to illegally supply model and actress Anna Nicole Smith with prescription drugs. Smith died in 2007 from an overdose of one or more of the many medications allegedly presc...