OMG -- Holiday Sale at PS Classics

Are you looking for something quick to grab for a holiday gift? PS Classics, the company that brings you all kinds of great music, Broadway and otherwise, is offering a holiday sale. Till the end of the holiday season, all cds from 2011 and earlier are marked down to just $9.95.

You can choose from cast recordings, like the one from the revival of 110 in the Shade with Audra McDonald, or Assassins with Neil Patrick Harris and Michael Cerveris, or Nine, starring Antonio Banderas. That last one is quite wonderful. Laura Benanti, Jane Krakowski, Chita Rivera? All included. And so much better than the movie version, which you probably didn't see, anyway, because, let's face it, Daniel Day Lewis is no Guido. And Antonio Banderas is.

PS Classics also specializes in new recordings of old shows, not shows revived on Broadway, but ones revived and restored by PS Classics just for the recording. Like Kitty's Kisses and Sweet Bye and Bye. Fabulous stuff.

And there are solo albums from people like Liz Callaway, Rebecca Luker, Kate Baldwin, Jessica Molaskey, Phillip Chaffin, Jason Danieley... You haven't lived till you've heard Danieley and Marin Mazzie take on Harold Arlen tunes.

You'll also want to take a look at what PS Classics calls "songbooks," like The Maury Yeston Songbook, which I think you pretty much have to own if you want to call yourself a Broadway musical fan. It includes songs I recognized, like "Unusual Way" from Nine, which is gorgeous here as sung by Brian d'Arcy James, and "No Moon" from Titanic, hauntingly performed by Howard McGillin, as well as things I didn't know before, like the simple and sweet "My Grandmother's Love Letters," sung by Christine Ebersole.

Other songbook choices include Sondheim, Strouse, Jason Robert Brown, Jonathan Larson, Lane and Harburg, Maltby and Shire, Georgia Stitt and Jule Styne. And more Maury Yeston.

Some must-have items, like the revival of Follies and Sweet Little Devil, a long-lost Gershwin musical, and the cast recording of the new Off-Broadway musical Death Takes a Holiday, are not on sale because they're too new. They're still perfect holiday gifts for anybody on your list who has a hankering for musical theatre. I'll take two of each, please.

My Favorite Holiday Movies 2012

Last year, I did a whole series on the holiday movies I like, with notations on when and where those movies would show up on your television. Unfortunately, this year most of my favorites won't be aired. I don't understand it, either.  How can you not show Holiday and Christmas in Connecticut and Swing Time?

Luckily I own copies of those three (plus a whole lot more Fred Astaire movies just right for New Year's Eve) so I won't be marooned without good movies. Plus they're all available on instant view from Amazon.

And my second tier of holiday movies, the ones that are a little better known, are still around. Here are the ones I picked out last year, the ones that hold up for me.

Up first: Elf, the 2003 film with ex-SNL comedian Will Ferrell as Buddy, a full-size guy who's had a hard time getting by as an adopted child in the teeny-tiny elf world at the North Pole. An outcast for his inability to be a proper elf, Buddy shows up in New York, where he learns about real people, romance and families, with a marvelous supporting cast in both worlds. I can take or leave James Caan, although he's fine as Buddy's real dad, but it's lovely to see Bob Newhart as his elf papa and even lovelier to see Ed Asner (I still have kind of a crush on him from his Lou Grant days) as Santa. Elf is sweet and silly, never cloying, with Ferrell deftly playing Buddy as a wide-eyed naif who means well, even if he and his big feet step in all the wrong places.

You'll find Elf on the ABC Family network on December 26th and 27th.

Miracle on 34th Street (the 1947 version) is one of the most recognizable holiday movies around, so everybody should know its story about a cynical little girl named Susan (played by the unbelievably cute Natalie Wood) and her hard-working single mother (Maureen O'Hara), neither of whom believes in Santa Claus. But then what appears to be the real Kris Kringle (played by the even more adorable Edmund Gwenn) arrives at Mom's department store and a firestorm of controversy erupts. Is he crazy? Is he the real deal?

A handsome lawyer (John Payne) lends a hand when Kris has a sanity hearing, Mom gets a romance, Susan starts to believe that wishes can come true, and everybody has a Merry Christmas. Well, maybe not the cranky pencil pusher who put Santa Claus on trial.

It's a classic for a reason: All the elements work perfectly, the players are terrific and just what they need to be, and both Edmund Gwenn and Natalie Wood knock it out of the park.

You can find Miracle on 34th Street all over AMC from December 20th to 24th.

My last holiday movie is darker and edgier, shoving Bill Murray into an updated Christmas Carol set in the world of TV production in 1988.

In Scrooged, Murray's character, Frank Cross, is too busy ordering people around for a live Christmas Carol broadcast to notice that he has no friends, his girlfriend (Karen Allen) left long ago, and he seriously needs a wake-up call on how to behave like a human being. The best part of the movie is its crazy take on his ghosts, with Buster Poindexter (credited here under his real name, David Johansen) as a ferocious cab driver Ghost of Christmas Past and Carol Kane looking pretty but packing quite a punch as the Ghost of Christmas Present. She wallops Cross in the face with a toaster in a moment that resonates long past the movie.

Bill Murray's brothers John, Joel and Brian Doyle Murray show up in cameos, plus you get to see a parade of wacky stars (Buddy Hackett, Robert Goulet, Lee Majors, John Houseman) in the TV extravaganza Cross is supposedly putting on.

Scrooged is cynical and irreverent, with that snarky edge Bill Murray does so well. It's like a crazy ride in Buster Poindexter's Hellcab. But it's also hella funny and a welcome companion to all the other Christmas Carols out there.

I'm afraid you'll have to rent Scrooged at the video store (if you still have one) or get it on Netflix or Amazon, because it isn't showing up in anybody's TV listings right now. Bah humbug!

Is there life in ONE LIFE TO LIVE and ALL MY CHILDREN?

Deadline is reporting that there may be life in One Life to Live yet. One Life to Live and its sister soap All My Children, both longtime ABC daytime dramas filmed in New York, were axed in 2011, although production company Prospect Park was supposedly trying to put a deal together to bring them both to the internet as web soaps with some of the same actors. All of that fell through, which meant AMC aired for the last time in September 2011, while OLTL bowed out in January 2012. Two of One Life's most famous characters, father and daughter Todd and Starr Manning, have since resurfaced on General Hospital, the lone ABC soap left.

And now, out of the blue, Rich Frank and Jeff Kwatinetz, the guys behind Prospect Park, are back in the news with their soap-operas-on-the-web deal apparently rising like a phoenix from the ashes. Deadline's Nellie Andreeva writes, "I hear Frank and Kwatinetz never lost hope, and had been quietly working since the summer on putting their plan back together and had been talking with the guilds, resulting in agreements with SAG-AFTRA and DGA. (The status of talks with WGA is unclear.) I hear there are preliminary discussions with actors from All My Children and One Life To Live to rejoin the revived shows. Prospect Park refused to comment."

Andreeva also notes that this is a good time to revive soap operas, since the four left on TV (The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives and General Hospital) have been going up in the ratings within the last year. Before it was canceled, One Life to Live was routinely beating GH in the ratings (and it was a much better show than GH, as well.)

Time will tell whether there's anything in these new rumors. Wary viewers know better than to trust Prospect Park after the last time. But still... Hope springs eternal. And that last (Hope Springs Eternal) just happens to be the name I made up for a soap opera I put in a romance novel way back in the 80s. My fictional daytime drama was loosely based on Santa Barbara, my fave at the time. But, you know, if the soaps really do come back strong and somebody needs a name for a new one... I still think Hope Springs Eternal has possibilities.

Screen Actors Guild Nominations: Loving LINCOLN, SILVER LININGS and LES MIS

Like the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards cover both movies and TV. Unlike the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards are a pretty darn good predictor for Oscar's acting nominations. They also cover a lot more ground in terms of voters; initial nominations are done by a random selection of about 2000 SAG members across the country, with final voting open to all 100,000 actors who belong to the Screen Actors Guild. Since those SAG members will be the same ones voting in Oscar's acting categories, you can see why they're a good prognostication tool.

The Screen Actors Guild is one of the newer entries into the awards show sweepstakes, beginning in 1995, but they're also taken a bit more seriously than some of the others, since they are voted upon by actors and only actors judging in their area of expertise, and they don't mess around with awards for songs or special effects or makeup. They don't even give a Best Picture or Best Show award. Just Best Ensemble.

On the film side, this year they've nominated Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones, as well the entire ensemble from Lincoln; along with leads Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, supporting actor Robert DeNiro, and the cast as a whole from Silver Linings Playbook; and Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway and the acting and stunt casts of Les Misérables.

The other casts as a whole recognized are from Argo and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. From Argo, supporting actor Alan Arkin was nominated, while Maggie Smith was the lone actor given a nod from Marigold Hotel.

Other actors nominated include John Hawkes and Helen Hunt in The Sessions, Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty, Marion Cotillard in Rust and Bone, Helen Mirren in Hitchcock, Denzel Washington in Flight, Naomi Watts in The Impossible, Javier Bardem in Skyfall, Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master, and Nicole Kidman in The Paperboy.

Along with Les Miz, the stunt casts from The Amazing Spider Man, The Bourne Legacy, The Dark Knight Rises and Skyfall were nominated. TV "action" ensembles recognized include those from Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy and The Walking Dead.

Boardwalk Empire and Breaking Bad also scored nominations for their acting casts, accompanying Downton Abbey, Homeland and Mad Men in the Drama category. Yes, cable rules the day in drama, as AMC, HBO, PBS and Showtime shut out ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox in nominations.

Four of the five dramas also got nods for their leads actors, as Boardwalk Empire's Steve Buscemi, Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston, Homeland's Damian Lewis and Mad Men's Jon Hamm were all nominated. Jeff Daniels of The Newsroom filled the last slot in that category.

If Hugh Bonneville of Downton Abbey was not recognized, his costars Michelle Dockery and Maggie Smith were. They will compete with Claire Danes from Homeland, Jessica Lange from American Horror Story and Juliana Margulies from The Good Wife.

For comedy series, the casts of 30 Rock, The Big Bang Theory, Glee, Modern Family, Nurse Jackie and The Office were nominated. If you're thinking the Guild is a few years out of date in this category, I would agree with you.

Individual comedic actors recognized include Ty Burrell, Eric Stonestreet and Sofia Vergara from Modern Family, Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey from 30 Rock, Louie C.K. from Louie, Edie Falco from Nurse Jackie, Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory, Amy Poehler from Parks and Recreation and Betty White from Hot in Cleveland.

The TV miniseries or movie category is smaller, with categories for only lead actor and actress. Why no ensemble award for a television miniseries or movie? Why no supporting categories for anything on TV? Because that's not how the Screen Actors Guild rolls.

In any event, Woody Harrelson, Ed Harris and Julianne Moore were all nominated for the Sarah Palin-inspired Game Change, while one Hatfield (Kevin Costner) and one McCoy (Bill Paxton) got nods for Hatfields & McCoys and both Hemingway (Clive Owen) and Gellhorn (Nicole Kidman) were nominated in Hemingway & Gellhorn. That leaves Charlotte Rampling in Restless, Sigourney Weaver in Politcal Animals and Alfre Woodward in Steel Magnolias to round out the mini/movie nominations.

There is also a lifetime achievement award, and this year that will go to Dick Van Dyke.

The Screen Actors Guild will hand out their Actor statuettes on January 27, 2013, in a ceremony broadcast on both TNT and TBS from LA's Shrine Exposition Center.

ISU's MOTHER COURAGE Headed to KC/ACTF Regionals in Michigan

Illinois State University's School of Theatre and Dance has announced that their "fierce and ferocious" October production of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage, directed by Professor Sandra Zielinski, has been invited to perform at the regional level of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. That means ISU will be taking their entire production of Mother Courage up to Saginaw, Michigan, in early January to showcase their show and their program. And you can help!

As they take their act on the road, you can contribute a dollar or two (or a hundred or two) and ISU's Friends of the Arts will match your gift. I suggest you go big and make Friends of the Arts match your generosity!

ISU's Mother Courage was really terrific, with exceptional performances from Abby Vombrack as Mother Courage and Michele Stine as her mute daughter Kattrin, among others in the talented cast. Zielinski's use of music and on-stage musicians helped keep it properly epic, while the actors made it affecting and powerful. If you'd like to refresh your recollection of the production, you can see a cast photo, a couple of sketches of the scenic design, and a cast list here.

The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival was created in 1969 to connect theatre students from universities all over the country, allowing them to network, perform, and hear opinions from voices outside their own departments, with the overall goal of improving the quality of college theatre across the United States.

Every fall, colleges and universities enter their productions for consideration, with the finest among them chosen to attend regional festivals held annually in January and February. In addition to handing out awards to excellent productions and scholarships to worthy students, the regionl fFestivals offer programs, workshops and symposia on acting, directing, design, playwriting, criticism, dramaturgy and stage management. Regional festival productions like Mother Courage are judged by a panel of three judges selected by the Kennedy Center and the KCACTF national committee. These judges select four to six of the "best and most diverse regional festival productions" to travel to the national festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

ISU's Mother Courage will be performed at the Region III festival in Saginaw along with Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel, as performed by cast and crew from the University of Wisconsin -- Parkside, Ghost Bike, a new play from Laura Jacqmin, produced by Wisconsin's Carthage College, a production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest from the University of Wisconsin -- Whitewater, In the Soundless Awe, from Chicago's Concordia College, co-written by Concordia professors Andrew Pederson and Jayme McGhan, and another new play, Three Generations of Imbeciles, by Bill Baer, presented by Cuyahoga Community College.

To help ISU and Mother Courage get to Saginaw, you can find contribution information here, or proceed directly to the ISU Foundation online giving page.

Four Great Lubitsch Films Tonight on TCM

Turner Classic Movies is really hitting it out of the park, programming-wise, at least for my particular taste in film. We just got both The Lady Eve and Ball of Fire on Barbara Stanwyck Wednesday, and now we get Ernst Lubitsch Friday!

Lubitsch was one of the seven directors I listed in the piece on The Lady Eve earlier this week. I called them The Big 7 -- they really weren't called that in the 30s and 40s, although, at least from the vantage point of the 70s, they were considered masters of their comedic film craft in the 30s and 40s -- and Lubitsch may just have been the best of the bunch.

As you may guess from his name, Ernst Lubitsch was German. He was born in Berlin and began his career in Germany, working as an actor with Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater just about a hundred years ago. But he turned to film rather quickly, first as an actor and then as a director, moving to Hollywood in 1922 when he was hand-picked by Mary Pickford to direct one of her movies.

He successfully directed all kinds of European-flavored silent films, like The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, a 1928 "Viennese Fairytale" from MGM that starred Ramon Novarro as a prince (who was also a student) who falls in love with a barmaid, played by Norma Shearer. You'll also find Hollywood legend Jean Hersholt as the prince's kindly tutor. Even though my favorite film professor in college was a major Lubitsch fan (and scholar), we did not see The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg in class. That means I will be looking for it tonight at 11:45 pm when TCM sends it my way. We can all raise a glass together to The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg and his lovely barmaid!

Lubitsch moved to directing musicals when talkies hit, including 1932's One Hour with You, a tuneful trifle with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald as a charming Parisian couple, blissfully married until a flirt named Mitzi tries to come between them. Ooh la la! One Hour with You is a remake of Lubitsch's earlier film The Marriage Circle, and, yes, this one did make it to my film class. Actually, I believe both The Marriage Circle and One Hour with You were there. Words like sophisticated and saucy come to mind for One Hour with You and its fancy French tomfoolery. And if you're like me, you will be very surprised at how mischievous, appealing, and lighter-than-air Jeanette MacDonald comes off.

One Hour with You will air tonight on TCM at 10:15 pm (Central time), just before Old Heidelberg.

Also released in 1932 was Trouble in Paradise, the third Lubitsch film TCM has chosen for tonight. If possible, it's even more sophisticated and charming than the others. In this one, Lily pretends to be a Countress, but she's really a pickpocket, slipping expensive watches off her marks. She's met her match in Gaston, who says he's a Baron, but he's really an international jewel thief, expertly removing diamonds and rubies from the women he romances.

As played by Miriam Hopkins (she's the blonde staring daggers in the corner of the poster) and Herbert Marshall, Lily and Gaston are smooth, sardonic and slinky, in a Continental sort of way, making love and stealing from each other at the same time. But when Gaston tries to move in on wealthy Mariette, played by Kay Francis (the brunette looking clingy over there) to get at her jewels and money, Lily does not appreciate it.

Trouble in Paradise is unabashedly sinful, what with Lily and Gaston and their perfectly lovely life of crime, plus suggestive dialogue and a lot of winks and nods to its characters' sex lives, so it's pretty amazing the censors didn't squelch all the joy out of it. Ah well. It is left to us to enjoy this delicious pastry of a film, with Hopkins and Marshall giving silky, seductive performances as the naughty duo of thieves.

If you've ever heard of the "Lubitsch touch," this film is full of them. Look for sly touches of elegance that glide right past what might seem snarky or raunchy elsewhere. Lubitsch keeps his innuendo stylish and sophisticated, delicate and delightful. As a result, Trouble in Paradise is pretty much perfect. Or parfait. You'll find it at 7 pm Central tonight on TCM.

And, yes, there is one more. Noël Coward's Design for Living and its ménage à trois was so scandalous it couldn't open in London in 1932, when Coward wrote it. So it came to Broadway instead. What? Americans less puritannical than Brits? Apparently. Not only was it a hit on Broadway, with Coward himself and Lunt and Fontanne forming the triangle, but it quickly got picked up by Hollywood for a film version, with what must've seemed like the perfect director -- Lubitsch, of course -- attached.

But the 1933 film Design for Living isn't much like the play.  For one thing, pretty girl Gilda, played by Miriam Hopkins, and the two men she's in love with, Tom and George, played by Fredric March and Gary Cooper, are decidedly American. Gone is the European sophistication. Gone is any sense of Tom and George being attracted to each other as well as Gilda. Gone is the daring ménage Coward wrote.

Oh well. If you can forget about the original play, Design for Living still has three great leads romping around, a snazzy Ben Hecht script, and the inevitable Lubitsch touches.

Design for Living airs tonight at 8:30 pm on TCM.

Golden Globe Nominations Announced, Usual Oddities Included

So the Golden Globe nominations were announced yesterday. And now there's that.

A lot of people trumpet that the Golden Globes are bellwethers for the Oscars. Yeah, no. They may generate more publicity for films that have been flying under the radar, or they may push forward a performance nobody was considering, but really, there is very little prognostication value from the Golden Globes. Remember, they're voted upon by the murky body known as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which has about 90 members. That's not a typo. 9-0. More people than that vote for dog catcher in Mayberry.

But still.. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association and its 90 members have managed to parlay their little party into a big deal where the people who put together both film and television can and will show up to get some facetime on the first big awards show of the year. Note that even though the Screen Actors Guild announced their nominations a day earlier than the Globes, the Globes will hold their ceremony on NBC on January 13, while the SAG Awards don't show up till the 27th.

So what do these nominations mean? Well, they mean that the 90 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press like NBC's execrable Smash more than makes any sense, that they like the new Quentin Tarantino movie Django Unchained more than most people expected, they continue to love Modern Family, they don't love Mad Men or Parks and Recreation nearly as much as I do, and they love Lincoln most of all. Meanwhile... Hello? Scandal? It, Kerry Washington and Jeff Perry ought to be right up the Golden alley.

But let's look at they've recognized, shall we?

BEST MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA
Argo
Django Unchained
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Zero Dark Thirty

BEST MOTION PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Les Miserables
Moonrise Kingdom
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Silver Linings Playbook

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Brave
Frankenweenie
Hotel Transylvania
Rise of the Guardians
Wreck-It Ralph

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Amour (Australia)
A Royal Affair (Denmark)
The Intouchables (France)
Kon-Tiki (Norway/UK/Denmark)
Rust and Bone (France)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA
Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty)
Marion Cotillard (Rust and Bone)
Helen Mirren (Hitchcock)
Naomi Watts (The Impossible)
Rachel Weisz (The Deep Blue Sea)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA
Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln)
Richard Gere (Arbitrage)
John Hawkes (The Sessions)
Joaquin Phoenix (The Master)
Denzel Washington (Flight)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Emily Blunt (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen)
Judi Dench (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel)
Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook)
Maggie Smith (Quartet)
Meryl Streep (Hope Springs)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Jack Black (Bernie)
Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook)
Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables)
Ewan McGregor (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen)
Bill Murray (Hyde Park on Hudson)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE
Amy Adams (The Master)
Sally Field (Lincoln)
Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables)
Helen Hunt (The Sessions)
Nicole Kidman (The Paperboy)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE
Alan Arkin (Argo)
Leonardo DiCaprio (Django Unchained)
Philip Seymour Hoffman  (The Master)
Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln)
Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained)

BEST DIRECTOR – MOTION PICTURE
Ben Affleck (Argo)
Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty)
Ang Lee (Life of Pi)
Steven Spielberg (Lincoln)
Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained)

BEST SCREENPLAY – MOTION PICTURE
Mark Boal (Zero Dark Thirty)
Tony Kushner (Lincoln)
David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook)
Quentin Tarantino (Django Unchained)
Chris Terrio (Argo)

BEST TELEVISION SERIES – DRAMA 
Breaking Bad
Boardwalk Empire
Downton Abbey 
Homeland
The Newsroom

BEST TELEVISION SERIES – COMEDY OR MUSICAL
The Big Bang Theory
Episodes
Girls
Modern Family
Smash

BEST MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Game Change
The Girl
Hatfields & McCoys
The Hour
Political Animals

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A TELEVISION SERIES – DRAMA
Connie Britton (Nashville)
Glenn Close (Damages)
Claire Danes (Homeland)
Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey)
Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A TELEVISION SERIES – DRAMA
Steve Buscemi (Boardwalk Empire)
Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad)
Jeff Daniels (The Newsroom)
Jon Hamm (Mad Men)
Damian Lewis (Homeland)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A TELEVISION SERIES – COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Zooey Deshanel (New Girl)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep)
Lena Dunham (Girls)
Tina Fey (30 Rock)
Amy Poehler (Parks and Recreation)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A TELEVISION SERIES – COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Alec Baldwin (30 Rock)
Don Cheadle (House of Lies)
Louis C.K. (Louie)
Matt LeBlanc (Episodes)
Jim Parsons (Big Bang Theory)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION 
Nicole Kidman (Hemingway and Gellhorn)
Jessica Lange (American Horror Story)
Sienna Miller (The Girl)
Julianne Moore (Game Change)
Sigourney Weaver (Political Animals)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Kevin Costner (Hatfields & McCoys)
Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock)
Woody Harrelson (Game Change)
Toby Jones (The Girl)
Clive Owen (Hemingway and Gellhorn)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A SERIES, MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Hayden Panettiere (Nashville)
Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife)
Sarah Paulson (Game Change)
Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey)
Sofia Vergara (Modern Family)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A SERIES, MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Max Greenfield (New Girl)
Ed Harris (Game Change)
Danny Huston (Magic City)
Mandy Patinkin (Homeland)
Eric Stonestreet (Modern Family)