What is Movie News After Dark? Tonight it’s the column I’m filling in on as Neil Miller journeys to the mystical, frozen land of Chicago. It’s also a list of links to movie or entertainment related things that I either found interesting, noteworthy, or that involved super famous young girls from the Disney channel. Tonight we begin by getting a glimpse at the second season of HBO’s Game of Thrones. WinterisComing.net has a whole host of pictures from the second season that have reminded me of how much I like the show and reinforced the three reasons why I’m looking forward to new episodes so much: boobs, blood, and Brienne. Hopefully we’ll be getting a lot of each.

Because it’s Saturday, we’re talking television. That’s when Amber Humphrey publishes her weekly entry of Channel Guide, our twice-weekly column on all things television. But there’s something else at work this week. It might be Saturday, but it’s also the final day of the year. And what better way to send off our coverage of television in the year 2011 than with a list of the shows that we loved most dearly. In order to do so, Channel Guiders Amber Humphrey and Mikela Floyd each contributed their picks for the five best shows of the year, in no particular order. In keeping with our ’11 Best’ theme for the Year in Review, FSR Publisher and closet television fanatic (don’t tell movies, we don’t want them to be jealous) Neil Miller throws in one final pick with his own best show of the year. All powers combined, they have unleashed our list of the 11 Best TV Shows of 2011.

Editor’s Note: This article will be updated in real time as the winners come in during the Primetime Emmys broadcast. Winners will be highlighted in bold and you can check out the winners that were already announced at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards. The very first Emmy Award was given to a ventriloquist named Shirley Dinsdale who worked with a puppet called Judy Splinters. Is that significant? Of course it is. That fact coupled with the design of the award itself – a woman holding an atom – represent the true heart of television’s most significant celebration: artistic inspiration, scientific technology, and wooden humanoids that only talk with a hand shoved up their back. Ponder that while you bask in the glory of the victorious. Here are the winners of the 2011 Primetime Emmy Awards.

Guess what everyone, the Emmys are back in town! Aren’t you excited?! No, that’s okay, neither am I. Just another night for some of Hollywood’s biggest talents to pat themselves on the back for making pretend (really good pretend, though). But you know what, we here at FSR will treat this with the utmost respect that we do all awards ceremonies. That said, before we get to the predictions, let’s take a look at some of the top winners from the Creative Arts Awards portion of the Emmys which were awarded last week: Futurama walked away with the top honor for animated program based on the episode ‘The Late Philip J. Fry,’ beating out front runners South Park and The Simpsons who dominated the category between 2000 and 2009. This also marks the second time Futurama has won the award for Best Animated Series. Maurice LaMarche also walked away with the award for Best Voice-Over Performance for his work on the series as Lrr and Orson Welles. Gwyneth Paltrow took the award for Best Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Holly Holiday on Glee. Game of Thrones took the award for Best Title Sequence. Boardwalk Empire took the win for Best Visual effects beating out the likes of The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. Deadliest Catch won the award for Best Reality Series (a win that is more than acceptable in this category). Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let’s move on to [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Closer to the Moon already has a lot of things going for it. It’s got Mark Strong and Vera Farmiga cast in lead roles, an interesting story about Communism and bank robberies, and an experienced Romanian director named Nae Caranfil putting it all together. And now you can add to the pile of positives that they’ve managed to poach one of the standout actors from HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones for another lead role. This one is starting to look like a project to pay attention to. We already know that Strong will be playing Max Rosenthal, a former police officer who is implicated in a bank robbery and is forced to re-enact his crimes in a propaganda film produced by the Communist-era Romanian government before being put to death. And it’s old news to us that Farmiga will be playing the mother of his child, a student in Moscow who travels back to Bucharest when she hears of Rosenthal’s impending execution. Harry Lloyd’s casting adds even another interesting wrinkle into the story. He will be playing a cameraman working on the propaganda film that Rosenthal is forced to take part in, and apparently over the course of the film he falls in love with Farmiga’s character. Drama! Seeing as I’ve only seen Lloyd playing the sniveling, awful Viserys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, I’m kind of picturing this as being less a love triangle and more a tragedy where Rosenthal gets his life snuffed out and his girl [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

San Diego’s Comic-Con has come and gone once again with 2011 marking my fourth straight year of attendance. Living in Los Angeles, it’s easy for me to shoot down there for the weekend, but beyond that, I actually like Comic-Con, seemingly unlike the majority of my colleagues. It’s only been three days since the Con ended, which means the memories are still fresh and the bones still ache, so it’s a perfect time to pop some Advil and reflect on SDCC, on the good and on the bad. Without further words to flush out the introductory paragraphs on the homepage, I present to you Comic Con 2011: 10 Things I Liked, 5 I Didn’t.

Yup, it’s that time of the year again. That time of the year where we TV folk bitch and moan about what shows won’t be getting some golden Emmy love because the Academy is full of old people who think basic cable is what holds up the Brooklyn Bridge, which they also saw get built… I think… That said, this year’s Emmy Nominations are no more surprising than they were last year. Mad Men leads in the scripted drama series dept with nineteen nominations, but more interestingly, the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce leads the overall with twenty one nominations. Before we get and further into this, let’s check out some of the shows that didn’t get nominated for anything in either overall, acting or technical categories (not that any of this matters, like usual).

There’s been a lot of talk the last few days regarding how critics (mostly on the TV side) should handle spoilers in an age where most people don’t keep up with their programming on a week to week basis, but rather save all their episodes for large clumps of viewing material at a time. The basics of both sides have been made clear, and for the most part, everyone pretty much agrees on the following: If you’re reading a review for a TV episode don’t bitch if there’s spoilers. If you’re reading a preview for a TV season, all past details are fair game. Journalists should do the best they can to not give away spoilers in things like tweets and headlines (I’m iffy on the tweets part of that statement, but I understand the point). If you’re following a show so intensely that you want to avoid all plot details then don’t read ANYTHING about it, at all. I’m not here to hound folks like Brian Moylan, David Chen and others for their take on the idea of spoilers. Both sides are right within their respective arguments. But there’s another side to this story, a side that no one has brought up, and it’s one that’s arguably more volatile than that of potential spoilers from the likes of critics. It’s the side pertaining to the regular viewer.

We’ve been planning hard for nine months, eating entire sheet cakes by ourselves, and now the fruits of our labor will burst forth onto the internet in just a few weeks. It’s Comic-Con season, and we plan to give birth to some incredible content and coverage. Then, we’ll wipe off the afterbirth and hand it to you with a bow on top. We’ll be tackling interviews aplenty, getting the inside information on movies we won’t see for another 3 years, and covering Hall H like pickle sauce on ice cream, but it’s a big job, and we won’t be doing it alone. Fortunately, Jordan Hoffman (champion Reject Radio Movie News Pop Quizzer and Editor over at UGO) has organized a handful of the best movie sites to share coverage. Here’s what we’re all excited for the most and what you can plan on seeing…

What is Movie News After Dark? It is not a sentient being sent to Earth to bring you nightly doses of absolute and unquestionable brilliance. It is not the wittiest chap at the tea party. It is not an ad-free experience. It is, however, a nightly gathering of entertainment news and views that works very hard to win your affection. Except for last night, when its usually diligent author felt pain so bold that it had him contemplating watching Glitter again… Breaking tonight is the news that Seth Gordon, director of such films as The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters and Four Christmases, is now attached to direct a remake of the 1983 film WarGames. This news will undoubtedly be met with mixed reactions, as their is a delicate balance between people’s hatred for remakes and their enjoyment of the works of Seth Gordon. Which will win out? More at 11…

Twitter is good for a few things, like telling the world what sandwich you’re eating, finding random hook-ups, or coordinating a revolution. But mostly, it’s for sharing your opinion and arguing against everyone and every-bot you can find. Since arguments are most often a result of anger and rage, we’ve merged the Inaugural Twitter Fight Round-Up with Boiling Point as a way of introducing it. In the future, we’ll consider shooting itself off into its own little column if we have enough ammunition – which we most likely will. This week we’ll take a look at arguments surrounding letter grades for movies, the R-Rating, and Game of Thrones’ Sean Bean. It’s also important to note that everyone we talk about (so far) is a friend. We’re not attempting to insult or reinvigorate the argument, but merely to use it as a starting point to more discussion and ultimately a verdict. So quit your crying.

A good number of months ago I made the plunge and cut the cable of having a traditional TV service. What I thought might be something that could take some getting used to, pretty much instantly turned into a freeing experience of paying far less money in my monthly bills and not spending so much time staring at time filler nonsense on the big, hypnotic screen in my living room. I didn’t miss dealing with companies like Comcast or Direct TV at all. Well, I missed one thing. I missed HBO’s original programming. And when I heard that they were debuting a new show based on those George R.R. Martin novels I read and liked a while back, well that sealed it; I needed to get myself some access to HBO. Luckily I frequent the services of a delightful bartender who has been letting me come over to her place and watch Game of Thrones off of her DVR. This is really the sort of show that makes having television worth it, and one of the last things that cable companies are desperately holding onto to try and keep subscribers. For the past few weeks I’ve had a number of things jump in the way of me keeping up with the show, first some illness, and then some tornado related power outages; so this week I found myself with the daunting task of catching up with three episodes. The thought crossed my mind that I might be too far behind, [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s usually a rather tame and family friendly nightly column that rounds up all the best and most interesting news and views from the world of film. It’s worth noting, as it doesn’t always lead with headlines about Anne Hathaway’s rear end. It’s usually something Doctor Who or Michael Bay related. Pick your poison, I suppose. This will likely go down as the dumbest lead story I’ve ever run in MNAD, but the Sunday edition works on the conceit that movie news happens over the weekend. Spoiler: movie news doesn’t usually happen over the weekend, so we’re doing our best. Also, do you really have a problem talking about Anne Hathaway’s ass? Apparently the tightness of her costume and aggressiveness of her stunt work on the set of The Dark Knight Rises has given other cast and crew a unique view of her hind-quarters. There’s something news-worthy in that, I’m sure of it.

Last week’s episode of Game of Thrones got my attention by having Gregor Clegane cut off a horse’s head, and this week’s had me staring slack jawed as Daenerys Targaryen ate a raw, bloody horse heart while all of the Dothraki surrounded and cheered. I’ve never seen so much horse brutality in all of my life, but at least Game of Thrones has made it count. Clegane’s casual decapitation of his steed really hammered home how dangerous and evil he was at his core. And Dany’s choking down of a bloody heart this week showed how strong and determined she can be when backed against a wall. She needs the Dothraki to be loyal to her, so she does whatever it takes to earn their respect; even if it’s taking part in a horrific, bloody ritual. Her brother Viserys, by contrast, feels that respect is owed him due to his royal bloodline. Where Dany digs down and finds strength when faced with adversity, Viserys pouts, yells, and makes an ass of himself when he doesn’t get what he wants. It has been said that due to his weakness, Viserys’ older brother Rhaegar was the last dragon. Daenerys might soon prove that train of thought wrong.

At the end of the fourth episode of Game of Thrones I felt like the feeling out process was over and that the fifth would be the one in which characters finally started playing their cards and coming into direct conflict with one another; and boy was that true. This episode felt so much different than the previous four in the series. Fewer characters get face time, the focus is narrowed, and the war between the Starks and the Lannisters steps up to take center stage. The pacing has been pushed forward, there are fewer scenes of pondering and pontificating, and the violence has been amped up to gross levels. Awesomely gross levels, but gross levels nonetheless. With this episode it feels like the writers are taking a step back from explaining themselves so much, and from this point on the viewers are going to have to hold on and keep up. Most of the people who I talk to about this series have said that they really love it, but there have been a few holdouts that think it’s a little too sleepy. If you’re one of those bored naysayers, and this episode didn’t manage to wake you up, then I suggest you cut your losses and find yourself another series to watch. For the rest of us… did you see The Mountain cut off that horses head?!

What is Movie News After Dark? First of all, POP POP! And now a few words about this column: it’s about movie news, but sometimes it serves as its author’s treasure trove of addictions. Such as his addiction to hanging on the words of Dan Harmon, or his need to regale you with his ability to find the best content on other websites. It’s a unique talent, he’s told. And now, something completely different… This week saw the season finale of Community. I will miss it until it comes back. For now, I would urge you to read this fantastic interview with creator Dan Harmon published by Vulture. There’s a reason the show is so delightfully nerdy, and it might just be the man in charge.

After a series of unfortunate car troubles and power outages, I was finally able to make it over to my bartender’s house and catch my weekly viewing of Game of Thrones, and I’m glad I did, because episode four was my favorite of the series so far. We open with the dwarf Tyrion Lannister returning to Winterfell following his visit to The Wall. With him he has brought plans to help build the newly crippled Stark boy a saddle that will allow him to ride a horse. At this point in the series most of the interactions we’ve seen between the Lannister family and the Stark family have been antagonistic. When asked his motivation for helping the Stark boy, Tyrion quips, “I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples, bastards, and broken things.” And there we have it, our theme. For the next hour Game of Thrones explores the lives of the black sheep of their families, the weak ones, the weird ones, the ones who never live up to expectations.

Now that we’re three episodes into Game of Thrones we find ourselves with main characters that are firmly established and battle lines that are being drawn. Tension is rising, schemes are being hatched, and visions of power and influence are dancing through people’s heads. We get our first scenes set in the kingdom of Westeros’ throne room, and the first images of the iron throne that should become a central one to the story. This is called Game of Thrones after all. Despite the fact that Robert Baratheon is firmly implanted as the king of the realm, what this episode establishes is that positions of power are always tenuous, and everyone around you is always looking to usurp your place. Maybe even those closest to you. But most of what we get  is still a lot of talk, war stories and warnings. We get scenes of old veterans reminiscing about first kills, young whippersnappers boasting about future victories, and battle hardened warriors comparing weaponry and technique. There are plans to hold a big tournament of knightly battle. Boys train to become fighting men of the Night’s Watch. And Arya Stark tries to get strong enough just to swing a sword. Do you think there’s a fight coming in the Kingdom of Westeros? I do. What this show has been about so far is building tension and setting characters up like game pieces in position to come in conflict with one another. To what end isn’t quite clear, but it sure seems like [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

This rant contains what might be consider highly non-specific spoilers for the second episode of Game of Thrones, which means it’s doing a better job than the Episode Guide. Lately I’ve been on an information kick. Not the normal kind of information kick people go on. I didn’t want more information. I wanted less. Less information about movies. Less about television. No casting news. No long trailers. I didn’t care to see and hear more about the movie before I was in the theater. I was doing my best to avoid learning too much. I failed. I failed not thanks to TV Guide specifically, but to their non-blood offspring. I’m talking about every little guide and preview program out there. It can be TV Guide or TVGuide.com. Or it can be Time Warner Cable’s guide. Or the Cox Cable screen. Or the DirecTV channel guide. And I have found spoilers. So seriously. I’m begging you, TV guides. Chill out.

Following a very successful premiere this past Sunday, HBO has made the decision to renew the critically acclaimed, medieval fantasy series Game of Thrones for a second season. The premiere scored a ratings of 2.2 million on the original airing and over the course of multiple reruns pulled in a final total of over four million viewers. It’s clear that Game of Thrones won’t be going anywhere any time soon. But while premium cable thrives, broadcast television falters as CBS pulled their CIA comedy CHAOS from its schedule after only three episodes, effective immediately. The series was averaging a little over five million viewers on Friday nights at 8pm. As a result of the cancellation, CBS has moved up the U.S. premiere of hit police procedural Flashpoint to May 6th in the 8pm time slot. And before you go, here are some other recently announced pick-ups: