You see, movies are not supposed to be nominated for Emmys. They are supposed to be nominated for Oscars. You're not new here. You know how it works.
But a Facebook friend had an Emmys reaction post that name-dropped Unfrosted, the Jerry Seinfeld-directed Netflix movie that has given me so much joy that I have already seen it twice, even though it was only released on May 3rd.
Investigating further, I discovered that Unfrosted has been nominated for best "Television Movie."
Uh oh.
Now I'm wondering whether Unfrosted is a proper part of my year-end list and all that. It's an existential threat, in a way.
In a streaming era in which so much skips theatrical release that there must be literally hundreds of these movies that would qualify, Unfrosted has made the cut for the final five nominees. This despite the fact that many people I know think I am a fool for liking it as much as I do, or really for liking it at all. My sister and wife liked it when they watched it with me, but not nearly as much as I liked it. (And to be fair to myself, I did not like it the second time as much as I liked it the first time.) Everyone else I've spoken to about it was lukewarm at best.
Its nomination means one of two things:
1) It really is among the best of all the streaming movies that might also have qualified, which would presumably include any movie released straight to Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, AppleTV+, Disney+ and what have you.
2) It is not a proper movie in some essential sense of the word.
There was a time when a "Television Movie" had a clear definition that I understood. Although there were many other examples, the one I think of, when confronted with this question, is Recount, which starred Kevin Spacey and was about the 2000 presidential election.
I saw Recount, but never entered it on one of my movie lists. The reasons were evident to me at the time. It debuted on HBO in 2008, and this was at a time when there was no such thing as Netflix, or if there was, it was only sending you DVDs through the mail.
A movie that did not have a theatrical run -- or at least a straight-to-video release -- was not a movie, as I defined it. If it premiered on television, it was a TV Movie.
The designation for Recount on IMDB states as much, as you can see here:
In addition to the scarlet letter T they give this movie -- or maybe the scarlet letter TV -- there is also the damning television rating of TV-MA.
Doing a comparison with what IMDB says for Unfrosted in that same area gives me some relief:
Okay no dreaded scarlet TV here, and that PG-13 is a bonafide movie rating.
But I'm still a bit unsure, still a bit knocked for a loop. Maybe I need to compare it to the other nominees, to see what I think of those "movies."
The first is Mr. Monk's Last Case: A Monk Movie.
Uh oh.
A movie associated with a TV show. The kiss of death. A "TV Movie" if ever there was one.
Then again, Mr. Monk's Last Case: A Monk Movie is 97 minutes long and it is not described as a "TV Movie" on IMDB. It does have a TV rating though: TV-PG.
Let's check out the next one: Quiz Lady.
Okay, I recognize this as a movie I wanted to fit in in 2023 except it was released on Hulu so I didn't think I could see it, before I realized that most Hulu movies are released on Disney+ here.
The last two are Red, White & Royal Blue, an Amazon movie that slipped past me last year (though it interests me because of its subject matter: a love affair between the U.S. president's son and a prince!) and Scoop, another Netflix movie that I have already been including on this year's list.
Okay my fears are mostly assuaged, but I did think it would be interesting to see the films that have won this category in recent years, just to get a better idea of what they're going for.
Last year's winner was Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, which has never for a moment seemed to me like anything other than a bonafide movie. The Roku Channel's finest. One of my top ten movies of 2022, Prey, was also nominated (remember, this award straddles two years), giving me further comfort. Hocus Pocus 2 and Fire Island, both of which I ranked, were also nominated. The only sketchy sounding one, in terms of my categorization parameters, was Dolly Parton's Magic Mountain Christmas. I guess there's one in every bunch.
Other recent winners have included Chip 'N Dale: Rescue Rangers (movie), Bad Education (movie?) and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (um ... er ... see here for a discussion). That was the third of three straight Black Mirror "movies" to win. And then in 2021 (going non-chronologically within this paragraph) you have Dolly Parton's Christmas on the Square. The Emmys like Dolly Parton.
It is clear that this is the category where "movies" that don't quite conform to my definition are honored. However, it's also clear that movies that debut on streaming are presenting a bit of confusion for Emmy voters, and they have only really been a big thing for maybe five to seven years.
I think it would be hard to say that there is anything intrinsically "TV" about Unfrosted, though it's interesting that this was following a year after Weird, because both are effectively bogus biopics, only Unfrosted is a biopic of a breakfast treat. However, there's nothing intrinsically "TV" about a biopic, in fact, quite the opposite. Biopics are typically the domain of genuine movies.
If you were really stretching, you could say that the fact that it was directed by Jerry Seinfeld, and he's a TV personality, might have given it a nudge in that direction. But he's also made genuine theatrical releases, like Bee Movie.
All we can really say for sure is that these are eligible for Emmys, while some other Netflix and AppleTV+ movies aren't, because these movies debuted on TV and some of those movies didn't. Because Netflix probably also doesn't think much of the idea of winning an Emmy -- unless for its scripted television shows, of course -- the leading streamer is sure to debut most of its most prestigious content on the big screen, to make it Oscar eligible. We all know Oscars are where it's really at.
And if there happens to be an award for some of the movies that don't get that theatrical release, well, I'm certainly not opposed to more people getting exposed to a movie like Unfrosted, watching it, and potentially enjoying it as much as I did.
No comments:
Post a Comment