2020 NAACP Image Awards: ‘Harriet’ is the top nominee

January 9, 2020

Cynthia Erivo stars as Harriet Tubman in “Harriet,” which scored a leading 10 nominations in the movie and music categories at the 2020 NAACP Image Awards. (Photo by Glen Wilson/Focus Features)

The following is a press release from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP):

The nominees for the 51st NAACP Image Awards were announced today at a joint press conference with Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP and Connie Orlando – Executive Vice-President, Specials, Music Programming & Music Strategy. The winners will be revealed during the two-hour live TV special airing on BET Networks on Saturday, February 22, 2020 at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT.

Netflix leads the television category nominations with 30, with an additional 12 nominations in the motion picture categories for a total of 42. RCA Records leads in the music recording categories with 14, followed by Columbia Records and BMG respectively with 7. Universal Pictures leads the motion picture categories with 15 nominations, and Penguin Random House has 8 nominations followed by HarperCollins with 4 in the literary categories.

“Representation across entertainment and the arts has profound meaning and unparalleled power to shape perceptions, influence culture, and galvanize communities,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson. “This year’s nominees have conveyed a wide range of authentic stories and experiences that have resonated with many, and we’re proud to continue celebrating their outstanding achievements and performances.”

“This is a historic occasion for BET Networks, and we’re thrilled to be able to celebrate our network’s 40th anniversary in conjunction with this milestone moment of hosting the NAACP Image Awards,” said Scott Mills, President of BET Networks. “It is our distinct privilege to be able to acknowledge contributions of talent in TV, music, movies and literature and we look forward to celebrating these contributions next month.”

The NAACP Image Awards honors the accomplishments of people of color in the fields of television, music, literature, and film and also recognizes individuals or groups who promote social justice through creative endeavors. The Image Awards previously aired on TV One.

In previous years, Image Awards attendees included Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis, Gabrielle Union, Kerry Washington, Anthony Anderson, Sterling K. Brown, Mandy Moore, Halle Berry, Common, Dwayne Johnson, Steve Harvey, Audra Day, John Legend, Lena Waithe, Tracee Ellis Ross, David Oyelowo, Laverne Cox, Octavia Spencer, Issa Rae, Trevor Noah, Terry Crews, Yara Shahidi, Danai Gurira, Jacob Latimore, Jay Pharoah, Jemele Hill, Josh Gad, Loretta Devine, Michael B. Jordan, Sylvester Stallone, Meta Golding, Michael Smith, Tyler James Williams, Ava DuVernay, Chadwick Boseman, and many more.

As previously announced:

Voting is now open to the public to determine the winners of the 51st NAACP IMAGE AWARDS by visiting www.naacpimageawards.net – Winners will be revealed during the 51st NAACP Image Awards telecast. For all information and the latest news, please visit the official NAACP Image Awards website at www.naacpimageawards.net or on Facebook at naacpimageawards and Twitter @naacpimageaward (#NAACPImageAwards).

About NAACP:
Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation’s oldest and largest nonpartisan civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities. You can read more about the NAACP’s work and our six “Game Changer” issue areas at naacp.org.

About BET Networks:
BET Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ: VIA, VIA.B), is the nation’s leading provider of quality entertainment, music, news, and public affairs television programming for the African-American audience. The primary BET channel reaches more than 90 million households and can be seen in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, and sub-Saharan Africa. BET is the dominant African-American consumer brand with a diverse group of business extensions: BET.com, a leading Internet destination for Black entertainment, music, culture and news; BET HER, a 24-hour entertainment network targeting the African-American Woman; BET Music Networks – BET Jams, BET Soul and BET Gospel; BET Home Entertainment; BET Live, BET’s growing festival business; BET Mobile, which provides ringtones, games and video content for wireless devices; and BET International, which operates BET around the globe.

Following is the complete list of categories and nominees for the 51st NAACP Image Awards:

ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR

  • Angela Basset
  • Billy Porter
  • Lizzo
  • Regina King
  • Tyler Perry

TELEVISION CATEGORIES

Outstanding Comedy Series

  • “Ballers” (HBO)
  • “black-ish” (ABC)
  • “Dear White People” (Netflix)
  • “grown-ish” (Freeform)
  • “the Neighborhood” (CBS)

Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series

  • Anthony Anderson – “black-ish” (ABC)
  • Cedric The Entertainer – “the Neighborhood” (CBS)
  • Don Cheadle – “Black Monday” (Showtime)
  • Dwayne Johnson – “Ballers” (HBO)
  • Tracy Morgan – “The Last O.G.” (TBS)

Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series

  • Logan Browning – “Dear White People” (Netflix)
  • Jill Scott – “First Wives Club” (BET+)
  • Tiffany Haddish – “The Last O.G.” (TBS)
  • Tracee Ellis Ross – “black-ish ” (ABC)
  • Yara Shahidi – “grown-ish” (Freeform)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

  • Andre Braugher – “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” (NBC)
  • Deon Cole – “black-ish” (ABC)
  • Laurence Fishburne – “black-ish” (ABC)
  • Terry Crews – “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” (NBC)
  • Tituss Burgess – “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” (Netflix)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series

  • Halle Bailey – “grown-ish” (Freeform)
  • Loretta Devine – “Family Reunion” (Netflix)
  • Marsai Martin – “black-ish” (ABC)
  • Regina Hall – “Black Monday” (Showtime)
  • Tichina Arnold – “the Neighborhood” (CBS)

Outstanding Drama Series

  • “Godfather of Harlem” (EPIX)
  • “Greenleaf” (OWN)
  • “Queen Sugar” (OWN)
  • “The Chi” (Showtime)
  • “Watchmen” (HBO)

Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series

  • Billy Porter – “Pose” (FX Networks)
  • Forest Whitaker – “Godfather of Harlem” (EPIX)
  • Kofi Siriboe – “Queen Sugar” (OWN)
  • Omari Hardwick – “Power” (Starz)
  • Sterling K. Brown – “This Is Us” (NBC)

Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series

  • Angela Bassett – “9-1-1” (FOX)
  • Regina King – “Watchmen” (HBO)
  • Rutina Wesley – “Queen Sugar” (OWN)
  • Simone Missick – “All Rise” (CBS)
  • Viola Davis – “How to Get Away with Murder” (ABC)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series

  • Delroy Lindo – “The Good Fight” (CBS All Access)
  • Giancarlo Esposito – “Godfather of Harlem” (EPIX)
  • Harold Perrineau – “Claws” (TNT)
  • Nigél Thatch – “Godfather of Harlem” (EPIX)
  • Wendell Pierce – “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” (Prime Video)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

  • CCH Pounder – “NCIS: New Orleans” (CBS)
  • Lynn Whitfield – “Greenleaf” (OWN)
  • Lyric Ross – “This Is Us” (NBC)
  • Susan Kelechi Watson – “This Is Us” (NBC)
  • Tina Lifford – “Queen Sugar” (OWN)

Outstanding Television Movie, Limited-Series or Dramatic Special

  • American Son (Netflix)
  • Being Mary Jane (BET Networks)
  • Native Son (HBO)
  • True Detective (HBO)
  • When They See Us (Netflix)

Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Limited-Series or Dramatic Special

  • Caleel Harris – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
  • Ethan Henry Herisse – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
  • Idris Elba – “Luther” (BBC America)
  • Jharrel Jerome – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
  • Mahershala Ali – “True Detective” (HBO)

Outstanding Actress in a Television Movie, Limited-Series or Dramatic Special

  • Aunjanue Ellis – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
  • Gabrielle Union – “Being Mary Jane” (BET Networks)
  • Kerry Washington – “American Son” (Netflix)
  • Niecy Nash – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
  • Octavia Spencer – “Truth Be Told” (Apple TV+)

Outstanding News/Information (Series or Special)

  • PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools (PBS)
  • Surviving R. Kelly (Lifetime)
  • The Breakfast Club (REVOLT)
  • The Story of God with Morgan Freeman (National Geographic)
  • Unsung (TV One)

Outstanding Talk Series

  • “Red Table Talk” (Facebook Watch)
  • “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” (Comedy Central)
  • “The Real” (Syndicated)
  • “The Shop: Uninterrupted” (HBO)
  • “The Tamron Hall Show” (Syndicated)

Outstanding Reality Program/Reality Competition Series/Game Show

  • “Iyanla: Fix My Life” (OWN)
  • “Lip Sync Battle” (Paramount Network)
  • “Rhythm + Flow” (Netflix)
  • “Sunday Best” (BET Networks)
  • “The Voice” (NBC)

Outstanding Variety (Series or Special)

  • “2019 Black Girls Rock!” (BET Networks)
  • “Dave Chappelle: Sticks & Stones” (Netflix)
  • “Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé” (Netflix)
  • “Saturday Night Live” (NBC)
  • “Wanda Sykes: Not Normal” (Netflix)

Outstanding Children’s Program

  • “Doc McStuffins” (Disney Junior)
  • “Family Reunion” (Netflix)
  • “Kevin Hart’s Guide to Black History” (Netflix)
  • “Marvel’s Avengers: Black Panther’s Quest” (Disney XD)
  • “Motown Magic” (Netflix)

Outstanding Performance by a Youth (Series, Special, Television Movie or Limited-Series)

  • Caleel Harris – “When They See Us” (Netflix)
  • Lonnie Chavis – “This Is Us” (NBC)
  • Lyric Ross – “This Is Us” (NBC)
  • Marsai Martin – “black-ish” (ABC)
  • Miles Brown – “black-ish” (ABC)

Outstanding Host in a Talk or News/Information (Series or Special) – Individual or Ensemble

  • Angela Rye – “Young Gifted and Broke: A BET Town Hall” (BET Networks)
  • Jada Pinkett Smith – “Red Table Talk” (Facebook Watch)
  • Lester Holt – “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” (NBC)
  • Trevor Noah – “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” (Comedy Central)
  • Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar,  Sunny Hostin, Meghan McCain, Abby Huntsman, Ana Navarro – “The View” (ABC)

Outstanding Host in a Reality/Reality Competition, Game Show or Variety (Series or Special) – Individual or Ensemble

  • Iyanla Vanzant – “Iyanla: Fix My Life” (OWN)
  • LL Cool J – “Lip Sync Battle” (Paramount Network)
  • Regina Hall – “2019 BET Awards” (BET Networks)
  • Steve Harvey – “Celebrity Family Feud” (ABC)
  • Wayne Brady – “Let’s Make A Deal” (CBS)

Outstanding Guest Performance in a Comedy or Drama Series

  • Blair Underwood – “Dear White People” ( Netflix)
  • David Alan Grier – “Queen Sugar” (OWN)
  • Kelly Rowland – “American Soul” (BET Networks)
  • MAJOR. – “STAR” (FOX)
  • Sanaa Lathan – “The Affair” (Showtime)

RECORDING CATEGORIES

Outstanding Album

  • “Cuz I Love You” – Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)
  • “Homecoming: The Live Album” – Beyoncé (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records)
  • “I Used To Know H.E.R.” – H.E.R. (MBK Entertainment / RCA Records)
  • “Sketchbook” – Fantasia (Rock Soul Inc./BMG)
  • “Worthy” – India.Arie (India.Arie Inc./BMG)

Outstanding New Artist

  • Ari Lennox (Dreamville/Interscope Records)
  • Lil Nas X (Columbia Records)
  • Lucky Daye (Keep Cool/RCA Records)
  • Mahalia (Burkmar/Warner Music UK)
  • Mykal Kilgore (Affective Music)

Outstanding Male Artist

  • Bruno Mars (Atlantic Records)
  • Khalid (RCA Records)
  • Lil Nas X (Columbia Records)
  • MAJOR. (BOE Music Group/EMPIRE)
  • PJ Morton (Morton Records)

Outstanding Female Artist 

  • Beyoncé (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records)
  • Fantasia (Rock Soul Inc./BMG)
  • H.E.R. (MBK Entertainment / RCA Records)
  • India.Arie (India.Arie Inc./BMG)
  • Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)

Outstanding Song – Traditional

  • “Enough” – Fantasia (Rock Soul Inc./BMG)
  • “Jerome” – Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)
  • “SPIRIT” – Beyoncé (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records)
  • “Stand Up” – Cynthia Erivo written by Joshuah Brian Campbell & Cynthia Erivo (Back Lot Music)
  • “Steady Love” – India.Arie (India.Arie Inc./BMG)

Outstanding Song – Contemporary

  • “Before I Let Go” – Beyoncé (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records)
  • “Hard Place” – H.E.R. (MBK Entertainment / RCA Records)
  • “Juice” – Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)
  • “Talk” – Khalid (RCA Records)
  • “Motivation” – Normani (Keep Cool/RCA Records)

Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration

  • “Brown Skin Girl” – Blue Ivy, SAINt JHN, Beyoncé & WizKiD (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records)
  • “No Guidance” – Chris Brown feat. Drake (Chris Brown Entertainment/RCA Records)
  • “Say So” – PJ Morton feat. JoJo (Morton Records/EMPIRE)
  • “Shea Butter Baby” – Ari Lennox feat. J. Cole (Dreamville/Interscope Records)
  • “Show Me Love” – Alicia Keys feat. Miguel (RCA Records)

Outstanding Jazz Album

  • “Carib” – David Sanchez (Ropeadope)
  • “Center of The Heart” – Najee (Shanachie)
  • “Love & Liberation” – Jazzmeia Horn (Concord Jazz)
  • “SoulMate” – Nathan Mitchell (Enm Music Group)
  • “The Dream Is You: Vanessa Rubin Sings Tadd Dameron” – Vanessa Rubin (Vanessa Rubin)

Outstanding Gospel/Christian Song (Traditional or Contemporary)

  • “I Made It Out” – John P. Kee feat. Zacardi Cortez (Kee Music Group/Entertainment One)
  • “Laughter” – Bebe Winans feat. Korean Soul (Regimen Records)
  • “Love Theory” – Kirk Franklin (Fo Yo Soul Records/RCA Records)
  • “Not Yet” – Donnie McClurkin (Camdon Music/RCA Inspiration)
  • “Victory” – The Clark Sisters (Karew Records/Motown Gospel/Capitol CMG)

Outstanding Music Video/Visual Album

  • “Hard Place” – H.E.R. (MBK Entertainment / RCA Records)
  • “Juice” – Lizzo (Nice Life Records/Atlantic Records)
  • “No Guidance” – Chris Brown feat. Drake (Chris Brown Entertainment/RCA Records)
  • “Steady Love” – India.Arie (India.Arie Inc./BMG)
  • “Talk” – Khalid (RCA Records)

Outstanding Soundtrack/Compilation Album

  • “Harriet (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)” – Terence Blanchard (Back Lot Music)
  • “Queen & Slim The Soundtrack” – Various Artists (Motown Records)
  • “The Lion King: The Gift” – Beyoncé w/Various Artists (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia Records)
  • “The Lion King Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” – Various Artists (Walt Disney Records)
  • “Us (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)” – Michael Abels (Back Lot Music)

LITERATURE CATEGORIES

Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction 

  • “New Daughters of Africa” – Margaret Busby (HarperCollins Publishers)
  • “Out of Darkness, Shining Light” – Petina Gappah (Simon and Schuster)
  • “Red at the Bone” – Jacqueline Woodson (Riverhead Books PRH)
  • “The Revisioners” – Margaret Wilkerson Sexton (Counter Point Press)
  • “The Water Dancer” – Ta-Nehisi Coates (One World)

Outstanding Literary Work – Nonfiction 

  • “Breathe: A Letter to My Sons” – Dr. Imani Perry (Beacon Press)
  • “STONY THE ROAD: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow” – Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Penguin Press)
  • “The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations” – Toni Morrison (Alfred A. Knopf)
  • “The Yellow House” – Sarah M. Broom (Grove Atlantic)
  • “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays” – Damon Young (HarperCollins Publishers)

Outstanding Literary Work – Debut Author 

“American Spy” – Lauren Wilkinson (Random House)

  • “I Am Dance: Words and Images of the Black Dancer” – Hal Banfield (Author), Javier Vasquez (Illustrator), (Literary Revolutionary)
  • “More Than Pretty: Doing The Soul Work To Uncover Your True Beauty ” – Erica Campbell (Howard Books)
  • “Such A Fun Age” – Kiley Reid (Putnam Publishing / Penguin Publishing Group)
  • “The Farm” – Joanne Ramos (Random House)

Outstanding Literary Work – Biography/Autobiography 

  • “Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System” – Cyntoia Brown-Long (Atria Books)
  • “Finding My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward” – Valerie Jarrett (Viking Press)
  • “More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say)” – Elaine Welteroth (Viking Press)
  • “My Name Is Prince” – Randee St. Nicholas (HarperCollins Publishers)
  • “The Beautiful Ones” – Prince (Author), Dan Piepenbring (Edited by), (Random House)

Outstanding Literary Work – Instructional

  • “Inspire Your Home: Easy, Affordable Ideas to Make Every Room Glamorous” – Farah Merhi (Tiller Press)
  • “Letters to the Finishers (who struggle to finish)” – Candace E. Wilkins (New Season Books)
  • “More Than Pretty: Doing the Soul Work that Uncovers Your True Beauty” – Erica Campbell (Howard Books)
  • “Vegetables Unleashed” – José Andres (HarperCollins Publishers)
  • “Your Next Level Life: 7 Rules of Power, Confidence, And Opportunity For Black Women In America” – Karen Arrington (Author), Joanna Price (Illustrator), Sheryl Taylor (Forward) (Mango Publishing)

Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry 

  • “A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland” – DaMaris B. Hill (Bloomsbury Publishing)
  • “Felon: Poems” – Reginald Dwayne Betts (W.W. Norton Company)
  • “Honeyfish” – Lauren K. Alleyne (New Issues Poetry and Prose)
  • “Mistress” – Chet’la Sebree (New Issue Poetry and Prose)
  • “The Tradition” – Jericho Brown (Copper Canyon Press)

Outstanding Literary Work – Children

  • “A Place to Land: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation” – Barry Wittenstein (Author), Jerry Pinkney (Illustrator), (Neal Porter Books / Holiday House Publishing Inc.)
  • “Hair Love” – Matthew A. Cherry (Author), Vashti Harrison (Illustrator), (Kokila)
  • “Parker Looks Up: An Extraordinary Moment” – Parker Curry (Author), Jessica Curry (Author), Brittany Jackson (Illustrator), (Aladdin Books)
  • “Ruby Finds a Worry” – Tom Percival (Bloomsbury Publishing)
  • “Sulwe” – Lupita Nyong’o (Author), Vashti Harrison (Illustrator), (Simon & Schuster, BFYR)

Outstanding Literary Work – Youth/Teens 

  • “Around Harvard Square” – C.J. Farley (Akashic Books)
  • “Her Own Two Feet: A Rwandan Girl’s Brave Fight to Walk” – Meredith Davis (Author), Rebeka Uwitonze (Author), (Scholastic Inc.)
  • “Hot Comb” – Ebony Flowers (Author), Ebony Flowers (Illustrator), (Drawn and Quarterly)
  • “I’m Not Dying with You Tonight” – Gilly Segal (Author), Kimberly Jones (Author), (Sourcebooks Fire)
  • “The Forgotten Girl” – India Hill Brown (Scholastic Inc.)

MOTION PICTURE CATEGORIES
Outstanding Motion Picture

  • “Dolemite is My Name” (Netflix)
  • “Harriet” (Focus Features)
  • “Just Mercy” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
  • “Queen & Slim” (Universal Pictures)
  • “Us” (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture

  • Chadwick Boseman – “21 Bridges” (STX Films)
  • Daniel Kaluuya – “Queen & Slim” (Universal Pictures)
  • Eddie Murphy – “Dolemite is My Name” (Netflix)
  • Michael B. Jordan – “Just Mercy” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
  • Winston Duke – “Us” (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture

  • Alfre Woodard – “Clemency” (Neon)
  • Cynthia Erivo – “Harriet” (Focus Features)
  • Jodie Turner-Smith – “Queen & Slim” (Universal Pictures)
  • Lupita Nyong’o – “Us” (Universal Pictures)
  • Naomie Harris – “Black and Blue” (Screen Gems/Sony Pictures)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture

  • Jamie Foxx – “Just Mercy” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
  • Leslie Odom, Jr. – “Harriet” (Focus Features)
  • Sterling K. Brown – “Waves” (A24)
  • Tituss Burgess – “Dolemite Is My Name” (Netflix)
  • Wesley Snipes – “Dolemite Is My Name” (Netflix)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture

  • Da’Vine Joy Randolph – “Dolemite is My Name” (Netflix)
  • Janelle Monáe – “Harriet” (Focus Features)
  • Jennifer Lopez – “Hustlers” (STX Films)
  • Marsai Martin – “Little” (Universal Pictures)
  • Octavia Spencer – “Luce” (Neon)

Outstanding Breakthrough Performance in Motion Picture

  • Cynthia Erivo – “Harriet” (Focus Features)
  • Jodie Turner-Smith – “Queen & Slim” (Universal Pictures)
  • Marsai Martin – “Little” (Universal Pictures)
  • Rob Morgan – “Just Mercy” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
  • Shahadi Wright Joseph – “Us” (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture

  • “Dolemite is My Name” (Netflix)
  • “Harriet” (Focus Features)
  • “Just Mercy” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
  • “Queen & Slim” (Universal Pictures)
  • “Us” (Universal Pictures)

Outstanding Independent Motion Picture 

  • “Clemency” (Neon)
  • “Dolemite is My Name” (Netflix)
  • “Luce” (Neon)
  • “Queen & Slim” (Universal Pictures)
  • “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” (Netflix)

Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance (Television or Film)

  • Alfre Woodard – “The Lion King” (Walt Disney Studios)
  • Donald Glover – “The Lion King” (Walt Disney Studios)
  • James Earl Jones – “The Lion King” (Walt Disney Studios)
  • Lupita Nyong’o – “Serengeti” (Discovery Channel)
  • Sterling K. Brown – “Frozen II” (Walt Disney Studios)

DOCUMENTARY CATEGORIES
Outstanding Documentary (Film)

  • “Miles Davis: Birth Of The Cool” (Eagle Rock Entertainment)
  • “The Black Godfather” (Netflix)
  • “The Apollo” (HBO)
  • “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am” (Magnolia Pictures)
  • “True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality” (HBO)

Outstanding Documentary (Television – Series or Special)

  • “Free Meek” (Prime Video)
  • “Hitsville: The Making of Motown” (Showtime)
  • “Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé” (Netflix)
  • “Martin: The Legacy of A King” (BET Networks)
  • “ReMastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke” (Netflix)

WRITING CATEGORIES
Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series 

  • Cord Jefferson – “The Good Place” – Tinker, Tailor, Demon, Spy (NBC)
  • Gloria Calderon Kellett, Mike Royce – “One Day at a Time” – Ghosts (Netflix)
  • Jason Kim – “Barry” – Past=Present x Future Over Yesterday (HBO)
  • Karen Gist, Peter Saji – “Mixed-ish” – Let Your Hair Down (ABC)
  • Trevor Noah – “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” – Steve King’s Comments Meet Trevor Noah: Racism Detective (Comedy Central)

Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series 

  • Ava DuVernay, Michael Starrbury – “When They See Us” – Part Four (Netflix)
  • Damon Lindelof, Cord Jefferson – “Watchmen” – The Extraordinary Being (HBO)
  • Nichelle Tramble Spellman – “Truth Be Told” – Monster (Apple TV+)
  • Nkechi Okoro Carroll – “All American” – Hussle & Motivate (The CW)
  • Pat Charles – “Black Lightning” – The Book of Secrets: Chapter One: Prodigal Son (The CW)

Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture (Television)

  • Cas Sigers-Beedles – “Twas the Chaos Before Christmas” (BET Networks)
  • Melissa Bustamante – “A Christmas Winter Song” (Lifetime)
  • Patrik-Ian Polk, Devon Shepard, and Alyson Fouse – “Being Mary Jane” (BET Networks)
  • Suzan-Lori Parks – “Native Son” (HBO)
  • Yvette Nicole Brown – “Always a Bridesmaid” (BET Networks)

Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture (Film)  

  • Chinonye Chukwu – “Clemency” (Neon)
  • Destin Daniel Cretton, Andrew Lanham – “Just Mercy” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
  • Doug Atchison – “Brian Banks” (Bleecker Street and ShivHans Pictures)
  • Jordan Peele – “Us” (Universal Pictures)
  • Kasi Lemmons, Gregory Allen Howard – “Harriet” (Focus Features)

DIRECTING CATEGORIES
Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series

  • Anya Adams – “GLOW” – Outward Bound (Netflix)
  • Justin Tipping – “Black Monday” -7042 (Showtime)
  • Ken Whittingham – “Atypical” – Road Rage Paige (Netflix)
  • Randall Winston – “Grace and Frankie” – The Pharmacy (Netflix)
  • Shaka King – “Shrill” – Pool (Hulu)

Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series

  • Ava DuVernay – “When They See Us” – Part Four (Netflix)
  • Carl H. Seaton, Jr. – “Snowfall” – Hedgehogs (FX Networks)
  • Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson – “Power” – Forgot About Dre (STARZ)
  • Debbie Allen – “Grey’s Anatomy” – Silent All These Years (ABC)
  • Jet Wilkinson – “The Chi” – The Scorpion and the Frog (Showtime)

Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture (Television)

  • Codie Elaine Oliver – “Black Love” (OWN)
  • Janice Cooke – “I Am Sombody’s Child: The Regina Louise Story (Lifetime)
  • Kenny Leon – “American Son” (Netflix)
  • Rashid Johnson – “Native Son (HBO)
  • Russ Parr – “The Bobby Debarge Story” (TV One)

Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture (Film) 

  • Chiwetel Ejiofor – “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” (Netflix)
  • Jordan Peele – “Us” (Universal Pictures)
  • Kasi Lemmons – “Harriet” (Focus Features)
  • Mati Diop – “Atlantics” (Les Films du Bal Presente en Co-Production avec Cinekap et Frakas Productions en Co-Production avec Arte France Cinema et Canal+ International for Netflix)
  • Reginald Hudlin – “The Black Godfather” (Netflix)

2020 BAFTA Film Awards: ‘Joker’ is the top nominee

January 7, 2020

by Carla Hay

Joaquin Phoenix in “Joker” (Photo by Niko Tavernise)

With 11 nominations, the supervillain origin story “Joker” is the leading contender for the 73rd annual British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards, which will be presented at Royal Albert Hall in London on February 2, 2020. Graham Norton will host the show, which will be broadcast exclusively on BBC One and BBC One HD in the United Kingdom and in other major territories around the world. BBC America will have the U.S. telecast of the show.

Other films to receive several nominations include “The Irishman” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which garnered 10 nods each. “1917” has nine nods, and “Jojo Rabbit” received six nominations. “Little Women,” “Marriage Story” and “The Two Popes” got five nods each. “For Sama,” “Parasite” and “Rocketman” received four nominations each. Three nominations each went to “Bombshell,” “Judy,” “Le Mans ’66” (which is known as “Ford v Ferrari” in the U.S. and other countries) and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.” Eligible movies were those released in the United Kingdom in 2019. (Some movies that have been getting awards buzz, such as “Uncut Gems” and “Just Mercy,” were released in the U.S. in 2019, and will have a U.K. release in 2020.)

The nominees for the EE Rising Star Award were previously announced as Awkwafina, Jack Lowden, Kaitlyn Dever, Kelvin Harrison Jr, and Micheal Ward. According to a BAFTA press release: “The award is voted for by the British public and presented to an actress or actor who has demonstrated exceptional talent and has begun to capture the imagination of the U.K. public. Voting is now open at ee.co.uk/baftas.”

Snubs and Surprises

Eddie Murphy in “Dolemite Is My Name” (Photo by François Duhamel)

The most noticeable snubs were for non-white actors in the major acting categories: All of the BAFTA nominees in these categories this year are white: Leading Actor, Leading Actress, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress. That means no acting nominations for anyone in the casts of the critically acclaimed, award-winning films “Parasite,” “Dolemite Is My Name” and “Pain and Glory.” The good news is that there is racial diversity in the actors nominated in the EE Rising Star Award. The nominees in that category include Kelvin Harrison Jr. (“Luce,” “Waves”) and Micheal Ward (“Blue Story”) are black, while Awkwafina (“The Farewell”) is Chinese American. Meanwhile, once again, there were no female directors nominated in the category of Best Director.

A big surprise was Margot Robbie scoring two BAFTA supporting actress nominations this year. Although she was widely expected to get a nod for “Bombshell” in this category, she was not widely expected to get nominated for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” considering that the movie received a lot of criticism for Robbie’s Sharon Tate character not having enough meaningful dialogue and screen time. Another notable surprise is Jessie Buckley’s lead actress nomination for “Wild Rose,” since her performance in the movie has been largely ignored for nominations for major movie awards.

Here is the complete list of nominations for the 2020 BAFTA Awards:

Best Film

“1917”
“The Irishman”
“Joker”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
“Parasite”

Outstanding British Film

“1917”
“Bait”
“For Sama”
“Rocketman”
“Sorry We Missed You”
“The Two Popes”

Best Director

Sam Mendes (“1917”)
Martin Scorsese (“The Irishman”)
Todd Phillips (“Joker”)
Quentin Tarantino (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”)
Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”)

Leading Actress

Jessie Buckley (“Wild Rose”)
Scarlett Johansson (“Marriage Story”)
Saoirse Ronan (“Little Women”)
Charlize Theron (“Bombshell”)
Renée Zellweger (“Judy”)

Leading Actor

Leonardo DiCaprio (“Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”)
Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker”)
Adam Driver (“Marriage Story”)
Taron Egerton (“Rocketman”)
Jonathan Pryce (“The Two Popes”)

Supporting Actor

Tom Hanks (“A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood”)
Anthony Hopkins (“The Two Popes”)
Al Pacino (“The Irishman”)
Joe Pesci (“The Irishman”)
Brad Pitt (“Once Upon A Time in Hollywood”)

Supporting Actress

Laura Dern (“Marriage Story”)
Scarlett Johansson (“Jojo Rabbit”)
Florence Pugh (“Little Women”)
Margot Robbie (“Bombshell”)
Margot Robbie (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”)

Adapted Screenplay

Steven Zaillian (“The Irishman”)
Taika Waititi (“Jojo Rabbit”)
Todd Phillips, Scott Silver (“Joker”)
Greta Gerwig (“Little Women”)
Anthony McCarten (“The Two Popes”)

Original Screenplay

Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Katie Silberman (“Booksmart”)
Rian Johnson (“Knives Out”)
Noah Baumbach (“Marriage Story”)
Quentin Tarantino (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”)
Han Jin Won, Bong Joon-ho (“Parasite”)

Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer

Mark Jenkin, Kate Byers, Linn Waite (“Bait”)
Waad al-Kateab, Edward Watts (“For Sama”)
Alex Holmes (“Maiden”)
Harry Wootliff (“Only You”)
Álvaro Delgado-Aparicio (“Retablo”)

Original Score

Thomas Newman (“1917”)
Michael Giacchino (“Jojo Rabbit”)
Hildur Guđnadóttir (“Joker”)
Alexandre Desplat (“Little Women”)
John Williams (“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”)

Cinematography

Roger Deakins (“1917”)
Rodrigo Prieto (“The Irishman”)
Lawrence Sher (“Joker”)
Phedon Papamichael (“Le Mans ’66”)
Jarin Blaschke (“The Lighthouse”)

EE Rising Star Award (public vote)

Awkwafina
Kaitlyn Dever
Kelvin Harrison Jr.
Jack Lowden
Micheal Ward

Film Not in the English Language

Lulu Wang, Daniele Melia (“The Farewell”)
Waad al-Kateab, Edward Watts (“For Sama”)
Pedro Almodóvar, Agustín Almodóvar (“Pain and Glory”)
Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”)
Céline Sciamma, Bénédicte Couvreur (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”)

Documentary

Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert (“American Factory”)
Todd Douglas Miller (“Apollo 11”)
Asif Kapadia (“Diego Maradona”)
Waad al-Kateab, Edward Watts (“For Sama”)
Karim Amer, Jehane Noujaim (“The Great Hack”)

Animated Film

Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, Peter Del Vecho (“Frozen 2”)
Sergio Pablos, Jinko Gotoh (“Klaus”)
Will Becher, Richard Phelan, Paul Kewley (“A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon”)
Josh Cooley, Mark Nielsen (“Toy Story 4”)

Casting

Shayna Markowitz (“Joker”)
Douglas Aibel, Francine Maisler (“Marriage Story”)
Victoria Thomas (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”)
Sarah Crowe (“The Personal History of David Copperfield”)
Nina Gold (“The Two Popes”)

Editing

Thelma Schoonmaker (“The Irishman”)
Tom Eagles (“Jojo Rabbit”)
Jeff Groth (“Joker”)
Andrew Buckland, Michael McCusker (“Le Mans ’66”)
Fred Raskin (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”)

Production Design

Dennis Gassner, Lee Sandales (“1917”)
Bob Shaw, Regina Graves (“The Irishman”)
Ra Vincent, Nora Sopková (“Jojo Rabbit”)
Mark Friedberg, Kris Moran (“Joker”)
Barbara Ling, Nancy Haigh (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”)

Costume Design

Christopher Peterson, Sandy Powell (“The Irishman”)
Mayes C. Rubeo (“Jojo Rabbit”)
Jany Temime (“Judy”)
Jacqueline Durran (“Little Women”)
Arianne Phillips (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”)

Makeup and Hair

Naomi Donne (“1917”)
Vivian Baker, Kazu Hiro, Anne Morgan (“Bombshell”)
Kay Georgiou, Nicki Ledermann (“Joker”)
Jeremy Woodhead (“Judy”)
Lizzie Yianni Georgiou (“Rocketman”)

Sound

Scott Millan, Oliver Tarney, Rachael Tate, Mark Taylor, Stuart Wilson (“1917”)
Tod Maitland, Alan Robert Murray, Tom Ozanich, Dean Zupancic (“Joker”)
David Giammarco, Paul Massey, Steven A. Morrow, Donald Sylvester (“Le Mans ’66”)
Matthew Collinge, John Hayes, Mike Prestwood Smith, Danny Sheehan (“Rocketman”)
David Acord, Andy Nelson, Christopher Scarabosio, Stuart Wilson, Matthew Wood (“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”)

Special Visual Effects

Greg Butler, Guillaume Rocheron, Dominic Tuohy (“1917”)
Dan Deleeuw, Dan Sudick (“Avengers: Endgame”)
Leandro Estebecorena, Stephane Grabli, Pablo Helman (“The Irishman”)
Andrew R. Jones, Robert Legato, Elliot Newman, Adam Valdez (“The Lion King”)
Roger Guyett, Paul Kavanagh, Neal Scanlan, Dominic Tuohy (“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”)

British Short Animation

Maryam Mohajer (“Grandad Was a Romantic”)
Kathrin Steinbacher (“In Her Boots”)
Naaman Azhari, Lilia Laurel (“The Magic Boat”)

British Short Film

Myriam Raja, Nathanael Baring (“Azaar”)
Hector Dockrill, Harri Kamalanathan, Benedict Turnbull, Laura Dockrill (“Goldfish”)
Sasha Rainbow, Rosalind Croad (“Kamali”)
Carol Dysinger, Elena Andreicheva (“Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl”)
Lena Headey, Anthony Fitzgerald (“The Trap”)

Review: ‘Limerence,’ starring Tammy Minoff

January 7, 2020

by Carla Hay

Tammy Minoff and Matthew Del Negro in “Limerence” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

“Limerence”

Directed by Tammy Minoff

Culture Representation: Taking place in bohemian-friendly California locations, the romantic comedy “Limerence” has an almost entirely white cast playing mostly American middle-class characters.

Culture Clash: The entire plot revolves around the characters’ conflicts and personal feelings on what kinds of commitments are needed to validate romantic relationships.

Culture Audience: “Limerence” will appeal primarily to fans of low-budget indie flicks that focus on love, relationships and quirky characters.

Matthew Del Negro and Tammy Minoff in “Limerence” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

Romantic movies have an interesting challenge right now. Movie audiences are craving more sophisticated and nuanced stories than the formulaic romantic comedies that Kate Hudson and Jennifer Lopez used to make in the 2000s. But at the same time, the enduring popularity of “The Bachelor” franchise indicates that there are millions of people who want to see the fantasy of being swept up into a love affair so passionate that getting engaged after dating for a short period of time can be a real possibility. When it comes to movies and scripted TV shows, the would-be couple usually has a “meet cute” moment, and there’s usually one partner in the relationship who is more reluctant to commit than the other. At the same time, we are also living in the #MeToo era, where workplace romances shown on screen are being viewed in a different way than how they might have been perceived in previous decades.

“Limerence” (written and directed by Tammy Minoff) packs in all of these issues in a mostly charming way and throws in some clichés as well as some curveballs. The characters’ dialogues are more realistic than some of the contrived situations that drive the central story: Two seemingly commitment-phobic people—aspiring painter Rosemary Wilder (played by Minoff) and art-gallery owner Tom Bartlett (played by Matthew Del Negro)—find themselves falling in love with each other.

Rosemary, the protagonist of “Limerence,” is an artistic free spirit in her mid-20s who has a history of cheating on and breaking up with boyfriends when she feels too confined in a relationship. She believes in love, but doesn’t necessarily believe that she’s suited for long-term monogamy. Rosemary is devoted to her art, but she doesn’t like to call herself an “artist” because she thinks that word is too pretentious to describe herself. She’s also the type who’s aware that she’s usually the most attractive woman in a room, so she gravitates toward men for emotional validation. It’s obvious that she gets along better with men than she does with women, since Rosemary doesn’t seem to have any close female friends.

Rosemary is a recent transplant from New York City to Venice, California (a well-known magnet for bohemian types), but her living situation is less than ideal upon arriving in Venice. She has to stay with her best friend from high school: Leo (played by Billy Aaron Brown), a slacker who’s living in a commune-like home with a bunch of eccentric New Age people who have names like Shamrock and Honeybee. One of the house residents is Rosemary’s and Leo’s mutual friend Emma (played by Marissa Ingrasci), who’s fully immersed in the hippie-ish lifestyle, while Leo just needs a place to stay since he can’t afford a place of his own. Rosemary is the type of person who goes with the flow, because the first thing she does when she’s in the house’s bathroom is light up a joint and impulsively dye her hair pink when she sees pink hair dye in the medicine cabinet.

Leo has a day job at a Vitamin Shoppe, but he moonlights as an events DJ. Meanwhile, Rosemary has vague plans to draw and paint and hopefully find a way to sell her work. While spending a few hours sketching at a local café, she sees a handsome older man (about 10 to 15 years older than she is) meeting different women for dates in the café at different times, before he and each woman leave for an obvious tryst. It’s unclear if the different women know about each other, but it’s very clear that the guy is a playboy.

Later, while accompanying Leo to a DJ gig at a bar mitzvah, Rosemary sees the playboy, who’s a longtime friend of a married couple at the party. Rosemary and the guy have the “meet cute” moment where they flirt and play coy with one another before Rosemary tells him that she saw him being a player with different women at the café. After some alcohol is consumed, Rosemary and the guy end up in bed together at his place before she even bothers to ask what his name is. She asks what his name is only after she’s getting ready to leave, because she thinks he’s a one-night stand she’ll probably never see again. But this is a romantic movie, so of course she’ll see him again.

That moment comes after Rosemary breezily (and unrealistically) gets hired on the spot as an assistant at a trendy art gallery, when she tells the no-nonsense manager Jack (played by Jack Merrill) that she met him in Brooklyn, and she decided to take him up on his offer to look him up when she was in California. Jack doesn’t really remember her, but the movie wants viewers to believe that Rosemary has such a magnetic personality that she can talk this cynical manager into hiring her, and he does. Not long after she’s hired, in walks the gallery’s owner. His name is Tom Bartlett, and he’s the playboy who is (of course) Rosemary’s recent hookup. At first, Rosemary and Tom play it cool in front of the other employees and act like they have a strictly professional relationship. But it isn’t long before their passions take over, and they don’t try to hide that they’re sleeping together.

In a private conversation between Tom and Jack, viewers find out that Tom has a history of sleeping with young, attractive women (usually aspiring artists who end up working at his gallery) and then dumping them. It’s resulted in the gallery having a revolving door of employees who are Tom’s female conquests, and Jack is getting fed up with these shenanigans. Tom considers it mixing business with pleasure, but in this #MeToo era, any boss who acts this way is just asking to be sued for sexual harassment if the dumped woman decides that she was taken sexually advantage of by her boss. Although there’s no indication that Tom’s relationships are non-consensual, his pattern of having flings with his female employees is the most cringeworthy aspect of the movie.

Rosemary is no angel either, but the main flaw of “Limerence” is that the movie plays right into tired clichés that a financially successful “bad boy” who has his pick of women can be changed by suddenly falling in love with an unsophisticated younger woman whose life isn’t going so well, and he can be her knight in shining armor by giving her a better life. Some of the most popular romantic movies of all time use these clichés, from “A Star Is Born” to “Pretty Woman.” However, one of the best aspects of “Limerence” is Minoff’s ability to craft Rosemary as a complex character who’s full of contradictions.

On the one hand, Rosemary sees herself as someone who likes to be independent and not bound by a lot of society’s norms. She privately ridicules Tom’s married friends Donald and May (played by Evan Arnold and Jennifer Lafleur), whom Tom has known since his college days. Rosemary thinks Donald and May’s domesticated relationship is boring. Rosemary says she wants her relationship with Tom to be casual, to the point where she refuses to call him her “boyfriend” or “lover,” and instead calls Tom her “peeps.”

On the other hand, after Rosemary fends off unwanted sexual advances from one of the men in the commune house, she immediately moves in with Tom (she says it’s only temporary), making her not only dependent on Tom for her salary but also for a place to live—not exactly the actions of an independent free spirit who wants to keep things casual. There are so many things wrong with Rosemary and Tom’s relationship that it’s kind of repellent to watch. Even though Rosemary initially declines Tom’s offer to show her artwork in his gallery, she eventually accepts his offer after he convinces her that he thinks she’s genuinely talented.

Although it’s obvious that their relationship is consensual, it’s just not a good look when anyone (particularly a woman in this #MeToo era) gets a big career boost by sleeping with their boss. But this is a situation that will always exist as long as people have sexual hookups with people they work with in some way. It’s realistic, it can get messy, and it’s not going away just because of the #MeToo movement. There are countless young women just like Rosemary: Because of their relative lack of experience in the workplace, they aren’t really thinking about the long-term effects of dating co-workers or bosses. Rosemary is so flippant about it that when the gallery is closed to the public, she walks around wearing nothing on top but her bra, and she openly expresses her sexuality with Tom while around other employees. What Rosemary sees as flirty and fun in the workplace is what most other people would see as inappropriate and unprofessional.

To its credit, “Limerence” doesn’t dismiss the very real consequences of the unbalanced power dynamic when a boss sleeps with an employee. If the relationship is out in the open, and if the employee is female, her talent and merit will always be questioned by colleagues and business associates. Did she get that promotion or raise because she deserved it or because she was sleeping with the boss? Meanwhile, the boss (who’s usually male in these situations) has more power and is less vulnerable to the gossip that can taint people’s reputations, and therefore is more likely to bounce back if the relationship ends badly. There’s a great scene in “Limerence” that illustrates the very realistic resentment that’s churned up when Rosemary experiences the career fringe benefits of sleeping with Tom, and she gets a rude awakening that she (not Tom) is the one whose reputation is going to get the most damage because of it.

“Limerence” also throws in some complications by having underlying sexual tensions between Leo and Rosemary (he’s had an unrequited crush on her for years); between Donald and Rosemary (he’s fairly open about how attracted he is to her while still being faithful to his wife); and between May and Tom, who secretly had a drunken makeout years ago, before May and Donald got married. (Tom confesses this secret to Rosemary shortly after he and Rosemary hook up.) There are hints that May is still sexually attracted to Tom, but the feeling isn’t mutual. May and Donald are having their own issues in their marriage, since they’ve been trying to start a family, but their inability to conceive a child has caused tensions in their relationship.

Meanwhile, what rings less true is that viewers are supposed to believe that Tom falls so in love with Rosemary that he’s suddenly no longer interested in dating other women—a “redemption of the bad boy” fantasy narrative that’s pushed in so many movies of this type. However, Minoff does a skillful job in showing Rosemary’s transformation from commitment-phobe to someone who makes decisions that she didn’t think she would make in the name of love. One of the best lines in the film (which explains Rosemary’s two-sided character) is when she wonders aloud if the person she thinks she should be would hate the person she actually is.

Even with some of the emotional turmoil that happens in the movie, there’s plenty of snappy and genuinely laugh-out-loud funny dialogue that will engage viewers who are looking for some adult-oriented comedy. The final scenes in the third act of “Limerence” are the most poignant and authentic. In the end, “Limerence” is an appealing film about the complications of a woman on a journey of self-identity. The main takeaway from watching the movie is that even if people think they are very self-aware and comfortable with who they are, they can find out things about themselves that will surprise them.

Gravitas Ventures released “Limerence” on VOD, digital and DVD on January 7, 2020.

Review: ‘Days of Rage: The Rolling Stones’ Road to Altamont’

January 7, 2020

by Carla Hay

(Image courtesy of Vision Films)

“Days of Rage: The Rolling Stones’ Road to Altamont”

Directed by Tom O’Dell

Culture Representation: A documentary about the disastrous and tragic Altamont concert headlined by the Rolling Stones in 1969, “Days of Rage” focuses on the era’s youthful counterculture movement and the business of rock music, as represented by white men who are British and American.

Culture Clash: In addition to showing a history of the 1960s counterculture and Generation Gap, the movie also examines how violence affected the factions of pop culture that were involved in the Altamont concert.

Culture Audience: “Days of Rage” will appeal primarily to Rolling Stones fans and people interested in learning more about how the Altamont concert became a notorious example of the dark side of the 1960s counterculture movement.

Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger (pictured at far left) on stage at the 1969 Altamont concert, in a photo still from “Days: of Rage: The Rolling Stones’ Road to Altamont” (Photo courtesy of Vision Films)

The first thing you should know about the absorbing documentary “Days of Rage: The Rolling Stones’ Road to Altamont” is that the Rolling Stones are not interviewed for this film. The second thing you should know is that the movie is not a rehash of “Gimme Shelter,” the 1970 documentary from director brothers Albert and David Maysles that chronicled the Rolling Stones’ ill-fated free Altamont concert in the San Francisco area on December 6, 1969. Even without the Rolling Stones’ participation, “Days of Rage” is a riveting historical account that explores much more than the Rolling Stones’ performance at Altamont concert. The movie takes an overall look at the circumstances and culture that led up to this tragic and violent event, during which an African American man named Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death in the audience by Hell’s Angels gang members while the Rolling Stones were performing “Sympathy for the Devil.” (The band didn’t perform the song for years after the tragedy happened.)

People who are interested in this documentary, which clocks in at a little over 100 minutes, should also know that the descriptions of the Altamont concert don’t come until the last third of the movie. The first two-thirds of the movie are a deep dive into how rock music and youth culture influenced each other in the 1960s, and led to the rise of the era’s counterculture movement. The 1960s counterculture was defined by rebellion against traditional establishment customs, and it included Vietnam War protests, liberal/left-wing politics, sexual liberation and rampant drug use, with marijuana and LSD being popular drugs of choice. Even though Altamont and the Rolling Stones are used as a hook in the title to sell this documentary, the movie is really about issues much larger than a rock band and a concert. The background information on how the 1960s counterculture happened might not be very revealing to aficionados who already know about the counterculture movement, but the documentary is a compelling visual journey into this part of history, regardless of how much knowledge people have about it.

Fortunately, director Tom O’Dell, who also wrote and edited “Days of Rage,” has constructed the story in such a fascinating way that viewers shouldn’t mind how long it takes for the film to get to the details of Altamont, since the preceding content provides much-needed context to explain how the Rolling Stones ended up in the most tragic moment of the band’s history. Unlike many unauthorized films about famous entertainers that are released direct to video, this isn’t a shoddy, “fly by night” money grab that interviews people with questionable credibility who have no connection to the artist. Two of the key people who were in the Rolling Stones’ inner circle in 1969 and who were at Altamont are interviewed for “Days of Rage”: former Rolling Stones tour manager Sam Cutler and Ronnie Schneider, who was a producer of the Rolling Stones’ 1969 tour.

The quality of “Days of Rage” is on par with a news documentary on CNN or BBC. Much of the Rolling Stones archival video footage in the documentary is from ABKCO, the company that owns the rights to most of the band’s 1960s recordings and official video archives. There are also clips from Rolling Stones documentaries, such as “Gimme Shelter,” “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Stones in the Park.” Given that “Days of Rage” is a low-budget independent film, the filmmakers wouldn’t have been able to afford the rights to license original recordings of Rolling Stones songs for use in the documentary, so generic facsimile music is used as the soundtrack instead, except for one snippet of the original recording of the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man.”

The documentary also includes the expected representation of authors and journalists (a mix of Brits and Americans) who provide commentary. They include “The Rolling Stones Discover America” author Michael Lydon, who attended the Altamont concert as a journalist; Rolling Stone magazine contributor Anthony DeCurtis; journalist Nigel Williamson, who’s known for his work for Uncut and Billboard magazines; “Altamont” author Joel Selvin, who was the San  Francisco Chronicle’s pop-music critic from 1972 to 2009; Grateful Dead historian Peter Richardson; “Rolling Stones: Off the Record” author Mark Paytress; photographer Gered Mankowitz, who took some of the most iconic photos of the Rolling Stones in the 1960s; “1968 in America” author Joel Kaiser; and Keith Altham, who was a writer/editor at NME from 1964 to 1967, and who later became an entertainment publicist whose clients included the Rolling Stones. All of these talking heads provide articulate and insightful viewpoints. The documentary also benefits from the appealing British narration of Thomas Arnold.

The first third of the movie delves into the 1960s British Invasion (rock/pop acts from Great Britain taking over the American charts), the influential London youth culture, the Generation Gap and the Rolling Stones’ image as the rebellious antithesis to the more family-friendly Beatles. It was an image that was carefully crafted by Andrew Loog Oldham, a former publicist who was the Rolling Stones’ manager/producer from 1964 to 1967, when he was ousted in favor of American manager Allen Klein, whose background was in accounting. It was Klein who was a key player in the Rolling Stones getting lucrative record deals and becoming a top touring act, but he is described in most historical accounts of the Stones as a greedy bully who was involved in legal battles with the Stones for years after they fired him in 1969. (Klein, who died in 2009, founded the aforementioned ABKCO.)

The second third of the movie covers the rise of the counterculture in the mid-to-late 1960s, particularly in San Francisco, the home base of the Grateful Dead, which used Hell’s Angels gang members as peaceful security employees during the band’s concerts. (The Hell’s Angels were far from peaceful at Altamont.) All of these changes in society took place during the rise of LSD gurus Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary; California’s influential 1967 mass gatherings the Human Be-In (in San Francisco) and the Monterey Pop Festival; increasingly violent political protests; and the 1968 assassinations of civil-rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

During this era, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones (who had almost parallel careers in the 1960s) were part of the soundtracks to millions of people’s lives. The documentary notes the contrast between the two bands in the pivotal year of 1967: While the Beatles triumphed with the universally praised, artful masterpiece album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and with anthems such as “All You Need Is Love,” the Rolling Stones stumbled with the critically panned album “Their Satanic Majesties Request” and the sardonic “We Love You” single, which failed to resonate with audiences on a wide level. The Rolling Stones were further sidelined in 1967 by legal problems for lead singer Mick Jagger, rhythm guitarist Keith Richards (the two chief songwriters of the Rolling Stones) and lead guitarist Brian Jones, who all got busted for drugs, resulting in jail time and scandalous trials.

But with civil unrest happening in many parts of the world, the Stones returned with a vengeance to the top of their game, marking the beginning of what many music historians and Stones fans consider to be the band’s best and most creative period in the late 1960s to early 1970s. The zenith of the Rolling Stones began in 1968 with the release of the single “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and the “Beggars Banquet” album, which included other Stones classics such as “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Street Fighting Man.” By 1969, the Stones were ready to tour again, this time with new guitarist Mick Taylor, the replacement for Rolling Stones co-founder Jones, who died by drowning on June 3, 1969, less than a month after he left the band. It was the first major lineup change to the Rolling Stones since the band began making records in 1963. The lineup was rounded out by drummer Charlie Watts and bass player Bill Wyman.

The Rolling Stones’ first concert with Taylor was a massive free show (with an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 people in attendance) at London’s Hyde Park on July 5, 1969, with the concert’s focus changing into a tribute to Jones because of his unexpected death. Even though the Hyde Park show was generally considered one of the worst concerts the Rolling Stones ever performed (their playing was out-of-tune and ragged), the show was a peaceful event with security provided by the British Hell’s Angels. The Hyde Park concert planted the seed for the idea of the Rolling Stones headlining a similar gigantic free concert in America, especially after the Woodstock Festival in August of 1969 became a cultural phenomenon. The Rolling Stones did not perform at Woodstock or the Monterey Pop Festival, and the documentary mentions that Jagger was particularly keen on performing at a huge counterculture event in America.

And when the Grateful Dead’s co-manager Rock Scully suggested that the Rolling Stones headline a free, one-day, Woodstock-inspired festival in San Francisco, with security provided by the Hell’s Angels, plans were set in motion for the concert that would become Altamont. In addition to the Rolling Stones, other bands on the bill were the Grateful Dead, Santana, Jefferson Airplane and the quartet Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. All four of these California-based acts except for CSN&Y member Neil Young had performed at Woodstock. The Rolling Stones’ “Let It Bleed” album (which included the classic single “Gimme Shelter”) was scheduled to be released just one day before the Altamont concert, which was essentially supposed to be a high-profile launching pad for the album.

The documentary points out that the British Hell’s Angels who provided security at the Rolling Stones’ Hyde Park concert were pussycats compared to their violent counterparts in America. Selvin further notes that the San Francisco chapter of the Hell’s Angels that the Grateful Dead worked with were much more benevolent than the “thugs” of the San Jose chapter of the Hell’s Angels who ended up committing the majority of the mayhem at the Altamont concert. The festival was so mismanaged that it never would have happened by today’s standards, due to all the present-day safety/insurance requirements and liability prevention policies that most U.S. cities, concert venues and promoters have. Plans to have the concert at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco were scrapped after the city refused a permit because the park wasn’t large enough for the expected audience size. The concert location was then changed to Sears Point Raceway in suburban Sonoma, but two days before the show, that concert site was cancelled after the Sears Point Raceway owners demanded exorbitant fees that the concert promoters weren’t willing to pay.

Out of sheer desperation, the concert was moved to the Altamont Speedway in suburban Livermore. The site, which was in a state of disrepair, was woefully ill-equipped to handle the crowd of an estimated 300,000 people who showed up. There were major problems with inadequate space, sanitation, food and medical facilities. Making matters worse, the stage was dangerously close to the crowd. At the Sears Point Raceway, the stage had been safely located at the top of a steep incline, so it was inaccessible to the audience. At the Altamont Speedway, the opposite was true—the stage had to be built at the bottom of an incline—so it was very easy for audience members to slide down the incline and reach the bottom of the landfill pit where the stage was located. Attempts to put barricades around the incline proved to be ineffective.

Even with these production problems and the large quantities of illegal drugs taken by the audience, people interviewed in the documentary say that the concert would have been relatively peaceful if there hadn’t been a bad group of Hell’s Angels inflicting an excessive and disturbing amount of violence on innocent people. The documentary has a harrowing account of the inescapable sounds of people being beaten with pipes and other weapons by the gang members. And a few band members weren’t spared from the violence either. Jefferson Airplane singer Marty Balin was beaten when he tried to stop a Hell’s Angels assault. Jagger, upon arriving at the concert site, was punched in the face by a drugged-out audience member. Band members pleaded several times on stage for the violence to stop, but those pleas were essentially ignored, and it wasn’t unusual for a Hell’s Angel member to get up on stage and threaten the performers.

The Grateful Dead got so freaked out by the violence that they refused to perform and immediately left the area. Schneider, a nephew of former Rolling Stones manager Klein, was one of the chief people responsible for promoting the concert, and he partially blames the Grateful Dead for the escalating Altamont violence, because the band abandoned the show. Schneider believes that if the Grateful Dead had played, the band’s laid-back jamming would have mellowed out the audience. Instead, there was nothing to fill the long time gap left by the abrupt departure of the Grateful Dead, and the audience had to wait for hours before the Stones arrived, further ramping up the tensions and violence.

There are graphic descriptions of what happened during and after the murder of audience member Hunter. According to eyewitnesses, his bloodied body was shockingly placed on stage and then backstage during the Rolling Stones’ performance, in order for his body not to be further violated by the angry and out-of-control Hell’s Angels. These descriptions are not in the “Gimme Shelter” documentary, which rightfully edited out the most disturbing footage of the murder. (Hell’s Angel member Alan Passaro, who was arrested for the stabbing, claimed self-defense because Hunter had pulled out a gun. Passaro was later tried and acquitted of the murder in 1971.) Some of the commentators, especially Selvin, want it to be known that the Rolling Stones perpetuated a myth that the band didn’t know about the murder until after their performance. Selvin said that the lights were so bright on stage (since the concert was being filmed) and the audience was so close to the stage that it was impossible for people on stage not to see all the violence being committed just a few feet in front of them.

The documentary also includes a photo of Jagger looking at a group of people standing around what is said to be Hunter’s dead body on stage. According to Selvin, it was Jagger’s decision for the Rolling Stones to continue performing, even after Jagger knew that someone had been murdered during the band’s set. Since Jagger has not publicly discussed the murder in detail, and he’s not interviewed for this documentary, his side of the story isn’t presented. However, the implication from the Rolling Stones insiders (Cutler and Schneider) who were at the Altamont concert and who were interviewed for this film is that Jagger probably thought that the violence would get worse if the Stones didn’t finish their performance.

Richards briefly told his memories of Altamont in his 2010 memoir, “Life,” but he did not go into any of the gruesome details. Wyman (who quit the band in 1993) ended his 1990 memoir, “Stone Alone,” with the death of Jones, who died six months before Altamont happened. Wyman barely mentioned Altamont in his 2019 biographical documentary “The Quiet One.” Taylor (who quit the Rolling Stones in 1974) and Watts have also not opened up publicly about how much of the murder and body disposal they saw.

Even if you’re a die-hard Rolling Stones fan who’s read numerous accounts of the Altamont concert or if you’ve seen “Gimme Shelter,” watching “Days of Rage” will still make an impact in showing how the peace and love dream of the ’60s counterculture turned into a sickening and brutal nightmare that’s also a cautionary and very tragic tale.

Vision Films released “Days of Rage: The Rolling Stones’ Road to Altamont” on VOD and digital on January 7, 2020.

2020 Golden Globe Awards: ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ is the top winner

January 5, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” writer/director/producer Quentin Tarantino at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on January 5, 2020. (Photo by Paul Drinkwater/NBC)
“1917” director/producer/co-writer Sam Mendes (second from right) at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on January 5, 2020. (Photo by Paul Drinkwater/NBC)

With three victories, Columbia Pictures’ “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” won the most prizes at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards, which were presented at the Beverly Hilton In Beverly Hills, California, on January 5, 2020. NBC had the U.S. telecast of the show.  “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which is set in 1969 and is about Hollywood entertainers who come in contact with members of the Manson Family, took the prizes for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy; Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture (for Brad Pitt); and Best Screenplay (for writer/director Quentin Tarantino).

Universal Pictures’ World War I drama “1917” won two Golden Globes: Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Director (for Sam Mendes), triumphing other films that received more Golden Globe nominations, such as the Netflix movies “The Irishman,” “Marriage Story” and “The Two Popes.” Many pundits did not predict that “1917” would win any of the big prizes since the movie wasn’t nominated in the categories for acting or screenplay. The only other category that “1917” received a nomination for was Best Original Score.

“Marriage Story” went into the ceremony with the most nominations (six), but ended up with just one Golden Globe: Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture (for Laura Dern). In fact, Netflix was shut out of winning almost all of its nominations this year. The only other Golden Globe victory for Netflix this year was Olivia Colman of “The Crown” winning Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama.

Other movies that won two Golden Globes each were Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Joker” and Paramount Pictures’ “Rocketman.” Joker” won the awards for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama (for Joaquin Phoenix) and Best Original Score (for Hildur Guðnadóttir, in a rare occasion when a female composer won in this Golden Globe category). “Rocketman” won the awards for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (for Taron Egerton) and Best Original Song, for Elton John’s “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again,” which was written by John and Bernie Taupin. It was the first major award that longtime songwriting duo John and Taupin ever won together.

Movie winners also included Renée Zellweger of “Judy” (Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama); Awkafina of “The Farewell” (Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy); the South Korean film “”Parasite” (Best Foreign Language Film); and “Missing Link” (Best Animated Film).

“Fleabag” creator/star Phoebe Waller-Bridge (holding Golden Globe trophy) at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on January 5, 2020. (Photo by Paul Drinkwater/NBC)

In the TV field, the top winners (with two awards each) were the HBO drama series “Succession,” the Amazon Prime Video comedy series “Fleabag,” and the HBO limited series “Chernobyl.” “Succession” was named Best Television Series – Drama, while Brian Cox won for Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama. “Fleabag” took the prize for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy, while the show’s creator/star Phoebe Waller-Bridge won Best Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy. “Chernobyl” took the prize for Best Television Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, while Stellan Skarsgård won for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television.

Other TV winners included Ramy Youssef of “Hulu’s “Ramy” (Best Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy); Michelle Williams of FX’s limited series “Fosse/Verdon” (Best Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television); Russell Crowe of “The Loudest Voice” (Best Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television); and Patricia Arquette of Hulu’s limited series “The Act” (Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television).

Crowe was the only winner who was a no-show, and he said in a prepared speech that was read on stage that he couldn’t be there because of the raging wildfires that were happening in his native Australia. Another no-show was Christian Bale (a Golden Globe nominee this year for his lead role in the movie drama “Ford v Ferrari”), who was announced as a presenter but ended up not attending the ceremony for a reason that was not announced.

Golden Globe Awards host Ricky Gervais at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on January 5, 2020. (Photo by Paul Drinkwater/NBC)

British comedian/actor Ricky Gervais hosted the show and delivered on expectations of making remarks that would offend some people, considering he’s done that every time he’s hosted the Golden Globes. (This was his fifth time as Golden Globes host. He previously hosted in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2016.) In his opening monologue, Gervais joked about notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein being a friend to many of the rich and powerful people in the audience, whom he called “perverts.” (Epstein was accused of pimping out and sexually abusing underage girls for decades, before he died in prison in 2019, while waiting to go on trial on sex-trafficking charges.) The jokes about sexual abuse didn’t end there, as Gervais commented that the past year was a year for movies about accusations of pedophilia, citing “Surviving R. Kelly,” “Leaving Neverland” and, he joked, “The Two Popes.”

Gervais also ridiculed the movie musical “Cats” for being a massive flop with audiences and critics. After making fun of “Cats” co-star James Corden’s weight by calling him a “fat pussy” (words that were not bleeped out during the telecast), Gervais made perhaps the most controversial remark of the evening: a crude joke about “Cats” co-star Judi Dench licking her genital area like a cat. In the joke about Dench, he used words that were definitely bleeped out. Gervais also took aim at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organization that votes for the Golden Globes and is partially responsible for hiring the show’s host. (Dick Clark Productions also produces the Golden Globes telecast.)  He joked that the Golden Globes vegan dinner menu consisted of “only vegetables … just like the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.”

Gervais pointed out the lack of diversity in this year’s Golden Globe nominees by calling the HFPA “racist” and joked that he also had a problem with the lack of diversity in the show’s “In Memoriam” segment that’s a remembrance of the entertainers who died in the past year. Awkwafina, “Parasite” director Bong Joo Ho and “Ramy” star Youssef were the only non-white winners at the Golden Globes ceremony this year, which will spark considerable conversation about the lack of racial diversity in the show’s winners.

Tom Hanks received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for career achievement. Ellen DeGeneres received the Carol Burnett Award, which is given to people who have excelled in comedy. The Carol Burnett Award debuted at the Golden Globes in 2019, and Burnett was the first recipient of the prize. Burnett was seated next to DeGeneres at the ceremony. Dylan and Paris Brosnan (sons of Pierce Brosnan) served as the 2020 Golden Globe Ambassadors.

Presenters included Jennifer Aniston, Antonio Banderas, Jason Bateman, Annette Bening, Cate Blanchett, Matt Bomer, Pierce Brosnan, Sandra Bullock, Priyanka Chopra, Glenn Close, Daniel Craig, Ted Danson, Ana de Armas, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ansel Elgort, Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Will Ferrell, Lauren Graham, Tiffany Haddish, Kit Harington, Salma Hayek, Scarlett Johansson, “Rocketman” Golden Globe winner John, Nick Jonas, Harvey Keitel, Zoe Kravitz, Jennifer Lopez, Rami Malek, Ewan McGregor, Kate McKinnon, Helen Mirren, Jason Momoa, Gwyneth Paltrow, Amy Poehler, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” Golden Globe winner Pitt, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Margot Robbie, Paul Rudd, Wesley Snipes, Octavia Spencer, Rocketman” Golden Globe winner Bernie Taupin, Charlize Theron, Sofia Vergara, Kerry Washington, Naomi Watts, Rachel Weisz and Reese Witherspoon.

Here is the complete list of winners and nominations for the 2020 Golden Globe Awards:

*=winner

MOVIES

Best Motion Picture – Drama
“The Irishman” (Netflix)
“Marriage Story” (Netflix)
“1917” (Universal)*
“Joker” (Warner Bros.)
“The Two Popes” (Netflix)

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (Columbia)*
“Jojo Rabbit” (Fox Searchlight)
“Knives Out” (Lionsgate)
“Rocketman” (Paramount)
“Dolemite Is My Name” (Netflix)

Best Director 
Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”)
Sam Mendes (“1917”)*
Todd Phillips (“Joker”)
Martin Scorsese (“The Irishman”)
Quentin Tarantino (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”)

Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama
Christian Bale (“Ford v Ferrari”)
Antonio Banderas (“Pain and Glory”)
Adam Driver (“Marriage Story”)
Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker”)*
Jonathan Pryce (“The Two Popes”)

Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Daniel Craig (“Knives Out”)
Roman Griffin Davis (“Jojo Rabbit”)
Leonardo DiCaprio (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”)
Taron Egerton (“Rocketman”)*
Eddie Murphy (“Dolemite Is My Name”)

Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama
Cynthia Erivo (“Harriet”)
Scarlett Johansson (“Marriage Story”)
Saoirse Ronan (“Little Women”)
Charlize Theron (“Bombshell”)
Renée Zellweger (“Judy”)*

Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Awkwafina (“The Farewell”)*
Ana de Armas (“Knives Out”)
Cate Blanchett (“Where’d You Go, Bernadette?”)
Beanie Feldstein (“Booksmart”)
Emma Thompson (“Late Night”)

Best Supporting Actor 
Tom Hanks (“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”)
Anthony Hopkins (“The Two Popes”)
Al Pacino (“The Irishman”)
Joe Pesci (“The Irishman”)
Brad Pitt (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”)*

Best Supporting Actress 
Kathy Bates (“Richard Jewell”)
Annette Bening (“The Report”)
Laura Dern (“Marriage Story”)*
Jennifer Lopez (“Hustlers”)
Margot Robbie (“Bombshell”)

Best Screenplay
Noah Baumbach (“Marriage Story”)
Bong Joon Ho and Han Jin Won (“Parasite”)
Anthony McCarten (“The Two Popes”)
Quentin Tarantino (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”)*
Steven Zaillian (“The Irishman”)

Best Original Score
Daniel Pemberton (“Motherless Brooklyn”)
Alexandre Desplat (“Little Women”)
Hildur Guðnadóttir (“Joker”)*
Thomas Newman (“1917”)
Randy Newman (“Marriage Story”)

Best Original Song 
“Beautiful Ghosts” (“Cats”)
“(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” (“Rocketman”)*
“Into the Unknown” (“Frozen II”)
“Spirit” (“The Lion King”)
“Stand Up” (“Harriet”)

Best Animated Film 
“Frozen II” (Disney)
“How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” (Universal)
“Missing Link” (United Artists Releasing)*
“Toy Story 4” (Disney)
“The Lion King” (Disney)

Best Foreign Language Film
“The Farewell” (A24)
“Pain and Glory” (Sony Pictures Classics)
“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (Neon)
“Parasite” (Neon)*
“Les Misérables” (Amazon)

TELEVISION

Best Television Series – Drama
“Big Little Lies” (HBO)
“The Crown” (Netflix)
“Killing Eve” (BBC America)
“The Morning Show” (Apple TV+)
“Succession” (HBO)*

Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy
“Barry” (HBO)
“Fleabag” (Amazon)*
“The Kominsky Method” (Netflix)
“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Amazon)
“The Politician” (Netflix)

Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama
Brian Cox (“Succession”)*
Kit Harington (“Game of Thrones”)
Rami Malek (“Mr. Robot”)
Tobias Menzies (“The Crown”)
Billy Porter (“Pose”)

Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama
Jennifer Aniston (“The Morning Show”)
Olivia Colman (“The Crown”)*
Jodie Comer (“Killing Eve”)
Nicole Kidman (“Big Little Lies”)
Reese Witherspoon (“Big Little Lies”)

Best Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy
Michael Douglas (“The Kominsky Method”)
Bill Hader (“Barry”)
Ben Platt (“The Politician”)
Paul Rudd (“Living With Yourself”)
Ramy Youssef (“Ramy”)*

Best Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy
Christina Applegate (“Dead to Me”)
Rachel Brosnahan (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”)
Kirsten Dunst (“On Becoming a God in Central Florida”)
Natasha Lyonne (“Russian Doll”)
Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag”)*

Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
“Catch-22″ (Hulu)
“Chernobyl” (HBO)*
“Fosse/Verdon” (FX)
“The Loudest Voice” (Showtime)
“Unbelievable” (Netflix)

Best Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Christopher Abbott (“Catch-22”)
Sacha Baron Cohen (“The Spy”)
Russell Crowe (“The Loudest Voice”)*
Jared Harris (“Chernobyl”)
Sam Rockwell (“Fosse/Verdon”)

Best Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Kaitlyn Dever (“Unbelievable”)
Joey King (“The Act”)
Helen Mirren (“Catherine the Great”)
Merritt Wever (“Unbelievable”)
Michelle Williams (“Fosse/Verdon”)*

Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Alan Arkin (“The Kominsky Method”)
Kieran Culkin (“Succession”)
Andrew Scott (“Fleabag”)
Stellan Skarsgård (“Chernobyl”)*
Henry Winkler (“Barry”)

Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Patricia Arquette (“The Act”)*
Helena Bonham Carter (“The Crown”)
Toni Collette (“Unbelievable”)
Meryl Streep (“Big Little Lies”)
Emily Watson (“Chernobyl”)

Review: ‘The Grudge’ (2020), starring Andrea Riseborough

January 3, 2020

by Carla Hay

Andrea Riseborough in “The Grudge” (2020) (Photo by Allen Fraser)

“The Grudge” (2020)

Directed by Nicolas Pesce

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in the United States and briefly in Japan, this reimagining (and third version) of the Japanese horror movie “The Grudge” has a predominantly white cast playing mostly American characters, with some representation of Asian, Latino and African American characters.

Culture Clash: A supernatural ghost story, the main plot involves the conflict between living humans and the evil spirits that cause murder and mayhem. A minor subtext is the movie characters’ varying levels of superstitions and beliefs in the paranormal.

Culture Audience: “The Grudge” will appeal primarily to horror fans who like scary stories to stick to a certain formula and don’t mind if a movie takes long stretches to build suspense.

Andrea Riseborough in “The Grudge” (2020) (Photo by Allen Fraser)

A lot has changed in the horror-movie landscape since Japanese filmmaker Takashi Shimizu wrote and directed his classic 2002 film “Ju-on: The Grudge.” Shimizu directed Hollywood versions that were a remake (2004’s smash hit “The Grudge”) and an inferior sequel (2006’s “The Grudge 2”). While the aforementioned movies took place primarily in Japan, and the first two Hollywood versions were rated PG-13, the 2020 Hollywood version of “The Grudge” (with Nicolas Pesce as writer/director) takes place almost entirely in the United States and is rated R.  If you’re wondering why this movie is rated R instead of PG-13, it’s because the death scenes are bloodier and gorier. (Don’t watch this movie if it’s too disturbing for you to see a child being murdered.) But having more graphically violent killings doesn’t necessarily make a horror movie better or scarier.

Movie audiences now have much higher standards than when the first “Grudge” movies were released. Oscar-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele, who is the reigning king of writing and directing horror films, has been offering up biting social commentaries in his movies that go beyond the usual horror tropes of murdered people and good versus evil. “The Grudge” is Pesce’s third feature film, and he has some way to go before he can reach the level of storytelling talent shown by Peele and other horror filmmakers such as Ari Aster and Jennifer Kent, who all began making movies around the same time as Pesce. Peele’s blockbuster success indicates there’s a huge appetite for R-rated, original horror movies that do something a little different than expected. Sam Raimi (director of the first three “Spider-Man” movies, “Evil Dead” and “Drag Me to Hell”) is a producer of all of the Hollywood versions of “The Grudge,” so it’s disappointing that he’s behind a horror movie as boring as this one.

As it stands, the 2020 reimagining of “The Grudge” breaks no new ground whatsoever. The movie takes place from 2004 to 2006, which is how outdated the horror writing seems to be for this film. In between long stretches of the movie’s under-written characters looking morose, shocked or confused, there are predictable and not-very-frightening jump scares. Pesce also has a thing for showing rotting, decaying or burned flesh with flies buzzing around (even in the butcher section of a grocery store), since those images show up numerous times in the movie. The cinematography from Zack Galler is gloomy and foreboding in all the right places, but there’s so much “been there, done that” to the film that almost nothing in this movie feels original.

You don’t have to see the previous “Grudge” movies to know that this is yet another horror film about an evil spirit taking over a home, and the body count starts to increase when the spirit goes on a vengeful murder spree. “The Grudge” is one of many horror film franchises that have used this trope, including “The Amityville Horror,” “Poltergeist,” “The Ring,” “Insidious” and “The Conjuring”/”Annabelle” movies. If you’ve seen any of these films, you can know what to expect from the 2020 version of “The Grudge.”

Switching the location from Japan to the United States (in the fictional suburb of Cross River, Pennsylvania) does little to make the 2020 version of “The Grudge” more interesting. In fact, it makes the movie even more generic than the previous “Grudge” movies (which took place in Tokyo in the 2004 film and Tokyo and Chicago in the 2006 sequel), because Cross River is indistinguishable from the many other similar, nondescript American suburbs that are the locations of countless other horror films. Pesce should be commended for not following the horror-movie cliché of having a female protagonist who’s a nubile woman in her late teens or 20s with not much adult life experience. However, Andrea Riseborough’s Detective Muldoon character (a police officer who’s in her 30s) is so hollow and underdeveloped that Riseborough’s considerable acting talent is wasted.

At the beginning of the film, it’s 2006, and Muldoon (Pesce didn’t give her or any of the other police officers a first name) is grieving the loss of her husband, who died of cancer three months before. She and her pre-adolescent son move to Cross River to get a fresh start. Immediately upon arriving in Cross River, Muldoon is intrigued by a case from 2004, in which a Cross River woman named Fiona Landers (played by Tara Westwood) murdered her husband Sam (played by David Lawrence Brown) and their underage daughter Melinda (played by Zoe Fish) in their home before committing suicide. In the film’s opening scene, Fiona is seen in Tokyo talking in a panic on the phone, because she’s clearly spooked by something, and she says she can’t wait to come home to the United States. (And there you have the thread between the previous “Grudge” movies and this one.)

It’s also obvious from this script with too many plot holes that Pesce would have benefited from better research of real-life police work. Muldoon’s partner Detective Goodman (played by Demián Bichir) was one of the two detectives who arrived at the Landers crime scene and assigned to investigate the case (remember, this is fairly small city), but he says that he was too scared and superstitious to ever go inside the house where the murder took place. You don’t have to be a cop expert to know that kind of incompetent investigator wouldn’t last long as a homicide detective. Muldoon, however, doesn’t bat an eye when Goodman tells her that he never went inside the crime scene. It’s explained later in the movie why Goodman was intuitive enough to know that if he went in the house, he might be “cursed,” but it’s a shaky explanation that does little to bolster the very thin plot.

Meanwhile, Pesce tries to fill out the story by inserting some unnecessary subplots that are shown as flashbacks to what happened to the people who lived in the house after the murders. A married couple in the film—Peter and Nina Spencer (played by John Cho and Betty Gilpin)—also have a connection to the house. Peter and Nina have a real-estate business together, and they’re the first people to buy and move into the house after the murders. Peter must be the dumbest real-estate agent in Pennsylvania, because he’s unaware of the recent murder-suicide tragedy at the house, which would undoubtedly be one of the first things a real-estate agent would know in buying or selling property.

When he shows up at the house to close the deal, he sees a sad, sick-looking girl with no parents around, and she starts bleeding from the nose, so Peter goes in the house and helps stop her nosebleed. Of course, the viewers already know who this girl and her parents are. Peter goes in the house and calls her father (because we’re supposed to believe that dead people can do real-estate deals to sell the house they were murdered in), gets the father’s voice mail (of course), expresses confusion over why the father missed the appointment, and tells him that his daughter has a nosebleed but that she should be just fine. (Really?)

Peter and Nina (who’s pregnant) have recently found out that their unborn child will likely be born with a crippling disease, and Nina has to decide whether or not to continue with the pregnancy. There seems to be no other reason to put that medical drama in the story other than to make Peter and Nina a more sympathetic and tragic couple, considering what happens to them later in the movie. (This movie’s trailer pretty much gave away that things do not end well for Peter and Nina.)

Another pair of unlucky residents of the house are William and Faith Matheson (played by Frankie Faison and Lin Shaye), a couple who’ve been married for 50 years. Faith has a terminal disease, which has gotten worse after they moved into the house in 2005. A distraught William has consulted with euthanasia specialist Lorna Moody (played by Jacki Weaver) to find out if Lorna can use her services on Faith. When Lorna meets her, Faith is definitely acting crazy, because she says likes to play peekaboo with her imaginary friend Melinda. It’s no surprise that Lorna quickly decides that Faith is mentally unfit to consent to euthanasia. You can easily guess where this subplot goes.

Meanwhile, as Muldoon becomes more obsessed with the Landers murder case, she starts seeing menacing ghosts that look exactly like the dead Landers family. She also finds out that Goodman’s former cop partner Detective Wilson (played by William Sadler), who investigated the case with Goodman, has since been put in in a psychiatric institution. Naturally, she tracks him down and interviews him. And because she already decided to enter the empty house to investigate this closed case on her own, we all know what that means.

One of the biggest complaints that movie fans have about the industry is that there are too many unnecessary remakes and reboots. Unfortunately, the 2020 version of “The Grudge” is an example of a remake that should not have attempted a comeback.

Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Screen Gems released “The Grudge” in U.S. cinemas on January 3, 2020.

 

 

2020 Golden Globe Awards: presenters announced

January 3, 2020

by Carla Hay

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (the organization the votes for the Golden Globe Awards) and Dick Clark Productions (which co-produces the Golden Globes telecast) have announced the presenters of the 2020 Golden Globe Awards ceremony, which takes place January 5 at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills California. NBC will have the U.S. telecast of the show, beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern Time/5 p.m. Pacific Time.

Here are the presenters in alphabetical order:

  • Tim Allen
  • Jennifer Aniston*
  • Christian Bale*
  • Antonio Banderas*
  • Jason Bateman
  • Annette Bening*
  • Cate Blanchett*
  • Matt Bomer
  • Pierce Brosnan
  • Glenn Close
  • Daniel Craig*
  • Ted Danson
  • Ana de Armas*
  • Leonardo DiCaprio*
  • Ansel Elgort
  • Chris Evans
  • Dakota Fanning
  • Will Ferrell
  • Lauren Graham
  • Tiffany Haddish
  • Kit Harington*
  • Salma Hayek
  • Scarlett Johansson*
  • Elton John*
  • Nick Jonas
  • Harvey Keitel
  • Zoe Kravitz
  • Jennifer Lopez*
  • Rami Malek*
  • Kate McKinnon
  • Helen Mirren
  • Jason Momoa
  • Gwyneth Paltrow
  • Amy Poehler
  • Brad Pitt*
  • Da’Vine Joy Randolph
  • Margot Robbie*
  • Paul Rudd*
  • Wesley Snipes
  • Octavia Spencer
  • Bernie Taupin*
  • Charlize Theron*
  • Sofia Vergara
  • Kerry Washington
  • Naomi Watts
  • Rachel Weisz
  • Reese Witherspoon*

*2020 Golden Globe Awards nominee

Ricky Gervais is hosting the show. Tom Hanks will be receive the Cecil B. DeMille Award for career achievement, while Ellen DeGeneres will be getting the Carol Burnett Award, which is given to people who have excelled in comedy. The Carol Burnett Award debuted at the Golden Globes in 2019, and Burnett was the first recipient of the prize. Dylan and Paris Brosnan (sons of Pierce Brosnan) will serve as the 2020 Golden Globe Ambassadors.

Click here for a complete list of nominations for the 2020 Golden Globe Awards.

Review: ‘Advocate,’ starring Lea Tsemel

January 3, 2020

by Carla Hay

Lea Tsemel in "Advocate"
Lea Tsemel in “Advocate” (Photo courtesy of Film Movement)

“Advocate”

Directed by Rachel Leah Jones and Phillipe Bellaïche

Hebrew with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Israel, this documentary has mostly Israeli Jews with a significant representation of Palestinian Muslims.

Culture Clash: This entire movie is about how the longtime and ongoing conflicts between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims affect the criminal-justice system in Israel.

Culture Audience: “Advocate” will appeal primarily to those who like arthouse international documentaries that cover civil rights, legal issues and criminal justice from a left-wing/liberal point of view.

Lea Tsemel in “Advocate” (Photo courtesy of Film Movement)

Controversial attorney Lea Tsemel has gotten used to being called a traitor and a “devil’s advocate” in her native Israel, because her specialty is representing Palestinian Muslim minorities in Israel who are usually accused of violent acts of terrorism or hate crimes. Tsemel says her clients are frequently targeted for unfair criminal prosecutions and are given harsher sentences than non-Muslims. A self-described left-wing activist, Tsemel is Jewish (most of her family members on her mother’s side were murdered in the Holocaust), but she’s not overtly religious. Her true religion is taking up causes for people she considers misunderstood underdogs and fighting a criminal-justice system that she says is biased against them.

Tsemel says she is not anti-Israel, but she will usually side with those she sees as being persecuted and deprived of their civil rights. Instead of cowering from the onslaught of hateful criticism that she gets from much of the Israeli public, she uses it has a badge of honor that she’s doing something right in shaking up a system that she wants to hold accountable for civil-rights violations. “Advocate” directors Rachel Leah Jones and Phillipe Bellaïche have made a compelling portrait of Tsemel by alternating between up-close access to her present-day life and archival footage that shows glimpses of her past.

Born in 1945, Tsemel is at an age when most people have settled into retirement. However, she shows no signs of slowing down. Her reputation of being a tough defense lawyer is one she’s had since she began practicing law in the 1970s, but her iconoclastic activism started long before she became an attorney. In the movie, she recalls her days as a volunteer soldier in 1967, and she claims she was one of the first Israeli women to visit the Wailing Wall. She had interactions with Arabs from an early age, since she grew up in an Arab-owned house in her hometown of Haifa, Israel.

As a student at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she frequently participated in activism rallies and protests organized by the radical Israeli group Marzpen. It was at one of these Marzpen protests that she was first seen by fellow Hebrew University student Michel Warschawski, who would later become her husband and a fellow left-wing activist. Warschawski, who is interviewed in the documentary, says he was intrigued not only by her physical appearance but also her fearless attitude. He vividly describes the first time he saw her at the protest as being a short, attractive, miniskirt-wearing woman who had a big voice and wasn’t shy about using crude language to make her point. When  a disapproving man watching the protest told her she should be worried about finding a husband, she shouted him down by essentially telling him that he should be worried about his small penis size.

Even though Tsemel and Warshcawski have kids together, they freely admit that her obsessive devotion to her work has made her family her secondary priority. Their son Nissan (nicknamed “Nini”) and daughter Talila are interviewed in the documentary, and they offer their perspectives of growing up with a mother who is a controversial public figure. Nini remembers a rare occasion from his childhood when he and his mother were spending leisure time together by talking a walk outside. They were stopped by a stranger, who showed them he had a gun and told Tsemel that people were watching her. Nini remembers being very frightened by the incident and asking his mother why she wanted to do this work if it was so dangerous. She replied that she can’t do anything else besides her work. Even though death threats are part of her mother’s work, Talila says that because of her mother’s gritty courage in dealing with her enemies, she and her family feel protected.

From the very first scene of “Advocate,” viewers see Tsemel’s dominant, “take charge” personality when, during a meeting with a client who’s accused of stabbing 11 people on a bus, she tells him about how she wants things to go for an upcoming court appearance: “I’ll do the talking.” The client was charged with 11 counts of attempted murder, but Tsemel got the charges reduced to one count of attempted murder. In Tsemel’s line of work, that reduction of charges is a major victory. Viewers don’t find out the final outcome of the case because the documentary then shifts to the case that is the primary focus of the film, making “Advocate” not just a biography of Tsemel but also a tense legal drama.

Tsemel is the defense attorney for a boy named Ahmad, who is in his mid-teens and charged with two counts of attempted murder. Several facts of the case are disputed by the prosecution and the defense, but both sides agree that Ahmad and his older teenage cousin Hassan were going around Jerusalem’s Pisgat Zeev neighborhood, openly carrying knives (some of this activity was caught on surveillance video), and two Jewish people (a man and a boy) got stabbed. The stabbings were not caught on video. In the resulting melee, Ahmad ran out on a street and was hit by a car, while Hassan was shot and killed by police. Ahmad had head and arm injuries as a result of the car accident, but they weren’t life-threatening injuries, and he was arrested. His defense was that Hassan did the stabbing, and that their intent was to scare people with the knives, not kill them.

There are certain people (such as Ahmad) in the documentary whose identities are protected. The documentary doesn’t reveal their last names, and their faces are superimposed with animation, which is shown in split screen with unaltered images in the same scene. Many of Ahmad’s adult relatives, including his mother and father, are shown on camera. Cameras and other recording equipment are not allowed in the courtroom, although cameras and other recording equipment are allowed in the courthouse hallways, which is where the documentary gets the majority of the courthouse footage.

In this high-profile case against Ahmad, the prosecution portrays Ahmad as a terrorist who committed a hate crime. The defense’s argument is that there is no proof that Ahmad actually did the stabbing, the crime committed was not a terrorist act or hate crime, and the attempted murder charges should be dropped. At the heart of the case is the issue of intent: Was the intent murder or something else? Tsemel and her younger co-counsel Tareq Barghout are faced with the decision to do a plea-bargain deal or take the case to trial. Revealing their decision and the outcome of the case would be spoiler information, but it’s enough to say that Tsemel, by her own admission, is the kind of person who doesn’t just back down from a fight, she runs toward it and sometimes instigates it. The decision on whether or not to take the case to trial is divisive among members of her own legal team, who express their differing opinions on what to do.

Barghout is cocky with a sarcastic edge to his humor, but his bark turns out to be worse than his bite. Although Tsemel is clearly his mentor, Barghout doesn’t have the nerves of steel that she does. In one scene in the documentary, Tsemel and Barghout have to face the media in the courthouse hallway after getting a judge’s decision that’s a setback in Ahmad’s case. Tsemel barrels ahead to face the cameras and answer questions from reporters during the impromptu press conference, while Barghout decides he can’t deal with the media at that moment, so he ducks out and leaves through a back staircase. He eventually returns, somewhat sheepishly, when the press conference is nearly over, but his actions show how conflicted he feels about the public scrutiny of being Tsemel’s right-hand man. A major development involving Barghout has happened since “Advocate” had its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. This development won’t be a spoiler reveal in this movie review, but the documentary mentions this development in an updated postscript before the movie’s end credits.

“Advocate” makes it clear that although Tsemel can be compassionate with her clients, that compassion doesn’t always extend to her employees. In one scene in the film, Barghout and Tsemel joke about an intern in their office who abruptly quit because the intern didn’t like how Tsemel yelled at the intern and told him to “eat shit” (metaphorically) after the intern resisted doing a requested office task. Barghout comments that Tsemel has said things worse things to Barghout and other people who work for her, so they have to find an intern who can handle Tsemel’s cursing and abrasive manner.

One of the biggest legal issues that really gets Tsemel riled up is how authority figures use unethical interrogation techniques, which can lead to false confessions. She thinks that torture and illegal interrogation methods are much more common than what’s reported, and she believes almost all of her clients have been victims of this abuse of power. The documentary includes released footage clips of Ahmad being interrogated by police shortly after being hit by a car. The footage shows Ahmad wailing to an irate, screaming police officer that he doesn’t remember what happened and he wants to be taken to a doctor. It’s footage that may be difficult for some viewers to watch, but it’s essential to understand why people have different opinions on how suspects should be treated during interrogations.

The interrogation issue is also a personal matter for Tsemel, because her husband Warschawski was brutally interrogated after being arrested in 1987 for running the Alternative Information Center, a radical political resource base that served anyone who wanted it, but the center was perceived by the Israeli government as being a haven for anti-Israeli/anti-Semitic Muslims. In an interview for the documentary, Warschawski remembers the abusive interrogations that he endured while in jail. When he contacted Tsemel and begged her to get him out of jail, she refused, and told him that she wasn’t worthy of being her husband if he couldn’t toughen up. (And she reminded her husband that the main interrogator was stuck in  the same job for years, which meant that he wasn’t considered good enough to be promoted, so he shouldn’t be feared.)

Tsemel is obviously a charismatic force who’s interesting enough to have an entire documentary made about her. However, viewers should know going into this movie that the filmmakers (who’ve known Tsemel since the 1990s) are clearly fans of her, because they present very little viewpoints from the opposing side, other than clips of media footage showing Tsemel in verbal spats with opponents on talk shows, or courthouse footage of a prosecutor making remarks during a hallway press conference. The movie’s main flaw is it shows no attempt to interview people on the victims’ side. Regardless of what people think should happen to Tsemel’s clients, there are people who’ve gotten killed or hurt as a result of violent actions, and the survivors’ perspectives are shut of out this film.

The talking heads in the movie include Palestinian feminist political activist Hanan Ashrawi, who talks about how normal it is for Palestinian families in Israel to have a family member who’s been a political prisoner. Also interviewed is Avigdor Feldman, an Israeli human/civil rights lawyer, who says that even though Israel passed tougher laws that restrict torture techniques in interrogations, the laws are ignored by Israel’s Secret Service. Although these intellectual viewpoints offer much-needed perspectives from people who aren’t clients, employees or family members of Tsemel, these talking heads obviously have similar left-wing mindsets.

As a biography that portrays Tsemel as a flawed but admirable anti-establishment hero, this documentary succeeds on all counts. As a balanced look at Israeli’s legal system, this documentary fails to tell a well-rounded story that can be considered true investigative journalism. But on a purely human level, “Advocate” is best enjoyed if you like to root for people who go against the system to take on unpopular causes at the risk of their own safety and comfort.

Film Movement released “Advocate” in select U.S. cinemas on January 3, 2020.

True Crime Entertainment: TV Series (Ongoing and Current)

All TV shows listed here are U.S.-based TV series. Availability might vary outside of the United States. Show descriptions are from the TV networks. Click on the show’s title to the go to the show’s official website that has air dates and more information.

20/20

ABC News’ “20/20” is an award-winning primetime program. A proven leader as a long-form newsmagazine for over 40 years, “20/20” features unforgettable, character-driven true-crime mysteries, exclusive newsmaker interviews, hard-hitting investigative reports and in-depth coverage of high-profile stories.

Series Premiere: June 6, 1978.

Available on ABC, Hulu. 

48 Hours

“48 Hours” is one of the most successful law and justice programs in television history. The enduring appeal of the program is based on original reporting and impact journalism. “48 Hours” has helped exonerate the wrongly convicted, helped solve cold cases, and is committed to investigating the most intriguing and compelling true crime cases. “48 Hours” has been recognized with multiple Peabodys, Emmys, RTNDA Edward R. Murrow Awards and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award. Erin Moriarty, Peter Van Sant, Maureen Maher, Richard Schlesinger, Tracy Smith are correspondents. Judy Tygard is executive producer, Nancy Kramer is executive story editor.

Series Premiere: January 19, 1988.

Available on CBS, Paramount+, Fubo TV. 

911 Crisis Center

This one-of-a-kind documentary series brings viewers behind-the-scenes of the fast-paced, high-stakes world of a dynamic 911 call center outside of Cleveland. This is an up-close and personal look at an amazing team of 911 dispatchers as they take on a never-ending bombardment of panic-stricken callers, and save lives. These dedicated professionals really are the unsung heroes of law enforcement.

Series Premiere: November 6, 2021.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Accident, Suicide or Murder

Each hour-long episode retraces the investigation from start to finish, taking viewers through the twists and turns of these shocking cases, from dissecting the red flags to the undeniable evidence, and strange behavior that put the tragedy in question. With the families fighting for justice and the detectives on the case determined to find the truth, motives will be exposed and justice will be served as the families finally find out what caused the death of their loved ones.

Series Premiere: March 23, 2019.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Accused: Guilty or Innocent?

Imagine being accused of a crime, knowing you may spend years in prison. A&E Network’s documentary series “Accused: Guilty or Innocent?” follows the dramatic inside stories—as they unfold—of people facing trial for serious crimes they are alleged to have committed. “Accused: Guilty or Innocent?” offers an intimate account of what happens when someone is formally charged with a crime and sent to trial—all solely from the perspective of the accused, their legal team and family members. Each episode follows the accused person’s journey through the planning of their legal defense, the trial and, ultimately, the verdict. “Accused: Guilty or Innocent?” is produced by Brinkworth Productions. Malcolm Brinkworth and Xander Brinkwork are Executive Producers. Elaine Frontain Bryant, Shelly Tatro and Brad Holcman are Executive Producers for A&E.

Series Premiere: April 21, 2020.

Available on A&E, Hulu, Tubi, Sling TV and Philo. Individual episodes available for a price on YouTube.

American Detective With Lt. Joe Kenda

This true-crime series hosted by Lt. Joe Kenda, one of America’s toughest detectives, features incredibly disturbing and mind-blowing cases from across the country. Lt. Kenda expertly guides us through the complex twists and turns of these bizarre crimes.

Series Premiere: January 4, 2021.

Available on Discovery+, Investigation Discovery, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

American Greed

Discover multimillion-dollar scams that build unimaginable wealth. Go to places where devious frauds feed deviant desires. And witness the fatal flaws that bring criminals to justice. “American Greed” takes you deep inside shocking true stories of brazen con artists who thrive on stealing fortunes, ruining and even taking lives. In-depth reporting exposes the devastating effects greed has on victims, bringing you up-close to heartless villains living large on other people’s life savings. How do these crooked masterminds defraud the wealthy, rip off their own families, and scam their friends? On “American Greed” (narrated by award-winning actor Stacy Keach), crime pays well, until the crooks get caught. Some people will do anything for money. With evil like this, no one is safe. “American Greed” is produced for CNBC by the independent documentary production company Kurtis Productions, which was formed in Chicago in 1988 by broadcast journalist Bill Kurtis.

Series Premiere: June 21, 2007.

Available on CNBC, Peacock, SlingTV, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

American Justice

Narrated by actor Dennis Haysbert (“24,” “The Unit,”) the newly reimagined and iconic “American Justice” looks at recent criminal cases in the United States through the prism of the criminal justice system, and from the first-hand perspectives of the prosecutors, defense attorneys, investigators, victims and perpetrators involved. The series dives into significant crimes that were adjudicated within the last few years, from trials that made national headlines to gripping lesser-known cases, ensuring that the issues being explored are relevant. Each story reveals how our justice system works, and, sometimes, how it doesn’t. One of the original true crime documentary series, “American Justice” originally aired for 13 years (1992-2005) on A&E, and was revived in 2021.

Series Premiere: September 15, 1992; August 20, 2021 (reboot)

Available on A&E, A&E Crime Central, Hulu, Tubi, Sling TV and Philo. Individual episodes available for a price on YouTube.

American Monster

Monsters can be found lurking behind any innocent smile and on any street corner in America. Never-before-seen-video footage stares straight into the eyes of these killers who hide in plain sight.

Series Premiere: June 1, 2016.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Black Market

In his most personal project to date, Michael K. Williams journeys into the dangerous world of illicit trade.

Series Premiere: July 5, 2016.

Available on Vice.

Body Cam

Offering an immersive portrayal of life on the streets, “Body Cam” engages a unique storytelling technique combining the body camera footage with first-hand accounts to virtually place viewers in harrowing moments as the suspense builds and the tension rises. Each episode tells multiple stories of those who vowed to protect and serve in unflinching detail, offering viewers their own personal perspective of officers in life-threatening circumstances. From domestic disputes to ambushes and traffic stops gone dangerously awry, “Body Cam” profiles just how quickly seemingly routine situations can escalate into tragic altercations. Produced by Arrow Media.

Series Premiere: November 27, 2018.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Buried in the Backyard

“Buried in the Backyard” examines true-crime stories of victims found hidden in quintessential idyllic spaces. Unearthing the human remains is only the beginning, however, as each hour-long episode focuses on a compelling police investigation that unravels the mystery surrounding the victim’s identity and cause of death. “Buried in the Backyard” is produced by Renegade 83, an Entertainment One company, with Jay Renfroe, David Garfinkle, Bob Kusbit and Carolyn B. Day serving as executive producers. There are also the spinoff series “Buried in the Backyard: Buried in the House” and “Buried in the Backyard: Buried in the Sand.”

Series Premiere: June 3, 2018.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Calls From the Inside

It’s an iconic line in any crime story: when a suspect is arrested, they get one call. In reality, once a person enters the criminal justice system, they have multiple opportunities to make calls as they await trial. The vast majority of those calls are recorded. An admission, a threat, a slip of the tongue, a bribe it’s all on tape and the suspect knows it. But this doesn’t always stop them from talking and talking. Calls From the Inside, uses jailhouse phone calls to frame the narrative of murder investigations steeped in mystery.

Series Premiere: December 29, 2021.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Catching Killers

The investigators behind infamous serial killer cases reveal the harrowing, chilling details of their extraordinary efforts in this true crime series.

Series Premiere: November 4, 2021.

Available on Netflix.

Caught in the Net

What happens when the clues to a murder aren’t just physical, but digital? Caught in the Net presents gripping true stories of investigators entering the digital world to solve a brutal murder. In each case, detectives are up against a lack of physical clues. But every time anyone goes online, whether it’s chat rooms, cellphone apps, car GPS or fitness trackers, they leave a digital trail behind them. Now investigators must enter this virtual world and follow the data, as they race against time to secure justice for victims’ families and track down the killer.

Series Premiere: March 14, 2022.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Chaos in Court

“Chaos in Court” examines clips of dramatic, unexpected, and cathartic courtroom moments captured in real time. Each hour brings the backstories of the crimes and legal proceedings to the forefront with actual courtroom footage, so shocking, it has to be seen, to be believed. With insightful analysis from a diverse panel of experts including judges, defense attorneys, prosecutors, and criminal psychologists, “Chaos in Court” takes you into the proceedings analyzing each case from start to finish. Featured within each of the ten episodes are interviews with defendants, family members, and others who witnessed the action to help bring dramatic courtroom moments to life, and the emotional realities of what happens when the ultimate stakes are on trial.

Series Premiere: September 18, 2020.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

City Confidential

“City Confidential” returns to explore crimes that have impacted cities and towns across America. The iconic, noir-style series goes beyond the headlines to showcase the emotional and unexpected stories that catapulted unique communities, both large and small, into the public eye. Narrated by actor Mike Colter, “City Confidential” tells the story of one crime, the ensuing investigation, and the ripple effect it had on a community. Speaking with family, friends, detectives, journalists, and others close to the case, the series weaves together firsthand accounts and archival footage to explore the crime and its outcome.

Series Premiere: November 7, 1998; October 28, 2021 (reboot)

Available on A&E, A&E Crime Central, Hulu, Tubi, Sling TV and Philo. Individual episodes available for a price on YouTube.

Cold Case Files

There are over 100,000 cold cases in America, and only about 1% are ever solved. With recent advancements in technology and the methods used to solve these cases, as well as the unwavering dedication of victims’ families, law enforcement and the public, “Cold Case Files” explores the cases the defied the odds. Narrated by the original host and producer of “Cold Case Files,” celebrated veteran journalist and newsman Bill Kurtis, each episode of the Emmy-nominated series examines the twists and turns of one murder case that remained unsolved for years, and the critical element that heated it up, leading to the evidence that finally solved it. Featuring interviews with family members, friends, detectives, and others close to the cases, the refreshed classic series examines all facets of the crime and shines a light on a range of voices and victims.

Series Premiere: January 1, 1999; February 27, 2017 (reboot); August 20, 2021 (reboot)

Available on A&E, A&E Crime Central, Hulu, Tubi, Sling TV and Philo. Individual episodes available for a price on YouTube.

Cold Justice

From executive producer Dick Wolf and Magical Elves, the real-life crime series follows veteran prosecutor Kelly Siegler, who gets help from seasoned detectives—Johnny Bonds, Steve Spingola, Aaron Sam and Tonya Rider—as they dig into small town murder cases that have lingered for years without answers or justice for the victims. Together with local law enforcement from across the country, the “Cold Justice” team has successfully helped bring about 30 arrests and 16 convictions.  No case is too cold for Siegler as the new season delves into new unsolved homicides while also bringing updates to previous cases. “Cold Justice” is produced by Wolf Reality & Magical Elves with Dick Wolf and Tom Thayer serving as executive producers for Wolf Reality and Jane Lipsitz, Dan Cutforth, Kelly Siegler, Nan Strait and Scott Patch serving as executive producers for Magical Elves.

Series Premiere: September 3, 2013.

Available on TNT (2013-2015); Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV (2017-present); Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Court Cam

A&E Network takes viewers inside America’s courtrooms in the new series “Court Cam” executive produced by Law&Crime Productions and Dan Abrams, former host of A&E’s “Live PD” and chief legal analyst for ABC News. This eight-episode 30-minute series gives viewers a front row seat to some of the most wild, unruly and outrageous courtroom moments recently caught on tape.

Series Premiere: December 5, 2019.

Available on A&E, A&E Crime Central, Hulu, Tubi, Sling TV and Philo. Individual episodes available for a price on YouTube.

Crimes Gone Viral

“Crimes Gone Viral” explores the riveting stories behind shocking crimes caught on camera that gain viral fame on the internet. From business security cameras to home surveillance systems and cell phone cameras, someone is almost always watching. Gripping clips of kidnappings, break-ins, wild car chases, violent road rage incidents and other crimes rack up millions of views. But “Crimes Gone Viral” goes beyond the jaw-dropping footage to tell the full story. This series features compelling interviews and behind-the-scenes information of some of the internet’s most viral crime clips.

Series Premiere: September 9, 2020.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Crime Scene Confidential

In her 12 years as a Crime Scene Investigator for Orange County, Florida, C.S.I Alina Burroughs investigated some of the most startling and devastating cases in the country – from the tragic 2008 death of toddler Caylee Anthony to the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre. Through her work she has learned that people may not always tell the truth, but the forensic evidence never lies. In this gripping ID series, Burroughs revisits controversial and shocking murder cases from across the country, taking a fresh look at the forensic evidence with the hope to bring more clarity to these complex crimes and closure to those the victims left behind.

Series Premiere: March 8, 2022.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

The Crimes That Changed Us

Certain cases are seared into the American consciousness. They are a part of how we look at society, good and evil. But what would happen if we could go back in time, or back in crime, and look again? This unique series fully re-immerses the viewer in these cases as we experienced them at the time by pairing the best news archive with audio interviews, reintroducing these cases from a new standpoint. Each episode shows the evolution of how these cases were perceived by the public then and how we view them now, exposing how the times have changed, and revealing the lessons learned from each case.

Series Premiere: November 11, 2020.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Dateline

“Dateline” is NBC’s signature newsmagazine, bringing viewers storytelling at its best. The stories range from compelling mysteries to powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. When major news breaks, they go to the scene, putting the pieces together to bring the viewer the full picture. And in every story they tell, they help the real people who lived the events share their journeys with the viewer. On the air since 1992, “Dateline” is the longest-running prime-time program on NBC. “Dateline’s” work has been honored time and again with broadcast journalism’s highest awards. Lester Holt is the principal anchor, joined by correspondents Andrea Canning, Hoda Kotb, Josh Mankiewicz, Keith Morrison and Dennis Murphy.

Series Premiere: March 31, 1992.

Available on NBC, Peacock, SlingTV, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Dateline: Secrets Uncovered

“Dateline: Secrets Uncovered,” hosted by Craig Melvin, explores chilling stories through first-hand accounts, told by those closest to the issue, including investigators entrusted with cracking the case and the families confronting tragedy.

Series Premiere: July 21, 2017.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Deadly Women

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, especially when she’s on a mission to murder. There’s no shortage of these tempestuous “Deadly Women,” Investigation Discovery’s signature hit series about women who have been driven to kill. Jealousy, revenge, desperation, and greed all play their devilish hand in driving these daughters, sisters, mothers, and wives to commit the ultimate sin. While male murderers are often motivated by anger, impulse, and destruction, women usually have more complex, long-term motives. Former FBI criminal profiler Candice DeLong helps viewers distinguish between the emotionally charged impulses and sociopathic intentions that lace each story.

Series Premiere: February 8, 2005 (as a limited series); December 24, 2008 (as a regular series).

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Dead Silent

Deep in the woods, inside an abandoned house, or along the shores of a sleepy lake, every snap of a twig or unidentified rustle can be a sign of danger. “Dead Silent” shows just how dark and desolate the great outdoors can be when no one can reach you, where myth, urban legend, and horror movie dread collide to showcase twisted tales too frightening to be imaginary. Each hour-long episode features one spine-tingling and terrifying true story, interwoven with expert commentary from local authorities, true-crime experts, and psychologists, as well as first-person accounts from many of the victims who survived these nightmarish events.

Series Premiere: October 25, 2016.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Devoured

(Image courtesy of Vice TV)

Each one-hour episode of “Devoured” is a deep dive into a single true crime story that centers on one American city or region’s food specialty.  Viewers will be taken through a thrill-ride of twists and turns as narrator Jon Cryer uncovers the unbelievable stories of how food fuels criminal enterprises, both large and small. Along the way, the series dishes up the food’s origin story and impact on the culinary landscape—while revealing how our passion for eating well can become a recipe for doing wrong.

Series Premiere: February 21, 2022.

Available on Vice.

Evil Lives Here

What if the person closest to you was a devil in disguise—would you see the signs? Investigation Discovery’s original series “Evil Lives Here” explores the true, heart-stopping stories of people who shared a home and a life with a loved one who would become a killer. “Evil Lives Here” has exclusive interviews and never-before-told accounts of the years and critical moments leading up to these vicious acts, “Evil Lives Here” showcases the devastating and often undiscussed consequences on the people who have nurtured, loved and raised a murderer.

Series Premiere: January 17, 2016.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Family Massacre

“Family Massacre” is a gripping and powerful exploration of some of the most ruthless murders ever committed. This series follows the true and gruesome tales of the unthinkable: multiple members of the same family slain in cold blood. In each episode, we hear from friends and surviving relatives, those people closest to the family that was massacred, while also detailing the work of the dedicated investigators and prosecutors tasked with finding their killer and bringing them to justice. Through first-hand accounts, archival footage and cinematic recreations, we see the twists and turns of the investigation unfold and delve deep into who could have committed such a shocking crime and just how they were caught and made to answer for it.

Series Premiere: December 3, 2021.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Fatal Attraction

Each pulse-pounding hour-long episode of “Fatal Attraction” centers around an incredible and dangerous romance. Shocking crime, kidnapping or even murder is only half of the story. Driven by powerful, real-life stories, “Fatal Attraction” weaves together intimate, first-person interviews, exclusive interrogation footage and rare archival material. Listen as the key players, family of the survivors and those that investigated the horrific crimes reveal the secrets to each sordid tale.

Series Premiere: June 3, 2013.

Available on TV One, Philo.

The FBI Declassified

“The FBI Declassified” features FBI agents and analysts taking viewers behind the scenes of some of the biggest cases they’ve solved during their careers. Through never-before-seen footage and in-depth interviews, each episode will focus on a different investigation and showcase the cooperation between the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Agents and analysts reveal the thinking, teamwork, technology, techniques and pure gut instinct that goes into solving a critical case. The show’s narrator is Alana De La Garza, star of CBS’s “FBI” drama series.

Series Premiere: October 6, 2020.

Available on CBS, Paramount+, YouTube TV and FubuTV. 

The First 48

The biggest enemy for any homicide detective is not the suspect…it’s the clock. In fact, if they don’t find a lead in the first 48 hours, their chances of catching the killer are cut in half. The “First 48” tracks real homicide detectives as they struggle to solve murder cases across the country. Gripping, authentic and dramatic, viewers are brought along for the ride as the detectives hunt for killers to bring to justice.

Series Premiere: June 3, 2004.

Available on A&E, A&E Crime Central, Hulu, Tubi, Sling TV and Philo. Individual episodes available for a price on YouTube.

Forensic Files II

Long considered the gold standard of crime docuseries, “Forensic Files” returned after an eight-year production hiatus, now produced by CNN Development for HLN under the guidance of executive producer Nancy Duffy. “Forensic Files II” continues the franchise, featuring the amazing work of scientists and investigators who use cutting edge forensics to crack the most baffling criminal cases. Acclaimed film, stage and television actor Bill Camp (“Dark Waters,” “Joker,” “The Night Of”) is the narrator.

Series Premiere: February 23, 2020.

Available on HLN, CNN.com and Hulu.

For My Man

“For My Man” is a true-crime series that features the salacious and shocking stories of women who have been arrested for a crime they did in the name of love. From a killing spree across the mid-west to being an inside informant at the DEA and from murdering an unsupportive mother to robbing fifteen banks in under a year, these women have no limits as to how far they’ll go for their men. And do not be misled; these are not the women you’d expect. They are straight-A students, career police officers and once happily married women. These are the stories of the obsessions and weakness that fueled their fall from grace.

Series Premiere: November 16, 2015.

Available on TV One, Philo.

Homicide City

“Homicide City” takes a deep dive into the crimes that shook Philadelphia to its core. The series explores cases from a darker time that had police detectives banding together across the metropolitan landscape in a sequence of manhunts. From the mansions of the wealthy suburbs to the rowhouse-lined streets of the inner city, each episode is told through the eyes of veteran homicide detectives, local beat reporters and the victims’ families who lost so much.

Series Premiere: January 1, 2018: 

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Homicide for the Holidays

The holiday season is usually the busiest and happiest time of the year and spent with family and friends, but unfortunately can leave a painful surprise when it begins with a shocking murder. Each hour-long episode examines a devastating case as police investigate and go to incredible lengths to unveil secrets about the true motive of the killer, giving families justice about their loved ones’ death. With firsthand accounts from those close to the victim, the limited series delves into the alarming cases that prove the holidays can turn the happiest time of the year upside down in a split second.

Series Premiere: December 3, 2016.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

How It Really Happened With Hill Harper

Hosted by lauded actor Hill Harper (“The Good Doctor,” “CSI: NY”), “How It Really Happened With Hill Harper” delves deeply into some of the most notorious crimes, mysteries, trials and celebrity tragedies of our time, with enlightening interviews and access to the vast CNN news library. Nancy Duffy is executive producer of the HLN Original Series “How It Really Happened with Hill Harper.”

Series Premiere: January 17, 2017.

Available on HLN, CNN.com and Hulu.

I Am a Killer

Death row inmates convicted of capital murder give firsthand accounts of their crimes in this documentary series.

Series Premiere: August 3, 2018.

Available on Netflix.

I Lived With a Killer

Their lives are portrayed in movies, TV shows and books and their shocking acts are woven into the fabric of scary stories about real monsters in the world. But what happens when the monster is someone you live with and love? Every hour-long episode of “I Lived with a Killer” brings a haunting new twist to cases that terrified the public with the powerful stories from the family members of killers. Viewers will also hear from members of the victims’ families, detectives on each case and experts who break down the media frenzy around the crimes. “I Lived with a Killer” is produced by Breakthrough Entertainment.

Series Premiere: January 25, 2019.

Available on Reelz.

I Survived a Serial Killer

“I Survived a Serial Killer” documents the harrowing, heroic stories of one or more survivors of the same serial killers. Told from the survivors’ point of view, the series highlights the strength and perseverance of regular people encountering and overcoming pure evil. Interviews with those closest to the cases will round out the stories of these unimaginable crimes.

Series Premiere: December 5, 2019.

Available on A&E, A&E Crime Central, Hulu, Tubi, Sling TV and Philo. Individual episodes available for a price on YouTube.

Impact of Murder

Putting the victim at the forefront, Investigation Discovery’s “Impact of Murder” utilizes the emotionally gripping victim’s impact statement delivered in court as the driving storytelling technique. Through a victim’s own words, viewers understand the horror they endured or the significance of the life that was taken, providing an acute understanding of the collateral damage of murder. Impact statements act as a source of strength for those who may feeling helpless after a senseless tragedy, showcasing the empowerment that they feel when they stand up in court to address the perpetrator.

Series Premiere: July 14, 2019.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

In Ice Cold Blood

Grammy and NAACP Image Award winner Ice-T (“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”) is host and executive producer, using his distinct voice to guide viewers through shocking true stories involving sex, money, obsession – or a fatal cocktail of all three. With in-depth interviews and archival footage, each hour-long episode spotlights a shocking mystery characterized by expert detective work, unforeseen twists and jaw-dropping discoveries. When some of the most basic human desires—sex and money—cloud our judgment with lust and greed, they run the risk of dangerous consequences. “In Ice Cold Blood” is produced by The Content Group with Steven Michaels, Jonathan Koch, Brian Knappmiller, and Ryann Lauckner serving as executive producers, along with Final Level Entertainment with Ice-T and Jorge Hinojosa serving as executive producers.

Series Premiere: April 1, 2018.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Injustice With Nancy Grace

Legal analyst Nancy Grace gets to the bottom of some of the most challenging and multi-layered true crime stories. Each episode of “Injustice With Nancy Grace” will expose an untold and riveting case involving wrongful accusations, botched investigations, suppressed evidence, unclear motives, unjust sentences and the path forward in seeking justice. “Injustice With Nancy Grace” is produced by The Intellectual Property Corporation, an Industrial Media company, in conjunction with KT Studios and TAP INc., with Eli Holzman, Aaron Saidman, Nancy Grace, John Terenzio, Stephanie Lydecker and showrunner Steve Katz serving as executive producers.

Series Premiere: July 13, 2019.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

In Pursuit With John Walsh

“In Pursuit With John Walsh” unites the power of Investigation Discovery’s dedicated fanbase with John Walsh’s lifelong mission of putting fugitives behind bars, finding missing children, and empowering the public to assist law enforcement. Showcasing time-sensitive, unsolved cases in desperate need of attention, this new real-time investigation series mobilizes ID’s audience to actively engage in the pursuit of justice. Backed by decades of victim advocacy with a mission stemming from his own personal tragedy, “In Pursuit With John Walsh” utilizes Walsh’s unique and unrivaled experience in this field coupled with a call center able to help law enforcement find leads in real time.

Series Premiere: January 16, 2019.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

I Was a Teenage Felon

“I Was a Teenage Felon” tells some of the most brazen stories of youthful ambition gone haywire as “average American kids” become smugglers, dealers, hackers, scammers and thieves.

Series Premiere: September 22, 2020.

Available on Vice.

Judgment With Ashleigh Banfield

“Judgment With Ashleigh Banfield” is an original series hosted by original Court TV alum and respected former CNN and MSNBC legal analyst Ashleigh Banfield, who made her Court TV return as a special contributor in 2020. “Judgment With Ashleigh Banfield” is a weekly hour-long series taking viewers on a deep dive into the most provocative and talked about trials and cases of all-time. With brand-new interviews and exclusive first-time ever reveals, each installment looks to further explore everything people only thought they knew about these touchstones in judicial history.

Series Premiere: September 13, 2020.

Available on Court TV.

Kids Behind Bars: Life or Parole

“Kids Behind Bars: Life or Parole” tells the individual stories of eight previously convicted child offenders sentenced to mandatory life terms, without parole, who are now seeking resentencing on the heels of a recent United States Supreme Court ruling. While some may be resentenced to life, others could be immediately released or given a new sentence that makes them eligible for parole.

Series Premiere: April 30, 2019.

Available on A&E, A&E Crime Central, Hulu, Tubi, Sling TV and Philo. Individual episodes available for a price on YouTube.

Killer Motive

“Killer Motive,” from the producers of NBC’s “Dateline,” is hosted by two award-winning journalists, NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk and Emmy Award winner Troy Roberts. Each hour-long episode uncovers dark and twisted motives, from vengeance to jealousy to greed that led to gruesome killings. “Killer Motive” is produced by NBC News’ award-winning production arm Peacock Productions with Paul Ryan serving as executive producer and Alexa Danner as co-executive producer.

Series Premiere: July 11, 2019.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Killer Relationship With Faith Jenkins

“Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins” investigates burgeoning romances from their sweet beginnings, and follows what happened all the way through to their bitter endings. With her background as a criminal prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and with her expertise in matters of the heart, Faith Jenkins gives her professional POV of the nightmarish cases. With first-hand accounts from victims’ family, friends and law enforcement, each hour-long episode reveals the inner workings of intimate attachments that seemed fated to last forever and ended in murder.

Series Premiere: January 16, 2022.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Killer Siblings

“Killer Siblings” tells the twisted stories of some of the most maniacal siblings in history. Each hour-long episode explores the psychology and pasts of cold-blooded siblings who have carried out vicious murders. Through exclusive interviews and firsthand accounts, the series delves into the evil minds of siblings who partnered together to commit some of the most heinous and sophisticated homicides. “Killer Siblings” is produced by Scott Sternberg Productions with Scott Sternberg and Matthew Watts serving as executive producers.

Series Premiere: October 27, 2019.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

License to Kill


Hosted by renowned plastic surgeon Dr. Terry Dubrow (“Botched”), “License to Kill” chronicles the harrowing accounts of patients put into jeopardy by medical professionals’ insidious use of their expertise. Told from the perspective of victims, families, colleagues and law enforcement, each episode of “License to Kill” exposes what happens when the hands that should heal are used to cause harm on patients at the most vulnerable times. “License to Kill” is produced by Shed Media with Pam Healey, Dan Peirson, Adam Kassen, Haylee Vance, Dave Kuba and Terry Dubrow serving as executive producers.

Series Premiere: June 23, 2019.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Lies, Crime & Video

“Lies, Crimes & Video” gives viewers an intimate look into terrifying 911 calls, police interrogations, jail house recordings, body camera and surveillance video captured as part of a criminal investigation. This series features riveting stories that incorporate video evidence in criminal cases and shocking courtroom testimony. The lies, deceit and bad behavior are all caught on camera and presented in this candid true crime docuseries. Produced by HLN Investigations, Elizabeth Yuskaitis is the executive producer.

Series Premiere: June 8, 2019.

Available on HLN, CNN.com and Hulu.

Locked Up Abroad

“Locked Up Abroad” is a cult cable favorite known for taking viewers inside accounts of capture, incarceration and terror far away from home with intimate personal interviews and dramatic reenactments. Hear the firsthand accounts not only of those who were locked up but also of those who were directly part of the story, such as the undercover agent compiling the evidence against the suspect or the person making the drug dealing offers.

Series Premiere: July 24, 2007.

Available on National Geographic Channel, Hulu, ABC. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Murder in the Heartland

Middle American towns are explored through the murders that tore through them. The townspeople not only become storytellers, they also hold clues to the puzzle that forever changed their lives and how they understand their home.

Series Premiere: November 29, 2017.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

The Murder Tapes

Homicide investigations unfold through dramatic real footage in this groundbreaking series. Viewers get an up-close perspective of each case using raw, unfiltered footage from body cams at the crime scene, surveillance cameras and interrogation room video.

Series Premiere: August 28, 2019.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Murder Under the Friday Night Lights

 

Across the country, high school football unites small-town communities. But when a heinous murder shatters that Friday night dream world, the crime ripples beyond those immediately impacted, and the community will never be the same again.

Series Premiere: January 24, 2022.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

New York Homicide

Oxygen, the home for high quality true crime programming, is diving deep into some of the most chilling murder cases in New York City’s recent history. New York is a shining beacon of opportunity to people across the world, and the convergence of almost innumerable cultures, customs and languages, makes it a true melting pot. It’s a city with a gritty core, where tensions run high. The series, from Good Caper Content, details the brazen crimes that could only happen in New York and the intense work by law enforcement and civilians who race to take murderers off the streets.

Series Premiere: January 1, 2022.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

On the Case With Paula Zahn

“On the Case With Paula Zahn” takes viewers on an exciting journey inside the most fascinating crime and mystery investigations. First person accounts, along with insight from experts are featured as each case reaches its dramatic conclusion.

Series Premiere: October 18, 2009.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Real Life Nightmare

“Real Life Nightmare” presents heart-wrenching, personal mysteries and unexplained deaths that continue to baffle investigators and horrify those left behind. Featured in the series is never-before-seen evidence plus a call-to-action that provides viewers an opportunity to be part of the investigation. This docuseries is produced by HLN Investigations, headed by executive producer Elizabeth Yuskaitis.

Series Premiere: November 2, 2019.

Available on HLN, CNN.com and Hulu.

The Real Murders of Atlanta

 “The Real Murders of Atlanta” portrays the unbelievable cases of homicide that highlight the boundaries between gentrified Southern dynasties, hip hop hustlers and the flashy nouveau riche of this metropolitan mecca of music, entertainment and tech. Told by the investigators, witnesses, reporters and loved ones who have direct connections to the cases, each hour-long story brings Atlanta’s hustle and deadly decadence into sharp focus. It’s the dark side of the New South, where deadly battles for status and affluence emerge between those who are willing to kill for the good life and those willing to kill to keep it.

Series Premiere: January 18, 2022.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

The Real Murders of Orange County

“The Real Murders of Orange County” delves into the most horrific, sinful and salacious cases that rocked Southern California’s wealthy coastal community. From a murder for hire gone wrong to families turning on their own, viewers will hear the harrowing tales of when privilege leads to problems and greed leads to murder.  as one wrong turn led to a brutal murder. “The Real Murders of Orange County” is produced by 44 Blue Productions, a Red Arrow Studios company, with Stephanie Noonan Drachkovitch, Josh Bingham, David Hale and Dan Snook serving as Executive Producers.

Series Premiere: November 8, 2020.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Reasonable Doubt

“Reasonable Doubt” explores controversial murder convictions through an objective lens. With their parallel expertise of the law, hosts retired homicide detective Chris Anderson and criminal defense attorney Fatima Silva know that the justice system doesn’t always get it right. As cries of innocence reverberate through prison cells across the country, this series sets out to help families who are desperate for someone to listen to their evidence and theories, convinced that their loved ones were wrongfully convicted of murder. Each episode is an intense and thorough re-examination of a murder case, where the two pore over evidence, interview witnesses, and consult experts previously overlooked by police or barred by the courts to hopefully reveal the truth. Each episode culminates with the gut-wrenching reveal to the family that either brings hope for an appeal, or clarity to accept the guilty verdict.

Series Premiere: April 26, 2017.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

See No Evil

“See No Evil” reveals how the deadliest crimes are solved by the only witnesses that never lie and never forget: surveillance cameras. With more shocking CCTV footage than ever before, “See No Evil” proves there’s nowhere killers can hide.

Series Premiere: February 17, 2015

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Sex & Murder

When you are playing with fire, someone is bound to get burned. In the HLN series “Sex & Murder,” detectives undercover dirty secrets, scandalous sex affairs, online sex addictions, dangerous jealousy, and stunning twisted fantasies which have all led to murder.

Series Premiere: March 9, 2020.

Available on HLN, CNN.com and Hulu.

Signs of a Psychopath

Charm. Narcissism. Lack of empathy. Impulsiveness. Manipulation. Deception. These traits and others are the telltale “Signs of a Psychopath.” This harrowing archive series revisits some of the most dangerous killers in modern history, reviewing news footage—and the words of the killers themselves—to see which terrifying traits each killer exhibited.

Series Premiere: August 23, 2020.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Sins of the City

“Sins of the City” is a close-ended series that exposes the dark underbelly of a city you thought you knew, by highlighting the mysterious crimes that changed the community forever. Combining informative takeaways and chilling first-hand storytelling, “Sins of the City” focuses on one shocking murder and begins with the discovery of a body as investigators are called to the scene in each hour-long episode. Each episode concludes with a verdict and the impact the case had on the victim’s family, law enforcement, the city, and the people living there.

Series Premiere: May 13, 2021.

Available on TV One, Philo.

Snapped

Oxygen’s ultimate guilty pleasure profiles the fascinating cases of every day, seemingly average moms, wives and girlfriends accused of murder. Did they really do it? And if so, why? Was it a cheating spouse, years of constant abuse or that dirty dish in the sink? “Snapped” attracts millions of fans, including a wide range of celebrities from Anderson Cooper to Kelly Ripa. There are also the spinoff series “Snapped: Killer Couples” and “Snapped: Notorious.”

Series Premiere: August 6, 2004.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Still a Mystery

Just because a case is closed doesn’t mean the truth has been revealed. Suicide or murder? Runaway or kidnapping? Accidental or premeditated? “Still a Mystery” re-examines cases where unanswered questions remain. Through original interviews with law enforcement, family members and private investigators, news footage and social media, “Still a Mystery” dissects the evidence and presents new theories in a quest to uncover the truth.

Series Premiere: May 27, 2019.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Suspicious Minds

Suspicion is contagious. What starts as a tiny spark of doubt focused on one individual can metastasize and cast a shadow on everything you, your community, and ultimately law enforcement thought to be true. “Suspicious Minds” creates a visceral viewing experience where a murder mystery unfolds as a psychological thriller where suspicion and doubt cloud the perceptions of everyone involved.

Series Premiere: October 8, 2020.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Taking the Stand

“Taking the Stand” tells the story of a crime from the unique lens of the accused as they take the witness stand. Hosted by Dan Abrams, each episode will cover everything from first-hand defendant testimony, juxtaposed with the contentious cross examination to the final verdict. There is a reason that taking the witness stand in your own defense is a gamble that very few criminal defendants ever take. In addition to interviews with key members of the investigation, the series features original video from law enforcement, surveillance camera footage, 911 audio recordings, digital forensic evidence and some exclusive interviews and responses from the defendants themselves, to provide an in-depth look at dozens of raw and real cases.

Series Premiere: January 13, 2022.

Available on A&E, A&E Crime Central, Hulu, Tubi, Sling TV and Philo. Individual episodes available for a price on YouTube.

A Time to Kill

The key to solving the toughest murders lies somewhere in the final 24 hours of a victim’s life. Determined investigators must piece together events to reconstruct the timeline, unlock the motive, and ultimately close in on the killer.

Series Premiere: June 4, 2020.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

To Catch a Smuggler

Homeland Security officers work to stem the flow of illegal contraband at America’s airports, seaports and land border crossings.

Series Premiere: November 27, 2011.

Available on National Geographic Channel, Hulu, ABC. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Trafficked With Mariana van Zeller

“Trafficked With Mariana van Zeller” is an original documentary series that explores the complex and dangerous inner-workings of the global underworld, black and informal markets. Each adventure follows Mariana on a mission to follow the chain of custody of trafficked goods, understand how to obtain the contraband, or see the 360-degree view of the trafficking world from the point of view of the smugglers, law enforcement and those caught in the crossfire.

Series Premiere: December 2, 2020.

Available on National Geographic Channel, Hulu, ABC. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

True Conviction

“True Conviction” explores how homicides are solved on the street and won in the courtroom. Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, a decorated Brooklyn homicide prosecutor, travels across the country to reveal how the nation’s top prosecutors tackled their toughest cases.

Series Premiere: January 1, 2018.

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Twisted Killers

The most baffling cases. The most bizarre killers. What drives acts of evil? “Twisted Killers” tells the shocking stories of some of America’s darkest, most unusual murderers. Along the way, a trio of criminal experts, including former NYC DA Beth Karas, retired LAPD Homicide Detective Tracey Benjamin and Forensic Psychologist Kate Termini, provide insight and expertise on how these twisted killers were brought to justice.

Series Premiere: January 6, 2022.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Twisted Sisters

From a quiet town near the Smoky Mountains, to the sunny skies of St. Petersburg, Florida, stories in this season span the nation, and across multiple different family dynamics. It’s not always the sister who is the culprit of the crime, but sometimes the accomplice, victim, whistle-blower or unintended spy. Each episode of the Khloé Kardashian-produced series “Twisted Sisters” is shrouded in mystery, heartbreak and hidden emotions, proving that where there are family ties, there are also family lies.

Series Premiere: September 3, 2018

Available on Investigation Discovery, Discovery+, Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

An Unexpected Killer

Each standalone episode takes viewers on a riveting ride that explores a jaw-dropping murder investigation in which detectives discover the killer is someone completely shocking and unexpected. The series takes a deep dive into homicide investigations through captivating interviews with potential suspects, in-depth examinations of the crime scene and re-enactments. “An Unexpected Killer” is produced by Our House Media with Simon Lloyd, Matt Hanna, Samantha De France, Tom Adams, and Carey Zeiser serving as executive producers.

Series Premiere: December 5, 2019.

Available on Oxygen, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV and FuboTV. Individual episodes available for a price on Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.

Unsolved Mysteries

Real cases of perplexing disappearances, shocking murders and paranormal encounters fuel this gripping revival of the iconic documentary series.

Series Premiere: January 20, 1987 (NBC); November 13, 1997 (CBS); July 12, 2001 (Lifetime); October 13, 2008 (Spike); July 1, 2020 (Netflix).

Available on Prime Video, Tubi TV, Pluto TV, YouTube, Hulu (for episodes prior to 2020); Netflix (for 2020-present episodes).

Vengeance

HLN’s “Vengeance” franchise is about revenge, betrayal and murder. “Vengeance: Killer Lovers” premiered in March 2019 as the first series under the franchise, followed by “Vengeance: Killer Coworkers” in January 2020. “Vengeance: Killer Families” debuted in September 2021. “Vengeance: Killer Newlyweds” premiered in January 2022.

Series Premiere: March 10, 2019.

Available on HLN, CNN.com and Hulu.

Very Scary People

Hosted by actor and musician Donnie Wahlberg, “Very Scary People” details many of history’s scariest and most notorious characters, through captivating news footage and interviews with people close to the case.

Series Premiere: March 17, 2019.

Available on HLN, CNN.com and Hulu.

World’s Most Evil Killers

This documentary series delves into the gripping real-life stories of the world’s most terrifying and sinister celebrities of the crime world. “World’s Most Evil Killers” gives viewers first-hand accounts as told by detectives involved with the case, journalists who reported on the stories, relatives and survivors. The series examines the triggers that drove the most evil to kill delving into their insatiable appetites for murder and their now chilling legacies. “World’s Most Evil Killers” is produced by Keshet International.

Series Premiere: January 12, 2018.

Available on Reelz.

Carrie Underwood announces she will no longer host the CMA Awards

December 30, 2019

by Carla Hay

Carrie Underwood at the 53rd Annual CMA Awards at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on November 13, 2019. (Photo courtesy of ABC/Image Group LA)

Carrie Underwood decided to end 2019 with a surprising announcement: After 12 consecutive years of being a host of the Country Music Association Awards (which is televised in the U.S. on ABC), she will no longer emcee the show. Underwood began her CMA Awards hosting stint in 2008, with Brad Paisley as her co-host. Paisley co-hosted the show with Underwood until 2018. In 2019, Underwood hosted the show with Reba McEntire and Dolly Parton.

On December 30, 2019, Underwood posted an Instagram message that read: “One of the highlights of 2019 and of my entire career was being on stage with the legends that are Reba and Dolly. I’m so proud that we could celebrate the incredible female artists that are part of the legacy of country music, past present and future, and I’m thankful for the huge audiences all over the world that tuned in to see it. It’s hard to believe that it was my 12th year hosting and I will always treasure every show, from the 11 that I was so lucky to do with my partner in crime and friend for life, Brad Paisley, to sharing the stage with two of my all-time heroes. I’m so incredibly grateful to everyone involved with the CMA Awards all these years. It’s hard to imagine topping what we have accomplished together, so I’ve decided that it’s time to pass the hosting torch (at least for now!) to others that will cherish it and honor it as much as I do. I’ve got so many exciting things coming in the new year and beyond, and I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for all of us.”

The Country Music Association responded Twitter: “We love you, Carrie! You’ll always be family to us. Thanks for 12 amazing years hosting the #CMAawards. We look forward to working with you in 2020 and beyond to help spread Country Music to fans around the world!”

Underwood has won nine CMA Awards so far, including five for Female Vocalist of the Year. Although she won the CMA Chairman’s Award in 2016, she has yet to win the top CMA prize of Entertainer of the Year, which she has been nominated for twice so far: in 2016 and in 2019. In 2019, she was nominated for three CMA Awards but didn’t win any.

Underwood ‘s first book, “Find Your Path,” will be published by Dey Street Books on March 3, 2020.

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