The Oscars picture is starting to emerge.  Last night, Argo won the Producers Guild Award for Best Picture, and tonight Ben Affleck‘s drama has won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.  With tonight’s win, Argo is slowly moving towards being the first film since Driving Miss Daisy to win Best Picture at the Oscars even though the director didn’t pick up a nomination.  Like Driving Miss Daisy, Argo will have managed the incredible task of directing itself.  The night’s other film actor winners included Daniel Day-Lewis, Jennifer Lawrence, Tommy Lee Jones, and Anne Hathaway.  It will be interesting to see how these will match up with the Oscar winners.  Over on the TV side, Downton Abbey broke Homeland‘s awards-streak by picking up Best Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.

Hit the jump for the full list of winners.

The 2013 Golden Globes have just wrapped up.  I only watched the last hour of the ceremony because the Globes no longer have their awards season power due to voting schedule changes.  Reading tweets and Facebook posts, it seems like it was a fairly entertaining show (keep an eye out for Jodie Foster‘s acceptance speech for her Lifetime Achievement Award).  As for the winners, they were very “Globes” in that they were more populist choices that are unlikely to have much bearing on the Oscars.  Argo may have had a good night at the Globes by winning Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director, but I still think Lincoln is the picture to beat when it comes to the Academy Awards, especially since Ben Affleck was snubbed for the Best Director Oscar nomination.

Hit the jump for the full list of winners.

One thing lately that Homeland has had in common with Sons of Anarchy is that even when the plot lets you down, the show does a damn fine job of giving satisfying “feels.”  Last week’s Homeland left viewers and critics alike in a quandary: was it a great episode?  A ludicrous one?  Had it turned into Prison Break? My stance was essentially that it was pretty ridiculous, but as others pointed out, we’ve bought into a pretty ridiculous world here anyway.  Why not believe that terrorists could be using Skype or that a normally subtle character went off the rails screaming a terrorist’s name in the Vice-President’s house?   But “The Motherfucker with a Turban” righted many of those wrongs, and focused almost entirely on the emotional.  It also blew some of the show’s conspiracy theories out of the water, possibly, but hit the jump to get into the specifics.

Homeland‘s greatest success may be its complete and utter emotional manipulation of its viewers to the point where only afterwards and after much consideration does one realize how completely ridiculous what just happened was.  Does anyone get through episodes of Homeland without getting close to hyperventilation?  The suspense, the jump cuts, the unsteady cam, the music — everything builds to an unholy tremor of excitement and emotion, and we’re whipped around from place to place without time to even finish a game of Hearts with Chris!  It’s all too much. But hit the jump to look at some of the cold, hard truths of Homeland once that emotion starts to wear away. 

Good news for a couple of popular series.  First up, hot off the network’s biggest ratings in years, The CW has picked up the superhero adaptation Arrow for a full season.  Much like Smallville, the show puts a television spin on the Green Arrow comic book character and has been met with a relatively enthusiastic audience response.  The series had an impressively strong hold from its premiere numbers of 4.02 million viewers and a 1.3 rating in the coveted 18-49 demo to the second episode, so the order was a no-brainer.  The CW’s pick-up is for a full 22-episode season.

Hit the jump for renewal news concerning the best show on TV, Homeland.

I didn’t take as many notes for this week’s Homeland as I usually do, probably because my hand was tremoring more than Claire Danes‘ chin.  After “Back to Beirut’s” jaw-dropping final moments, it seemed inconceivable that the show could — or would — do anything but back off of the action and take another route before coming back to what Saul had discovered in the bag.  And yet, Homeland did not shy away from addressing that issue in the opening moments at all.  Then to top thing off, it then pulled a twist that made the action double again.  How is it possible that in only the third episode of the season I’m already needing to consider blood pressure medication?  There are so many episodes left in front of us, yet Homeland continues to keep things amped to the maximum drama at all times.  For more on this and why every time you have an argument you can bet Dana is creepin’ in the shadows listening, hit the jump.

Those of you who just marathoned the first (and newly minted “Emmy award winning”) season of Showtime’s exceptional psychological thriller Homeland won’t need much of a refresher course since your mind is probably racing as fast as Carrie’s trying to connect the dots about who’s lying, who is working for the good guys versus the bad guys, who isn’t sure, and the biggest question of the season: does Morena Baccarin look better with chin-length hair or a pixie cut?  Still, maybe it would be helpful to organize our thoughts into a rainbow chart of time anyway.

Hit the jump for a few reminders of the biggest points from the end of last season, and a few questions that may get answered in season 2 (spoilers abound!).

The 2012 Primetime Emmy Awards were given out last night, and longtime favorite Mad Men had a pretty rough evening.  Matthew Weiner’s AMC drama was shut out in every category in which it was nominated (Christina Hendricks was robbed), denying the series a record-breaking fifth consecutive Best Drama Series Emmy in favor of Showtime’s excellent freshman series Homeland.  The cable thriller nearly swept the drama series category, even landing Damian Lewis a surprising Best Actor win over perennial favorite Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) and Mad Men’s way overdue Jon Hamm.  It’s hard to complain, though, as Homeland had a positively stellar first season and star Claire Danes gave a powerhouse performance as a psychologically plagued CIA analyst, for which she was awarded Best Actress.

On the comedy side of things the awards were a tad more predictable, with ABC’s Modern Family pulling off another sweep in the genre. Julia Louis-Dreyfus took home the Best Actress award for her hilarious work on Veep, and Jon Cryer inexplicably won Best Actor in a Comedy for his role in Two and a Half Men despite that show not being funny.  Hit the jump to read the full list of winners.

The 2012 Emmy Awards air Sunday at 8pm on ABC during all of your other programming (set those DV-Rs!), so is the show worth watching?  Will there be any upsets?  Or will it just be worth it to sit there smugly as Bryan Cranston wins again for Breaking Bad, turning to your friends, significant other or Siri and saying “I totally called that.”  Hit the jump to see my predictions for who will win and whoshould win Sunday night based on Vegas odds, rumors, secret handshakes, the predictability of Emmy voters, with maybe an upset or two thrown in to keep things interesting.

One of the best shows on television returns later this month with the second season premiere of Showtime’s Homeland, and the cable channel has now made available the first 20 minutes from the episode to entice fans even further.  We last left Claire Danes’ CIA operations officer in a rather shocking position, and this sneak peek opens with a rather lengthy recap of the events from season one.  If you haven’t seen the first season, I highly suggest you do so.  And if you have, then hit the jump to check out the rather curious first 20 minutes from the season two premiere.

Season two of Homeland premieres on September 30th.

A new trailer for the upcoming second season of Showtime’s Homeland has landed online, and it’s the best one yet by far.  Set against a rather haunting cover of The Police’s “Every Breath You Take”, the trailer shows ridiculously tantalizing clips of what Claire Danes, Mandy Patinkin, and Damien Lewis’ characters will be up to following the cliffhanger events of last season’s finale, and it closes out with one hell of a scene.  Though I think the first season was far and away one of the best things on television last year, I’ve been skeptical of how the series can continue its streak throughout another season.  This trailer offers a great deal of promising evidence that showrunners Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa have indeed pulled it off.

Hit the jump to watch the new trailer.  Homeland season 2 begins on September 30th on Showtime.

One of the most nominated series for the upcoming 2012 Primetime Emmy Awards is Showtime’s Homeland, and for good reason.  The first season of the dramatic thriller was an absolutely joy to watch, with an intense, enthralling, and addictive season-long story that kept viewers on their feet, buoyed by some truly terrific performances by Claire Danes, Damien Lewis, and Mandy Patinkin.  For those unaware, the series centers on a CIA operations officer investigating a possible major terrorism threat in the U.S.   As you can probably surmise, things aren’t exactly that straightforward.

The season ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, and a new trailer for the upcoming second season has landed online to confuse fans even further.  It’s a bit jarring to watch, but by the end of the trailer you’ll be craving new episodes faster than you can say “Abu Nazir.”  Hit the jump to take a look.  Season 2 begins on Showtime on September 30th.

Howling fans of intrigue and murder packed Ballroom 20 today for a Showtime’s combo Homeland/Dexter panel.  We learned a new locale for Homeland, the dramatic thriller concerning a CIA officer (Claire Danes) and a soldier returning from enemy captivity who may be a threat to the U.S. (Damian Lewis).  And we also met a new face for Dexter.  The show, which will be entering its seventh season this fall, stars Michael C. Hall as the fan-favorite killer with a conscience.  Read more about terrorists and serial killers after the jump.

I’ve just spent the past three hours watching and live-blogging the 2012 Golden Globe Awards.  My brain feels mushy.  After the jump and presented without comment is a list of this year’s winners. If you don’t even want to hit the jump, The Artist and The Descendants won Best Comedy/Musical and Best Drama, respectively.  If you want to awards prognosticate, I’ll save you the trouble: both were nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.  Those nominations haven’t been announced yet, but they were nominated.  Trust me.  I’m a professional.

Also, feel free to sound off on the winners and losers.  Lord knows I’ve been doing it for the past three hours.

The Screen Actors Guild handed out awards for the 17th time tonight with The King’s Speech and The Fighter each taking home two wins.  Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech won awards in the “Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture” (more or less, SAG’s equivalent to the Academy’s “Best Picture” category ) and “Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role” for Colin Firth.  Meanwhile, David O. Russell’s The Fighter dominated the supporting categories by landing “Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role” awards for both Christian Bale and Melissa Leo.  In what should be (in my opinion, at least) an open-shut case for the Academy, Natalie Portman was awarded “Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role” for her stellar work in Black Swan.

For those wondering what, if any, effect the SAG Awards may have on the eventual Academy Awards, it’s important to note that the event is believed to be a better gauge of Oscar winners than its most recent predecessor (the Golden Globes).  This is because the Screen Actors Guild is comprised mostly of American actors (the largest branch of the Academy) as opposed to the Globes which is made-up of a smaller group of foreign journalists known as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.  Long story short (though certainly not etched in stone), look for The King’s Speech to take home Best Picture next month.

Hit the jump to check out the complete list of winners (television included) from the 17th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.