19 | July | 2012 | Through the Shattered Lens

The shootout in Michael Mann’s “Heat” (1995) remains one of the best ever filmed, in my opinion. Mann himself even tried topping it in Miami Vice (which is good in it’s own right), but this scene (which occurs some minutes in) is so loved, Rockstar Games actually developed a mission in Grand Theft Auto 4 to mimic it.

A group of bank robbers, led by Neal McCauley (Robert DeNiro) finally take down their score, only to find that the police squad out to get them has been tipped off. The video starts as the robbery begins. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino), along with his team arrive just as the crew is coming out of the bank with the money. The rest is mayhem, with the gunfire sounds echoing all around. Elliot Goldenthal’s score for the piece sets the tone for the robbery, a piece called Force Marker (along with Brian Eno).

What I wouldn’t give to catch this in a theatre somewhere. Enjoy.

The 2012 Emmy Nominations were announced this morning and, at the risk of repeating myself, “Bleh!”

I know that I’ve kind of set myself up as the awards-crazy member of the TSL team and that’s a title that I wear proudly. Usually, I love writing up posts about the Oscars and the Emmys and whatever other silly awards might be handed out during any particular week.

But seriously, this year’s Emmy Awards are just making me go, “Bleh,” with boredom.

For the boring list of official nominees, click here.

For the far more interesting list of my personal nominees, click here!

Here’s ten random thoughts that went through my head as I looked over the list of nominees:

1) The best comedy on TV, Community, was totally and completely snubbed with the exception of one writing nomination.

2) The Walking Dead was also snubbed. To be honest, I feel that the Walking Dead’s 2nd season was a bit too uneven to justify it winning but, at the very least, it deserved a nomination.

3) 3o Rock, which hasn’t been interesting for a while, received all sorts of nominations.

4) My three favorite guilty pleasures — Pan Am, The Client List, and Ringer — were completely ignored. I’m not surprised by that but seriously, I was still hoping that the Emmy nominations would be at least a little bit fun.

5) The tyranny of Betty White continues as she was nominated for Outstanding Reality Series Host.

6) I was excited by a few of the nominations: Girls and Veep for Best Comedy Series, Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire for best drama series, Claire Danes for best actress in a drama series, Uma Thurman for best guest actress in a drama, and Idris Elba for best actor in a miniseries. Degrassi picked up a nomination as well. Yay!

7) The two most overrated shows on TV, the Colbert Report and The Daily Show, were both nominated for like the 100th time.

8) Both the Office and Dexter were thoroughly snubbed, as they should have been. In the past, I’ve loved both of those shows but this season, they both seemed to take viewer loyalty for granted.

9) Apparently, networks can now pass off their failed shows as being miniseries. That’s the only possible way to explain Ashley Judd picking up a nomination for best actress in a miniseries.

10) With the exception of a nomination for Project Runway, the Lifetime Network was pretty much ignored. When you ignore Lifetime, you pretty much leave me no choice but to ignore you.