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By Rachel Bennett
Television Editor & Columnist

Every Monday, Rachel will pick a TV show you need to watch out for that week and/or in the near future.

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It’s been almost three weeks since Cougar Town returned to us, and its fourth season proves the series is better than ever.

Despite being one of the best comedies on TV, Cougar Town gets unfairly overlooked. Sure, it’s not as popular as ABC’s Modern Family or as grounded as NBC’s Parks and Recreation, but it effectively mixes goofiness and pop culture with pathos every week — a difficult combination to pull off.

So why has it struck out with a lot of TV viewers? Much of it probably has to do with its first season and title, as neither is indicative of what Cougar Town has become over the past few years. Ever since the show stopped focusing on protagonist Jules (Courteney Cox) dating younger men and centered more on her group of friends, affectionately called “The Cul-de-Sac Crew,” Cougar Town  has set itself apart.

Since the comedy moved from ABC to TBS, it’s remained must-see TV. If you’re not watching, it’s time to pour a glass of wine and start. Luckily, the show shouldn’t be too hard to pick up if you’ve never seen it — so it’s at least worth a try, right?

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By Rachel Bennett
Television Editor & Columnist

Every Friday, Rachel recaps the week’s major TV-related news, announcements and gossip!

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TOP STORIES

• Although Netflix’s new season of Arrested Development will feature every member of the Bluth family, you won’t actually get to see all of them at the same time. “You don’t see them all together until you see the movie,” says creator Mitch Hurwitz. We thought we couldn’t wait for the movie, which has yet to be confirmed, any more than we did, but we’ve been proven wrong — very wrong.

• Unless Fox’s American Idol judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj are great actors in addition to being talented singers/rappers, it seems they really are feuding.

• Anna Faris is going from real motherhood to reel motherhood. The actress is joining the CBS pilot Mom, executive produced by Chuck Lorre (CBS’s Two and a Half Men), and will star as a recently sober single mom living in California’s wine-filled Napa Valley.

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By Joey Magidson
Film Contributor

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Once upon a time, there was a sort of caste system in place for actors and actresses in Hollywood.

Film and Television were kept as separate as possible, with mobility quite limited and often discouraged. When a performer went from one medium to the other, they were either a TV star on the way up to acting on the silver screen or a film star on the way down, willing to ply their trade on the small screen as opposed to the unemployment line.

Now we know that things have been upended in a big way, as big stars frequently shuffle back and forth. Television is hardly the ghetto that it used to be. And interestingly enough, this awards season features perhaps more former television stars contending for Oscar nominations than we’ve had in some time.

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By Rachel Bennett
Television Editor & Columnist

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The 64th Primetime Emmys have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t stopped thinking, over-analyzing, cursing and celebrating them.

If you checked out the live-blog moderated by TV contributor Carson Blackwelder and myself, then you know we were equally surprised (Damian Lewis of Showtime’s Homeland) and bored by the winners (ABC’s Modern Family) Sunday night.

After taking some time to reflect on the ceremony, here are seven takeaways from the awards:

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By Scott Feinberg
The Hollywood Reporter

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The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Marion Cotillard, the 36-year-old France native who won a best actress Oscar five years ago for her performance as singer Edith Piaf in Olivier Dahan‘s La vie en rose and is contending for another this year for her performance as a paraplegic in Jacques Audiard‘s Rust and Bone, will receive the Hollywood Actress Award at the 16th annual Hollywood Film Awards — the first awards show of the 2012 Oscar season — when its gala ceremony is held Oct. 22 at the Beverly Hilton.

The Hollywood Awards, which are associated with the HFF and determined by HFF founder and executive director Carlos de Abreu and his advisory team, recognize individuals for both career achievement and work released within the calendar year. Cotillard also won the Hollywood Actress Award in 2007; other recipients include Drew Barrymore (1999), Angelina Jolie (2000), Nicole Kidman (2001), Jennifer Aniston (2002), Diane Lane (2003), Annette Bening (2004 and 2010), Charlize Theron (2005), Penelope Cruz (2006), Kristin Scott Thomas (2008), Hilary Swank (2009) and Michelle Williams (2011).

Of Cotillard, de Abreu tells THR, “It is a privilege to honor her great talent, as well as her outstanding performance in Rust and Bone.”

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With the major exception of The Good Wife (CBS), there’s really not much that piques my interest on network television these days. Indeed, it increasingly seems as if everything and everyone with any originality or daring has migrated to cable. But, that being said, there is one new network show that, I must confess, has me a little excited: Don’t Trust the B— in Apt. 23 (ABC, trailer), which debuts tonight at 9:30, right after Modern Family.

Why? In part because of the unusual title; in part because it has been endlessly promoted on ABC, ABC’s affiliated channels (ESPN, etc.), and in movie theater promos; and in part because it is attempting the tongue-in-cheek feat of having James Van Der Beek, the forgotten Dawson’s Creek (WB) alum (as in not Katie Holmes, Michelle Williams, or Joshua Jackson), portray — you guessed it — James Van Der Beek.

But the show’s biggest draw for me, far and away, is the fact that it stars Krysten Ritter, the 30-year-old actress who I first noticed during season two of Breaking Bad (AMC), on which she portrayed Jane, the moody, drug-addicted, and — spoiler alert — ill-fated girlfriend of Jesse (Aaron Paul). In Apt. 23, as the show is destined to be called in PG-13 America, Ritter plays a city girl who repeatedly cons and crosses her naive new roommate (Dreama Walker, who played Becca, Alan Cumming’s young nemesis, on The Good Wife). Ritter has described her character as “Holly Golightly and the devil combined.”

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Dear Readers,

This post will — with the exception of one or two other posts that have already been written but have yet to post — bring an end to my coverage of the 2011-2012 awards season, which I have found to be the most exciting, exhausting, and gratifying of the 11 that I have now covered. This is all largely attributable to my affiliation with The Hollywood Reporter, which I was immensely proud to join on August 31, 2011.

The six months since then have been incredibly busy, fun, and surreal. During that time…

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Last night, thanks to a very kind gesture on the part of my editor, I was able to realize a lifelong dream and sit in the audience at the Academy Awards. I covered the Oscars from the backstage press room three years ago, which was a thrill in and of itself, but, as someone who has spent a huge chunk of my life researching, writing, and talking about the Oscars, you can imagine how much more excited I was to have the chance to watch the ceremony unfold with my own two eyes. And, I’m pleased to report, the experience did not disappoint.

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The 27th annual Independent Spirit Awards, presented by Film Independent, were dished out this afternoon in a tent by the beach in sunny Santa Monica. Comedian Seth Rogen hosted the ceremony, which brings together the best and brightest of the indie film community, past and present, for an Oscar-weekend celebration of the struggle that is independent filmmaking. While the event is known for being lots of fun (how many other awards shows encourage day-drinking?), it is not known for its prowess at predicting the Oscars (voting for which closes before the Spirits are dished out anyway).

Indeed, only one of the winners of the Spirit Awards’ top prize, best feature, has ever won the best picture Oscar, and that was 25 years ago (Platoon, 1986), and only 11 of the 100 performances that it has rewarded with acting prizes — 26 in each of the two lead categories and 24 in each of the two supporting categories — were subsequently recognized with Oscars in their respective categories: Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote, 2005) and Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart, 2009) for best actor; Geraldine Page (The Trip to Bountiful, 1984), Frances McDormand (Fargo, 1996), Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry, 1999), Charlize Theron (Monster, 2003), and Natalie Portman (Black Swan, 2010) for best actress; Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine, 2006) for best supporting actor; and Dianne Wiest (Bullets Over Broadway, 1994), Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, 2008), and Mo’Nique (Precious, 2009) for best supporting actress.

Most pundits, however, believe that this trend will be broken at tomorrow’s 84th Academy Awards — at least as far as the best picture, best actor, and best supporting actor Oscar races are concerned.

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By Sean O’Connell

The Irish know how to party (believe me, I’m one of them). And so it was a “wilde” evening last night in Hollywood as the U.S. – Ireland Alliance held its seventh annual Oscar Wilde: Honoring the Irish in Film.

Academy Award nominees John Logan (“Hugo,” “Rango”), Melissa McCarthy (“Bridesmaids”) and Michelle Williams (“My Week With Marilyn”) were honored at J.J. Abrams Santa Monica production company, Bad Robot. Among the 300 guests in attendance were Stephen Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, Motion Picture Association Chairman Chris Dodd, Colin Farrell, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Jim Sheridan.

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