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The first episode of “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” needs to accomplish a lot. There’s setting the scene, introducing the Menendez family (beyond dysfunctional), and portraying a brutal real-life slaying of José and Kitty by their sons, Lyle and Erik. Oh, and then show the funeral, complete with a somber Milli Vanilli needle drop. (Which really happened.) That’s a lot of tone, but the anchor of the episode and of the season itself is the central murder.

“From the get-go, one of the things that Ryan [Murphy] said was that he wanted you to feel how awful that moment is, to remember that they’re murderers,” Episode 1 editor Peggy Tachdjian told Indiewire. “Because it sets up the whole season. He was like, ‘I want everyone to always remember that the murder was brutal.”

The sequence is remarkable in its unflinching recreation of the violence but also of the cold bloodness.

Industry heavyweights Atticus Ross (“Shogun”), Michael Minkler (“Masters of the Air”) and Robert Elswit (“Ripley”) were among those who led the Creative Art Emmy nominations on Wednesday morning.

FX’s “Shogun” dominated the Emmy nominations Wednesday morning, landing 25 nods. The drama series based on James Clavell’s epic novel landed musician and composer Ross a nomination for music composition for a series while costume designer Carlos Rosario was also nominated.

Speaking with Variety, Rosario explained how he created over 2300 designs for the series set in feudal Japan.

Elswit, who reunited with directed Steven Zaillian for Netflix’s “Ripley,” earned his first Primetime Emmy nod. The Oscar winning Dp (“There Will Be Blood”) sat down for Variety’s Inside the Frame series and explained how he wanted to get inside Tom Ripley’s (Andrew Scott) mind and give the series a painterly effect.

“This goes back to his way of bringing Caravaggio into the movie,...

When it comes to predicting the Oscar winner for Best Film Editing, you can’t go wrong by looking for the movie with the most cuts. Past winners “The Bourne Ultimatum” (2008), “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2016) and “Ford v Ferrari” (2020) included high-octane action sequences with frenetic cutting. And a slew of other champs — including “Saving Private Ryan” in 1999, “Black Hawk Down” (2002), “The Hurt Locker” (2010), “Hacksaw Ridge” (2017) and “Dunkirk” (2018) — have been war pictures. (Scroll down for the most up-to-date 2021 Oscar predictions for Best Film Editing.)

Oscar voters also embrace film editors who skillfully juggle multiple storylines, as was the case with “Traffic” (2001) and “Crash” (2006). And they like films that expertly inter-cut music with images, such as “Cabaret” (1973), “Chicago” (2003), “Whiplash” (2015) and “Bohemian Rhapsody” (2019). Special effects extravaganzas like “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2004) and “Gravity” (2014) won by deftly blurring the lines between the real and the fantastic.

Historically, a...

The original editors of Lifetime’s now-famous January 2019 docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly” walked out over creative disagreements on how best to portray sexual assault survivors, according to a bombshell report published Wednesday morning by The Hollywood Reporter.

Though these events took place in 2018 during post-production on the docuseries, the story recently came to light when Peggy Tachdjian, a TV editor who used to work at production company Bunim/Murray and witnessed the events take place, wrote an Instagram post in June in support of the editors along with an image that said, “Let’s talk about performative allyship.”

“In 2018 @bunimmurray was making a show called Surviving R. Kelly. I saw them take the step to hire 5 Poc editors for this project that we all knew would have deep impact for the African American community,” Tachdjian wrote.

Also Read: While Lifetime's 'Surviving Jeffrey Epstein' Aired, Calls to National Sexual...

The 2020 Emmy ballots have been released by the Television Academy, so we now know which shows, actors, etc. are in contention for this year’s golden statues. Netflix’s “The Politician” accounts for 16 entries on the performer ballot, including lead actors Ben Platt and Gwyneth Paltrow. Platt plays Payton Hobart, an aspirational politician who one day hopes to become President of the United States … but first he has to win his high school’s student body election. Paltrow, who won an Emmy for Ryan Murphy‘s “Glee” (2011), takes on the role of Payton’s supportive mother in Murphy’s latest series.

Notable A-listers who appear throughout the first season include frequent Murphy collaborator Jessica Lange as the poisonous mother of VP candidate Infinity, Bob Balaban as Payton’s quiet father, and Dylan McDermott and January Jones as the parents of Payton’s frenemy Astrid. Judith Light and Bette Midler pop...

The 2020 Emmy ballots have been released by the Television Academy, so we now know which shows, actors, etc. are in contention for this year’s golden statues. FX’s “American Horror Story: 1984” accounts for a whopping 29 entries across all competitive ballots, including 10 actors for their roles as counselors/workers at the hauntingly tubular Camp Redwood. This ninth season of the popular anthology series welcomed back fan favorites like John Carroll Lynch (as Mr. Jingles) and Emma Roberts (as Brooke Thompson) while also introducing some new blood in the form of Angelica Ross (as Nurse Rita) and Gus Kenworthy (as Chet Clancy).

This installment, which aired last September-November, is also notable for producing the show’s landmark 100th episode, which flash-forwarded a year after the massacre at Camp Redwood. Will “Ahs: 1984” continue the franchise’s winning streak at the 2020 Emmys? The first eight cycles took home 16 trophies, including acting wins...