Look who got to meet President Obama!

A heartwarming photo to start your day!

That's little Sunny Pawar, who is so wonderful in the Best Picture hopeful Lion (2016), meeting the President himself. Pawar is serving as the ambassador for the #LionHeart campaign. The campaign has already raised $100,000 for charities that provide support and resources for the millions of children living on the streets of India. You can read more about the campaign at Lion's official site.

You can see more Photos of Sunny's visit to the White House at People.com

One Link at a Time

The Pool the shelf life of 'the cool girl' is getting shorter. Which actresses will we be told to hate in 2017?
Variety a depressing report about which future movies are being talked about the most on social media. Cars 3 is number 2? Gross
Screencrush here's to the behind the scenes administrators and shooting schedule people. This is hard work. Consider that Doctor Strange is absent for ALL scenes which involve Doctor Strange in Avengers Infinity War (now filming)
The Guardian... is disturbed by this as we all should be. Especially with "ghosting" happening via Rogue One

Variety yet another award for Isabelle Huppert -- this time in Paris. (Speaking of -- I'm so excited to see how Elle and Things to Come fare at the Césars. Those nominations are Jan 25th)
Page Six Are Kiki Dunst and Jesse Plemons engaged now? Fargo brings people together
MNPP Which is hotter "The Rock" or "The Slab" in Baywatch
The Retro Set looks back at Russia House (1990)
Vulture Ben Affleck was embarassed by his love scene in Live by Night so he cut it. He has been so depressed lately, people. What is up with the glum face. It's been since, what, Gone Girl? (Or was it before that?) 
Awards Daily Sasha's favorites of the year 
MCN David Poland's 15 most underrated films of the year from Deadpool (wha--- that seems overrated which is the opposite) to The BFG and Pete's Dragon 

Long Reads
The Hairpin Hitchcock's legacy of possession in Marnie, Vertigo... It affects even our language
Bright Wall Dark Room is Robert Eggers the next great filmmaker? (The Witch which has been mistreated this awards season.)
The Tracking Board examines what went wrong with The Founder's release 

Stage
Guardian La La Land considering stage version
Playbill We knew they were remaking the Murder on the Orient Express movie to be released this year. It's also coming to the stage.
Playbill Nicole Kidman nixes plan to take Photograph 51 to Broadway 

The 5th Annual Team Experience Awards!

As teased in this week's podcast installment, it's time for The Team Experience Awards, our fifth yearly celebration! While Nathaniel begins his own Film Bitch Awards, here is our growing team's turn to bestow their year-end accolades without our host.

Last year we went all-in on Todd Haynes's Carol, and this year we have another favorite that receives quite a few prizes: Barry Jenkins's Moonlight. And this wasn't even close: the film was the only one to appear on every ballot in at least one category and was a landslide victory to the big prize. Consider Moonlight the consensus favorite here at The Film Experience. On to our awards:

BEST PICTURE
Moonlight
Runner-Up: The Lobster

BEST UNRELEASED FILM
Personal Shopper
Runner-Up: The Ornithologist

Click to read more ...

Streaming: Netflix is still a mini-haven for foreign films

The Wailling was the 3rd most popular South Korean movie in the US last year after Train to Busan and The Handmaidenby Brian Zitzelman

The accepted mindset is that Netflix Instant is no longer a paradise for cinephiles. There are countless things to binge, sure, but large swaths of those are the service's original series and TV series from other networks. For moviegoers interested in material beyond the recent blockbusters or Hollywood fare, the pickings are much much slimmer than they once were. For example, those spurred to view the work of Meryl Streep after her powerful speech at Sunday's Golden Globes have only five streaming options, two of them being documentaries. A Hepburn fanatic, be it for Katharine or Audrey, has but two pictures to choose from.  

Yet there remains one avenue where Netflix secretly and continually excels; foreign cinema...

Click to read more ...

Beauty vs Beast: Disobey

Jason from MNPP here. I probably wouldn't have thought about John Carpenter's 1988 goofy sci-fi classic They Live in relation to politics this year if the film hadn't been dragged kicking and screaming into the conversation by a bunch of Donald Trump's Nazi followers (in my best Carrie Bradshaw voice-over voice: "And so I wondered -- are the terms 'Nazi' and 'Donald Trump Follower' redundant?").

But now that the film has been dragged into the conversation a story about a bunch of elite monsters blinding the populace while they loot the Earth doesn't exactly sound like the world's most far-out science-fiction story these days. So with the Inauguration looming like an orange-haired mushroom cloud before us - and, on a less fatalistic note, with it being John Carpenter's 69th birthday today - let's assume our places.

PREVIOUSLY You guys gave me hope for humanity with last week's competition facing off the two Best Actress winners from the Globes - that's not meant as a knock on Emma Stone or her performance in La La Land but if a performance as sharp and unfriendly as Isabelle Huppert's in Elle can grab 70% of our vote, then maybe one day Yes We Can again. Said Evan:

"Let's not kid ourselves: Michele could gut Mia with that ax and then send a letter of condolence back to Mia's folks in Boulder City, all before "le petit dejeuner.""