Blueprints: FYC Original Screenplays

Following the first major award nominations of the season, Jorge takes a chance to remind any Academy votes to keep in mind some of the best screenplays of the year… 

Historically, Best Original Screenplay has been the category in which the Academy takes some of its biggest risks. Or maybe where it likes to think it does. This is the place where more daring, inventive, or “non-traditional” movies tend to get a shout-out, perhaps as a recognition of the overall novelty of the film without going as far as honoring those edgier achievements with a Best Picture nod or win...

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The 2018 Animation Contenders: Tito and the Birds

Every Saturday this month, Tim will be taking a look at one of the films submitted for the Best Animated Feature Oscar.

First things first: the Brazilian Tito and the Birds, a newly-minted Annie Award nominee for best animated independent feature, is a preposterously beautiful motion picture. The film's style is perhaps best described as looking like a digital oil painting, with swirling smears of color defining every background and character. It is not by any stretch of the imagination looking to present a realistic vision of the world, creating spaces defined only in outlines and crude shapes, and then filled in with dramatic swatches of barely-motivated reds and yellows and blues that function expressively and emotionally rather than to build out the narrative. It is, at an absolute minimum, one of the most eccentric, distinctive animated features released in 2018, but it's not just eccentric: the aesthetic is thoughtful, consistent, and pairs elegantly with the film's thematic concerns.

As for those thematic concerns, they're pretty overt, to the point that it almost feels like the film is a bit of a diatribe. Tito fashions itself as something of a Young Person's Guide to Media Skepticism...

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Team Experience's Happy Gay Thoughts, Our Globe Reaction Finale.

Thank you for your robust comments on our the Golden Globe nominations, Globe snubs, and Vice/First Man nomination theorizing! Please do enjoy your weekend but it'll be busy here non-stop through the Oscar nominations so please check back in daily... or several times a day, bitches! To wrap up our Globe nomination reaction coverage, let's get happy and gay.

We asked friends and teammates at The Film Experience to share their giddiest thoughts and we hope you'll answer these final three questions, too. Here we go...

1. Which acting nomination were you most thrilled about?

DEBORAH LIPP: Alex Borstein 4Ever! I am here for any woman who appears on television in boxer shorts. 

MURTADA ELFADL: John David Washington because he is the real star born in 2018 and should be rewarded as such... 

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Would you rather?

It's our silly hangin' with celebs aspirational time-killer. SO, WOULD YOU RATHER...

• sip a poolside drink with Jharrel Jerome?
• attend the AACTA Awards with three generations of the Kidman family?
• go horseback riding with Zac Efron?
• cheat on your abs workout with Gilles Marini?
• pick out a Christmas tree with Tom Holland?
• do sauna time with Busy Philipps? 
• hit the hot tub with Lea Michele? 
• have an ice cream cone with Reese Witherspoon & Zoe Kravitz?
• visit an art studio with Ava DuVernay? 

Pictures are after the jump to help you decide.

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More top ten lists for your reading pleasure...

List after list every day now. Wheeee,  we love this time of year even as we wish the majority of critics would actually wait for the last week of the year or the first week of the new year to do their top ten lists. Nobody has seen enough by early December is our feeling. But anyway here are a few more lists to check out from popular critics and sites...

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