Lynn Gives Thanks

Team Experience members were invited to give thanks this week so you'll be hearing from a few of us. Here's Lynn Lee..

In many ways, 2018 – like the two preceding years, only even more so – has felt like a nauseating carnival ride that I, for one, would like to stop and get off.  But the one welcome constant was always having something genuinely engaging to watch and, in the best cases, elevate my feelings on the state of the world and humanity. 

In that spirit, here are some of the many things I’m thankful for:

• The electrifying last 15 minutes of Nanette, wherein Hannah Gadsby turned stand-up comedy into something else altogether – and left our collective jaw on the floor.

• Daveed Diggs – so good in Hamilton, even better in the riveting and underrated Blindspotting.

• The shimmer in Natalie Portman’s and Oscar Isaac’s eyes at the end of Annihilation, one of the most bonkers and most unexpectedly rewarding films of 2018...

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A rough weekend for Oscar hopefuls at the Box Office

by Nathaniel R

What did you see over the weekend? Though a lot of Oscar hopefuls struggled, this weekend was but the preamble to a big holiday weekend so this coming week will tell a much broader story of which films the public is responding too. More commentary after the jump...

Weekend Box Office  (Nov 16-18)
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
1 🔺   Fantastic Beasts 2 $62.1 on 4163 screens *NEW*	1 🔺 Boy Erased $1.3 on 409 screens (cum. $2.6) Podcast

2 Dr Seuss' The Grinch $38.5 on 4141 screens (cum. $126.9) Posterized	2🔺 Can You Ever Forgive Me $893k on 555 screens (cum. $5) Review, Podcast

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Willem Dafoe is Monumental in "At Eternity's Gate"

by Eric Blume

Willem Dafoe plays Vincent van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate, director Julian Schnabel’s film about the last year in the life of the great Dutch painter.  And Dafoe’s delivers a magnificent performance here: his face is the canvas of the film, in all its agony and ecstasy.

Schnabel, a painter himself who made the stunning films Before Night Falls and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, gives us a deeply detailed movie of a painter by a painter.  The mechanics of landscape and portrait painting, the walks to the viewpoints, the tools, and the intimacy with the subject all become the fabric of this movie.  Schnabel’s attention to these subtleties establish his credibility and give the movie real texture...

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Interview: Hirokazu Kore-eda on "Shoplifters," his process and working with child actors

by Murtada Elfadl

Kore-eda with his Palme d'Or for Shoplifters. Is an Oscar nomination next?

In Shoplifters Hirokazu Kore-eda (Like Father Like Son, After the Storm) tells us a story about how families unite with bonds of love and real connection rather than accidents of birth. Perhaps the best way to describe it is “humanist” as it puts connection, kindness and love at the forefront. According to the press notes, the director was inspired to write the story after learning about incidents of pension fraud in Japan - where families illegally received the pensions of parents who had already died years ago - and the severe criticism the perpetrators got.

I am wondering why people get so angry over such minor infractions even though there are many lawbreakers out there committing far more serious crimes without condemnation.

Shoplifters traces the relationships of a makeshift family that survives through petty crime, shoplifting and the grandmother's pension. Kore-eda, who wrote, directed and edited the film, won the Palme D’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film was a runaway commercial success in Japan and is considered a frontrunner for a nomination in this year’s Foreign Language Film Category at the Oscars. On a break from shooting his latest film with Juliette Binoche, Catherine Deneuve and Ethan Hawke, we spoke with him on the phone about Shoplifters, his writing process, and why he’s great with child actors. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity...

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'97 til Oscar

It's 97 days til Oscar so we thought it might be fun to discuss Best Actress 1997. When I asked on twitter and here at the site what everyone's first Oscar ceremony was, this one came up alot. Titanic-mania was in full force in March 1998, bringing the Academy Awards many new young viewers! In fact, Titanic which had opened for Christmas had never left the number one spot at the top of the box office by the time Oscar night rolled around 14 weeks later. (Titanic spent 15 weeks at #1 in total. Can you imagine? in today's movie culture you're basically a true phenomenon if you can stay on top for more than 3 weeks - only Black Panther managed it this year with 5 weeks)

Do you remember these gowns? And who would you have voted Best Actress that year?

click to embiggen

• Judi Dench, Mrs Brown
• Helen Hunt, As Good As It Gets
• Kate Winslet, Titanic
• Helena Bonham-Carter, Wings of the Dove
• Julie Christie, Afterglow

Kate Winslet wasnt winning anything (besides millions upon millions of fans), but the rest of them divvied up the Best Actress gongs. Helena and Julie were neck and neck when it came to critics awards; Bonham-Carter snagged the NBR, BSFC, and LAFCA while Christie swiped the NYFCC and NSFC. That was it for both of them because Dench and Hunt both took home Golden Globes. It was something of a nail-biter between them on Oscar night, though Hunt had the edge given her SAG win. But would they really give a TV star the Oscar (remember the TV and movie divide was so much greater in the 1990s) ???