On this day: Billie Holiday, Sandy Powell, Wham!, Coppola, and More

on this day in showbiz related history

1915 Billie Holiday born in Philadelphia. The iconic singer's voice is still heard in many films and tv shows as is her life story. The Billie biopic Lady Sings the Blues (1972) was nominated for 5 Oscars including Best Actress for Diana Ross. Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, a stage play about Billie, was also an awards magnet with Audra McDonald winning the Tony...

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Hugo Nominees 2017

Like many awards groups the Hugo Awards (which specialize in sci-fi literature) have been the subject of controversy over the years. That's not just in terms of nominees but the voting process itself. But as window dressing for those of us who like sci-fi but aren't immersed in that world firmly, so to speak, they still make for a handy list of reading suggestions! I'm going to try a couple of these since I needed some new books to read.

They have two screen movie/tv related categories, too, so Arrival has a chance to win something else (crosses fingers)

THE NOMINEES
[Note: If there's a bold link, the nominee is free to enjoy online. Regular links go to Amazon. We're an affiliate so if you purchase anything after clicking over (and some of these are quite inexpensive) The Film Experience gets an eensy-weensy little kickback.] 

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

• Arrival, (21 Laps Entertainment/FilmNation Entertainment/Lava Bear Films)
• Deadpool (Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Marvel Entertainment/Kinberg Genre/The Donners’ Company/TSG Entertainment)
• Ghostbusters (Columbia Pictures/LStar Capital/Village Roadshow Pictures/Pascal Pictures/Feigco Entertainment/Ghostcorps/The Montecito Picture Company)
• Hidden Figures (Fox 2000 Pictures/Chernin Entertainment/Levantine Films/TSG Entertainment)
• Rogue One (Lucasfilm/Allison Shearmur Productions/Black Hangar Studios/Stereo D/Walt Disney Pictures)
• Stranger Things, Season One, (21 Laps Entertainment/Monkey Massacre)

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MTV Movie & TV Award Nominees!

Chris here. You may have missed awhile back but the MTV Movie Awards have added television into its ceremony. While that news may sound like a "Golden Globes for the Instagram set" proposition, the results are much more muddied. 

For starters, outside of the top categories movies and television are nominated alongside each other - which makes for some headspining lineups like "Tearjerker". As if the current murky waters of what defines cinema and television weren't frustrating enough already for those of us that follow awards, this awards show has just thrown caution to the wind. They've always fallen on the populist and occasionally silly side but this is essentially bonkers...

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"What I'm looking for is a driver..."

...preferrably one with some mileage."

Great Moments in Screen Come-Ons #136
Madonna in Dick Tracy (1990) 

Celebrating Grindhouse: 10 Years Later

By Spencer Coile 

There was something electric in the air when I sat down at an opening night showing of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's collaborative work, Grindhouse ten years ago to this day. I was only 15 years-old at the time, crowded into a rowdy, sold-out theater. Dripping in nostalgia, the film heralded back to B-movies from the 60's and 70's that were pulpy, campy, and over-the-top in every way imaginable. This 3+ hour epic featured trailers, two films (Planet Terror from Rodriguez, Death Proof from Tarantino), and an "intermission" as a means to immerse its audience into a culture of filmmaking that had long been forgotten... 

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