Oscar Nominees "O.J. Made In America" and "13th" Among 2017 Peabody Award-Winning TV Shows

by Daniel Crooke

Founded in 1938 with the intention of recognizing the very best in television and radio according to the metrics of singularity of vision and quality over popularity, the Peabody Awards celebrate their 76th annual honors this year with a crisp crop of cutting-edge content. While it’s thrilling to see Donald Glover achieve recognition for his marvelously fresh FX series Atlanta in its freshman year – not to mention Louis CK’s double dip with the self-financed, self-distributed Horace and Pete and Pamela Adlon’s sharp-as-nails take on single working motherhood in Better Things, which he co-created – what really stands out is the cross-pollination between television and film, which should come as no surprise to observers of filmed entertainment in today’s media landscape...

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TCM Classic Film Festival 2017 Starts Today!

Greetings, classic Hollywood fans! Anne Marie, here, returning to the blog! The sun is shining, the stars on Hollywood Blvd are gleaming, and there's been an uptick of tourists taking pictures of Bette Davis's handprints outside the TCL Chinese Theatre, all of which mean just one thing: it's time for the TCM Classic Film Festival! 

This year, the most explosive news of the festival is the screening of several movies on nitrate film. TCM has always prided itself on screening 35mm at its festival side by side with new digital restorations. However, projecting nitrate prints requires a retrofit of the projection booths that handle the infamously flammable film stock. Fortunately, the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood recently underwent just such a renovation thanks the Hollywood Foreign Press, The Film Foundation, and Turner Classic Movies. As a result, movies ranging from Laura to Black Narcissus and the original The Man Who Knew Too Much will once again get the chance to light the screen ablaze - metaphorically, of course...

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Feud: Bette and Joan "And the Winner Is" (Part 1)

Previously on Feud: Bette and Joan
1 "Pilot" 2 "The Other Woman"  3 "Mommie Dearest"  4 "More or Less" 

-Do you have any comment on your co-star Joan Crawford being snubbed?

-Define "snub"! 

by Nathaniel R

If you had told me at any point before Feud: Bette and Joan was announced to the world that there would one day be a TV show that spent a full hour recreating the drama of a single Oscar night, I would never have believed you. If that imaginative hurtle was cleared I would then preemptively call it the single greatest TV hour in the history of television. But here we are with Feud and the reality is, if not the fantasy, still the best hour of Feud as a series. The concept of the series has so far outpaced the reality of it that it's lapped by several times already. Which is to say that if you've been reading along you know that I don't love the show. So I'll turn over the finale 3 episodes to team members who are maybe enjoying it a bit more (with one last Feud-related post from me after the season has wrapped). Still, I can't not review this Oscar-themed episode.  "And the Winner Is..." was entirely riveting even though all Oscar buffs had spoiler alerts in their DNA!

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"the greatest people you will ever meet"

Review: The Zookeeper's Wife

A portion of this review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

Jessica Chastain stars as Antonina Zabinski, The Zookeeper's Wife, a true story based on the international bestseller of the same title. The Zabinski family run a lovingly crafted zoo in Warsaw but political unrest unnerves Jan Zabinski (Johan Heldenbergh) enough to attempt to send his wife and child away. Antonia, naive and endearingly devoted to her animals, won't have it. Then German bombs hit their attraction, killing many animals. Poland surrenders to Germany quickly. Much to the Zabinski’s horror they learn that their surviving animals will all be killed for meat to feed soldiers unless they can strike a deal with fellow zookeeper and now Nazi officer (Daniel Brühl, Hollywood’s go-to Germanic villain who isn’t named Christoph Waltz). 

While working on this deal with the devil, Antonina and her husband begin a dangerous game, hiding Jews in their now empty zoo until they can figure out a way to get them out of Poland to (relative) safety in a world gone mad...

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