Golden Globes Tonight!

Golden Globe Madness is about to hit. Yipee! So make sure you're watching tonight (5 PM PT / 8 PM EST on NBC). We haven't forgiven Jimmy Fallon for treating T**** like a cuddly harmless celebrity instead of a Democracy destroying fascist but we don't watch awards shows for the hosts anyway (the Amy & Tina years were just a happy bonus) but for the stars who dress up, copiously drink, and win or lose graciously or otherwise. 

I am quite terrible at predicting the Globes and have never claimed otherwise but I'm guessing it goes like so...

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FYC: Moonlight, Best Original Score

By Chris Feil

It's always ceaselessly frustrating to see deserving below-the-line work from so-called smaller films miss out on Oscar nominations. Even when a film is a favorite in the major categories, it can still be hard to break through beyond major races - just look at last year's Room. This year, Moonlight deserves those nominations for its behind-the-scenes craft, each of its elements too powerful and integral to deny. But for brevity's sake, I'll just call attention to its evocative score by Nicholas Britell.

Britell threads recurring melodies and tones through each of Chiron's chapters without feeling repetitive. As the piano theme comes in and out, it takes us back to the previous struggles that add weight to the fresh one, just as life is connected memory to memory. The sharp strings show the soaring relief of a moment like Juan teaching him to swim, but also reveal the anxiety of being seen for what he truly is, the fear of what that means.

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NSFC Gives Isabelle Huppert the Critical Triple

The National Society of Film Critics have spoken. The last important critics prizes of each season is sometimes idiocyncratic but not this year. They've gone with the the leaders in every single category (in terms of past critics prizes from all over the nation) except Best Cinematography. That award has varied from groups to groups and here it goes to Moonlight.

Most importantly they've given Isabelle Huppert the rare triple crown of film critic prizes. She'd previously won both New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. To show you how infrequently that happens a list of the previous winners of all three after the jump...

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Pfandom: Introducing Michelle Pfeiffer... "Miss Orange County"

Pfeiffer's Yearbook Photo (76?). Miss Orange County Win (78)

Pfandom. Episode 1.
Michelle Pfeiffer Retrospective. Every Saturday in 2017 at TFE
by Nathaniel R 

The time is spring 1978. Fountain Valley High School graduate and former Vons Supermarket checkout girl Michelle Pfeiffer is 19 going on 20 when she takes the Miss Orange County beauty pageant crown. She's dreaming of bigger things and community college isn't quite it.

The first bigger thing is the "Miss California" pageant. The young future-very-big-deal walks stiffly down a makeshift runway for Miss California in that highly practical ready-to-wear combo of swimsuit and high heels...

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'Winners!' Sincerely, Isabelle & Paul

Congratulations to the winners of our Elle poster contest. The posters are signed by Isabelle Huppert and Paul Verhoeven and I asked people to share a story about an early encounter with either a Huppert or Verhoeven film, though winners were drawn randomly.

Congratulates to... Joshua from Texas who writes:

It was Slant's review of that gave me, for the first time, the experience of approaching a film with a legitimate lens. It blew my mind and inspired me to become a Verhoeven devotee (I ordered a box set of all his Dutch films at a quite exorbitant price because I needed to see everything!) as well as laying the foundation for my academic interests; I study celebrity from a rhetorical perspective and wrote my first significant academic paper over Showgirls!

And Salim from Florida who writes:

My favorite Paul Verhoeven film encounter involved getting ready to go to Vegas in 2012 with my then-girlfriend to visit her family and deciding to prep her between Showgirls and Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven as a double feature at my place. Her genuinely positive response and the good we had watching the former told me she might be the one.

The posters are on their way to you!

Thanks to everyone who entered and if you didn't enter but are rooting for Huppert's Oscar nomination, cross your fingers and wish on the Oscar-nominated French stars who preceded her.