Interview: Stephanie Hsu. The year's breakout star on her insane year, stage history, and working with legends.

by Nathaniel R

Stephanie Hsu as "Jobu Tupaki" in Everything Everywhere All At Once2022's wildest film was also it's most unlikely mainstream success. For sheer invention it Everything Everywhere All At Once, outdid the animated Spider-Verse and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the suddenly flourishing subgenre of multi-verse hopping. At the center of its chaotic maelstorm, is Jobu Tupaki (Stephanie Hsu), the nihilistic variant of depressed Joy Wang, a young queer woman with a tense relationship to her overly critical mother Evelyn(Michelle Yeoh). Stephanie Hsu, 32, is not an overnight sensation but she is a sensation. 2022 essentially served as a mainstream coming out party for the gifted actress after years treading the boards in experimental theater and musical comedy, as well as season-long or guest episode TV gigs.

Back in October I had the change to moderate a Q&A for Everything Everywhere All At Once at which Hsu received a "Rising Star Award". Over the course of the day we met three times and talked Broadway theater, being dramaturgy nerds, forgetting your lines, wild costumes, and various movies that are competing with hers at awards shows (off the record of course!). What follows is the conversation we had as we met, shortly before we went on stage [edited for length and clarity]...

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Drag Race RuCap: "All Queens go to Heaven"

Is this heaven...or hell?

CLÁUDIO ALVES: This week, the talk of the town within Drag Race fandom is length. It's not inches we're talking about, sadly, but minutes. After that supersized premiere, episode 3 of season 15 brings us down to reality and the format the show is taking for its new home of MTV – 40-minute episodes. Last time RuPaul's Drag Race had such limited runtimes was Season 9, but they had less competing queens. Even after Irene DuBois' elimination last episode, we're still at 15 bitches, making this episode a frantic amuse-bouche that tastes unbalanced, unstable, unhinged...

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Critics Choice Award Winners, Blanchett's Speech, and More

by Nathaniel R

Last night the Critics Choice Awards were held and broadcast on the CW. They copied and pasted many of the winners from the Golden Globes, though not quite all. To their credit, though, the repeat acting winners mostly seemed to understand this (a stark change from years past where you'd hear the same speech at every show) and didn't copy and paste their own speeches. There were also a few differences in attendance that varied things up (most noticeably Cate Blanchett who didn't attend the Globes; she won at both). But it was a dull night, overall, if you weren't in the room. We've gone before of course but it's been a few years and it does feel different if you're inside the room. Especially if you manage to get a seat at a fun table. 

For the low energy, maybe we should blame the absence of awesome cheerleader Jamie Lee Curtis whose enthusiasm was very much missed since Everything Everywhere All At Once kept winning awards (it took five in total, the most prizes for anything)  The winners and a few more comments after the jump...

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Left off the "Cast" list! (Our annual SAG outrage)

by Nathaniel R

It's a tradition of ours at The Film Experience for a long time now to note the egregious problem that they never fix in SAG voting. Which is that you have to be famous enough to get your own title card in order to be included in your movie's "Outstanding Cast" nominations. This has led to some truly grotesque omissions over the years... especially for scene-stealers whose breakout performances weren't honored even though they definitely helped the film to that very same "Cast" nomination.

If you're curious about this rule we explain it better here. This year we're already very late with this annual article, so let's get right into the SAG Outstanding Cast nominations and complain about who ISN'T nominated despite doing great work in those ensembles...

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Cinematography - the guild nominations

by Nathaniel R

EMPIRE OF LIGHT

One of our favourite guild awards each year is the American Society of Cinematographers. This is not, primarily for their main category but the "spotlight" category which gives us a peek at which films far outside the main Oscar conversation they actually watched and thought about from a craft standpoint. More guilds should have awards like this. Their nominees are after the jump...

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