Team Experience: Final Oscar Nominations Predictions!

by Cláudio Alves

We predict EMILIA PÉREZ is about to make Oscar history.

With the Oscar nominations mere hours away, it's time to present the Team Experience's final predictions. Like last time, you get each writer's individual guesses, followed by an aggregate collective prediction. Tallying everything up, the Team Experience believes Emilia Pérez will be the nomination leader with eleven mentions, which would make it the most nominated non-English-language film of all time. The musical is closely followed by The Brutalist and Conclave, which have nine each. We also see Wicked scoring eight categories, while Dune: Part Two settles for seven. In the 2023/4 season, we averaged 70% correct predictions, with Nathaniel and I leading the pack with 73% accuracy. Time will tell what pundit claims victory this year…

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Drag Race RuCap: "Monopulence!"

by Cláudio Alves

Monopoly sure looks different since last I played it.

If you only come to these RuCaps in search of Nick Taylor's dazzling wit, I'm sad to report that, this week, you'll have to settle for little old me. Our beloved co-Rucapper was busy with a trip to New York, so, like Elphaba, I'm flying solo. But only for this design challenge episode, where drag queens celebrated the most friendship-breaking tabletop game ever, giving us a flavor of Logo-style messiness. For a while, it felt like we were back in those early Drag Race seasons, when the claws came out and nobody left an episode unscathed. So, settle in for drama and some dubious fashions, as we dive headfirst into "Monopulence!"…

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Indie Spirit Revue: "Problemista"

by Nick Taylor

As a fan of Julio Torres's work on SNL for years who's had only intermittent contact with his other ventures, I am so goddamn delighted by Problemista. Every loopy, queer, topical, cubist dimension to his art is so fruitfully deployed while allowing the colors and slashes of every single collaborator to shine as brightly as he does. As a showcase of singular, unpredictable comedic instincts, this beats almost every other 2024 film for mining laughs from all directions. Bizarre art objects, wry narration, ridiculous tableaus, fantasy costumes, goofy-ass behavior, incredible commitment to the bit from all sides. She's got it all…

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"I Saw the TV Glow" leads the 16th annual Dorian Award nominations

by Nathaniel R

I SAW THE TV GLOW © A24

Oopsie. While celebrating Paul Newman's centennial we forgot to mention another round of nominations. This time it's GALECA: THE SOCIETY OF LGBTQ ENTERTAINMENT CRITICS taking on the challenge of naming "best" this and than of the year. This group, which includes over 500 entertainment journalists (including some of us here at TFE) and media personalities, showered I Saw the TV Glow with nominations. Perpetually overperforming gonzo horror satire The Substance was a close second.  

For my part I'm grateful that the category list has been expanded to make the awards more LGBTQ centric, because what is the point of any critics groups if they don't have a specific point of view/ place of origin apart that differentiates them from other critics groups? See the nominee list after the jump...

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Paul Newman @ 100: "Hud"

By Juan Carlos Ojano

Martin Ritt’s 1963 revisionist Western Hud is remembered these days for mainly two things: for Patricia Neal’s Best Actress-winning performance (one of the shortest in Oscar history) and for hailing one of Paul Newman’s seminal works as an actor, two years after his Oscar-nominated turn in The Hustler. Hud further solidified Newman’s film star persona, now with indelible iconography within an all-too American genre. However, Newman’s performance as well as the film’s overall prickliness help the film transcend surface-level memorializing...

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