Split Decision: “Avatar: The Way of Water”

No two people feel the exact same way about any film. Thus, Team Experience is pairing up to debate the merits of each of the awards movies this year. Here’s Glenn Dunks and Cláudio Alves on James Cameron’s latest.

GLENN: Hi Cláudio! Welcome to Pandora... the whales are majestic, the grass gets you stones (mmhmmm) and the eyewear are Ray-Bans. An awful lot of ink has been spilled across the 13 years between Avatar movies. Ink about how nobody remembers Avatar. Ink about how it has no cultural imprint. Ink about how nobody knows the characters' names. Ink about how nobody actually even liked the 2009 original and it was purely a hit because of the 3D. And yet here we are with a James Cameron movie already having become (yet again) the highest grossing movie of the year and also potentially (yet again) the leader of the nomination board on Oscar morning 2023…

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Sundance: 'Talk to Me' is a handshake with Hell itself

by Jason Adams

See one horror movie about grief and you've seen every horror movie, or so it feels sometimes. Dead children, siblings, parents, spouses -- the genre is littered with beloved corpses winking back at us from the other side of oblivion. I'm writing this on day one of virtual Sundance and I've already seen three movies of this sort! But we keep coming back to the Babadook Special because it works. It's what we fear the most. Death for ourselves is one thing, but seeing the people we love the most slip away is something tangible; something that we'll all experience and then be expected to exist on the other side of. When I was little it was losing my parents that I feared the most of all.

For teenager Mia (newcomer Sophie Wilde), the lead in the Philippou brothers' unsettling new horror flick Talk To Me (playing Sundance 2023's Midnight program), it is her Mom that she's grieving...

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Nathaniel's Final Predix (and Cruel Father Time)

by Nathaniel R

Hello faithful very patient readers! Time to put our cards down on the table or a protective cloth over our crystal ball and other such metaphors. FINAL OSCAR PREDICTIONS MUST NOW BE UTTERED...

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Who could surprise *without* SAG/Globe precursors on Tuesday?

The following article is reprinted from The Many Rantings of John with his permission. We have attempted to lure him to joining The Film Experience but we had to share this wonderful stat-fascinating piece! You should also follow him on Letterboxd. (Consider this piece a companion of sorts to Chris's piece on statistically who might still be vulnerable despite love from the precursors)

Sipping Oscar tea

by John T.

Every year since 2006 at least one nominee for the Oscars was not highlighted by either the HFPA (the Golden Globes) or SAG-AFTRA, and becomes the "shock" of the morning.  At this point in the season, predicting the Oscars is something of a slog because so much is "decided" so trying to guess who will be this nominee becomes quite fun.  

Here are the people from the past ten years who fit this bill:

2021: Penelope Cruz, Jesse Plemons, JK Simmons, Judi Dench, & Jessie Buckley
2020: Paul Raci & LaKeith Stanfield
2019: Florence Pugh
2018: Marina de Tavira & Yalitza Aparicio
2017: Lesley Manville
2016: Michael Shannon
2015: Charlotte Rampling, Tom Hardy, & Mark Ruffalo
2014: Bradley Cooper, Marion Cotillard, & Laura Dern
2013: Jonah Hill
2012: Quvenzhane Wallis, Emmanuelle Riva, & Jacki Weaver

Usually the types of nominees that get in under this designation fall into one of two categories...

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Oscar Volley: Beyond the locks, Best Picture is hard to predict

Team Experience is discussing each Oscar category in the lead up to the nominations. Here's Nathaniel Rogers, Cláudio Alves and Nick Taylor to talk Best Picture...

EDITORS - NOTE. THIS DISCUSSION WAS HELD OVER A TWO+ WEEK STRETCH WHERE A LOT OF THINGS HAPPENED. SO THINGS SHIFT WHILE WE'RE TALKING...

 NATHANIEL: Hello teammates. I thought I'd throw you a little unexpected curveball in our last volley. Rather than starting with frontrunners or longshots, let's talk philosophies of selection for a brief moment. When the AFI selects their list annually (depressingly reading like Oscar predictions) the guiding principle is. film that are "culturally and artistically representative of this year’s most significant achievements in the art of the moving image. When the Library of Congress does their annual retroactive National Film Registry list they choose based on "cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage."

That cultural / aesthetic double-side strikes me a LOT like the very first year of the Oscars when there were two separate Best Picture categories " Outstanding Picture (which went to Wings) and Unique and Artistic Picture (which went to Sunrise) .If we want to get really reductive about it -- which we should so that this conversation doesn't go 10,000 words -- it also strikes me a lot like Commerce vs. ART which has always been the tension of Hollywood itself and by extension, the Oscars…

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