Cinderella vs The Sound of Music: Live TV Musicals

It’s been one week since NBC was alive with the sound of Carrie Underwood. Whether you enjoyed The Sound of Music, hated it, or were on the fence, you have to admit that it’s the most talked-about television event since the Breaking Bad finale. 18.5 million people tuned in to watch Underwood under pressure, making it NBC’s most watched non-sports event of 2013.

While NBC has been reaping the rewards, Carrie Underwood has drawn fire for her lackluster acting skills. Since a lot of (justifiable) comparisons have been made between Underwood and Julie Andrews, I thought now would be a perfect time to revisit Julie Andrews’s own star turn in a live TV musical event, one that would make television history: the 1957 broadcast of Rodgers And Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Attend that magic ball after the jump

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The Golden Globes: The Nominations Announced

Good morning once again. It feels like just yesterday we were getting up early to watch a major awards precursor announce their list of nominees. Well, that's because it was just yesterday. Yikes! First SAG, now the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Spread it out, guys! The movies, and us fools who love them, are still all going to be here tomorrow. Or next week! Next week would have been a fabulous time to announce your nominees! I'm still here in bed wrapped up like that Golden Globe award to your left. Anyway, we're all here now and we're going to get the titles to you as fast as presenters Zoe Saldana, Aziz Ansari and Olivia Wilde can read 'em and I can write 'em. My brain nor my typing fingers work particularly well before 10am (okay - noon!), but here's hoping for some surprises. 

While we wait, any last minute hunches? Will the HFPA mimic SAG's shockeroo of no Robert Redford? Will Dallas Buyers Club find its way into the best picture category? Will the comedy categories actually honour a non-prestige comedy? I'm pulling for This is the End if they do, but what about you? Gah! It's so exciting...

Before the nominations have even started and I have to heartily congratulate the HFPA on their "streming". Whatever that means. It's not like thousands are viewing the feed or anything.

Okay, here is the complete list of film nominations with commentary. (We'll get to TV eventually - they were certainly a more interesting lot than SAG; oh hi Orange is the New Black and Orphan Black! - for now let's keep it to film).

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Oscar's Documentaries: Tales from the Shortlist (Part 1)

Glenn here with the first of three pieces looking at this year’s 15 finalists for Best Documentary. Watch along with us!

Prior to the announcement of the shortlist, I had seen roughly 30 of the 151 contenders. Hopefully by the end of the week I will have managed to catch up with all 15 of the shortlisted titles, which will be the first time that has ever happened. As Team Experience's apparent resident doc expert, I am determined to do it, although I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that I couldn't catch even more of the longlist. 151 is a lot even for me.

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer
Synopsis: Filmed over the course of 6 months, this documentary tells the incredible story of three young moments of Pussy Riot, a Russian activist punk band out to disrupt the status quo and bring attention to their homeland's injustices by the hand of Vladimir Putin.
Director: Mike Lerner (Oscar nominee, Hell and Back Again) and Maxim Pozdorovkin
Festivals: Bath, Brisbane, Cornwall, Eastend, GAZE LGBT, Melbourne, New Zealand, Seattle, Sheffield, Sundance, Sydney, Vancouver.
Awards: Special Jury Prize (Sundance), Best Documentary (British Independent Film Awards).
Box Office: N/A (qualifying run), available on HBOgo
Review: If TV networks had Christian Bale balls they would air this illuminating documentary on a never-ending loop parallel to the upcoming Winter Olympics in Russia. They don't and they won't - although maybe HBO, who screened it last summer alongside other long-listed titles such as Valentine Road and Gasland 2 - will. The film itself isn't particularly brilliant, but works as a perfect entry point into the story of Pussy Riot. A story, just by the way, that continues to evolve to this day. It's a very standard documentary, simply charting the story of the imprisonment and subsequent farce of a trial of three Pussy Riot members after they stormed a church alter and performed an anti-Putin anthem. I'm glad I watched it, although there are areas that the filmmakers could have expanded like Russia's growing feminist movement and the history of it.
Oscar: The branch could respond to the very timely subjects of not just artistic oppression and censorship, but also Russia's glaringly plummeting human rights record. The branch has gone with an unexpected music doc before - Tupac: Resurrection in 2003 - but even then, the music of Pussy Riot are a, shall we say, acquired taste. And they did just award Searching for Sugarman. A vote for this film would be more a vote for the issue than the film.

Four more contenders after the jump...

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Yuletide cinema

Tim here. Two weeks from today is Christmas, which means you have a mere fourteen days left to cram in all the movies – some of them all-time masterpieces, some of them borderline-unwatachable dreck – that we’ve all agreed can only be viewed during a very brief window at the end of the year. One of the things that fascinates me most about this season is observing what traditions people haul out to celebrate, or how they pointedly don’t celebrate, and in that spirit, I’d like to offer up my own most treasured Christmas cinematic traditions. And because there’s nothing wrong with being a Grinch, I also have three suggestions of Christmas-set movies that have almost nothing to do with the holiday and can provide a seasonally-appropriate way to vent your disgust with the whole matter.

Christmas pageants, skeleton reindeer, sex orgies and more below the jump!

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Rita Moreno turns 82

Anne Marie here with some happy news: It's Rita Moreno's birthday! The Puerto Rican showbiz legend has a list of awards as long as her gorgeous legs, and soon she's going to add to it! As Nathaniel reported earlier, the Screen Actors Guild is adding the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award to her much-deserved accolades in January.

In addition to being the third Triple Crown winner (Emmy, Tony, Oscar) and one of twelve EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony), Rita Moreno has had an absolutely fascinating career for its depth and diversity. She's said that her success in West Side Story was actually a double-edged sword, after winning an Oscar in 1962 for her firey performance as Anita, most of the film roles offered to her were as the token minority. As a result, she refused to appear in film for another seven years. Moreno instead turned to television and theater. As part of the cast of The Electric Company (along with a very young Morgan Freeman), Moreno won her Grammy in 1972. In 1975, Moreno won a Tony for the play The Ritz. Then she completed her EGOT with two Emmy wins: first in 1977 for The Muppet Show, and again in 1978 for The Rockford Files. But her career didn't stop there. She's done everything from voice work (Carmen Sandiego in Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?) to TV Drama (Oz), and even an occasional Law And Order episode in the past few years. One thing she's never been in is a rut.

Today in honor of Rita's birthday, here are clips from her EGOT winning performances.

Emmy: The Muppet Show (1977)

Grammy: The Electric Company (1972)

Oscar: Anita in West Side Story (1961)

And finally her incredible Tony acceptance speech for The Ritz (1975)

What's your favorite performance by Miss Moreno?