April Foolish Predictions: Setting the Table for "Best Picture"

by Nathaniel R

Is it anticlimactic to start our annual blindfold guessing with Best Picture? Of course! Does it make sense? That, too! You all know the drill. If a film has Best Picture heat they have a leg up in every single category, whether or not they deserve it in that particular category. Best Picture heat means that people end up aware of and actually screening your movie. If you think about it, that’s half the battle. So as we stumble foolishly into April prophecies in all categories, roughly ten months before Oscar nominations will even roll around (January 17 next year), we have to set the major playing field first. 

We call these April Foolish Predictions because who can possibly know a thing in April?!? Last year at this time nobody would have seen Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest emerging as major Oscar titles. They were already tipped for Cannes, of course, but Cannes and Oscars are very different contests, despite what ended up happening last season. The increasing globalization of the Oscar race makes predicting even harder (we love a challenge!) because who can possibly know which of the hundreds of non-English language titles vying for global attention at festivals will catch the English-language audience’s fancy in a big way? It stands to reason that a non-English language picture will factor into the race again but we’ll have to wait for festival buzz on that front to narrow it down from hundreds of options to a few.

Anyway here are 15 pictures we think could enter the awards conversation...

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Drag Race RuCap: “Reunited - LipSync LaLaPaRuZa Smackdown”

Nick Taylor and Cláudio Alves are watching and recapping RuPaul’s Drag Race season sixteen. This week, it’s time for episode fifteen…

This week, Megami pulls a Silky and a star is born.

CLÁUDIO: After weeks of complaining about the season’s declining quality, the Drag Race producers shut me right up. This spin on a reunion episode is the best of the year, a super-charged queer Super Bowl of lipsyncing that serves as a respite before next week’s finale. Most of the girls brought their A-game, fighting for their Ru-demption with everything they got, and even the losers seemed to have a good time. Well, most of them. More important, still, was how the hour felt formed around the arc of one particular queen, subverting folks’ expectations both among the audience and the contenders themselves. To paraphrase Mother Jinkx, anyone saying Megami isn’t a star after this episode is so full of shit the toilet’s jealous.

NICK: As far as sports analogies go, I feel more partial to Sapphira calling this the gay Kentucky Derby, though perhaps I was swept up by the fantasy her gigantic hat inspired. But this was a total joy from the first second to the last. Megami’s superstar ascendancy is a Rudemption for the history books, bolstered in every way by how tough the competition was. I loved this episode, and I hope we get this format again in future seasons. . . .

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Stanley Donen @100: The Most Charming Speech of All Time

by Baby Clyde

With their increasingly bizarre choices and lamentable decision to move recipients from the main telecast, long gone are the days when the Academy’s Honorary Awards made any cultural impact. We’re all the losers, because not only did truly deserving legends of the industry being belated rewarded give deep satisfaction to the Oscar nerds at home, from an ailing Myrna Loy and triumphant Charlie Chaplin to a sprightly Lillian Gish and a regal Deborah Kerr, they created some of the most memorable and moving moments in Academy history.

None more so than the man who celebrates his centenary yesterday, Stanley Donen. The master of the movie musical was unaccountably never nominated for a competitive Oscar during his illustrious career but took his opportunity at the 70th Annual Academy awards to give the most charming speech of all time...

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Over & Overs: "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)

by Cláudio Alves

It's been a while since the Over & Overs series has shown up on The Film Experience's timeline, and it's as good a time as any to rectify that. Indeed, revisiting a beloved picture one has seen more times than one can count is the perfect idea for today's celebration. You see, a century ago, Stanley Donen was born in Columbia, South Carolina, the son of a dress shop manager and future movie lover. He'd also be a movie magician, capable of turning the screen into materialized joy, like an alchemist who used the camera to transform and transport his audiences. Though one finds several titles are worth appraising in his filmography, a single picture stands above all others, the musical to end all musicals. It's Singin' in the Rain, of course…

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Beauty Break: When Almodóvar met Alcaine

by Cláudio Alves

Starting yesterday, Strange Way of Life is streaming on Netflix. To commemorate the occasion, I thought about diving into the collaboration between Pedro Almodóvar and cinematographer José Luis Alcaine, a recurring creative partner since they filmed Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown back in the late 80s. Even though I had issues with the short film, its lensing wasn't one of them. Indeed, playing with Western iconography and Saint Laurent fashions, Strange Way of Life is as visually enchanting as one would expect from something bearing the Spanish auteur's signature. When everything else fails, Alcaine creates hyper-artificial frames, popping with bright colors and luster…

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