'Winners!' Sincerely, Isabelle & Paul

Congratulations to the winners of our Elle poster contest. The posters are signed by Isabelle Huppert and Paul Verhoeven and I asked people to share a story about an early encounter with either a Huppert or Verhoeven film, though winners were drawn randomly.

Congratulates to... Joshua from Texas who writes:

It was Slant's review of that gave me, for the first time, the experience of approaching a film with a legitimate lens. It blew my mind and inspired me to become a Verhoeven devotee (I ordered a box set of all his Dutch films at a quite exorbitant price because I needed to see everything!) as well as laying the foundation for my academic interests; I study celebrity from a rhetorical perspective and wrote my first significant academic paper over Showgirls!

And Salim from Florida who writes:

My favorite Paul Verhoeven film encounter involved getting ready to go to Vegas in 2012 with my then-girlfriend to visit her family and deciding to prep her between Showgirls and Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven as a double feature at my place. Her genuinely positive response and the good we had watching the former told me she might be the one.

The posters are on their way to you!

Thanks to everyone who entered and if you didn't enter but are rooting for Huppert's Oscar nomination, cross your fingers and wish on the Oscar-nominated French stars who preceded her. 

Odd Golden Globe Nominations This Century

by Brian Zitzelman

The Golden Globes take the spotlight again tomorrow night, however briefly. As the Oscars shine with prestige, the Globes remain its bratty little brother; he seems well behaved, but does enough wild things (drinks, watches too much tv, dresses down) that he'll never escape his elder sibling's shadow. And annually he let's strange nominees slip out the gate... 

This is not to say that Oscar doesn’t occasionally include films and performances that are immediately forgotten or unworthy, but nobody beats the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for oddball picks, both deserving and not. So, if you’re curious why the Globes are such an easy punching bag for movie hounds, while nonetheless being a delight for their originality, here are a few of the most peculiar nods of this century. Not all of these are laughably bad -some reveal a daring and interest in films outside the 'prestige' norm, yet in the world of film awards, they are indeed odd... 

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Tweetweek: Deadpool Revival, La La Land Triumph, and A Few Good Jokes

We'll start with two tweets to suit this morning's neurotic Tennessee Williams heroine mood. Continue on for La La Land and Deadpool divisiveness (with jokes), and more... 

sexuality: that thing jessica lange does with her hands when she's acting her hardest

— probably an android (@airportangel) December 29, 2016

I love Altoid smalls b/c you get to feel like a character from a Tennessee Williams' play taking one of their heart pills when you eat them.

— LoreenaMcKennittVEVO (@robertbalkovich) January 3, 2017

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La La Demy Land

Now that La La Land is in wide release word of mouth from regular moviegoers (rather than critics) keeps expanding. As expected with Best Picture frontrunners, not all of it is kind. This unique and ravishing film has begun to suffer from the inevitable backlash.  Some of my musical theater friends are balking that neither star is a great singer, the songs aren’t sophisticated, and it doesn’t honor Hollywood musicals in the way they’d expected.

To harp on these issues misses the point of what director Damien Chazelle has created.  It's true that neither Emma Stone nor Ryan Gosling have Broadway-caliber singing voices, and it’s also true that future composers of musical theater are likelier to study Sondheim than Justin Hurwitz.  But Chazelle isn’t making a Broadway show, he’s crafting a wholly-original tone for a film, stealing bits and pieces from a wide variety of sources, and doesn’t seem interested in making a purely traditional Hollywood musical.

Chazelle has spoken in interviews about how the single greatest influence on La La Land were the two musical films of French director Jacques Demy:  The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and The Young Girls of Rochefort...

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The Oscar Week: Palm Springs to NY to LA

In this weekly feature from Murtada we follow Oscar contender appearances and interviews.

This week Oscar contenders were very busy, making numerous appearances from Palm Springs to New York and back to California for Sunday’s Golden Globes. From the ceremonial Palm Springs International Film Festival that basically gives awards to every single contender as long as they show up to their fund raising gala, to the more discerning New York Film Critics Circle awards, people like Casey Affleck, Jeff Bridges and Amy Adams got to test out their acceptance speeches while gaining face time with media and Oscar voters... 

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