John Waters @ 75: Polyester (1981)

Team Experience is celebrating John Waters for his 75th birthday this week

by Eric Blume

John Waters’ 1981 film Polyester satirizes the “women’s picture” genre, but in the way that only Waters would spin it.  His heroine, Francine Fishpaw, played of course by muse Divine, is trapped in a horrific marriage to the owner of the local porn movie palace.  Her daughter is a nympho and her son has taken his foot fetish to a comically violent place.  Sex and vice surround Francine, and she’s just soldiering on, nobly of course.

The beauty of Waters and his sensibility is this:  imagine someone making this movie today.  You can’t, because the basic elements are too far out there...

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2 days til Oscar.

by Nathaniel R

Streep's 2 wins

Our final predictions will be up tonight but until then let's share a bunch of lists using the number two as inspiration...

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"Nomadland" and "Sound of Metal" dominate the Spirit Awards

by Nathaniel R

Last stop before the Oscars! The Spirit Awards were held last night and the big winner was Nomadland which fits the Spirits like a glove. Congratulations to Chloe Zhao and her team. Less expected but wonderful news is that Sound of Metal collected three prizes: First Feature, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor, finally also getting its due. This 'spread the wealth' awards season was surely accidental but it's been beautiful as art is subjective and there's no reason to pretend that only say, four people and one movie are worthy of any prizes each year. In this one way, this season has been the best. In the other ways, zoom ceremonies... never seeing anyone holding their trophies or mingling in rooms together or on the red carpet has been quite glum. But we're in the last weekend now. Hoorah.

After the jump the winners and their acceptance speeches if we found them. Melissa Villaseñor hosted and if you missed her opening monologue here it is...

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93rd Academy Awards: Best Production Design

by Daniel Walber

Is it a good year for the Best Production Design category at the Oscars? Is it a bad year? What does the word “good” even mean? Or, for that matter, the word “year”? Certainly not the same thing as “eligibility period,” given the way things have shaken out with the 93rd Academy Awards. Pour one out for First Cow.

But I digress. We have five films nominated for Best Production Design, and they’re a relatively modest batch. There’s the eternal joke about the Oscars nominating movies for “most” rather than “best” design, but by some miracle that hasn’t happened this year...

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John Waters @ 75 : Desperate Living (1977)

Team Experience is celebrating John Waters for his 75th birthday this week

by Camila Henriques

The final chapter of John Waters's so called "Trash Trilogy" has everything you would expect from the filmmaker. Except for one pivotal thing: it doesn't have Divine, the iconic star that made the two previous excerpts from the trilogy - "Pink Flamingos" and "Female Trouble" - true camp classics. But even if her magnetic screen presence is always a sight in Waters's filmography, you needn't worry about Desperate Living, as the 1977 film represents the raunchy brand of comedy camp that makes the director one of our most fascinating auteurs...

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