The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
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Monday, April 12, 2021 at 11:08AM Are you ready for the season premiere of what's going to be the final season (at least in its current form) of Supporting Actress Smackdown? The Smackdown and companion podcast arrive this Thursday. We're starting with the current Oscar race honoring the films and performances of 2020 and your votes count so hurry up and get them in.
Let's meet your fellow panelists, shall we?
Monday, April 12, 2021 at 10:49AM by Christopher James
(from left, clockwise) Daniel Kaluuya, Lakeith Stanfield, Paul Raci, Leslie Odom Jr. and Sacha Baron Cohen make up the 2020 Supporting Actor race.Category fraud has been talked about extensively at The Film Experience. Yet, year after year the supporting categories are filled with leading performances. This year, one could argue that four-fifths of the Supporting Actor field is made up of leading performances. How is a true supporting actor supposed to compete with a lead performance that has been strategically "demoted."
Bad blood aside, the field is filled with many interesting performances from a diverse group of nominees. Even better, four of the five nominees are celebrating their first acting nomination this year. The Oscars can often be accused of repeatedly nominating their favorite actors, whether or not they deserve it, so it's nice to see fresh blood...
Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 5:02PM by Nathaniel R
Richard E Grant accepts Best Actress on behalf of Frances McDormand
It's the last major stop before Oscar night. The BAFTAs were held over two days this weekend and the winners list is now in. It was a spread the wealth kind of year. Nomadland led with four awards including the top prize but The Father, Sound of Metal, Promising Young Woman, Soul, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom each won two statues.
We notated whether or not we correctly predicted the wins below as well just for fun...
Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 3:43PM by Nathaniel R
Zhao on the set of Nomadland
As expected Chloe Zhao took the DGA prize last night for Nomadland on her way to making history (hopefully) on Oscar night. She's only the second woman to win the DGA for Feature Film and she'd be the second to win the Oscar if she prevails later this month on Hollywood's High Holy Night. She reportedy praised her fellow nominees at the guild awards where her peers convene honoring David Fincher as "master class", Aaron Sorkin as "a poet". And echoing the sentiment of many of us movie lovers in that Lee Isaach Chung's Minari touched her personally and she can't wait to see what Emerald Fennell does as a follow up to Promising Young Woman. Relatable words and classy, too...
Sunday, April 11, 2021 at 8:20AM 
I don't know about you, but I'm pretty tired of the biopic domination of the acting Oscar categories. Admittedly, such distaste comes from my general dislike of prestige cinema's biographical genre, but the situation is truly glaring. This year, 45% of the nominated performances are of real people whose lives were dramatized on-screen, exercises in actorly mimicry, and direct emulation. It's not that these achievements aren't impressive or worthy of awards, but that they're over-represented a great deal. Most narrative films aren't dramatizations of actual events or the lives of celebrities no matter how much AMPAS' selection might make us think otherwise. It's a pity that other kinds of character construction tend to be underappreciated while biopic roles become frontrunners before anyone has even seen the movie…
