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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Wednesday, January 20, 2021 at 1:30PM by Nathaniel R
Looking at the calendar this morning on this blessed Inauguration Day, we realized with great alarm that the SAG, Globe, and Critics Choice nominations are just two weeks away so it's time to update all the Oscar charts again...
BEST PICTURE
What if we only get 7 nominees this year?
Wednesday, January 20, 2021 at 10:30AM 
Patricia Highsmith was born 100 years ago this week. The writer died when she was 74, leaving behind a collection of full of classics. Many of those novels were adapted to the big screen, her mellifluous psychological thrillers most of all. Strangers on a Train and the many stories of Tom Ripley being the most popular. It was through cinema that I discovered the author and ended up falling in love with her prose. I adore how she seduces and stabs, hypnotizing us with beautiful words, undercutting the splendor with her character's monstrousness.
There was a mysterious softness to Highsmith's poisonous style, an insightful breath of romance that reached its apotheosis with The Price of Salt, later retitled Carol. First published in 1952, the novel was one of the first lesbian romances with a happy ending to see the light of day, making it a revolutionary text in many regards. By 2015, Todd Haynes and Phyllis Nagy finally told that story in celluloid, delivering what's arguably the best cinematic adaptation of a Highsmith novel…
Wednesday, January 20, 2021 at 8:00AM 4 random things that happened on this day, January 20h, in showbiz history
1933 The infamous erotic drama Extase (Ecstacy) starring Hedy Lamarr, and filmed simultaneously in three languages (German, Czech, French) premieres in Czechoslovakia. It would take years to travel the Globe since it kept running into trouble with censors due to Hedy's nude scenes and being one of the very first movies to depict a female orgasm (Hedy's perfect face in close-up). Famously brainy Lamarr helped translate the original Czech screenplay into German and French for filming...
Brian Cox, Hedy Lamarr, LIE, Omar Sy, Paul Dano, Split, nudity, on this day Tuesday, January 19, 2021 at 5:00PM 
Will Viola Davis be able to win Best Actress at the Oscars?The first step to Oscar success is appearing like a frontrunner. This is why adaptations always are at the top of people’s year in advance predictions. Yet, sustaining that early buzz (often sight unseen) can be a dicey proposition.
Both Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and One Night in Miami are play adaptations that are towards the top of many Oscar predictions right now. Now that both are available on streaming (Netflix and Prime Video, respectively), audiences are finally seeing and enjoying both films. While critics have been giving out their awards recently, the major precursors for the Oscars (guilds, Golden Globes, Critics Choice) still have not been announced. Can we look to the awards run of their source material as a signal for how they will perform at the Oscars?
Tuesday, January 19, 2021 at 2:35PM Here's five more groups of prizes from critics groups that have announced in the past handful of days. Chloe Zhao continues her total sweep of Best Director prizes for Nomadland, an achievement we haven't seen in quite some time. Generally there's one award where someone steamrolls but it's usually in one of the acting categories. Promising Young Woman, Trial of the Chicago 7, Soul, First Cow, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom also do well in this week's regional critics haul...
