98th Academy Awards: Team Experience Predictions

by Cláudio Alves

Tomorrow will be a big day for the ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER and SINNERS' teams.

Before tomorrow’s nomination announcement rocks our world and redefines the season, it’s time for ten Team Experience writers (including Nathaniel!) to throw their hat in the punditry ring and hope for the best. This year, ten predictors are in play, doing their best to see who has the best instincts for Oscar prognostication. Last time, Eric proved himself our champion, but things may change with a new season, new contenders, new narratives. There are some wild swings among the various picks – Kokuho in Costume Design, for instance – along with many locks that everyone agrees with – Best Animated Feature feels terribly predictable – yet may still produce some shocking snubs. One thing’s for sure, either One Battle After Another or Sinners will be our nomination leader. Indeed, there’s a strong possibility one or both will break the record for most nods ever. We have to wait and see.

You can find the prediction charts and added commentary after the jump…

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Drag Race RuCap: “RDR Live Returns!”

Nick Taylor and Cláudio Alves continue to follow and recap and despair over the new RuPaul’s Drag Race season…

Live, from Tuckahoe, it's RDR Live! And yes, that's a threat.

NICK TAYLOR: Well diva, here we are. Another week where this fun cast of queens did their level best with a very fun runway prompt and a new maxi challenge staple. Another week where Mandy Mango is improbably fucked over to save a presumptive frontrunner from potentially being sent home, only this time I found almost all of the judge’s critiques baffling as hell. When was the last time the show worked this hard to eliminate one of its contestants this early in the game? I mourn for Mandy, and really, I feel so gaslit by the last 15 minutes that an otherwise solid episode is retroactively rendered meaningless. If Ru’s not watching the challenges, I’m not sure why I should either.

CLÁUDIO ALVES: Especially when those challenges are as desultory as RDR Live continues to be. Three weeks in, season 18 delivers its first truly bad episode, a trainwreck that’s only saved by the queens who do their level best to keep a sinking ship afloat…

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2025 in Review: Perfect Costumes & Other Visual Delights

by Nathaniel R

I had briefly hoped to do a huge post in each awards category but in the interest of time and availability thereof, we have to wade into the deep end. Herewith a random shout out to 4 costumes from the film year that I think are special in some way. ONLY THE FIRST IS A NOMINEE for Best Costume Design (here at TFE) but in the interest of spreading the wealth I really wanted to shout out some films randomly and these were the first four I thought of.  I love costume designers with all my heart. They regularly elevate and enrich storytelling and especially when costumes aren't the focus of the picture, they get way too little credit for it. 

Willa's Act Three Ensemble - One Battle After Another
If you ask me four time Oscar winner Colleen Atwood had been running on fumes for some years trapped as she was in Burtonisms and puffy shoulder fetishes. Something in Paul Thomas Anderson's near future battlefields -- not her usual type of assignment - set her imagination free again. She makes one inspired choice after another...

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It’s Autumn Season for Best Cinematography

By Juan Carlos Ojano

Ryan Coogler and Autum Durald Arkapaw while filming SINNERS. (Courtesy: Eli Adé)

After 98 years, history might just be made in Best Cinematography. Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the cinematographer of SINNERS, is the current frontrunner for Best Cinematography, the last non-gendered Oscar category yet to have a female winner. Born of African-American and Filipino descent, Arkapaw has worked for more than a decade. Her resume includes Palo Alto, Teen Spirit, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and The Last Showgirl. In Sinners, Arkapaw already made history for being the first female cinematographer to have shot a film on large format IMAX film.

The history of women nominated for this category has unfortunately been short and recent. The list includes...

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"Kokuho" dominates the 49th Japan Academy Prize nominations

by Nathaniel R

KOKUHO is nominated across the board with Japan's Academy

While many other countries film awards operate on different time tables Japan and France, like the US, are calendar year with nominations in January and awards ceremonies in February or March. The French César nominations are a week away but Japan announced yesterday. They requiretwo continuous weeks in theaters for eligibility (the Oscars are less theatrical-focused *sigh* with only one week required). While Japan is inarguably the most successful Asian country at the Oscars, outside of anime (which Oscar ignores), Korean and Chinese cinema are more popular with US moviegoers with regular crossover hits. We've always wondered why there's that disconnect between the Oscars and arthouse moviegoers. But that's a larger and more complex topic. For now, let's look at the nominees for the 49th edition of Japan's Academy prizes. Japan's eye candy spectacle and Oscar finalist Kokuho received 17 (*gulp*) nominations with eight (*gulp x 2*) nominations happening within the 5 acting categories alone. We don't know if that's a record but it sounds like one. Kokuho has been so popular in release in Japan that it is already the highest grossing live-action Japanese film of all time there.

Nominees, commentary, and some history after the jump...

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