Best Picture, Black-and-White Edition

by Cláudio Alves

Ever since NEON released a black-and-white version of Parasite during the awards season's peak, we've begun a tradition here at The Film Experience of looking the Best Picture nominees each year, and trying to imagine what they'd look like devoid of color. Naturally, we'll never know that since making a black-and-white movie is much more complex than simply turning the saturation to zero. Matters of design and lighting are involved, as are other elements of pre and post-production. Still, it's fun to peruse movies in search of striking imagery. But of course, beyond personal amusement, there's another component to this exercise…

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Streaming Roulette, March: Drive my car by the west side, Peggy Sue

by Nathaniel R

Before we begin we should note that between HBOMax (Dune, King Richard, Drive My Car, West Side Story), Netflix (Power of the Dog, Don't Look Up), Hulu (Nightmare Alley), AppleTV+ (CODA) and VOD (Belfast, Licorice Pizza) all of the Best Picture nominees are or will be available to watch at home this month before the Oscars (March 27th). 

Okay, time for this month's streaming roulette. You know the rules. We highlight new-to-streaming titles by freezing them on the scroll bar at entirely random places and just sharing what pops up. No cheating*!

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Jesse Plemons is an Oscar lucky charm

by Cláudio Alves

Mr. Kirsten Dunst is a lucky guy, wouldn't you say? The past decade has seen him rise in prominence, acting in movies by some of today's greatest directors – Spielberg! Scorsese! Campion! – while also delivering a slew of memorable performances in supporting roles. After earning TV awards glory, he finally transferred that same acclaim to big screen prizes, winning his first Academy Award nomination in the same movie that got his wife an overdue recognition. For awards aficionados, his turn as George Burbank in The Power of the Dog holds even more Oscar trivia goodness. You see, when Jane Campion's latest scored a Best Picture nomination, it marked the fifth consecutive year of Plemons starring in a movie up for the Academy's greatest trophy…

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Best Picture Rankings... the serious and the silly

by Nathaniel

It may surprise you to know that DUNE does not even have the highest death count among the Best Picture nominees

Each year after the Oscar nominations are announced we give ourselves over, even more fully, to our primal mania of list-making. On the updated Best Picture Oscar Chart you'll find a daily Reader's Choice poll, plus lots of info on the films, how we did on our predictions, and multiple very random lists like these...

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12 takeaways from this morning's Oscar nominations

In no particular order - see the full list of nominations here.

1. BEST ACTRESS IS, TWO YEARS RUNNING NOW, A CHAOTIC NAIL-BITER
Last season provided us a rare nail-biter as different women kept winning lead actress at the televised shows: Andra Day, Viola Davis, Frances McDormand, Carey Mulligan. This year the nominations themselves have been routinely surprising. In fact the only woman to hit *every* key precursor was Lady Gaga but when the nominations were announced this morning she was the most shocking snub. Meanwhile, Penelope Cruz who'd only won the Volpi Cup and Kristen Stewart, who had struggled in the precursors despite year long "she's going to win!" hoopla both showed up. So we currently have NO idea who is going to win. You can make a case for any of the nominees. And, once again, none of them are in Best Picture nominated films.

2. QUALIFYING RELEASES ARE ALIVE AND WELL (SIGH)
Norway's incredible film The Worst Person in the World scored a surprise nomination in Best Original Screenplay (well deserved) despite only playing for a week unadvertised in theaters to qualify...

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