Coco, CMBYN, and the Specificity of Feeling Seen at the Movies

by Jorge Molina

Award season means trying to watch as many movies as possible in the shortest amount of time to feel included in the zeitgeist (well, in our zeitgeist here, at least; movies from all across the board that, apart from wanting to be in the awards conversation, often have little in common.)

Recently I watched two movies that, at first glance, couldn’t be more different. On one hand there’s Coco, Pixar’s newest entry about a Mexican boy wandering into the Land of the Dead. And on the other, there’s Call Me by Your Name, the much-discussed festival favorite that follows the romance between a teenager and an older man in sun-drenched Italy. On the surface, these two films don’t share much yet they offered me a very similar cinematic experience.

Both made me feel seen (yes, in italics). They reflected parts of my identity that I rarely get to see reflected on screen. How did they do that? By being as specific as possible...

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Box Office: Animation of 2017

by Nathaniel R

This long holiday weekend saw the releases of three major Oscar contenders. Call Me By Your Name had a sensational per screen average (101,000 per screen). Darkest Hour also showed its prosthetic Churchill face for a good opening ($44,000 per screen). And then there was Pixar's Coco, which easily trounced Justice League to take the #1 spot. Critics are raving and, more importantly, Latino critics are raving, too, as you can see at Remezcla and here at The Film Experience.

So let's do the box office report differently this weekend and look at this year's Animated Features...

ANIMATED FEATURES AT THE BOX OFFICE IN 2017 GROSSES AS OF NOV 26th
1. Despicable Me 3  $264.3	6. Captain Underpants $73.9
2. Lego Batman Movie $175.7	7.🔺 Coco $71.1 REVIEW
3. The Boss Baby $175 REVIEW	8. Lego NinjaGo Movie $59
4. Cars 3  $152.9	9. Smurfs: Lost Village $45 REVIEW
5. The Emoji Movie $86 REVIEW	10. Nutjob 2 Nutty by Nature $28.3

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59 days til nominations. Time for a little Disney trivia

by Nathaniel R

Disney won every single short category plus Documentary Feature at the 1953 OscarsWith 59 days left until Oscar nominations, it seems an appropriate time to remind everyone that it's not Meryl Streep (20) or Woody Allen (24) or even John Williams (50) who holds the record for Most Oscar Nominations of All Time, but industry titan and one of the most influential people who ever lived: Walt Disney. His fingerprints... or mouse glove prints if you will, are still all over showbiz, especially the business part. But we're here to talk Oscar. He received an incredible 59 competitive Oscar nominations, winning 22 of those races.

So in addition to holding the record for most nominations, he also holds the record for most wins. The last of those nominations and wins was his only posthumous honor -- Winnie Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) took the Animated Short Oscar (then called "Best Short Subject, Cartoons")...

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The 2017 Animated Contenders: "The Girl Without Hands"

by Tim Brayton

Last week, we took a look at Loving Vincent, a stunningly gorgeous animated feature taking its aesthetic cues from traditional fine arts; and this week, we're doing the same thing. Though the style in the French The Girl Without Hands is quite a long way from the rich oil portraits of Loving Vincent. Now, the inspiration is (or anyway, appears to be) Chinese ink wash painting, the art of sketching out characters and settings in a few swift, bold brush strokes with strongly-colored ink. The results deserve the same praise: this is, visually, one of the most distinctive, special, and unusual piece of cinema released this year.

This time around, the film has a narrative that can stand up to its style. The Girl Without Hands is a fairly straightforward adaptation of the Grimm fairy tale, about a young woman (voiced by Anaïs Demoustier) whose miller father (Olivier Broche) unwittingly promises her to the Devil (Philippe Laudenbach) in exchange for a river of endless gold...

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The 2017 Animated Contenders: "Loving Vincent"

by Tim Brayton

Last week, we got word of the 26 films declared eligible for Best Animated Feature at the 90th Academy Awards. That means it's time for the Film Experience's not-quite-annual look at some of the animated contenders that don't have the high profile and financial backing of a big studio affair like Coco or Despicable Me 3. Some of these might possibly be within hunting distance of an Oscar nomination; some, sad to say, won't have a chance in hell. But they're all worthy of attention.

I picked our first subject, Loving Vincent, for no particular reason other than because it's been one of my most-anticipated and because it's done quite well at arthouse theaters suggesting a good deal of interest. As such, it's with some qualified disappointment that I come to tell you all that it's... definitely not great.

 I certainly won't say it's bad. But it's kind of startlingly uninteresting as a narrative. So let's not start by talking about it as a narrative...

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