15 Days Until Oscar: The habit, get into it.

15 is today's magic number. As far as I can tell -- though I am not Pope-infallible-- 15 women have been Oscar nominated over the years for playing nuns or nun apprentices... what are they called, novitiates? novices? problems-like-Maria?

Let's pray for them together after the jump. Which of these nominations do you most approve of and why is it so hard to win for playing a Sister or Mother Superior? 

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Nevertheless, She Tweeted

Happy weekend!

#BestActressEdition pic.twitter.com/15aff4kXcm

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) February 8, 2017

It's not exactly surprising that The Film Experience would feel inspired by Best Actresses but that's just what happened with the latest meme. And a Best Actress nominee even retweeted it so we should all feel inspired to resist and persist together, onscreen and off. After the jump amusing inspiring or curious tweets of the week including tweets on Beauty and the Beast, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Elle and more...

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Laura Dern Week: Rambling Rose (1991)

by Jason Adams

When it came time to choose a performance to honor here for Laura Dern Week I was a bit flummoxed - how does one on narrow it down? She's one of my favorite actresses, maybe the most favorite. So I did what any (semi)sane person in such circumstances would do: I made our host Nathaniel choose for me. I gave him two choices - I am pro-choice! One was my favorite performance of hers as Ruth in Alexander Payne's brutal abortion comedy Citizen Ruth, which I've written about a million times. And there was the one I said I had never seen before. Nathaniel went for freshness...

... but I realized ten minutes into 1991's Rambling Rose that I had actually seen it before. And I hadn't liked it! I'd blocked out the whole damn thing, actually. But a funny thing happened this time around - I found myself charmed.

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20 Days til Oscar. Beyond Meryl...

Everyone knows that Meryl Streep is Oscar's all time acting nomination queen. This year the queen received her 20th nomination, this time for playing the worst opera singer Florence Foster Jenkins. But Streep's astonishing numbers get a little less intimidating if you break them up into supporting and lead categories. So let's do that to place Streep in a slightly different context in the history of Oscar'ed actresses.

I begged for this Crayola set as a child. pic.twitter.com/uB5CDBkXup

— Louis Virtel (@louisvirtel) February 3, 2017

We'll ignore wins in this particular exercize. Streep isn't #1 in the supporting sweepstakes, but she remains #1 by a very comfortable margin for leading actresses. More details after the jump...

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28 Days Until Oscar

Today's number is 28. I trust you know that Gloria Swanson was ALWAYS ready for her close-up. 

She's best remembered for Sunset Blvd (1950) but that movie couldn't have existed, at least not in the perfect form it does, were it not for her earlier silent screen stardom.  Her first Oscar nomination came for Sadie Thompson (1928) in the very first year of the Oscars. The movie was also nominated for Best Cinematography but both the DP and Swanson lost the Oscars to Janet Gaynor and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, respectively. Swanson wasn't the only female superstar to play Sadie...

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