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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Saturday, February 1, 2020 at 12:00PM Time to play 20:19. We had intended to rank every Best Picture nominees by how intriguing their 20th minute and 19th second was until our DVD player (remember those?) decided to malfunction. Oops. So streaming it is with just two of 'em. Pretend you haven't seen either of these Best Picture nominees. What do you suppose these two movies are about based on these fleeting images?
Friday, January 31, 2020 at 3:33PM 
The past always returns, one way or the other. It haunts the present and prophesizes our uncertain futures. That's why History is a cycle of recurring nightmares and dreams, one overtaking the other in ruthless combat.
Anyway, we're here to talk about the Academy Awards. The ghosts of Oscars past always come to haunt the current races, helping shape narratives, setting records to be broken and announcing patterns of cyclical discontent. Regarding the Best Picture nominees of 2019, here are some of the Oscar champions of the past that haunt them…
Friday, January 31, 2020 at 10:00AM 
There's something mercenary, a bit unseemly, about many Oscar campaigns. Nobody should be slighted for campaigning too hard or for showing they want the award too much, of course -- that's not what we're saying (no Hathahating here). Still, studio's FYC ads tend to feel pushy, more interested in vacuous hyperbole than a genuine celebration of any film's particular merits.
All of that said, sometimes a campaign hits the nail right on the head, negotiating the needs of clever promotion and cinephile wonderment with utmost ease. Such is the case of Once Upon a Time ...in Hollywood's latest ads. As the final Oscar voting starts, Sony has played its last card in the campaign game. It's a rather simple one, focused on special screenings and a bunch of traditional paper ads as well as some internet banners. Their genius lies in the simplicity of it all, avoiding incomprehensible lists of critics' prizes in favor of a simple powerful message...
Friday, January 31, 2020 at 8:30AM 
Final voting has begun for the Oscars with just 9 days until the big night. Preferential balloting is such that we can dream of crazy outcomes on the big night even though it's fairly clear that 1917 is in the lead amongst the 9 Best Picture contenders. (Have you voted on our "who should win polls yet?If not do so on each Oscar chart) Only Parasite and Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood are well poised to spoil the war film's party if preferential balloting is kind to them.
For those who don't know how preferential balloting works it's a complicated math system which begins rather simply by counting #1 votes until one of the contenders has reached 50.1% of the votes. Since that rarely happens on first pass, #2 votes become important... but only from the ballots that have been discarded by whichever film came in last on the most recent round. It's a process of elimination whereby the least loved pictures votes are continually reallocated to that movie's biggest fan's next preference until one movie eventually gets half of the voters on its side...
Tuesday, January 28, 2020 at 9:13AM 
Sam Mendes may be winning prizes left and right for his World War I epic, but a big element of the production has been ignored by awards bodies. As it happens with many epics, the actors of 1917 are forgotten amid their picture's celebration. It's difficult to consider the human element of a spectacle that calls so much attention to the craft of its construction, its beauty, and savagery. Instead of chewing on the scenery, these actors are consumed by it and fully digested.
As we start approaching the finish line of this Oscar race, one question looms over the Best Picture category. Can 1917 overcome its actorly lacunas and defeat Parasite in all its SAG-crowned glory? On the other hand, are those perceived lacunas a reality or a byproduct of the epic scale...
