Justice for Jeannie Berlin!

by Cláudio Alves

THE BRIDE!, Maggie Gyllenhaal | © Warner Bros.

The Team Experience had a lot of fun voting on that “Who should be the Next Amy Madigan?” poll, but, lovely as the final results might be, there will always be something to gripe about. For me, the major complaint is that I was the only fellow to pick Jeannie Berlin for their top ten, a grave injustice that warrants a write-up all by itself. If you don’t buy that excuse, then there’s The Bride!’s VOD release, where this erstwhile Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee dons a Sandy Powell-designed maid outfit to play Frankenstein’s Igor as reinvented by Maggie Gyllenhaal at her looniest. As Greta, Berlin makes for a delightful, if small, presence, hinting at a soft-spoken oddness that strikes an even weirder note than the movie’s other, more extravagant, grotesqueries. 

Fans of the actress shouldn’t be too surprised by this gentle scene-stealing, as Berlin has been doing this sort of thing for a good fifty years…

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PT 1 - Who Should Be The Next Amy Madigan? (Team Experience Votes!)

by Team Experience

Which actress deserves an Aunt Gladys style comeback most? Stone? Perez? Lewis? The possibilities are almost endless!

We received a really fun request from a reader (Thank you, Brian!) a week or two back. Amy Madigan rose from the dead (pop culture figuratively speaking) 40 years after her first Oscar nomination (Twice in a Lifetime discussed here) to not only break the record of the actress with the longest gap between nominations (the previous record holder being Helen Hayes at 39 years) but also went on to win the Oscar! Her comeback is instantaneously the stuff of legend which made Brian's question catnip to us. He challenged Team Experience to sound off on Who do we think should be the next Amy Madigan ? 

TO FIT THE BILL IT HAS TO BE...

• An actress with only one Oscar nomination (she lost)
• Which she received 20 or more years ago
• And she's at least 50 years of age at the moment. 

76 living women met that criteria (we eliminated people with Honorary Oscars). Once we had the eligibility list Team Experience each ranked their 10 favorites so the following communal list is the combined vote - originally we had a couple of ties so we brought in our old friend and podcast pal Nick Davis to break the ties with his own vote (though he wasn't shown our list so he didn't know what ties he might be breaking!). #1 rankings on each ballot were worth ten points, #2 rankings nine points, and so on. Here are the results in ascending order...

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Reader Poll: Who would you love to see as the next Amy Madigan?

This question was posed by a loyal reader and to double the fun we want you to participate with our Team. 

AMY MADIGAN "FLUMMOXED" AND BEAUTIFUL OSCAR SPEECH

At the 98th Oscars Amy Madigan improbably returned to the Oscars 40 years after her first nomination (Twice in a Lifetime, 1985) and WON for Weapons. Who would we like to see as the next Amy Madigan? Here is the criteria for eligibility for this niche actressexual poll: 

• The actress must have received only one one previous Oscar nomination (they lost)
• That nomination was 20 or more years ago
• They are at least 50 years of age at this writing.

Check out the eligibility list and VOTE FOR YOUR TOP TEN by Wednesday night April 8. Share the link with friends you think would like to play. We'll discuss the results from TEAM EXPERIENCE and from readers here on the weekend of April 10th.

The Lone Acting Nominee vs Best Picture Stars

by Cláudio Alves

In the battle of Aunt Gladys against Best Picture stars, the witch won!

I don’t know about you, but I love Oscar trivia, the more meaningless, niche, and utterly useless for prediction purposes, the better. Indeed, matters of stats and precedent feel better invoked in post-Oscar talk than in the middle of the season, when folks sometimes hold on to these analyses as if they were unshakable rules. Every year, Academy Award history gains new records, new precursor combos that failed or succeeded, and age-old assumptions that were never examined until they were proven wrong. So, let’s roll with it and enjoy the silliness of our collective Oscar obsession. Tonight, I’d like to return to the matter of Amy Madigan’s Best Supporting Actress win.

Hers is a remarkable achievement for a number of reasons, spanning from genre bias to the sheer quality of the performance at hand. Still, even odder is the fact that the Weapons witch was a lone acting nominee facing off against a lineup of women starring in Best Picture nominees. And though we live in an era when the Academy tends to privilege the movies listed in their top race in almost every other category, Madigan came out victorious. This particular scenario has only happened three times before…

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Ranking the 2025 Oscar Clips

By Ben Miller

It's been a few years, but we are finally back! The Oscars brought back acting clips for the Oscars and I'm here to rank them from 20 to 1. Let's get to it!

What Are We Doing?

"If there's a straight line, you've got a problem."

20. Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
19. Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
18. Amy Madigan, Weapons

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