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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Happy Cannesiversary to "Dancer in the Dark"!!

by Nick Taylor

Happy (belated) Mother’s Day, everybody!! I did not plan on watching Lars von Trier’s Palme-winning musical tragedy at the break of dawn on May 11th, but sometimes fate gives you a funny little coincidence to make a work of art even more resonant than it would already be. Dancer in the Dark ranked high on the list of films I should absolutely have seen by now, based on literally every aspect of my tastes and personality, and the 25th anniversary of its Cannes premiere made for the perfect excuse to finally check this out . . . .

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Venice Gowns '22, Round 1

by Nathaniel R

Raffey Cassidy, Jury President Julianne Moore, Tessa Thompson, Greta & Noah

Golden Lion winner Deneuve, Jodie Turner-Smith, Cassidy again, Don Cheadle, and HIllary Clinton?

Who was best dressed on the opening night of Venezia 79? It's your choice. Just make one. Vote as often as you'd like.

online polls

Cannes at Home: Day 4 – Christmas on the Nile

by Cláudio Alves

French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin seems to be on a downward trajectory. His new film, Brother and Sister, has been slaughtered by critics at Cannes, the worst-reviewed Main Competition title so far. For those legions who hoped this would be the year when Marion Cotillard finally won the festival's Best Actress prize, better luck next time! Tarik Saleh's Boy from Heaven was more warmly received despite some cries of conventionality. Through procedural tropes and thriller stylings, the Swedish director explores themes of corruption in Islam, a recurring motif throughout his filmography. These Cannes contenders are both directors' second 2022 pictures – Desplechin's Deception is a new MUBI release, while Saleh's The Contractor has been available for a while. Unfortunately, neither title got much in the way of critical praise.

To keep the Cannes at Home series a celebratory exercise, today's selection looks back at lauded works from these auteurs – A Christmas Tale and The Nile Hilton Incident… 

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FYC: 20 People Who'd Make Great Honorary Oscar Recipients!

by Nathaniel R

Over the years The Film Experience has provided the Academy with brilliant ideas for Honorary Oscars that they've ignored until it was too late and the worthy recipient died. We're talking luminaries like movie stars Max Von Sydow, Albert Finney, and Doris Day, cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, and voice artist Marni Nixon. (At least they heard us on Maureen O'Hara, Harry Belafonte, Liv Ullman, David Lynch, and Angela Lansbury in time!). So here we are again trying to sway them. They make such strange decisions. Why did Sophia Loren who was already a (deserving) Oscar winner, need an Honorary when she was only in her fifties? Why did they refuse to honor Doris Day because (the rumor is) they knew she wouldn't show but then went ahead and honored Jean Luc Godard who they also knew would never show? 

For our suggestions we're limiting ourselves to people over 70... though you could make valid cases for several late 50something or 60somethings if you wanted to like Michelle Pfeiffer, Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, Antonio Banderas, Willem Dafoe, Hugh Grant, directors Sam Raimi and Todd Haynes, producer Christine Vachon, or craftspeople like costume designer Sharen Davis or composer Marc Shaiman.

20 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE HONORARY OSCAR...

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