Grammy Nominations for Movie People !

by Nathaniel R

The Grammy Awards aren’t really a crucial topic for The Film Experience. Except when they are. We do love to share the movie adjacent stuff that doesn’t get much press (‘hey, I didn’t know that actor ____ recorded a spoken word album’ etcetera). So herewith some key movie adjacent bits.

Beyonce’s efforts for The Lion King are up for a few pop prizes but that's no surprise since Queen B is a Grammy favourite. Former movie star and still legendary chanteuse Barbra Streisand, another Grammy favourite, has her presumably umpteenth nomination for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for her latest “Walls”... the one with the unexpected unintended Girl-in-the-pit Silence of the Lambs homage cover.  

But there are some less expected showings, too.

Iconic cult director John Waters is up for Best Spoken Word Album for “Mr Know-It-All” where he’s competing with Former First Lady Michelle Obama. That juxtaposition is insane and we couldn’t love it more...

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April Foolish Predictions #2: Music and Sound Categories

[drumroll] It's Time! Our annual April Foolish Oscar Predictions have begun.

Ad Astra was supposed to be out next month but rumors are that it's not finished yet

First we looked at Animated Features and now we turn our attention to the Sound categories. It's rather perverse to do them second and here's why: Original Songs and Original Scores are among the last things we have confirmed each year. Technically speaking you can wait until your whole film is nearly complete before adding a score or commissioning an original song. It's not always wise to wait of course since songs, especially, can be more effective if they're woven in and some directors prefer to work with some idea of what the score will be like while they're editing. Nevertheless there is much that's completely unknown about this film year in terms of its music...

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Beauty Break: Ten March 1st Babes

by Nathaniel R

Welcome to March! 2019 can officially begin (heh-we're on the film calendar, not the calendar-calendar). Today is Javier Bardem's 50th birthday. Happy half-century to one of cinema's most striking faces!

To help get us going this morning -- we're off to a slow start -- here are the ten beautiful (aka favorite) people born on this day (March 1st) in no particular order whatsoever...

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Podcast: Final Oscar Predictions

with Nathaniel R and Murtada Elfadl and special reccuring guest Nick Davis

 

With the Oscar on Sunday night, you'd better hurry and listen to this 65 minute podcast as it will self destruct in less than 72 hours. We kid, we kid. You'll still be able to make fun of our faulty crystal balls since we spend one hour making bold and not-so bold predictions as to who will win in 21 Oscar categories (minus the shorts). Hear us panic about how many Oscars Bohemian Rhapsody might win, and whether First Man might surprise with multiple wins, and will Roma really take the most statues?

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Oscar win predictions

Listening to the Best Score Nominees

18 days til Oscar so today is a perfect day to look at and listen to the composers nominated for Best Original Score. They have 18 nominations between them and on their Oscar chart, you can vote on who you think should win. Let's check out the nominees!

Terence Blanchard  for BlacKkKlansman  (56 years old | 33 features | 1st nomination!)
This New Orleans native is world-famous jazz musician and trumpet player. He's been working with Spike Lee in on capacity or another since Spike's second film School Daze (1988). His first full score for Spike was Jungle Fever (1991) and Blanchard has scored all but a couple of Lee's joints since...

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