ACE Editing: Big Little Lies, Best Picture Hopefuls and More...

by Nathaniel R

The guild nominations are here already? Oh, yup, it's January now. (Funny how the calendar keeps happening even if you're in bed for a week plus with the flu!) Hollywood's editors have spoken and here are the cutting and shaping jobs they loved best this year on screens  big and small. Curiously they have a hodgepodge of category sizes (3,4, or 5 nominees depending) and voting practices. In some categories the final voting for winners happens between January 5th and 18th and in others (within the TV side) there are blue ribbon panel voting situations where the screenings happen on the 14th. This always leaves us wondering what their prizes would be like if they were consistent. Would awards season have more surprises if those voting were forced to watch everything as they are in very few select categories within various organizations... often somewhat randomly? We think it might and wouldn't it be super exciting to try with the consistency and with the mandatory screenings?

One of the most notable things on their TV list is that Big Little Lies has been bumped from competing in miniseries (where it's competed at most every other awards shows) and is competing in regular drama series (where it surely belongs since they've announced a second season with the same characters/actresses).  Nominees in all categories after the jump...

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Soundtracking: The Best Musical Moments of 2017

Chris here. This past summer I started a series here at The Film Experience called Soundtracking that takes a deeper look at music in the movies. I hope you've loved reading (and listening) along!

2017 proved an appropriate year to start this musical exploration as brilliantly used tracks kept showing up in movies and television shows. Even some things that I didn't care for (Baby Driver, sorry) or missed entirely (Twin Peaks, sorry) proved that music is another storytelling tool that can define a narrative in interesting ways. Even films like The Florida Project and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 gave us memorable needle drops! Before Soundtracking brings a close to its first film year with full pieces on I, Tonya and Call Me By Your Name in the next two weeks, let's take a look at the best musical moments of TV and Film of the past year...

Top 5 TV Musical Moments...

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Dan Gives Thanks

by Dancin' Dan

2017 started off in a rather dark place, didn't it? And it's kinda stayed there, hasn't it? It's difficult to look at the entertainment industry at the moment and not want to just throw your hands up in disgust - are there no decent men (besides Tom Hanks) anywhere?!? But on the bright side, at least the entertainment 2017 has had to offer has been up to the task of nourishing our souls. I have been to the cinema more times this year than I have in any other year, and other than a certain remake of a certain animated musical, I haven't hated anything I've seen, and I've loved quite a lot of them.

But of all the things to love, these are the things I'm most thankful for:

• The perfect endings of BPM, Lady Bird, and The Florida Project, in part because they lead up to their respective endings brilliantly

• The fact that, no matter what happens with The Greatest Showman, we've already gotten a great movie musical this year, and that it's as weird and wonderful and fabulous as The Lure is...

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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Won't Be Ignored, Dan

by Dancin' Dan

The posters for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's third season warned us. In them, Rachel Bloom spoofed iconic imagery from Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Basic Instinct, sending a clear message: Bloom's Rebecca Bunch is one of our great anti-heroes, and she's about to go full-tilt crazy. And those posters didn't even tell the half of it. We're only four episodes into the new season, and already Rebecca's life in West Covina appears to have reached the end of the line. Things are moving so fast that each episode so far has left me breathless, perpetually on the edge of my seat wating for the next installment.

It's the best, most daring show on air right now, and it's even more jam-packed with film references than before. BUT BE WARNED. Lots of spoilers after the jump...

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Blueprints: "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend"

This week on Blueprints, Jorge Molina takes a drive to the pride of the inland empire to talk about musical numbers in screenplays, only two hours from the beach. 

Fundamentally, scripts serve as a blueprint for what has to appear on screen, hence the name of this series. A blueprint that some people choose to follow more closely than others. However, there are instances where following a script meticulously is vital not only for the benefit of the story, but for the costs and efficiency of an entire production. There are times when a script is a literal choreographed dance, gigantic pretzel and all.

So let’s take a look into the idyllic suburban fantasy of the The CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, where if every location, note, and twirl hadn’t been precisely mentioned in the script, there may have never been a show...

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