Last Gawk at the Hunks of the Year

Year in Review continues...

We're attacking 2016 from multiple angles (with a few more categories to go so yes, we never quite fit it all into the right calendar year. Sigh). For today's topic, showbiz men and their gratuitous hunkiness. Who won our, um, "hearts" this year?

Herewith a semi-random collection of hotness.

Not Quite There but Still Sexy
We'd love to embrace Deadpool's pansexuality wholeheartedly but it's been wildly overstated by its creators and Deadpool himself Ryan Reynolds. In truth the character is a straight superhero (like all the others) only with a flirtatious teasing sexual vulgarity. This is easy to spot in the otherwise funny and raunchy "holiday f***" montage when the movie reminds us that Deadpool is no catcher (gross!), ONLY a pitcher... and his girlfriend is a lot happier to experiment than he is. 

Would you take his measurements?

The Youngest Hemsworth
It was hard to even mind that the casting of The Dressmaker decided it didn't matter that Liam Hemsworth was 15 years younger than Kate Winslet though they were supposed to be the same age in the story.  What mattered was the fantasy of Tilly's perfect comeback which includes winning the most eligible or at least most delicious bachelor in town. Pity about that 3rd act twist, though. Why can't we have nice things?

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The Great "Make-Up and Hairstyling" Bake-Off of 2016

We just wanted the blog post title to sound fancy. Who knows if the screening/meeting/deliberation at the Academy was anything like a superlative adventure this year? But let it suffice to say that they narrowed down some unknown number of films (why no semi-finals list, AMPAS?) to seven films which will compete for the 3 Oscar nominations in Best Makeup and Hairstyling.

Those films, with photos to jog your memories, are after the jump with some commentaries about their specific follicular and beautifying achievements...

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Oscar's Visual Effects Race, Round Two

The Academy has spoken and they've axed half of the semi-finalist for visual effects so we're down to just 10 films competing for the five nominations. It's the only bad news Deadpool has received all week after great showings at the Globe and Critics Choice and the only good news Passengers has gotten considering its excoriating reviews. The list is now like so...

• Alice Through the Looking Glass
• Arrival
• The BFG
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
• Captain America: Civil War
• Deadpool
• Deepwater Horizon
• Doctor Strange
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
• Independence Day: Resurgence
• The Jungle Book
• Kubo and the Two Strings
• Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
• Passengers
• Rogue One 
• Star Trek Beyond
• Suicide Squad
• Sully
• Warcraft
• X-Men Apocalypse

But nothing has changed really since this race is surely a battle to the finish between Doctor Strange and The Jungle Book. One assumes the disturbing CGI humans in Rogue One won't help it win.

Team Experience: Golden Globe Snubs & "WTF?"s

We polled Team Experience on the Golden Globe nominations this morning. Here is part one in which we dispense  quick thoughts about the most head scratching nominations and the 'I know they di't' dismissals (I know we're not supposed to call them snubs anymore but the word is such convenient shorthand). 

WHAT'S THE SNUB THAT MAKES YOU THE CRAZIEST?

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Halfway Mark: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (So Far)

Mainstream cinema is having a rough summer, qualitatively... but let's honor what mainstream cinema often does best, for this episode of the Halfway Mark Review. Which is to say the broad strokes of Good vs Evil.

Not that mainstream movies always ace this low bar, mind you: Marvel remains mostly terrible at crafting villains, Batman v Superman was so inept that it didn't even understand that you need heroes in superhero movies. X-Men Apocalypse was a crowded repetitive mess on either side of the good/bad divide. But enough about stinkers - happy thoughts:  BESTS! 

Heroes of the Year

• The Avengers (Chris Evans, Cast & FX Team) in Captain America: Civil War
Can't they all just get along? While it'd be silly to say that Civil War doesn't tell you which team to be on (Hint: it's in the title) it does offer up enough sympathetic furrowed brow angst when looking at Team Iron Man that it's easy to understand both sides of this argument. That's half the battle in the selling the film. The other half is staging the battles so that everyone survives but looks deeply affected by the blows, which it also does well. Black Panther and Spider-Man are wonderful new additions, and Black Widow again demonstrates that she's the swiftest, most asskicking, and consistently double sided tape that arguably holds these movies together. If only Captain America, Marvel's most successful comic-to-film translation, weren't having to fight for so much attention in his own damn franchise; Iron Man never had to that. 

• Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) in Gods of Egypt
What's that you say? 'Gods of Egypt is a terrible movie!' Why yes, Yes it is. But that doesn't mean I can't honor Nikolaj's well shaped silly/serious turn as a blinded God. He's one of only two actors who knows what kind of movie he's in (the other is Geoffrey Rush, even better with the heightened camp) and he's fun to watch, helping to make this a sort of enjoyable terrible movie insteaad of just a terrible movie.  

Zootopia, Warcraft, The Conjuring 2 and more after the jump...

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