Oscar History
Film Bitch History
Welcome

The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)

Follow TFE on Substackd

Powered by Squarespace
Keep TFE Strong

We're looking for 500... no 390 SubscribersIf you read us daily, please be one.  

I ♥ The Film Experience

THANKS IN ADVANCE

What'cha Looking For?
Subscribe

Entries in Dreamgirls (16)

Saturday
Aug142021

Review: Aretha biopic "Respect"

by Patrick Ball

The scene is a packed movie theater in Oakland, California on Christmas Day, 2006. The film is Dreamgirls. We’re finishing up the iconic musical number “Listen”, a solid 75-80% into the movie. Beyoncé’s Deena Jones hits the last passionate note and the audience loses it, clapping and hollering, and a woman stands up and screams “You GO, EFFIE!” That was how powerful Jennifer Hudson’s Academy Award winning performance was, that this woman was ascribing every fabulous moment in the movie to her and her character, even when another character/actress was onscreen.

Hudson has had a bumpy road as a film actress since then, but is back in a big way in Respect, the long awaited Aretha Franklin biopic...

Click to read more ...

Friday
Aug132021

Posterized: Jennifer Hudson

by Nathaniel R

With Respect, the Aretha Franklin biopic, hitting theaters today let's talk Jennifer Hudson's movie career. Well, her TV and Broadway career, too, since she's primarily a singer even when moonlighting as an actress. She's made more movies than you probably think.

How many of her performances have you seen? The posters are after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Thursday
Feb252021

Showbiz History: It's "One Night in Miami" day! 

8 random things that happened on this day, February 25th, in showbiz history...

Feb 25th, 1964 in history (left) and reenacted in 2020 for One Night in Miami... (right)

1950 Your Show of Shows premieres on NBC. The live variety show starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, was a stepping stone for legendary comedy writers like Mel Brooks and Neil Simon. The show helped create the  variety genre and inspired both the TV classic The Dick Van Dyke Show and the movie My Favorite Year.

1956 Poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes meet at a party. Their doomed romance is dramatized in the 2003 film Sylvia starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig...

Click to read more ...

Tuesday
Dec152020

Showbiz History: Olivia marries, Spice Girls act, and Gone With the Wind premieres

7 random things that happened on this day, December 15th, in showbiz history

1939 Gone With the Wind has its world premiere in Atlanta, Georgia. The premiere was very well documented because the movie was so famous even before release. It was three days (!!!) of festivities in Georgia for the world premiere to usher in the surefire blockbuster.  NYC followed a few days later and LA just after Christmas before the movie went nationwide in January of 1940. If you adjust for inflation it's still the highest grossing movie of all time (with Star Wars, The Sound of Music, E.T. and Titanic completing the top five).

1978 Ryan O'Neal risks a sequel to his blockbuster Oscar hit Love Story (1970) called Oliver's Story, new in theaters on this day. It's hard to capture lightning in a bottle twice and critics and audiences weren't fond... 

Click to read more ...

Thursday
Nov142019

Oscar Trivia: Which films received the most nominations yet missed Best Picture?

by Nathaniel R

We love to throw random Oscar trivia at you. We love you for not even trying to dodge it! So here's a top ten for you. Here's something we were pondering the other day quite randomly: pictures that Oscar voters obviously loved but somehow skipped in the Best Picture race. This trivia is now a different game entirely given that there are so many Best Picture nominees each year. Unless Oscar returns to the days of 5 nominees, we aren't likely to see this list change ever again. But do you think any film this year might see a lot of nominations without a Best Picture bit. Anyway here is the all-timers list of such things...

The "Most-Nominated" Films That Missed Best Picture

01. Nine nominations
THEY SHOOT HORSES DON'T THEY (1969)
Director Sydney Pollack would make multiple classics in his career, among which The Way We Were (1973) and Tootsie (1982) are arguably the best loved today, and win two Oscars for Out of Africa (1985). His fifth, which preceeded those "greatest hits" catapulted him into greatness. This bleak masterpiece about a Depression-era dance marathon is still an intense watch a full half century after its debut. The performances by Jane Fonda, Susannah York, and Gig Young are sensational and the film is never less than riveting. It was nominated for 9 Oscars, more than any of the Best Picture nominees that year save Anne of a Thousand Days, but won only supporting actor for Gig Young. Perhaps it was too bleak... or those Academy members with a taste for grit and edge were all already in Midnight Cowboy's pocket that year?

02. [TIE] Eight nominations plus a non-competitive special achievement Oscar

Click to read more ...