TCA Nominations 2021

The Television Critics Association has announced its nominees for the season and they make an interesting parallel kudo-party with the Emmys both in their sameness and where they diverge. I'm told voting closed before the Emmy nominations were announced so these are simple disagreements as opposed to statement making...

INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN DRAMA

Michaela Coel, I May Destroy You – HBO
Ethan Hawke, The Good Lord Bird – Showtime
Thuso Mbedu, The Underground Railroad – Amazon
Elizabeth Olsen, WandaVision – Disney+
Mj Rodriguez, Pose – FX
Omar Sy, Lupin – Netflix
Anya Taylor-Joy, The Queen’s Gambit – Netflix
Kate Winslet, Mare Of Easttown – HBO

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Gay Best Friend: Sammy Gray in Reality Bites (1994)

In this series by Christopher James we investigate the 'Gay Best Friend' trope in movies.

We're introduced to Sammy along with the whole crew of main characters on the roof after their college graduation, two minutes into the movie.

At last, it has come to this point. This marks the first week where I’ve covered a “first watch” for the Gay Best Friend series. Thanks go out to Julian who suggested Steve Zahn’s clean cut Sammy in Reality Bites, a 1994 Gen-X classic. As a proud, card-carrying millennial, Reality Bites had been a movie I had always meant to watch, but never gotten around to. The Winona Ryder fan in me was excited to use this column as an excuse to rectify this blind spot. Overall, the film left me a bit wanting. The characters and situations were a great encapsulation of the confusion you experiences the first years after college. It’s easy to see the lineage from this film to movies and TV shows I love and relate to (namely Girls on HBO and Frances Ha). However, the plot always felt less developed than the characters and performances. The movie exists now as a museum piece encapsulating post-grad life in the 90s. That’s not meant to be a dig. Plenty of movies from the '00s and '10s will feel the same way in 10-20 years. In fact, it speaks to why this modest love triangle from 1994 has endured for twenty-six years in the cultural conversation...

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Lynn Gives Thanks, 2020

Team Experience is giving thanks. Here's Lynn Lee...

Between the scourge of COVID-19 and the utterly dysfunctional American response, 2020 is looking more and more like a lost year for public health, good governance, and the arts and entertainment industry in this country.  Still, as tantalizing hopes of a return to normalcy glimmer on the horizon (three potential vaccines! A responsible, expertise-driven presidential administration!), Thanksgiving provides a much-needed reminder to appreciate the things that helped get us through the past several months.  Here are some of the movie and TV-related moments and discoveries that brought me joy this year:

• Parasite making history as the first Korean movie to win the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Foreign Film.

• The huge, unblinking gimlet eyes of Anya Taylor-Joy (which bring to mind a cross between Emma Stone and Alita): sometimes challenging, sometimes disquieting, always riveting.

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Ethan Hawke at 50: An Appreciation

by Lynn Lee

If I had to pick one actor who most perfectly embodies the spirit of Generation X, the choice would be a no-brainer.  With all due respect to other 40 and 50something stars (Leo, Brad, Johnny, Keanu) or dead icons (River, Heath) in his peer group, it could never be anyone other than Ethan Hawke.  Not because—or not only because—of Reality Bites, which made him the poster child for cynical, disaffected (but secretly vulnerable) Gen X slackers everywhere.  Rather because his career exemplifies the quiet independence and under-the-radar achievements of that not-quite-lost, but certainly liminal, generation.  He’s been working steadily since his debut, at the age of 14, in Explorers (1985), yet like any good Gen Xer, has successfully eluded easy characterization.  He reaches the half century mark today having assembled one of the most intriguing and eclectic bodies of work of any currently living actor... 

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Streaming Roulette: Monstrous Kaitlyn, Shifty William H, and Ubiquitous Sharon

After the jump you'll find a listing of everything that's new to streaming this month (October 2020). But first we pick two handfuls of titles and we just randomly freeze them with the scroll bar. Whatever comes up is what we share. Do these images make you want to see (or rewatch) the movie? 

[Church choir singing]

Dick Johnson is Dead (2020) on Netflix
Filmmaker Kirsten Johnson dramatizes her father's death in multiple ways to help them both prepare for it. Glenn reviewed this buzzy new documentary for us in his weekly column.

Nononononononono. That's not how we're going to talk to one another. I will not be that guy. You cannot put me in that category: the biological father I spend every other week with and I make polite conversation while he drives me places and buys me shit."

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