Oscar Volley: Best Original Screenplay...the "alternative Best Picture" award?

Team Experience is teaming up to discuss each Oscar category. Here's Mark Brinkerhoff and Elisa Giudici...

TÁR in the act of creation

MARK: Hello, hello! Get a look at the Best Original Screenplay nominees this year—all five are also Best Picture Oscar nominees. Now of course this isn’t unprecedented, namely in the modern era of (up to) 10 Best Picture nominees, but it *is* unusual. (2020 was the other year this complete overlap occurred.) Typically we’ll get at least one inspired, left-field choice in Best Original Screenplay (think Bridesmaids, The Lobster, Nightcrawler, etc.). Not this year, unfortunately.

So where does this leave us? With a pretty sterling lineup of nominees overall! Among the five—The Banshees of Inisherin, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Fabelmans, Tár, Triangle of Sadness—which strike you as the real deal this year?

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Best Ensemble, Casting, Stunts, and More...

by Nathaniel R

EEAAO an easy choice for "Best Ensemble" discussions.

With the SAG Awards airing tonight -- we expect to see encore speeches from Blanchett, Fraser, Bassett, and Quan since the acting winners tend to get set in stone once televised ceremonies begin -- let's talk acting categories that Oscar doesn't have. Here are my personal favourites for Casting, Ensemble, Stunts, and Juvenile Performances, a couple of prizes which SAG has and two that they don't...

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Oscar Volley: Will it be Period Perfection or Fantastical Visions as the winner of "Best Costume Design"?

Team Experience is discussing the various Oscar categories. Here's Chris James and Juan Carlos Ojano discussing Costume Design.

CARLOS: Hi, Chris! I would like to confess that I am terrified to talk about this category. For the last few years, I have just made my picks without actually articulating specific reasons. Maybe I don't have the necessary vocabulary or real-life knowledge in costuming or maybe because I'm still working on veering away from my preconceived notion of "Best" as "Most" or "Prettiest". But that fear also makes this exciting, and to do this with you - huzzah!

All right. Let's get down to business. What do we have here? Two Best Picture nominees, two Best Picture-adjacent films, and a lone nominee from a favourite designer in this category. In the expanded ballot era, a time where a lot of the categories have gone (or in some cases, defaulted) to Best Picture nominees alone, this category has demonstrated a level of independence. Out of the past thirteen winners, seven were non-Best Picture nominees (that's 54%, more than half!). So if you're predicting the winner, stats aren't necessarily helpful...

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11th Annual Team Experience Award - WINNERS

From the team…

The team is just as obsessed with Lydia Tár as she is of herself.
Preferential balloting can do crazy things. It was neck and neck over the course of five rounds, with different films taking the lead at different moments. In the end, TÁR prevailed in the Best Picture race. Overall, the team of Film Experience writers decided to spread the wealth, rather than give Lydia Tár all the awards under the sun. In fact, this year’s Best Picture winner only won two other categories - Best Actress (tied) and Best Original Screenplay. Everything Everywhere All At Once also won three awards - Director, Supporting Actor and Film Editing.

Check out the rest of the winners after the jump...

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Interview: Stephanie Hsu. The year's breakout star on her insane year, stage history, and working with legends.

by Nathaniel R

Stephanie Hsu as "Jobu Tupaki" in Everything Everywhere All At Once2022's wildest film was also it's most unlikely mainstream success. For sheer invention it Everything Everywhere All At Once, outdid the animated Spider-Verse and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the suddenly flourishing subgenre of multi-verse hopping. At the center of its chaotic maelstorm, is Jobu Tupaki (Stephanie Hsu), the nihilistic variant of depressed Joy Wang, a young queer woman with a tense relationship to her overly critical mother Evelyn(Michelle Yeoh). Stephanie Hsu, 32, is not an overnight sensation but she is a sensation. 2022 essentially served as a mainstream coming out party for the gifted actress after years treading the boards in experimental theater and musical comedy, as well as season-long or guest episode TV gigs.

Back in October I had the change to moderate a Q&A for Everything Everywhere All At Once at which Hsu received a "Rising Star Award". Over the course of the day we met three times and talked Broadway theater, being dramaturgy nerds, forgetting your lines, wild costumes, and various movies that are competing with hers at awards shows (off the record of course!). What follows is the conversation we had as we met, shortly before we went on stage [edited for length and clarity]...

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