Vote on the new Smackdown. Meet your fellow panelists.

A new season of the Supporting Actress Smackdown is upon us. We'll begin with the current season, honoring the films of 2021.

• Buckley, The Lost Daughter
• DeBose, West Side Story
• Dench, Belfast
• Dunst Power of the Dog
• Ellis, King Richard

So email your votes ranking each nominated Supporting Actress performance on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (perfection) by this Sunday March 20th. Your votes will count toward the final outcome. Now, let's meet your fellow voters who we'll be chatting with you on the podcast.

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'West Side Story' leads LEJA Nominees

The Latino Entertainment Journalists Association (or LEJA) has announced its fourth annual awards nomination. Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story leads with a whopping 13 nominations.  The year's other big Latino musical In the Heights received 4 nominations. Lin-Manuel Miranda alone reaped 7 nominations (for his work on In the Heights, tick tick BOOM!, Vivo, and Encanto). The year's other big Latino musical In the Heights received four nominations.  The nominees are after the jump and their winners will be announced on March 6th...

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12 takeaways from this morning's Oscar nominations

In no particular order - see the full list of nominations here.

1. BEST ACTRESS IS, TWO YEARS RUNNING NOW, A CHAOTIC NAIL-BITER
Last season provided us a rare nail-biter as different women kept winning lead actress at the televised shows: Andra Day, Viola Davis, Frances McDormand, Carey Mulligan. This year the nominations themselves have been routinely surprising. In fact the only woman to hit *every* key precursor was Lady Gaga but when the nominations were announced this morning she was the most shocking snub. Meanwhile, Penelope Cruz who'd only won the Volpi Cup and Kristen Stewart, who had struggled in the precursors despite year long "she's going to win!" hoopla both showed up. So we currently have NO idea who is going to win. You can make a case for any of the nominees. And, once again, none of them are in Best Picture nominated films.

2. QUALIFYING RELEASES ARE ALIVE AND WELL (SIGH)
Norway's incredible film The Worst Person in the World scored a surprise nomination in Best Original Screenplay (well deserved) despite only playing for a week unadvertised in theaters to qualify...

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Cláudio's 2021 Top Ten

by Cláudio Alves

Ever since late 2019, there's seldom been a week when I didn't write for The Film Experience. Being part of the blog's team is a dream come true in many regards, having followed it since I was a baby cinephile back in the mid-aughts. Considering how much The Film Experience has become part of my life, it's with great delight that I'm now sharing my year-end personal top 10 in these hallowed pages. While I love to read everything my fellow Team Experience colleagues write, we all have distinctive tastes. Indeed, many are the movies where many disagree – just look at the polarizing reactions to Spencer. This means that it's unlikely there's much overlap in any list of favorites, including that of our beloved editor, Nathaniel. Our heterogeneous opinions are part of what makes The Film Experience so special. 

With that in mind, here are my ten favorites features released in 2021. (First, though, some honorable mentions)…

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Critics Groups Round 7 - That point in the year when we begin to lose our minds

by Nathaniel R

JK Simmons picks up his first prize for Being the Ricardos

Another week. Another crowded list of critics associations announcing their "Bests". There's still a lot of repetition but there are a couple of minor points of interest, some annoying and some delightful in this particular roundup. Here are the 12 latest critics groups to announce after the jump...

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