Post-ApocaLinktip

Time is a real bitch. Between interviews and standard blogging and technical difficulties and Globes and Film Bitch Awards and a cold, your host has had a difficult couple of weeks that he definitely didn't plan well enough for. But this rought start to 2016 shall not deter him. Please stick with us and cheerlead in the comments and we'll make 2016 the best year yet at The Film Experience even though these past 10 days or so have not gone half as planned. (Note to self for 2016: You can't cover everything... the link list is your friend. Also please win the lottery so you can hire a full time staff of 5? 10?) 

Here's some reading elsewhere while we continue to update Oscar charts, try to collect ourselves (still trying to decide how to approach the #OscarsSoWhite issue which is getting such shoddy or agenda-filled or misleading coverage elsewhere). And maybe eating lunch or sleeping would be nice at some point! 

Good LOL
The Toast "Signs You're About to be in a Sinister Homoerotic Subplot in a Midcentury Drama" 

Extra Extra Read All About It
Boy Culture 50 stars turning 50 this year. Which should we celebrate here at TFE?
Film School Rejects talks Ryan Coogler's strong beginnings and bright future and the matter of his Black Panther gig
Gizmodo Inside Out might get a sequel? Blargh.
Variety Dan Hagerty (best known as "Grizzly Adams" from TV died this morning at 74
New Now Next Nico Tortorella gives you tips on how to maximize your Instagram account (of course if you look like Nico Tortorella you probably won't need any tips to get popular on Instagram
Playbill the David Bowie scored musical Lazarus set to close this next week off broadway might get a second life
The Guardian Mike Lee talks about what he's up to, his past film, his politics and his next project Peterloo (date TBA) about a Manchester massacre in 1819.
Vanity Fair Jacob Tremblay, Charlize Theron, Cate Blanchett, Bryan Cranston and more doing their best Scarlett & Rhett Gone With the Wind finale impressions
Just Jared The great Emma Thompson remembers her co-star the late Alan Rickman (RIP)
Slate looks at the treatment of the romantic rival in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and wonders why it isn't as subversive/progressive as other parts of the show. Are any of you watching this? There are true fans among TFE's team (including me)
MNPP whenever you need a Michael Fassbender fix, Jason will provide. 
The Guardian wonders if the Star Wars universe will replace the Marvelverse with the public within the next few years 

Year in Review Stuff
Reverse Shot gets grumpy with "offenses" to take down awards biggies like Son of Saul and Sicario. Though I'll admit reading the take on The Overnight makes me glad I skipped it.
Coco Hits New York who recently joined the team here at TFE has shared his list of the best of 2015. It's a good long read with interesting choices so enjoy. I love what he writes about Alicia Vikander's work in Ex Machina

For playing man as she plays machine, and for not disappointing a movie that builds its mysteries around her.

Beauty vs Beast: Beard vs Bumble

JA from MNPP here, ho ho hosting this week's ho ho holiday edition of "Beauty vs Beast" for y'all (okay okay I got all my ho ho's out, I promise) -- a couple of weeks ago TFE's resident animation guru Tim gave good love to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on the occasion of its 50th anniversary and it struck me like a peppermint pick-axe to the brain, what this week's face-off needed to be. Who else but...

poll by twiigs.com

Yukon Cornelius, the standard of bearded beauty for an entire generation, grabs that frightful Beast by the belly and bounces away with our hearts every time, but we've got a special place for the Bumble's passionate bumbling too. So help us choose! You have one week to vote, and please do share your thoughts upon each in the comments.

PREVIOUSLY Spinning off from the frozen tundra of the North Pole to the magnolia swelter of the Deep South, last week we celebrated the 75th anniversary of Gone With the Wind by play-acting Scarlett and choosing our best beau - Ashley put up a decent fight for such a wilting flower but frankly, my dears, we want to be man-handled. Rhett swept 79% of us up in his arms and carried us into that fiery sunset. Said TB:

"Ashley is the biggest cad in the whole movie. He's got Olivia de Havilland at home, and he's stringing along Vivien Leigh the whole time. Nope. NOPE. Rhett's a slut, but at least he's got principles."

Beauty vs Beast: Miss Scarlett Decides

Fiddle-dee-dee y'all it's Jason from MNPP here with today's sweeping Southern epic edition of "Beauty vs Beast." Yes indeedy today is the 75th anniversary of the biggest movie that ever was and probably ever will be - David O. Selznick's Gone With the Wind (if any movie's ownership belongs to its producer, it's this one) premiered in Atlanta on this day in 1939. Three hundred thousand people lined the streets surrounding the Loews Grand Theater, the cap of three days worth of festivities which brought over a million people to the city. Most of the stars attended, save Leslie Howard who'd returned to England because of WWII, as well as Hattie McDaniel and the other black actors in the film who would've been segegrated from the rest of the cast thanks to Jim Crow. (A situation echoed several months later when McDaniel had to make her way from the back of the room to accept her Oscar.)

The film immediately smashed every record in sight - it sold just about half as many tickets as there were people in the United States, and adjusted for inflation its box office in today's dollars sits at something like three and a half billion dollars. It was a hit!

There were several character iterations I could've gone with for today's competition, but it seemed to me to face Viven Leigh's towering performance as Scarlett O'Hara off against anybody (Melanie, imagine!) would've flounced and trounced any ol' nobody in her way, so instead let's make like we're Scarlett herself and stricken with a crisis of suitors! A beau-tastrophe! Whomever shall we choose?

poll by twiigs.com

You've got seven days to vote, which should just give you about enough time to re-watch the first half of the movie up to the Intermission, so get to it.

PREVIOUSLY We took on 2014's blood-soaked war of the sexes with David Fincher's Gone Girl last week, pitting Ben Affleck's full-frontal assault as Nick in one corner opposite Rosamund Pike's icy cool girl Amazing Amy in the other - sure enough Amy kept her nickname tight in her calclating grasp, making off with over 70% of the vote. Said Mareko:

"Cool Girl is fun. Cool Girl is game. Cool Girl is hot. Cool Girl never gets angry at her man."

138 days til Oscar: That's your Best Picture length!

138 is a magic number. It's the average length, in minutes, of a Best Picture winner. Here are the running times of all winnners from longest to shortest. You'll see that the majority of winners are over 2 hours long which has caused no end of padding in "serious" movies but alas, not enough padding for tender buttocks watching the interminable movies. 

Here are your Best Picture winners from longest film to the shortest.

1. Gone With the Wind (1939) 238 minutes
   Just two minutes shy of four hours, but worth every second. Lots of Gone With the Wind discussion here. Did you see its recent two day theatrical screening?
2. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) 216 minutes
3. Ben-Hur (1959) 212 minutes
   Currently in the process of being remade because that's how Hollywood do. Although this film was itself a remake so... we'll let it pass. Still there is no way its signature scene, the chariot race, will be as thrilling with CGI.
   ˆˆˆ over 3½ hours ˆˆˆ
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) 201 minutes
5. The Godfather Part 2 (1974) 200 minutes
6. Schindler's List (1993) 195 minutes
7. Titanic (1997) 194 minutes
8. Gandhi (1982) 191 minutes
9. The Deer Hunter (1979) 182 minutes
10. Dances With Wolves (1990) 181 minutes
    ˆˆˆ over 3 hours ˆˆˆ
    
    other long ass movies and how it relates to this year after the jump...
    
    

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"If she thought anybody would take after her..."

..she'd walk down the street naked."

[continues sewing...]

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