Team Experience Awards ... with love to Carol, Ex Machina, Girlhood, and more

Amir here, to welcome you to the 4th annual Team Experience Awards, bestowed on the year’s best in film by the Film Experience community (you can read about us here) – sans Nathaniel, our host; you can follow his personal awards here. In the past three installments, we honoured Leos Carax’s Holy Motors (France/Germany), Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (USA/UK) and Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (UK/USA/Switzerland) as our Best Pictures.

Perhaps it won’t surprise you that the awards below, particularly in the craft categories, are more or less dominated by a couple of films that we have all been championing throughout the year, but the usual caveats of all our team posts apply to this one as well. Though the final results might be not be shocking, there were bloodbaths in most categories with many strong contenders for each prize. The best actress category’s contenders, for example, were separated by a hair, rather fittingly, given the winner and and the runner-up.

Some of these behind the scenes details are listed in the trivia section, but without further ado, here are the winners of 2015’s Team Experience Awards:

BEST PICTURE
Carol Runner-up: Brooklyn

BEST UNRELEASED FILM
The Lobster Runner-up: Chevalier

foreign film, acting prizes, and craft achievements after the jump...

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Curio: 2015's Most Artistically Inspirational Films

Alexa here looking back at 2015 along with the horde. As I've noted before, some films seem to inspire visual artists and crafters more than others.  Of course science fiction and fantasy will always result in legions of geekery, but some films seem to go further, initiating a dialogue for visual artists that proves ongoing, often for decades. Certain directors' work will always be on the list (Woody & Wes), while others are more hit-or-miss (e.g. the endless fan art tributes to Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, relatively few for Polanski's Chinatown). Reasons are elusive, but it seems some films just serve up a perfect storm of elements that visual artists crave reinterpreting.

So Nathaniel (who chose the ten runners up) and I (who chose the top five, and maybe they're wishful thinking, as they're some of my favorite films of the year) looked into our crystal balls and choose

15 Films of '15 That Are Most Likely To Inspire Future Artists

Nathaniel's Honorable Mentions

15 Diary of a Teenage Girl
14 Tangerine 

"Favorite Movies 2015" by Hulyen

Neither of these films have really caught on yet with the online art crowd -- at least a web search of the usual places doesn't reveal much happening -- but they will.  Diary of a Teenage Girl is about a cartoonist so it starts with an easy identification hook. Plus it's got memorable period trappings, gutsy performances, and an uninhibited libido for unhealthy sexual relations.

I'm even more sure that Tangerine will catch on and here's why...

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THR's Screenwriter Roundtable

Chris here. I hope you're having a relaxing and safe holiday weekend!

Earlier this week, hiding among the constant updates on the reams of money The Force Awakens is floating in, we got this year's Screenwriters Roundtable! You'll remember from November that we had some feelings about this year's Actress Roundtable and I'll confess that I found this year's Actor Roundtable underwhelming in lineup and discussion. However, the Screenwriters edition is often the loosest and freshest each year - with its selected participants typically on point.

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Menagerie '15: Best Animals in the Movies

Personality Assessment. Go...

• Do you feel guilty (like me) about missing White God, Hungary's acclaimed drama about a pack of wild dogs?

• Were you puzzled when Susan Cooper was embarrassed by her crazy cat lady disguise in Spy?

• Would you put on a bee suit to hang with Mr Holmes? 

• Would you adopt Paddington after he defiled your toothbrushes? 

If you answered yes to any of those questions you might be an animal person or a crazy cat lady like your host Nathaniel. This list (updated from a halfwaymark celebration) is for you!

TOP 15 ANIMALS FROM 2015 MOVIES
after the jump...

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Annie Awards Give Love to Pixar (and "Judy" in The Revenant!)

The Annie Awards, now in their 43rd year, seemed to have stabilized after their controversial laden years when people felt they were to beholden to Dreamworks Animation (am I remembering this correctly?) within their voting ranks. But their nominations often still feel quite random as in voice acting where Richard Kind was shut out for "bing bong" in Inside Out. Or Tom Noonan, who voices almost every character in Anomalisa, being ignored. Or their character design and visual effects nominations sometimes specifying individual scenes or categories and sometimes just labelled "all". And the varying number of nominations per category.

In short: their executive body really needs to sharpen up their rules so they feel more respectable / consistent.

But it was a good morning for Pixar since Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur dominated with 14 and 10 nods respectively. As for their competition for Oscar gold, good showings for Anomalisa, Shaun the Sheep and Peanuts with 5 nominations each. The low profile but reportedly excellent Brazilian feature Boy and the World received 3 nominations.

Even some live action films get honored by the Annies since most films get computer animated assists these days so... what's that? The Revenant was nominated? See more after the jump...

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