A Golden Globes Surprise

by Murtada Elfadl

The Golden Globes are always good for a surprise. Aaron Taylor Johnson winning best supporting actor for Nocturnal Animals (2016). Amy Adams winning for Big Eyes (2014) when everyone expected Emily Blunt to win because she was in a musical; Into the Woods (2014). Just last year Glenn Close winning over Lady Gaga changed the best actress race. 

But perhaps the biggest and happiest surprise was Isabelle Huppert winning best actress in a drama for Elle (2016). That year everyone thought the competition was between Emma Stone for La La Land and Natalie Portman in Jackie. And there they were in separate categories at the Globes and were each expected to win...

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Emmy FYC: Christina Hendricks in "The Romanoffs"

Team Experience is sharing FYCs as the Television Academy votes on Emmy nominations over the next two weeks. Here's Mark Brinkerhoff.

The general consensus, if we even can have one in these divisive times, seems to be that Matthew Weiner’s The Romanoffs is an ignoble failure. As his immediate follow-up to Mad Men, the seminal, peak-TV series that gave him pretty much carte blanche to do whatever he wanted to creatively, The Romanoffs arrived last fall on a wave of buzz and eager anticipation. With a star-studded, international cast and intriguing, globe-trotting storyline (made possible by Amazon’s $70 million investment), what would Weiner & Co. ultimately deliver? The answer: Zzzs. (I sort of checked out mid-way through the second to last episode, as a matter of fact.) 

Nevertheless, within this eight-part limited series (which surely was meant to continue?) are elements that succeed better than they ought to quite frankly. Indeed, the parts are greater than their sum, and one in particular stood out to me immediately/in retrospect: Christina Hendricks... 

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Tribeca 2019: "White as Snow"

Jason Adams reporting from the Tribeca Film Festival one last time...

The sins of the flesh have always been right there on the surface of Fairy Tales, waiting to be ravaged by sex and by violence, by finger and by claw. Crooked old ladies morph into comely lasses, and ripe red lips are ready to be plucked and plundered. Snow White didn't move in with seven little dudes by mistake -- whatever our imaginations can imagine, whatever wishes our hearts can make, they're all within reach for a price, endless sleep and poisoned apples. Anne Fontaine's White as Snow is just the latest in a long string of movies soft-coring up our princess fantasies...

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Stage Door: Isabelle Huppert is "The Mother"

Since we're in the thick of theater season with the Drama Desk, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle, and Tony Awards coming up, that means an extra stage review here and there! Here's Eric Blume...

One of TFE’s favorite actresses, Isabelle Huppert, currently stars off-Broadway in writer Florian Zeller’s new play, The Mother.  As you might guess, she kills it in Zeller’s non-linear play. The Mother is challenging and archly theatrical, with scenes being acted and re-enacted, timelines being blurred, and reality and fantasy being blended in gloriously unclear ways to achieve both a distancing and an immediacy.  This is intelligent and precise writing, not an easy ride for theatergoers, and demanding in its shifts both temporal and stylistic.

But Huppert is deep in character as always, sinking into the skin of the matriarch in the four-person family play...

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Five From Tribeca 2019

by Jason Adams

The 2019 edition of the Tribeca Film Festival, which runs from April 24th to May 5th, announced their Feature Film line-up this week -- you can check out the entire thing right here. Once again yours truly, along with a couple of familiar TFE faces, will be covering, and glancing through what I've got coming to me I can already feel the tips of my toes and fingers tingling with expectation. There are a ton of goodies again! So many, many goodies, actually... there are 103 movies already announced... oh my god it's a lot. So much. Okay okay before I start hyperventilating let's narrow this down. Here are the 5 films I'm most looking forward to right off the bat...

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