The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Christina Applegate got here SAG card in the 70s on an indie film. She doesn't remember what it was (yeah, right) but everyone was "really really high". Cynthia Erivo played a shepherd -- "Everyone lauded my performance." she was hooked at five years old. Eugene Levy dreamed of being the next Mr Whipple but goes on and on in a funny bit. They are actors! (We always love that corny intro.)
Levy and (hot/gay) Son present Male Actor, Comedy Series for which, inexplicably, neither of them is nominatd. The statue goes to awards magnet Tony Shalhoub in Marvelous Mrs Maisel
Banderas with Catherine Zeta Jones at last year's ceremony
It’s almost time for the Golden Globes. Over the years they have given us many memorable speeches that we talked about for days after and influenced the rest of awards season. So it’s time to judge potential speeches Sunday night by evidence given at other awards ceremonies earlier this season. I’ve chosen the best actor drama category because I think the nominees are eclectic in their public style and personae. And play along by thinking of which of these speeches you'd like to see a replica of on Sunday.
If Antonio Banderas were to win, I think he will be charming. However more importantly he will be sincere in paying respect to Pedro Almodovar, who will be in the audience. Wouldn’t you like to see that?
Adam Driver will be probably not be the most memorable. If we take a look at his speech from last month’s Gothams it’s mostly a list of names. He only shows genuine emotion when he mentions his wife. And perhaps that will be enough to provide a TV moment.
Joaquin Phoenix's speech might be an odd mix of earnest and weird, as evidenced by this speech at TIFF. Unfortunately he won't be able to ramble as much as he did here, or interrupt the presenter. Still he's my bet for giving a speech that might become the most unforgettable. Despite not caring much for Joker (it's fine), it looks like I'm a Phoenix voter when playing this game.
Christian Bale and Jonathan Pryce haven't given speeches this season yet. Or at least ones I could find on youtube. Based entirely on what speech you want to see on Sunday night, who do you want to win this category?
In 1989, Tim Burton envisioned Gotham City as an Expressionistic nightmare, something necessarily unreal. Three years later, Batman Returns showed a different sort of urban reverie, one tainted by quasi fascistic imagery, an appropriate dark meaning for a darker film than its predecessor. Joel Schumacher's sequels would see Gotham go through another transfiguration, from a gloomy nightmare into a candy-colored hallucination. This process of growing artificiality would end when Christopher Nolan revitalized Batman for a 21st-century audience.
Nolan's trilogy shows us a Gotham that's a foreigner's idea of an American metropolis and one can almost chart, throughout the films, how the city goes from being a dream of Chicago to New York City 2.0. Todd Phillips' Joker perpetuates this configuration of Gotham as DC Comics' version of Manhattan, but he isn't looking to the real contemporary city for inspiration. The film is set in a New York of yore, a fantasy built from nostalgia and the cinematic legacy of New Hollywood's urban dramas. Gotham is never just a city, rather the idea of one…
The circus around Joker has been exhausting. It’s been a nonstop argument between every single person that posts a positive or negative review, causing friction between subgroups you didn’t even know existed. I admit I found myself having trouble separating the discourse from the film itself. I couldn’t forget the unfortunate interviews given by director Todd Phillips. When I sat in the packed-to-the-brim theater, my head was filled with expectations, anxiety, and the dozens of headlines, articles, and think-pieces I’ve read over the past few weeks.
I’ve never seen a film provide so much discourse outside the screen, yet feel this empty and broken once it's playing in the confines of a theater. Joker is gorgeous, though, and unrelenting in its violence and instability, by way of both the titular character and its striking visuals...
Sunday, January 19, 2020 at 10:50PM 
