The 2023 Gold Digger Mid-Year Awards: Nominations Announced!

by Cláudio Alves

With 17 different citations, Wes Anderson's ASTEROID CITY is the nomination leader.Since 2018, Patrick Gratton has been organizing the Gold Digger Awards, welcoming fellow critics and cinephiles to vote on the year's best achievements in film. Though no such voting was done in 2021 or 2022, the Gold Diggers are back with a new group of over forty folks who write about the cinematic arts, including some members of Team Experience, like Nick Taylor, Ben Miller and myself. Diversity of identity and thought is prized above all else, a plurality of opinions coming together in idiosyncratic fashion, widely different ballots all around, even if just the first half of 2023 was considered. Specifically, US release dates were judged, despite the voting body including numerous nationalities. Whether they opened in theaters or streaming, these films reach nearly 800 eligible titles – a fantastic bounty of cinema.

Without further ado, I leave you with the 2023 Gold Digger Mid-Year Awards nominations in 24 categories. Enjoy the ride...

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"Bombshell" and "Rocketman" are the stars of the Makeup and Hairstyling Honors this year.

by Nathaniel R

The acronym MUAHS always amused us since it sounds like a goofy platonic kiss --“Mwahh!” Perhaps that’s appropriate since Make Up involves many pairs of lips. The Makeup and Hairstylists Guild, an organization about 2100 members wide, have announced their nominees for 2019 in movies and television and theatre. The gala where the winners will be announced is on Saturday, January 11, 2020. “Bombshell” and “Rocketman” lead the movie portion of the awards... 

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Review: John Wick 3: Chapter 3 - Parabellum

By Lynn Lee

“Guns.  Lots of guns.”

That line is only one of several of John Wick 3’s nods to its spiritual predecessor, The Matrix, albeit the most overt one.  With the right audience, it draws appreciative laughs.  It also embodies everything that’s both most effective and most lacking in Keanu Reeves’ latest blockbuster franchise.  The action pyrotechnics are dazzling, the callouts to his last blockbuster franchise amusing, but once the last gun stops firing, there’s nothing left.  Nothing to feel, think about, or care about, even as the story ends on yet another cliffhanger that practically ensures the next installment we all knew was coming and was sealed by the movie’s gargantuan opening box office haul.

It wasn’t always this way.  The first John Wick had a simplicity of premise that made for a sharp and clean, if fundamentally goofy, revenge narrative...

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John Wick finds box office gold

Weekend Box Office Estimates May 17th-19th (ESTIMATES) 🔺 = New or Expanded Theater Count
W I D E	PLATFORM / SPECIALTY TITLES
John Wick Chapter 3	Trial by Fire
1 🔺 John Wick Chapter 3  $57 on 3850 screens  KEANU REEVES *NEW*	1🔺 Biggest Little Farm $270k on 45 screens (cum. $406k)

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Posterized: Keanu Reeves

by Nathaniel R

Whoa. Keanu Reeves turns 55 later this year and he's made roughly that many movies, too. Time sure does fly since he's still implanted in our consciousness as that stoner-like raven-haired looker of convenience store, surfing, and bus adventures. Figuring him out has always been an impossible trip. Keanu means "cool breeze over the mountains" in Hawaiian but, that geographically specific well-known trivia aside, he's always been hard to visually or sonically place anywhere on the map OR within the pantheon of contemporary stars; Born in Lebanon and raised in Canada, though he's of Hawaiian/British/Chinese/Portuguese descent, and with a voice that conjures the early 80s and California. Who/what/where is he even other than on his own planet and his own unique star? 

Though it seems hard to imagine now, when he first came to fame he was a very unlikely candidate for longevity...

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