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.)
Every day, different angles on a 2016 wrap up. Tonight Nathaniel with the year's best musical short films...
It's true. They're more commonly referred to as "Music Videos" but since they have their roots in the Movie Musical, we think of them as short film descendants of that greatest of film genres. Music videos, which exploded so spectacularly in the 1980s with the dawn of MTV but experienced something like a midlife death rather than crisis, when MTV dropped the music part of music television, have roared back to life in the past decade with YouTube Vimeo and other saviors. The medium is alive and well and arguably healthier than ever (until the next platform crisis at least).
Though Beyonce's Lemonade dominated the conversation, 2016 actually produced a remarkable number of musical shorts that one might include under the umbrella of "Women Gone Wild," a subgenre equal parts political, erotic, and psychological...
ET First pic of Pixar's Coco though the text is greatly irritating as they seem to be very anti-musical "Don't call it a musical!" Filmmixtape "if 2016's worst films were drag race competitors" Playbill George S Irving, the voice of Heat-Miser for the Bankin Rass TV classic "The Year Without a Santa Claus" has died at 94. The Guardian why 2016 was a big year for female sexuality in film and on television
Carrie Fisher & Debbie Reynolds and infinite list-making after the jump...
As a general rule of thumb, we love list-making and recapping of the year's significant moments and events but the exception is the work of the grim reaper. Death has claimed so many icons recently, particularly from the music world, that 2016 is starting to feel like a parody of its apocalyptic self as we reach its conclusion.
On Christmas day, of all days considering that one of his most enduring hits is "Last Christmas," George Michael was taken from us. Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou (better known as George Michael) was born in East Finchley London in 1963. By the age of 19 he'd charted his first hit with his friend Andrew Ridgeley (the other half of Wham!) called "Young Guns (Go for It!)". Two years later he was world famous by way of the global smash "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go." Which is when little Nathaniel first fell in love. But that initial fame wasn't the half of it. In fact the early hits I loved so much only hinted at the artist he'd become. He proved himself one of the great pop singers and composers over and over again. "Listen Without Prejudice Vol. I," released in 1990 is surely his masterpiece (and one of the greatest pop albums ever recorded) but he continued to be brilliant even when record contract troubles and personal problems overshadowed his talent with the public. His career had been quiet for some time but it's worth noting that he made one last significant contribution to pop culture that people don't regularly attribute to him -- he was the first star to sing with James Corden whilst driving around in a car back in 2011 which eventually became the ubiquitous "Carpool Karaoke" series of the here and now.
Given his death this weekend, the lyrics and defiance of one of his very last records "White Light" (recorded in 2012 and inspired by his near death in 2011) are suddenly so much sadder.
There is no white light and I'm not through I'm alive I'm alive and I've got so much more that I want to do.
Was it music or science that saved me?
After the jump 16 favorite songs from his career...
Oopsie. In the Holiday rush we forgot to share one of the most important lists, the list of which films can be nominated for Oscars (in regular categories -- speciality categories like "best foreign language film" having their own rules). Every year the list is a wee bit odd if you really take a deep dive at it because it's filled with movies you haven't heard of as well as missing a few movies you have. Why is that? Because the list is made up of films which met two requirements.
1) Each film played for a week long engagement in Los Angeles that you could buy tickets to like you would any movie (i.e. not a festival engagement alone) and... 2) Films which did that and then ALSO submitted paperwork to the Academy to be eligible.
The most important film that is missing this year (apparently due to requirement #2) is acclaimed Aquarius starring Sonia Braga. Of films I personally saw in movie theaters or noted when they came out in movie theaters that weren't submitted the list is mostly foreign and indie though there are strange cases where wide releases didn't submit either. Another section of films that's often missing from these lists are films which were submitted for Oscar's foreign race the year prior but were not nominated and then released in the current calendar year when they theoretically would be eligible for any category BUT foreign film according to Oscar rules. ANYWAY. Of those missing films that could have been eligible there's no: Bang Gang: A Love Story, Best Worst Thing That Ever Happened, El Clan, El Club , The Family Fang, Glassland, Gods of Egypt, Lazy Eye, Morris From America (which got a Spirit nomination for Craig Robinson), Transpecos, and Under the Shadow and so on. The full eligible list is after the jump...
Another couple of days, another couple of lists. After the jump the AFI and the AARP lists and a couple notes about which films are coasting through precursor season without a care in the world. Consensus: a powerful tool if you can grab it...
Thursday, December 29, 2016 at 10:49PM 
Every day, different angles on a 2016 wrap up. Tonight Nathaniel with the year's best musical short films...
