Best Written TV Shows?

If you haven't read the 101 Best Written Television Series list (voted on by the Writers Guild of America), chances are you've been on a wee internet break for the past 24 hours. But I kinda have been (#sorryboutit) so I've included it here for discussion purposes and with a few notes...

1. The Sopranos
2. Seinfeld
3. The Twilight Zone
4. All in the Family
5. M*A*S*H
6. The Mary Tyler Moore Show
7. Mad Men 
8. Cheers
9. The Wire
10. The West Wing

Mad Men (for many years now the best show on television) has won 11 WGA nominations and 6 wins in its six year run... but what I find fascinating is when groups like the WGA vote for something they didn't originally get behind in a big way; The Wire, for example, makes their top ten all time list despite a measily 3 nominations and 1 win in its entire five year run.

91 more series after the jump

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Team Experience: Great Losers, Actress Edition (Pt. 2)

As long time readers know The Film Experience started out as a one-man show. That man being myself, Nathaniel R. (Remember in Ye Olden Times when posting two goodies a week made you a prolific must-read web star? I still remember David Poland's Hot Button which did just that!) Over the years the royal "We" has stopped being royal and become literal... both from necessity of content-need and desire of companionship - writing can be lonely! I still do the bulk of the posting but now there are a handful of regular columnists and a dozen more occasional voices. Seeking out perspectives other than one's own keeps you fresh and alert. 

So I love these Team perspectives (and I love Amir for dreaming them up / hosting them!) even when they cause me pain. Of course, I get to vote too but, being a Benevolent Dictator, my vote only counts once. DAMNIT. Which is to say that though I loved reading the "Team Top Ten: Oscar's Greatest Losers Best Actress Edition" I was more than a little freaked out not to see a picture of unravelling Deanie in her bathtub staring back at me needily.

the best performance of 1961: Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass

Where is Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass?!?" 

I bellowed internally.

Then I imagine this reaction was shared by many of you 'out there in the dark' albeit with a rotating snubbed actress /film causing the indignation. As it turns out Natalie Wood did make lists other than my own but not enough to secure her a top ten placement. Natalie and other divas who missed the list are after the jump...

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Team Top Ten: Oscar's Greatest Losers (Actress Edition)

Hepburn won 4 Oscars. Every win leaves a trail of four lossesAmir here, to bring you our newest Team Top Ten. You may remember we tackled the best directors of the new century in our first episode and each first Tuesday of the month Nathaniel and all the contributors will vote on a new list. This time it’s all about two things I’m sure you all love as much as we do:

...Actresses & Oscar.

This is a list of the greatest performances that lost the Best Actress award. We’ve looked at the pool of 337 performances that were nominated for an Oscar in that category but failed to win and we ranked them in the order of our individual preference, irrespective of the actresses that won in any given year.

It was quite a heavy task, as you can imagine. How would you go about choosing only ten among so many stellar turns? 80 different performances managed to get at least one vote from our contributors. Actresses who have had multiple unsuccessful nominations were generally the victims of an internal spread of votes. Meryl Streep is the most glaring example, of course. Four of her performances garnered votes, but none was popular enough to make the cut. Katharine Hepburn’s performances were similarly divisive, though one of them stood head and shoulders above the rest as you will see below. There were surprising inclusions and even more surprising exclusions but the main takeaway was consensus over performances that have found their place in the critical canon. Only 6 ladies from this new century made the top 30, which is reason to rejoice, in my opinion -- old treasures aren’t forgotten just yet.

Swanson gave good face.

Nathaniel will share runners-up and some juicy trivia and stats because this experiment really deserves a lot more than a list of ten names. For now, however, here are the actresses Team Experience deems the greatest Oscar losers of all time:

THE 10 GREATEST BEST-ACTRESS-LOSING PERFORMANCES
are after the jump...

surprise! Holly Hunter made the list

10. Holly Hunter (Broadcast News, 1987)
Lost to Cher in Moonstruck

"The leads in so many romantic comedies blend together into a blandly likable blur. Not so with Holly Hunter in Broadcast News. She takes the trope of the hardworking professional woman who is great at her job but unlucky in love, and imbues her with a crackling specificity. Far from sanding down her rough edges, Hunter embraces them, from her crying jags, to her stubbornness, to her clumsy grabs at love, to that southern accent she makes no attempt to disguise. Hunter’s Jane Craig topped my ballot because she is the gold standard against which I measure all other romantic comedy performances."
- Michael C.

nine more iconic performances after the jump...

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Top Ten 1990s

I promised longtime TFE super fan Ryan that I would one day write up a big top ten of the 90s piece although THIS IS NOT IT. This is like those tossed back "shots" of past decades wherein we tell each other our favorites. I'll tell you my ten favorites which are wildly unstable and could be replaced by anything in the "with apologies to" list if I'd ranked on another day. Well, not the top three. I mean... let's not get crazy.

1. The Piano (Jane Campion)
2. Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott)
4. Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson)
5. Beauty & The Beast (Trousdale & Wise)
6. All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar)
7. Trois Coleurs Trilogy (Krystof Kzielowski)
8. T2: Judgment Day (James Cameron)
9. Fargo (The Coen Bros)
10. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)

Most of them weren't even nominated for Best Picture. (Sigh). Oscar is so...

With apologies to 15 more. Let's call it a top 25: 
Being John Malkovich, Titanic, [safe], Howards End, The Thin Red Line, Se7en, The Truman Show, Schindler's List, The Silence of the Lambs, Postcards from the Edge, Edward Scissorhands, The Grifters, Waiting for Guffman, Husbands and Wives, and Election.

other "favs" if not all of them as 'respectable':
Death Becomes Her, Babe, Ed Wood, Dead Man Walking, Strictly Ballroom, Tie Me Up Tie Me Down, A League of Their Own, Addams Family Values, Bullets Over Broadway, Reality Bites, Queen Margot, Clueless, Romeo + Juliet, My Best Friend's Wedding, Wings of the Dove, Celebration, The Idiots, High Art, Velvet Goldmine, Run Lola Run, My Own Private Idaho, Priest, The Fisher King, Leaving Las Vegas and The Last of the Mohicans.

P.S. After Jurassic Park (best shot tomorrow night!), I promise we'll leave the 90s behind and come back to the now. So get it all out of your system in the comments!

Previous Top Ten Quickies
1930s | 1950s | 1970s | 1980s

Tues Top Ten: Tarantino's Toes

A dark Cinderella moment in "Inglourious Basterds"Denny, back again after dancing to Chicago this weekend. When Nathaniel was looking for suggestions to kick off Tarantino Week, I immediately suggested a piece (or pieces) called "Tarantino’s Toes," in honor of his position as the world’s foremost foot fetishist. I was half-joking, but the alliteration was simply too much to walk away from. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. How does one even begin to rank the many, many feet Tarantino has filmed? Does one go by the height of the arch? The length? The width?

… Sorry. I just had to run to the sink. I’m better now.

Actually, on re-watch, I found that, while they aren’t always plot devices, Tarantino does actually use feet to illuminate his themes and charact… Sorry. I just can’t take this seriously. We’re talking about FEET for frak’s sake! To wit, being as non-pervy as I possibly can, my completely arbitrary list of...

Tarantino’s Top Ten Toes

Honorable Mention: Mia’s foot massage in Pulp Fiction
We don’t actually see it onscreen, so I didn’t consider it eligible, but Jules’s monologue about the ultimately deadly foot massage that “Tony Rocky Horror” gave to Mia Wallace is pretty killer. That, according to Mia, the foot massage never even happened makes it even more intriguing.

10 O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill, Vol. 1
They’re only glimpsed for a split second, but the sight of Lucy Liu’s O-Ren running down a table just before slicing off the head of the one member of the crime council who dissents to her new leadership in one swift, clean cut, is one of the film’s best surprises. And on repeat views, it only gets funnier.

more little piggies after the jump

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