Almost There: Taron Egerton in "Rocketman"

by Cláudio Alves

Because it's Pride Month and Rocketman is new to streaming on Hulu and Amazon Prime, this week's Almost There subject is Taron Egerton in Dexter Fletcher's Elton John biopic. In the most recent awards season, this Welsh actor probably came quite close to an Oscar nomination, both thanks to his performance as well as his aggressive campaigning. The nature of his role helped too, of course. Biopic roles are, literally, the Academy's favorite flavor of Oscar bait. Still, in the year after Bohemian Rhapsody's controversial victories, Rocketman had to content itself with a Best Original Song win. As for Egerton, he got Golden Globe, BAFTA and SAG nods, but failed to secure the Oscar nomination, ending up just outside the Best Actor lineup…

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1947: "Boy! What a Girl!" is an underseen lively gem

by Nick Taylor

Let's recap our tried-and-true methods of investigating what early cinema has to offer for these alternate looks at supporting actreses outside of the Oscar shortlists and we do these retrospectives.

1. Combing through the canon for actressy projects
2. Checking out what the great actresses of the era were up to.

But what about option 3... the ever-reliable, deeply specific journey of stumbling onto something interesting and keeping it in your back pocket until you finally get a reason (quote-unquote) to check it out? Take, for example, my relationship with Boy! What a Girl!, which I first heard about in my senior year of college...

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Almost There (x 2): Marion Cotillard in "Nine" & "Public Enemies"

by Cláudio Alves

It's become somewhat uncommon for Oscar champions in the acting categories to be a "one and done" type of deal. A good amount of the winners from the past 25 years have either received nominations after their victory or already had them before their golden coronation. All this to say that, after Marion Cotillard won the Best Actress Academy Award for her work in La Vie en Rose, it felt like it was just a matter of time before she'd be in another Oscar lineup. That follow-up nod would come until 2014 for Two Days, One Night but, before that, there were a couple of failed Oscar bids to account for.

Previously in this series, we talked about her 2012 Best Actress snub for Rust & Bone. Now, let's look further back, to the Best Supporting Actress race of 2009...

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When Oscar met Razzie

by Cláudio Alves

Founded by Mo Murphy and John J. B. Wilson, the Golden Raspberry Awards, more commonly known as Razzies, are the evil twin to the Academy Awards. Instead of celebrating the best achievements in world cinema, they award the worst, ridiculing them in the process and daring anyone to go accept their gold sprayed statuette in good humor. They've been handed out since 1981 when Xanadu and Can't Stop the Music battled out for the title of Worst Picture. Since then, the Razzies have made many controversial choices, showing an especially troubling fondness for lampooning female-centric stories or examples of campy entertainment.

Today we'll be talking about two instances when the Oscars and the Razzies tastes diverged so much they ended up nominating the same performances…

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National Pet Week: “Si” and “Am” from Lady and the Tramp

Team Experience will be celebrating pets at the movies this week. Here's Lynn Lee...

My cats!

Last fall, my husband and I adopted a pair of Siamese kittens from a local rescue organization.  It was my husband’s idea – I was hesitant at first, despite the extreme cuteness of their pictures and videos.  Not because I don’t like cats; to the contrary, my husband had already converted me into a cat lover with our previous, gone but still-missed pair.  No, the real if silly reason, as I explained sheepishly, was that every time I thought of Siamese cats – especially in twos – all I could think of was the devilish duo from Lady and the Tramp (1955). While I hadn’t seen the movie in years, I vividly remembered two blue-eyed hellions who teamed up to torment poor innocent Lady and frame her as the “bad dog” she assuredly was not.  I also remembered a sibilant signature song that I was pretty sure had not aged well after a half century, even if the movie itself remained one of my Disney favorites...

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