Review: Sandra Oh in "The Chair"

by Lynn Lee

In my younger days, I wanted to be an English professor.  I was pretty serious about it, too – serious enough to major in English, get a fellowship, and enroll in a Ph.D program.  Ultimately, I realized academia wasn’t for me and left with just a master’s.  I’ve never regretted that decision.  Yet I still wonder occasionally what my life would have been like if I’d stuck with my original dream.

So it’s no wonder I immediately let myself sink into The Chair, a new Netflix (mini?)series starring Sandra Oh as the titular chair of the English department at Pembroke University. That's a fictional Ivy League school in what looks like a permanently snow-covered New England college town, although the show was actually shot in Pennsylvania.  Basically, it’s my alternate-universe existence if I were as cool and charismatic as Sandra Oh and as brilliant and committed as her character, Ji-Yoon Kim...

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Emmy Analysis: A close race in Outstanding Writing for Limited Series or TV Movie

The Film Experience Team takes a look at the episode submissions for all the major Emmy categories.

by Cláudio Alves 

Unlike the Drama and Comedy writing categories at the Emmys, the Limited Series or TV Movie one can find entire seasons competing against solo episodes or single films. In the recent past, individual chapters of Sherlock and Black Mirror, classified as TV movies, won out against juggernaut series such as Fargo and Big Little Lies. This year, there are no such "movies" nominees. Indeed, despite six slots, only four series are recognized across the board. Wandavision is the nomination leader as well as the only show competing with single episodes instead of seasons. Indeed, with three nods, it thus becomes only the second limited series to score triple writing nods in the same year. The first one was American Crime Story: The People v O.J. Simpson. That Ryan Murphy show won in 2016, despite the threat of vote splitting, and maybe the Disney+ program can do the same. Let's take a look at the nominees…

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Locarno Diary #1: The festival begins with "Beckett"

by Elisa Giudici

A couple of weeks after having saying goodbye to Cannes and to the superb blue sea of the French Riviera, I am back at it by the majestic, cloudy mountains of Switzerland for the Locarno Film Festival: the long summer of European festival continues!

Up top you see the Piazza Grande (the biggest outdoor screen in Europe!) where we'll discover smaller movies and younger directors than the ones seen (and reviewed) at the Croisette. Unfortunately today the weather is really rainy. I am writing these lines with my raincoat on, wishing I followed that note I write to my future self every year at Locarno to stuff appropriate clothes in my car for mountain weather. The scenery is really majestic though, with clouds moving fast over the mountain tops and the city, like you're inside Olivier Assayas' Sils Maria.

Enough with scenery, let's talk about the opening night film... 

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Emmy Watch: Outstanding TV Movie

by Juan Carlos Ojano

In a year when most categories saw the number of their submissions drop, the Outstanding TV Movie category stands out as one of the few that actually had an increase in submissions (41 submissions from last year’s 28). On the flipside, this year saw even less high-profile contenders, adding to the growing indifference towards this category. Perhaps last year’s winner Bad Education set a high bar in how a “TV movie” can be received critically, faring well even in traditional film awards. The COVID-19 pandemic continued to blur what is considered a film and television, with streaming services now arbitrarily pushing some for Oscars and some for Emmys.

This year, let’s take a look at the field of contenders that we have (per platform)...

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Why I love Bo Burnham's "Inside"

by Cláudio Alves

In 2016, Bo Burnham announced he was quitting live comedy. The artist, whose career started on Youtube, attributed the decision to a series of panic attacks he'd had while on stage during the tour of his latest show. When transforming said show, Make Happy, into a Netflix special, Burnham built the ending to resonate with a sense of finality that went beyond the end of the stand-up act. The smirking meta-performance reaches its zenith with a parody of a Kanye West rant, interrupted midway through by unexpected sincerity, a confession of the comedian's anxieties. After saying he hopes the audience is happy, he leaves, and the camera follows. Not backstage, but into Burnham's home, a nondescript white room with a lonely keyboard. The special ends with the instrument left behind after one last song, the funny man exiting through the door on the corner. He goes out of the shot, out of the show, out of his life as a comedian.

Five years later, after redirecting his attention to cinema both as a writer, director, and actor, Bo Burnham is back in that room. He's alone, performing once more. Like most of us, for the better part of 2020, he's Inside…

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