Introducing the Smackdown Panelists for '05

The Supporting Actress Smackdown season is roaring along. Up next on August 20th, in two weeks time we'll talk 2005. Let's meet the panelists!
PLEASE WELCOME (IN ALPHA ORDER)...
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The Supporting Actress Smackdown season is roaring along. Up next on August 20th, in two weeks time we'll talk 2005. Let's meet the panelists!
PLEASE WELCOME (IN ALPHA ORDER)...
If you're new to the site this is how we share new streaming offerings for the month. We select a handful or two of titles and just randomly hit a place on the scroll bar to see what the film looks like - no cheating. Ready? Let's play...
I CAN'T WATCH!!!
Muppets Now (2020) Season 1 on Disney Plus
Let's HOPE Kermit isn't being prophetic about the quality of his new show with this random shot/dialogue. Maybe because we grew up with them, we always give new Muppet content a chance. Will you?
Michael Cusumano here, kicking off our intermittent 2005 coverage for the next few weeks. This episode of The New Classics can be subtitled "Confessions of a Former Malick Agnostic."
Scene: Reunion in England
For most of my life, Terrence Malick films have been like going to church in that I respect the showmanship while being privately unmoved as, all around me, believers are moved to heights of ecstasy. Like any good lapsed Catholic, I felt tremendously guilty about this. If only I wasn’t so spiritually deficient, so hung up on traditional plot structure, then I wouldn’t be a Philistine who preferred Private Ryan to Thin Red Line (twenty lashes for being basic). True, I adored Badlands but that only increased my shame. Of course I would go for his most accessible one. What, is "Creep" my favorite Radiohead song, too?
My first viewing of The New World followed the usual script...
by Nathaniel R
We've had more difficulty letting the latest Smackdown go than usual but then 2002 was a fun fun year to discuss and podcast about. There were so many more films we could have spoken about.
As an added bonus, since people are always asking about the old Film Bitch Awards that are no longer available online, we thought we'd share a couple of page from the 2002 honors for fun / discussion. (We've thought about compiling a "first ten years" book via GoFundMe or something - would you buy one?).
The Supporting Actress Smackdown series picks an Oscar vintage and explores.
THE NOMINEES Today's topic: 2002 which featured the movies Adaptation, The Hours, About Schmidt, and Best Picture champ Chicago. This very starry field of much-beloved actresses (all but one are now Oscar winners) deliver a juicy collection of characters: a horny mother-of-the-groom, a suicidal 50s housewife, an opportunistic prison warden, a fictionalized non-fiction writer, and a jazzbaby murderess.
THE PANEL Here to talk about these 2002 divas and their movies are comedian/writer Joel Kim Booster, comedian/writer Matt Rogers, Variety's Artisan's editor Jazz Tangcay, Vox's critic-at-large Emily VanDerWerff, and lip sync assassin Ben Yahr. And, as ever, your host at The Film Experience, Nathaniel R. Let's begin...
2002
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN + PODCAST
The companion podcast can be downloaded at the bottom of this article or by visiting the iTunes page...