FYC: Allison Janney in "I,Tonya"

by Seán McGovern

First things first: Lady Bird hasn't been released over here in the UK yet.
Secondly: Are you really going to begrudge Allison Janney an Oscar?
Then this FYC, by all accounts, is an unbiased endorsement of Allison Janney for Best Supporting Actress.

Allison Janney, as Tonya Harding's mother, in any other year, would have Film Twitter and Gay Twitter right behind her, and yet we hesitate. Janney is razor-sharp as LaVona Golden, whose love is more brutal than merely just tough. But as we have determined, this year there's a problem, and it's the problem of parallels..

Click to read more ...

Months of Meryl: The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979)

Hi, we’re John and Matt and, icymi, we are watching every single live-action film starring Streep.

#4 — Karen Traynor, a Southern political operative who has an affair with a popular senator.

JOHN: I can’t even imagine what it must have felt like to be an actressexual in 1979, the year when Meryl Streep catapulted herself from that interesting, up-and-coming actress of The Deer Hunter, the Holocaust miniseries (which brought her first Emmy win), and the New York theater scene, to first-class movie star, appearing in three successful films and winning her first Oscar for the year’s highest-grosser and Best Picture champ, Kramer vs. Kramer. But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves; buried in the middle of all this impressive acclaim is perhaps Streep’s least-known triumph of her early period: Jerry Schatzberg’s The Seduction of Joe Tynan.

This story of a liberal senator (Alan Alda, who also penned the script) struggling to balance political ambitions with family life, is a keen, sophisticated relic from a time when studio movies were risky, inspired, and targeted towards an adult audience, free of gimmicks or condescension. They were capable of making bank to boot.

In Joe Tynan, Streep plays Karen Traynor, a Louisiana lawyer who, while aiding Tynan’s campaign against a racist Supreme Court nominee (Remember when racism disqualified you from office?), begins a fling with Alda’s fast-rising political star...

Click to read more ...

Team Experience Grieving the Oscar Shut-Outs

Nathaniel R

We're not supposed to use the word "snub" anymore (stop trying to make "snubbed" rehappen). It's true that it's become overused to the point of insanity. The word implies a purposeful disdain, a rebuff, when Oscar voters surely aren't saying "ugh, that Franco!" when they vote (errr, bad example perhaps they were). The point is they're merely voting on the ones they keep hearing about their favorites. Some films and performances and achievements just don't quite make the cut. And who knows? Someone or something you love might have been one vote shy of a nomination so it wasn't "snubbed" at all, just unlucky! This is what I'm choosing to believe about Jake Gyllenhaal's raw, rangey, vulnerable, and altogether stunning turn in Stronger. He's one of his generations very best actors and keeps proving it in film after film and they just keep ignoring him year after year. It's driving me mad. So...

Which omission pissed you off the most? That's the question that I ask you in the comments and that I already asked the (usually) Oscar loving Team Experience. Their angry-fun answers are after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Months of Meryl: Manhattan (1979)

Hi, we’re John and Matt and, icymi, we are watching every single live-action film starring Streep.

#3 — Jill, our neurotic protagonist’s chilly lesbian ex.

MATTHEW: So, you’ve just played a chatterbox and a near-mute, the former defined by her gaucheness, the latter by her almost ethereal warmth. What role do you take on next? Why, an ice queen, of course!

The overarching worldview of Woody Allen’s beloved Manhattan is cruel, chaotic, and self-absorbed, even as its fleet, monochromatic presentation retains the smooth and deceptive romanticism of that rightfully-iconic opening montage...

Click to read more ...

What's the Sexiest Golden Globe Category this weekend?

by Nathaniel R

The 75th annual Golden Globe Awards hit this Sunday night on NBC (5 PM PT/8 PM ET) so I asked Team Film Experience and friends of TFE which category is making them the thirstiest? They answered like so but please do vote yourself in the commments won't you?

Click to read more ...