Team Experience reactions #2: Final questions from today's nominations

We've polled Team Experience one last time today to answer the following three questions to complete our Oscar Nomination Day reactions (apart from the podcast which is going up soon). We hope you'll chime in too.

1. Which nomination are you happiest about?
   
   
2. Which is the strongest category and which is the weakest? 
   
   
3. Nominees always release totally generic statemetns about being "truly honored". But which nominee would you most like to have been a fly on the wall to watch their totally authentic reactions/conversations this morning. 

Ready? You'll hear their answers after the jump...

WHICH NOMINATION MADE YOU HAPPIEST?

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Taron Egerton WANTS that Oscar nomination

by Ben Miller

Elton & Taron at another ROCKETMAN screening

There’s long been an awards season cliché along the lines of 'I didn’t expect this and I’m so grateful to the Academy for the recognition.'  Let’s not kid ourselves, some talent understands the process of what it takes to get an Oscar nomination. That includes schmoozing with Academy members, attending press junkets and sitting on every late-night couch you can find.

No one understands this better in the current season than Taron Egerton.

Following his Golden Globes victory on Sunday night for the Elton John biopic Rocketman, Egerton is well poised to snag one of the Best Actor slots precisely because he has done the work and put himself in front of the most faces in the lead up to the Oscar nominations...

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(You're Gonna) Love it Again - Rocketman!

by Nathaniel R

Kudos to Paramount to beating the Rocketman drums again with a screening and performance in Los Angeles yesterday. Early releases require this sort of care and attention from their home studios, come awards season. Rocketman emerged in the giant shadow of Bohemian Rhapsody this past May, and though it is vastly superior to the Queen picture in every way, shadows are shadows and sometimes they obscure the light...

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CONSIDER - Actors of 2019, First Half

With the year half over, it's time to look back on the first six months and what treasures they brought us. Here are the 19 performances by actors we liked most at the movies thus far this year. We hope you'll sound off on these and share a few of your own in the comments... and we hope this list serves as a reminder to Oscar, Globe, critics, and SAG voters that amazing performances can happy at any time of the year. Why wait til December to start considering your "Best of" ballot? We're not saying that all 19+ of these fellows deserve prizes, just that everyone should be keeping lists of standouts for their own pleasure and edification and to combat faulty memories as the year progresses.

Subject to Change! I regret missing the following actor-led pictures which I will catch up with as soon as I have the opportunity: The Mustang and Sorry Angel. Okay here we go...

9 FAV LEADING ACTORS
(Jan 1st - June 30th releases) 

Chao Deng as "Jing Zhou/ Zi Yu" in Shadow
An amazing dual role wherein he delivers both near-camp level villany and subdued stoic masculinity sometimes in the same frame. [Awards for this performance: Best Actor nominations at both the Golden Horse Awards and the Huading Awards.]

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Soundtracking: Rocketman

by Chris Feil

Rocketman is just about the jukeboxiest musical that ever jukeboxed, arriving on the screen with a structure more indebted to that of the stage than the kind of musical biopic (namely Bohemian Rhapsody) some might have expected. It’s as if Elton John’s and his Billy Elliot collaborator Lee Hall had shifted gears mid-conception, opting for a film with what had originally been planned for the stage. Safe bets will be on Rocketman coming to Broadway eventually anyway.

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