Team Experience: Happy, annoyed, and thirsty Emmy reactions

What's your favourite season, Catherine?We've already heard from Team Experience on the Emmy omissions that most pained them. Now that we've all had the opportunity to sleep on it, here are three final questions about the nominations for the 71st annual Emmys which will be held on.

1. Which Emmy nomination was your favourite?

2. Which Emmy nomination most confused / annoyed you?

3. What category is so sexy it made you quiver under your bodice? 

Enjoy their brief answers and provide your own after the jump, won'cha...

Which Emmy nomination was your favourite?

CHRIS FEIL: Sian Clifford for Fleabag. With most folks predicting the also sensational Olivia Colman, I feared that the show might be more of a critical fave than an Emmy to earn multiple slots in one category. But I'm thrilled that Emmy agrees that Clifford's hilarious crisis is an essential ingredient to the show and an ultimately moving one as well. The way she throws away her monumental, restorative line "The only person I'd run through an airport for is you"? Perfection.

ABE FRIED-TANZER: Kumail Nanjiani for The Twilight Zone. The comedian perfectly encapsulates the tone of this anthology reboot and his nomination serves as the best summary of its balance of creepiness and wonder...

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Halfway Mark - Team Experience Favourites

I'll be sharing my midyear ballots (such as they are) over the next couple of days but first let's hear from the whole team. Or, some of them - those that volunteeered their little in progress top fives. The team hopes you enjoy these little peeks into our individual film experiences from January through June at the movies (and in some cases, at home).

Chris Feil's midyear top five  
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01 Her Smell's redemptive anarchy in five acts

02 Ari Aster's hilarious Midsommar -time sadness

03 Claire Denis' sci-fi descent into the black hole of our biology High Life.

04 The haves-and-have-nots horror of Us.

05 Zhao Tao giving another masterclass in Jia Zhangke's Ash is Purest White.  

Paolo Kagaoan's midyear top five
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01 Homecoming: A Film By Beyonce... When  Beyonce descended from those steps, Sergei Eisenstein rose back from the dead, burned every copy of Battleship Potemkin, and killed himself.

02 Elizabeth Olsen in Endgame because she reminded me that Thanos is an asshole... 

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Aladdin Pt 3: Free at last! A 'Whole New World' awaits.

In Part 1 Ben introduced us to the romantic heroes and their evil nemesis. In Part 2 of our re-watch of Disney's Aladdin (1992) Timothy took us into the Cave of Wonders where our 'diamond in the rough' met the whirlwind vocal performance of Robin Williams as the Genie. He discussed stylistic, color palette, and comic choices in the storytelling on the fantastical journey. We return to the film just as Aladdin has dropped his pompous prince pretenses and admitted that the Princess is not a prize to be won and promptly jumps off her balcony just as she requested.

Part 3 by Nathaniel R

- Startled by his sudden humility and agreement, as well as the not so mundane matter of magical carpets, Jasmine drops her own defenses and becomes curious about this new prince. She can't shake the feeling that she knows him.

- Does Jasmine have facial blindness that she can't remember the only man she ever almost kissed in her life? The one from the day before no less!

-Aladdin moves at quite a clip but we know it's been no more than two days due to the plot business because she has only three days to get married by the laws of both Agrabah and childlike-attention-spans-of-target audiences. 

- Tim spoke of Aladdin's intuition and it is a beautifully realized aspect of his character. He's not aware of it, per se, the way he is in regards to his other physical and mental skills, so he's more of an idiot savant when it comes to emotional intelligence. He instinctively gets the Genie's pride / Jafar's competitiveness / and Jasmine's need to roam. He harnesses all three in the course of the plot, the latter not to manipulate her like the other two but to free her spiritually/romantically though he isn't thinking of all this when he asks...

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Aladdin Pt 2: Manic Magical Improv, Sight Gags, and "Prince Ali"

In Part 1 of our re-watch of Disney's Aladdin (the proper one, from 1992, not the live-action thing coming out this weekend) Ben got us through the introductions to good-hearted "street rat" Aladdin, frustrated princess Jasmine, and up to the mouth of the Cave of Wonders. We enter as Aladdin takes his first step into a whole new world…

Part 2 by Tim Brayton

0:28:04 – Let's take just a minute to appreciate the atmospheric concision of this descent into the cave. First, we had a shot of Aladdin stepping over the tiger-god's teeth, dissolving into this beautiful wide shot of him (below) at the top of an impossible flight of stairs, a tiny bright dot in the overall gloom that shifts from cold blue to hot, threatening red as our eye glides down the lines of the composition.

Then another dissolve takes us to the foot of stairs, with Aladdin about to step into the heart of the cave. It's a swift, visually-driven way of taking us down into… Hell? It's hard to say just yet, but it creates a terrific sense of mystery, both promising and foreboding...

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Team Experience Awards 2018: Our Favourites

by staff

We couldn't let the Oscar season go without our team of writers giving you our 7th annual Team Experience Awards (Nathaniel doesn't vote on these but his Film Bitch Awards will resume in a couple of days). We've given ourselves some time to catch up to 2018's offerings and as a result we have some fun surprises in store for our ballot! This year our Best Film goes to Yorgos Lanthimos' The Favourite, one of the six prizes we've given it of thirteen total nominations. Next behind is Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk with nine mentions, and then the love is spread pretty wide elsewhere with Roma, Hereditary, BlacKkKlansman, and Can You Ever Forgive Me? doing well among nominations.

Best Picture

1. The Favourite
2. If Beale Street Could Talk
   
3. Roma
   
4. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
5. Hereditary
   
6. BlacKkKlansman
   
7. Widows
   
8. Annihilation
   
9. First Man
   
10. We the Animals

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