Are you a patron saint?

big sad eyes. show us love.I have sad news to report. The Film Experience has lost its chief patron who underwrote some of our expenses due to a shift in their personal economy (plus our ad revenue was down this year). This won't mean anything to you reading (at least immediately) but in order to insure our continued success as we scramble to find other income streams, we do need more funds than usual for dull things like rent and food and exciting things like film festivals and tech improvements on the chart pages and better microphones for the podcast and so on. We're working on solutions to further monetize the site beyond the occasional movie ad and hopefully we'll start selling ebooks or other items. We'll have more time to figure this out after the Oscars. But for now there are two things you can do to help.

One: Shop at Amazon under our affiliate program. Next time you need to buy something -- anything -- just click from here (ads to your left) to purchase it. I'd love to see if this is a feasible option for extra funds

Two: Become a patron of the site by setting up a monthly donation. If you'd like to sponsor a particular series rather than just donating in this general way, please notate that on your donation so we can direct the funds accordingly. So whether you love the Oscar coverage, actress-obsessing, theme weeks, retrospectives, random silliness, or any of our weekly series show your love. There are two ways to donate, subscription (which is wonderful as its steady and something we can count on) or a one time donation. 

Our fundraising goal is 500 patron saints - We'll keep a tally to the right hand so you can see how we're doing at meeting that goal!  Your suscription dimes make an enormous difference to The Film Experience.

C O N S I D E R . . .

cup o' joe : $2.50USD - monthly popcorn : $5.00USD - monthly movie ticket : $10.00USD - monthly

I ♥ The Film Experience

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89th Academy Awards. That's a Wrap

Another Oscar season wraps up. It's all over but the memories and the future debates. Here is a complete guide to our coverage in case you missed any of these pieces...

• New Facts & Trivia Interesting developments
• Twist Ending & The Winners List Surreal but fascinating
• Jimmy Kimmel  How'd he do as host?
• Emma Stone ♥︎s Moonlight In the press room
• Pic / Director Split Is this the new normal? 

• Moonlight's Missing Speech What we lost in the snafu
• Oscar Packages they really biffed the craft presentations this year!
• Viola's Speech Great or too much?
• Best Oscar Tweets Fun 140 character reactions
• Oscar Stage Design They're obsessed with art deco

• Warren vs Faye Reader poll - VOTE
• Only one "Woke" at a time - Oscar = always problematic
• Faces in the Crowd  So much variety in the surprise looks
• 5 Most Handsome Men Chris, Riz, Mahershala, Ryan, Dev
• Kevin O'Connell Wins! It only took 21 nominations

• 13 Fav Photos Celebrity beauty & randomness
• Random Leftovers Screengrab thoughts
• 10 Best Gowns from our fashion guru Jose 
• Podcast The Season Finale 
• The Oscar Charts in all categories 

and yet another set to add to our imaginary doll collection

AND OSCAR WINNER INTERVIEWS

• Asghar Farhadi merging theater and film for The Salesman
• Krystof Deak preps for a big career with the little Sing
• Robert Legato putting exotic animals out of business with The Jungle Book
• Rich Moore on the global resonance of Zootopia 

UP NEXT
Don't go away! We're more creative off season when we don't have so many golden statue deadlines. Pleaes like us on Facebook, sign up for a newsletter (it'll start going out weekly in March), and consider being a patron saint so that we can keep doing this.

Coming in March, the 1963 Supporting Actress Smackdown, Michelle Pfeiffer and the costumes of Scarface, Logan and King Kong and Belle and Gaston all return to the movies (so much nostalgia at the multiplex), thoughts on Big Little Lies, Jake Gyllenhaal in Life, and the 50th anniversary of Thoroughly Modern Millie... "Rasberries!". And on April 1st, new predictions for the 2017 Oscars (yes, the 2017 Oscars. Don't get it twisted like the rest of the internet)

Final Oscar Predictions !

With the Oscars nearly upon us, it's time for final predictions. I've written up a lengthy piece for Towleroad which I hope you'll read and you can also compare my predictions to the other Gurus of Gold at Movie City News. I shan't reprint the whole thing here since we have all those charts you can peruse and months of articles on these very races. 

While nearly everyone expects La La Land to be the major champion of the night, I don't think it will be record breaking. Damien Chazelle’s popular musical would need 12 Oscars to beat the record of 11 which was set by Ben-Hur back in 1959 and then tied by both Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) and Titanic (1997). West Side Story (1961), yours truly's all time favorite movie, is the runner up to "most wins" with 10. La La Land might tie West Side Story but I'm predicting 9 wins. That's still a lot mind you but it's not quite record breaking. The number of wins for a Best Picture seems to be trending downward in the modern era. The only really truly big hauls in the past twenty years have been for The English Patient (9 wins for 1996), Titanic (11 wins in 1997), Shakespeare in Love (7 wins for 1999), Return of the King which was a special case as they were obviously rewarding the whole trilogy (11 wins for 2003), and Slumdog Millionaire (8 wins for 2008). I can't see La La Land winning less than 8.

But let's divvy up the categories into sure things, probably sure things, and very unsure things...

ALL LOCKED UP AND THEY SWALLOWED THE KEY

Click to read more ...

Double Winners & Chart Updates

No Oscar Trivia today. Unless you count all the stuff that's on the Oscar pages. The major category charts have been updated with our popular "how'd they get nominated?" speculation, chosen preferred Oscar clips, and other sorts of trivia. Every acting chart plus Picture and Director are update! Woooo

Thoughts? Comments? Feelings? Nonsense? Opinions? Do share. (Note: The final predictions full article will go up tomorrow but you can see a sneak peek of the predictions on the chart index.)

Okay fine, fine. You have to have your daily trivia don't you? As if the charts aren't enough! You're so greedy, sometimes, I swear. After the jump the six double winning actors who are two for two in that they won both times they were nominated, never losing an official Oscar race. (Obviously they lost out on nominations over the years but that's a different thing and everyone does. Even Streep)

Click to read more ...

The 89th Oscar Nominations Are Here

Oscar night is February 26th, 2017. Here are the nominees along with how I fared on my punditry and some interesting stats. Also Read: "8 Big Takeaways from the Nominations" and "Sad Snubs and Curious Inclusions", "Nominations that made us happy" and "Curious Statistics - Oscar Numbers"

La La Land enters Oscar history with 14 nominations, the most ever

BEST PICTURE:
“Arrival”
“Fences”
“Hacksaw Ridge”
“Hell or High Water”
“Hidden Figures”
“La La Land”
“Manchester by the Sea”
“Lion”
“Moonlight”

How'd I do on my predictions: 9/9 though this wasn't that difficult I will readily admit

History Made: La La Land, with 14 nominations, ties the record of "most nominations ever" with Titanic and All About Eve

BEST ACTOR
Casey Affleck 
Andrew Garfield 
Ryan Gosling
Viggo Mortensen
Denzel Washington

How'd I do on my predictions: 5/5. This was the expected list, no surprises...

Click to read more ...