Beauty vs Beast: Colin Farrell's Best Friends Forever

Jason from MNPP here on the eve of Oscar nominations wishing you all a good night's rest tonight - I know how you'll all be tossing and turning with visions of little golden sugar-plum statues dancing in your heads. Until then let's use this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to tackle one of the greatest movies of 2016 which may or may not get a single nomination tomorrow but if you ask me it'd be up for La La level awardage - Yorgos Lanthimos' The Lobster. And I want to further tune in one two of its finest yet totally unsung turns, both of which I maintain are as fine as any in the conversation for Supporting Actor - Ben Whishaw as John the Limping Man, and John C Reilly as Robert the Lisping Man.

PREVIOUSLY Last week it was John Carpenter's birthday so we looked through our x-ray goggles at his 1988 anti-consumerist actioner They Live, and once again it was "Rowdy" Roddy Piper's chance to pound some alien butt. Said Steven:

"I'm here to kick ass and chew bubblegum and I'm all out of bubblegum. For the Hot Rod. Still miss that man."

The 5th Annual Team Experience Awards!

As teased in this week's podcast installment, it's time for The Team Experience Awards, our fifth yearly celebration! While Nathaniel begins his own Film Bitch Awards, here is our growing team's turn to bestow their year-end accolades without our host.

Last year we went all-in on Todd Haynes's Carol, and this year we have another favorite that receives quite a few prizes: Barry Jenkins's Moonlight. And this wasn't even close: the film was the only one to appear on every ballot in at least one category and was a landslide victory to the big prize. Consider Moonlight the consensus favorite here at The Film Experience. On to our awards:

BEST PICTURE
Moonlight
Runner-Up: The Lobster

BEST UNRELEASED FILM
Personal Shopper
Runner-Up: The Ornithologist

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Going Crazy and Coping With 2016 Films

Year in Review. Every afternoon, a new wrap-up. Today Chris on films that represented the tumultuous year...

It's a comfort to know that even in no-good-horrible-very-bad years such as this that the movies will always be there to sustain us. However this year the movies seemed to reflect our troubled times right back at us - from racial divides in Zootopia to global communication breakdowns in Arrival. But these very films that embodied the awful also provided us with ways to cope with the ceaseless catastrophe that was 2016.

It should come as no surprise to have more than one horror film on such a list, but let's look at some examples...

The Witch
The Crazy: Look what nightmares can be wrought from living in a bubble, even a self-induced one. Is this even our reality or just perception?
How to Cope: Go join that coven! You go. You got this, girl!

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Team Experience: Favorite Globe Nods

We bitched and moaned about WTF snubs and inclusions earlier so now it's time to turn those frowns upside down. We polled Team Experience about their favorite Globe nominations in movies and tv and we hope you'll answer the same questions in the comments! Ready? Here we go...

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The Furniture: The Lobster's Phony Flowers

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber... 

In a 2014 interview, production designer Jacqueline Abrahams described her job as “creating an environment that is credible but sometimes incredible...always aiming to be authentic in spite of being made up.” As this was two years ago, she may not have had her work on The Lobster in mind. Yet the sentiment couldn’t be a more perfect fit for the weird universe of Yorgos Lanthimos.

The dystopia of The Lobster, after all, is not particularly flashy. It’s a world just like our own, only a little grayer. If every frame held immediate physical evidence of a dramatically different future, the carefully calibrated mood would collapse. Instead, the dystopia emerges subtly, through little gestures of performance and design.

Abrahams, a BAFTA-winner for her work on BBC’s Wallander, is an integral part of this achievement. Her presence is felt from the first shot, in which she makes her acting debut as the woman who shoots a donkey on the side of the road. Her design contributions are even more memorable.

The hotel for singles is a triumph of carefully planned ennui. If you look closely, you can pick up the tone from the very first scene within this last resort...

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