2nd Annual "Gold List" Honoring Asian Achievements in Film

by Nathaniel R

Shang-Chi

Hello, awards fans. While we have often bemoaned the ever-increasing amounts of groups giving out "best" honors here at TFE, we do love to share and champion groups that have very specific focuses since the conversation could always do with broadening rather than the narrowing that more traditional awards do. So we're pleased to share the second annual "Gold List" a joint venture between Gold House and CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment) recognizing outstanding work by Asian filmmakers and actors. Shang-Chi and Drive My Car both took multiple prizes this year while The Green Knight played bridesmaid with multiple honorable mentions. The full list of winners and honorable mentions is after the jump... 

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Year in Review Beauty Break: Thirst Traps of 2021

by Team Experience

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... as is thirst. When we polled Team Experience for the hottest actors of 2021, the voting was all over the place and thus fairly close. So we ended up with a dozen people (after the jump) that had at least two ardent fans among our team members in the preferential ballots.  Because the voting was so close they're presented in random rather than ranked order.

Other hotties that earned our lust, admiration, and aesthetic wonder included: Penelope Cruz in Parallel Mothers, Ruth Negga in Passing, Lady Gaga in House of Gucci, Idris Elba in Concrete Cowboy, Benedict Cumberbatch in Power of the Dog, and Rebecca Ferguson in Dune. And because thirst is not always singular, great pairings like Taylour Paige and Riley Keough (Zola), Melissa Barrera and Anthony Ramos (In the Heights), and Daniel Craig and Ana De Armas (No Time To Die) also showed up in the ballots. Speaking of the latter, why wasn't she the main Bond girl of the movie?!? WOW!

Okay, on to the gallery...

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Would you rather?

Time for our silly gawking at celebrities on Instagram impromptu readers poll. So, would you rather...

GOOD MORNING.

• Have a cup of tea with Lee Pace?
• ride bikes with Anna Kendrick?
• rush tickets for "Wicked" with Kristen Chenoweth?
• celebrate Park So Dam's birthday with the Parasite star herself?
• pause for a little stretch and a glass of wine with Julianne Moore?
• bake cookies with Jennifer Garner?
• take photos with LaKeith Stanfield?
• dive with Ben Hardy in Croatia?
• do a quick supply run with Dove Cameron?
• cosplay favourite toys with Lea Delaria?
• hit the beach with Tony Leung? 

Pictures are after the jump to help you decide. 

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Review: "Shang-Chi" soars through action and chemistry

by Nathaniel R

Father vs Son in Shang-Chi

Many years ago I was at the movies with my best high school girlfriend. I had convinced her to see The Piano, which was not her usual sort of film. At the exact moment that mute Holly Hunter lost her little finger to her husband’s axe, I let out a non-mute yelp. My bestie and I were both deep in the story onscreen and at the film’s most violent moment she had dug her fingers into my arm so tightly offscreen that I was in pain. What does that have to do with the latest Marvel Cinematic Blockbuster, you might, very sensibly, ask? It is only that this long-forgotten sense memory came rushing back to me in two winning ways, the first of which occurred as Shang-Chi’s action mettle was put to the test.

While the film takes its time getting there — blame the familiar slow pacing of flashback heavy origin stories— the story properly takes off as soon as Sean (Simu Liu) and his best girlfriend Katy (Awkwafina) are suddenly beset by assassins on a San Francisco city bus, One of them, Razor Fist (Florian Munteanu)  is so extra he has a blade where his arm should be. This particular action sequence is as shocking to us as it it is to Katy but for different reasons...

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How Had I Never Seen . . . . "Lust, Caution"?

by Nick Taylor

Happy Venice Film Festival, y’all!! While Nathaniel and Elisa are off in Italy enjoying some of the season’s hottest potential offerings, I figured it’d be fun to play along at home and finally watch some noteworthy Venice prizewinners I somehow hadn’t seen yet, or have been prioritizing for years but never gotten around to viewing.

And among the most urgent films for this tour was 2007’s Golden Lion winner Lust, Caution, Ang Lee’s story of espionage in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong across several years of World War II, dramatizing on-the-ground political stakes with an eye towards contemporaneous cinematic flourishes and the defining grit and elegance of ‘40s noir. The 1979 novella by Ellen Chang was infamous for supposedly extrapolating story elements from the life of Chinese spy Zheng Pingru. Lee’s film reignited those controversies while drawing some of its own, facing confusion about its country of production and earning an NC-17 rating that put it in hot water with numerous censorship laws.

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