Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 1:15PM Chris here, to curb your naysaying. I've heard plenty of "she doesn't even go here" comments about Rachel McAdams's Best Supporting Actress nomination, from even my delightful Team Experience colleagues. So here's a quick reminder (with help from this year's nominees)...
[MORE...]
Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 11:30AM Amir here, to welcome you to the 4th annual Team Experience Awards, bestowed on the year’s best in film by the Film Experience community (you can read about us here) – sans Nathaniel, our host; you can follow his personal awards here. In the past three installments, we honoured Leos Carax’s Holy Motors (France/Germany), Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (USA/UK) and Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (UK/USA/Switzerland) as our Best Pictures.
Perhaps it won’t surprise you that the awards below, particularly in the craft categories, are more or less dominated by a couple of films that we have all been championing throughout the year, but the usual caveats of all our team posts apply to this one as well. Though the final results might be not be shocking, there were bloodbaths in most categories with many strong contenders for each prize. The best actress category’s contenders, for example, were separated by a hair, rather fittingly, given the winner and and the runner-up.
Some of these behind the scenes details are listed in the trivia section, but without further ado, here are the winners of 2015’s Team Experience Awards:
BEST PICTURE
Carol Runner-up: Brooklyn
BEST UNRELEASED FILM
The Lobster Runner-up: Chevalier
foreign film, acting prizes, and craft achievements after the jump...
Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 10:08AM 
Bette on the Tonight Show in 2014Bette Midler basically gave the game away in a tweet last night but today it's official: The Divine Miss M will be taking over Carol Channing's signature role Dolly Levi in a Broadway revival of "Hello, Dolly!" due in the Spring of 2017. Carol Channing made a huge enduring career out of the role, of course, playing it three different times across four decades on Broadway and touring with it, too. Barbra Streisand tried to wrestle the role away from her in the movie musical adaptation in 1969 -- there are multiple catty anecdotes about this in the trivia-filled gossipy book "Roadshow! The Fall of the Film Musicals in the 1960s" that do not paint a pretty picture of Babs -- but despite the plentiful Oscar nominations thrown that movies way, it didn't really stick and no one thinks of Dolly as anyone's but Channing's.
Babs, Bette, Carol Channing & Pearl Bailey after the jump...
Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 8:00AM It's time for the irregular 'newish for home viewing' list. If you've been trying to catch up on 2015 hits & misses (no judgments -- we're all for movie consumption of multiple kinds and whenever people can get to them) it's worth noting that a lot of things hit DVD, Blu-Ray, and Streaming over the past three weeks. Here are some highlights. (Links go to related articles here).
Monday, January 18, 2016 at 9:00PM 
For this edition of Contrarian Corner, we'll have to redub it "Conflicted Corner". Lynn Lee discusses her mixed feelings about the Oscar's primary dark horse.
In this year’s Best Picture race, The Big Short is the one title that virtually no one saw coming very far in advance. Which is appropriate for a movie about an event that only a handful of people predicted. And while it’s fallen back a little in the shadow of The Revenant’s nomination-leading surge and Globe wins, it’s still very much in play for Oscar’s big prizes. With five nominations (fpicture, director, supporting actor, adapted screenplay, and editing) under its belt, as well as a strong performance both at the box office and the Critics Choice Movie Awards, who knows?
The Big Short's ascendance hasn’t gotten it much love here at TFE, where the prevailing reaction has been a mixture of incredulity and disdain. I get it, especially if you’re mourning the omission of better films from Oscar’s best picture lineup. And yet, dare I say I’m neither surprised nor dismayed at its inclusion, and on the whole am pleased at its success? Yet also oddly conflicted.
Frankly, I enjoy The Big Short, while recognizing its limitations...
