Team Experience on Globe Snubs, Strange Honors, and Best Director Nominees

As is our habit we polled Team Film Experience and web friends on the Golden Globe nominations. This will come in two parts but we'll start with a cleanse by shaking off the bad feelings. We must bid a fond fist-shaking farewell to our favorites that the Globes shunned and reveal the nominations that confuse us.

We think you'll also enjoy the part where we choose which Best Director would best dramatize our moods while watching the nominations. Ready? Here goes...

1. Which omission most galls you?

MURTADA: Widows. Viola Davis for Widows. Elizabeth Debicki for Widows. Steve McQueen for Widows. It had many opportunities to get mentioned and zilch.

JASON ADAMS: Toni Collette and Carey Mulligan, the drinks are on me. [MORE AFTER THE JUMP...] 

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Lynn Gives Thanks

Team Experience members were invited to give thanks this week so you'll be hearing from a few of us. Here's Lynn Lee..

In many ways, 2018 – like the two preceding years, only even more so – has felt like a nauseating carnival ride that I, for one, would like to stop and get off.  But the one welcome constant was always having something genuinely engaging to watch and, in the best cases, elevate my feelings on the state of the world and humanity. 

In that spirit, here are some of the many things I’m thankful for:

• The electrifying last 15 minutes of Nanette, wherein Hannah Gadsby turned stand-up comedy into something else altogether – and left our collective jaw on the floor.

• Daveed Diggs – so good in Hamilton, even better in the riveting and underrated Blindspotting.

• The shimmer in Natalie Portman’s and Oscar Isaac’s eyes at the end of Annihilation, one of the most bonkers and most unexpectedly rewarding films of 2018...

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Say it Aint So! Rebecca (1940) is Getting a Remake

by Nathaniel R

Nooooo. Rebecca (1940) doesn't need to be remade. Essentially no Hitchcock picture needs to be, you know. But word is out that Lily James and Armie Hammer are risking the ghosts of Joan Fontaine and Sir Laurence Olivier to star in a new film version of the Daphne Du Maurier story about "the second Mrs de Winter," her cold bossy husband, a sinister lesbian housekeeper, and an old creepy gothic mansion. The foolish or ballsy director that's going to try to live up to collective memories of Alfred Hitchcock? That'd be Ben Wheatley of High-Rise and Free Fire fame. 

Hey, let's do a "Cast This!" in the comments for the story's best role: Mrs Danvers, that creepy housekeeper with an obsession for her late mistresses undergarments. (You may recall that The Film Experience spent a lot of time with Rebecca a few years ago for a pass-the-baton retrospective.)

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Review)

by Jorge Molina

Almost ten years ago to the date, Mamma Mia! opened in theaters. The jukebox musical based on the theater phenomenon that at the same time was based on the biggest hits of Europop sensation ABBA went on to gross almost 600 million dollars globally, and became the highest grossing live action musical ever. That movie seems to be divisive among fans of the genre because of the fluffy, silly and often nonsensical joy that poured out of the screens (you can read about the emotional connection I personally have with the movie here). 

Ten years and a Cher later, Donna and her Dynamos make a return to the island of Kalokairi with a sequel that doubles down on everything that made adamant fans of the first one fell in love with it, and made the skeptics roll their eyes...

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Lily James Kisses "Teacher"

Chris here. While the first looks at the Mamma Mia! sequel has been a swinging pendulum of results, fans sincere and ironic still eagerly await word on just what ABBA songs will make their way into the film. But yay, we just got our first released track: a Lily James-led rendition of "When I Kissed the Teacher". And naturally it's a gay old time: feather boas, costume reveals, and a Celie Imrie cameo. Mostly, this has us really stoked for James' polished vocals and perhaps some higher production value this go around.

Even though this song isn't quite at the top of my must list for this ABBA redux (gimme "People Need Love" in addition to Cher's incoming "Fernando"), it's quite a treat. What ABBA tracks are you hoping make the mix?