Best Pic Battles: Opening Lines

Here are the opening lines of each Best Picture nominee. Can you guess which one belongs to which film? 

A. "14....15...16... Prime."

B. "QUIET!"

C. "______ Come on, come on. Get up. Come on, quickly!"

D. "A lot of stuff he just doesn't understand about the world that I understand. That makes all my actions when I move through the world -- I do things better because I can see it all laid out like a map." 

E. "Can you help me out, man?"

F. "Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting god, creator of the ends of the Earth."

G. "It's another hot sunny day today here in Southern California, temperature is 84 for downtown Los Angeles"

H. "I used to think this was the beginning of your story."

I. "____, you ought'a stop that lying." 

Try to guess. Go ahead and tell us how you did once you check the answers after the jump / scroll down!

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Link by Day

Coming Soon Beauty and the Beast has an original song called "Evermore," sung in the film by Dan Stevens and in the end credits by Josh Groban. Uff, I've never liked Disney's "do overs" in the end credits. They're always worse than the in-film version
Variety Beauty and the Beast also got character posters
MNPP a pic of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal we'd never seen before!
The Playlist on 30 breakouts of the Sundance Film Festival 
David Poland La La Land backlash and why you should give the movie its due

 

Boy Culture celebrities pay tribute to Mary Tyler Moore
MTV Teo Bugbee on Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People (1980) 
The Daily Beast Lois Smith has a breakout role at 86 in Marjorie Prime
Film Mixtape Chris Feil's top fifteen of the year
Art of the Title looks back at Madonna's Who's That Girl (1987) opening credits. Loved those
/Film Sing already set for a sequel for Christmas 2020
Unicorn Booty 100 intriguing LGBT artists, characters, and people to watch
Awards Watch shares the GALECA winners with prizes to Moonlight, The Dressmaker, Christine, The Handmaiden, and more 
Gurus of Gold rank the Oscar nominees in order of likelihood to win... 
Film School Rejects The Flash movie is going back to the drawing board. No script. No director.
MNPP on 'the tell' in tense films and Asghar Farhadi's crazy skill with them in The Salesman 
Variety Ben Affleck's Live by Night is a big financial loss for Warner Bros  

Three Fittings: Oscar Nominated "La La Land"

by Nathaniel R

Welcome to "Three Fittings" in which we will celebrate costume design in the movies weekly. The number is necessary self-restraint for we love the art of costuming too much. We'll choose three costumes from a chosen film to discuss. Otherwise each episode would be six thousands words and twenty-five images long. As with Daniel's series "The Furniture," which focuses on Production Design, I'll alternate between contemporary and older films.

Let's begin with one of this year's Best Costume Design Oscar nominees La La Land. Contemporary films rarely receive this honor. Out of the 85 films nominated this century thus far for costumes, only 4 have been contemporary films: The Devil Wears Prada, The Queen, I Am Love, and now La La Land. But let's state this clearly up front: La La Land deserved the nomination. 

While the guiding principle of La La Land's costume design by Mary Zophres is simplicity, this should not be confused for subtlety...

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Two silly questions about dressing up and playing house with the Oscar contenders

Okay, one final round of question for Team Experience about the Oscar nominations. We've talked about people who didn't make the list and the nominations that delighted us. Now, two burning questions inspired by the Production Design and Costume nominations.

Which production design nominated picture would you most want to live inside?

GLENN: Hail, Caesar!, but only if Tilda Swinton and I find ourselves running around movie studio backlots set to a zippy orchestral soundtrack. I might just sneakily pop into Passengers' robot bar for a drink when we're done.

DAVID: The moment I saw the ridiculously giant Ingrid Bergman wall in La La Land is the moment I knew that film was definitely on my wavelength...

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Link Her Moore

NYT TV comedy legend and dramatic Oscar nominee Mary Tyler Moore (Ordinary People, The Mary Tyler Moore Show) dies at 80
Empire Actor Dan Aykroyd pays tribute to his Blues Brothers co-star Carrie Fisher in a new essay
Awards Daily Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey interview to air on Netflix tomorrow 

Playbill If you're near Cambridge, there's a new production of Night of the Iguana starring James Earl Jones and Amanda Plummer (!) opening in February 
Tracking Board Jacob Tremblay signs on to a reboot of Predator as an autistic child with a gift for languages
/Film X-Men is getting its own TV series, unrelated to the movies. Good luck with that 
THR on all the times the Star Wars universe has used "The Last Jedi"  
People Scarlett Johansson and Romain Dauriac have split 
Interview talks to Asghar Farhadi about his Oscar nominated film The Salesman 

More Oscar Reactions
MNPP Jason does not like Hacksaw Ridge. But will still ogle the soldiers
Washington Post subtlety and Oscar don't always mix. Bye Amy! 
The New Yorker if you can get past the condescension of Richard Brody's opening 'graphs he says a lot of good things thereafter about the Oscar nominees and the beauty of Annette Bening's missing performance

Call Me By Your Name Sundance premiere won raves

Sundance Fever
Tracking Board bidding war and awards season plans for Dee Rees Mudbound
Coming Soon Netflix picks of new Marti Noxon (Buffy) movie To the Bone about aneroxia
/Film is keeping a list of all the movies that have sold
Variety gay drama Call Me By Your Name starring Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet (best known for playing Finn on Homeland and McConaughey's son in Interstellar) won lots of sexy buzz out of Sundance. I know I'm supposed to be excited because it's a gay drama but honestly my entire obsession with getting to that movie as quick as possible is that I L-O-V-E Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love, A Bigger Splash) who directs. Now if he would just get on with making that Auntie Mame remake with Tilda.