Who could surprise *without* SAG/Globe precursors on Tuesday?

The following article is reprinted from The Many Rantings of John with his permission. We have attempted to lure him to joining The Film Experience but we had to share this wonderful stat-fascinating piece! You should also follow him on Letterboxd. (Consider this piece a companion of sorts to Chris's piece on statistically who might still be vulnerable despite love from the precursors)

Sipping Oscar tea

by John T.

Every year since 2006 at least one nominee for the Oscars was not highlighted by either the HFPA (the Golden Globes) or SAG-AFTRA, and becomes the "shock" of the morning.  At this point in the season, predicting the Oscars is something of a slog because so much is "decided" so trying to guess who will be this nominee becomes quite fun.  

Here are the people from the past ten years who fit this bill:

2021: Penelope Cruz, Jesse Plemons, JK Simmons, Judi Dench, & Jessie Buckley
2020: Paul Raci & LaKeith Stanfield
2019: Florence Pugh
2018: Marina de Tavira & Yalitza Aparicio
2017: Lesley Manville
2016: Michael Shannon
2015: Charlotte Rampling, Tom Hardy, & Mark Ruffalo
2014: Bradley Cooper, Marion Cotillard, & Laura Dern
2013: Jonah Hill
2012: Quvenzhane Wallis, Emmanuelle Riva, & Jacki Weaver

Usually the types of nominees that get in under this designation fall into one of two categories...

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Oscar Volley: Beyond the locks, Best Picture is hard to predict

Team Experience is discussing each Oscar category in the lead up to the nominations. Here's Nathaniel Rogers, Cláudio Alves and Nick Taylor to talk Best Picture...

EDITORS - NOTE. THIS DISCUSSION WAS HELD OVER A TWO+ WEEK STRETCH WHERE A LOT OF THINGS HAPPENED. SO THINGS SHIFT WHILE WE'RE TALKING...

 NATHANIEL: Hello teammates. I thought I'd throw you a little unexpected curveball in our last volley. Rather than starting with frontrunners or longshots, let's talk philosophies of selection for a brief moment. When the AFI selects their list annually (depressingly reading like Oscar predictions) the guiding principle is. film that are "culturally and artistically representative of this year’s most significant achievements in the art of the moving image. When the Library of Congress does their annual retroactive National Film Registry list they choose based on "cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage."

That cultural / aesthetic double-side strikes me a LOT like the very first year of the Oscars when there were two separate Best Picture categories " Outstanding Picture (which went to Wings) and Unique and Artistic Picture (which went to Sunrise) .If we want to get really reductive about it -- which we should so that this conversation doesn't go 10,000 words -- it also strikes me a lot like Commerce vs. ART which has always been the tension of Hollywood itself and by extension, the Oscars…

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Split Decision: "All Quiet on the Western Front"

No two people feel the exact same way about any film. Thus, Team Experience is pairing up to debate the merits of each of the awards movies this year. Here’s Eric Blume and Cláudio Alves on Germany's Oscar contender.

ERIC:  Claudio, let's get down and dirty on Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front.  I'm in camp "love" and I think you're in camp "don't love"?  The only real dissent I've heard from folks is that "it says nothing new about war" (which I look forward to addressing).  But let's start with overall impressions of the film.

CLÁUDIO:  Well, it's adapting a seminal anti-war novel – maybe THE anti-war novel pre-WWII – already made into a Best Picture Oscar winner before. So it's not like it had much hope of saying something new about its subject. Nevertheless, Edward Berger and company bring plenty of "new things" to the narrative presented in the literary work and its previous adaptations, so there's that...

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Interview: Dolly De Leon (Triangle of Sadness). She's the captain, now!

by Nathaniel R

Dolly De Leon

Dolly de Leon didn't know what was coming when she auditioned for an international feature from Swedish auteur Ruben Östlund, pre-pandemic. Two plus years later, thirty-one years after her film debut, she was an international hit, winning best in show reviews for his latest feature Triangle of Sadness. No small feat given that the film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Even after the film's splashy premiere the kudos kept coming for Dolly's work. In recent months she's been up for the Golden Globe, the Dorians, the London Critics Circle Film Awards, and other prizes. She also shared the Supporting Performance win at the prestigious Los Angeles Film Critics Awards in a tie with Oscar's Best Supporting Actor frontrunner Ke Huy Quan.

We had the pleasure of spending time with her at the Middleburg Film Festival earlier in the season. We enlisted the help of our own TFE contributor Juan Carlos Ojano to prepare for our interview, since he's well acquainted with the film industry in the Philippines. In our conversation we talked about her experience doing her first intimate scene, whether or not she expected Triangle of Sadness to blow up, and her dream role for the future. But we started our conversation by showing her a picture from her very first movie that Juan Carlos sent us as an ice breaker; Ice successfully broken!

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Cinematography - the guild nominations

by Nathaniel R

EMPIRE OF LIGHT

One of our favourite guild awards each year is the American Society of Cinematographers. This is not, primarily for their main category but the "spotlight" category which gives us a peek at which films far outside the main Oscar conversation they actually watched and thought about from a craft standpoint. More guilds should have awards like this. Their nominees are after the jump...

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