November 2018 – This Had Oscar Buzz

023 – The Tourist (with Katey Rich)

Remember that time a movie where Johnny Depp explains vaping to Angelina Jolie made everyone super mad at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association? That’s right, we’re talking this week about The Tourist, a film so notorious in Oscar buzz history that we’ve invited a special guest to unpack it: deputy editor for VanityFair.com Katey Rich!

The Tourist had a labored pre-production history that eventually landed it in the lap of recent Foreign Language winning director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. However our Oscar-watching eyes were mostly (perhaps cynically) directed toward its stars: a waning Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie as an arresting but nondescript fancy European lady. Toss in a very convoluted plot of spies, assumed identities, and flatlining humor and you have a recipe for a critical and commercial misfire.

But immediately after The Tourist thudded into theatres, it earned its notoriously generous Golden Globe nominations. We dissect the movie’s lunacy, defend the HFPA’s recent Musical/Comedy picks, and most importantly, we Consider Melissa Leo.

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022 – Cake

2014 was a year of mirrored Best Actress hopefuls launched at the Toronto International Film Festival: out of nowhere, Julianne Moore capitalized on a “weak” field and finally won for Still Alice. And then, ultimately snubbed on nomination morning after being recognized by the other big prizes, there was Jennifer Aniston in Cake.

Notorious among Oscar watchers, Cake stars Aniston as a woman dealing with grief and chronic pain, and felt like a dubious candidate from the beginning. Was it the bad reviews, or was it the public’s sometimes cruel consideration of Aniston’s film career, or was it “Anna Kendrick as imaginary friend on a pool inflatable nudging her into suicide” that spelled disaster? Regardless, Aniston’s snub was perhaps the year’s least shocking “most shocking” missed nomination.

This week, we get into 2014′s bench of great, but less Oscar-friendly lead female performances, the mythos of Aniston, and detour into Gaga Five Foot Two.

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021 – Tadpole

The Sundance Film Festival is an elusive mistress that giveth Oscar buzz only to taketh away when at lower altitudes. Case in point is this week’s would-be Oscar title: 2002′s Tadpole. The film was a sensation of the festival, winning a Best Director prize for Gary Winick and stirring buzz for newcomer Aaron Stanford and Bebe Neuwirth. But the newfangled digital technology that won praise at the festival for all the new filmmaking possibility it represented ended up looking amateurish and garish upon release.

Tadpole ultimately got lost in a slew of 2002′s rich boy movies and disappointed on release after Miramax’s big $6M acquisition. This riff on The Graduate by way of Voltaire quotes may have been lost to time, but for a minute, it was kind of A Thing. This week, we’re also talking about the distinctions between regular Oscar buzz and Sundance Oscar buzz, the Meryl Streepness of The Hours vs. the Nicole Kidmanness of The Hours, and the National Board of Review’s “prize as party invitation” special recognitions.

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020 – Secretariat

After landing a Best Actress nomination in a great Best Actress year for Unfaithful, we once thought Diane Lane could come back to the Oscar race by going to a horse race. This week, we’re talking about Secretariat, a live-action Disney biopic that got buried in the wake of The Social Network. Get ready for a dive into the 2010 Oscar nominations, including a strong defense of its Best Picture lineup. And we obsess over the real reason to watch the movie, even though it does her dirty: the eternal Margo Martindale.

Join us as Joe explains horse racing awards hierarchy, Chris has an Oscar host hot take to end all Oscar host hot takes, and we unpack the cornucopia of the film’s rich white people problems. Come for the remembered Oscar buzz, stay for the elevator stories! Oh and we try and fail to not call this movie Seabiscuit.

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