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103 – Natural Born Killers

This week, we’re going back to the mid-90s to visit Oliver Stone’s highly controversial skewering of the muckraking, blood-thirsty media landscape. Natural Born Killers arrived in late summer 1994 and immediately started a firestorm of outraged Republicans and a number of copycat killings. While an audacious and uncompromising satire, the violence of its central Mickey and Mallory paired with the bombast of Stone’s vision proved to be too daring for the Academy that previously couldn’t resist the filmmaker.

But the film also debuted in the year of Pulp Fiction, and inspired a major grudge toward Stone from original Killers screenwriter Quentin Tarantino. This episode, we praise the performances of stars Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson, and look at supporting player Robert Downey Jr.’s much-storied addiction issues during the decade.

Topics also include the 1994 Best Actress race, other movies drunk on dutch angles, and Tori Amos.

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102 – The Walk

Bonjour, listeners! This week, we’re returning to the work of Robert Zemeckis for a film whose buzz was built first by an Oscar winning documentary. In 2008, Man on Wire steamrolled the documentary race with the telling of highwire artist Philippe Petit’s daring tightrope performance between the World Trade Center towers – leading Zemeckis to give Petit the biopic treatment with The Walk in 2015. Promising awe-inspiring visual effects to put audiences in Petit’s shoes, the film nevertheless plummeted to an immediate death at the box office due to audiences’ waning favor for both 3D and the film’s star Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Despite some more embarrassing elements like JGL’s French accent and a climatic visit from a CGI bird, the film does deliver a satisfying and thrilling climax. But this episode, we unpack how even the film’s visual effects couldn’t crack Oscar’s lineup in a year with a surprising result in the category. We also look at Gordon-Levitt’s rise from teen star to capital “C” Charismatic leading man.

Topics also include the early films of Rian Johnson, An American Tale, and Werner Herzog saying science things.

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101 – Flawless

Philip Seymour Hoffman had a breakout 1999, winning critics prizes for performances in two films that just missed the Best Picture cut but landed his flashier costars with Supporting Actor nominations: Magnolia and The Talented Mr. Ripley. But this week, we’re discussing another less-praised film of his that year that nevertheless landed him a Lead Actor nomination at SAG: Joel Schumacher’s Flawless.

Hoffman stars in the film as drag performer and trans woman Rusty, who starts singing lessons with his bigot ex-cop neighbor Walt (Robert DeNiro) to help him recover from a stroke that was onset by violence in their building. This episode, we talk about the Oscar momentum Hoffman built over several beloved performances before his steamroll to a win for Capote. We also discuss the recently departed Schumacher, including battling over his Batman films and looking at his remarkable range of movies (and their quality).

Topics also include the film’s spotty relationship with trans and queer representation, DeNiro’s long gap between nominations post-Cape Fear, and cufflink guns.

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100 – mother!

We have finally arrived at a major milestone – our 100th episode!! To commemorate the occasion, we’re looking back at the notoriously divisive 2017 discourse factory, Darren Aronofsky’s mother!. An environmental allegory of biblical proportions, mother! arrived after a cryptic marketing campaign with few plot details beyond the promise of a horror spectacle and megastar Jennifer Lawrence at the forefront. Loved by some critics and loudly reviled by most audiences, any Oscar hopes or predictions evaporated once we saw what the film actually was.

for our 100th episode, we’re going all in on a film bursting with talking points, from Lawrence and Aronofsky’s romantic relationship (and how that shadowed readings on the film) to Michelle Pfeiffer rude and horny stand-in for Eve. Though Aronofsky was vocal to the press after release about what the film represents, we examine multiple possible threads of interpretation in its madness. We also look at Jennifer Lawrence fatigue among audiences, the history of F Cinemascores, and the goriest swag you’ve ever seen.

And since this is such a milestone episode, we take some time to look back on our favorites from previous episodes. Thank you listeners for joining us on the journey!

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099 – Proof

We’re looking to the stage for this week’s episode! After being awarded the Pultizer Prize for Drama, a Tony success, and two years on Broadway, Oscar obsessives looked to the big screen adaptation of Proof to continue its slew of trophies. With Gwyneth Paltrow reprising her role from the London stage (along with that production’s director and Shakespeare in Love helmer, John Madden), this intimate drama on math and madness felt like the surest of bets on paper. But Proof’s release was delayed by a year as Miramax began to fizzle, arriving on screen as an afterthought even in a Best Actress year with fewer contenders.

This week, we look back at recent adaptations of Pulitzer Prize winning plays and what has gotten lost from stage to screen. We also look at how Proof has aged over years of being over-produced, Hope Davis’s era of an expected eventual nomination, and Mary Louise Parker’s Tony win.

Topics also include Anne Heche at stage doors, the God of Carnage puke scene, and next week’s 100th episode!!

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098 – Lee Daniels’ The Butler (with Jourdain Searles)

One year after giving us Nicole Kidman peeing on Zach Efron in The Paperboy, Lee Daniels delivered a late summer hit and Oscar hopeful with The Butler. Starring then-recent Best Actor winner Forrest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, a White House butler to eight presidents, the film follows the arc of civil rights in America through the lens of one Black family. But it was the screen return of Oprah Winfrey that was the film’s closest brush with Oscar, and her work as Gloria Gaines remains an understated treasure.

This episode, we welcome back freelance writer and Bad Romance cohost Jourdain Searles to unpack the film’s high points as a family drama and shakier ground as a conveyor belt of cameos for famous people as presidents. We discuss the 2013 Supporting Actress contenders, and how the film’s Oscar chances were hindered three-fold: a summer release, a distributor that prioritized other films, and an Academy unwilling to consider multiple stories from Black filmmakers in one year.

Topics also include Yaya DaCosta, presidential movies, and the film’s sometimes effective, sometimes cringey makeup.

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097 – The Others

We are taking the rare This Had Oscar Buzz stroll through the horror genre this week and also discussing the rare case of a performer possibly splitting their own vote. The Academy rules state that one performer cannot be nominated for two performances in the same category, and one case against that rule was Nicole Kidman’s 2001. Eventually nominated for the more broadly rewarded Moulin Rouge!, Kidman also gave a much heralded performance that year in this week’s film The Others.

This episode, we look back at the precursor run for Kidman in 2001 that was likely closer than we remember between her two performances – and her divorce with Tom Cruise. We also discuss musty mansion movies, Fionnula Flanagan as a deserving supporting actress contender, and 2001 as an underrated movie year.

We also encourage listeners to donate to the Emergency Release Fund, supporting bail funds for trans people jailed while protesting systemic racism and police brutality in New York City. Donate at emergencyreleasefund.com

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096 – Nurse Betty (with Rob Scheer)

Renée Zellweger’s three year run with Oscar in the early 2000s makes for oft-discussed trajectory, perhaps so much so that we don’t always remember her near nomination the year before it all began. This week, film publicist Rob Scheer joins us to look back at her Golden Globe winning performance in Nurse Betty, a dark comedy about a woman so traumatized by witnessing her husband’s murder that she breaks from reality and persues the fictional soap opera doctor she adores.

This episode, we discuss director Neil LaBute and his abrasive playwrighting style in addition to Nurse Betty‘s reception at the Cannes Film Festival. We also take a big picture look at the 2000 Oscar race including the Globes and National Board of Review. And we revisit a favorite “what if” Oscar scenario and imagine how following Oscar years would play out if Zellweger had instead gotten her Oscar for Chicago.

Topics also include frantic Oscar telecast control rooms, Björk as potential (or not) sixth place Best Actress contender, and thanking John Carrabino.

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095 – St. Vincent (Naomi Watts – Part Four)

Nao-May comes to a close this week with St. Vincent, the 2014 film that starred Bill Murray as an old codger who learns to love while caring for a not-quite-precocious preteen. The dramedy targeted that elusive follow-up nomination for Murray after losing out for Lost in Translation a decade prior, not to mention holding promise for a dramatic turn from Melissa McCarthy. But it is perhaps most remembered by awards hounds for Watts’s surprise SAG nomination as a pregnant Russian immigrant sex worker.

This week, we look at Naomi’s successful 2014 (that also included starring in Best Picture winner Birdman), her career post-St. Vincent, and what we imagine lies ahead for her career. We take another final look at Watts as a committed performer to sometimes unfortunate material, as evidenced by this film and… oof, The Book of Henry.

Topics also include the film’s rainsoaked TIFF premiere, embarrassing interviews on morning shows, and (once again) Jaden Mein Leiberher Martell.

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094 – Diana (with Richard Lawson) (Naomi Watts – Part Three)

As our Naomi Watts miniseries continues into its third week, we come to the biggest misfire therein: 2013’s reviled biopic Diana. With Watts taking on titular role, the film follows Princess Diana in her final days and her thwarted romantic relationship with surgeon Hasnat Khan (played bby Naveen Andrews). But in an attempt to avoid the salacious of headlines, the film became a bland failure and received much-earned bad reviews when it opened.

Vanity Fair chief critic and Little Gold Men cohost Richard Lawson returns this week to talk about the actress’s path to a second Oscar nomination and how Diana quickly took the wind out of those sails. Yet another example of Watts working with the right director at the wrong time, the film also suffers from an ambivalent approach to its subject by director Oliver Hirschbiegel. On top of the film’s dullness, we discuss how some felt its very existence missed the point of Diana Spencer’s death.

Topics also include the film’s symmetry to Nicole Kidman vehicle Grace of Monaco, KT Tunstall song cues, and teenage psycho twinks.

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