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057 – Truth

Not only are we Oscar historians here on This Had Oscar Buzz, we are also the Illuminati of Vanderbilts. This week, we look at the directorial debut of Zodiac screenwriter James Vanderbilt Truth. Detailing 60 Minutes’ expose on President George W. Bush’s military service that ended in Dan Rather’s demise, the film starred Cate Blanchett as producer Mary Mapes and Robert Redford as Rather and died a quick death at the box office despite being a great on-paper Oscar prospect.

Also the film’s best chance at Oscar was overshadowed by herself – Blanchett (though great in Truth) also had a little movie that year called Carol that she ultimately was nominated for and earned even higher praise. But perhaps Truth was also compared against Spotlight, another true journalism story and the eventual Best Picture winner.

This week, we discuss the 2015 Oscar race at large, Redford’s late-career Oscar close calls, and how Zodiac was underappreciated in its initial release. Last call for Mailbag episode questions! Send us your questions to [email protected] and @Had_Oscar_Buzz on Twitter!

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056 – All The Pretty Horses

This week, we have a deceptively titled film that was also sold deceptively to audiences in 2000. Billy Bob Thornton’s Cormac McCarthy adaptation All The Pretty Horses was supposed to be an old-fashioned romantic epic filled with sweeping landscapes and big emotions – but what audiences got on Christmas morning was a bleak western about cowboys who just wanna cowboy. Famously, the film was cut down from a 3.5 hour epic into two hours by Harvey Weinstein and it still makes for a very scattered and lethargic movie.

For this episode, we take a look back at both Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz’s star personas, his as a go-to leading man with a string of pre-Bourne bombs and hers as an unfairly treated tabloid figure. We also look at the back stage stories that were depicted in Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures, Lasse Hallström as unexpected benefitor of Horses’ failure, and the Oscar year that was capped brilliantly by Björk’s swan dress.

And for listeners clamoring for our thoughts on the beginning of the TIFF lineup, we spend the beginning of the episode discussing what we’re most excited for, including Harriet, Marriage Story, and Meryl in a Blossom hat.

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055 – The Majestic

This episode we arrive at two inevitable discussion points for Joe and Chris. First, a fifteen minute discussion of the Cats trailer. Second, a look at an essential This Had Oscar Buzz title: Frank Darabont’s 2001 melodrama The Majestic.

The film arrived in theatres during the Christmas holiday with most of its awards hype trailing its star Jim Carrey. Here he would be playing the everyman in this Frank Capra-inspired look at Hollywood dreams and small town America – could this be the film that finally would land him an Oscar nomination after two Golden Globe victories for The Truman Show and Man on the Moon got shut out by Oscar? As the bad reviews and even worse box office would quickly show, the answer was no, leaving Carrey still waiting for that first dance with Oscar.

This week, we take a look at Carrey’s fast rise and what might have kept him out of Oscar’s club. We also take a look at Frank Darabont and his relationship with Stephen King, the film’s major missteps in chasing Frank Capra, and directors with multiple snubs in recent years despite their films making it to Best Picture.

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054 – J. Edgar

We’re taking a trip back this week to some of the darkest days in the “Get Leo an Oscar” saga: Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar. The film starred Leonardo DiCaprio and detailed the many political exploits of J. Edgar Hoover and his efforts to stomp out communism. The actor would get close to a nomination (after showing up for the precursor triple crown of Globes, SAG, and Critics’ Choice) but this prestigious biopic was not meant to be for Leo and his eventual Oscar.

What didn’t help the film’s case were many unfortunate elements aside its anemic box office: a wishy-washy take on Hoover’s tyranny, DiCaprio sobbing in a muumuu, and most notoriously, its laughable old age makeup. This episode, we discuss Eastwood’s overly expeditious tendencies, screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, and the film as a turning point for supporting costar Armie Hammer.

And to spread some goodwill, this week we also discuss favorite performances from J. Edgar’s most cast-aside ensemble member: the one and only Naomi Watts.

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053 – Random Hearts

Get ready for another Movie That Does Not Exist – except evidence of this week’s film is provided in one of the most iconic EW Fall Movie Preview covers! Yes, in 1999 Random Hearts promised us sexy Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas in a pool and instead it gave us… a creepy dry hump sequence in a car and a lot of lethargic half-musings on infidelity, politics, and grief. Not to mention breakdowns in department stores and a comical litany of familiar faces in tiny roles.

The film follows a cop and a senatorial candidate who begin a relationship after their cheating spouses die in a plane crash, and it’s as much of a bummer as you might expect. Despite the pedigree (including Hollywood legend Sydney Pollack in the director’s chair) was a box office and critical bomb long forgotten come Oscar nomination morning.

This week, we take a look at the 1999 Oscar race and imagine what a Best Picture Ten might have looked like. We also discuss Ford’s shockingly anemic Oscar history and potential contractual obligations for his famous earring.

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052 – Frankie and Johnny

We’re going all the way back to 1991 for this week’s episode on Gary Marshall’s take on the Terrence McNally two-hander Frankie and Johnny. Here is a film that was a convergence of several Oscar narratives: Al Pacino’s lengthy overdue status, Michelle Pfeiffer’s prestige ascent, and Marshall’s follow-up to the success of Pretty Woman. The film works overtime to open up the play’s text, and results in a film about two lonely New Yorkers that we kind of actually like.

But despite the pedigree and an Academy willing to even nominate Pacino for Dick Tracy the previous year, Oscar looked elsewhere. Pfeiffer was also criticized for being too glamorous for the character, and notably turned down the role that would win Best Actress this year: The Silence of the Lambs’ Clarice Starling. And the film has further hooks on the fringes of the ‘91 Oscar year: Kate Nelligan shared a few notable critics prizes with this and The Prince of Tides, the film she would ultimately be nominated for.

This week, we also discuss the last days of Johnny Carson, Pfeiffer and Pacino’s lack of nominations past the early 90s, and Terence Trent D’Arby.

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051 – I Saw the Light (with Erica Mann)

Can you believe it’s taken us this long to discuss that genre Oscar so adores, the musical biopic? This week, Erica Mann joins us for one of the most reviled paint-by-numbers biopics and a little bit of yeehaw with 2016′s I Saw The Light.

The film stars Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams and Elizabeth Olsen as his long-suffering first wife Audrey, detailing his rise in country music before his untimely death at the age of 29. The film was originally planned for 2015 and ran the board for early predictions, but a disastrous response at TIFF led to the film being pushed into 2016 and quickly forgotten soon after release.

This episode, we have another pop quiz lined up – this time centered around other Oscar buzzed musical biopics. We also discuss Olsen’s start in Martha Marcy May Marlene, Hiddleston’s prestige ascent and plateau, and of course, we discuss the Avengers.

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050 – Bobby

Can you believe we have made it to our 50TH EPISODE?! And for the occasion, we’ve allowed you the listeners to pick the film we are discussing – and you’ve chosen Bobby, Emilio Estevez’s 2006 film about the day Robert Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassdor Hotel during the 1968 Democratic presidential primary!

The film stars a smorgasbord of famous faces and called-in-favors, including Sharon Stone, Martin Sheen, Anthony Hopkins, Elijah Wood, Laurence Fishburne, and many many more. But the cast is so sprawling that the film struggles to make any of its ensemble all that interesting and never really settles on what Bobby’s assassination means for mid-00s Americans. Perhaps its Golden Globe Best Drama and SAG Ensemble nominations were always the ceiling for Bobby’s awards prospects.

This episode we talk about stylistically chasing Robert Altman’s Nashville (and a certain reviled Best Picture winner), lounge singer and hairstylist meet-cutes, and, of course, the thwarted prestige legacy of Lindsay Lohan.

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049 – Stonewall

This Pride season honors the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots – and here on This Had Oscar Buzz, we are taking a look at the film that only did so in lip service.

From director Roland Emmerich, Stonewall is a cautionary case against the kind of year-ahead Oscar predictions that are made without much details on the film’s details. But when we got indication that Emmerich would be taking a white-washed (not to mention Newsies-inflected) approach to queer history, the film became a hot take factory before bombing both at TIFF and with audiences immediately after. This episode, we look at Emmerich’s disaster movie career progression, recommend other better films on queer activism, and run the marathon of Stonewall’s cringey moments.

Since Pride is also about honoring community, we also take time to spotlight on two organizations that serve LGBTQ youth: The Ali Forney Center and Kaleidoscope Youth Center. Both organizations work in their communities to work against queer youth homelessness and provide programs that empower queer young adults! Donate and discover more at aliforneycenter.org and kycohio.org, follow at @AliForneyCenter and @KYCOhio!!

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048 – Rendition

With the return of Big Little Lies to our television screens, we’re taking a look at a film starring one of the Monterey Five’s key players and her newly arrived nemesis. No, that outdoor coffee shop wasn’t the first time someone demanded answers between Reese Witherspoon and Meryl Streep – they first squared off in 2007′s Rendition. All together now: “JUST TELL ME HE’S OKAY!!”

Rendition was one of the many, many prestige titles that tried to unpack the War on Terror to underwhelming results with Oscar. But this film also had some of the highest expectations of them all due to the star wattage of Streep and newly minted tabloid staple couple Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, plus recent Foreign Language-winning director Gavin Hood at the helm. Ultimately, this film was too dull and obvious to be embraced by a critical community already impatient with these kind of very similar films, and Oscar followed suit.

This episode, we discuss more Foreign Language director successes that sparked buzz for their first English-language films in the years to come, the impact of a poor TIFF reception, and the romance that wasn’t meant to be. Get ready to try to tell those 00s anti-war films apart, because we have a quiz coming!

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