Academy Awards – Page 31 – This Had Oscar Buzz

035 – Meet Joe Black (with Bobby Finger)

Can anyone today compare to how red hot of an actor Brad Pitt was in the 90s? After following his Oscar nomination for Twelve Monkeys with dual failed Oscar bait (The Devil’s Own and Seven Years in Tibet, for those keeping score at home), Pitt’s next headlining gig was a prestige fiasco: 1998′s Meet Joe Black.

Directed by a pre-Gigli Martin Brest, a pre-Lecter redundancy Anthony Hopkins stars as a publishing billionaire visited by Death (played to full frosted tip capacity by Pitt). Audiences who left the theatre after catching a glimpse of The Phantom Menace’s hotly awaited trailer were the lucky ones, because this failed Oscar hopeful was categorically a disaster.

This week, Bobby Finger joins us to dig through this very long and very strange film and its accidental slapstick car crash, weird sex scene, and outlandish fireworks display. However, a brilliant score from Thomas Newman inspires us to quiz eachother on composers with multiple nominations in the 90s. And yet all roads lead back to Freddie Prinze, Jr…

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034 – Riding in Cars With Boys (with Bowen Yang)

Penny Marshall’s passing last year reminded us of how unfortunately she never got her due as a respected director. Never was that more clear than the critical drubbing that was met with 2001′s Riding in Cars With Boys. On paper this one looked to capitalize on Drew Barrymore’s post Charlie’s Angels success and Penny’s previous history of missing out on directing nominations for respected films – but the immediate cultural fallout from 9/11 did not meet this film kindly.

This week, writer for Saturday Night Live and cohost of Las Culturistas Bowen Yang joins us to discuss Penny’s legacy and how Riding in Cars With Boys is underrated canon. We look at Drew Barrymore’s second coming (including her brilliant opening performance for Scream), cherish Brittany Murphy’s comedic gifts, and stolen glances with Lucy Liu. And we briefly return to that most formative of Oscar years when Titanic reigned supreme.

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033 – Rent

Once intended to be adapted for the screen by Spike Lee, the Pulitzer-winning musical Rent made its leap to the big screen in 2005 amid impossible expectations. Having helped usher in the modern era of Broadway blockbusters, this one had to live up to the dreams of its massive fanbase but also the shadow cast over all movie musicals in the short years that followed Chicago.

But it ultimately satisfied few, thanks to some key mistakes, starting with the mismatched director Chris Columbus and the recasting of most of the original Broadway leads. This week, we look back at the Oscar success of the decade’s musicals, spend some time lamenting the Crash Best Picture win, and unpack all of the film’s “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman” issues.

And, oh yeah, we brace for the coming impact of Tom Hooper’s Cats.

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032 – Ricki and the Flash

After a string of August (yes, early buzzed) hits, Meryl Streep collaborated with two Oscar-winning names that sent Oscar obsessives to get lost in their rock and roll: director Jonathan Demme and screenwriter Diablo Cody. 2015′s Ricki and the Flash didn’t set the box office on fire and a very competitive Best Actress year possibly kept it out of the conversation, but that doesn’t mean the film doesn’t reveal why we once had such high hopes for it. The film isn’t as much of a harmonious fit as we originally expected for this trio, but they do give us something uplifting that deserved more of a shot than Oscar gave it.

This week we look at the gifts of Diablo Cody, Ricki’s parallels to his recent (foolishly underloved by Oscar) masterpiece Rachel Getting Married, and the major flub of 2015′s Best Original Song nominees and eventual winner “The Writing’s On The Wall”. Just as Ricki gives and takes with her family, we rewrite history to take some of Meryl’s Oscar nominations away to give them to some of her underrated performances.

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031 – How to Make an American Quilt

Coming off of two successive Oscar nominations, Winona Ryder led an immaculate female ensemble for Jocelyn Moorhouse’s How to Make an American Quilt. But instead of furthering Ryder’s mounting Oscar narrative, the film wound up as a surprise SAG Ensemble nominee – and, as Joe and Chris argue, a welcome one. This week, we take a look back at SAG Ensemble’s history, including most and least favorite nominees that didn’t translate to Best Picture nominations.

The film itself is a (however delightful) mixed bag of infidelity narratives that don’t always serve a top notch ensemble of Ellen Burstyn, Anne Bancroft, Kate Nelligan, Alfre Woodard, Lois Smith, 90s mega hottie Johnathon Schaech – and yep, even Maya Angelou. It may be too many plot threads for a 60-Second Plot Description, but also for one modest movie as well. Topics also include underrated Snatch Game performances, SAG’s silly title card rule for its Ensemble prize, and the reason the MTV Movie Awards should exist: the Best Kiss category.

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Class Of 2018

An episode an entire year in the making – we’re welcoming This Had Oscar Buzz’s Class of 2018 into the fold! As requested, we’re running down all of this past year’s films that had lofty Academy Award aspirations and were left with nothing come last week’s nomination morning. And not to confuse these new inductees into the THOB fold, we also unpack the Widows/Eighth Grade/Leave No Trace of it all and discuss the difference between what makes a THOB movie and a movie that is just a bummer to miss out come Oscar time.

This episode we dive into 2018′s films by several categories: The Cake Memorial Award for Happiest Miss, the Justice for Slaughter Race Saddest Snub, the Dr. Louise Banks Award for Most Surprising Shutout, Most Forgettable, and most importantly we name the film we can’t wait to select for a future episode! Oh, and don’t forget to watch our Class of 2018 video!

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030 – Brothers

Our episode this week is on a film that once dominated the earliest Oscar predictions for 2009: Jim Sheridan’s American remake of Brothers. Led by Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Natalie Portman, the film repurposed Susanne Bier’s film as another in a line of film’s to take on the war in Afghanistan – and like many of its predecessors, it failed with Oscar. Except this one stood in stark contrast to that year’s major Oscar story, The Hurt Locker.

Sadly, Brothers fell flat despite its promising pedigree. This week, we discuss the film’s three stars (a bug-eyed Maguire, Gyllenhaal in hottie transition, and Portman in limbo between Star Wars and Black Swan) and Sheridan’s successful Oscar history, and the HFPA’s 2000s love story with U2. And naturally, we get sidetracked on talk of kitchen and Batman soundtracks.

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029 – To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday (with Gavin Mevius)

This week, we dive into our pfirst Pfeiffer and it’s also pforgotten Pfeiffer. To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday arrived in 1996, coasting on a triple threat of Oscar buzz: a popular stage play, adapted by the Picket Fences team of David E. Kelley and Michael Pressman, and starring the beloved Michelle Pfeiffer as its ghostly object of affection.

Critics quickly dismissed the film as maudlin (with oddball comparisons to Ghost) and audiences forgot about it even faster. This week, The Mixed Reviews’ cohost Gavin Mevius joins us to rediscover the film – in all of its icky sexual mores and misrepresentation of how karaoke works. We also discover Freddie Prinze’s Jr.’s late career switch, luxuriate in the trash of William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, and unpack Pfeiffer’s stalled Oscar trajectory.

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028 – The Paperboy

An episode that asks that oft-repeated eternal question: will the Academy ever be ready for a movie where Nicole Kidman pees on Zac Efron? In 2012, Lee Daniels followed up his Precious Oscar success with a film that scandalized Cannes and answered that question with a resounding “no”. McConaissance be damned!

The Paperboy may be a pulpy southern crime saga that shows Daniels at his most excessive, but it got shockingly close to Oscar thanks to Kidman’s audacious (and divisive) performance. But while negative reviews and the film’s definitive griminess kept it out of Oscar history, it still gave us Efron dancing in his tighty whities in the rain.

Also in this episode, we look at some highs and lows of the this era of the McConassaince, 2012′s odd Supporting Actress year, and an underrated performance from Macy Gray.

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027 – The Family Stone (with Tara Ariano)

This week, we invited over Extra Hot Great co-host Tara Ariano to discuss our problematic Christmas fav, 2005′s The Family Stone. It may be one of several love-it-or-hate it holiday movies, but spoiler alert the three of us are super fans. Oscar and critics however, were a different story. Once thought a potential play for the goodwill lingering from Diane Keaton’s Something’s Gotta Give nomination, the awards tally for the Thomas Bezucha film made its largest dent with a Globe nomination for Sarah Jessica Parker – not to mention playing into the ascendancy of Rachel McAdams.

Topics include the 2005 Supporting Actress lineup that introduced several Oscar favorites, the film’s cozy/prickly authenticity in depicting family dynamics, and the return of our favorite random movie award: the AARP Movies for Grownups Awards!

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