Ashley Judd – This Had Oscar Buzz

267 – Heat (with Roxana Hadadi!) (Patreon Selects)

This week, our first film selected by one of our sponsor-tier Patreon subscribers arrives, and we brought back Vulture’s Roxana Hadadi to celebrate. In 1995, audiences were hyped to finally see an onscreen showdown between Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in Michael Mann’s Heat. But what promised to be a standard actioner on paper (on top of a battle of titans) was in actuality an existential tone poem on masculinity, with audiences feeling let down by the lack of fireworks in Pacino and DeNiro’s brief but mighty scene. The film has since been reassessed, earning a vocal and devoted fanbase that hail the film as Mann’s masterpiece.

This week, we talk about Mann’s work studying the masculine mind and Pacino and DeNiro’s 1990s periods. We also talk about Val Kilmer’s Batman year, how the 1995 Oscars largely rejected darker material, and our thoughts on Mann’s Ferrari.

Topics also include bisexual eyebrow piercings, our diner orders, and the Nyad towel.

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198 – Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (with Christina Tucker)

YA-YA!! This week, Christina Tucker joins us once again to discuss popular literary adaptation and TNT staple, 2002′s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. The directorial debut of Callie Khouri, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Thelma and Louise, the film stars Ellen Burstyn and Sandra Bullock as mother and daughter feuding over the playwright daughter’s very public interview about her very tempestuous childhood. The mother’s friends (played by Maggie Smith, Fionnula Flanagan, and Shirley Knight) then kidnap the daughter and return her to her southern home to reveal her mother’s side of the story. This made for a film of wildly conflicting tones, which critics roundly lambasted before the film became a summer disappointment.

This episode, we discuss the early 2000s for Bullock in star mode before her Oscar win and Ellen Burstyn in an unhinged mother era after her return Oscar nomination for Requiem for a Dream. We also discuss the remarkable performance by Ashley Judd as the young Burstyn, pride season, and the late career of James Garner.

Topics also include devastating Lisa Schwartzbaum pull quotes, TV’s Nashville, and the Mad Money poster.

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152 – De-Lovely

Birds do it, bees do it; let’s do it, let’s talk De-Lovely! Reuniting Kevin Kline with his Life As A House director Irwin Winkler, the film casts Kline as the legendary songwriter Cole Porter. Also starring Ashley Judd as his devoted wife Linda, De-Lovely caught attention for its depiction of the Porters’ marriage amid his open homosexuality and also for casting a smorgasbord of adult contemporary musicians to sing the Cole Porter songbook. But the film received middling reviews despite its soundtrack success and met the end of its awards road with Globe nominations for Kline and Judd.

This episode, we discuss how De-Lovely meets all of the boring mechanics of the musical biopic genre, and compare it to another 2004 prestige film’s depiction of a marriage with gay polyamory (and another 2004 musical biopic that is even worse). We also get into the stops and starts of MGM studios over the past few decades, the trajectory of recent Bond themes, and which of the film’s musical numbers we enjoy most.

Topics also include the Lilith Fair, the Grammy soundtrack prize, and the AARP Movies for Grownups Best Time Capsule prize.

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008 – Double Jeopardy

Before this year’s Oscar season kicks off, we have a cautionary tale for your early predictions: 1999′s revenge thriller smash hit Double Jeopardy!

That’s right, you may have forgotten, but leading actress Ashley Judd started pulling Oscar buzz when Double Jeopardy opened and started raking in the cash. But this blockbuster (which opened opposite eventual Best Picture winner American Beauty) was never meant to be with Oscar, even though it also starred Tommy Lee Jones in the same vein as his Oscar winning role in The Fugitive.

This week we discussed Judd’s underappreciated career, 1999′s many breakout actresses, and the badass maven of the crime procedural, Roma Maffia.

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