It’s the biggest This Had Oscar Buzz episode every year! Now that we have this year’s crop of Oscar nominations, that means it’s time to welcome a whole year’s worth of films to the THOB fold. We unpack the Class of 2025 in all its glory, from the films that deserved better to the ones that didn’t, from the narratives we fell for and didn’t, from the most forgotten to the close calls. And, of course, we call it for the Valedictorian, the film that will get the first THOB episode from 2025.
With a new Benoit Blanc out for you to devour, we decided it was a great time to talk about the great Rian Johnson. In 2012, Johnson delivered his genre hybrid Looper, set in a dystopic future where, through the magic of time travel, a hitman (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) faces off against his older self (Bruce Willis) to stop a mysterious force who’s hunting them. With mind-bending leaps and a stellar supporting turn from Emily Blunt, Looper cemented Johnson’s reputation and led to his hiring for The Last Jedi.
This week, we talk about Johnson’s confident grasp of twisty material and the layered world he creates with Looper. We also talk about Gordon-Levitt’s Willis-riffing turn, Willis’ late career in the years after this film, and Kazu Hiro’s makeup to make JGL look like BW.
Topics also include 2012 TIFF Galas, the 2012 Original Screenplay race, and the blunderbuss.
Grab your half-butter-half-salt popcorn because this week, we’ve got something to make you howl! After the critically-hailed success of Waiting for Guffman, Christopher Guest returned with another improvisational comedy set in a world of deeply specific eccentrics played by an ensemble of geniuses. Best in Show is set in a world of competitive dog shows, with all the beloved pooches mirrored in their idiosyncratic owners. The film helped cement Guest’s brand of humor and earn an ever-expanding devoted fanbase, but Oscar was just out of reach.
This episode, we talk about how the film’s precursor run was more robust than you think and the Guest films’ increasing Oscar pedigree. We also talk about the film’s endless quotability, how Fred Willard became the performance to be singled out from the ensemble, and the bittersweetness that runs through Guest’s work.
Topics also include the 2000 Best Original Song race, lingering misunderstandings around improvisational vs. scripted, and Almost Famous.
We’re ringing in another year on the pod with our 350TH EPISODE!! In 2006, Broadway imported the National Theatre production of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, an ensemble piece following a group of college hopeful students and their philosophically opposed teachers. The Broadway production became a Tony record-making sensation. However, prior to the transfer, the entire cast completed a film version that would arrive later in the year after the Broadway fever had cooled.
This episode, we talk about why this film marks a place in THOB history and the film’s complicated presentation of queerness and predation. We also talk about Richard Griffiths’ lauded performance, Fox Searchlight’s busy 2006, and our favorites from the past year of the show.
Topics also include the mixed bag of 2006 contenders, the successful young male cast, and college admissions culture.
99HOMES_00014_CROP
(l to r) Andrew Garfield stars as ‘Dennis Nash’ and Michael Shannon as ‘Rick Carver’ in Broad Green Pictures release, 99 HOMES.
Credit: Hooman Bahrani / Broad Green Pictures
2014 fall festivals saw the debut of Ramen Bahrain’s 99 Homes, a dark crime saga centered around the housing crisis of the previous decade. Andrew Garfield (fresh off of his mildly received run of Spider-Man movies) stars as a father who tries to rebound from his eviction by taking up work with the slick real estate operator who evicted him, played by Michael Shannon. Once the film was released in the fall of 2015, Shannon earned Supporting Actor nominations at each of the major precursors, only to miss out on Oscar nomination morning.
This episode, we talk about Shannon’s snubbing and his two unlikely Supporting Actor nominations. We also discuss the short life of Broad Green Pictures, Garfield’s performance in Angels in America, and the 2015 Best Supporting Actor race.
Topics also include Joe’s first TIFF, Florida onscreen, and our upcoming May miniseries!
After passing off the reins of Veep, Armando Iannucci returned to movie screens with another political satire. Based on the graphic novel, The Death of Stalin farcically recounts the last days of the dictator and the scramble for power in the days after. With stars like Steve Buscemi, Jason Isaacs, and Simon Russell Beale, the film received solid reviews at its 2017 TIFF premiere and solid box office at its spring 2018 release. But thanks to BAFTA recognition and a Screenplay prize from the National Society of Film Critics, some folks predicted The Death of Stalin for a surprise Adapted Screenplay nomination that never came to be.
This episode, we talk about Iannucci’s career and how the surprise screenplay nomination for In The Loop stirred Oscar anticipation for this film as well. We also discuss the correct way to pronounce Buscemi, the film’s balance between serious-mindedness and farce, and our favorites from the film’s ensemble.
Topics also include the 2017 TIFF lineup and the 2018 Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor races.
This week’s episode is a callback to our beloved 100 Years, 100 Snubs May miniseries: Mitchell Beaupre joins us to talk about 1995’s Devil in a Blue Dress! Carl Franklin emerged with the indie success of crime thriller One False Move and moved onto studio filmmaking with Devil in a Blue Dress, starring Denzel Washington as a veteran hired to find a missing woman. The film was a smart noir exercise that nevertheless didn’t quite catch on with audiences, though critics were taken with an unpredictable supporting player, Don Cheadle.
This episode, we discuss the controversy over 1995’s all white acting nominees and the origin story quality of the film’s story. We also talk about Franklin’s unique awards haul for One False Move, Washington’s atypical lack of love interest costars, and how Cheadle’s performance feels like it has more screen time than it does.
Topics also include 1995 Best Supporting Actor, 2003 Entertainment Weekly as Oscar gateway, and Jennifer Beals as anti-femme female.
We’re back again with another episode chosen by one of our sponsor-tier subscribers from Patreon, this time with a bit of 1990s gay cinema! Thank you Lance for bringing us all to 1995’s Jeffrey! Adapted from Paul Rudnick’s Off-Broadway smash play, the concept of an “AIDS comedy” made it difficult to get produced, but ultimately unique once it reached theatre audiences. Despite playing to a limited audience on film and taking a broad comedic approach to the culture surrounding gay life in the 1990s, Patrick Stewart’s performance as an interior designer diagnosed with AIDS earned some bit of buzz.
This episode, we talk about the career of Paul Rudnick and the types of gay cinema that emerged in this moment of American independent filmmaking. We also talk about Stewart’s surprising lack of awards history, Bryan Batt’s performance as Stewart’s lover, and Christine Baranski hosting a “hoedown for AIDS.”
Topics also include TikTok smash videos, “start my orange for me,” and Debra Monk talking gay stuff.
1974 brings us to one of the final films of Billy Wilder, which also reunited a screen duo beloved by both Oscar and audiences, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Vulture writer Roxana Hadadi is back to the show to talk about The Front Page, an oft-adapted farce about newspapermen getting wrapped up in the case of an escaped convict. Most famously retold in a gender swapped version in His Girl Friday, this version stumbles to deliver the best of this director-star trio and missed Oscar’s good graces despite multiple nominations in the decade for Mathau and Lemmon, including Lemmon’s win the previous year.
This episode, we talk about the victory lap made by Francis Ford Coppola with The Godfather Part II and The Conversation both earning Oscar love. We also talk about the film’s apoliticism was atypical of the moment, our love for Ingrid Bergman’s Supporting Actress speech, and the hubbub over the acceptance speech for Best Documentary Feature Hearts and Minds.
Topics also include disaster movies becoming the splashy Hollywood product, The Godfather Part II Supporting Actor nominations, and Anderson Cooper talking about his mom hooking up with Marlon Brando.
Attention, Dune-heads, we’re talking about Timothee Chalamet this week! In 2018, fresh off of his first Oscar nomination, Chalamet joined Steve Carell for Beautiful Boy, an adaptation of David and Nic Sheff’s memoirs about a young man’s addiction and his father’s attempts to help him. Directed by Felix van Groeningen (who’d directed nominated international feature The Broken Circle Breakdown), the film is a somewhat scattered and ineffective weepie that strains Carell’s limitations but nevertheless earned Chalamet Best Supporting Actor nominations at all the major precursors.
This week, we talk about Carell’s career starting with The Daily Show and his more tricky dramatic work. We also talk about Chalamet’s quick ascent following his Call Me By Your Name success, Maura Tierney’s impactful but too brief role, and 2018 Best Supporting Actor.
Topics also include Dune Part 2, TIFF 2018 galas, and the Beautiful Boy Erased is Back vibes of 2018.
