Christoph Waltz – This Had Oscar Buzz

197 – Downsizing

And we’re back to your regularly scheduled episodes! This week, we return to our non-EW episodes with one of the more divisive high-profile bombs in recent years, 2017′s Downsizing. A globalization satire from Alexander Payne and his Sideways co-writer Jim Taylor, the film follows an everyman played by Matt Damon who decides to join the masses deciding to shrink themselves for the sake of green initiatives and a little outsized wealth. The film ran the 2017 fall festival gamut, opening the Venice Film Festival to raves only to see increasingly negative receptions at Telluride and Toronto. In the long wait to its eventual Christmastime release, the negative perceptions settled in and the film became a box office bomb.

By Oscar time, its biggest chances lied in the supporting turn from SAG, Globe, and Critics’ Choice nominee Hong Chau as a political activist forced into downsized life as punishment. This episode, we’ll be talking about the 2017 Supporting Actress race and how she was shut out at the last minute. We’ll also discuss Damon’s constant foot-in-mouth syndrome, 8 Kinds of F*cks, and the National Board of Review’s Top Ten Films of 2017.

Topics also include our thoughts on this year’s Cannes, talking head documentaries, and Paramount’s big year of bombs.

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187 – Water for Elephants

Adaptations of uberpopular novels are always ripe for awards prestige, but this week’s episode is for a film that fizzled quickly. 2011′s Water for Elephants assembled an impressive crew for the circus-set period romantic drama along with a starry cast at tricky career moments: Robert Pattinson breaking from the Twilight franchise, Reese Witherspoon on a string of unsuccessful films, and Christoph Waltz as his typecast was taking shape. Each was slightly miscast, resulting in tepid romantic fireworks and familiar narrative beats that add up to a hohum movie forgotten by the time The Artist became a somewhat atypical Best Picture winner.

This episode, we discuss Pattinson career and the power of the Twihard base, along with our thoughts on The Batman. We also go into the filmography of the film’s screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and director Francis Lawrence, and look back at Witherspoon’s rebound that came shortly after this film.

Topics also include the Teen Choice Awards, why circus films stir up awe and awards prospects, and Uggie.

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139 – Carnage

After becoming a Broadway sensation, landing the Tony Award for Best Play and lead acting nominations for each member of its acting quartet (including a win for Marcia Gay Harden), Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage looked primed to become yet another stage-to-screen adaptation with Oscar in its sights. But when the movie version arrived, it eschewed the play’s lauded, starry Broadway cast (not to mention the many famous names that starred in hit productions around the globe) for a miscast foursome: Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz, and Kate Winslet. The film, abreviated to simply Carnage, failed to capture the play’s humor and precise bourgeois target, on top of being directed by Roman Polanski.

This episode, we compare the missteps of the film to the successes of its stage version, including one major mistake that bookends the film. We also discuss Marcia Gay Harden’s Tony speech, map Winslet’s long road to Oscar starting with Sense and Sensibility to the category maneuvering of The Reader, and play another round of Alter Egos.

Topics also include American Express commercials, Broadway bootlegs, and the infamous barf scene.

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134 – Big Eyes (with Jorge Molina)

After years of cast announcements, a biopic of painter Margaret Keane escaped development hell thanks to director Tim Burton and Oscar hopeful Amy Adams with 2014′s Big Eyes. A departure from Burton’s late-career big-budget preexisting IP efforts, the film promised a showcase for Adams that could earn her that elusive Oscar after her previous five nominations. This week, writer and Just To Be Nominated creator Jorge Molina joins us to talk about the film’s underwhelming insight into Margaret Keane and its wild miscasting of Christoph Waltz as her scheming husband that took credit for her work.

This episode we look at the diminishing returns of Tim Burton’s career, from a filmmaker formative to the taste of a generration of young cinephiles to the forgettable spectacle that fills his current era. We also discuss how close Adams might have been to a win in her nominations, the biopic screenplays of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, and the sparse lyrics of Lana Del Rey’s Globe-nominated title song.

Topics also include the year of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, and Guillermo Del Toro arrived as a lasting Oscar narrative for Mexican filmmakers, previous nominations for Burton films, and when they handed out craft category Oscars in the aisles.

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002 – Tulip Fever

This week’s piece of failed awards bait is the 2017 costume drama/romantic “thriller” Tulip Fever, and by “2017,” we mean “filmed in 2014 and originally intended to be released at various times over the course of the next three years, only to finally limp into theaters after several waves of frantic test screenings, horrid buzz and derisive jokes.” From the director of The Other Boleyn Girl, people! How could it have all gone so very wrong?

Topics include: Dane DeHaan and baby pandas, Judi Dench running Goldman-Sachs-for-flowers, whether we’re living in a post-costume-drama world, whether this would have been Alicia Vikander’s Norbit, and how much would have been different if DreamWorks had been able to make this movie in 2004 as originally intended.

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