Claire Danes – This Had Oscar Buzz

230 – Stage Beauty

Longtime listeners will know that a special space in our podcast lore is reserved for our first six timer, Claire Danes. This week, we return to her work in the opulent and forgotten Stage Beauty. The film cast Danes as a stage dresser who longs to be an actress in a time when women weren’t allowed on the stage, and opposite Billy Crudup as an actor celebrated for his performances in female roles. In an anemic year for Globes Comedy, it looked like the film could fall into a similar vein of the recently Best Picture awarded Shakespeare in Love, but this became a costume drama that the industry overlooked.

This episode, we get into the film’s surprisingly curious (if still dated) eye towards gender and Crudup’s playful performance, which might be his very best. We also dive into the gossip of Danes and Crudup’s onset affair in which Crudup left a pregnant Mary-Louise Parker, her winning Globes speech that very year, and the elusiveness of an Oscar nomination for Crudup.

Topics also include the unmissable Fleishman is In Trouble, the Tribeca Film Festival, and the National Board of Review’s Special Recognition for Excellence in Filmmaking catchall.

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122 – Me And Orson Welles

While cinephiles celebrate the release of Mank this week, we’re looking back at a different Citizen Kane-adjacent awards hopeful: 2009′s Me and Orson Welles. The film stars Zac Efron as a young would-be actor who is plucked from the streets and cast in Welles’ landmark stage production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. With Christian McKay as the infamous creative force and Claire Danes as Efron’s love interest, the film has its charms despite its similarities to similar films.

Directed by Richard Linklater, the film’s unconventional semi-self-distributed release generated little fanfare despite major precursor mentions for McKay. This episode, we look at the underwhelming 2009 Supporting Actor race and Linklater’s filmography, including Dazed and Confused as a formative film education movie. We also celebrate Claire Danes’ seventh entry to THOB history, holding her place as our most discussed performer.

Topics also include Zoe Kazan as a quasi-manic-pixie-dream-ghost, the 90s evolution of middle-part butt hairstyles, and the impact of Welles’ Caesar production. Send us your Mailbag questions – now through Dec. 15!!

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089 – The Rainmaker

Francis Ford Coppola is a legendary director among Oscar lore thanks to the Corleone family, and this week’s episode pairs him with a name that resulted in much ‘90s cinematic prestige: John Grisham. After a string of hit adaptations that danced with major Oscar consideration, Coppola took his shot at Grisham’s The Rainmaker. But despite good reviews (and a Globe nomination for supporting actor Jon Voight), the film earned mild box office that halted the Grisham hot streak. Led by an emerging Matt Damon, the film was also overshadowed just one month later by the release of Good Will Hunting.

This episode, we revisit the box office success and Oscar near-success of films adapted by the mega-popular works of the legal thriller / airport staple John Grisham. We also discuss Coppola’s late career phase of largely unseen and unheralded films, the stacked 1997 Best Actor field, and The Rainmaker’s bursting cast list of glorified cameos and supporting players.

And this episode brings the return of two of our favorite topics: Claire Danes and the Entertainment Weekly Fall Movie Preview.

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042 – Evening (with Richard Lawson)

This Had Oscar Buzz has always been a long day’s journey into Evening! In 2007, the film strangely opened in the summer and quickly became the poster child for the “Oscar bait” moniker. Starring a massive female ensemble including [inhales sharply] Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave, Natasha Richardson, Glenn Close, Mamie Gummer, Eileen Atkins and Meryl Streep, the film is an unfortunately vague journey through one dying woman’s regretful memories of a fateful wedding weekend on the coast.

Joining us for this episode is Vanity Fair’s chief critic Richard Lawson to help unpack the many, many things that make Evening such a disappointment and a dreary, sex-negative enterprise. We also discuss our accidental obsession with Claire Danes (here discussed in her fifth episode), how the film borrowed heavily from our relationship with The Hours, and the 2007 era of Focus Features. Get ready to howl like Close and chase some moths!

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038 – Shopgirl (with Pamela Ribon)

2005′s Shopgirl looked like a safe Oscar bet on paper – a whimsical, lighthearted romance with Claire Danes taking her ascendancy into lead roles and Steve Martin capitalizing on an Oscar shutout narrative that began in the 80s with All of Me. But its Oscar chances died once the film arrived in the May-December shadow of Lost in Translation and left our love story expectations unfulfilled. This week, Ralph Breaks The Internet and Moana screenwriter Pamela Ribon joins us to talk about this film about a sad seller of gloves who doesn’t know how special she is and the men who love her.

Shopgirl is sadly an example of aughts era romances that sacrifices its female protagonist’s sense of self to the arc of her male counterpoints, and all of the chaste shots of ladies backs to portray sex onscreen. This episode we also discuss Shopgirl’s laughable representation of parking in Los Angeles, the perfect Jason Schwartzman burn, and one early Oscar memory of a comedy performance that deserved a nomination.

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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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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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