Elle Fanning – This Had Oscar Buzz

223 – We Bought A Zoo

After the notorious failure of Elizabethtown, Cameron Crowe took a few years off and attempted to rebound with a warm-hearted family film, 2011’s We Bought A Zoo. The film starred Matt Damon in the very loose true story of a father struggling to raise his two children in the wake of his wife’s death, and finds the solution to their problems in a local zoo listed for sale with a few loyal animal wranglers (including contrived love interest Scarlett Johansson) still tied to the property. Though the film became a modest hit, its punchline title and feather-weight tone was not taken seriously by critics or awards bodies in a season filled with other stories filled with children and grief.

This episode, Matt Damon joins Meryl Streep as the only performers in our Ten Timers Club. We also discuss the varying degrees of failure in late stage Crowe films, Crowe’s AARP Movies for Grownups Best Director nomination against heavy hitters, and 2011′s many Oscar contenders featuring children.

Topics also include Diane Warren finally having her Oscar, the fake We Bought A Zoo Twitter account, and Content Creator Kits.

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137 – Live By Night

After landing a Best Picture winner that famously left him without a Best Director nomination for Argo, Ben Affleck made his director-star return in 2016 with Denis Lehane adaptation Live By Night. Affleck cast himself as a criminal caught between the Irish and Italian mobs in Tampa (with an ensemble that included Chris Messina, Zoe Saldana, and Elle Fanning) and is a muddied mess of mob movie tropes. The film shuffled release dates and opened with a whiff at the end of the year, failing to catch audiences amid a packed Oscar season and its own floundering reviews. Live By Night was forgotten and out of theatres once nominations arrived.

This episode, we talk about Affleck’s successes and stumbling blocks, including our own conflicting feelings about him as an actor, director, and celebrity. We also look back at Affleck’s shocking Best Director snub, his habitual casting of himself shirtless, and Warner Bros. disappointing 2016 which also included the introduction of Batfleck.

Topics also include our Top 10 films of 2016, Affleck’s meta casting in Gone Girl, Sienna Miller facial blindness.

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105 – Somewhere (with George Civeris)

After reaching Oscar success in 2003 with Lost in Transalation, Sofia Coppola has stayed mostly on the fringes of Oscar conversations with her distinct but understated filmography. This week, comedian and StraightioLab cohost George Civeris joins us to look back at perhaps her quietest film, 2010′s Somewhere. Starring Stephen Dorff as a B-movie star and Elle Fanning as his preteen daughter visiting him at his home at the Chateau Marmont, the film received a muted release at the end of the year and has since gained more ardant fans of its subdued emotional insight.

We discuss the film’s triumph and mishegoss at the Venice Film Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Lion by a jury led by Coppola’s friend Quentin Tarantino. We also look at Coppola’s frequently revisited portraits of privilege, her exceptional taste in song choices, and her performance in The Godfather Part III.

Other topics include the 2010 Best Actor lineup, newspaper ads as a bygone Oscar campaign tool / gay recruitment tool, and Britney Spears’ “Everytime” video.

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