Hong Chau – This Had Oscar Buzz

Keeping things horror adjacent for your October viewing schedule, this week we are discussing 2022’s The Menu. Originally announced as a collaboration for director Alexander Payne with Emma Stone, The Menu centers on a psycho chef and his high end clientele, who all take part in a super exclusive dining experience from Hell. The film ultimately lost that twosome but inherited Succession‘s Mark Mylod and the in-demand Anya Taylor-Joy, with Ralph Fiennes staying on as the chef. The film was a minor hit with audiences and received critical praise for its ensemble, but distributor Searchlight didn’t get it into Oscar’s good graces.

This episode, we talk about the film’s flimsy “eat the rich” satire and Taylor-Joy’s sudden ascent to stardom. We also talk about Hong Chau’s perfect line readings, other recent successful films satirizing class, and Mylod’s work on Succession.

Topics also include Fiennes in villain mode, fan culture as represented by Nicholas Hoult, and our current Halloween viewing.

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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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Tag: Hong Chau

313 – The Menu

197 – Downsizing