John Cusack – This Had Oscar Buzz

251 – Love and Mercy (with Taylor Cole!)

Are you loving our new original intro music, listeners? We’re joined this week by its composer and our friend Taylor Cole to muse on the genre musical biopic with 2015’s Love and Mercy. The film follows different chapters of Brian Wilson’s life and mental wellness journey, with Paul Dano taking on Wilson’s life as he experimented with The Beach Boys’ sound and John Cusack as the later Wilson. After a debut at the 2014 TIFF, the film launched in the summer to positive reviews and a slew of precursor nominations for Dano. But much like the Academy voted with The Fablemans this past year, Dano was left out at the last moment.

This episode, we discuss how the film’s structure appropriately tells Wilson’s story while creatively twisting the standard biopic framework. We also discuss Elizabeth Banks’ performance headlining the later portions of the film, divisive feelings about Dano’s earlier performances, and 2015 Best Supporting Actor.

Topics also include Cusack strike tweeting, presenting Chicago to Social Studies class, and our relationships with the music of The Beach Boys.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our Patreon, This Had Oscar Buzz: Turbulent Brilliance, over at patreon.com/thishadoscarbuzz!!

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028 – The Paperboy

An episode that asks that oft-repeated eternal question: will the Academy ever be ready for a movie where Nicole Kidman pees on Zac Efron? In 2012, Lee Daniels followed up his Precious Oscar success with a film that scandalized Cannes and answered that question with a resounding “no”. McConaissance be damned!

The Paperboy may be a pulpy southern crime saga that shows Daniels at his most excessive, but it got shockingly close to Oscar thanks to Kidman’s audacious (and divisive) performance. But while negative reviews and the film’s definitive griminess kept it out of Oscar history, it still gave us Efron dancing in his tighty whities in the rain.

Also in this episode, we look at some highs and lows of the this era of the McConassaince, 2012′s odd Supporting Actress year, and an underrated performance from Macy Gray.

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011 – Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

In 1997 we celebrated a giant sinking ship with James Cameron’s Titanic, but we are here this week to talk a different cinematic capsizing that year: Clint Eastwood’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Adapted from the wildly successful work of nonfiction by John Berendt, this film opened to massive expectations its unimpressive production could never match. Riding the wave of Kevin Spacey’s first win as he stars as closeted antique meister Jim Williams, Midnight is likely more fascinating in the contemporary context of Spacey’s actions than it was at the time.

Listen along as we discuss the film’s half-hearted attempts at oddness, John Cusack’s Oscar nomination that has yet to happen, and our deep affection for the film’s greatest performer, national treasure The Lady Chablis. (Oh and we finally discuss those much-maligned Oscar changes!)

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