John Hawkes – This Had Oscar Buzz

386 – Contagion

With The Christophers finally arriving in theatres, we are returning to the ever-evolving filmography of director Steven Soderbergh. In the period of his one-for-you-one-for-me jostling between micro budgets and mainstream fare, 2011 offered his paranoid eco-thriller Contagion about a virus that overtakes the world. Though the film was an early fall box office success with major Oscar winners as Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, and Marion Cotillard, Warner Bros. only launched the film’s campaign at the end of the season. A decade later, the film would become a major mass rewatch for… totally normal, everyday reasons!

This episode, we talk about Soderbergh’s period between Oscar and “retirement” and Paltrow joins our Ten Timers club. We also talk about Laurence Fishburne and Jennifer Ehle as best in show, our reticence to watch the film during COVID, and Soderbergh’s current underrated era.

Topics also include Paltrow’s terrifying death scene, the 2011 Venice Film Festival, and the Saturn Awards.

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264 – Everest (with Katey Rich!)

Following Thanksgiving tradition, Katey Rich returns to This Had Oscar Buzz to discussant film with indistinguishable white male actors, and this year we have chosen 2015’s Everest. Directed by Baltasar Kormákur and featuring a massive cast led by Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, and Jake Gyllenhaal, the film follows the true story of a disastrous trip up Mount Everest that left almost an entire crew dead. The prestigious cast and the film’s placement opening the Venice Film Festival led some prognosticators to suspect the film could be an Oscar player, but it ended up a straightforward disaster film that American audiences mostly dismissed.

This episode, we discuss how the film struggles to portray the reasons someone would want to climb Everest and Joe delivers his most hoot-worthy game yet. We also discuss Gyllenhaal’s recent questionable output, Elizabeth Debicki explaining things, and directors we confuse for Kormákur.

Topics also include mountain madness, author Jon Krakauer, and “wife on phone.”

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203 – Martha Marcy May Marlene

One of the major stories out of 2011′s Sundance Film Festival was the arrival of Elizabeth Olsen, a new actress who just happened to be the younger sibling of the Olsen twins. In Sean Durkin’s debut Martha Marcy May Marlene, Olsen stars as a young woman who escapes a cult and copes with her fractured identity in the wary arms of her estranged older sister, played by Sarah Paulson. The film earned rave reviews, a Directing prize for Durkin, and distribution with Fox Searchlight. The film would be sold in the shadow of the previous year’s Oscar success Winter’s Bone: a Sundance launch, a star-making debut performance, and a chilling supporting performance from John Hawkes. But the film was significantly less audience friendly thriller by comparison, and paired with Searchlight’s stacked lineup of films, Martha didn’t fit the Oscar mold.

However, Martha Marcy May Marlene remains a movie we are still haunted by. This episode, we talk about the film and its associated network of stars and directors that would become Sundance staples. We also discuss the stiff competition faced by Olsen in the Best Actress race, Paulson’s career prior to becoming a Ryan Murphy staple, and Hawkes’ run of awards-buzzed roles in the early 2010s.

Topics also include our love of Durkin’s The Nest, thoughts on The Staircase, and ugly QR code posters.

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