Kevin Spacey – This Had Oscar Buzz

150 – The Shipping News

We’re marking a milestone this week with our 150th episode. And for such a momentous occasion, we’re finally digging in to one of the most notorious films of THOB history with Lasse Lasse Hallström’s The Shipping News. Adapted from Annie Proulx’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, the film cast Kevin Spacey as a meak man who uproots his life to his Newfoundland home after the tragic death of his wife, Petal (Cate Blanchett). Also starring awards magnets Julianne Moore and Dame Judi Dench, the film had massive on-paper goods that went down in flames when the film faceplanted onto screens on Christmas Day, earning dismal reviews for its ungraceful handling of a literary work.

Especially cursed in retrospect for all of the obvious reasons, the film also met a Hallström backlash after Chocolat and The Cider Houses Rules back-to-back. This episode, we look at Miramax’s 2001 awards contender reshuffling and the film’s shockingly robust precursor tally, including a Best Picture nomination from the Critics Choice Awards. We also revisit our past Judi Dench episodes and our list of superlatives for episodes 101-150.

Topics also include the film’s absolutely bonkers character names, seal flipper pie as the best part of its love story, and Cate Blanchett’s 2001 triptych of critics prize awarded performances.

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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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003 – Pay It Forward

This week we’re calling all angels as we discuss 2000’s major critical disaster and thwarted Oscar grab, Pay It Forward. That’s right, the one where a post-Sixth Sense Haley Joel Osment teaches the world to pass on one favor to three strangers. A film notorious in This Had Oscar Buzz lore, Pay It Forward‘s awards hopes were spoiled by epic failures of miscasting and egregious emotional manipulation, not to mention the ever-changing landscape of Kevin Spacey’s burn makeup.

On this episode, we look back at the beloved Entertainment Weekly Fall Movie Preview issues, Jon Bon Jovi’s emerging acting career, and composer Thomas Newman copying himself in the span of a single Oscar season. Just one of several failed awards players from the major studios in 2000 (as well as one of several Helen Hunt movies), Pay It Forward is perhaps the most infamous.

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