Michael Kelly – This Had Oscar Buzz

We return to the work of Naomi Watts this week for a discussion on 2010’s Fair Game. Costarring with Sean Penn for the third time in a decade, Watts starred as outed CIA agent Valerie Plame with the film detailing the leaking of Plame’s identity amidst her husband Joseph C. Wilson’s criticisms of the Bush administration. With Doug Liman taking the director’s chair after a series of action films, the film is a surprisingly sober recounting of the Plame story and one of Hollywood’s better offerings deconstructing that era of American culture. But despite launching the film at Cannes and Watts’ solid performance, the film became yet another disappointment among the many political dramas of the period.

This week, we talk about the career of Liman, including the fraught production of The Bourne Identity. We also discuss Watts’ period between her two Oscar nominations, the general landscape of Bush era politics and how few films successfully unpacked it well, and the relative box office disappointment of Edge of Tomorrow.

Topics also include Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, Bush administration names like “Scooter,” and the National Board of Review’s Freedom of Expression award.

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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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Tag: Michael Kelly

281 – Fair Game

264 – Everest (with Katey Rich!)