Morgan Freeman – This Had Oscar Buzz

096 – Nurse Betty (with Rob Scheer)

Renée Zellweger’s three year run with Oscar in the early 2000s makes for oft-discussed trajectory, perhaps so much so that we don’t always remember her near nomination the year before it all began. This week, film publicist Rob Scheer joins us to look back at her Golden Globe winning performance in Nurse Betty, a dark comedy about a woman so traumatized by witnessing her husband’s murder that she breaks from reality and persues the fictional soap opera doctor she adores.

This episode, we discuss director Neil LaBute and his abrasive playwrighting style in addition to Nurse Betty‘s reception at the Cannes Film Festival. We also take a big picture look at the 2000 Oscar race including the Globes and National Board of Review. And we revisit a favorite “what if” Oscar scenario and imagine how following Oscar years would play out if Zellweger had instead gotten her Oscar for Chicago.

Topics also include frantic Oscar telecast control rooms, Björk as potential (or not) sixth place Best Actress contender, and thanking John Carrabino.

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087 – The Bucket List

This week, we’re crossing a big one off our list. Arriving at the tail end of a very serious-minded 2007, Rob Reiner gave us The Bucket List, a globetrotting buddy comedy about two eldery men with cancer starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Thanks to its two major stars and an early Best Of mention from the National Board of Review, this one arrived in Oscar consideration but was ultimately never taken seriously due to a slate of poor reviews and its punchline status.

This episode, we take a look at Reiner’s directorial career that has been defined by the low points (such as North) while his best films often get attributed moreso to his collaborators. We also discuss our personal choices for the Best Actor of 2007, a field so competitive that Nicholson and Freeman were never likely to crack.

Topics also include epic pans from Roger Ebert, A Few Good Men as a formative cinematic experience, and Himalayan mountaineer Sean Hayes.

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086 – The Bonfire of the Vanities

We’ve got our oldest movie yet this week and it’s a doozy! In 1990, auteur Brian DePalma gave us a prestige adaptation of the most lauded novel of the 80s and faceplanted to notorious depths. This week, we’re talking about a bomb of era-defining proportions – brace yourself for The Bonfire of the Vanities!

Headlined by three of the biggest names of 1988 – Tom Hanks, Melanie Griffith, and Bruce Willis – DePalma’s adaptation was riding on major buzz beyond even Oscar’s consideration. The film aims to satirize class inequity and hypocrisy among Wall Street’s Manhattan, but was critically drubbed for its atonal swings and those misbegotten casting choices. As detailed in Julie Salamon’s behind-the-scenes book “The Devil’s Candy”, Bonfire was also a very troubled production plagued with producer exits, star egos, and an intense level of scrutiny.

This episode, we discuss this legendary flop and the trajectories of both director Brian DePalma and star Melanie Griffith. Topics also include “with, and” starring screen credits, the 1990 Oscar nominees, and teen heartthrob Devon Sawa.

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012 – An Unfinished Life

This week’s episode takes you back to September 2005, when the exit of the Weinsteins from Miramax resulted in a fire sale of delayed releases finally arriving in theatres to the most modest of fanfares. Least trumpeted of all was An Unfinished Life, starring Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez, and Morgan Freeman.

Here we have a film to fill your This Had Oscar Buzz bingo card: Lasse Hallström. An adaptation of a book about a grieving family. Scar makeup of debatable quality. A bear shows up. And of course, the oh-so-trustworthy source of test screening reactions from online message boards building up our hopes of a Camryn Manheim nomination.

What makes a life “unfinished”? As we discuss this week, it might just be having a name like Griff, living in the generalized American west, and (our favorite) winning an award we have never heard of before!

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