movies – Page 19 – This Had Oscar Buzz

143 – The Muse (Focus Features – Part One)

We’re kicking off our May miniseries on Focus Features with the winner of our Listeners’ Choice poll, 1999′s The Muse. To kick things off, we’re looking at how Focus was birthed from the previous companies of USA Films, October Films, Gramercy Pictures and Good Machine. Written and directed by Albert Brooks, The Muse stars Sharon Stone as the titular eccentric tasked with reviving the career of a once-celebrated Hollywood screenwriter (also played by Brooks). The antics result in a slew of cameos, Andie MacDowell baking cookies, and multiple trips to an aquarium, and it all resulted in a Golden Globe nomination for Stone before Oscar looked elsewhere.

But that Globe nomination is now remembered as one of the many bumps in the history of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s practices, namely for the watches they received as part of Stone’s FYC campaign. This episode, we look at the lineup of films from the companies that merged into Focus Features, Brooks’ surprisingly limited Oscar history, and Stone’s ascension in the 1990s.

Topics also include our other Listeners’ Choice film options, the film’s datedness even for 1999, and Elton John’s abysmal original song for the film.

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142 – Friends with Money

This episode, we are returning to the career of the great Nicole Holofcener with 2006′s enesemble comedy Friends With Money. The film stars Jennifer Aniston as the housemaid friend to three wealthy women played by Joan Cusack, Catherine Keener, and Frances McDormand, and studies class and friendship with the kind of wit and grace that’s made Holofcener’s films so special. But despite strong notices for Aniston’s off-type performance and rising appreciation for Holofcener’s work, the film peaked with a Supporting Actress win for McDormand at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Once again, we praise the Holofcener ouevre and exhalt the Holofcener/Keener partnership. We also look at Cusack’s rare multiple comedy Oscar nominations, Aniston’s love of working with comedic actors like Adam Sandler, and McDormand going off in an Old Navy.

Topics include creative differences between Holofcener and Julianne Moore attempting to make Can You Ever Forgive Me?, films that might have overshadowed her work in their Oscar seasons, and our Holofcener rankings.

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141 – Carlito’s Way

We return to the filmography of Brian DePalma this week with 1993′s Carlito’s Way. The film reunited DePalma with his Scarface star Al Pacino as Carlito Brigante, a former criminal struggling to go straight after his release from prison and his shady circle that keeps pulling him back in. Released the year after Pacino’s long-awaited Oscar win for Scent of a Woman, the film and Pacino received mixed reviews and was ultimately buried in Universal’s mighty awards slate that included Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, and In the Name of the Father.

This week, we discuss Al Pacino’s Oscar draught between his win and The Irishman and some of the troublesome spots in DePalma’s filmography. We also look at John Leguizamo’s cinematic breakout in the early ‘90s, Penelope Ann Miller’s filmography of female roles in male-centered movies, and an “unrecognizable” Sean Penn returning from a three year movie break.

Topics also include the Cahiers du Cinema, Carole Bayer Sager’s Oscar nominations in Original Song, and iconic ghost cinema Heart and Souls. And we also announce our upcoming May miniseries!

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140 – A Home At The End Of The World

After the success of The Hours in 2002, author Michael Cunningham was a hot commodity in prestige cinema. At the same time, Colin Farrell emerged as the next big thing and was seemingly inescapable at the movies. The two converged in 2004 for A Home at the End of the World, an adaptation of Cunningham’s novel delivered by celebrated stage director Michael Mayer. Also starring Robin Wright, Sissy Spacek, and a breakthrough Dallas Roberts, the film follows a bisexual throuple that forms their own unique family unit outside the societal norms and their struggles to maintain their delicate balance.

Released in the summer and met with lukewarm reviews, A Home… was mostly forgotten by year’s end despite the strong work of its cast. This episode, we revisit an early THOB bet about Colin Farrell’s long-term Oscar prospects and discuss the beginning days of both Warner Independent and Farrell’s career.

Topics also include Oscar’s recent history of straight actors in LGBTQ roles, Sissy Spacek smashing plates in the aughts, Michael Mayer’s Broadway directing credits, and “pentathalon bangs”. And we tease this year’s May miniseries!

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139 – Carnage

After becoming a Broadway sensation, landing the Tony Award for Best Play and lead acting nominations for each member of its acting quartet (including a win for Marcia Gay Harden), Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage looked primed to become yet another stage-to-screen adaptation with Oscar in its sights. But when the movie version arrived, it eschewed the play’s lauded, starry Broadway cast (not to mention the many famous names that starred in hit productions around the globe) for a miscast foursome: Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz, and Kate Winslet. The film, abreviated to simply Carnage, failed to capture the play’s humor and precise bourgeois target, on top of being directed by Roman Polanski.

This episode, we compare the missteps of the film to the successes of its stage version, including one major mistake that bookends the film. We also discuss Marcia Gay Harden’s Tony speech, map Winslet’s long road to Oscar starting with Sense and Sensibility to the category maneuvering of The Reader, and play another round of Alter Egos.

Topics also include American Express commercials, Broadway bootlegs, and the infamous barf scene.

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138 – All the King’s Men

We’re finally getting around to one of the most notorious of aughts era failed awards plays, Steven Zaillian’s All the King’s Men. A remake of the former Best Picture winner and originally heavily predicted in the 2005 season, the adaptation was unceremoniously punted into the following year. The next September, the film had a disastrous debut at TIFF and was in and out of theatres within a month. Incoherent and uninspired with a barking Sean Penn at the center, the film is a soup of accents and flat convolutions that makes for a flop that is more boring than cringeworthy.

Zaillian has yet to direct a film since, but we look back at his other directorial efforts like Searching for Bobby Fisher, as well as a writing career that’s paired him with a top tier of directors. This week, we look at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival packed with successful Oscar plays and remembered for its thwarted Borat premiere. And we discuss The Departed and Scorsese’s winding road to Best Picture, almost again blocked by a stealth Clint Eastwood. Mark Ruffalo quiz alert!

Topics also include Kate Winslet’s odd lineup of 2006 titles, why Jude Law is better when not playing a traditional leading man, and the traumatic cinema experience that is Jack the Bear.

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Class of 2020

It’s finally here: our This Had Oscar Buzz Class of 2020! Even in a COVID-impacted Oscar year that saw a longer eligibility calendar and much fewer trips to the theatre, we still have a slew of movies with Oscar hopes that were left out in the cold on nomination morning. And we are here to celebrate (or at least in the case of The Little Things commemorate) them! We get into our favorites and yours from the year of Unprecedented Times, and we break them into several categories, from the movies we were happiest or saddest didn’t make the Oscar cut, the most forgettable, and the ones we can’t wait to give the full THOB treatment to first!

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137 – Live By Night

After landing a Best Picture winner that famously left him without a Best Director nomination for Argo, Ben Affleck made his director-star return in 2016 with Denis Lehane adaptation Live By Night. Affleck cast himself as a criminal caught between the Irish and Italian mobs in Tampa (with an ensemble that included Chris Messina, Zoe Saldana, and Elle Fanning) and is a muddied mess of mob movie tropes. The film shuffled release dates and opened with a whiff at the end of the year, failing to catch audiences amid a packed Oscar season and its own floundering reviews. Live By Night was forgotten and out of theatres once nominations arrived.

This episode, we talk about Affleck’s successes and stumbling blocks, including our own conflicting feelings about him as an actor, director, and celebrity. We also look back at Affleck’s shocking Best Director snub, his habitual casting of himself shirtless, and Warner Bros. disappointing 2016 which also included the introduction of Batfleck.

Topics also include our Top 10 films of 2016, Affleck’s meta casting in Gone Girl, Sienna Miller facial blindness.

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136 – White Oleander (with Nathaniel Rogers)

Pfor this week’s episode, we’ve invited The Film Experience creator and Michelle Pfeiffer superpfan Nathaniel Rogers back to discuss one of our listeners most requested films, 2002′s White Oleander. Based on the beloved novel by Janet Fitch, the film stars Allison Lohman as the teenage Astrid, who is plunged into the foster care system after her manipulative artist mother Ingrid (a phenomenal Pfeiffer) kills her boyfriend and is sent to prison. The film suffers from moving too briskly between Astrid’s foster homes (with Robin Wright and Renée Zellweger cast as various mothers) and met poor anemic reviews that left the film and Pfeiffer’s work forgotten in a backloaded awards season.

This week, we talk about the 2002 Supporting Actress race including who we think placed fifth in the nominations and the performance Nathaniel thinks derailed her chances. We also look at Oprah’s Book Club, Pfeiffer’s reticence with doing press, and personal Oscar grudges over Pfeiffer’s best work.

Topics also include Melissa McCarthy as an EMT, Robin Wright pronouncing the word “virus”, and Sheryl Crow’s The Globe Sessions (which, yeah, Chris misremembers instead of C’Mon C’Mon).

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135 – The House of the Spirits

By today’s standards, this week’s film stands out for its gobsmacking cast of Meryl streep, Gleen Close, Jeremy Irons, Antonio Banderas, and Winona Ryder. But back in the 90s, The House of the Spirits caught attention as both an adaptation of Isabel Allende’s beloved novel and the biggest acquisition Miramax had ever landed. Set over decades in Chile with mild mysticism and political revolution, the film whitewashed and condensed the novel into a poorly received epic long forgotten by year’s end – with Miramax enjoying their biggest success yet in Pulp Fiction.

The film was the follow-up to back-to-back Palme d’Or wins for director Bille August, after The Best Intentions and the Oscar-annointed Pelle the Conqueror. This episode, we look to Palme d”or winners for a round of Alter Egos as we discuss the film’s many problems. We discuss the false narrative of Streep vs. Close among Oscar obsessives, Ryder as a quintessentially 90s star, and Streep’s early 90s roadblocks.

Topics also include “an abundance of juices”, Irons’ expanding set of false teeth, and Close’s Oscar chances this year.

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