Oscars – Page 25 – This Had Oscar Buzz

090 – Magic Mike

Based loosely on star Channing Tatum’s experience as an exotic dancer, 2012’s Magic Mike lured director Steven Soderbergh out of his ongoing “retirement” and became a summer smash. Women loved it, men loved, the critics loved it – except the Academy did not. Though released during the full swing of the McConnaissance, it would take another year for Oscar to honor Matthew McConaughey, overlooking his charming, thong-clad villain performance here, despite love from some major precursors.

This episode, we fire up the Ginuwine to discuss Tatum’s rising movie star career from beefcake to surprising comedic talent to his current downshift in visibility. We also look at Soderbergh’s career post-Oscar, including his reticence to play the Oscar game that might leave films like this (and Contagion) out of the running.

Topics also include the 2012 Best Supporting Actor field of all previous nominees (and who we think might have had sixth place), the forgotten Alex Pettyfer, and the multiple onscreen appearances of Channing Tatum’s bumbum.

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089 – The Rainmaker

Francis Ford Coppola is a legendary director among Oscar lore thanks to the Corleone family, and this week’s episode pairs him with a name that resulted in much ‘90s cinematic prestige: John Grisham. After a string of hit adaptations that danced with major Oscar consideration, Coppola took his shot at Grisham’s The Rainmaker. But despite good reviews (and a Globe nomination for supporting actor Jon Voight), the film earned mild box office that halted the Grisham hot streak. Led by an emerging Matt Damon, the film was also overshadowed just one month later by the release of Good Will Hunting.

This episode, we revisit the box office success and Oscar near-success of films adapted by the mega-popular works of the legal thriller / airport staple John Grisham. We also discuss Coppola’s late career phase of largely unseen and unheralded films, the stacked 1997 Best Actor field, and The Rainmaker’s bursting cast list of glorified cameos and supporting players.

And this episode brings the return of two of our favorite topics: Claire Danes and the Entertainment Weekly Fall Movie Preview.

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088 – Alfie (with Griffin Newman)

We’re taking it back to Jude Law’s infamously busy 2004 this week and we’ve got a special guest to help dissect it. Actor and cohost of the Blank Check with Griffin and David podcast Griffin Newman joins us to discuss Alfie, the modernized remake of the 1966 Best Picture nominee with Law filling Michael Caine’s previously star-making shoes.

In a 2004 that also filled his resume with Closer, I Heart Huckabees, and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Alfie was was one that was most bent on turning Law into a bonafide movie star – and the biggest bomb with audiences and critics. Not helped by an updated take that is significantly more shallow than the original, this film suffered from a star overexposed to audiences both onscreen and in the tabloids. This episode, we look at Law’s quick turnaround from omnipresence to punchline, and his eventual reemergence as a character actor.

We also take a look back at the career of director Charles Shyer and his quality drop-off after the end of his personal and creative partnership with Nancy Meyers, and the one-two punch of Chris Rock and Sean Penn commenting on Law at the Oscars. Topics also include the era of metrosexuality, London as a terrible stand-in for New York City, and Beyoncé performing three Original Song nominees at the Oscars.

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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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085 – Exodus: Gods and Kings

We as Oscar watchers can’t quit predicting Ridley Scott just like Ridley Scott can’t stop making historical epics that end up underwhelming. In 2014, he gave us one of them – a retelling of Moses story (minus all that religion) called Exodus: Gods and Kings. With Christian Bale at the forefront, the film stirred controversy for casting all white actors led to a tepid box office, with the film becoming one of many late year disappointments in 2014.

This week, we unpack how this film stands up against previous versions of the exodus story, The Ten Commandments and The Prince of Egypt. We also lament some of Scott’s big budget habits (that he might be returning to later this year with The Last Duel) and the many ways that Exodus: Gods and Kings’ does not stand up to his best work.

Topics also include Joel Edgerton’s rising Oscar trajectory, our top ten films of 2014, and the Oscar-winning dueling divas of “When You Believe”.

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083 – Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

For this week’s episode, we have another quintessential prestige picture that flubbed with Oscar: it’s-a Captain Corelli’s Mandolin! Coming off of a Best Picture win with Shakespeare in Love, director John Madden returned with a WWII romance set on a gorgeous Greek island between recent Oscar winner Nicolas Cage and next-big-thing Penélope Cruz. But this love story was instantly derided for its tepid sparks and cringe-worthy dialect work from Cage, making it more of a punchline come Oscar time than the viable contender it seemed to be before release.

This week, we look back at Madden’s very THOB-friendly filmography and the behind-the-scenes business maneuverings that crossed this film with Miramax. We also take an extended look at 2001′s acting categories and imagine what a Best Picture ten could have been in the year of A Beautiful Mind and the first Lord of the Rings installment.

Topics also include Cruz’s busy 2001 amid her relationship with Tom Cruise, how movie-going was impacted by 9/11, Christian Bale’s butt, and prostitute pasta.

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082 – Stranger Than Fiction (with Kevin Jacobsen)

This week we’re returning to a subject that never fails to summon Oscar buzz: comedic actors going dramatic. For this round, we welcome And The Runner Up Is host and writer for Gold Derby Kevin Jacobsen to discuss 2006′s Stranger Than Fiction. The high-concept seriocomedy starred Will Ferrell in his first major attempt at a dramatic role as Harold Crick, a man who hears a voice narrating his life and predicting his imminent demise. That voice belongs to an author played by Emma Thompson, with Harold being the subject of her next masterpiece.

But it wasn’t just Ferrell’s leap into drama that spelled Stranger Than Fiction’s Oscar potential. The film was directed by Marc Forster – already a rising Oscar commodity after directing Halle Berry to her win and following that up with Finding Neverland – with buzzed new screenwriter Zach Helm chasing the in-vogue absurdity of Charlie Kaufman. Despite good reviews, the film didn’t fully achieve the potential of its premise and was overshadowed by other counterprogramming options to Oscar’s brooding 2006.

This episode, we take a look back at the diminishing Oscar returns for Marc Forster and how Sacha Baron Cohen and Borat surprisingly stole this film’s thunder. Topics also include Amy Pascal at awards shows, films that made us look at film more critically, and canonical This Had Oscar Buzz superfan Don Gummer.

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081 – Finding Forrester

After the disasterous reception to his shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, Gus Van Sant returned to territory closer to his previous Oscar success with 2000′s Finding Forrester. Another tale of a prodigy in academia, the film follows newcomer Rob Brown as a young writer who stumbles into the guidance of a famed recluse writer William Forrester, played by a late career Sean Connery.

Told in tropes made very familiar by the likes of Dead Poets Society and Scent of a Woman, Finding Forrester is ultimately a very dull version of a mentor/pupil story. And while the film’s moderate box office success made for a small comeback for Van Sant, stiff competition and a late release kept Sean Connery out of the Best Actor race. Now the film is most remembered for its catchphrase, crowed into consciousness in Connery’s brogue: “You’re the man now, dog!”

This episode, we also discuss Connery’s string of post-Oscar hits throughout the 90s and Van Sant’s tough-to-pin-down filmography. Topics also include Oscar presenters who make the envelope reveal more about themselves than the winner, Busta Rhymes, and our favorite pottymouth Shohreh Aghdashloo.

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080 – Enough Said (with Mathew Rodriguez)

One one our favorite female filmmakers to hover just outside of Oscar’s graces is Nicole Holofcener, and this week The Body’s Mathew Rodriguez joins us to talk about one of her more recent films: 2013′s Enough Said. The romantic comedy stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a single mother preparing to send her daughter off to college while discovering the man she is dating is the ex-husband of one of her clients. One of Holofcener’s most celebrated humanist examinations of class and relationships, the film faced an uphill climb against Oscar’s bias against comedies and female stories.

But perhaps its closest shot was for Louis-Dreyfus’ love interest, the dearly departed James Gandolfini. Released after the beloved actor’s death, his against type (but true to his real-life persona) performance remains one of his best.

This week, we’re taking a look at our love for Holofcener’s work, including with her muse and Enough Said supporting star Catherine Keener. We also discuss this year’s exceptional Globes Actress in a Musical/Comedy lineup, what went down when Holofcener almost made Can You Ever Forgive Me? (which still led to her first writing nomination), and Bon Qui Qui from MadTV.

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