Paul Schneider – This Had Oscar Buzz

After winning Best Picture and Best Director for his zeitgeist-seizing debut feature American Beauty, Sam Mendes instantly became a director who generate awards chatter no matter the project. In 2009, he took a noticeable tonal downshift with Away We Go, a minor key comedy about a young pregnant couple on a road trip to decide where they want to grow their roots. Despite praise for Maya Rudolph’s performance as a soon-to-be mother still grieving the untimely death of her parents and John Krasinski opposite her as her jokester partner, the film didn’t succeed as summer counter-programming and mostly forgotten in the season to come.

This episode, we talk about the harsh reviews that found the film more judgmental than reflective and Rudolph’s understated and absorbing performance. We also talk about Alexi Murdoch’s soundtrack, possibly semi-autobiographical screenwriter marrieds Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, and the film’s bursting ensemble of fantastic character actors from Melanie Lynskey, Allison Janney, and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Topics also include this year’s New York Film Critics Circle award winners, Mendes’ pivot to Bond, and the lure of Montreal. Don’t forget to get submissions in for our upcoming mailbag episode!

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Joining us this week is Podcast Like It’s 1999′s Phil Iscove to finally unpack a foundational This Had Oscar Buzz text. After winning an Oscar for Almost Famous and delivering a financially succesful (if extremely divisive) hit in Vanilla Sky, Cameron Crowe decided to return to his roots with Elizabethtown. Starring Orlando Bloom as a young shoe designer struggling to cope with professional ruin and the sudden death of his father, he meets a buoyant flight attendant played by Kirsten Dunst who brings him back to to himself. Crowded with song cues, bizarre character beats, and notes of whimsy that struggle to stick the landing, the film received a disastrous critical response at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, leading Crowe back into the editing room before release and Oscar to immediately count this one out.

Still a film that has a sizable fanbase of defenders of its earnest vibes, Elizabethtown is remembered today as the beginning of the end for Crowe and birthing the phrase Manic Pixie Dream Girl (as penned by Nathan Rabin). This episode, we dive into all that works and doesn’t for us in Crowe’s sentimental screwball movie, its infamous casting struggles with the biggest young acting names of the time, and the ups and recent downs of Crowe’s career.

Topics also include Roger Ebert’s later reassessment of the film’s theatrical cut, the Crowe/Tarantino divide of pastiche, and tap dancing at funerals.

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Tag: Paul Schneider

222 – Away We Go

160 – Elizabethtown (with Phil Iscove)