318 – My Policeman (with Katey Rich!)

As is our Thanksgiving week tradition, The Ankler’s Katey Rich returns to talk about another film with indistinguishable young actors. In 2022, fans and awards prognosticators were hyped for Harry Styles to make the leap to movies and leading man stardom. Amidst the gossip for Don’t Worry Darling, literary adaptation My Policeman loomed, with Styles cast as a man caught in a bisexual love triangle between his wife (Emma Corbin) and the art curator (David Dawson) he secretly loves. The film flashes forward to their older selves as they grapple with the consequences of their actions. All that hype amounted to a film quickly forgotten between its world premiere and its Prime debut.

This episode, we talk about Styles’ disappointing and brief jaunt into films including Dunkirk and Eternals. We also talk about DWD Watch 2022, the film’s TIFF Acting Tribute honor for its ensemble, and the film’s much ballyhooed gay sex scenes.

Topics also include Brokeback Mountain, Emma Corrin’s other 2022 contender Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and the spit.

230 – Stage Beauty

Longtime listeners will know that a special space in our podcast lore is reserved for our first six timer, Claire Danes. This week, we return to her work in the opulent and forgotten Stage Beauty. The film cast Danes as a stage dresser who longs to be an actress in a time when women weren’t allowed on the stage, and opposite Billy Crudup as an actor celebrated for his performances in female roles. In an anemic year for Globes Comedy, it looked like the film could fall into a similar vein of the recently Best Picture awarded Shakespeare in Love, but this became a costume drama that the industry overlooked.

This episode, we get into the film’s surprisingly curious (if still dated) eye towards gender and Crudup’s playful performance, which might be his very best. We also dive into the gossip of Danes and Crudup’s onset affair in which Crudup left a pregnant Mary-Louise Parker, her winning Globes speech that very year, and the elusiveness of an Oscar nomination for Crudup.

Topics also include the unmissable Fleishman is In Trouble, the Tribeca Film Festival, and the National Board of Review’s Special Recognition for Excellence in Filmmaking catchall.

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