Scarlett Johansson – This Had Oscar Buzz

330 – In Good Company (with Emily St. James!)

Oh, the quaint economic anxieties of 20 years ago! We’re tackling 2004’s seriocomic tale of “what if your much younger boss slept with your newly adult daughter” and Paul Weitz film In Good Company, and writer Emily St. James returns to the show to help us unpack it. Modest lighthearted fare, the movie pits dad-mode Dennis Quaid opposite Topher Grace as advertising sales reps in the halcyon days of magazines. While it isn’t without its charms, the film was wedged into the very end of the season and didn’t make enough waves to earn much awards love.

This episode, we talk about the film’s intergenerational dynamics and the then economic anxiety of young people taking all the boomers’ jobs. We also talk about Scarlett Johansson’s high demand after Lost in Translation, the Oscar Original Song quality gap, and Clark Gregg joins our Six Timers Club.

Topics also include dad music needle drops, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and what went down on the set of The Brutalist.

Preorder WOODWORKING by Emily St. James

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223 – We Bought A Zoo

After the notorious failure of Elizabethtown, Cameron Crowe took a few years off and attempted to rebound with a warm-hearted family film, 2011’s We Bought A Zoo. The film starred Matt Damon in the very loose true story of a father struggling to raise his two children in the wake of his wife’s death, and finds the solution to their problems in a local zoo listed for sale with a few loyal animal wranglers (including contrived love interest Scarlett Johansson) still tied to the property. Though the film became a modest hit, its punchline title and feather-weight tone was not taken seriously by critics or awards bodies in a season filled with other stories filled with children and grief.

This episode, Matt Damon joins Meryl Streep as the only performers in our Ten Timers Club. We also discuss the varying degrees of failure in late stage Crowe films, Crowe’s AARP Movies for Grownups Best Director nomination against heavy hitters, and 2011′s many Oscar contenders featuring children.

Topics also include Diane Warren finally having her Oscar, the fake We Bought A Zoo Twitter account, and Content Creator Kits.

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133 – The Other Boleyn Girl

Heavily anticipated by Oscar predictors in fall 2007, Justin Chadwick’s historical fiction The Other Boleyn Girl paired Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johnasson as their Oscar stars were rising. But when the film was rescheduled into early 2008, all signs pointed towards a disappointment that the film ultimately proved to be. With Eric Bana as King Henry VIII, the film is a soapy and scattered take on the Boleyn sisters vying for the king’s affections. Even with the beloved Sandy Powell on costuming duties, the film’s poor reception canceled out its chances to make an impact in the 08 Oscar races.

This week, we go into Oscar’s long history of awarding films surrounding the royals and how this film is weighted with historical inaccuracies. We also dive into screenwriter Peter Morgan’s place as current royals’ biographer with an Oscar pedigree and Johansson’s long road to her two first Oscar nominations last year, beginning with her two 2003 competing performances through souring her public favor in later years.

Topics also include the Teen Choice Awards, a cringe-inducing plot turn that turns Jim Sturgess into a royal Kombucha Girl, and the musical Six.

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079 – A Love Song for Bobby Long

The Golden Globes have a standing reputation for oddball nominations and this week we are discussing one of the peak examples: 2004′s A Love Song for Bobby Long. The film follows Scarlett Johansson as [ahem] Purslane Hominy Will, a young woman who inherits a home from her estranged mother only to find it occupied by two poet drunkards played by John Travolta and Gabriel Macht. Remembered far more as a trivia item for Johansson’s Best Actress in a Drama nomination at the Globes than the film itself, Bobby Long provides a fascinating time capsule to the exact moment when Johansson’s star was on the rise after her big 2003.

But this one was held by distributor Lionsgate for a post-Christmas qualifying release, with its fate doubly sealed when the then-tiny distributor’s other candidate Hotel Rwanda took off just a week before. This week, we take a look back at the history of Lionsgate from tiny indie label to the mini-major distributor they are today, and we argue that Johansson might not be the Globes darling that conventional wisdom claims she is.

We also discuss other qualifying releases that had varying degrees of success, Oscar’s history of actors getting double nominations, and galaxy brain what The Cell: The Musical would look like.

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