Sundance Film Festival – Page 2 – This Had Oscar Buzz

BONUS – Sundancing On My Own

And we’re backbackback again with a special BONUS episode this week to talk about our experience will the films of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival! The big prize winner for US Dramatic Competition was A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One, and Chris was wowed by it. We talk about our shared love for new films from our beloved Nicole Holofcener, Ira Sachs, and gnarly debut horror film by Laura Moss, birth/rebirth. We also get into the divisiveness of Magazine Dreams and Eileen, the crowdpleasing delights of Theatre Camp, Celia Weston LARPing in colonial garb in A Little Prayer, and lots more!

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215 – Beatriz at Dinner (with Jorge Molina)

On the eve of the return of The White Lotus, we’re taking a look at the Mike White oeuvre with returning guest Jorge Molina and 2017′s Beatriz at Dinner. Starring our beloved Salma Hayek as a holistic masseuse trapped at a toxic dinner party held by her wealthy clients, the film debuted at Sundance and was immediately viewed through the lens of our outrage and despair in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s election. The dark cringe comedy had a divisive finale but a brilliant ensemble including Connie Britton, John Lithgow, and Chloe Sevigny, with Hayek giving one of her finest performances. But the 2017 Best Actress race was highly competitive, and this summer release struggled to make an awards season comeback.

This episode, we talk about the Arteta/White partnership including White’s television output and Arteta as the quintessential journeyman director. Topics also include scrubbed John Early clips, our dreams for Hayek’s deserved awards future, and comparing Beatriz at Dinner to another 2017 film that succeeded with Oscar.

Topics also include the 2002 Best Actress nominees pitching grants, Mike White’s run on Survivor and The Amazing Race, and performing Salma in Snatch Game.

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209 – A Walk on the Moon (with Tara Ariano)

This week, Tara Ariano returns to us to talk about a forgotten and quite lovely independent film from 1999, A Walk on the Moon. The first feature directed by actor Tony Goldwyn, the film stars Diane Lane as a late 1960s housewife who has a sexual awakening with a hippie blouse salesman (played by Viggo Mortensen) while vacationing with her family. With Anna Paquin and Liev Schreiber respectively as daughter and husband, the film features Woodstock and the moon landing in the background of this quite potent take on female sexuality and the effect of young parenthood. The film had a quiet spring release after debuting at Sundance, but year-end critical notices kept Lane in the awards conversation.

The film also has similar shades of what Lane would turn into an Oscar nominated role just a few years later with Unfaithful. This episode, we’ll discuss Mortensen’s deep bench of pre-LOTR roles, Happy, Texas’ famous post-Sundance financial failure, and how this film avoids the typical “Woodstock movie” trappings.

Topics also include Julie Kavner as Big Brother, gay euphemisms, and the immediate cultural impact of Ghost.

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203 – Martha Marcy May Marlene

One of the major stories out of 2011′s Sundance Film Festival was the arrival of Elizabeth Olsen, a new actress who just happened to be the younger sibling of the Olsen twins. In Sean Durkin’s debut Martha Marcy May Marlene, Olsen stars as a young woman who escapes a cult and copes with her fractured identity in the wary arms of her estranged older sister, played by Sarah Paulson. The film earned rave reviews, a Directing prize for Durkin, and distribution with Fox Searchlight. The film would be sold in the shadow of the previous year’s Oscar success Winter’s Bone: a Sundance launch, a star-making debut performance, and a chilling supporting performance from John Hawkes. But the film was significantly less audience friendly thriller by comparison, and paired with Searchlight’s stacked lineup of films, Martha didn’t fit the Oscar mold.

However, Martha Marcy May Marlene remains a movie we are still haunted by. This episode, we talk about the film and its associated network of stars and directors that would become Sundance staples. We also discuss the stiff competition faced by Olsen in the Best Actress race, Paulson’s career prior to becoming a Ryan Murphy staple, and Hawkes’ run of awards-buzzed roles in the early 2010s.

Topics also include our love of Durkin’s The Nest, thoughts on The Staircase, and ugly QR code posters.

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BONUS – Sundance, I Say

We’re bringing you a special bonus episode to recap our time with year’s edition of the Sundance Film Festival! We discuss some of the biggest prize winners from the US Dramatic Competition winner Nanny and the US Dramatic Audience Award winner Cha Cha Real Smooth, and other award recipients like Descendant, Dos Estaciones, and Fire of Love. We also discuss the films that might be pushed for Oscar in the year ahead (Good Luck to You Leo Grande and Living) and other personal festival highs (After Yang and Resurrection), lows (Sharp Stick and Call Jane), and everything in between!

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177 – Secretary

After a few minor roles in American indies, Maggie Gyllenhaal broke out in a big way with Sundance hit Secretary in 2002. The story of a young woman who copes with her mental health issues while entering a BDSM relationship with her boss (played by James Spader), Secretary was praised for its dark wit and daring, and immediately put Gyllenhaal on the map. But while she earned breakthrough prizes throughout the season, the film’s risque subject matter and a notoriously competitive Best Actress race kept Gyllenhaal out of Oscar contention.

This week, we discuss how the film holds up in terms of its handling of sensitiive subject matter and its place in the filmography of (surprise THOB heavy-hitter) Erin Cressida Wilson. We also discuss Gyllenhaal’s chances this season for her directorial debut The Lost Daughter, Spader’s run as an erotic psychodrama mainstay, and how the 2002 Best Actress race was shifted by contenders campaigning for multiple roles.

Topics also include the proposed Indecent Proposal remake, what we are programming at our imaginary repertory cinema, and the MTV Movie Awards Breakthrough Female Performance category.

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BONUS – Sundancing at Lughnasa

We’re bringing you a special BONUS episode to talk about all the goings on at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival! Chris and Joe both just participated in the virtual festival and have some exciting films to talk about. First, we discuss the few films eligible in this current Oscar season, including the one with (we think) the most promising prospects, Judas and the Black Messiah. Next, we look ahead at the Sundance films with awards potential such as Passing, Mass, and the biggest success of the festival, CODA. We also discuss other favorites of the festival including Censor, Together Together, Summer of Soul, and We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.

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109 – The Way Way Back

We decided to end the summer with another Listeners’ Choice episode and your triumphant film was 2013′s Sundance title The Way Way Back. The film was another massive Sundance buy for Fox Searchlight, who sold it to audiences very much in the mold of its successful Little Miss Sunshine. But even with two of Sunshine’s Toni Collette and Steve Carell among the cast, audiences and critics alike were far less enthusiastic about The Way Way Back’s summer vibes, leaving the film forgotten by year’s end. Well, except by our good friends at the AARP M4Gs.

The highest praise for the film was granted toward Sam Rockwell, still in the phase of his career as a critics darling before his first Oscar nomination. We get into his newfound typecast as racists, how the film feels like it should be a period piece, and the ethos of festival fever.

Topics also include the Black List, water park culture, and Allison Janney as various anthropomorphized types of alcohol.

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021 – Tadpole

The Sundance Film Festival is an elusive mistress that giveth Oscar buzz only to taketh away when at lower altitudes. Case in point is this week’s would-be Oscar title: 2002′s Tadpole. The film was a sensation of the festival, winning a Best Director prize for Gary Winick and stirring buzz for newcomer Aaron Stanford and Bebe Neuwirth. But the newfangled digital technology that won praise at the festival for all the new filmmaking possibility it represented ended up looking amateurish and garish upon release.

Tadpole ultimately got lost in a slew of 2002′s rich boy movies and disappointed on release after Miramax’s big $6M acquisition. This riff on The Graduate by way of Voltaire quotes may have been lost to time, but for a minute, it was kind of A Thing. This week, we’re also talking about the distinctions between regular Oscar buzz and Sundance Oscar buzz, the Meryl Streepness of The Hours vs. the Nicole Kidmanness of The Hours, and the National Board of Review’s “prize as party invitation” special recognitions.

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