Tom Hanks – This Had Oscar Buzz

193 – The Da Vinci Code (EW Summer Movie Preview)

Our EW Movie Previews miniseries continues this week with a look at the summer season! After the ubiquity of the best-selling book, The Da Vinci Code was primed for a glossy movie adaptation even before it landed the Oscar pedigree pairing of Ron Howard and Tom Hanks. Considered prestigious enough to open the Cannes Film Festival, the film received middling reviews for its schlock factor and was ultimately added to the heap of another bad movie in a cursed summer movie season. Though the film stayed somewhat in awards consideration thanks to earning nominations from various crafts’ guilds, the film was quickly destined to a life on cable television.

This episode, we look at the film’s handling of controversies from an upset Catholic Church and EW’s positioning of the summer’s biggest films, including eventual Best Picture nominee Little Miss Sunshine. We also discuss Hans Zimmer’s Oscar nomination history, Hanks’ much discussed longer hairstyle for the film, and Ian McKellen leading Mary Magdalene’s stan army.

Topics also include Paul Bettany at Provincetown Catholic Week, scrunts and narfs, and forgotten studio animated films of the aughts.

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104 – The Terminal

Soak this one up, listeners, because this episode we’re taking one of the very few opportunities for us to talk about Steven Spielberg. The beloved director has one of the best Oscar track records in history, earning nominations for all but five of his feature films – including this week’s misfire, 2004′s The Terminal. Tom Hanks stars as a traveler from the fictional eastern European country of Krakozhia who gets trapped in JFK airport when a coup erupts mid-flight. What ensues is a too-cutesy and logic-defying fairy tale that is widely regarded as one of Spielberg’s biggest creative misses.

In this episode, we unpack all of the film’s tonal imbalances and its place in Spielberg’s post-9/11 triptych. We also look at costar Catherine Zeta-Jone’s post-Oscar (and pre-Tony) career, the one category we think The Terminal should have been nominated for, and Stanley Tucci as the film’s bland bureaucrat villain.

Other topics include Casa Zeta-Jones, Broadway billboards, and an extensive dive into all of the nominations (and wins) received by Spielberg’s films.

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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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075 – Cloud Atlas

We’re bringing 2019 to a close with another Listeners’ Choice, and our listeners have chosen perhaps what will be our most daunting title yet: 2012′s interconnected science fiction opus from Lana & Lilly Wachowski and Tom Tykwer, Cloud Atlas! This tale of several stories spanning generations, genres, and continents launched its Oscar hopes with a jaw-dropping, mega-sized trailer, and lost them just as quickly with an extremely divisive critical reception at TIFF. Led by Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, the film takes massive narrative and emotional leaps that were ultimately too much for Oscar and general audiences.

But you can consider both Chris and Joe as firmly in the positive for this film, while also accepting of its ambitious flaws. This week, we spend the majority of this episode unraveling the many threads and issues within the film (Yellow face makeup, its near three hour length, its dizzying construction), and just what stirs our affection for it (its spiritual convictions, general audacity, and of course “The Cloud Atlas Sextet”).

Topics also include Ben Whishaw’s whittle butt, Hurricane Sandy, and who would play our own personal Old Georgies. You true-true-ly chose a great movie for us, and we love you all the more for it!

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