Toronto International Film Festival

268 – Shattered Glass (with Richard Lawson!)

Hayden Christensen arrived seemingly out of nowhere to land the role of pre-Vader Anakin Skywalker, becoming one of Hollywood’s hottest stars overnight and largely untested as a screen presence. After a respected turn in Life As A House(see previous episode!), the Attack of the Clones reviews soured audiences on this brand new star. The very next year, he gave a terrific performance in Shattered Glass as journalist Stephen Glass who famously fabricated stories for The New Republic. But awards bodies overlooked Christensen’s work and instead nominated the rising Peter Sarsgaard as Glass’ pseudo-rival Chuck Lane.

This episode, we talk about the Entertainment Weekly It List that was Christensen’s first debut post-Star Wars casting and his return to the franchise. We also talk about director/writer Billy Ray, Sarsgaard’s near nomination here, and journalism movies that were successful with Oscar.

Topics also include working with fact checkers, college group watch television, and the 2003 Independent Spirit Awards.

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263 – A Good Year

After the Oscar and box office success of Gladiator, director/star duo of Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe decided to reunite in 2006 for a very different kind of film, A Good Year. Starring Crowe as a finance bro who returns to the French vineyard of his beloved but estranged and now deceased uncle (played by Albert Finney), the film offered Scott the chance to shoot a film close to home and stretch himself into comedy. With Marion Cotillard as Crowe’s love interest and Abbie Cornish as the uncle’s rightful heir, Scott’s fledgling comedy chops resulted in a misfire and one of the biggest bombs of his career.

This episode, we discuss the Ridley Scott post-Best Picture filmography and the 2006 Best Actor race. We also look at Cotillard’s Oscar win during a strike year, Cornish’s world-traveling dialects, and the 2006 TIFF Galas.

Topics also include Industry, a former lost episode, and Buffalo voice.

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Back to TIFF!

We’re back from our annual trip to the Toronto International Film Festival! Once again, we’ll be dissecting our festival experience, the films we saw, and what lies ahead for the season. We discuss the Peoples’ Choice Award winner American Fiction and its chances in the awards race, several International Feature contenders at the festival including Perfect Daysand The Teachers’ Lounge, the highs and lows of festival films by actors making their directorial debuts, and our top 5 films of the festival!

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252 – Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool

Ahead of this season’s Nyad, we are looking back at the Oscar history of Annette Bening and 2017’s Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool. One year after missing out on a nomination for 20th Century Women, Bening returned with this film, starring as actress Gloria Grahame . Told from the perspective of actor Peter Turner (played by Jamie Bell), the film tells a love story between Turner and the Oscar winner during her final days. The film received a mild festival response and limited release during New Years, with Bening and Bell getting BAFTA nominations, but no such love from Oscar.

This episode, we talk about Bening’s four previous Oscar nominations and her notorious dual losses to Hilary Swank. We also discuss actresses who have played Oscar winners, Grahame’s Oscar win for The Bad and the Beautiful, and that other Sony Pictures Classics film from 2017 that took its time to expand.

Topics also include Bell’s leading man charisma, Bening’s potential for Nyad, and the many PG-13 f*cks of The American President.

Don’t forget to sign up for This Had Oscar Buzz: Turbulent Brilliance over at patreon.com/thishadoscarbuzz!!

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231 – Force Majeure

We’re taking another dive into the Best International Feature category this week to talk about one of the biggest world cinema successes of the past year, Ruben Östlund. Though he made films before it, 2014 catapulted Östlund with the Cannes premiere of Force Majeure, a dark satire of masculinity, and relationships dynamics, and fight-or-flight impulses. The film continued on the fall festival circuit, amassing critical acclaim and advancing to the Foreign Language Film bake-off list as Sweden’s submission. However, on nomination morning, Force Majeure missed a heavily-predicted nomination.

This episode, we discuss Östlund’s reaction video to missing the Oscar nomination and the films that followed, including two Palme d’Or wins and now Picture/Director/Screenplay nominations for his Triangle of Sadness. We also discuss the immediately pre-COVID American remake Downhill, the lack of an International frontrunner in the 2014 race, and other directors who have won multiple Palmes.

Topics also include this year’s AARP Movies for Grownup awards, shading the International winner that year Ida, and sauna moshpitting.

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221 – The Front Runner

We’ve previously discussed the work of Jason Reitman with our Men, Women, and Children episode, and this week we have another Reitman bomb: 2018′s The Front Runner. The film features Hugh Jackman as Senator Gary Hart and dramatizes Hart’s failed presidential campaign that was thwarted by an infidelity scandal. Released on Election Day after a very mild fall festival run, the film posits Hart’s case as the beginning of political muckraking in America, but fails to make a compelling case for that argument or find a pulse on the political climate in the immediate year’s following the 2016 Presidential Election.

This episode, we talk about Jackman’s prestige run in the shadow of Wolverine and his prospects this year with the reviled The Son in a weak Best Actor field. We also welcome Reitman regular J.K. Simmons into our Six Timers Club, and discuss Reitman’s other 2018 release Tully, post-Hart political sex scandals, and Vera Farmiga Phone Acting.

Topics also include Phil Hartman’s Clinton impersonation, current awards season malaise, and our upcoming mailbag episode!

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216 – Snowden

Welcome all our new CIA listeners, because this week we are talking about 2016′s Snowden. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as controversial whistleblower Edward Snowden, the film follows Snowden’s journey through exposing the surveillance state and his exile to Russia, all while maintaining his relationship with girlfriend Lindsay Mills (played by Shailene Woodley). With Oliver Stone at the helm and Laura Poitras’ Snowden doc Citizenfour having recently earned the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, the film arrived with high expectations that it immediately disappointed when this bland biopic debuted at TIFF.

This episode, Joe gives us a recap of his New York Film Festival experience this year before we dive into Stone’s misfire. We also talk about Oscar winners that have played Oscar winners, Gordon-Levitt’s distracting baritone while playing Snowden, Peter Gabriel’s film awards history, and Stone’s fall from the height of his cultural significance in the 1980s and 1990s.

Topics also include TIFF premieres that open to general audiences during the festival, the 2011 Best Supporting Actress race that Woodley narrowly missed, and Chris’ ongoing journey with Survivor.

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Reunited at TIFF!

It’s an annual tradition! Joe and Chris (reunited for the first time in years!) are reporting on the films of the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, including this year’s (Not Grolsch) People’s Choice Award winner: Steven Spielberg’s The Fablemans. And we’ve got bets against each other gaining some heat! This episode, we unpack our feelings about some of the festival’s biggest titles including Glass Onion, Women Talking, The Woman King, The Banshees of Inisherin, and The Inspection. We also discuss potential THOB titles of the future, Taylor Swift crowd control, and the dire Best Actor race. Topics also include the TIFF preroll ads, International Feature contenders, and TIFF’s history of People’s Choice winners and Oscar.

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205 – The Four Feathers

Long-time listeners of the podcast will recognize this week’s episode as one promised from the very beginning! In 2002, The Four Feathers arrived with major Oscar follow-up and star-on-the-rise pedigree. The film was Shekhar Kapur’s directorial follow-up to the Oscar anointed (and Cate Blanchett launching) Elizabeth, and starred three of the biggest young would-be megastars in its love triangle: Heath Ledger, Wes Bentley, and Kate Hudson. But on top of being one of many cinematic versions of A.E.W. Mason’s, the film bored critics and audiences when it world premiered as a TIFF gala, and fizzled entirely upon release a few weeks later.

This week, we talk about its three headliners at critical points of their careers: Ledger being foisted onto traditional leading man roles, Hudson following her Almost Famous Oscar nomination, and Bentley trying to escape that floating plastic bag. We also talk about Kapur’s dual Elizabeth films, the film’s supporting male cast of recognizable faces, and the film’s apolitical stance post-9/11.

Topics also include sideburns, the film’s brownface makeup, and Ledger’s final stretch of roles.

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179 – On Chesil Beach

Saoirse Ronan came on strong at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival with two films that had the opposite experience: the immediately beloved Lady Bird and the misfire On Chesil Beach, which cratered after world premiering on the first day of the festival. The film reunited Ronan with Ian McEwan, the author of her Oscar-nominated breakthrough performan in Atonement, and cast her as a young woman in the mid-century who experiences a disastrous honeymoon with decades worth of emotional consequences. Also starring Billy Howle (who she would quickly reunite with for The Seagull) as her hot-tempered husband, the film received a very tepid response at the festival despite its pedigree and received a very quiet release the next spring.

This episode, we’re talking about Ronan’s increasingly prolific career and the performances that brought her Oscar nominations, including Atonement, which we will defend to the death. We also discuss the history of Bleecker Street films, their difficulty in securing Oscar nominations, and our favorites of their lineup.

Topics also include that one cello piece used in all of cinema, frustrations over the term “Oscar bait”, and Bebe Zahara Benet’s Jungle Kitty.

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