Val Kilmer – This Had Oscar Buzz

This week, our first film selected by one of our sponsor-tier Patreon subscribers arrives, and we brought back Vulture’s Roxana Hadadi to celebrate. In 1995, audiences were hyped to finally see an onscreen showdown between Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in Michael Mann’s Heat. But what promised to be a standard actioner on paper (on top of a battle of titans) was in actuality an existential tone poem on masculinity, with audiences feeling let down by the lack of fireworks in Pacino and DeNiro’s brief but mighty scene. The film has since been reassessed, earning a vocal and devoted fanbase that hail the film as Mann’s masterpiece.

This week, we talk about Mann’s work studying the masculine mind and Pacino and DeNiro’s 1990s periods. We also talk about Val Kilmer’s Batman year, how the 1995 Oscars largely rejected darker material, and our thoughts on Mann’s Ferrari.

Topics also include bisexual eyebrow piercings, our diner orders, and the Nyad towel.

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Grab some snakes and prep that Dionysus monologue, because this week we are taking it back to 2004′s Alexander. Starring Colin Farrell filling the historic shoes of Alexander the Great, this film was a passion project for Oliver Stone that defeated a rival biopic from Baz Luhrman and Leonardo DiCaprio – but lost the war to critics and audiences alike. And we’ve brought along another special guest to help us on the journey: staff writer for The Atlantic and co-host of the Blank Check podcast, David Sims.

Alexander was a notorious bomb that failed to walk the road that Gladiator had paved for it, but was initially thought of for Oscar almost on Oliver Stone’s name alone. But that hasn’t stopped the director for making several extended cuts of this already very long film. This episode will go into Stone’s diminishing Oscar returns after his heyday in the 80s and 90s, Colin Farrell’s Hollywood explosion, and take our first look at the Razzies.

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Tag: Val Kilmer

267 – Heat (with Roxana Hadadi!) (Patreon Selects)

025 – Alexander (with David Sims)