William Fichtner – This Had Oscar Buzz

We welcome back Richard Lawson this week to discuss Tommy Lee Jones’s final (to date!) directorial effort, 2014’s The Homesman. Led by Hilary Swank, the film follows a 19th century woman charged to transport three women with “prairie madness” across the Nebraska Territory. With Jones as a wayward man who assists her journey, the film debuted at Cannes and promised a return to the Best Actress race for Swank that never came to be.

This episode, we talk about Swank’s two Best Actress Oscars and Richard details his first experience with Cannes. We also talk about this film’s arrival after neo-westerns made a splash in the late aughts, its reflection on women during old west times, and Meryl Streep’s third act cameo.

Topics also include Ben Schnetzer, Amy Madigan narrating the Donner Party, and Julianne Moore’s sudden arrival in 2014’s Best Actress race with Still Alice.

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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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Tag: William Fichtner

403 – The Homesman (with Richard Lawson!)

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