Audio – Page 26 – This Had Oscar Buzz

019 – Hannibal

Happy Halloween, listeners! This week, we’re getting creepy with Ridley Scott’s follow-up to Best Picture winner Gladiator, the gross-out macabre sequel Hannibal. The legacy of The Silence of the Lambs made this one of the most heavily covered productions of the early 2000s and convinced that it might be similarly bound for Oscar glory. Maybe someone was just feeding us our brains.

With Jodie Foster out as Clarice Starling as well as Jonathan Demme passing off directing duties, Scott was chasing every actress in Hollywood that was also among the Academy’s favorites. Also on our mind’s this episode: producer Dino De Laurentiis, how the film (wisely) nixed its more problematic elements, and its terrifying makeup. Also Anthony Hopkins talking about poppers.

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018 – Sommersby

It’s time for some failed harlequin romance Oscar buzz and that means we are talking 1993′s Sommersby. A post-Civil War era love story of overtaken identity and languorous beard shaving, the presence of a post-Silence of the Lambs Jodie Foster had us thinking this weepy could be Oscar-bound. But as the dueling elements of Richard Gere’s non-accent and Foster’s scream-whisper will attest, we were so wrong.

As if the gaslighting by oil lamp wasn’t enough to warn us, the movie is fairly cringeworthy in its plot mechanics and ripping off of the third act of The Crucible. We get into Sommersby’s mishaps this episode as well as Gere’s Oscar shutout vs. Foster as one of Oscar’s golden children, making out while protecting expensive seeds, and the Great Cuckold of 1993, Bill Pullman. We never loved not this movie as much as we loved this movie.

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017 – Seven Pounds

Cuddle up to your jellyfish, because this week’s we’re talking about Seven Pounds. Just two years after being nominated for The Pursuit of Happyness, we thought that Will Smith’s reteaming with director Gabriele Muccino could maybe bring the Oscar that has eluded him since first being nominated for Ali. But that was before we realized what this movie actually was, let alone how painfully bad it is.

Scattered among the sacrificial flesh of the film’s thwarted Oscar dreams, we discuss Will Smith’s Oscar trajectory, Rosario Dawson’s underrated career, and the many ways this bonkers movie grinds our gears. We also take a look at 2008’s whirlwind tour to Kate Winslet’s Best Actress win and the full insanity and ramifications of how the film withholds its twist. And of course, we don’t forget to notice the collateral beauty around us.

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016 – The Fifth Estate

If the past few weeks of movies we like had you weary, fear not for this episode we have a real stinker for you: 2013′s The Fifth Estate. This was the year that Benedict Cumberbatch was everywhere and nowhere, alone yet not alone. After the rise of Sherlock, this year saw him in four major movies including his biggest role in this film as Julian Assange, the controversial figure at the head of WikiLeaks.

This week we look at Cumberbatch’s expected Oscar rise and how The Fifth Estate quickly died when faced with competition from bigger and more beloved movies. Joe finds a perfect summation of the film through The Simpsons and Chris defends the oeuvre of Bill Condon. Other topics include Josh Singer’s oddball Wikipedia page, Daniel Bruhl’s near-miss Oscar nomination for Rush, and this film’s bizarre opening credits sequence.

But most exciting this episode: a first ever perfect score on The IMDb Game!

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015 – Get Shorty

For a short time in the 90s, Elmore Leonard was an Oscar thing and post-Pulp Fiction John Travolta being due was also an Oscar thing. Both of those may sound confounding in today’s era of Gotti and an unwatched series on Epix, but this week’s film brings both of those statements together to prove them true: Barry Sonnenfeld’s 1995 comedy Get Shorty.

And guess what? We kinda really like this one.

Topics include the short-lived splitting of the Original Score category into Drama and Musical/Comedy, the early days of IMDb, and our love for the undersung Rene Russo. This episode also finds Joe revealing his secrets on remembering film years and Chris delivering his “Blythe Danner in To Wong Foo” impression.

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014 – The Door in the Floor

This week’s episode is the sound of something trying to not make a sound. It’s our first failed Oscar buzz movie that we genuinely love and it’s 2004’s The Door in the Floor. Adapted from the first segment of John Irving’s A Widow for One Year, this film stars Jeff Bridges as a grieving novelist, Kim Basinger as his estranged wife, and Jon Foster as the young student spending the summer between them.

The Door in the Floor also introduced us to Elle Fanning and gave us what might be the best adaptation of Irving’s work. The film feels like a crucial stop on the path to Bridges’ eventual Oscar for Crazy Heart, and is best remembered for his performance. Or maybe, it’s just his muumuu caftan. Listen along as we obsess over the lore of Focus Features, gush over its underappreciated and oft-repurposed score, and gasp over the film’s cameo from a beloved Tony winner.

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TIFF ’18 BONUS – We’re Far From the Scotia Now

We’re taking a break from our usual dives into thwarted Oscar buzz this week and taking a look at all the films we saw at the Toronto International Film Festival! Not only are Joe and Chris in the same room for once, but we also have our very first guests: The Film Experience’s Nathaniel Rogers and Film Comment’s Nick Davis!

Though none of us saw the eventual winner of that bellwether of Oscar buzz, Grolsch People’s Choice Award, Green Book (from Osmosis Jones director Peter Farrelly), we still have lots to discuss regarding Oscar and festival ephemera. Listen along as the four of us dive off the deep end to talk our favorites of the festival, our disappointments, and what at the festival we think will lose Oscar steam. Topics include: the ubiquitous love for A Star is Born, Juliette Binoche’s High Life sex braid, and a stacked Foreign Language field led by Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma.

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013 – It’s Complicated

Close your eyes. Picture the movie about kitchens you’ve always wanted. Now open them. Is Alec Baldwin blowing pot smoke into your face? That’s kind of what it’s like to experience the 2009 romantic comedy It’s Complicated, from celebrated (and beleaguered) director Nancy Meyers.

Since Oscar buzz follows Meryl Streep around like a heartsick ex-husband wherever she goes, this was a no-brainer of a selection for This Had Oscar Buzz. Join us for discussion of Steve Martin’s banjo commitments, the utility of Mary Kay Place as a gal pal, and whether John Krasinski was at one point a gay assistant.

Join Chris, Joe, and two very flirty Jack Ryans for our episode on It’s Complicated.

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012 – An Unfinished Life

This week’s episode takes you back to September 2005, when the exit of the Weinsteins from Miramax resulted in a fire sale of delayed releases finally arriving in theatres to the most modest of fanfares. Least trumpeted of all was An Unfinished Life, starring Robert Redford, Jennifer Lopez, and Morgan Freeman.

Here we have a film to fill your This Had Oscar Buzz bingo card: Lasse Hallström. An adaptation of a book about a grieving family. Scar makeup of debatable quality. A bear shows up. And of course, the oh-so-trustworthy source of test screening reactions from online message boards building up our hopes of a Camryn Manheim nomination.

What makes a life “unfinished”? As we discuss this week, it might just be having a name like Griff, living in the generalized American west, and (our favorite) winning an award we have never heard of before!

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011 – Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

In 1997 we celebrated a giant sinking ship with James Cameron’s Titanic, but we are here this week to talk a different cinematic capsizing that year: Clint Eastwood’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Adapted from the wildly successful work of nonfiction by John Berendt, this film opened to massive expectations its unimpressive production could never match. Riding the wave of Kevin Spacey’s first win as he stars as closeted antique meister Jim Williams, Midnight is likely more fascinating in the contemporary context of Spacey’s actions than it was at the time.

Listen along as we discuss the film’s half-hearted attempts at oddness, John Cusack’s Oscar nomination that has yet to happen, and our deep affection for the film’s greatest performer, national treasure The Lady Chablis. (Oh and we finally discuss those much-maligned Oscar changes!)

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