All right, here we go. Quiet! Quiet! Roll up!
Hi, guys. Welcome to The Big Picture Podcast. We're back again to take a look at the latest movie news, the films of today and yesterday, or should we just say just today, and try to put it into some sort of context. Seated across the microphone from me, as always, our master of ceremonies, our editor-in-chief, Mitch Davis.
And seated across the microphone from me is our mistress of ceremonies and Filmhub Online contributing editor, Natasha Boginski. Wait, did you just lose your words? How often does that happen? No, I did not.
I was going to put an edit there. Anyways, how's it going, Natasha? Hi. So it is one of the greatest days of the year for a lot of people and not so great today for other people, too.
And we're going to talk about that. Yes, it is, of course, Oscar nomination day, the day when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announces the nominees, the final nominees for their annual Academy Awards. And as always, there's some great ones. There's some omissions and some snubs there.
And we're going to talk about it all, just about all. We're probably going to skip over a few categories. But anyways, right off the bat, how happy are you for the guys from Godzilla minus one for getting visual effects? I screamed and jumped up and down.
I did not warn anyone in my branch when I was going into work and I was trying to set up everything this morning. I didn't warn anyone that, hey, it's Oscar nom day, so if I just start screaming like an idiot, just ignore me. It's because I'm an idiot. And so all of a sudden, I'm listening to it in my headphones, walking around, setting up my tail and everything.
And we get the visual effects, and I'm like, Godzilla, Godzilla. And they did. And I screamed bloody murder. And I was jumping up and down as if someone was moving a jump rope under me.
That's fantastic. Now, I don't know if you saw it online. The visual effects crew posted a video of themselves watching the nominations in Japan live. And they just freaked out.
I was so happy for those guys. It's a little movie that could. Toho was only going to leave it in theaters for a week at the beginning of December. Here it is midway through January.
It's still showing on some screens. And then in two weeks. It's getting re-released as Godzilla minus one minus color, a black and white version. And they didn't just slap a black and white filter on there or just desaturate the color.
It's a whole rethink of how every shot looks. Because I've seen a few of the shots, and they look marvelous. I want to see how they're going to do the heat ray in black and white. Yes.
So I'm very excited to go see Godzilla minus one on the big screen for a third time in a couple of weeks. It'll be my third time if I do that. I was very happy for them. And I also was very happy for the crew of Creator, a little science fiction film from back in the fall.
Kind of came and went. Not a lot of people saw it. I really liked it. I thought it was an interesting exploration of AI, which...
With John David Washington. Yes, yes. Which is something, you know, we desperately kind of feel timely about now with AI and things like that. And I thought the effect work in that was magnificent.
They also got a nomination, I believe, in sound. Sound, yeah. Yeah. So, and they were working on a small budget.
Not as small as, like, Godzilla minus one, mind you. But, you know, they still had a, you know, a not as many resources financially as, say, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which also, you know, deserves their nomination. Which is interesting because the director of said film is also the director of Rogue One.
And you want to talk about heading up a machine, that is considered to be one of the best Star Wars movies ever made. Yes. So, yeah, you know, he knows what he's doing. And he delivered the goods for a small budget and for a big budget, too.
So you can't quite knock it there. Just kind of going over some of the, I don't call them the lesser awards, but the awards, you know, the technical awards, some of the short film stuff. Not a lot of things are jumping out at me. One live-action short I'm aware of.
Okay, which one? The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar came out from Wes Anderson and was dropped on Netflix. Yeah, that's on Netflix. There's a few others in here that I, you know, have heard about but I haven't had a chance to see.
We're going to have a piece either later on today or tomorrow on FilmBuffOnline where you can see some of these short film nominees, live-action and documentary I'm trying to put together. I wanted to do one for animated shorts, but not a lot of them are available online for viewing as of now, which kind of bums me out. So let's kind of move along then to the marquee awards, shall we call them? You know, even just kind of skating by international feature film, which I like Society of the Snow, Teacher's Lounge, I thought was fantastic.
Zone of Interest is really good as well. I'm thinking of Mindie's Zone of Interest. I have a feeling that's probably going to be it, if only for the name recognition out of all five of those. I mean, that kind of presupposes that the members of the Academy are not going to watch all five, but are still going to vote in that category anyways, which is not necessarily a fair supposition to make about that category, but you never know.
So anyways, moving on. Let's look at some of these writing nominations here. Original Screenplay, we have Anatomy of a Fall. That'll be the winner.
The Holdovers, Maestro, May December, and Past Lives. All super strong scripts. I have, you know, a soft spot in my heart for The Holdovers, so that's going to be my default answer on all these categories, including this one. But also, I thought May December was well-written, as was Past Lives.
I'm going with Anatomy of a Fall here. Okay. As I've been watching the award series cooking up, that one seems to be collecting the most amount of awards. Yeah, these aren't our final Oscar picks.
That's going to be a whole separate episode. Oh, that's my final one in that category. Okay, okay. No, that's definitely it.
All right, all right. If you want to call your shot early, that's cool. That's fine. Now, Adapted Screenplay.
We've got American Fiction, which I'm super excited about. I love that film so much. Barbie, which I think is fantastic, especially doing what it does in terms of its thematic material and having to juggle several ideas about Barbies. And it does it so adroitly.
Oppenheimer, Poor Things, and Zone of Interest. You're thinking here. Was there anything here that surprised you? The only two films I've seen of these five so far is obviously Barbie and Oppenheimer.
I'm a big fan of Tony McNamara's writing work, period, across the board. But I have, without having seen Poor Things, I cannot say anything about that or American Fiction or Zone of Interest at this point. So, but I can, looking at the politics of things. Okay.
And I would say that this one, if it doesn't go to one of the others, it'll probably go to Greta and Noah for Barbie. That's fair. That's fair. Again, you know, American Fiction is dealing with some interesting issues.
I think Barbie, you know, when it's dealing with the fact that at various times in pop culture history, Barbie was held up as an ideal or held up as an impossible goal for young women, young girls to achieve. So it balances both those ideas in the movie. And I think it does a great job. So that gets us to directing.
Here we go. We're going to do directing. Then we'll have a little bit of a cool down while we talk about some of the acting awards. And then we'll finish up with Best Picture.
But the directing, and this is where we get into a problem. Yes, we do. Yeah. Okay.
We've got Justine Troye for Anatomy of a Fall. Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon. Christopher Nolan on Oppenheimer. Yorgos Lanthimos for Poor Things.
And Jonathan Glazer for Zone of Interest. And you think it's just going to go to... Nolan? Yeah.
I'm looking at the politics of this. I'm looking at the amount of awards he's racked up on the road to the Oscars already. This one, this one's a no-brainer. This is the politics of them saying, okay, you've waited long enough.
We're going to finally give you this. This is his 10th nomination, and previously he was tied, for the record, with Steven Spielberg at 9 nominations. Christopher Nolan has done some great work. You know, obviously, genre fans are going to immediately jump up and shout Batman trilogy.
But beyond that, I think Tenet is fantastic. Inception is great. So good. Interstellar is...
Yeah, he's done a lot of great genre work, period. I can't fault him for finding interesting things to do within those confines that make for spectacular films, but also very thoughtful and smart and introspective films at the same time. Is this his year? Maybe.
Maybe indeed. But yeah, he's going up against Scorsese, who has his 10th nomination, which, you know, he now is Having up to 10 features at one point, now it's just the top 10 for Best Picture, but only five spots for Best Director. And that invariably leads to the kind of sarcastic, well, I guess movie X just directed itself then. No, it just means that among the people who were nominated, they felt, you know, that there were still probably, you know, 10 directors that I dare say the directors who are having a film nominated for Best Picture but aren't nominated for Best Director still probably fall within the first 10 to maybe 12, you know, just to budget for a little bit of math there, of the overall nominees if you were to rank them by their votes.
We'll never know for certain. The Academy doesn't release that kind of data. But, you know, so Barbie is on there, but maybe she was just this sixth or the seventh nominee and they only take five. I think a better way to do this would be to do 10 directors, 10 pictures.
If you want your pictures to open up to, you know, 10 nominees so you'll create more interest in the race, it feels only fair that you have 10 directors there as well. I would agree with that. I remember several years ago when Dark Knight got snubbed, that's what created, or that's really what got the conversation going about, hey, we need to make a rule change on Best Picture because we're snubbing certain films that are going to be works of art, that are also speaking to the popular crowd. Argo would be nominated.
And Ben Affleck not getting a nomination for Best Director, even though the DGA, the Directors Guild of America, gave him their Best Director award that year, which was bonkers to me. You know, it is insane. And we're also seeing a sector where people are screaming, and they have been for years, about more inclusion in the race. Not just people of color, but more female filmmakers.
Natalie Portman a couple of years ago showed up at the Oscars and part of her outfit of the night was a cape. And the embroidery on the edge of the cape was every female director who could have been nominated that year and was snubbed in favor of an all-male category. Well, within the 10 Best Pictures, we do have three female directors, okay? So that's 30% right there.
So in Best Director, we only have 20% who are female. 20 to 30%. I mean, it could be better. It wouldn't make me mad if it was anywhere between 40 and 60.
But comparatively, 20 to 30% in between the two categories does feel a little bit, obviously not totally equal. My math isn't that terrible. Couldn't even say it had to be a straight 10 in directors, but at least open it up so they could go up to, I would be okay with eight, just to give a little bit of wiggle room. I think 10 is too much because then people can say, well, what about in the acting categories?
What about in the writing categories? Oh, yeah, it's a very slippery slope. I will grant you that. But I think it is time to open it up just a little bit more.
The beauty of actor and actress, leading and supporting roles, is that overall, you're giving out 10 to each. Yeah, they're split between categories, but it's still 10 awards. Whereas, or 10 nominations, 10 for actor, 10 for actress. And you're only getting five for director.
It doesn't feel right. I'm not even worried about Margot Robbie here. She is nominated for producer, but alongside three men as part of Lucky Chat. But she owns Lucky Chat.
She's the queen bee there. Even so, Margot Robbie doesn't need the acting award here. If Barbie takes home the big one of the night, she still goes home with an award. What does Greta Gerwig get that she doesn't have to share with her other half?
That's true. That's fair. I will say this, though. With no nomination for Greta Gerwig in directing, no nomination for Margot Robbie in best actress in a supporting role, and a nomination for Ryan Gosling in supporting actress, God darn it, and Ryan Gosling for supporting actor, and Ryan Gosling with a nomination for supporting actor, it does really look bad because it's all in relationship to the movie about how the patriarchy is bad.
So the optics on this are the worst they could possibly be. I mean, we do get a nomination for America Ferrera. And a friend of ours mentioned it earlier. Those two definitely are the standouts of the film.
They are. But the beauty of how Barbie works as a unit, all these actors being the most ridiculous that they can be and still having fun and seeming serious at the exact same time, is not an easy feat. It can easily turn into, this is so ridiculous, it's just flat out bad. But she works the cogs of this movie and makes certain that the gears all work as a single unit.
You can tell from the set design, the costumes, the music, all the way straight down. There are many sequences of this movie that wouldn't even stay in if she didn't put her frickin' foot down to the studio. The scene where Barbie meets Barbara on the bench, where she's seeing what it's like to be human all around her, and she feels it, would have been cut. I'm just Ken, your favorite earworm of this year, would have been cut.
One of the best song nominees. So yeah, so yes, definitely, you know, she protected a song that wound up being a best song nominee. It does go to show you that studio executives don't know what the hell they're doing all the time, and that she, as the director, her instincts were absolutely positively correct. I'm worried about how female filmmakers will start reacting to this in the long run, is the case of, well, if we can't get acknowledgment for creating entertaining work that appeals to a wide mass, bringing in billions of dollars, and still creating works of art in the same film, and Barbie can't do it, then how the hell am I supposed to do it?
It's going to cause more people to say, well, screw the studio, and we're just going to try to take it like Taylor Swift did this year. We'll try to sell it directly to a distribution through the cinemas or something. They are going to find their ways around this because they know that in the grand scheme of this, they are not going to be acknowledged for it. I don't think it's as intentional as you're making it out to be.
It's not intentional, but I know that over time, this is going to cause outrage. This is going to get people angry. I've already seen some people online upset about that. And I say, yeah.
I mean, yeah, she probably is one of those directors that really deserved the nomination. And like I said, looking at this guy, I'd probably kick Glazer out of there. Sorry, Jonathan. But it's just kind of how the math shakes out, I think, at times.
And it's not like there was a cabal of old white studio executives in a cigar smoke-filled room going, all right, what are we going to do about this Greta Gerwig broad? I know, but the Academy's PR team right now is probably going, well, fuck. How do we fix this situation? Honestly, looking at it strictly from a television event standpoint, not having Greta Gerwig in run for Best Director makes this a less desirable thing to watch for other people, for some people.
I mean, not for movie nerds like myself. Even just the whole Barbenheimer thing. Yeah, our friend JW over in the estate network mentioned that a lot of people tune in for the Oscars when they have a horse in the race. Exactly.
Yeah, you have Barbie going up against Oppenheimer in Best Picture. But no one's undefeated because Greta Gerwig's not even nominated. Yeah, and I would have preferred, you know, from the standpoint of getting eyeballs on the telecast. Yeah, I would have preferred her in there as well for multiple reasons.
So yeah, so there is that. Let's move on to acting before I throw my coffee. Yeah, I know. You're going to start on cat.
Looking here over these supporting actor and actress, again, some really good nominations here. Nothing I'm angry about. Maybe I would have liked Julianne Moore from May December in Best Actress in a supporting role. I'm not sure who I'd boot from there though.
Honestly, I think Divine Joy Randolph is the one to beat in this category because she's already kind of storming up and getting a lot of awards. I have, unfortunately, apart from Barbie and Oppenheimer here, I haven't seen the other three nominees' films in order to say. I'm really behind this year. I know I really need to, but I would probably say you're right here.
Divine Joy Randolph is probably the... Yeah, it's an understated but absolutely empathetic performance. She's just wonderful in it. And, you know, holdovers, you know, I also am hoping Paul Giamatti goes and wins Best Lead Actor.
It's probably his role of a lifetime. I also like Jeffrey Wright in here. It's going to Killian. Yeah, it feels like it's going to be an Oppenheimer sweep, unfortunately, because I think there are some smaller films that are just better.
I would agree with you here. But I think there's a popularity or a populist wave that this film is going to be surfing on. There is... I was really upset about one omission in the actor for leading role category.
And I know this movie is dividing a lot of people. You know, they're mixed on it. Some people are saying it's absolute trash. Some people are holding it up as, this is an incredible work of art.
any traction at all this awards season, which kind of surprised me a little bit and disappointed me a lot, actually, because there's some interesting things that happen in the third act that I don't want to spoil, but I want to talk about with some people, and no one's bothered to come to see it. Well, it hasn't been showing around here, and it's not out on streaming yet, so it's a little difficult for us around here to see it. Now, had directing been extended just a couple of slots, it could have actually fixed a lot of problems here, because you could have nominated Greta here, you could have nominated Bradley Cooper here, where he actually deserves to be. Lose him out of leading role and then throw up either Andrew or Barry.
Yeah, that's absolutely a great way to shuffle those around. Now, let's take a look really quickly, though, at best supporting actor. Sterling K. Brown is really good in American Fiction, but I don't see him getting it.
I don't think he's taking it home. I called it the moment I saw the movie. Robert Downey Jr. That's the performance from Oppenheimer that I would be very glad to see win.
I love Killian Murphy. I absolutely adore that man. I think he's one of the greatest talents that we've seen in a very, very long time, who is overdue in how much he needs to be appreciated outside of Peaky Blinders. But as I was watching Oppenheimer, it was Robert Downey Jr.'s performance that was blowing me away.
You could look at him and not realize you're looking at Robert Downey Jr., for goodness sake. Killian Murphy was wonderful as Oppie, but Robert... Let me ask you this, though. Are people being blown away by his work here, even though they seem to be blown away by Chaplin and a bunch of other films?
I think Chaplin's forgotten at this point. But everybody's kind of comparing it to Tony Stark from the MCU films, and he's just, you know, it's a very interesting character arc that he goes through over, you know, the course of 10 years and however many films he winds up being in, like seven or eight of them. And I wonder if people are just kind of like, oh, he's in a different mode than he is with Tony Stark. And they're just, oh, that's right.
Robert Downey Jr. is a hell of an actor. Well, he did one a couple of years ago that was very underrated. It was called The Judge, him and Robert Duvall.
That was one of the movies during his MCU time that he did that was separate from Tony Stark. Oh, yeah, yeah. And it was a self-type of performance. Yeah, and was completely forgotten about everywhere.
I think for the younger generation, Tony Stark is the only thing they've ever really seen him do. Sherlock Holmes, the way he played Sherlock Holmes is very erratic, but pretty close to how he did Tony Stark. Yeah, yeah. So you cannot look at those two and go that they're any different.
You just see one or you see the other. Tropic Thunder came out roughly during that time period, too. And they're like, oh, yeah, he's really good in this, but we don't talk about Tropic Thunder anymore, which is the funniest movie. But a lot of people forget that he was an actor for probably a good 20, 30 years before ever stepping foot into the goatee.
That is true. He also had, for those 20, 30 years, he also had some issues that kind of kept him from acting. So we didn't get as many performances to kind of solidify our idea of him as a really good actor instead of a really good guy who can play Tony Stark. Yeah, Chaplin is one of my favorite films I've ever seen from him.
And every time I am talking to people and they're like, recommend me some movies, and I'm putting a list together. I always include Chaplin because that one is a look at one of the juggernauts of film history, as well as being a great transcendent performance from someone who created the MCU as we now see it. Yes. So we're in agreement that you can kind of look at Chaplin and look at Tony Stark as they're the creators of this section of film.
Yeah. So you're in agreement then that he's probably going to win it. There's nobody that we would have put into this category anyways because they probably would have lost it. Well, there's actually one person I think who has a shot at beating him.
Who? Not Ruffalo. Okay, yeah. That's as close as you're getting.
I love Ryan Gosling as Ken, and I knew he was going to be nominated the moment I walked out of Barbie. I absolutely knew. I'm like, nomination. But then I walked into and walked out of Oppenheimer and I went, win.
It's crazy to think that on one weekend in June, so many Americans went to the movies and ultimately saw like 20 Academy Award nominations on the screen. They did the whole Barbenheimer. In the course of like six hours. That's what I'm saying.
No one can say that except, you know, if you're like a festival nerd like you or I where we're just like pounding through like three or four movies a day. I think that's really exciting, actually. And to see it kind of continue on through the year. Okay, so let's look at the actresses here.
What do you like? Who do you like in best supporting? Oh, wait, hang on. Just say leading actress because we've already covered supporting.
Yes. Okay, so I think just for the acting categories, that leaves us with best lead actress. It's going to be a wrestling match between Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone. It is.
And I love Emma Stone. You think I'm Lily? But I really would hope it's Lily. Me too.
Emma Stone's already had hers. Let someone else have it. And if, and also if Poor Things takes home best picture, Emma Stone's also a producer on that. Yes.
So she wins either way. Yes, exactly. Carrie Mulligan, like we said, she kind of wipes the floor with Bradley Cooper. But, and this is so, it's so tough to compare two different performances that are just so different in their approaches, I think.
You know, you can't say Carrie Mulligan approached and gave, you know, a comparable performance to what Emma Stone is doing in Poor Things or what Lily Gladstone is doing because they're entirely separate characters, their, you know, performances and services in service to entirely different types of movies. So it's always, these are always kind of frustrating on some level, but best picture. Oppenheimer or Poor Things. Yeah, I think those are the real go-tos.
Oppenheimer is the crowd favorite, I guess we could say. Poor Things is a film that is not for everybody. I loved it. We know people who have seen it who did not connect with it.
And that's fine. I think it would be funny if it won over Barbie because, you know, Barbie is like, deals with the same, some of the same themes that Poor Things does. It's just Barbie is, you know, more, has a bigger, yeah, for the masses. Poor Things is a little bit more, I don't want to say difficult of a film, but maybe challenging of a film for people.
I think out of the two, Poor Things will take, uh, if Poor Things takes it home, it's going to be because it needs help. If Oppenheimer takes it home, it will be as a crowning achievement to the work of all the work of Christopher Nolan. Um, Barbie will not need the award. It's the Star Wars of this group.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Barbie losing is like Star Wars losing to Annie Hall. Barbie will stand on its own feet forever. Yes.
Oppenheimer will stand on its own two feet for maybe a few more years. And then it's easy to get out. Is that what you're saying? Or am I just extending the metaphor badly?
It will. Okay. Poor thing needs a crutch. Ouch.
I don't know. Um, I'd like to think Yorgos Lanthimos will be remembered. Um, but I, I have a feeling, uh, he's an acquired taste almost. Um, and he might become more of a household name as time goes on, but I don't think people will investigate his film.
It's the same way. Like David Lynch is, most people know who David Lynch is. Most people have not watched all of David Lynch's works. Most people probably haven't seen a quarter of his films, but they know his name.
I would say Yorgos Lanthimos's name is becoming more, um, more prevalent. Uh, I mean, uh, Killing of a Sacred Deer, people are revisiting that one recently with, here we go. I'm coming back around with the popularity of Barry Keoghan. They're also looking at The Favourite was kind of his big one that kind of started to knock him into the stratosphere.
Yeah. Uh, the work of Tony McNamara, as well as some of Yorgos Lanthimos's eccentricities landed in The Great, um, the TV show about Catherine the Great, uh, that lasted on Hulu for three seasons. And anyone who kind of tapped into that, that was definitely made for the masses. So you can enjoy it while still getting a little bit of those ticks and quirks.
It's a, it's a nice way to get your feet wet before you go deep diving into the rest of his filmography. Um, people are revisiting The Lobster. It's, I'm starting to see amongst film groups, um, definitely more traction picking up for his work. Yeah.
Um, but I think, uh, honestly, Poor Things is number two, but O