Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by the Enhanced Editions of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones books, which are currently available exclusively on iBooks, including the just released A Feast for Crows Enhanced Edition. It contains interactive character maps, hundreds of author notes, beautiful illustrations, a sigil guide, and much more. All these extras bring the thrilling adventure to life and help you stand on top of the Epic Storylines.
Get A Feast for Crows Enhanced Edition exclusively on iBooks at apple.co. Slash Game of Thrones, not available in all countries. I need to force that to be the room. Stand up and walk now.
Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm a couple of jump ins beforehand or maybe during the show, but we're in our best dinner where. Hopefully we'll get some of our best dinner.
Can we expect Sean? Can we expect Sean to get the right ear? The answer is no. That's fair.
That's happening. You still have time to vote for our new, the bell holder. We've taken ourselves out of this decision-making process. Yeah, our hands are too bloody and fun, right?
So at The Watchpot on Twitter, share the pod with a friend, vote for the bell. We also have on Monday, so you'll be able to hear the podcast version of our live video from Sunny on Monday. There's also going to be a special snippet of an interview that Andy did with Lena Dunham. TV's Lena Dunham, right?
She did. She talked about the episode that's airing Sunday night. It's Sunday night episode of Girls It Might be the best episode they've ever done. Lena came in.
We talked a lot about that. You'll get to hear some of that interview on Monday and then you'll hear the whole interview with the week. Yeah, and then we'll do, we'll have the whole interview during the week and then we'll get next Thursday. So we're all in good shape here.
So, but today's all movies all the time, which means I am wildly unqualified to be here because I'm sitting here with two hands of gentlemen who see all the movies. If only we were on a plane right now. I know. You guys, in six months, I'm going to have Firetakes on Helper Highwater.
But before we begin, I do want to ask this. We have some questions from Twitter, from listeners. We're going to handicap things. Sean has a piece up today on the ringer with his expert pro picks on who's going to win on Sunday.
And if he's wrong about any of them, just at him forever. Please, Chris Ryan 77. That's my job. That's my job.
But before we get into it, Sean, you know I movie challenged these days. But one thing I know about you is that you love cinema. You love cinema ever since you were a little boy in Italy going to that one theater. I believe it was called Paradise, so or something.
That was you. What I want to know, and I should also say some of my favorite writing of the year is what you write on your personal Tumblr site where you rank all of the movies. And again, let me be clear. All of the movies that splitinfinities.com for people want to check up on this, please don't.
Sean, where does this come from? Not like why don't we because we all love movies at a certain point your interest in seeing everything and then taking the time to reflect on them and rank them and consider them in such an area like way you have a day job. What a flattering question. First of all, let me just say I'm very honored to be here.
Long time listed on this podcast. I feel like I'm in the studio with the Eagles in 1975. This is really something to see in front of microphones. You're actually in the locker room with the Eagles in 1989.
Well, allow me to be ready to write in this situation. So you know, the truth is that movies are amazing for two reasons for me. One is just a purely emotional aesthetic reason and two is the analytical, corporate, maneuvering and the collision of those two things. And I think that's why as much as I love to just go to the movies and escape the way that most people do and have fun and think about not thinking about the rest of my life.
There's also an entire sort of industry apparatus. There's a lot of political action. There's a whole entire world that's built around the movie industry that is just as interesting to me as just kind of enjoying myself at Ant-Man. So the Oscars really is sort of like a pinnacle of that.
You know, it's the height of looking at what box office means, what visibility means, what gerrymandering means, what relationships mean inside the industry. You know, that seems sort of cynical, but it is something that genuinely intrigues me and keeps me going. And, you know, I'm always going to see 145, 165 movies a year. That's just part of my biological clock.
But this is a time when you get to kind of take stock of all that stuff and try to make sense of what it means. We were talking a couple of weeks ago, I talked a couple of weeks ago, I talked a lot about before the Grammys. And he was kind of talking about award shows and specifically Grammys. But just this idea that as a award show is not interesting to him, but one of the reasons why these kinds of celebrations are relatively important is that they basically set up something to rebel against that there's like a cannon and then you can have like an alternative version of that cannon.
The Oscars are a little bit different because the bar to entry and make a movie is higher than it is to just make an album. I mean, at this point, we can make an album right here with GarageBand. But you know, to make a movie and then to make the kinds of movies that we're all interested in, it actually is becoming more and more important in some ways to get Oscar recognition to be part of this awards conversation. And Blaland's box office success is an indication of that.
If that movie isn't being talked about five times a day on every website on the internet, I don't think it becomes what it is, right? I completely agree. I mean, I wrote about it in the piece today. This weekend across the barrier for the highest grossing live action original movie in the world in 2016.
I mean, that's astonishing. How much money is it? Where's it right now? 345 million dollars.
Blaland? Around the World. 145 million dollars for that? Yeah.
Against the budget of like 30 million dollars. I'm going to be your crazy old uncle on the show. That's ridiculous. Crazy.
That's three national and women yards. Do you know what that means? That means that Daemon Shizel's next movie that he makes the real armstrong. No, it's the New York Strong movie with Gosling.
Yeah. He might get a bigger budget for that, right? Oh, he definitely would get a bigger budget. I think the question is, is Blaland, you're right that the increase is sort of access to it because of the awards conversation has definitely driven a lot of the box office to it.
It's just been in the conversation for five months instead of just one and a half, like most movies. But this is setting a very tricky bar for a movie like this. And making a new armstrong movie make $400 million. It's going to be very difficult unless it's gravity and he dies in flight, which I don't know what happens.
That's not what happens. That's not what happened. One more La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La in takes because it was going to win all of the Oscars in a couple of days. But generally when movies reach this level, live action movies reach this level of success, there is a phenomenon tag associated with it.
Generally driven by younger people because younger people are the ones who often pay to go to movies, but not just once, but more than once. Are people in love with this movie? Because I'm saying this, I'm not asking this to be snarky because I didn't love it. I'm saying it because I am not, I'm not as plugged into tweening culture as you guys are.
And I'm really curious. Like are people buying the soundtrack? Are people obsessing over it the way they did Titanic or Hamilton, which was not a movie, but in a similar way became a phenomenon driven by young people's affection for songs and love stories? I think yes and no.
I think that there is a conversation that is happening on film Twitter that is just full blown backlash against the movie. I wouldn't lose sight of the fact that making $345 million is extraordinarily difficult. And while there are a lot of young people who I think have watched it, one of the reasons that it's done very well is it's really kind of cross-generation. It's definitely resonated with people who are generations.
So my mom loves this movie. My sister loves this movie. It's not just if it were only 18 year olds, I think it's probably fewer 18 year olds than it is 48 year olds, honestly. And it's like it can't be stressed hard enough.
Like Twitter is not real life. And just like the to this debate specifically where it seems as if there's this there's actually been venom for a while and for pretty much the second week it ever came out. It's just been like, you know what? Fuck this movie.
But in reality, I think it's just been increasing in popularity. That's for sure as it rolled out. But I guess separate apart from Twitter, the vibe I've gotten from a lot of people, cross-generation parents, response to it as well as as friends and colleagues. I don't know many people who have said, I'm in love with this movie.
This is the greatest movie. This is the work of art. I'm not in a pejorative way. Boy, that was a good time.
Boy, that was well done. Boy, I enjoyed that. And so I think a lot of the venom is also just people be grudging that because it is, I don't know many people saying and tell me if I'm wrong. I don't know many people saying this is an A plus.
I think people are saying this is a B. I agree with you. And there's something wrong with the B succeeding. I agree with you.
I think the thing that we can't lose sight of is that really has very little to do with the Oscars. Very rarely does the movie that people say this is an A plus win vest picture. The artist. I mean, even look back at last year's example of Spotlight, which is a very solid movie that many of us really like.
It's not going to stand the test of time with Casablanca and with Citizen Kane and you know, historic. It's not going to be an historical record of the greatest movies ever made. And it's very likely that the All Land is the same thing. But you know, among the Academy of the Old Saw, I think holds true in this case, which is this is a movie about young people who live in Los Angeles who are trying to make their show business.
I mean, what could be better catnip for Academy voters? Does it really? I'm going to throw something at you. It could be about young people living in Los Angeles learning about the Holocaust.
Then that would win. I think that that was the thing you can take away from the All Land, whether you enjoyed the movie or dislike the movie or thought it was vanilla or whatever, is that it was, it was a risk. You know, I mean, making a movie like this, even if it has incredibly attractive stars and pretty like, pretty like widely appreciated music in terms of like, it's just, it's really the way he has a jungle round. And if they don't, Ryan Gosling will teach you about that.
Is that it does suggest that there is an opportunity that some people, I mean, what we get is like five bad musicals, but you'd hope that what we get is five people being like, yeah, here's $30 million to make the movie of your dreams. And that's ultimately like the best part of the Oscars is that you hope that it mince people, you hope that it sets up people to make five, six more movies that pursue like a very specific vision. And to Sean's point, being a fan of movies in this day and age, it means more than just liking a certain movie, it means being invested artistically and politically in Damien Chazelle, not making Jurassic Planet next. And he chooses to make a new Armstrong movie.
That's a win for people like movies, even if we don't like his movies. Yeah. And you've been talking to these a lot of directors and on your podcast on channel 33, where you've been talking with some of the directors that are from awards and some just guys who are people who are making films right now. And you talked to Barry Jenkins.
I mean, you must have seen from talking to him, this is a career maker. That's totally transformative. I mean, Barry Jenkins, three years ago, had written five scripts that he couldn't get off the ground after making a micro movie in 2008 called Medicine from Ellen Colley. And now he is arguably the most in demand young filmmaker, save for Damien Chazelle.
He's in a slightly different situation from Chazelle, who was a very old school kind of boy, Wonder filmmaker. He's very Spielbergian in terms of the scope, the kind of stories he wants to tell. Now I call them Trevor Rose. Jenkins, you know, Moonlight is a five million dollar movie.
It was the first movie that A24 fully funded. It's still a very much an independent cinema pursuit. You know, his influences are like Wong Kar-Wai. They're not Steven Spielberg.
And so he finds himself in this interesting position. It seems like he's doing some things with Netflix. He's adapting the Underground Railroad, the Coulson Whitehead novel as a series. And then after that, he's kind of getting his pick to do whatever he wants on the big screen.
It'll be interesting to see which direction he goes. And I don't see him taking on Black Panther too. Because you can make a career doing that now. And I think that we're looking at this, I think people, I think we've generally looked at the career transitions through a very old school lens, which is certainly the way the studios do it, which is, okay, you make your little one and now we're immediately putting you on the biggest stage possible where you can crash and burn.
If you have a certain sense about you and a certain sense of your own taste and talent, you can just make stuff. You can do, I mean, I hate to say you could do the Fukunaga. You can, you know, you can shepherd something on television. You can direct a 10 hour movie and call it a TV show.
And then you can pick your spot and make your movie. You don't need to immediately jump into the biggest possible pool. I mean, that's gizm's all. I mean, that binary is the idea that, you know, we're seeing the Source Aisies next movie, the Irishman get snapped up by Netflix for something like $100 million and it's the De Niro hit-man movie.
I mean, that's a huge deal because that means that like there might, there is no country for old men. You know what I mean? Like, there is no space after silence, like, Source Aisies is not going to wait five years to get the movie he wants to get made. He's going to make it for Netflix now.
And hopefully they'll show it in theaters and if they don't, everybody's going to have access to it. Well, the other thing that this might challenge people to and we're getting a little bit off Oscars, so we should probably swing it back. But there are filmmakers who just want to make movies. And one of the biggest impediments to making movies has always been, it's impossible to make movies.
Not no different now than, you know, 10, 20 years ago, maybe slightly, maybe slower, but basically to get all the pieces aligned from budget to script to studio okay to stars. I mean, people can spend decades on a passion project and then lose all the mojo and all the momentum. Now you can make stuff. People want to make stuff, right?
People will pay you to make stuff and maybe that can be good for some people. Maybe it's where Sazy just wants to film, but maybe some other people want to take the time. Well, one thing that's interesting, I wrote about this a little bit in discussing the best documentary feature. You know, I'm almost certain that as I don't want to make America's going to win, but there's a strong push for 13th, which is Ava DuVernay's movie.
And you know, you guys talk a lot about the Emmys and the Golden Globes and a lot of the groundwork that Netflix has laid over the last five years there, winning awards and sort of pushing heavily in the campaign season. They haven't had as much success in the movie side of things. They don't have an Oscar. And I think that you're going to see in the next two to three years a really sincere effort.
If you look at, you know, Brad Pitt's next movie is an Netflix movie, you know, picking up a Martin Scorsese movie, the fact that they double their documentary up every year is a clear sign that that's really, you know, this disruption is such an overused word, but they really are trying to bust up some of the conventions of who gets to make and see movies. Okay, we want to take a quick break. Let's talk to some ringer staffers who we have recorded voice mails and they talked about the best picture that wasn't nominated for Best Picture, and when we come back, we'll talk more with Sean about Sunday Night's Oscars. Hi, this is Amanda.
This is Don Qua. Yo, it's Jason Gallagher. This is Allison Kerman. This is Zach Mack.
This is Christian. This is Mike Peters. Guys, it's Mallory. You know what movie was a dope?
Captain Fantastic. The nice guys. I'm telling you, it's Ryan Gosling at its best. It's better than Lola Land.
And my book for Best Movie of the Year that was not nominated for Best Picture is Fantastic Beast and Where to Find Them. There is a creature called Swooping Evil. One more you want the witch. And it's the most accurate movie about Puritanical Witchcraft from the 1700s you'll ever see.
Weener. The documentary and the Handmade in a Korean film. I'm not saying that Deadpool deserved to win like Picture of the Year or anything like that, but it was clever and probably the most fun I've had in the movie this year. The lobster.
Why the lobster you asked? Well, because lobsters live for over 100 years, are blue-blooded like aristocrats and stay fertile all their lives. Sully, it's really just like an exceptional, well-edited film that is only 90 minutes long. Best of all, it was just something that I still to this day kind of chew on and think about some of the concepts presented and I think it's been overlooked.
So let's get into this actual show, Sean. You wrote a really good piece today about kind of going through your own ballot, talking about the nominees and who you expect to win. And your intro is largely about we've been taught over and over and over again over the last 12 months not to trust the data that the cast can come back from 3-1 down, the Trump and win the election that comes through in the World Series, all these things. But at the end of the day, and I know that you're a very rational person, you arrived at pretty much a chopped ballot, right?
I don't know if that's a sub-tweet or not. I think you probably were like, even as a rational person, you probably had this like all these presidents over the last 12 months and make it sound like, we're going to be seeing no gifts up there, but you just can't possibly imagine. Right, it's not. It doesn't seem like it to me.
There are a couple of small factors in play here. One, Academy President Cheryl Boonizak has made a huge effort in the last 12 months to add 600 more Academy members as a response to the Oscar. So white controversy from last year. So you do have a lot more people of color, more women, more young people in the Academy.
You can see that reflected somewhat in the nominations this year, I think. I think a movie like Moon, like, starring eight nominations, even with all the critical acclaim is a pretty big victory for that movie in and of itself. It's possible that the addition of all those new people and maybe some of the overexposure of La Land backfires, I find that highly dubious. There's a chance that it actually goes the other way and that it's the most decorated movie of all time.
If it wins, it's been nominated for 17 Oscars and it could win 12. One of the questions we have from a Twitter user from Joshua was, other than Moonlight, is there any other film you think could topple La Land? I want to tack a question on my own onto it, which is, if Hidden Figures had been released earlier in 2016, it had been a summer sensation as opposed to, oh my goodness, we have a hit here at the end of the year, do you think that would have been better set up? When did you get to listen to the opposite of Christmas?
It was really some Christmas, yeah. I think the opposite is true. It likely would have been as big of a hit and I'm not even totally sure it would have been nominated, but there is a post-election feeling of uplift that that movie gives people it's a really old fact. Even much more so than La Land, which is borderline meta relative to the way Hidden Figures plays out.
That movie just makes people feel good. The performances are great, it looks clean, it's a story that people can easily comprehend and walk out feeling satisfied. That is probably a bigger dark horse than Moonlight. To me, I don't think Moonlight has a very strong chance of best picture at all.
I think it has a better chance and best director, best adapted screenplay, categories like that. La Land is still there. If it doesn't win, I will be stunned. Another question here from C3BO, who should be busy on set right now, I imagine.
But it's a little in many languages. Many languages. They're probably multi-task. I thought they wrapped episode 8.
They're always filming something over there. I mean Kennedy makes moves. Which of these nominees will actually be remembered in 25 years? I'm going to tack a question on two.
I just like piggybacking. I'm a question barnacle. Sorry, Twitter. But when you were talking about last year in Spotlight winning, I was remembering that Spotlight beat the Revenant, which was, so that felt like victory because I think Spotlight to my taste was a better movie and the Revenant was so thirsty to be this great movie that I found it exhausting.
But wrapped up in this question is the essential thing, which is not every year has an all-time movie. Certainly not every list of nominations has an all-time movie. And then you get weird years like 2007 where you have multiple all-time movies crammed in together. Do you think any of these are going to be put on some sort of film-print canon?
Is this a year that has all-timers? I wrote in the piece that I think La Land may turn out to be Chazelle's fourth or fifth best movie. To me, it's a very good movie. It's extremely well made.
You can see a lot of the craft. But it's not a classic. I think Moonlight is immediately an independent film classic. That seems like some sort of downgrade, but there's just a very specific mode of operation when you're making a movie at that budget and with that pursuit.
And it fits into a category of movies that we don't see as much anymore that sort of come out of Sundance or very small and chapped it along very carefully and are sort of expertly delivered to the audience that they deserve. Beyond that, I stand by Ojima in America, which I just think is an incredible achievement and basically has no precedent. It reminds me more of like Showa, the 10-hour documentary about the Holocaust than it does anything that came in that category or any other. I really think it should have been nominated for Best Picture.
But beyond that, I don't think so Chris, is there any iconic movie on the bunch for you? No, I thought that this was a really weird in between year. There was a lot of really, really good genre stuff that came out in 2016, but that was never really going to rise to the level of getting nominated for Best Picture. It was a pretty slow, in terms of the awards season fair, I thought it was pretty long to two-pointer, pretty good, not particularly efficient, nothing really blazing.
I actually wound up strangely. I think if you ask me what movie I thought about the most coming out of awards season, it was probably Silence, but that was more because I only wanted to be tested. I felt like that film was made by a real artist, not that these other people aren't, but I was like, this is a real shot of shot. I was like, I thought a lot about it, I thought a lot about the performances, I thought a lot about the messages in the movie and the symbolism in the movie.
But that was never going to be in the Best Picture. I don't even know if it's active or film, but it is a very compelling movie. It seemed like a transition year in a lot of ways because we're seeing talent working things out. Whatever it does, it doesn't exist.
No worthy. Whatever very Jenkins does, it doesn't exist. It's going to be noteworthy. Yeah.
Arrival, both for the talent on screen, behind screen, but then also as we discussed with Chris on the show, what it signifies because this was a non-franchise grown-up kind of genre movie that succeeded. It had stars, it made money, it was worthwhile. I thought you were going to say that as the movie thought about the most because even when I don't think I loved it, but it really resonated. So there's a lot of themes in this year that I think will carry over and bear fruit further down the line.
Yeah, I think the thing about Arrival is for Denis Villanue fans, it's probably their second or third favorite of his films and for people who are just sort of coming to him. I think there is something still a little bit opaque about the kinds of movies that he makes and some of it is very moving in spiritual. I just heard him talking on a podcast recently with the director's guild about the movie, the part of the movie that frustrates me most, which is the part of the movie that you most need, which is the Jeremy Renner's voiceover and he had him explaining how they were in the editing today for months, trying to figure out how to stitch this movie together, because he went out and shot an art film without heptopods and then he realized this movie didn't really make sense. And there's not a lot of precedent for a movie like that, getting this much Oscar's recognition, which I think is very cool and interesting but very similar to Chazelle.
I think he has four or five movies in front of many. It's from the line like that there was a lot of stuff off his car, he was like Josh Brolin was like, I had no idea where we were filming, like I just didn't know that this movie was going to be good or not. And he would come in and shoot, have me shoot this like standing against this sunset or staring at this wall. Yeah, I'm touching this shirt.
Yeah. But that's what you guys are talking about a really good point though, that there's going this will be looked at as the year, like, oh, that was the movie David Mackenzie made before this movie. That was the movie Jeremy Salia made before this movie. I think that there's going to be a lot of like the people who we were introduced to, who directed the witch, Robert Eggers.
Yeah, like, the next movies are going to be really cool for these people. Should we talk a little bit about what happened with Manchester by the Sea? Because that in some ways followed a more traditional festival arc. I mean, that debuted over a year ago.
Was it at Sundance or was it at Sundance? It was at Sundance. Sundance. So people came out of that movie, much like I did maybe you guys did too, just felt like we'd been run over by a truck.
It is in its own way, kind of a masterpiece, even though I had issues with aspects of it. It survived the long year. It got the nominations. But it's in a way, it almost feels, I feel like people have stopped talking about it, I've stopped seeing it.
I think that movie will be remembered for performances, certainly because Lonergan is just one of our great writers and so it's in his in his canon now. So I guess it's a two-part question. The role of the arc of that movie, of that movie's journey to now and where it stands. And then also of course, K.C.
Affleck, because the biggest surprise to me in your piece on the ringer is that you think Denzel is going to win, which I think I agree with you, but I'm curious about how you landed there. Well, that's for the first part. I spoke to Chris Moore, who was on the producers on the movie, Last Fall for Story. And he sort of talked about what we were talking about earlier, which is the reason that they decided to go to Amazon to do this movie, the reason they wanted to work with Ted Hope.
Chris was saying that he ultimately just wanted to sort of understand the state of the business now about using a streaming service to ship a traditional kind of Oscar-spersed each film through that system. I think that had a lot of success. I mean, that would be made almost $40 million, which is really good for a small character piece. I can't imagine they could have dreamed up more.
I mean, the movie was released, it was heralded, it cleaned up film festivals, it made money and it got really nice. Actually also not to get too inside baseball about it, but a movie that's almost unsellable became kind of this weird feel-good move. I mean, the way that they were able to invert the actual content of that movie to be like, it's actually like this life-affirming film. But without misrepresenting it, that's not again too though.
The one again makes the funniest movies about horror. It's true. All three of his movies, though, have also gone through interesting sort of marketing stages where they all are pitched as more life-affirming stories than they actually are. If you look at the posters from You Can Count on Me, you get the sense that this is like a Nancy Myers movie about a brother and a sister, figure and stuff out.
In fact, it's just this body cavity destroying exercise and destruction. But I think Manchester by the sea is just a huge success story in a lot of ways. It was never going to win Best Picture. I think that there's a chance that Langergan wins Best Original Screenplay.
The backstory of that movie is really interesting that John Krasinski and Matt Damon over some beers came up with this story and decided it would be a great project for a entertainment set of beers. It was much like the scene in the movie where they're all drinking and having fun and show Williams comes and yells at them. It was basically that night. By the end of the year.
Okay, we're going to take a quick break from our sponsor. When we come back, we're going to talk about the Best Actor Ace. We'll talk a little bit more about Sean's ballot, go through a couple other Oscar predictions and superlatives, and then we obviously have questions from Twitter and Facebook. Hey guys, just want to take a quick second to talk to you about driving for Uber.
We've all taken some jobs to earn extra cash back in the day. I used to work as a lifeguard. It was a very fun opportunity for me to be a fool. I got a better way you can earn cash.
You don't have to be a lifeguard. You can earn some money on the side and it's so much easier today thanks to Uber. Uber is the ultimate side hustle. Driving with Uber is a new way to earn extra cash whenever you want and it's not just another job.
It's a totally flexible way to earn. You can turn it on off just like your car. If you have a few spare hours here and there, drive with Uber. Have you ever wanted to be your own boss?
I bet you'd make a great boss. Drive with Uber and you are your own boss. If you're driving right now, you should be earning right now. I do it if I wasn't so busy recording podcasts with the 80.
Every day is payday when you drive with Uber because you can cash out any time with instant pay. With access to instant pay, you cash out your earnings five times a day with no minimum amount required. Listen, if you enjoy earning extra cash, if there's something special that you'd like to buy, your car can start making money for you. So go ahead, get your side hustle on.
Sign up to drivewithover today and go to uber.com slash drive now. That's uber.com slash drive now. U-B-E-R dot com slash drive now. Hey guys, I also want to tell you a little bit about the other sponsor for today's show, which is Crowd Cow.
Crowd Cow lets you buy the very best beef from Happy Cows, raised without growth hormones or growth stimulating antibiotics on small, sustainable ranches. It is delicious stuff. They have everything from green fed to grass fed beef, tried and true Angus to buttery wagu, all delivered straight to your doorstep and every cut is dry and from maximum flavor. You know that then flash frozen and vacuum seal to keep it fresh and easy to store.
Plus their website lets you learn all about the rancher cow came from, which is pretty interesting. Reserve strip steaks and tenderloins or petiturists and try Oxdale. I love Oxdale. You can get shank, even bones to make those rich stocks and brats.
They sell entire beef head to tail. This is premium beef. You really can't find it anywhere else, including high-end super mortgage especially stores. You want to visit crowdcow.com to learn more and our listeners get $10 off their first order when they go to crowdcow.com.
Watch. How good is that? That's crowdcow.com slash watch. It's $10 off your first order.
Go there now. Move. Okay, we're back. We're talking about Best Actor because this is probably the one award that no one could make.
No one's really sure it's going to happen here. I think that there is obviously Casey Affleck had the it's his time, it's a lock, it's the best performance, it's going to happen. Obviously a lot of off court issues to say the least for Casey Affleck over the last few months that have kind of come to light. There's a really good piece in the New Yorker this week.
I believe it last week. Michael Schonman's article about the ethics of award season, how these things kind of get adjudicated in public and in private behind the scenes in the Oscar industry. But leaving that aside somewhat, not entirely because it's obviously going to have it's going to play into this a little bit. We have seen over the last couple of weeks and months and I think a real sort of surge in momentum for Denzel Washington and his performance in Fences.
If I had to ask you right now, Sean, who do you think is going to be Best Actor? I think it's Denzel and none of this stuff is merit based really. But a big part of it is just looking at the fact that he won the SAG Award for Best Actor and that's usually a strong indicator of the direction this is going to go. Casey Affleck won virtually every other award and critics prize in the run up to that.
I think that a lot of things have happened in recent months. Some of it is the awkward issues that you talked about, the sort of revelations for certain people about two sexual harassment cases that he settled in the past. But some of it is also just the fact that people realize that they love Denzel Washington and then people just really want to see and be around Denzel Washington. I mean, just as a movie fan, I watch every Denzel Washington movie and he makes a lot of bad movies.
He's one of the greatest movie stars we have, if not the greatest. This is his passion project. He's, you know, Titanic in it. He directed it.
It's merit based in the sense that any of these things are merit based. I mean, it's hard to argue against Denzel Washington, winning almost for whatever part he's in because of what he brings to it. And as you said, people love him and people love having around at these shows. And he's sort of weirdly morphing into one of those old lions that you want in the front rows.
He's kind of coming at it. And even in this award season, he's a notoriously sort of bad. He's like, you get sometimes good Denzel sometimes you get bad Denzel. I think he often likes some of you last my question.
He's like, why ask me that question? You know, like, it's like he'll go after you. But he seems quite charming over this. You can tell this is something he probably wants.
He's like, he's doing viral videos and stuff. And it's, it's, it's, it's cool to see it happen. But you kind of feel like he knows it's in touching distance in a way. It's a very interesting old school movie star character study in Schulman's piece that you referenced.
He in a passing notice says that there are movie stars who still don't know how to turn on the charms when they're out campaigning and he cites Denzel and Tom Hanks. And those guys are obviously contemporaries. They're both two time Oscar winners. They have very similar careers in a lot of ways.
And those guys, people like that, they're very people who have won more than two Oscars and from in the acting categories, I think it's only six people. And they tend to be those sorts of people. They're Catherine Hepburn, they're Jack Nicholson. They're people who people just want to be around.
It could be depending on Tarantino's next film. But Denzel crosses the bar to win a third award. And now I will say, just as a fan of movies of Oscar history, like don't really like the idea of Denzel having a third Oscar in the same way that I don't like the idea of Jack Nicholson having a third Oscar or a mayoral street or anybody else, just because I think it tends to distort our perception of what great film is because people still do use this as sort of a Ouija board for what the movie's movie history is. Not necessarily because I think like Andrew Garfield deserves it this year, but I do prefer to see it kind of spread around.
I think there is movies something interesting about Affleck winning and what that would mean for sort of the dispersal of awards in the season. Also, their performance is Titanic. It's an incredible performance. The other thing that tends to happen for these kinds of movies, I was thinking about how if and when Robert Downey decides to make a real movie again, he should have, I mean, he was probably thinking this for the judge, but he will be the first person because he's a hugely star super charming.
Everybody wants to talk to him. He's a great interview. He'll be great at an award show, but he hasn't done anything to merit an award. But the fact is that he makes so much mainstream bad blockbuster popcorn stuff that you have to catch that while it's there.
Denzel, you would say that about and you might be like, oh, is it going to do Magnificent Eight next year or whatever? But Denzel Washington might be up for an Oscar next year for Intercity. The funny thing about this specific one is it's not a, we got to get this last one to Denzel. He could still be up for one to three more back.
Yes, but he's that good. And he works that much. Sean, I want to ask you a little bit about your ballot. We'll share that on Twitter from the watch button from the rare.
But was there anything in this year's lineup of awards, I kind of want to help people out if they're doing like a pool at home. Is there anything that they should keep their eye out for on some of the technical awards? And is there anything that you saw where you're just like, you know, if this happens, then expect the law to land sweep? Yeah, it's an interesting question.
Generally speaking, I think in almost every technical category in which law land is going to win. That includes costume design, costume design, and law land is bad, is actively bad. And I don't think it matters. I think people, there's just such a wave happening here.
I think if someone like Maharsha Ali, who's up for best supporting actor, if someone like him loses, then weirdly, even though there's no one nominated for law land in that category, it means nothing. It means moonlight's in a lot of trouble in general. And it means, I think in many ways, that law land could win 14 Oscars. So there's a few things to look out for in that respect.
Likewise, if law land wins Best Original Screenplay over Manchester by the Sea, which, you know, is one of the more intense races, I think. Because one movie is well written and one movie isn't. Well, you know, it's all very debatable. Like there are a few locks that are Best Original Song, Best Original Score, Lawland, we'll just win those things outright.
If Lawland wins Best Sound Editing, you know, we know that we're in for a very, very, very long night of Lawland. Question for both of you guys. Throw out probability, throw out reality. What is one award that you just personal passion thing that you just love to see win?
Marshall. Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was just incredible. That's a really good question.
I don't know if I've really given that a lot of thought. I loved L, and I think Isabella and Pear winning would be an interesting thing. I mean, there is some precedent for an actress from a foreign country or an actress who has, you know, been considered iconic in some respects, but is very undervalued in the American Hollywood awards system. L is just a very, very difficult, transgressive, not Oscar-friendly film.
So I think it would be interesting to see that rewarded. It would reveal maybe something about the state of the voting body now, but I don't think that's going to happen. I want to see Yorkie Swin for the lobster. That would be pretty cool.
We had a piece of that about today that Adam Nimmer wrote about it as the most original Best Original Score, I just think it's even when it doesn't work, God, it's awesome. Do you guys want to ask? Do you want to ask? Do you want to ask a question?
Let's do a lightning round here, some of these questions. This one actually for both of you guys, I think we'd want to weigh it on this. Chris, potentially Chris Ryan for being honest, what does Ray Fiennes have to do to get nominated here? He has been nominated, so in the later half of his career, the fucking balls out awesome half of his career.
I think he just needs to keep doing what he's doing. He's making such good choices in terms of the movies. He's being in one of them will hit. With it it was a simple thing.
So which of the late, can I put you on the spot? Like which late period, Ray Fi would you most like to see just covered in gold? I mean, I said a bigger splash was my favorite movie last year. It was my number one, and he is on one and two and three in that movie.
So it's one of those things where in a similar fashion as a pal who pair is just a little bit too over the top. I was a little bit too small and too as a film, but almost anything he does now is interesting. He should have nominated for being Voldemort. I mean, there are things that he's done that we take for granted.
I mean, he is always interesting. He's good in the James Bond movies, and he literally has nothing to do. This is a question from Andy. Do we write these questions?
Another Andy, I shouldn't best director and best picture be consolidated into one award. Does it make sense for them to differ? No, and I wrote about this on the ringer, on the ringer, which is a website. Look at this.
The thing about it is filmmakers want to acknowledge achievements and filmmaking without acknowledging the totality of a movie. So if you look back at Angley's two wins in 2003 for Broback Mountain and in 2014 for Life of Five, you can see that these are basically an acknowledgement of an achievement that only one filmmaker could pull off. And it's not necessarily the Academy loves those movies because neither of those movies want to best picture. It's that they love the filmmaker and the way that he approaches the work.
And I actually think that that makes a lot of sense. I don't think that best picture and best director mean the same thing, because best director is somebody who certainly isn't charged and is leading the charge and making a lot of choices. But the way that a movie exists in full is not only up to a director. Producers are huge part of movie making writers are huge part of movie making actors of course.
Like, there's been taking a lot of things into account. In some ways the best director award I think also acts as a an extension of the logic that goes into best actor and actress where there's a lot of like deserve there's a lot of it's their time. It's like you've seen that with Spielberg where it's like it doesn't always wind up being the best picture because maybe the movie that they made it's not that movie's year but it's their year. And so it's always been like to the extent that any of this stuff makes any sense.
I do understand that the split there. A question that I am not qualified to answer absolutely. And you wouldn't want to hear me anyway. James this question better Amy Adams performance in 2016 arrival or nocturnal animals.
I really did not like nocturnal animals. I'm gonna go with the rival because she pretty much just reads the nocturnal animals. A woman reads a book. The motion picture.
Did you the question from Christian is when will the Oscars go back to nominating 10 films sincerely loving Deadpool silence etc. I was not a fan of I mean I guess maybe Sean you can talk us through it. It's still possible they could have done 10 right that rule is 10. So what's your opinion can you restate that rule and then also what's your opinion on more nominees versus less.
Yeah there's just a voting threshold that a film needs to get to there could have been as few as seven this year but there were nine. I think that there just wasn't enough enthusiasm for Deadpool or loving or any other movie that we really like that we hoped had crossed that threshold. You know last month I wrote about my desiracy Deadpool in the mix in the top 10. Not because I even liked that pool.
I think it's perfectly fine. Like most popular movie on every flight I took. I believe that literally every every screen probably the most pirated to. But the thing is is just the Oscars needs to pierce its own bubble a little bit and I think it actually would be a good thing.
It doesn't just have to be Deadpool. I think it could be the Hunger Games. It could be any number of things that should find its way into that conversation because it just brings a new audience to the show brings a new audience to this podcast. I think it's gonna come to play next year because I could see Logan getting nominated.
What? I could see. Have you guys seen it? I know I just tons and tons of it.
Is it good? The answer is yes. Wow. And I could see episode eight getting nominated.
Yeah, I think that if any one of these franchises is going to have to be a sepierce the bubble, I think it would almost have to be Star Wars just by the global scale of it. I think I would imagine. I think it would come out earlier. I might have.
I think episode nine. I think they tend to they love finales. I mean Fellowship of the Rings. That would be called that one.
You're part of the Trevor O'Hive. Look, I want the Ryan Johnson one to be the best one because I think he's the good filmmaker. But I think the last one will probably get it. Yeah, there is precedent for it.
I think the thing about Deadpool is it is actually not like the Fellowship of the Ring or the Two Towers or any of the Lord of the Rings. It's not that movie is still about prestige in a lot of ways. Based on IP that is slightly more Tony, Deadpool is like a dumb Shen fan movie. And there's like there's no history.
I mean, he was like that being acknowledged by the academy. So it would be interesting. Even Logan has this deep, gritty, hard-won, autorist vision of a superhero. It would be fun to me if something stupid got nominated.
Because a lot of stupid prestige stuff gets nominated all the time. And there is this weird variance where we're allowed to talk about lion. Like it really matters. But we have to say Deadpool is stupid.
That was the sweet spot that Fury Road hit for a lot of people. Essentially like this insane car chase. But it was such an insane car chase. And it was so well done.
And there was everything about it. It was so no perfect. That in retrospect is kind of like how did that not win? Even then George Miller was a hugely lauded filmmaker who had directed babe and had built this entire bed max universe.
Yeah, there's no precedent for a first time director making a comic book movie that has cursing and fart jokes. The really interesting thing will be as we're entering this phase where you have mangled trying really hard with Legion Fox is being more more mutable about this and more flexible about this. It was a bad pun. But I would even say with all the caveats, like what would know how he was trying to do with Legion.
Like can someone who was trying to be more artistic play in the sandbox and get it to a certain place. I mean, I think honestly it would be more interesting to see a non-IP, non-franchise take on this kind of genre stuff. Cause genres always been a challenge. Westerns were the superhero movies of the day and they weren't nominated until you become a little bit more prestigious.
And then you end up with like, you know, true, what do you call it? Unforgiven. Many, many years later. True, right.
That's what I was trying to say. But in terms of superhero movies, to your point about lion, what's a superhero movie that actually won an Oscar in its Birdman? Which is a high, you know, a chin-scredging Tony commentary on the banality of superhero movies. That's completely true.
We'll see what happens. I think that superhero movies are in for an interesting run in the next 10 years. They're going to change a lot because once they close this adventure cycle and once DC figures out what it wants to be, which will happen in the next two years, there actually probably will be more Logan's. There probably will be more stories that have more modest ambitions and smaller scale approaches and there are only 75 million dollar budgets instead of 180 million dollar budgets.
And those movies are going to do well. And so that is going to change up. Any more quick questions? One more Sean?
What's this is my this is from this Andy. What speech are you most looking forward to? Now, the last because this is a question purely about the Oscars as televised television show. I think that the most anticipated speech is likely Viola Davis because there's going to be and we haven't really talked about Viola Davis, who's not made for Best of Foreign Interest for Fences.
Apparently a lead performance, but there were people playing the game right? Yeah, there was some what's described as category fraud, which is not a phrase that I like very much. But I think that she is in line to give us this both highly personal and highly political and will be about opportunity and the chance to do great work while also being yourself. Hopefully, my hair is a little bit wins.
His speech at SAG was amazing. And I just I wrote in a piece today that I just think he has an amazing career. He's 43 years old. There's really no precedent for a guy like this becoming a big movie star.
But he might be. He's wonderful. He's interesting about him is when he came on, I never seen him. I don't think before House of Cards.
He comes on the screen in House of Cards. You're like, who is that? Totally. Who is this incredible charismatic movie star?
I'm Dan and then by the way, he just works Congress just like a like a speed bag. And then he shows up in like as the second villain or the in Luke Cage, you know, which is fine. That show is fine. But like talk about biting your time.
Why isn't he getting these parts and maybe now he's going to get a lot of activities. Yeah, so let's wrap up there. We got a lot planned for the watch after the Oscars in regards to interviews, book clubs, mail bags, discussing tons of television on HBO and otherwise. If there's something you feel like we're neglecting, show-wise, feel free to tweet us at the watch pod.
If there's something you feel like we're neglecting, feel free to tweet us at the watch pod and we'll try to accommodate you. And they have to pod. Yeah. And big things to come.
Stay tuned. Thank you all for your feedback and questions and see you Sunday night for the Oscars. I'd like to thank the Academy Bransky. Hey guys, just want to say thanks to Uber.
Get your side hustle on. Sign up to drive with Uber and extra cash whenever you want. It's totally flexible. You're your own boss and you can cash out up to five times a day with no minimum amount required.
Sign up today at uber.com slash drive now. That's ubr.com slash drive now. Thanks again to the enhanced editions of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones books which are currently available exclusively on iBooks including just released a feast for crows enhanced edition.
It contains interactive character maps, hundreds of author notes, beautiful illustrations, a sigil guide and much more all these extras bring thrilling adventure to life and help you stay on top of the epic storylines yet a feast for crows now it's the enhanced edition exclusively on iBooks at apple.co slash Game of Thrones not available in all countries.