Welcome to the first installment of Oscar Talk, a (hopefully) weekly podcast between myself and Anne Thompson, newly of indieWIRE. We spend some time getting our feet wet in this introductory kudocast, but among the topics on the rundown:
• Films screened thus far with the best Oscar profile heading into the awards season, including “The Hurt Locker,” “Up” and even some discussion on “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”
• Meryl Streep’s performance in “Julie & Julia,” what Anne calls “the story of the summer,” and how Streep succeeds into her 60s where her contemporary actresses have not.
• Oscar’s controversial move to 10 and what how we think it will affect the awards landscape.
• The rise of indie studios such as Overture Films, Summit Entertainment and Apparition.
• Shifting philosophies of Oscar campaign strategies
• Paramount bumping “Shutter Island” to 2010.
• All things “Avatar”: the new trailer, “Avatar” Day, etc.
• A festival preview as Anne runs down her list of anticipations at Toronto.
And then we ran out of steam. For now. I runs close to 40 minutes, but we had plenty to discuss in this first edition. We’ll whittle it down by half that in future installments, I’m sure.
Have a listen below. (Audio? How novel!) We’ll try to do another one from Telluride but the more consistent stuff will probably pick up in a month or so.
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36 responses to “OSCAR TALK: Ep. 1 — Best in show so far, campaign strategies, festival preview and “the 10””
She lost me when she said Michael Gambon could get nominated.
Haven’t seen it, can’t comment.
That was nicely done. You both spoke very well. And you aren’t missing much with Harry Potter, its utterly disposable. I looked up the budget because she mentioned it and holy christ! it cost 250 million dollars for a movie that is three-fifths an episode of gilmore girls. The cinematography is good but I certainly think(or atleast hope) there will be 5 better works this year.
And you both are right about Avatar, there’s only 1 way to see it and that’s on an Imax-3d screen. I also saw it in normal 3d and it sucked balls. The trailer in 2d simply doesn’t represent the movie in any accurate light. That’s kind of a disadvantage too because your movie is so bound by the medium. The script in typical Cameron fashion seems piss poor(the dialogue was ludicrous) but the visuals truly hit it out of the park. No amount of visual effects will compensate for a script but it looks like good escapist fun.
Loved your first Oscar Talk….so glad we’re just about into Awards Season
Great first attempt at a podcast, with some great insights.
Needs to be a little tighter, but luckily you’re both interested [in the subject matter] and interesting enough for that not to matter.
Early reviews for creation are appearing in film magazines over in the UK. You can probably pick up a copy of Empire or Total Film over there to get their thoughts. Both mags are aimed at the multiplex crowd so there’s nothing in depth but curious to see what they’re thinking.
Now that you’ve seen the Informant and the Road when will you be able to comment on them?
If anyone’s got a shot from Harry Potter, it’s Jim Broadbent. Gambon’s performance was laughable – but I’d blame it on the dialogue.
Definitely deserves cinematography and art direction nods though.
Enjoyed this very much you two! I’ve seen An Education and agree with what you had to say on that one and even though it is so early I do think it will boil down to Mulligan v. Streep in the end. In some respects I would like to see Meryl finally get her just desserts — as Ms. Thompson says, she is kind of beating the odds, making money AND doing great work. Though it could be quite hysterical to see Streep get an Oscar on the same night as Mo’Nique!
Will there (or is there already) a iTunes feed of this podcast?
Will listen on Monday at work….
This is really fun!! I LOVE OSCAR SEASON!
Mike: Will probably add one, yeah.
I think the 10 could work because it’s something new.
ATONEMENT my friend says ” That must be one of those oscar movies” not that my friend is a AMPAS member but a lot of people refuse to watch “oscar” movies for some reason and the recent fare at the B.O. might have something to do with the last few nominees. With the exception of a few (Slumdog, No Country, etc.)
I too think the 10 BP nom switch benefits more of the same, rather than some sort of olive branch to pop films.
I am curious if Up and Avatar somehow miss out (the two obvious big name money earners in contention) whether or not the 10 BP noms will be seen as a failed experiment and we’ll return to 5.
I’d again assume Pixar (this time with Toy Story 3) stands a good chance of being nominated with 10 films next year, as would Deathly Hallows Part One and to a lesser extent, Iron Man 2.
It’s unfortunate that Sharlto Copley has very little shot in cracking the best actor category. I thought he was amazing in ‘District 9’ and I agree with you Kris in that his performance is the best this year so far. Nevertheless, I think ‘District 9’ at least has a slightly better shot (still pretty nil though) than Copley in getting nom’ed considering the expanded 10 slots. But yeah :(
In my consolation, at least Christoph Waltz is pretty much a lock for a nom.
Obviously i’m anxious to see it…but i’m interested in what the reception will be for The Lovely Bones…since according to Anne or what she’s heard….paramount didnt “love” the first cut, but Jackson said after he showed them a cut of the film in late 08…they moved its release date up 9 months….so i’m interested to see how it all plays out.
Great to see you guys jump into podcasting. Ever since I started following the site last fall I always thought a weekly podcast from you guys would be cool.
Looking forward to many more (hopefully via iTunes)
I’m having trouble submitting the playlist to iTunes. Weird error message. You can subscribe to the feed, but I can’t submit it separately. Weird.
It would be cool if you did it in video for the people that are more visual-minded but I’m sure there’s a reason audio is being preferred.
Yeah, Broadbent is the standout in “Half-Blood Prince.” Great work.
I like the audio. It loads in a much more reasonable amount of time than a video would.
I don’t think video is really viable for these things. What, me and Anne’s faces up close and chatting? It always looks shoddy to me, and it’s not like we have a set or something to make it look better, so I figured old school was the way to go.
This was a great listen, and a great idea. Unlike others, I wouldn’t be too concerned about tightening … when two informed, intelligent people are talking about something I’m interested in, I’m personally happy to hear as much as they’re willing to give.
And yes to audio … it’s not like we have no idea what you guys look like.
Finally, thanks to Anne for seconding my “Fish Tank” endorsement and confirming that I’m not completely out on a limb over that one.
I’m very sorry – I really didn’t mean to offend with the tightening comment.
I really did enjoy your chat, and I’m looking forward to hearing more of you as the season progresses.
It’s brilliant to hear an open debate from two people who are as interested and knowledgable in the subject as Kris and Anne.
I don’t think anyone took offence, BJT. No need to apologize for expressing a constructive opinion.
Since you mentioned “Inglorious Basterds,” I’ll add my voice to the chrorus: I just saw it last night, and I can’t remember a movie that impressed me more since “Mulholland Drive.” There are irritating things about it, yes: it kind of reminded me of a “South Park” episode in that the silly pop references are balanced well with artistic and intellectual sophistication until suddenly they no longer are and you get a fart joke (in “South Park”) or bad Italian accents (in “Inglorious Basterds). Also, the scene in the basement bar is a bit unshapely. It has a bad red herring where the Nazi guy bullies the other four into playing the game with the cards on their foreheads and we expect that he will use the occasion to trip up the British guy with a German literary character that no foreigner would know. (The Nazi places himself to the left of the British guy so he can be the one who supplies him the card on his forehead.) But the British guy is tripped up for another reason. The Nazi’s agenda in that scene is a bit murky, especially compared to the agenda of the Christoph Waltz character in the opening scene in the French farmhouse, which is amazing. But those reservations aside, I was deeply impressed. The movie is repellent and fascinating and sophisticated and intelligent and very well crafted and well cast. I would expect it to make the top ten list of best movie nominees for sure.
Frank, do you recall what Lt. Archie Hicox’s card read?
Loyal,
I tried to catch what the card said, but I didn’t see it. The Nazi has “King Kong,” and one of the other guys has “Marco Polo,” I believe.
Enjoyed it a nice run down of the season and I agree with both Guy and BJT some tightning would help to keep going but we do hear the true enjoyment you have for the subject and that helps ALOT.
What worked: The concept. I looked for a podcast like this last year and was dissappointed in what I found. I’ll be following this and recommending it on Facebook. It’s great to get your depth and level of insight in a format I can listen to on the treadmill. (So that’s a vote for audio.)
What didn’t: I think the two of you agree on most things. That leads, frankly, to insular thinking. For example, you both say The Hurt Locker is a top five film but it came and went very quietly months before the Oscars season. Someone needed to stop you and at least get you to justify that more (and a dozen other things). And you’re both still fairly old guard at a moment of real upheaval in what films are considered worthy of consideration. In order to really capture lightning in a bottle here you need someone who lives and breathes Dark Knight and District 9 movies the way you do Milks and No Countries so you can portray the kinds of conversations central to this moment in Oscar history.
Actually, I spoke too soon. Once it gets going this IS pretty open minded to both commercial and uncommercial films. Sorry.
Henry: It was a discussion of likely Oscar nominees that have been released already. How could you NOT include The Hurt Locker in that?
Glad you listened further before committing us to a box, however.
Are you going to have a podcast only feed and/or placement in the iTunes podcast directory?
As I said earlier in this thread, I’m having some trouble doing that.
No no. The Hurt Locker is absolutely on the spectrum. I just find it hard to believe it will still be the movie everyone’s talking about five months from now. That’s like a snowball trying to survive a firestorm.
I liked the podcast idea. You both kept it interesting and I didn’t feel that either one of you rambled or stayed on one topic for too long.
Random thoughts from me:
I don’t think District 9 or Inglorious Basterds will get much Oscar love….they just don’t strike me as Oscar bait, no matter how good they are.
To me, Meryl is the only lock in the best actress race. The field is so wide open. Mulligan and Cornish are both unknowns to the general public and I can only see one of them, most likely Mulligan, scoring a nom here. Cornish is not popular in Hollywood, due to her cheating with Ryan Phillippe and breaking up Reese Witherspoon’s marriage (not a solid marriage anyway but Cornish’s image has been very tarnished by this). Anyway, the academy wants ratings and they want established stars, so the frontrunners in this category have yet to emerge in my opinion.
Anne’s list of films for Toronto was great, I hope she can discuss them here. I am very interested in Chloe, and some of the other films that no one has seen yet. I’d like to hear some actual reviews of Creation, which I think has so much awards potential. I mean…we’re talking about Charles Darwin, who remains such a contoversial historical figure that his life had never been explored before in a feature film. If Paul Bettany nails the role of Darwin; if he can put a human face on the man…..I think he’s a lock for a best actor nom.
Anyway I look forward to hearing much more from you both about all the festival buzz!
With regard to Cornish’s personal life, I can’t imagine that anybody in the industry seriously cares about that.