Oscar Talk: Ep. 69 — Ratner, Murphy, Grazer, Crystal, Freeman, 'Hugo,' BUSY WEEK!

Posted by · 7:58 am · November 11th, 2011

Welcome to Oscar Talk.

In case you’re new to the site and/or the podcast, Oscar Talk is a weekly kudocast, your one-stop awards chat shop between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. The podcast is weekly, every Friday throughout the season, charting the ups and downs of contenders along the way. Plenty of things change en route to Oscar’s stage and we’re here to address it all as it unfolds.

Are you ready for the most unorganized podcast of all time? This was perhaps the busiest Oscar week of the season. I forgot to ask for reader questions (sorry) and didn’t even get around to an actual rundown before recorded due to a big news item dropping right before we recorded. But hey, we can fly by the seat of our pants. Let’s see what’s on the docket today…

The Oscar telecast saw a lot of changes this week, starting with Brett Ratner’s resignation of the Oscarcast producing post, followed by host Eddie Murphy’s exit, then Brian Grazer getting tapped to produce and finally Billy Crystal coming on board to emcee. We talk about all the moving parts of this swiftly developing story.

There were a few other nuggets worth discussing, like “The Flowers of War” getting an Oscar-qualifying run. We discuss whether it has much of a chance at landing any attention.

AFI Fest has been on-going all week, starting with the “J. Edgar” premiere last week and wrapping up with the North American premiere of “The Adventures of Tintin” (which we’ll discuss next week) last night. We talk about this and that.

Morgan Freeman was tapped for the Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award. We kind of talk about that.

Oh, and “Hugo,” which I saw this week after Anne caught it at the New York Film Festival. We disagree a bit on its Oscar potential. Plus lots more. We kind of just skimmed over a number of news nuggets.

Have a listen to the new podcast below with a Grazer and Crystal’s theme leading the way. If the file cuts off for you at any time, try the back-up download link at the bottom of this post. And as always, remember to subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here.

Subscribe to Oscar Talk

“Theme from Superman (Main Title)” courtesy of John Williams and Warner Bros. Records.
“It’s a Tower Heist” courtesy of Nas, Rick Ross and Varese Sarabande.




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