Blank Check with Griffin & David - Critical Darlings: The Oscar Nominations Recap (And Also Some Talk About F1)

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

It’s Hollywood’s biggest morning! Join Richard and Alison (plus a vacationing Producer Benjamin Frisch) as they pick apart the biggest snubs and surprises of the year: Sinners breaking the all-time nominations record! The Secret Agent surging out of Neon’s international power lineup! The complete collapse of would-be frontrunner Wicked: For Good! Plus we take a conversation detour with Apple’s F1, the surprise blockbuster pulling up the rear amongst the Best Picture lineup finds alongside Train Dreams, Frankenstein, Marty Supreme, Bugonia, Sentimental Value, Hamnet, and One Battle After Another in the Best Picture category despite being a popcorn racecar movie about Brad Pitt going fast vroom vroom.  Subscribe to Richard's newsletter, Premiere Party, and read Alison's work at Vulture. Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Critical Darlings, a conversation about the award season conversation. One contender at a time. Please welcome to this stage, your hosts, Richard Lawson and Allison Wilmore. Well, thank you, Marie, for that spirited introduction, as always, but especially today. It's the day. This is the day we've been training for all our lives. We are at the final base camp before we summit. We're about to have a very confusing F1 race in which no one knows the rule.

but we're going to beat them somehow. Yeah, yeah. We're alone in studio today. Our producer Ben Frisch is on the line in Mexico. Hello, Ben. Hello. Now, did you decide to hide out in Mexico because as one of the lead producers of Wicked for Good,

you're kind of licking your wounds? I'm deep in shame in a mescalita right now. Is Mescalita with you? Oh, also snubbed? Paul Meskos. Yeah. Yeah, well, he's on the other side of the beach. Oh, I see.

Yeah, I take your meaning. He's looking sadly there, reciting to be or not to be as you do. In Spanish, though. Yeah, just a fun, though. Yeah. Yeah. It was genuinely an exciting morning.

A friend texts to be right before being like, I'm so excited. And normally this, for Oscar nominations morning, sometimes I'm in Sundance and it's like, you know, six in the morning or whatever. And I'm kind of like, whatever. We already know everything. But this year, I didn't know everything. And it felt great. And my sister, like, literally two minutes into like Daniel Brooks and Lewis Pullman talking, my sister called me on the phone. And I texted her and I was like, Oscar nominations are happening.

What's wrong with you? And then she told me that someone had died. But anyway, not anyone I know. But I was like, oh, shit. Were you excited? I was excited. I mean, I think there is something about this year where also there are a lot of movies that people have been talking about. So it doesn't feel like the general public has been interested, you know, in a way that I feel lends extra energy.

So there are times where, you know, you're like, oh, there are a lot of films. getting nominated that are near and dear to my heart and I'm invested in this, and no one cares. You know, like, you, the outside, this is so, it's too insular. The outside world is just not invested. And in this case, I feel like for better and worse, the world is watching, including but not for good. Yeah, but not for good. I will say also, I feel like this, this time last week, we were recording and you're like, we're like, oh, any surprises. And I was like, I think sinners is not going to get any traction. I'm just getting bad vibes feelings when like things are going. So never let me talk about vibes again because clearly radar is better.

A record-breaking amount of nominations 16, which blows past Titanic, All About Eve. There's one other in there. But that's huge and huger... La Land. La Land. Oh, right. 14. All of those got 14.

Lest we forget. Yeah, so two more than a record that, you know, before Titanic, All About Eve held for a very long time. And Titanic held for about 20 years. And now just, what, eight years later, here comes sinners. Part of that was that they had the two extra acts. nominations like in Delroy Lindo and when we missaka, that we weren't sure we're going to happen. But maybe the SAG Award nominations should have indicated that that was actually going to be a thing. They also had casting, which is like this brand new, exciting category.

And I think, I mean, there is something about if you're going to get the casting nomination, then also, it feels like you're getting this, they're vouching for the fact that you did a good job with the actors in your movie. So she should probably sign. And the dreaded thing of like Jack O'Connell getting nominated with Delroy Lindo, not. I was like, what if that happened? Or Haley Steinfeld and novel people suck. So, you know, the things happen.

And I think also, you know, we talked a bit last week about like Oscar Villany and Hamnet. Hamnet sort of underperforming while sinners overperformed. I think for my like sanity and peace of mind, like, I'm like, okay. So maybe from now until the actual Oscars, the discourse will be a little bit less fraught and more sort of fun. I think so. I hope so. it could be now set up to be depending on where you fall, sinners and one battle after another, getting chosen as the Oscar hero and Oscar villain, you know?

Yeah. And there could be plenty of toxic discourse around that. I'm sure we can pull it off. But for now, yes, I feel like, I feel a lot better, frankly, about those two movies, duking it out than about, like, Hamnet, yeah, being cast as this, like, spoiler that everyone. Because it just, I think, like, potentially brings out a lot of, like, just ugly. ugly stuff that is not related to the movie itself.

No, right, right, exactly. Yeah. Like Hamnet, you know, it's going to win its actress prize and that'll be enough. And, you know, maybe it'll... I mean, I don't know. Hamnet, like, not getting in cinematography

was interesting. She got in... She got in, Chloe got in a directing. Yeah, that's true. Which is big, you know. Yeah, cinematography, I kind of, I get the feeling that, like,

they were like, we can give one, one slot to kind of Malikian, dreamy, like, nature footage tabloes, and it's going to go to train dreams instead. Sorry. Only one space. You know, honestly, having watched both of those again fairly recently, like, I would give the edge to train dreams. Like, especially because they did so with, like, a lot less budget, and, you know, they were really out there in the middle of nowhere, like, just looping those

cameras around, you know, like Hamnet, you expect to be stately and look elegant. And it does, but train dreams, I think, yes, it's doing Malik Pastiche, but, like, it does it well. And I think it's one of the chief, like, selling points of that movie, so. Yeah, I think also, I mean, it's a little not that you couldn't also aim this at Frankenstein, which frankly looks a lot worse, but I think Hamlet tends to be a little, a little careful, you know, like, it really is like, look at this shot a lot of the times. And Train Dreams is lush and beautiful, but also feels a little more loose in that, in that sense, a little more alive in terms of how the camera moves.

And I think that, I bet that. helped. Yeah, it for sure did. But that still, nonetheless, Hamnet not getting in there was a surprise. Do we think that Hamnet, it's just at this point, Jesse Buckley, potentially even not, not, but well, her, the musical artist, her recorded an original song for Hamna. So I think that, you know, rogue and peasant slave, it's called. No, I really do think that Buckley will, at the end of the Oscar ceremony in, you know, six weeks or whatever, like will stand alone as the sole representative of that movie. I think the other seven nominations are just like honor to be here.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it was funny to me that Max Richter got original score also because like the talking point there has been not his original score, but the famous track he wrote a long time ago that everyone. And it has that weird echo of remember when the arrival score either it did get nominated right, but the problem was that

everyone thought that the Max Richter thing that's also in Hamnet was part of that score, but it wasn't actually. So, Mary, Max Richter just kind of like weirdly like drifting through. Yeah. I wonder how annoyed he is about that track at this point. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, being like, guys. Do you remember that Elizabeth Moss is in the music video for On the Nature of Daylight? No. YouTube suggested that video to me the other day. It's like, you know, however many years old. Neither did I until yesterday. So here we go. It's, I think it's just Elizabeth Moss like kind of wandering a street looking sad and then it cuts to other sad faces.

I didn't watch much of it. But I just think it's funny that there's a video for it at all. And that Elizabeth Moss is in it. Amazing. Yeah. Ben, do you have any questions about, like, how this all goes down? Because I think you might, you know, some of our listeners might not know. So my question is, like, obviously you've got a large voting body for the Best Picture nominees, right?

How do the actual nominations happen? Is that a smaller group within each body, or is it the same body's voting? Yeah. I mean, so the first step of the ever... every Oscar voting year is the short list. So there are certain categories as varied as animated short to makeup and hairstyling, the songs, you know, those are, that's like a smaller subcommittee. I believe it's largely people who volunteer to do that. Yeah, that would make sense. I think that in the same way, like international features, animated features and short films also have like volunteers who can nominate them. It's like volunteering to be like club treasurer, you know. You're like, oh, fine, there's a thankless job. But I'll do it. Or you're like, I just want to be involved. Right. Yeah. And coach. So that's what happens, you know, before the new year. And then after that, once the shortlists have been figured out, there's only really a five-day window for voting. So this year, it was January 12th through 16. So that was the Monday after the Golden Globes to that Friday. And then it closes and then they announced the nominations less than a week later. Right. Well, and they also, like, they also, the short list at voting was like in December. And that was also like four days, right? One week. So they did one week. short lists, one-week nominations. Yes.

And then the final voting will be, we'll start on February 26 and go through March 5th. Yeah. So they're really short, they're small windows. I think because they don't want to allow too much like gaming and whatever. But who is doing the voting on those nominations? So each individual branch will vote for, you know, if I'm in the sound branch, I'm voting for best sound and best picture. If I'm in makeup branch, I'm voting for that and best picture.

Everyone in the voting body does best picture, which I think is kind of how a movie like F1 gets into Best Picture because the tech branches clearly like that movie. Yeah, and then once the nominations are set, everyone in the Academy votes on every award for the actual winners. And how do you actually like

submit a movie? So you have to have played for a week in, well, they just expanded. It used to just be New York and L.A. and now it's, I think, there's multiple markets, but you have to have played for at least a week in a first run theater. And then it counts. And I'm sure, yeah, they do

You have to submit your film because they have to put it on the academy screening platform and all that. And then there are gamesmanship with that too where like places will be like we're not going to put our, we're going to be like, oh, we're working on it, getting a screening in. And they try and be like, well, if it gets up really late on the screening site, maybe it'll be the last thing people watch before voting. So it'll be the last thing in their mind. But that obviously can backfire as well and people just don't see your movie. There is some thought that the year that Anthony Hopkins won best actor for the father. whenever one thought that Chad McBowtham was going to win this posthum as Oscar.

Not me, I called Hopkins at Sunday and Sunday, and then changed my mind. But the father was one of the last things that the Academy saw, I think, kind of for that reason. And they were like, okay, so he was just freshest in everyone's mind, ironically, given the subject of that film. Right, right. Great film, though.

Yeah, I think there are probably there are little stratageons that happen here and there, but it's a pretty set process. And I actually do really like that it's a short window. because like if people could have like a month to figure out who they wanted to vote for for nominations, I think that really screwy things would happen. I mean, maybe fun, screwy.

But I feel like you would get a lot more people being like, well, I talked to my friend and they voted for this already. So I'm going to vote for this. Or, oh, then I assume that everyone else is also voting for, like, say Hamnet. And I feel like you could make the case that like there are movies that everyone assumes everyone else is voting for. So they are freed up to vote for this more wildcard choice. And is it first past the post or is it like ranked choice? Yeah, so it's ranked choice for Best Picture when they did reciting a winner. And then in nominations, I believe it's also ranked.

So it's, you know, they've tried to ensure ways for, like, to get more consensus rather than just sheer majority. But, you know, it's not a perfect process. But I think this year they gave us a pretty varied, you know, there were enough surprises. Yeah. And I think they did a good job of, like, representing the bigger movies of the year without it feeling. too heavily weighted. I mean, yes, Senors got 16 nominations, but, like, you know, one of battles right behind them with 13, like,

it's... Yeah. I mean, also, like, those were the two kind of, like, biggest talked about, kind of, like, possibilities. So the fact that they both did quite well, that they're, like, kind of these top-heavy nominations, I think, is a good thing. It's also funny that a movie with 13 nominations is not the leader. Like, that's crazy.

But, yeah, to the idea, Allison, that, like, voters kind of feel like they're left, let off the hook when it seems like, oh, everyone's going to go this way. So I'm just going to vote my passion pick. I'm convinced until someone tells me otherwise that that's exactly how Olivia Coleman won. Oh, yeah. Everyone in the academy was like, well, Glenn's going to win because it's her year. I didn't really like that movie or I didn't even see that movie. But like, she's going to win. So I loved that British actress in that weird, you know, queen movie. And then enough people said that.

And there went. Yeah. And she also, I mean, I think she has a benefit of being like just kind of a a kind of natural seeming, quirky person who's very charming and warm, you know, and you're like, oh, that helps with the underdog thing. You're like, oh, you're not like everyone else. How unexpected. Let's choose you. And I think there are definitely stubborn academy members who don't like feeling that their hand is being forced in one direction. And they're like, no, I'm going to defy that. That narrative.

I reject your narrative. You can't get me to vote for Sylvester Stallone. I'm voting for that weird British guy. David? Yes. This episode is brought to you by Moob. be the global film company that champions great cinema. It champions it.

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And R. Pats. Yeah. And even R. Pats knows he's playing second fiddle. Sure, but then there's like... Jayla's busting out the cello. A lemon pepper dry rub of Nick Nolte. I love lemon pepper guys. I love Nick Nolty.

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Mystique, that is. Oh, sure. Yeah, it's an awesome movie. The Steak and the Freak. Is that something he's played a lot of freaks? Sure, sure. The spoiler alert for the episode, but I was a big fan of the film. I know you were.

Yes. Have you seen it yet? I haven't seen it yet. Whoa. I think you're going to like it a lot. It's also based on a book by Ariana Harwit. Mm-hmm. Anyway.

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Okay. I guess it's not entirely. surprising. I feel like its momentum had been fading a bit in recent, in recent, the last few awards, but the Panahi film, it was just an accident, did not get in for Best Picture. I was kind of assuming it would, you know, we've been having a lot more breakthroughs of international films into Best Picture lately. This was a neon film. Neon had this very strong slate of these kind of international films. They were good at pushing them, though maybe this year they just had to divide their efforts a lot.

You know, but I think a lot of people assumed it won the Palm Door, had an incredible narrative behind it. You know, Jafar Panahi, his travel ban overturned. He was allowed to actually go to places with these films. He's really funny, you know, as a presence. He's great at talking about his films, even though he hasn't done that, you know, in person. He did enough Q&A's that both you and I have moderated Q&A's with him this season. Yes. I mean, I think that that was, you know, on the Ancler Pundits thing, I got nine out of ten Best Picture Nominees, right? And the one I got wrong was that I had, it was just an accident there. What I forgot, and maybe listeners don't know, is that F1, which did get nominated, has the full backing of the Iranian government. So I guess that just the power apparatus, you know.

Love Brett. Yeah, they do. The car represents something political. I don't know. But yeah, I think that was disappointing. But I think probably it just came down to with voters. Like, we've got, I've got these two political, somewhat esoterror. non-English language movies, both did very well it can,

and something about the bright color and sort of sex and music of Secret Agent just sort of won them over. Yeah. Yeah. I think we've said this on this podcast before, or at least we've said it in talking about it. Like, The Secret Agent is a much weirder movie than it says at first. It is not a typical thriller. But I do feel like it has a bit, yes, like it has this kind of like old 70s movie's

swagger to it. I mean, it is set in the 70s. It has these incredible colors. It has Wagner. It's also partly about, like, movie theaters. I mean, just a little bit. Sure, sure. It has a bit of that.

Yeah, it is about kind of like political oppression. It is about like banding together in the face of it. But, yeah, it's sexy. It feels very vibrant. I mean, for me, snub-wise, yeah. Picture this. You're in Los Angeles or maybe you're in London or maybe in New York. And you have a little viewing party of the nominations.

And it's all the people you've spent months and months with, artisans, actors, filmmakers, or whatever, and you're all wearing your Wicked Green, and they start reading the nominations, and then category, after category, after category. Your movie's title is never said not once. Wicked, the first part, got 10 nominations one year ago. Wicked Part 2 got zero.

I mean, that is a stunning rebuke of that movie from Hollywood. Yeah, and also not good for me, given my movie draft. Oh, no. Oh, no. In an act of cynicism. Oh dear. I was like, well, this is going to be fun. Yeah.

I mean, I had Wicked in pretty much every craft category in my ankleer predictions. I had it in Best Song. I mean, it not getting in Best Song and, like, costume design is crazy. A song especially, even though everyone seemed to hate the new songs. But they, like, you know, the classic thing of inserting some new songs into a musical, especially, like, on top of being like, so many other songs in this are just like either from movies. no one knows or remembers like the Diane Warren documentary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or just like they're tacked on to the kind of like the end where you're like,

this is not really part of this movie. It's kind of, yeah. Can I ask why you guys thought it was going to do well if it, nobody seemed to like it? It didn't do that well last year, right? It didn't, what did it win last year? Well, I mean, it got those 10 nominations. I just thought that there would just be sort of like inertia. It would just be like, well, we nominated it there, you know, last year.

so let's just do that again. Well, I think it also, it's like, it's a musical. It's, you know, like, it does a lot of stuff that seemed like kind of to speak to the academy and the industry in terms of old-fashioned, you know, show business, song and dance, costumes, fantasy settings, you know. It had a lot of kind of show business stuff that seemed to appeal to people. Yeah, it won two Oscars last year for costume design and production design. The first movie did. Yeah. So I just thought there would be that sort of inertia, and I also thought that there are plenty of examples of movies that, like, aren't beloved necessarily, but have all of those craft elements that people enjoy. I was sort of out on, like, Grande or Arevo getting in. I think Arevo was out of it for a long time, and Grande was sort of just maybe she was sixth or seventh place in the voting. But to not get anything for makeup or production design or anything, like, that's, to me, is just, like, wild. But I guess they really.

hated that movie, or maybe resented what it stood for, or maybe Universal just made a mistake, and they should have held it. They should not have done it in back-to-back years. How important is it to have, like, for a Best Picture nominee, to have, like, the craft categories and the actor nombs as well? I mean, it depends on the year, really. Like, you think about a year, like, Spotlight, which only had a couple. It did, certainly Spotlight wasn't getting in, like, production design and visual effects or whatever. They had, you know, the, one acting nomination in Rachel McAdams, or no, two, I guess it was Ruffalo and at McAdams, right? But Keaton didn't get in.

So, you know, there are some years where the smaller sort of less, you know, high-style movie, but I think that for, you know, a year like this when you have not only critically acclaimed, thoughtful, politically idea-driven movies, vying for it, those movies also are enormous productions. Maybe that's where Wicked gets blanked because they're like, well, we have to slot sinners, and one battle after there in pretty much almost every technical category. So that takes two away for every single one. And now there's only three to kind of... I think it's a great point.

I think in general also, in a year in which it was like Hamnet and Wicked for Good and then Not Sinners and Not One Battle After Another, you know, like I think maybe Wicked would do better because it would be the kind of like Hollywood commercial counterweight scene. But like there are bigger movies that, you know, this year that have been doing fine that also have. have like big ideas behind them. So I think there's just no space, no space for wicked. Yeah. And look, there are plenty of Oscars past where like a movie comes in with 11 nominations, including deep in the tech categories and goes home with nothing, you know. So it does it. It's not a guarantee that you're going to win something just because you got a ton of nominations. But,

but it certainly helps as you enter that evening as like one of the, you know. On that note, imagine, a watch party. Yeah. All of these fans dressed in blue, blue makeup. Oh. You know, lightly dusted with volcano. Volcano ash. You know, having learned to speak Navi, watching the feed, does get some nominations. Costume design. Yes. Somehow.

When Best picture comes up, is there any Avatar Fire Nash? There is not. This feels like another one that would have benefited if, yes, it needed to be a counterweight to a whole bunch of like Indies. or smaller international films, but in this case, there wasn't... Yeah, again, just the cultural footprint thing, but this is the first James Cameron movie in 28 years to not get an Oscar number, a Best Picture nomination. He's only made three, but...

He's not been... banging them out, yeah. But, you know, I mean, like, you know, the second... The Avatar sequel, Way of Water, getting a best picture, it was like, okay, so maybe this just gets it every time. It's not going to win, but it gets, you know, gets among the 10. Yeah. But, yeah, I think that that movie

just really was not greeted. Again, same with Wicked. they just didn't wait long enough. No. If they had waited like five more years and people were really champing at the bit for another Avatar movie, I think it would be a different story.

Because the drop, I think it is not as good as the past two Avatar movies, but the drop in quality is not that significant. It's not wicked to one to two. Right, right. It just felt a little too much like the last one, I think, to your point.

Yeah, the battle is the same at the end. And, you know, I mean, the thing is I was really looking forward to doing an episode about Avatar on this podcast because Blank Check, our parent podcast, they don't, they've never seen those, movies. They don't have any interest in them. No, I don't think they even know who James Cameron is.

So this was, this was like blind check listeners one chance to hear about Avatar movies. So, sorry guys, but we just, our hands are tied. I'm speaking of blue. We're going to watch part. Look, I look at the same setup. You're at a watch party. You're Kate Hudson. And you somehow get in as best actress, which honestly, like, I'm bummed for Amanda Seifred. I saw that. that would have been pretty cool. Yeah. But I also think that, like, maybe Emma Stone could have just sat this one out. Yeah. I mean, I feel like she didn't really campaign at all, even.

At this point, they just give her nominations. And for a movie that was by no means a kind of, like, overwhelming favorite, Bagonia, like, on the scale of your ghost movie is, like, this was not one of his most beloved, as divisive as his movies often are. Would you have ever guessed, like, back in the day, watching Alps or Dogtooth, being, like, Someday he'll just be like an Oscar favorite. Oscar darling. You're a girl to slandthos.

It's so funny. Making this movie about incest amongst siblings who've been locked in of compound their entire lives. Yeah. But K. Hudson, I mean, I think that's like that, you know, it's hard when there's only five slots and you're like, there are great performances that just can't get in. And K. K. Hudson is really good in Song Song Blue. Can I confess something? This is the one that I haven't seen yet.

Well, well, well. How about that? I will. I will watch it. I mean, it's not a, I don't think it's a bad movie. I think it's a little bit hokey or something. Hugh Jackman is maybe kind of oddly miscast, even though he's literally the only movie star in working today who could do that role. He's also a miscast somehow. But Kate Hudson, like, you know, she's doing this kind of Midwestern Milwaukee, I guess, accent,

and she sings and she's a beautiful singer. And she has a lot of levels to play from, you know, you know, falling in love to, you know, recovering from a terrible accident to sort of drug addiction, to grief. Like, there's a lot in this movie that kind of advertises itself as just because kind of uplifting movie about, like, the songs of Neil Diamond, like, making people happy. And, yeah, I think that when I saw that movie at Savannah, I was like, this does have some kind of academy juice to it. And there it is. Proven. Yeah.

I mean, you know, sometimes people like a lot of acting. And if it sounds like it's a lot of acting. Yeah, it's a big, broad kind of old school performance of the sort that, like, there were probably, I haven't, I don't have it in front of me, but you could probably go back to like the early 2000s, the late 90s, and all five best actress nominees would be giving this kind of performance. Yeah. It's just that kind of old-fashioned thing. I feel like, I mean, also, as opposed to Amanda Safer do I think is great in Testament of Anley. But, like, I think Testament is Enli. You can imagine a lot of people walking out of that movie being like, what was that movie?

You know, like, she's incredible in it, but like what? Like, it's a harder movie to understand. It is less friendly. It is much less commercial, you know. It's much less commercial than The Brutalist, which has basically the same creative team behind it, you know. And I think people were making that comparison, like, well, okay, so the movie that the man directs and the stars a man, like, that wins all the – or gets nominated for all these Oscars and wins a big one. And then his wife's movie that she directs doesn't – and it's about a woman, doesn't get anything. But they are very different enterprises.

One is about, like, World War II. and architecture and America. And this, and Lee is about, like, religious ecstasy and an obscure cult with also music. Right. And also, like, about kind of channeling your domestic trauma into a revelation from God in which you're, like, sex is bad.

And your husband is like, what? Not between us, though, right? We're fine. Yeah. No, I think a great and interesting movie, but not a friendly one in terms of, of letting the audience in. And Seifred did just do an interview

where she was like, you know, I'm not doing this for awards. Like, you know, a nomination would be great, but like, blah, blah, you know, she's, I think she'll be okay. I just think it's a little bit surprising in some ways, despite, you know, the difficulty with subject matter,

the sort of strange music, that this lushly mounted movie that eventually got picked up by Searchlight and was at Venice and was at Toronto So it was from a long distance, like maybe this summer, like, viewed as, like, one of the bigger Oscar potential movies of the year. Like, Anli just didn't hit anywhere. It just, yeah. Yeah, but it also, like, it sold a searchlight at the end of September.

Like, that's really late, you know, like, it had to compress a whole run, which is not impossible, right? But, like, it had to compress a whole run starting after its Venice premiere. They would need, they would have needed that, yeah, engine to really be moving at Venice or before Venice even. And I think my theory about why that sale happened late, you know, was that, like, searchlight was like, you know, we've done some screenings. I don't think this Bradley Cooper Will Arnette comedy movie is going to be Oscar-y. So what else is out there that we could snap up real quick and try to do something for it? Right, right. And it just happened to be this pretty esoteric, I think, beautifully mounted and beautifully performed movie about religion and, yeah, trauma.

What else have we got? Oh, no, Paul Muskell as previously as. Yeah, which I think, like, that's okay. I think I was texting with somebody who was like, I wonder if he's relieved. Yeah. In a way. Because would you want to be the person who denies Delroy Lindo getting a nomination or whatever? I think also he obviously has plenty of time.

And I feel like, I think he is very good in that movie, if given, like, some impossible tasks as we discussed. But it's, I mean, like, the acting story there is Jesse Buckley's, you know. Like, it has been so Jesse Buckley's from the beginning. And I think that's fine. Yeah. Well, in some ways, actually, Meskell not getting nominated, despite the fact that he's a pretty large presence in the film, is actually true to the book where he, his Shakespeare, William Shakespeare is, like, not really in the book much at all.

Yeah. And it's all on, on, on, yes. So now the, the academy has leveled that out to where it should be, I guess. You know, and I don't, I don't feel like that's a snub for some reason. I don't know why. I mean, I guess I kind of know a snub when I see it. And that just feels like a, eh, like there wasn't room. and we had other things we wanted to do in this category.

Yeah, I know. I feel like people kind of took it for granted, but he'll be fine. Yeah, I think so. He said this morning, he's still in bed. Maybe he was a little sad when I left the house, but no, but he seemed okay. I mean, best actor went pretty much as expected. I say that. Three weeks ago, I would not have said it went as expected because, like, I thought Joel Edgerton was going to get in.

I, you know, I wasn't so sure about the Wagner-Mura thing. Ethan Hawk kind of came up really quick at the last minute. But if you'd ask me a week ago, yes, this would have been my five. Okay. This was what I expected. But I will say, we differ here. I never thought Joel Edgerton was going to, was a surefire nominee. I mean, it's a little film.

I am impressed by how well it did, you know, in the nominations. This, like, it certainly overperformed. But I felt like this was a really crowded category. It was understood to be a crowded category, even. You know, even when it was packed with, like, people who have since faded away, right? Yeah. Like, you're George Clooney's, et cetera. But I think...

Was George Clooney in a movie last year? I never heard of it. Oh, I don't know. But I think that you, you know, you have, like, a lot of people vying for this. And Vagnamora, like, kind of rising up to suddenly become, like, the, I don't know, kind of the second. I feel like he's like... Well, it helps if you look hot as shit at every single precursor you go to. And just comes in and, like, charms the hell out of everyone.

Yeah. Where it was like Joel Edgerton, we're going to talk about train dreams next week more in depth, so I don't want to say too much about it. But like, you know, I went to a dinner with him at the Savannah Film Festival. And like, he's a nice guy and like clearly like very dedicated to the film and to his craft and all that. But he's not like giving a ton in a room. Yeah. And I think that Wagner Mora, who is brilliant in his movie, has been great in other things in the past. Again, wearing these great suits, giving lovely speeches.

And also discharming off old school leading man in that movie. and in person. And I think that helps a lot. Whereas, like, Edgerton is, like, very self-contained. In his roles, that's usually what he gives, right? He's, like, he's like a guy who kind of is carrying a lot inside. Yeah. And he barely speaks in Tritney. It's like Will Patton, the narrator speaks way more than, and is never on screen. Yeah. So, yeah. And I think, look, Ethan Hawke, that's so great. He, again, kind of with, to the Kate Hudson of it all, like, that's a really old school, like, transformative performance. And they had to shoot him from funny angles to make him look tiny and it's verbose. it's about the American theater and all that. Like, I think that's really cool. And I thought that that would be the one representative of Blue Moon, but it got a screenplay nomination. And I thought that was, that was surprising to me. Yeah. I figured Ethan Hogg was getting it.

I feel like he does something. I mean, like you said, it's an old school kind of transformative performance. But I think it's also just a really good one, you know? Like, he is doing a lot without feeling like he's making you, like, look at his work, which is sometimes the case when someone is especially playing a really. person, you know, where you're like, oh, like, I get it. You watch, like, listen to a lot of tapes of this person talking or, like, yeah. You spend a lot of time in the makeup chair every morning. I feel like he just really inhabits that character, and he allows it to be a little bit of a fantasy, you know, like, this was not, like, a real night in his life. Like, this is,

like, this incredibly theatrical, like, idea of, like, picking, what's one pivot. Like, he plays into that so well. And I feel like it frees him up to play that character. as a character. Yeah, I mean, as I've said about that movie a billion times, if he did it on stage, they would hand him a Tony a curtain call. They would not wait till June. He would have it wrapped up. He is really good.

I also love the screenplay nomination because it is a great, dense, you know, clever screenplay. So the guy who wrote it, Robert Caplo, he has written one other screenplay, which was for Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Wells, which did not get an Oscar nomination. He's written a lot of books, I think, like nine or something. but he mostly was a film in English teacher in high school until fairly recently he retired. Imagine if your teacher just got nominated for an Oscar,

that would be pretty exciting. That is pretty exciting. I will say one thing about that screenplay. I do like it a lot. I cannot stand the moment where he gives E.B. White the idea for Stuart Lill. But that's actually, that actually happened. That's when the movie tilts from like charmingly old school quaint to like cloying. Yeah, yeah.

Today we call them computers. Yeah. Let's just take a moment, though, before we leave Best Actor behind, this was a category where, like, every major actor passed through. So let's take a moment to salute George Clooney, if we're mentioned, for a movie we don't know about. No, I think it was, yeah. It was odd that he was in the race, but didn't have a movie. No, I know, but it just happened that way. Yeah. The Rock. Oh, yeah. Remember the Rock? He was in there briefly. Talking about how he had been ruthlessly pigeonholed as an action star who only wears khaki colors. And he had no control over that whatsoever. He definitely had not executive produced all of the movies that he was in, in which he played the same character over and over again. Should have done Song Song Blue.

Yeah. Might have worked out better. It would have been incredible. Jeremy Allen White. Uh-huh. Yeah. Given it is all in your classic, you know, angsty biopic. weird movie, just picking a really odd sliver of life.

Still haven't seen. It's my song song. Yeah. It's men will literally write a hugely critically claimed album instead of going to therapy. It's kind of... I am proud, though, that of the music movies that both of you and I have not seen, I made the right choice because mine didn't get nominated for anything. So now I have no, I don't have any reason to watch it. Yeah, all right.

You have to watch it. Don't worry. It's kind of long. Yeah. Oscar Isaac. Oh, yeah, for Frankenstein. Yeah. I think really miscast in that. We'll talk more about that in a future episode, but he's like genuinely bad in that movie, right? Yeah, I think he's actively bad. I love Oscar Isaac.

But like, yeah, yeah, we will, yeah, we need to find someone who'll fight back. Brandon Fraser, Jesse Plemons. Plemons, I think probably came really close. Yeah, I just like, I'm so unenthusiastic about that movie that it's been hard for me to. He's really good, but he's also kind of good in the way that you see. think Plymouth's going to be good. Yeah.

Emma Stone is good in the way you think she's going to be good. It's a Yorgalos movie in the way you think it's, again, we're going to talk about it later

because it's the best picture nominee. But I think that my hunch, given how much they liked Bologna elsewhere, my hunch would be that Plemons was sixth.

Yeah. Just barely missed out. Oh, also Russell Crow, Nuremberg, another real movie that definitely once in a while from that premiered at Toronto,

right? I feel like every couple weeks from September to now, someone would sort of drift out of the woodwork in my life and be like, I think Nuremberg might be doing something quietly at like these little regional festivals. And it never stuck in my mind completely, but it was always sort of there in the background,

except that when you just said that, I was like, oh, I forgot about that. Yes, that's a movie that came out this year. Also, shout out to Daniel DeLewis for coming out of retirement to support his son for a nominee, a movie that also... It's a real case against nepotism. Yeah, you know. He was happily retired. went out on such a high note

Maybe, yeah, like, you know, maybe like making shoes by hand or doing all, you know, whatever Daniel DeLuis does for fun. He and Rebecca Miller just fixing their yurt or whatever they live in. And then look at that.

Came back. I was like, I'll do this for you, my son. We will work on this together. And then people hated that movie. I didn't even hear much good about him, like his performance, which is that's really rare.

I know. You're like, this is like, I think everyone's like, this is the greatest actor of our generation. We're talking about an enemy, by the way. I don't think we said that. Anenemy.

Yeah. See, that was another problem with that movie is that no one could say the goddamn title. Wow, we were a lot of best actors. I know, Li Bionkuhn even, like that was an outside case. What do we think about the no other choice of it all? Because it feels like that was very much in the mix for a long time and then yet didn't. Yeah, I don't know. It was not one that I got the feeling.

As we've discussed, my vibes assessments are never wrong. I did not get the feeling that it was getting that kind of traction. You know, again, like Neon had all of these international films, these like lauded international films that were in contention. Yeah. This was one of them. I feel like it's just not as good a movie as, you know, some of these others, including Surat, which got sound and international sarat.

But like, yeah, it, I don't know. I mean, I think, like, like, I think Li Binkun is very good in it. I think he's, you know, got a great kind of, he's also got a great narrative behind it. But that was also Wagner Morris, you know? Like, they were kind of on the same track of, like, these are actors who have been, who've rattled around in Hollywood to a certain degree, but, like, have gone back, you know,

and made movies that, like, just showcase their incredible leading manness in their home turf. Those are old neon movies? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So, Neon, the only international feature film nominee that Neon didn't have is Voice of Henry Job, right?

Yes. No one has that? No, I think that Willa. Oh, okay. So a small distributor. Yeah. And they had started campaigning before the distributor came on. So they were kind of going it alone. But yeah, like, Secret Agent, it was just an accident, sentimental value, and Surrott are all neon movies as is the Park Chenowc film.

So there was, it was easily, it could have been five or five for neon, which would have been, which would have been remarkable and like good for them in a way. But also I think increasingly I'm a little bit worried about neon stranglehold on these movies. Like, yeah, I mean, maybe it's no one else but is touching them or I don't know. I mean, it feels like it's also you're like, okay, they are good, I think, at marketing them. Some go do better than others. These are not easy movies to always market. But it does feel like, you know, what we're commending them on is mostly an incredible act of shopping at Cannes. Well, exactly.

Yeah. You know, you know, I mean, I think the thing about the shopping of it all is like, were it not for Frankenstein, which over indexed. I mean, it did so much better. And again, we're going to do an episode on it. But, like, I don't like that movie. I'm happy for a lorty. That's cool. But, like, were it not for Frankenstein?

We've said it before on the show. Like, they were fucked. But they did a good little bit of shopping at Sundance and bought train dreams there. And, like, so they're on the – they were always probably going to be on the board with train dreams for something. And then Frankenstein ended up, like, picking itself up and writing its campaign. But, you know, the George Clooney movie that doesn't exist. and the Catherine Bigelow movie, those were completely DOA for Netflix.

So, yeah, the shopping aspect at festivals can count for a lot. I would really be curious to see, and this is something we can talk about in the future, too, but, like, neon has barely produced any of their own movies. I think they did Spencer, right?

The Diana movie with Kristen Stewart, I think that was homegrown. That sounds entirely possible. Right. Yeah, they don't. Unless I got drunk and funded that, because I've done that before. Yeah, so I don't know.

I've warned you about that. It's so tempting. And then suddenly you've just plent down like $5 million on this like... I got Natalie Portman that Oscar nomination, didn't I, for Jackie. Yeah, I mean, their model has been much more about acquisitions or like co-producing, right? Like I think like when they do get into something early as when they're stepping into something that is already kind of in the works with funding from many different places to kind of co-produce or something. So unlike, say, A-24, which has produced a lot more on their own. Yeah, neon has been much more.

about betting big on international films and kind of like stepping in. And I bet, you know, speaking of 824, I bet they're pretty happy this morning, you know, like Marty Supreme, which is their big play. Yeah. Did just about as well as I expected it to. I think it ended up in all the categories I thought it would, screenplay, actor, picture, director. I was maybe starting to think that there could be a little momentum for Gwyneth Paltrow or even for Kevin earlier because like people have talked about those performances a lot but I think ultimately

the supporting categories were just a little too stuffed for yeah and uh and no odessa yeah I guess that was the other one that people were talking about but that performance seemed to have been polarizing or it wasn't the performance it was more like I saw on Twitter people being like this person literally didn't exist two days ago and now all of a sudden people are talking about her getting not it's like well no she was on a television show for a long time yeah and she's on isn't she on I love L.A. She's also on that. Yeah.

But I think that's what people were saying there. Like, all of a sudden, she's this co-star of an HBO show. She's getting Oscar buzz for this Timothy Shalami movie, but I did, no one knew who she was. And she's a nepo baby, of course. So I cannot remember if we talked about this last time. But someone, when my co-workers brought up that someone on Twitter had been, like, ferociously defending Odessa by being like, she's not a nepo baby. How can you call the child of a voice actor is not a nepo baby? And I was like, well, that's a really kind of downplaying Adelon's career overall.

but also like was a voice actor on like a network animated show that ran for like 14. And is now, yeah, exactly. Like that is actually probably one of the more lucrative things. Yeah, the more lucrative things, jobs you could pick up, you know. She's, she's Bobby Hill? Yeah. But is she not Bobby in the new one because he's grown up? I don't know.

Oh, she is. She still is. Okay. We're getting a thumbs up from offstage. So anyway, Odessa will be fine. Yes. You know I met her mother once at the Vanity Fair Oscar. party, Pamela Adlon is her mom.

Yes, yes. And it was the year that the New York Times had run this really kind of mean, and I think actually I'm not saying it's out of brand loyalty, but like genuinely inaccurate piece about how the Oscar party had sort of faded and it wasn't the cool party anymore. Yes, look, like that party, like Madonna has a party, there are other cool, Jay-Z has a party, like there are cool parties to go to that night that aren't the VF. Anyway, so all of us at VF that we were feeling a little glum about like, Oh, is anyone going to come? And it turned out to be a perfectly fine evening. But anyway, I was

outside and Pamela Adlon, not to out her, bummed a cigarette off me back when I was smoking. And I brought, some reason I brought up that New York Times article. And she, or no, she brought it up. And she was like, fuck them. Fuck the New York Times. This is the greatest party I've ever been to. And I was like, thank you, Pamela Adela. So I'm forever rooting for her and her family for cheering me up at that time. Yes, yes. I mean, that's lovely. And I support her coming out. in favor of branded parties. Kind of grotesque displays.

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Pooty, pooty, poise. Sir, please. I feel like as we come to the end of these initial observations, maybe it is worth talking about one of these movies, the movie that was the surprise. Yes. One of F1. Yeah, like was, I would say, I mean,

like people have been calling this. People have been, you know, like, Clayton Davis, a variety shoutout. He did call it. I guess Sean Fennessey. Apparently for months. Also for months and months has been calling it. So like people have been, have been. I had it at one point on my anchor.

I'm not making that up. I really genuinely did. But that was a long time. I mean, it is not one I would have predicted. Though I feel like it does not entirely surprise me that it got in there. Yeah, I think that, you know, kind of going back to Ben's question about how this all works. like everyone's voting on their own category, their own branch, but they're also all voting on Best Picture. And there are a lot of technical categories.

And I think the tech people really admire F1. That's one component of it. The other, which you have said, Allison, is that like Hollywood likes movie stars. They like fast cars, look at Ford v. Ferrari and all that stuff. Like, there's enough to satisfy two different sides of Academy voters to get it in there. Yeah. So it also, in addition to Best Picture, it got editing, it got sound, and it got sound. and it got visual effects.

Yeah. You know, so like those are your classic, like this is a blockbuster, kind of nominations otherwise. But for all that, I don't think anyone was ever talking about Brad Pitt as a best actor contender. I do feel like a large part of why people like this movie is because it showcases Brad Pitt in a, like, enshrines him in this, as a movie star in this way that is like. And it's about that. It is about how great he is and people try to like replace him, but actually he's kind of irreplace. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah, like it, you know, it was directed by Joseph Kaczynski. It echoes, like, TopGum Maverick a bit. Also, funny in both of them that they're like, you know, in Top Gun, you're like, when he's young, he's also, he's right all the time. Like, he's the young hot shop, but he's like, he's the right all the time. And then when he's older, he's like, he's the experienced voice who's right all the time. Exactly. Okay, so wait, who do we think? So, Cruz has gotten this treatment now, and now Brad Pitt has.

who is another, like, big, older, like, male movie star who's, like, currently, like, straightening his tie and, like, making sure the bouquet is right as he is about to go into Joseph Kucinsey's office to be like, can you do that for me? Can you make a movie about how I am actually irreplaceable? Like, is there another movie star who would fit that bill? I feel like it'll be someone like Wahlberg who does not have the presence. Please, Mr. Kaczynski, I've been good. Please, sir. But, you know, I don't think he has the same presence, but I feel like that's maybe the kind of, like. a good one. That's a good call. I mean, yeah, he never, he wasn't quite at that echelon. I mean, I mean, honestly, at this point, maybe Dwayne Johnson.

No, yeah, I know. He could definitely, he could use the help as well. Yeah. Yeah. But it's just funny. Like, when, when Brad Pitt walks into this movie, he is wearing, like, I feel like this array of slightly hippie-ish-looking, but, like, beautiful, like, kind of knit tops. And he does not look ageless, but he looks great or his age. And, like, in this way that suggests he has, like, a bit of. burnish patina, you know? He's not aging. He's developing a patina. He's like crinkling at the corners of his eyes. He's like brass hardware in your kitchen. Yeah, exactly. Like, it is like, the movie, like, enshrines him in this way that is very much.

And I wonder if there's... And you have Carrie Condon just being like, how you, hachi, much. Yeah, exactly. It's me like, hello. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like, and I wonder also if, if there is a little bit of, for like, older, slightly contrarian members of the academy to be like, I don't care about the stuff about his personal life.

Like, I don't care. You know, like, this is, he is unreplaceable. You know, like, you cannot, he is irreplaceable. Like, he, he's doing something that no one else can. Like, like, look at that. Like, I don't have to bother about all of the stuff that continues to, you know, emerge from his incredibly, you know, bitter divorce battles. We have definitely said on this podcast, and I do agree with this, that, like, for the most part, internet discourse does not really get. into like voters heads.

That said, I do think there is some sort of tabloid discourse that does. And they're really resistant to a lot of it. You know, there is like a lot of like credible enough stuff about Brad Pitt, like, and what happened with him and Angel Angel Lee and the kids that like, you know, a lot of people are like, I'm done with him, whatever, but I do think there is a big enough contingent in Hollywood that's like, mm-mm, like, no, that's not my business. And we will never know for sure. and he's like one of our greats and you know right i think it's also i mean it's always been easier

uh you know as we've as we've continued to litigate like what actually sticks to people which just seems to be almost nothing um like the idea that this was like um within his household right like that like we've it feels like we have essentially decided like domestic stuff is is not like part of any public calculation um or at least the industry seems to have have decided that. And so, I don't know. I know some people have described F1 as this act of rehabilitation for Brad Pitt, but frankly, I don't think Brad Pitt has ever, like, in the public eye needed it. Needed it. Yeah. Like, like, I think that... He won that Oscar, and it was sort of like, we, you know, we love you here. Thanks, thanks for all the fish, you know, basically. And now,

post this, you can do whatever you want. Yeah. No. I mean, you know, it's stuck for, like, Kevin Spacey because Kevin Spacey was apparently nightmare to work with. Right. And wasn't making people nearly as much money. Right. Right. And Brad Pitt, like, as a producer, produces a lot of, like, you know, respected and, like, best picture winners. Exactly. And often deal with, like, very serious kind of topics as well. So yeah, you, you can feel that Brad Pitt is load bearing within the industry in ways that some other people have not been, or easier to discard. Have been proven easier to discard. An F1, you know, is Top Gun, but they're on the ground, and the stakes are lower. Yeah. But it has that really, you know, it's exciting to watch. It's shot pretty well. I thought it looked a little tinny at sometimes. No, it's a little antiseptic in terms of there's like the look of it is like a little too sling.

Whereas Top Gun felt a lot more like golden hued and like sort of more. Right. Because obviously it's all taking place as Tom Cruise is dying after blowing up in the sky. Oh. If people have not read Alice's amazing piece about how almost all of top gun Is it? Yeah. I mean,

I do feel like that's the only way to really explain the kind of like amazing oddness, like of the look of that movie where it is almost entirely in golden hour. But yeah, like F1 is not in golden hour. It is like a little blue tinged. It's like chilly. Yeah, yeah. It's, you know, it's just takes place in in the UK, a lot of it. And then like bouncing around Europe. But yeah, it looks chilly.

It has. has like a kind of cool undertone. And cool, you know, could be greeted as sort of slick. And I do think that like,

here's a big budget Hollywood partnership with a major brand, you know, in F1. Like, the movie is essentially advertorial,

you know. F1 is so popular. It's finally getting really popular in the U.S. It was a great, smart bit of, like, cynical business synergy for,

you know, the studio and F1 to do. do this movie. It performed very well. And it's like a big, robust, kind of masculine Hollywood product that doesn't involve boy princes riding sandworms or singing witches or whatever. And I think that there's a definitely contingent in the academy that's like, oh, good. And you might say, well, then why didn't they do that for Ferrari? Ferrari does a lot weirder movie, like the Michael Mann biopic with Adam Driver. Like, it's American actors doing

weird Italian accents. It's like very much about like, it's like very interior. There's not much racing in it. And then when there is, there's a horrific. Yeah, like a really terrible accident. Yeah. Like, and whereas F1, what were, you know, suspenseful things happen, it is for the most part about like the roaring engines of the cars, the roaring engine of Brad Pitt movie star, and the roaring engine of Hollywood, you know, and there you go. Yeah. It is, it's a much easier movie to drop into because, yeah, it's also not about like a dynastic. in fighting or things like that, you know? It's not Euro people.

You know, it's like real American guy, you know. A real American guy. Like, I think Ferrari in a weird way probably subconsciously suffered from being close enough to House of Gucci. No, yeah. Yeah, I would agree. Where people were like, am I just watching that movie again? I think also, I mean, like,

it does, you know, make the case for this kind of like this American swaggering into this, like, much more international scene and doing things in his, like, kind of perverse American an exceptionalism way. Yeah, of being like, I've just a talent. I've just got this talent. Like, I've just, like, no one else. And I've got this true passion.

Like, I've got, you know, like, and yeah. But I think also, like, there is a, you know, he, there's, it's not an accident that he kind of looks Paul Newman-esque, you know, when he walks into this movie. I think it is, like, very much wedding that tradition of, like, movie stars who also dabble in racing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like, N.A. really wants to, it love, I think that there's something about that. I think there's something about this association, Frankie Mnese,

those associations that people like, you know? Like you said, it is very kind of like traditionally masculine, but also like it has this long kind of like Hollywood tradition of like looking cool. Like these are actors leading men, but they also look at this cool thing they're doing. Yeah, so it is like,

it's a surprise, Best Picture, Dominique, in that like it was not being seen. spoken about, but it was always there. It was always a possibility. You know, the Academy has done things like this before, where they just like a big piece of technically proficient Hollywood product that is a cut above, you know, your sort of standard commercial release. And, and that was enough. I mean, I think it's, you know, it's, it was never going to get acting nominations. I don't think Kaczynski was ever going to get in for director. I also feel like this is an Apple film, famously expensive one, though it did make a lot of money in the box office.

But, like, you know, for all that Apple, like, with CODA had this, like, freak incident of... Which CODA costs more, though. Yeah, CODA costs, like, $450 million. Well, they had to buy the state of Massachusetts to make that work. And then they tried to sell it, you know, but at a loss. It was at a loss. It was very depreciated in that time. No, but, I mean, like, I don't feel like Apple gave it much of a push.

You know, I got, like, I feel like... Yeah. One or two. We weren't being courted as members of the New York Film Crude. I mean, probably because they were like, the New York Film Cours are is not going to give F1 anything, but... We gave us cinematography, didn't we once to something? I don't know.

But we gave Maverick something. Yeah. That's true. But that was different. That was different. But yeah, I mean, it feels like this was just one of those things where it felt relatively organic, you know, it was not just the result of like someone pushing this relentlessly. It was that people were like,

I like this movie. Yeah, it's just lingered in people's minds. You know, I think of, you know, definitely I know, out of the 10 best picture nominees, F1 is the only one who's ending I have not seen. How? I went to go see it in theaters. Oh, so I tried to go to a press screening. Yes. Even though I had just been told by my former boss that he didn't want reviews anymore and there was no reason for me to go to screenings. And so I was like, oh, well, I'll try to get, I don't know, I'll go anyway. The air conditioning was broken and it was one of those days last

summer when it was literally like 100 degrees. I would just like to say, I watched the movie at that screening at that screening where they handed us fans and were like the air conditioning was broken. I walked in and I was like absolutely not. It was actually like kind of endearing because you would look down at the crowd and it was like, you know, almost like a church service in the summer, like everyone fanning themselves. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that, I guess it was June. So I didn't go to that. So I went to go see it on my own like in like Regal Essex downtown Manhattan. And it was a Sunday in June. It was the last Sunday in June, if that tells you anything. I had to go to a prize. I had to go to a prize. I had to go to a thing. It was Pride Sunday in New York, and I was meeting friends at a great bar in the East Village called Boilerm. And I forgot that there were going to be 20 minutes of ads and previews, or maybe 30, actually, in this case. So the movie started half an hour late, and I was going to be late to meet my friends for this big Pride thing that we were going to do. And I chose Pride over F1. So literally, he was getting into the car to do the last race. And I was like, well, I got to go. Sorry, Brad. Let me spoil it for you. He was dead all along. It was all a death dream that he was having He was next to Trumpers in that plane.

Like as the plane was explaining of her head, he was cars crashing and it was all a death dream. And then you saw someone's head sitting behind them and you think it was maybe Mark Wahlberg. Suggesting the movie to come. Yes, exactly. Yeah, so I'll have to go back and watch F-1s, at least it's ending.

But without spoiling anything, does it end in a way that sends the audience out of the theater feeling excited, like, excited, I would imagine so. Sure, of course. Everyone breaks into song. Oh, great, perfect. You know. The girl in the bubble.

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Corona Cero, the official non-oomavirus. Serro, the official non-alcoholic beer of Milano Cortina, 2026. So are there other movies in the past that have kind of come in and surprised like this? Yeah, I mean, a bad surprise years ago was when Stephen Daldry's extremely loud and incredibly close got a Best Picture nomination. And I think maybe didn't get anything or got one other, Max von Zido, I think was nominated for a supporting actor for that. but it was like a total like everyone hated that movie it was based on a book that people i guess kind of liked it was 9-11 Sandra Bollick or no tom hanks dies really early on in the movie like it's just kind of like um so that was a weird one um you know there are other sort of sadder examples where like

selma the eva de verne film only got best picture and best song nominations and like david olio loo didn't get best actor nomination um so there are definitely these kind of lone like rogue Best Picture nominees in the past. I'm looking to see if they're... Is that kind of a consequence of the having the 10 categories is that you have these big movies that have the Best Picture Nom, but not a lot of other noms, and they just sort of feel like they're walking dead? I feel like there are also, like, there will be movies that will get in, like, Best Picture

and then some kind of craft categories, and that's it. Like, I feel like that always happens, right? Like, or at least, like, since there have been this many. Yeah. Like, I think Coda winning Best Picture with only three nominations total was a big deal. It won all three awards it was nominated for, which is kind of crazy. But normally, a Best Picture winner is probably going to be more deeply represented in other categories. Yeah.

So, yeah, when these win, like, like an F1, I don't think there's a single person in Hollywood who's like F1 could win Best Picture. Right. It's not. Right. It's just the industry, or at least the industry, as reflected in the academy being like, well done. Yeah, we like this movie. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, I think we can probably say that F1 has probably gotten as far as it's going to get this season. I mean, something crazy could happen. I mean, it could win in the tactical categories. Yeah. But best picture, this is. No, there's no way it's going to win in this picture. Got a solid 10th place.

Yes. And you know what? It's honor just to be nominated, et cetera. As we close this nominations episode out, I'm curious, Allison, do you want to bid adieu say, you know, do an in-memorium for one of your little, little, little, happy horses? Sure. I will say, I was hoping for weapons to get in a tent slot. I think that would have been a great fun pick. I know, that was one you were talking about. I also, I mean, like, the doc category is impossible to predict. Like, it is such, it is so, like, weird and, like, maybe more subject to the whims of, like, a harder to parse group than any other category. But my undesirable friends, Julia Locktav's like five plus hour. It was always going to be a tough road anyway.

Like it was campaign without distribution. It's five and a half hours long. It is told in chapters. So they had to get like a special. They had to go to ruling that it, you know, did not fall under the OJ made in America rule and get declared actually a TV series. But like I think probably that heard it as well. It got a lot of critical awards, but it did not get in for Best Doc. Asking Academy voters to watch something that long.

Yeah, that might be, that's difficult. Yeah, and I can see people being like, this is not a movie. Like, excuse me, this is a TV show. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my memoriams would be stuff that was, like, never going to happen. Like, wouldn't it be cool if Ben Wischaw had had some attention for Peter Hoosier's Day beyond, like, you know, like, he got has a spirit nomination, I believe. I mean, Josh O'Connor got the mastermind.

I think in a much slower year that, like, he would have been talked about more. Instead, he was, like, never a possibility. Yeah. I thought maybe, like, maybe sorry baby could get in in screenplay. Maybe 28 years later could have gotten in, like, a technical category, cinematography or something. If I had legs, I was hoping for more. I mean, Roseburn got in for actress, but that was it. That could have been an interesting screenplay.

For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. photography, the editing. Yeah. Oh, I think that, except Rocky gives, like, really one of the great, like, like, for supporting for Highest Alois, I think that is one of the great, like, kind of breakthrough

performances of the... And he's good in If I had legs. He is really good in that, too. But, yeah, like, I thought he was, like, mesmerizing in Highest to Lois. Well, look, there's a reason, I mean, we should have a breakthrough performer, Oscar or something. Yeah, except it's so hard to be like, what does it mean that someone's breaking through? It's kind of malaria.

Yes, he is. Special appearance. Kate Hudson is kind of a breakthrough. She hasn't been doing much acting. Right. You know, by the polter. I think my biggest, though, that we've already kind of talked about is like, I don't love, love the movie as a whole.

But I thought Seifred could have pulled it out in the end and then didn't. But otherwise, I don't know. I feel weird. I'm happy. Yeah. No, I think they're good. I mean, honestly, what I mostly miss about Seaford beyond the fact that I think she's very good in that movie is that she's such a kind of delightfully, genuinely

eccentric person in doing press. and I would have liked to see her do more on the award circuit. She is someone who does not seem to care about public image in really any serious way. And that is a rare quality that needs to be cherished. I agree. Well, Allison, thank you for breaking this down with me. It's been fun. You know.

We've got a lot more movies to talk about in the kind of weeks. I know. We did it, though. We made it here. Yeah. Again, we're at the final base camp. We're getting our own suggested. To us and leave our corpses somewhere near the summit,

as is. Oh, for all to see as they attempt awards podcasts in the future. We'll be like, we were here. Our frozen bodies be a warning to you. We'll see you next week when we will be talking about chuk-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-chug-ch-ch-chug-ch-train dreams. Is that good? It was a really unexpected way for that movie to begin, but I thought it was surprising as well. Yes, anyway, we'll be talking about the rip-roaring comedy train dreams next week. So give it a watch if you haven't yet.

It's on Netflix. to find. Critical Darling's is a blank check production in association with Vulture. Hosted by Alison Wilmore and Richard Lawson. Produced by Benjamin Frisch. Executive produced by Griffin Newman and Neil Janowitz. Video production and distribution by Anne Victoria Clark, Wolfgang Ruth and Jennifer Jean.