Blank Check with Griffin & David - Introducing Critical Darlings

Episode Date: January 1, 2026

Welcome to Critical Darlings, a new podcast miniseries from Blank Check: A conversation about the awards season conversation, one contender at a time.  On Critical Darlings, critics and Blank Check alumni Richard Lawson and Alison Willmore guide you through the state of the Oscars race, from the precursors, to the campaigns, to the nominees themselves. To get things started, we begin with a discussion of the festival circuit and the curious state of this year's race; where many promising films have floundered upon their public release. Sidebars include the host's Oscar history, watching festival features on no sleep, Brazilian film Twitter, The Oscars on Youtube, Leonardo DiCaprio at Cannes, and Allison's shocking Il Postino experiment.  Critical Darlings is crashing the Blank Check feed every Thursday through the end of Oscar season. Starting next week we'll have video clips to share produced by our friends at Vulture, stay tuned.   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. Follow @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or DiscordFor 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. Thank you, thank you. Hello, Allison. Such an honor. It's such a pleasure.

It is an honor and a pleasure, and I want to talk about why we're here. But first of all, can I just say how strong my commitment is to this brand new endeavor? Just before we sat down to record, I received from HBO, the screener of the season finale of heated rivalry. And it is burning a hole in my inbox. And I have to endure a long talk about movies before I can watch my favorite TV show ever made. I'm very thankful for your sacrifice here. I can't believe you didn't immediately catch, quote, unquote, COVID. and then have to reschedule.

But I really appreciate your being here, Richard, and not watching your prestige television smut. Oh, yeah, well, I'll get to it eventually. And, you know, I think you and I both, I don't know, we've sacrificed a lot for movies over the years, over the years that we've known each other even. Yeah, I mean, certainly any sense of financial stability or maybe, you know, retirement plan, you know, a social life, really.

Well, a lot of evenings. A lot of evenings are given up to being in Lincoln Square, AMC, or whatever. But, you know, this is going to be how we get rich, finally, is this podcast in which, you know, this season we're going to cover awards movies, particularly the critical darlings of the season. But I'm sure we'll branch out into other topics as is the blank check brand. Yeah. And I'm looking forward to both dissecting the movies that we have to live with for all award season. And then also, you know, maybe taking a different look at award season, which is, I think, so much stranger than anyone ever really registers. Beyond the fact that it goes on for most of the year in some incarnation or another, just the fact that it's so much less monolithic, that it's so much more a bunch of sometimes shockingly small groups of people making decisions about things. But also that it's so many people going to so many receptions and needing so many people. and needing so many past apps and hoping for so many photos with some star that they're like

we're colleagues, but also can I please take a picture with you, Robert Downey Jr. Yeah, exactly. It's become, there's a cottage industry that every year kind of sprouts up around awards. And I feel like, you know,

I've been part of that for a while because I did Little Gold Men for 10 years, another podcast at VF, and I've been to a lot of those parties and receptions and, you know, things where I think my arm is being twisted, a little bit to vote. I don't think I've ever actually been swayed by it. But I think there also is this other thing that's sort of even further outside of Academy voters, who ultimately

are the ones who decide what wins, which is like there's all this online chatter now. Like, there's almost a whole other Oscar race that is litigated on Twitter usually or maybe letterboxed that like, yes, might not ultimately have an effect on who wins in March, but like I think it's worth talking about because it's part of the, it's like the film. It's like the film. culture now in a way, kind of. Yeah, and I also don't think it's something entirely separate, right? For all that the Academy is filled with, as our friend Cal Buchanan put it, a bunch of guys named Mel. Yeah. It is also filled increasingly with younger, more online, more international members whose tastes are slightly less predictable, I would say, and maybe slightly less conventional, as we've always thought of it in terms of what an awards movie is. and what the Oscars like.

So I do feel like all of that online chatter, even as it gets sometimes, like, deranged, I think can filter through and have some effect on some voters. I think we're going to see more of it too. And I think that when we get, well, we'll talk a bit in this episode about like the season overall. And I think when you get that picture,

you do see some effect of, well, yes, new members of the academy, more international members of the academy, but also just discourse has changed. changed around these movies. But before we do that, we should maybe more properly, I don't know, introduce ourselves. I mean, you know, close listeners to our parent podcast blank check will, of course, know us very well because we've both been guests on that show. But I don't know if people know how well we know each other. Did you remember where we first met? I don't at all. You told me about this. You mentioned it earlier and I just had nothing. No trace of that in my

brain. We met in a totally prosaic, you know, boring place. Can France during the Can film, which did you know that's in Europe? Europe. It's across the ocean. Yeah, we had like probably met like, you know, in passing at screenings or something because I was pretty new to like film screening world. I think we first hung out in like 2015 or 16. Well, okay, I will say in preparation for recording this podcast, I did some deep research, which is to say I searched my Gmail. Oh, wow. Okay. When is the first time I got a message for Richard? And the first one that was mentioned was just 2014, actually. Oh, okay.

We were at the Toronto Film Festival. We were trying to plan a late in the festival dinner at a Chinese restaurant. And I said, I asked Richard Lawson, but he's already got dinner plans tonight. We'll see if anyone else has left. So what I have is you blowing me off for someone else. Oh, I'm sorry. In Toronto, no less. Yeah.

Then we also, in 2016, have an email in which you ask me if I saw some film called love song. And if you should bother seeing it at Sundance, I apparently did. Do I remember anything about that film? I could not tell you a single thing. Yeah. Okay, well. It is a movie in which Jen Malone and Riley Keo are friends who have like a burst of like maybe romantic moments. And that screened at Sundance? That doesn't sound like a Sundance movie at all. No, but never a quiet kind of like vaguely lesbian. And like very kind of non-plot. driven drama. Yeah, no, it doesn't sound like the kind of thing you would say at that festival at all. Yeah, I remember we, like, maybe it wasn't our first, first one-on-one like drinks,

but it was one of the early ones was Cannes, probably 2015, maybe 2014 even. And we went to Petit Majestic, which for people who don't know, which, you know, probably very few people do know, is this bar on a little side street in Cannes. It's not on the beach or anything. And, and, And it's, there is an indoor portion, but it's not, like, that nice to sit in. So everyone just kind of either sits or stands outside. And at night, like, it can get really crowded. Like, the whole street is filled in a way that, like, doesn't really happen in the U.S. But we managed to get a table. I think we went kind of earlier in the afternoon, which is sort of my MO. And it was lovely. And we chatted. And I think that from then on, I was like, oh, Allison is not, you know, we're simpatico. We have sort of a similar outlook of things. But also, especially then, you knew away a lot. a lot more than me about movies. And also, despite our being a straight woman and gay man, we became friends. I know. A relationship that has hitherto never existed.

Is there been a Sundance movie about that, maybe? So I don't remember this, which I think is, I don't know. I do think also, like, oftentimes people who are in my life just feel like they've always been in my life, which I realize sounds sweet, but it's actually just an example of how I have like the kind of object permanence of one of the dumber bird species. You can keep me away from your home by hanging, like, you know, some old DVDs on strings outside. Like, oh, it's looking pretty shiny over there. But I will say, I have a very strong memory, another film festival memory. 2018, we went to see Hereditary, which had premiered earlier at the festival at Sundance. And we had heard it was very scary, this new movie by renamed Ari Aster.

And we're like, well, we got to go see it. It was one of the last press greetings. It was at like 8.30 in the morning. So we went to this press screening. We saw this wildly terrifying movie. And then we were both like, bye. And I think I got in an Uber to the airport to Lake City. Got a flight back that I looked at it.

Somehow it went back to New York through Charlotte. Oh. Arrived at midnight. And then definitely lay there in bed with my eyes like wide open running through some of the more disturbing parts of that movie again and again. Yeah. That was back when I was, because I had taken a long break from horror movies. Because, like, my sister and I used to watch, like, every slasher down to, like, you know, D, E, F-grade slasher movies when I was a kid. And then somewhere in, like, young adulthood, I went to go see Scream 4 alone because I thought it would be fun.

And the whole time I was just, like, these poor kids, their poor parents. Like, I found it really sad and I couldn't. So I kind of, and then it was also, like, all the torture porn stuff. So Hereditary was actually one of the first, like, truly scary horror movies that I saw, like, in a theater in a long time. time. So I was happy for the moral support. Yeah. I mean, that is a movie that, I mean, I love Hereditary. I think it is an incredible horror movie, an incredible movie. But that movie is one of those experiences where, yeah, it was like, just like running on a loop through my, through my brain, even over hours of exhausting travel. This is the same thing happened

at another festival setting with It Follows, a movie where I was at the Cannes Film Festival. And I was like in my hotel room, like looking out the window, being like, is there anything following me. Well, in Cannes, there might have been, honestly. Yeah. Allison, there's a third person involved in Critical Darling's who we should introduce now. We're a blank check production, and it is in their bylaws that if you have a podcast on their network, there has to be a producer named Ben. In this case, we have the wonderful Ben Frisch. Ben, hello. Hey, how's it going? Good. We're happy to have you here. I have a question. When did you first get into watching the Oscars? Do you remember, do you have a first Oscar memory? That's a good question. I mean, I

I've talked about this a bit on Little Old Men before in the past. Like, my first, like, really significant Oscar viewing experience was 97 because, so the 98 ceremony, because I'd seen every nominee in the theaters, including Titanic. And my mom let us stay up to watch the whole thing, which was not common. It was the first time that had happened. But my, my first, like, real palpable memory of paying attention to the Oscars was for the 93 movies, because my sister had seen the piano. I had...

I told this story in Black Check. Our babysitter took my sister to the piano and I went to go see the Pelican Brief alone when I was 10 years old. And fell in love with the whole different kind of movie. But anyway, but I was keenly aware of what the piano was. And I think...

Oh yeah, Tom Hanks was also in the running for Philadelphia. He ended up winning. And so I just, for some reason, at like 10 years old, I kind of cared about it for the first time. And I distinctly remember opening the front door to the house, walking down the stairs to the sidewalk, essentially, and getting the newspaper, the Boston Globe, and then bringing it inside and throwing away the front page and the sports and all that and finding the arts thing, which had a photo of Holly Hunter holding the Oscar because she had won. And I remember being very excited about that because Holly Hunter was in the movie Always, which we owned on VHS. Yeah, I remember the 1993 Oscars as well.

I don't know when I started watching them. I must have watched them at least in pieces with my parents, you know, but I feel like my stamina was not always there also because they did go on forever, and these are often movies that I did not see because I was too young. And there were a lot of boring movies for a kid, I mean. Yeah, yeah. But I did actually, the piano, I think, was one of the first R-rated movies I saw in the theater with my parents' awkward movie to see.

With your parents. Yeah, you see Harvey's full Keitel in that movie. You sure do. But I definitely remember that year because, yes, suddenly I felt like I was getting a glimpse into this idea of what not just a movie was, but like this grown-up world of this like prestige, serious, you know, like cinema that was about a lot of things. I was just so aware of just like it was trying to do a lot of like kind of huge. serious things. So yeah, those, you know, those years were also when I was starting to have formative movie experiences, but like formative suburban California and movie experiences. So it was very defined by what was either at the Blockbuster video. I was sorry, I was more of a Hollywood video girl, to be honest, and at my local Cineplex. Well, 93 was also Jurassic Park, which was a

big deal. I saw Jurassic Park multiple times. Yeah, as a Bay Area kid, my dad worked at a computer company. He worked at InGen. Yeah, he was like, no, it's fine. It's a foolproof idea. Anyway, off to Costa Rica. Yeah, dot-com boom, you know, it's, yeah, it was really the collapse of the dinosaur industry that led to the dot-com boom, actually.

It's a little known part of the Silicon Valley history. Do you still have the house on Isla Nubler? You know, we don't go there much out of kind of all the death, but I think it'll appreciate in value eventually. I don't have the same Oscar experience

as you guys. I remember the English patient, like being a movie. Dude, I've still never seen. Oh, you should. It's really good. I have no idea what it's about other than presumably an English patient. But I remember that being like a movie that's like, oh, that's like a movie for adults. That's like, yeah. But Richard, you said that you had seen every single movie. That was nominated for Best Picture that year. Oh, okay, just for Best Picture. So you were going to the movies a lot as a, and your parents presumably. Yeah. So, I mean, well, first of all, funnily enough, the English patient is actually. not about an English patient. Really? No. It's a Hungarian person they think is English. But anyway,

so no, I mean, 93, I was already well into movies. You know, there was a video store that was like, my sister and I could walk to it from our house, which like really helped matters. We didn't have cable TV until I was 12, I think. So we were big video store rental people and big movie theater people um but for whatever reason in 97 when i was 14 everything that was not so that would have been full monti uh la confidential titanic goodwill hunting and oh god i'm forgetting one it's got a little dog in it oh my dog's kid it's uh oh it's good as it gets yeah so all five of those were kind of my parents were like we could all four of us go see that together there's nothing to risk. Yeah, there's Kate Winslet nude and, I guess, in Fulmonte, you know, whatever,

but that wasn't so my parents were, and I was also not like young, young. So that was really exciting because I felt really invested in not just the particular movies, but the sort of narrative of the whole season, also because I was two years into a very long and devoted entertainment weekly subscription. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was a formative publication, for sure. I also, I mean, like, the 90s, we were as both, like, children of the 90s. It was a time in which you had these movies that were kind of, like, maybe, like, technically being released by, like, art house arms of, like, large, you know, larger companies, but were this interesting mix of movies that still felt pretty big, even though they were not, like, considered to be, like, giant commercial enterprises, but that also played at the Cineplex, you know? Like it was not The way

Now, if I were in San Ramon, California, where I grew up And, you know, I do not know How much I would have to drive to go see like a 834 relief release, you know? It's a lot more work. That's true. And like I was lucky enough to go over in Boston. So the English patient year, Ben, was 96, so the year before the Titanic year.

And 96 was this kind of source of panic related to the Academy Awards, because Jerry McGuire was the only major studio film nominated for Best Picture that year. They were all these indies, including English patient, which is kind of funny to think that that's an indie. It was Miramax, which was, I think, already owned by Disney at that point, and it's a pretty, you know, sweeping war epic. But it was considered something of an interloper that was disrupting this narrative that, like, only big, you know, lost leader prestige films from studios are supposed to win Best Picture or be nominated for it. But then that was course corrected immediately the next year with Titanic. And how do you remember all this?

Like, do you keep spreadsheets? I have it all tattooed on my body. Yeah, like memento. No, I mean, that kind of stuff is like lore that's just like seared into my head. I think because Entertainment Weekly, you know, I think my parents would call it an enabler. But for me, it was an instructor for many years. And those were facts that were just repeated over and over every time something would come up, usually around Oscar time. But also, like, the fate of the film studio has been a question as long as I've been a fan.

of movies. Yeah, it's funny that that has been like the existential crisis of... But now it's salt. Everything's fine. No, the studios will be fine forever. Nothing bad can ever happen to them again. This also does remind me, I had not even realized it got nominated for Best Picture, but Il Postino was, yeah, in 1995. When I was in college later, I used to do psych experiments for money. You would like go to do a psych experiment and they would do something and then they would be like, actually, we tricked you. What we were really testing is this. And then here's $10. Were you in that prison experiment?

I mean, basically, because one of the psych experiments that paid more, it was hooked up to two electrodes, and they put headphones on. And then I was watching Il Postino, and every once in a while, they'd give me a mild electric shock or blast a loud sound in my ears. They claim that the point of this experiment was to see how well I could follow the movie while getting interrupted by mild electric shocks. But I feel like there was something else weirder going on that they never told me about. Maybe it wasn't a psychic experiment at all.

Maybe this was just some weird sickos. Yeah, that was. What is Il Pistino? It was an Italian film, right, that became one of the rare, like, then, foreign language films to make its way into, like, regular Oscar consideration. The actor who had already, who was already dead got nominated for best actor. It was, like, a big, like, art house sensation that rode this raft of, like, you know, popular kind of esteem. to break through, which rarely happened back then. But I never finished it because I died of mild electric shock halfway through.

Wait, when did you do the experiment? I was an undergrad. So, wait, the movie was already well, like, old by that. Yeah, it was like, it was... So why that movie? I have never, I've never found out. Wait, so somewhere there is published in an obscure scientific journal by Dr. Victor Frankenstein, there is an ill-postino-related psychological study about,

I guess so. And they just brought in a lot of undergrads, and we're just shocking them. I'm like, ha ha ha. That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I really should have asked a few more questions about this. But at the time, I made it paid, I think, like, $30, which felt like an enormous amount of money. And so I was mostly very psyched about how many, you know, pines of beer and hamburgers I could have that. Yeah, that's true. Have either of you ever been to, like, an actual, like, one of those test readings where they, like, give feedback? No, I feel like, I mean, I would never get invited, but also. So I just, I don't know why I would think I was so important. I just imagine someone being like, you, member of the media and like getting tossed out, you know, like tumbling head over heels. Well, I know a couple people who have tried to pretend they aren't members of the media so they can see something like eight months early and then they kind of got found out and it became an issue. Oh. Yeah.

You haven't either? No, I never. I mean, I think when I was a kid, I would have probably like pushed my sister down a flood of stairs to get into one of those things. But I mean, I'm sure they had them in Boston, but they were. weren't, they probably weren't common. So, yeah. I would really like to do one. Didn't they used to have ones where you'd have a dial and you'd be like, this is working for me. And you'd believe so. Well, it'd be like, yes. And then be like, it is parodied on the Simpsons. So I'm assuming they were getting it from somewhere. Yeah. I would have loved to do that. Oh, I know.

The good old days. Now, and now it's probably just like tweet reactions. Yeah. Or they hook you up to mild electric shock. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you're not laughing hard enough. Try harder to like this movie. all right so my wallet guys before i had ridge i had this crusty leather brick falling apart just this big sort of wedge i would put into my pocket all uneven it's got credit cards it's got you know dollar bills it's got coins it's got whatever i've gotten there random stuff i've put in it throughout the years and my lower back starts to hurt from sitting on this giant brick all day maybe i'm sitting unevenly i you guys anyone with a wallet out there might know what i'm talking about you might also know about ridge they've got unique slim modern wallets and they just took their game changing wallet and made

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Our Oscar consciousness started early. Did it, did either fade for you at any point, like in college or after college? Because I took a big detour into theater for several years. I always liked movies. But I will say also. I feel like I have a more, a more distance relationship with awards than, say, you do, or David Sims. I have, I watch them, but I feel like, for me, the most interesting part of them is not necessarily even, like, who's going to win or not, but just the kind of, like, what it says about what Hollywood thinks about of itself from year to year is really interesting to me, like that most, yeah. Yeah, and also I think it's sometimes interesting looking.

at like read more recent best picture winners let's say and and seeing seeing okay this is what Hollywood thought it was saying about itself but here's actually what it indicated yeah like green book for example or you know something like that so it is like you know it's an imperfect measuring stick by a lot of you know in a lot of ways but there is something of value to I don't know assessing the mood of a given year and and even if someone like you or like a lot of film fans are just like not really into awards or actually some are really vehemently against them which I totally get I've just happened to stay kind of more pro awards my whole well now career I guess but I don't know I don't love it when people say they have no sort of cultural significance or value because like they might be diminishing but it does exist yeah I also of course feel much more invested in awards when I personally get to influence them you know so like when like one of the littler awards comes up and I was like would you like to be on our committee this year I'm always like Like, yes, even though that's a lot of work for nothing, because I would like to feel more powerful. Yeah, I mean, I've definitely been, yeah, I've had my hands on that power a couple times, too, and it's pretty, it's, you know, like.

It's heady. But it also, I think, really instructively, and maybe this will come to bear as we continue to talk about this season throughout, you know, in the next few weeks. But, like, it also reminded me of how sort of arbitrary it all is. And like, because there's sometimes when I'm going to vote for something and I haven't really made a game plan and I'm just kind of deciding on the fly. And it's like, oh, right. That's definitely, you know, a significant portion of the academy is filling their ballot out that way. You know, like, what am I into this morning, basically? So, you know, so I think the long games definitely, like the campaigns definitely help, but also it can be a whim. And so you never really know ultimately what the, how it shook out. Yeah. And I feel like there is this fascinating, like, social dynamic there as well. which is that you are watching reflections of an industry, but you're also watching reflections of a whole group of people who see each other as colleagues,

but also there's an enormous, like, power gradient, right, amongst them. And I think that the ways in which people who are voting are part of this industry, but also fans of this industry or also, like, begrudge this industry. I mean, those are all, like, totally unpredictable, you know, currents that ultimately affect people's votes. Do you feel like a responsibility as critics to serve as sort of mediators in some way of the awards generally or the awards season? You know, when you're growing up and reading variety or whatever, those writers were presumably influencing you.

Do you feel like that sort of responsibility for young film, Brazilian film, Twitter, whatever? Well, first of all, then, do you know what a variety subscription costs? I was not just like swimming in money that I could get a kind of professional trade. How much is a variety? It was quite expensive, I think. You were getting like a, was it like a week?

Yeah, like this. Sometimes you were, well, the old days you were getting a daily print issue. Oh, wow. And then now it's weekly, I think. And also it's like priced in that way that is assuming your company is paying for it and then you are expensing it.

So, yeah. Like a Getty subscription. Yeah, I don't know how many members of the public actually get variety. I'm sure they are hoping to get. get more members of the public to do that. But yeah, I think like the actual subscription, I would love to be like, that would be such a great weirdo origin story for me to be like, I was 12 years old and I told my parents that I needed several hundred dollars. So it's like a

Bloomberg. Right, a bit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I had no idea. Yeah. But I mean, and now these days, I'm sure it doesn't work like that in the same way. But yeah, I feel like my responsibility as a critic is only just to comment on them. Like, I don't feel, I mean, I guess in theory, we could have some kind of input on there, but, like, I don't have any way of gauging that. And I don't really set out to try and do that, you know, to be like, I can make a case for this. If I'm going to make a case for, like, I, you know, like, last year I wrote a piece about how much I thought Marianne Jean-Baptiste should get an Oscar nomination. And that worked really well, of course. Yeah, well done. I've just nominated her, of course. But I think that's just more me wanting to write about that performance that I, you know, I hadn't had, I gotten a chance to write about it. And I just thought she was so incredible.

So I think that's more how I approach it is I don't really have any input here, but I will comment on it in the same way that I am also commenting on the movies. I think that, like, ideally I would say the same thing. But the reality is that, like, I, the bulk of my film criticism career minus two, three years was at Vanity Fair. And that magazine is very closely tied to the Oscars and that we, you know, there's a big after party that every year that is, you know, very, like, well attended events and other things throughout the season and, you know, and I did an awards podcast. And so inevitably, not that I was writing reviews with awards in mind necessarily, but I think a lot of times how those reviews were packaged, like how they were headlined, what the subhead was, where it arrived in the year, like usually from a film festival that's sort of an Oscar precursor. Like, I think inevitably my reviews tended to get rolled up in that, you know, maybe more so than other publications that are a little bit,

just a tiny bit further away from the Oscars. But I don't think that I was when I would sit down to write that that was top of mind. I was able to keep that hat on. And then if an editor wanted me to write something specifically Oscar-focused, like, who were the frontrunners this year? I could put the other hat on. Okay. Did Leonardo DiCaprio always come to the party?

Would they cancel the party if he couldn't come? That's a great question. I've only went to the Oscar party twice in 12 years. Because they were not like, please, Vanity Fair Staffers come to the party. They were like... Yeah, no, I had to work, but I had to do live stream on camera hits both times. That was why I was there. I do remember a Leo VF party story, though, involving Cannes. So one year, he used to come to that party whenever he was in town. And I was at that same party one year. And Leo came and he was in like, and it's not black tie. It's like Mediterranean cocktail chic. He shows up in like shorts in a baseball. in a t-shirt, which, like, whatever.

Yeah, or Leonardo DiCaprio. He wasn't, like, coming from her premiere. I think he had just rolled down the hill at the Hotel DuCap, like, from his room, like, to the pool deck party. He sat and stood in a corner smoking, or maybe he was vaping, complained that the music wasn't cool enough because it's like, it was our DJ Mateo who, like, always DJs the parties, and it's more, it's for, like, an older set. It's, like, lively and fun, but it's not like.

Cha-cha slide. It's straight for four hours. they just played on the loop. But I guess DiCaprio complained that the music wasn't cool enough. I think he wanted more, something with the beat, maybe some hip hop or something.

Eventually, he decided to just round up every young woman at the party and leave with them, like tie-piper style. Yeah, I would imagine that he could just kind of like

hold up a sign, you know, like a poor guy. And then they all just turn around. And they all got in his bus. And drove into the night. Yeah. But I don't think,

I don't think I remember seeing Leo at the actual Oscar party. I think mostly because I wasn't really supposed to talk to, like, like notice talent at those things but you couldn't help

you know but standing five feet away from Oprah talking to Jane Fonda talking to Steven Spielberg talking to Anita Hill you know Jeff Bezos is standing behind them like a weirdo you know like Joni Mitchell being there a couple times when I was there was pretty amazing but anyway see this is what I'm saying is that my

job at VF like is inherently more tied to that stuff than is another critic job somewhere else so I'm probably I was probably always a little compromised yeah whereas I feel like I'm mostly just attached like a remora to award season as it swims by, you know, gaining its nutrients. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's, I guess, what you could call it when I do a moderate a Q&A for, you know, an award screening. That is me getting some delicious krill or whatever.

But in terms of responsibility to younger readers, I do think that, I don't know if, I don't know who the younger readers are because I feel like they're all kind of having conversations with themselves and they're on letterbox and they're on film Twitter and, you know. They're so incredibly neat. And a lot of them are speaking Portuguese. So, Ben, do you know about, like, Brazilian film Twitter? I've only heard tell. I would love for you to explain.

It's probably the funniest and most heartening in a way phenomenon that's sprouted up in recent film memory for me. In that it first became apparent when, like, Allison and I would vote for the New York Film Critic Circle Awards, which are announced during one, you know, weekday, category by category as we vote. and the response is on Twitter to each one with each passing year it's just more and more people like from Brazil who seem young and they're like if there's a Brazilian film in the mix

forget about it but they're also diehard fans of American actors or whoever and they just all have their horses that they're rooting for they can be kind of nasty but they're for the most part really enthusiastic and it seems like there are thousands of them yeah and they they will all also it's like when you

you, like, happen to step on the edge of a Stan war, you know, and you're like, oh, these people are already involved in, like, so many layers of deep of lore about the fights that they're having and the battles on behalf of their respective teams. I can't even understand what they're upset about. But then you will be like, oh, we gave the prize, you know, for best cinematography to this, and they'll be, like, raging in the responses. Like, they have really strong opinions about that. And you're like, I don't know what they're so upset about. I thought it was just good cinematography. I do. I do. love that. I feel like there are other pockets of international film Twitter. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there was one year where there are a bunch of kind of like people in the Philippines, who are just like deeply invested and also like very displeased and scornful of our picks. And I was like, I accept it. I appreciate it. But yeah, I don't know. I love the idea that there are just whole enormous pockets of international Twitters that are just wildly invested in like kind of whatever horse race is going on in whatever category of the Oscars, you know, we're heading towards. Yeah, so we're doing this podcast for them.

Yeah, solely for them. Yeah, this will be AI translated into Portuguese, I'm hoping, although they all seem to speak very good English. But yeah, it's a funny phenomenon. And I say heartening because, like, you know, there are big questions about the future of film and right now and to young people. Well, actually, it does turn out that young people are going to movies more than older people, actually. But, you know, when you see something like last year where I'm still here, a Brazilian movie was up for a bunch of awards and it won one. And then there's video of the Oscars being projected on the side of a church. I think it was in Rio or Sao Paulo. And there's a huge crowd like that would, you know, typically the size of a crowd, what we were watching football or something, cheering as it wins and like partying in the streets. And it's like, I really wish we could, you know, kind of take an inspiration in America to that sort of. film culture, which I think we've lost, if we ever had it at all. Yeah, well, I mean, maybe it'll happen again this year. The Secret Agent, which is, I feel my love, is definitely gaining momentum in ways that I would

not have expected when I first saw it at Can. Yeah. So, who knows, maybe we'll have another season of... Yeah, I mean, but I have to confess, I saw the Secret Agent It Can. I should maybe put the word saw in quotes because I was jet lagged. That movie can be a little slow. And it was like a later screening. I feel like it was around the time where, yeah, you run out of steam.

And I was not dead asleep, but I was slipping in and out of lucid consciousness pretty much the whole run. So I didn't review it. I was kind of quiet about it all summer when people talked about like potential awards movies because I was like, I don't really feel like I've seen that movie. I finally rewatched it in New York with some sleep. And I did really like it. but I apparently had absorbed less of it than I thought because I walked out of it

and I said to my friend I was like oh so he wasn't a spy my memory was that he had been some sort of actual secret agent and it turns out he's not really I mean they do kind of like set him up like he's going to be and then it becomes something

more complicated to explain I will say my version of this movie was Leviathan like a 2014 Russian film Oh I remember that yeah like I remember it was at Ken and I remember sitting down it started and my eyes just kind

And then I spent the whole thing like kind of lurching back into consciousness like every few minutes. And there would be like, you know, very upset Russian people talking to each other. And then there was like bones of a whale. And then it was over. And I was like, whoops. Yeah. My first can, we didn't know what we were doing. And so I flew in late and left early and it was just a whole debacle.

But I remember getting into town, putting my suitcase down, going to get my badge. We were staying, you know, two miles away, which was really stupid. and we didn't, you know, so I was walking back and forth all the time. Anyway, the first movie that I could have seen was Winter Sleep, the, what, three-plus-hour Turkish movie? And I at least had the presence of mine to be like, I think that's maybe not the best thing to see right now, just based on the title alone, as my first movie it can. It sounds like going to festivals like that as just a marathon. Yeah. And I'm curious about how, from a filmmaker or director's standpoint, how they're thinking about, like,

when do I premiere my movie? Obviously, I don't think they have, they don't get to choose their time slot necessarily. But in terms of, like, why do you premiere some things at certain festivals? How does that whole system, like, work? I think people attack it from different angles of thought, you know? I mean, from my perspective, it is a total,

it can be a grind, you know, I mean, it's also a privilege and it's really fun to get those festivals. I have in recent years started to question whether or not I was doing the right thing by like turning around really quick reviews from festivals because many times

I would reassess later with when I had more time to think and feel very differently about it. So that's from my critical perspective but from a studio's perspective or filmmakers it can kick off an awards campaign which is germane

to what we're talking about on the show. It, you know, it shores something up with good reviews, hopefully. It's a risk because it can sink it too. But it's really the most high profile way with the most amount of journalists and the most amount of everyone else there,

photographers, all that, to premiere a film, you know, and it also is prestigious and the filmmakers care about that prestige. To walk the can red carpet, to get the standing ovation there or at Venice or wherever, it means something to them. And also, there is a way to game when, what time slot you get at a festival. If you just say, if you have big talent, you just say, well, they're only available on Saturday evening. So if you want the, if you want the stars on the red carpet, it has to be the big, you know, Saturday night premiere slot. Oh, that's smart. Yeah, I mean, sometimes they also really only have that.

Like, like, highest to lowest premiered at Cannes this year. And, like, Denzel Washington was on Broadway at the time. Yep. So they had this window of, like, when the night the show was dark, they basically, like, as soon as he did his previous show, I think they, like, put him on a plane. Yep. He slept on the plane, walked the red carpet, got back on a plane, back in New York. Did Broadway.

Yeah, did Broadway. So sometimes, yeah, you really just wrestle over getting your. talent there. But I would say I would say that most films, I am not sure how many films turned down Cannes. I think if you're ready in time for Cannes, you go to Cannes because it is the glitziest, it is the most

prestigious. It is not the one that is closest to awards season, but I think lately it has proven a better launch. It is absolutely possible to, you get well received there and then it's fine. You can carry momentum across, you know,

all the way through and to fall. Because you can premiere at Cann and then release the movie six or eight months later. You premiere at Cannes, you kind of lie dormant all summer. Maybe your film plays at one of the smaller European regional festivals. Then you can resurface at New York Film Festival or Toronto and like restart the kind of awards campaign. And then open in theaters with even more glowing reviews, kind of whatever. And as the Academy has gotten more international, it's no surprise that Cannes has become so much more relevant on that front. You know, because if you look back, like, even 10 years ago, there was usually one Cannes movie that was, like, a best picture contender, but nowadays, I mean, yes, they've expanded to 10 nominees and Best Picture, sure. But, like, nowadays, it can be, like, upwards of five, which is crazy.

How French is Can? Pretty French. It's very French. Like, I mean, are you, you're not having to, like, get around in French. A little bit. I try, and then they say, no, and respond to me in English. The most French thing about the festival is that they... tier all of the press members into a selection of like, um, color-coded badges that indicate basically how powerful they see you as. And it determines the order in which you get into

screenings and the order in which some screenings that you can only access. And so it is like a giant psych experiment without the electroshock as far as I know. But it is one in which people torture themselves over their status that they've been granted by the festival. And that feels to me wildly French in a way that I appreciate, you know? Yeah, I mean, I'm the kind of person who, as much as I complain about how rigid and horrible can be, and look, they do genuinely bad things. Like, they can be pretty racist and, you know, and sexist and all that stuff. But their formality is, is, it can be appreciated in a way where I go to, like, Toronto or Sundance. So a North American festival, and I get kind of annoyed by the, like, earnest volunteers who were just kind of like,

happy to have a headset in the clipboard and you're just like bring back the uniformed French people who were just like stern and you know organized and usually wearing some very stylish uniform too yeah I also you know Cannes is the only festival where I've seen people get into a physical shoving match

over trying to see a Jia Jajanko documentary about factory workers in China and I feel like you cannot That's how we met that's what it is now I'm sorry I said I was sorry knocking you down the stairs Richard But is there a correlation between like doing well at Cann and then winning Best Picture or being nominated for Best Picture? There didn't really used to be, to be honest.

It was rare that a Palm Door winner was even an Oscar player. It was usually two art house or two international war. But now that has changed. I mean, Anora won Best Picture at the Oscars at one Palm Door at Cannes. This year's Palm Door winner, it was just an accident, the Jafar Panahi film from Iran. I have that on my best picture 10 list right now I think it's really good it's one of the best movies of the year

and I think it's a contender so yeah something has shifted Ben and it's just like now that people I think also it's it's not just that the academy has gotten more international and thus and like also the internet audience has you know movies have kind of crossed borders more easily whatever

I think it's also just that Hollywood isn't really putting out enough awards a movies to fill 10 best picture slots anymore. Yeah, like that the kind of version, more recent version of the oh my God, these movies are too small no one will care crisis has been

yeah, when you have like a few Sundance movies, right? Like movies or I mean, it won but like Coda is like yeah, that was an anomalous year. But like that's like not the kind of movie that they see themselves like wanting

to build the Oscars on. You know, it's It's too small to support the Oscars. I watched The Fugitive the other day. The Harrison Ford Feas? Yeah. And I didn't realize that that had been nominated for Best Picture. Yeah. And that was a rare occurrence back then for something like that to get in there.

But it was such a phenomenon and well enough made that. And I guess probably Tommy Lee Jones and eventually winning the Oscar definitely, I think, helped that movie's momentum overall. But I guess like Unforgiven had been the year before, right? Yeah. I feel like it's easy to think that the dynamic. that we deal with now were always the dynamics with regard to like

something being too pop being too commercial being to this and that but yeah they're always being reshaped and I should point out like we've just talked about the festivals circuit a lot

but like you don't have to go to the festivals too you know like one battle after another is not a festival movie sinners is not a festival movie and they are both you know in addition to being

enormous kind of commercial well we can debate how enormous commercial it, one battle after. We're not accountants. Yes, you know. It certainly made more money than most of the can. It made more money than I make an ear.

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Is there a continuity between the type, of movies that win Palm Door that go on to win Best Picture like Anora or a Parasite, I think? Well, Anora and Parasite are really entertaining, for one thing. They're propulsive. Parasites kind of genre that probably helps. You know, I mean, this year's Palm Door winner, the Iranian film, like, is among Iranian New Wave movies one of the more propulsive plot, you know, driven kind of movies to come out. of that film movement. So I think it benefits from that. If there's some extra

hook, I mean, in Nora's English language and, you know, from an American director, so that I don't know, but it feels like there has to be a little bit of extra juice to get. Yeah. And I feel like you are right, Richard, in that what you said, where I feel like part of this is not even necessarily

the kind of greater footprint of international films and is more just like the falling away of Hollywood offerings, right? Right. Like if we were getting, you know, two Philadelphias and three Forrest Gump's and whatever in any given year we would be having a very different conversation but like those movies just aren't coming out

I mean if we want to talk more broadly about this year as an example of all of this strangeness like I do think like right now number 10 on my best picture predictions is weapons because I think that maybe Hollywood wants to claw back a little bit of their Oscar position and say like let's get more of our movies on these lists. And yes, it's a horror movie. And yes, there's a crazy witch lady. But, like,

we kind of want to nominate the crazy witch lady. And so the screenplays pretty good. And so why don't we just nominate the movie as a whole? Because it's another Hollywood triumph, you know, versus one of these damn Ferner movies. Yeah. I also, it's a good movie. I like weapons. I love with weapons was nominated for Best Picture. I just think this year out of many, like, like, there is a tension between traditional Hollywood Oscar Fair and the kind of new Oscar fair being like can movies or whatever and the company that you know the two the two major american companies that are sort of propping up the american side of the narrative ironically enough are netflix and warner brothers which are trying to get married and have babies um and i don't know

if i want them to get married and have babies but uh you know warner brothers has weapons it has one battle it has sinners Netflix has j kelly and frankenstein and i guess house a dynamite but not really that's train dreams like um so that's kind of the story i think of best picture this year at least is like on the american side is these two companies that are trying to merge uh are the only ones really producing the the stuff that keeps the americans in the race at all yeah well it's also it's funny that born brothers has had all these wild card movies you know these like really bold uh original films these like big swings of movies and netflix with all of these resources

its slate of awards films all of which sound great on paper kind of fizzled out aside from I guess train dreams which is when they acquired and how they seem to be kind of pinning all their hopes on and I don't mean to discount A24 which has Marty Supreme and neon

which acquires a lot of those canned films they are in American company so there's a lot of American interest involved past Netflix and Warner Brothers but I don't know that seems to be the big narrative and speaking of going to festivals and whether it's worth it or not I think one of the main stories of this year

Oscar-wise is like how unreliable festival reaction was because like I if you would talk to me out of Cannes I'd be like I think it was a pretty weak year I saw maybe a sentimental value from Norway that probably has some decent Oscar chances

but past that like I don't really know I'm saying a very different thing six months later you know because I had a chance to see movies where I wasn't sleeping during them and stuff like that catch up on stuff I missed. And then, you know, Venice, that was where all Netflix's big movies premiered and they kind of fizzled there. But then Jay Kelly seems to have gotten a sort of like change of heart campaign and, uh, ditto, um, Frankenstein. And, and so I think this year has been

really marked by a lot of up and down unpredictability. Yeah, I feel like also Venice is, I don't know, it's the place where you're supposed to be able to do a big, let's see, launch of your festival film now or your you're your fall film and stars go there there are boats you know there are parties on islands uh but it still has a smaller set of american press like in particular yeah than can and then a lot of festivals because you know it's Venice it's a it's a trek to get there although the secret is cheaper to go to Venice than go to tell you right yeah yeah um but because of that I think it creates a sense that there's a bit more of a bubble there um yeah and and and this year in particular, I saw people writing about how, oh, you'd hear about like every movie

there, you know, getting seven minutes standing ovation, 14 minutes standing ovation. And then when it actually plays here, everyone's like, her? Her? Yeah. Well, I was, you know, I was one of the people, I'm embarrassed to say, but it's, it's historical record. Speaking of the Venice bubble, I was one of the people who on the water bus home from the lead out to the main city of Venice where I was staying, starting to write my review on my phone, I, genuinely worried if the movie Joker could incite the violence. Because that was what everyone was saying after that first screening. And I was like, I kind of, I see it. Like, I believe them. And so I didn't, like, actually say that the movie was dangerous, but I just sort of, you know, rub my hands together

with worry and sort of said, oh, could this movie do something bad? And then Joker, I think it next played at Toronto, like a week or so, not even a week later. And everyone there who was seeing it anew was like, what the fuck were you talking? You guys are such dorks. Is it because maybe you're seeing these movies in these Europe, these like goats of European settings? I don't know. Would it be different if you just like saw it at a mall? 100%. Because it's not just that like you're in a different setting and it's that that different setting costs money to be there and a lot of effort to get there and you're burning the candle at both ends. And you want all of these things to be significant. You know, you want them to be glorious masterpieces or troubling visions of, you know, dystopia. So you wanted Joker to civil violence?

I think subconsciously I wanted Joker to be a reckless and irresponsible movie. Yes, I did. I mean, I wouldn't have ever said that out loud. But, like, I think in hindsight, we all sort of went there. I mean, the Reddit people are going to go insane. But I don't mean, I don't, there was not a conspiracy to call Joker dangerous. I promise you. What I mean is that subconsciously, we'd are, that pump had already been primed by a lot of press leading up to the premiere that, oh, it's about incels.

It's about this. It's about school shooters. It's about that. that that was definitely in the back of some of our minds. And when we saw the movie, it seemed, I thought it was well enough made that it seemed to confirm that. And thus, you know, but had I seen it a couple weeks later when the stakes weren't as high, I probably would have felt very different about it. I can't believe we've blown this conspiracy wide open. I know. I'm going to get us in so much in trouble.

Yeah. Well, I think also, I think that Richard's point, though, like, you want these movies to be major, whether they're good or bad. Like, the worst thing is being like, oh, I flew, you know, thousands of miles away, and I'm sleeping three hours a night and, like, churning out all of these reviews of movies that no one will ever care about. And there are certain festivals where I have kind of lost interest in going because I felt increasingly, like, I am doing this for movies that are not going to have, most of which are not going to have a major footprint. Yeah. But when you're watching these movies in your mind, are you like, this performance feels best supporting? Are you like... Oh, I am. I am not.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm, because I'm VF brained and also just like me brained. That's... And like, you know, Kyle Buchanan, who's kind of... He writes about awards for The New York Times. Like, that's a fun sort of post-screening game for us. But that's not the number one reason why I'm seeing these movies.

But it can be a fun little side combo. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's also like, you are the first audiences seeing something. And so... I do feel like the more a film kind of has this journey and plays for different audiences and different contexts, the more it is kind of freed up from the pressure of being like you have to decide where this film exists in the world, right? Because there are a lot of different people who have a lot of different opinions on where it exists in the world. Whereas when it's brand new and all you know about it are the kind of like little stories that have gone up or sometimes nothing at all. Sometimes you are sitting down to a movie where you're like, I know basically nothing about. what this is going to be.

And that's exciting. But I think it also means that you are just like, you're like, you know, footprints in fresh snow, basically. And later, everyone else will tread over them and what you say will matter, nothing at all. And I had, for the first time in a long time, I sort of had more of the civilian experience this year with a lot of these movies because, you know,

I lost my job in August. I had to cancel my trip to Venice. So that meant I wasn't at the first audience for Jay Kelly or for House of Dynamite or for Frankenstein or for Hamnet. And I didn't really have a chance to catch up with many of those in Toronto because I had other assignments to do

for freelance stuff. And so, like, there were maybe half, a third of a lot of the big awards movies of the season, at least from the American side of things, that I saw either at a much later festival or sort of on my own and had very different reactions to it because again the stakes were so low

and I found that like really instructive actually if less exciting that's a thing you know that is the trade office you don't get all the pomp and circumstance but maybe it makes you a better assessor of like you know

Frankenstein being terrible can I ask about two categories in particular that have always sort of confused me best foreign film and best animated feature what is how what are the rules

around those movies being eligible for Best Picture as well? Anything is eligible for Best Picture as long as it's a feature that played for a certain amount, which is just a short amount of time in the United States theatrically. But wasn't there some rule about Best Animated stuff not being eligible? I don't think so because, like, Beauty the Beast was nominated for Best Picture, Toy Story 3 was nominated for Best Picture, Up was nominated. So there have been, that has happened in the past. it just doesn't happen often, I think, because of a bias against the form.

Yeah. I mean, like, it's a joke almost every year when they introduce that category of the Oscars are like, animation. It's the thing we show to our children over and over again. And every animator in the audience is like, thank you so much for that. What are the odds that we get like a chainsaw man or something? That I think, I think that we'd have to have all of like, you know, Twitter, film Twitter vote on the Oscars for that to happen. I think that the animated category is in a kind of weird position right now because this year in particular was not great for animation, at least the mainstream American studio animation. But at the same time, you have K-pop Demon Hunters, which is a legit phenomenon.

And like barely should, it shouldn't technically qualify, though, because it didn't release theatrically. It went on to Netflix first. But they kind of grandfathered them in, right, for some reason. Yeah. Because they want Golden to be performed at the Oscars, which I don't blame them. I, too, want that to happen.

Yeah. Yeah, it's, and then otherwise, I don't know. I mean, I think the thing is with, it is true, like, to your point, I think that you make a really good point, which is, like, the biggest animated films of the year aside from, like, you know, K-pop Demon Hunters and, like, I don't even know which. Zootopia. Yeah, Zootopia, too, the kind of, like, sequels to the established kind of franchises that are more aimed at children. the biggest animated films of the year have been these anime films that have been screened mostly as like kind of fathom event style screenings

like event screenings and that are often like a feature film continuation of a hugely successful series, right? And it really is a whole other universe of animation and movie going because it is like all of these people who have already been really invested in these characters and in this world

getting to get together and see something in person, you know, as a group in this, like, kind of, I don't know, communal setting, I feel like most of those movies are just, like, totally opaque to the average Academy viewer who has not, you know, already watched some of that series. Describe for me the average Academy viewer. You mentioned a Mel earlier. Yeah, that's Kyle Buchanan's construction that, like, a vast portion of the Academy who votes are the sort of under, you know, regarded, like, Mel's of West L.A.

you know, like just guys in their 70s who've been in the industry a long time, live in their little bubble in Santa Monica or wherever, and have pretty conventional taste, one could say. And I think that they're probably not the guys who are and gals who are going out to these like, you know, FYC events and, you know, being, you know, whined and dined. I mean, some of them get definitely go. But I think that's the voter that we know is out there, but is very hard to access in terms of like what they're thinking. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Well, I think also there is an interesting phenomenon where a lot of, like, younger viewers of film and television have tastes that are maybe, like, becoming more interesting and, like, animation skewing and international skewing thanks to streaming, right? Yeah. Like, they're kind of outstripping what the average Mel might be interested in, you know, what they might even think about viewing. Whereas, you know, a lot of people who are younger, who are. watching like all of these anime series on streaming are watching uh foreign language television shows which is something that was like you know now is like so widespread and was just like not available for so much of um yeah you know like my my growing up and uh i think that

really normalizes a lot of interest in things that an older academy member might not even consider you know as important um i also think that there's a question of film grammar and storytelling grammar where like a lot of stuff from East Asia, let's say, is just following a sort of different storytelling rubric than people in the United States, you know, Western people are used to maybe, and you see that like in anime. You see something like Parasite, which kind of like very successfully merges a sort of, sort of traditions of storytelling, how to kind of lay out a plot, you know. You see something this year, like no other choice, the Park Chan Wick film,

which I think is not trying to do that quite as much. It's a little bit harder to kind of parse. I also think that like a secret agent from Brazil is also sort of challenging an American understanding of how a story like that is supposed to be laid out and told. Younger audiences who are more steeped in international stuff, I think kind of already have that wired into them. They can parse a story from anywhere around the world. But I think older voters are like, wait, but I don't understand why this plot, didn't show me X event happening and just only made us infer that it happened in the way that I find, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Allison, but like I feel like a lot of Chinese and

Korean cinema and Japanese cinema to a lesser extent, like aren't going to hold your hand through every single matter of the plot, whereas I think an American film does. I mean, at some point does the Academy kind of have to recognize that stuff, if only because Demon Slayer came out this year and is the, like, the highest grossing. born film ever. I think they're going to start looking pretty irrelevant if they don't. I think it's also the fact that

the way a lot of those anime films work as like a feature film spinoff of a series makes, puts them in their own kind of unusual category because I do think most of the viewers of that are ones who saw this show, right? Like I've kept up with

the series in some way. And I feel like it's a lot harder to be like you're an academy member and you're like, oh, I got the screener for this thing, you know? And then do you start, like, is it how good an experience is at watching that if you have no idea what, what, you know, the franchise is? I don't know. But I also think, like, like, it can also depend on, like, how mainstream these international films are meant to be as well, you know. But I think, I don't know.

I feel like we are seeing audiences that are getting exposed to more of the fact that, like, they're different. there are different things allowed tonally especially in different international cinemas. I think that's the true tone. Yeah, I happen to moderate a Q&A, speaking of my Ramora career, moderate a Q&A with Javar Panahi

for, you know, it was just an accident. And he was talking about how audiences in the U.S. laugh at that movie a lot more. I think, which is a movie that I think is a very solid streak of like dark comedy in it. But they laugh at that movie

a lot more than, say, when he took it to Japan, and people were, like, silent. They did not kind of think it was funny at all. And I think that, you know, obviously, things will always be received differently, depending where you go. The U.S. has, like, posted on this kind of, you know, soft power exporting of Hollywood standards for a really long time and this assumption that everyone would, of course, you know, follow and accept and take as the norm Hollywood storytelling. But I think that's not necessarily the case anymore. So, oh, I think it's almost a, like we're nearing full reversal, you know, of the engines. You know, China's sort of starting to really reject a lot of American movies and then America trying to like figure out what they wanted

and, you know, that's had some effect. But I think it's more just about a lot of young people are like, I have no trouble parsing what an anime story is, you know, or how the how the plot plays out, you know, or, and I think, you know, Squid Game being so successful on TV helped, although that's pretty linear. That's pretty straightforward. But, but yeah, I mean, I do think that my question is, and not to sound doom and gloom, is like, whether or not the Academy catches up before the whole thing kind of goes away, like the Academy Awards, or at least as we know them. Well, they're going to be on YouTube soon, so. Yeah, are you happy about that? Like, do you think that's a good thing or a bad thing? So this is in 2029. YouTube has attained the rights for the Oscars after, what, three decades, 40s?

decades at ABC. I think on the one hand, sure, great, attract younger viewers. There is a sense that younger people actually are going to movies more than this sort of conventionally thought of. I thought it was older people, you know, keeping theaters alive. It turns out it's actually kind of the opposite. So if they have better access to the Oscars, because otherwise they don't know how to find broadcast TV, I think that's great. I worry a bit about, and maybe this is just me being, you know, middle-aged about it. But like, I worry a little bit about, um, YouTube feeling a little less prestigious and, you know, a little bit jankier. I think the, the Netflix award shows, they've done the SAG Awards a couple times. The sound quality is not

great. The picture looks a little too kind of motion smooth. Um, it just feels a little kind of clunkier. And I, I do know that YouTube invested a lot of money in this. And so hopefully they'll treat it with a bit more care than Netflix does to the SAG Awards. I think they'll definitely get a big audience. Like, if, if, if, uh, if the Oscars were on YouTube this year, you would look at like the graph of people watching. And then when Golden was being performed, it would be like up here and then it would go back down.

Any Marty Supreme thing and T. Yeah, Timothy Shalameh, obviously a big draw. Um, so I, I think, look, the Academy needed to figure out how to move this ceremony into the future, you know, they've tried experiments on ABC that haven't really. worked, I think stylistically. Then they kind of went back to more traditional Oscars, which I love. And the ratings actually have been pretty decent in recent years. They've ticked up even a little bit. Still one of the most watched live events. I mean, it pales in comparison to football, but otherwise it does pretty well compared to other things. But yeah, they need to modernize and I think maybe the YouTube of it all is what's going to force them to do that.

We should have the host directly address the chat. There you go. Yeah, that would be good. I love I love, I think there's nothing more compelling than when you're watching someone on a live stream, like, peer at like the sidebar, you know, and just be like, as comments are flying by being like, oh, yeah, uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, you guys are right. That's a, it's, it is like. Goku Fort 20 says, it was just an accident. It was the best picture of the year. Come to Brazil, come to Brazil. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I have no idea what to think, but I am very curious about what it will look like for the structure of the Oscars to no longer be beholden to the kind of formal rhythms of network television. Yep. Totally. I mean, I would assume that they would have ad breaks because not everyone will be paying for premiums. So they'll have to be, they'll be served ads. So they was have to also people have to pee. Sure. And the celebrities have to go get drinks in the, in the lobby. And superpowers and this. Well, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, actually, that is, that is a superpower. Some critics don't. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Sims will get up out of a, you know. Yeah. No, no, I don't do that.

Oh, no. I refuse. I have really bad bladder problems because of it. But it's worth it. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know. My swears at the Oscars, you know, that'll be kind of strange. Yeah. I mean, run time delay. Right. Run time can go on. We can go on whatever. For eight hours. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it would. No. But I also think that like Nate Bargatz hosting the Emmys was it this year where he had like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. like the charity money numbers going down the longer you go over time that felt like funny on paper but in execution like really kind of rude

to also like the opposite of what you actually want which is like you're like the point of this is not to hurry through well it's this non-fan of awards show thinking about how awards show should work we're like who gives a shit let's just get through this you know and it's like no I want Melissa Leo still on stage

accepting her best supporting actress from 15 years ago like that's what I like that's what I want you were like that that speech should still be going on right now 100 person you should be able to walk into the Dolby theater at any time 24 hours a day yeah and she's on that stage in that white dress still talk really good for the museum as just having her as a permanent exhibit I think um we should write to them Melissa what's your housing situation like right now did you would you want to move to LA yes I've got a room set up for you it'll be great what's her name she lived in a glass cube for a minute Tilda Swinton yeah yeah no I think I think we're on to something here So YouTube, if you're listening, respected actresses and Glasgow. And they live there. They have to, it's really got to be like at least a multi-year commitment. Yeah. Yeah, it's the future of awards.

And it's almost made me kind of like impatient for it where like I'm excited about you know, Conan hosting again this year and I'm invested in some of the narratives that we'll be getting into over the course of the next few weeks. But I don't know. I'm sort of suddenly really eager to see what the YouTube version looks like, and now it's, you know,

three years to wait. Yeah, we will, we will get there. I'll be so old then. Oh, if I may be, I may not make it. Oh, well, if you, we'll try. Let's both try as hard as we can. Well, I have a really pressing question for you, Richard. Okay.

Because obviously, one of the reasons I watch the Oscars is to look at what everyone is wearing. Mostly the dresses, because let's be honest, men's fashion has, like, come a bit further on the red carpet, but it's an all, like, a little. But I got sick at the heart. harnesses in this sort of like big billowy pants that the guys were doing it. Also, I feel like there's a lot of, there's been a kind of retrenchment to like wearing just like a standard tux

anyway. Well, look at Chalamee. He's just completely reverted to. He's growing out of these days. What do you think? Orange tucks for the, uh, for the Oscars this year. Oh, I bet he shows up in like a mesh basketball shirt and like long jeans shorts. A tux made entirely out of mesh basketball. I think that would be incredible. If you're his stylist. Yeah. Rachel Zoe, if you're listening. We're giving out some great notes here. We could say him for the Oscars, personally. What is your favorite Oscar dress? I have sort of one is, well, I have two answers.

One is sort of more sentimental. One is more technical. I think technically the Kate Blanchett yellow dress when she won for the Aviator is incredible. It's very pretty. In hindsight, a really weird win. Yes. Have you watched clips of her in the aviator, like in the last, let's say, 10 years? No.

It's like basically SNL. Like, it's not like a very subtle performance. But, you know, when they say now where people are in biopics, like, they're not doing an impersonation. They're capturing the spirit of the person. She's doing an impersonation. But anyway, I'm glad she got her first Oscar, and she looked amazing. But then the more sentimental one, which also, I think, is technically, fashion critics like it, is the Valentinian. dress that Julia Roberts wore when she won

with the white strap the kind of little like V cut out otherwise black beautiful dress yeah that is a good one yeah my favorite and I'm just discovering that there is a Wikipedia page for this that is definitely not translated from AI by

AI from French ivory Jean-Paul Gautierre oh yeah it's always the of yes yes yes we're like there's no like a possessive it's yeah You know, Marianne Cotillard, one of my top five French 9-11 denialists. Sometimes she's number one.

And moon landing. Yeah, sometimes she's number one, but I don't like to commit to that. But that was the year she won for Le Vion Rose. She wore this, yes, it was kind of like white and silver. It had like a mermaid dress and it had kind of like fish scale inspired. And it was like so beautiful. And in this way where it was both like very elegant and glamorous, but just a little. kind of organic looking and unsettling

as well. I think that is still like my favorite Oscar dress. That's a really good choice. And I think a rarer choice. You know, my Blanchet and Juliet, those are pretty common, I think. No, but those were also very good dresses. I don't remember the last time I saw the aviator. Is this something I should we watch?

It's a curiosity at this point, I think. Can we redeem the swan dress? I like this one dress. I think it's been redeemed by the people who matter. Yeah, yeah. Like Us mostly. Yeah.

But I think also, I mean, part of the issue with the swan dress is that, like, we are now in an age where everyone has, like, a stylist. And so many people have, like, relationships with these, like, giant fashion houses and are committed to only wearing. So there's a lot of, like, less daring choices, you know? Like, the Emmys are weirder. Yes. Because the Emmys, you have drag queens showing up in, like, Green Goblins or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Right.

I mean, I do. I doubt. It hasn't been to the Oscars in years. I feel like the kind of weird theme dressing that people have started to do, which they don't usually bring to the actual Oscars, but like the challengers, kind of like tennis-inspired fashion that sometimes calls, whatever, to me, has been doing this year with the orange. I feel like I would like to see that. I would like to see that brought to the red carpet. You know, I want some bolder choices here. You know, like, I think about, there was that costume designer who wore the American Express card dress member.

It was all the gold American Express cards that she'd sort of sewn together into a dress. That was really cool. But then you also had like Sharon Stone wearing like her husband's like gap buttoned up shirt. There was also a turtleneck she wore with a fancy skirt one year. Yeah. It was a gap top and a fancy skirt. And the top was cheap and whatever. I'd like to see more of that where it's a little bit less stylized and maybe trying to be less on trend and more individualistic. Yeah, I think that's the thing. The thing that's made it a little less fun is the degree to which also, yeah, there's so many brands involved and brands that are like, you know, kind of like, they're like, here is our representative. And I'm like, that's a lot less interesting than someone being like, I love this dress. Even though no one everyone says, don't do it, I'm going to wear it. And I'm like, I want that. There was one Oscar year not too long ago. I might be confused. Maybe it was a golden gloves or something. But where, like, it feels like two-thirds of the famous women were wearing some mixture of white and red. Yes.

And it was like, okay, so all these stylists are just like talking to each other or and thinking that they're the only ones doing it. But then everyone, I don't know. It just felt very like accidental collusion or something. So, yeah, more swan dress, as I say. No. Um, so, so we should give people a little sense of what, uh, what these episodes are going like going forward. Uh, obviously, it's going to be 45 minutes of me talking about different dresses every time. But like after that, maybe we will also get around too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's like

blank, most blank check episodes are that too. Just me coming in, farting in first and being like, I have a lot. Yeah. Um, yeah. Um, yeah. So, you know, we, we're going to talk kind of broadly about like various things at the Oscars. Backlash, campaigning, all that kind of that we've experienced, you know, from the behind the scenes. But also, because, you know, our parent podcast is Blank Check and they devote most episodes to a movie, we kind of want to do that as well. And Blank Check also has not really been able to talk about a lot of the movies that we think are going to be in the best picture race. So probably we'll be talking about 10. movies over the next 10-11-ish weeks.

But each of those movies, be it Marty Supreme, which we assume is going to get nominated, or Hamnet, which we assume is going to get nominated, probably will make us think about some sort of bigger topic that surrounds either the movie or the award season, because they each kind of in their way, all these frontrunners, represent something different in how we're thinking about the Oscars and the industry these days. Yeah, and I'm looking forward to revisiting some of these movies because as weird as it is to say, I feel like they've already had, some of them have already had full arcs, you know, like they, the movies do not change themselves, but they're like a relationship to them or like the public's relationship to them can change so much. A movie can go from being a favorite to getting the backlash. It can go from getting a backlash to somehow like getting over that and rising and esteem again. So, you know, I think there's something really interesting about revisiting a movie after, you know, that initial reaction, which for us can sometimes be like back at a festival a long time ago. Yeah. And now more people have had a chance to see these movies and weigh in on them on their own. You know, the hamnet backlash is real. I'm really curious in that movie's case. Like I saw that movie in Toronto. I got in line for it at 7 a.m. I'd gotten four hours asleep because I was up late writing. And so I wept like a like a baby at the very, at the last, you know, 10 minutes.

minutes or whatever, will that be the same if I watch it again now that everyone has backlashed against it? And I don't know. I'm just very curious if it'll have the same effect on me. You'll be swayed. You'll be you'll be backlashed into a changing. We shall. We'll find out. Yeah. Interesting. So yeah, we can't really, we don't really know if we're going to be able to do one movie a week. Maybe we might have to double up on a couple occasions because we are going to do an episode when the nominations come out, kind of breaking those down. We'll also do an episode, obviously, doing a post-mortem of the actual ceremony in March. But yeah, in between then, we have these movies to talk about. We have SAG Awards. We have Golden Globe Awards. We have

Guild Awards from the Producers Guild, the Directors Guild, the Writers Guild, which really help sort of any predicting anyone wants to do. So yeah, it's just going to be kind of all things, 20, 25 Oscars, which I think will be fun. It'll be great. And we should also say for upcoming episodes, too, will be recording in a different location we're at the Blank Check Studios right now but we'll be recording with our friends at Vulture in their video studio

Yeah, so... There will be some clips of us floating around. Yeah, which is a terrifying thing to think about, but... Yeah, I have to go to Turkey and get everything reworked before then. I was going to say, I'm also going to go to Turkey because I was thinking about getting a new... Let's... Can we do this from Turkey? Yeah, let's do... Yeah, me with a head bandage on.

Yeah, there will be clips floating around. We won't have full video episodes, but the full episodes will just live in audio form on the blank check feed. But yeah, if you want to head over to the vulture socials, there will be. And if you want to see, you know, Richard's face looking more and more gassed as I give

some bad take on handouts, that will be the place to look. Maybe I'll be sobbing again. Who knows? Yeah. I hope so. I really moved me last time. I'm dead inside. I'm sorry. Well, no. I mean, more and more, it seems like I'm actually in the minority there, but... No. Well. We'll find out.

Big year for dead child cinema. Yeah. It's always a big year for four children. Yeah. We love... That was dead children, too. Oh, yeah.

That's true. Yeah. That's how you know you're really going for an award. Yeah. One is not enough. You're really committing. But yeah, Surratt, that's a shocking one. And the dog, too.

Sarat really went for it. Oh, God, yeah. I can't wait to talk about that one. I have a weird hunch just before we sign off. We didn't really get a chance to talk with the shortlist stuff, which we will. But on the short list of like what's eligible for casting and cinematography and all that stuff, Surat showed up a lot, which is the Spanish film that was at Cannes that won a bunch of awards at Cannes. And I was surprised by that. I think it has an actual shot, even though it's

such a brutal, strange movie. Yeah, I had not expected either The Secret Agent, which is a much weirder movie than it seems like it will be at first, or Surat, which is also actually a much weirder movie, then it seems like it will be at first to make that kind of headway. But people seem to be really responding to them. And do you know what? I find that like really exciting. I'm really excited to see Surat of Kangding Ray, the, um, the techno artist. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So well, actually, if we went next time we talk about Surat, you have to tell us about techno artist, because I don't know anything about that. Sure. I just, um, we'll have to consult your expertise for some of the soundtrack things. Sure.

There's some real actual musical artists involved this year. I've got breaking news, by the way. In 1997, the annual subscription rates for Variety Magazine in the U.S., 199. In 1997? That's like $5,000 in present day. Yeah. That's a lot.

Yeah, that's so much money. Surface delivery worldwide, 279. It's like, I guess, just international. You could just get your. wow all to learn words like prexy and yeah exactly yeah so this was a real investment this was not happening at the wilmore household in in suburban california entertain weekly on the other hand yeah that was a song yeah you could get like a real deal yeah you could also sometimes scam your way into free subscriptions to things so yeah that's the good old days um all right so we'll be back

on next thursday right um in video form from the vulture studio at least in video clip form In the meantime, I feel like we could plug things, right? Like where people can find you, Allison? My work is at vulture.com. And what do I have coming up? You can be found walking in the park with your dog. I can be found walking in the park with my dog. And then, yeah, I have a George Clooney essay coming up.

I have an interview that I did with Kevin O'Leary, the villain in Marty Supreme. a.k.a. Mr. Wonderful. And probably some reviews out there, I'm sure. That's theoretically my job. One of the best to do it. Well, so I just started a newsletter called Premiere Party. That's PremiereParty.com. We somehow got that domain name. I'm doing three posts a week, two of which are paid subscriber only, one of which is

like anyone who just gives me their email can read. So come on by. It's reviews. It's some Oscar Talk. It's some other things. I'm going to be doing recapping in the new year, well, now that it is the new year. I think it'll be fun. Cool. And maybe we should say that next week we're going to be talking about Marty Supreme. Oh, yeah, yes. If you want to watch along with us, I will go see Marty Supreme again, even though it's very long. Wow. No, I'm excited to, actually.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I am excited to talk about my lunch with Mr. Wonderful, I guess. Oh, I'm well, I'm excited to hear about it. Spoilers. He ordered a $190 bottle of wine. At lunch. Yes. Love it. Well, that's the Shark Tank Way. It is. It seemed very unbranded. 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. Thank you.