The Big Picture - 10 Way-Too-Early Oscar Predictions and the Best Movies at Telluride

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

The Oscars Show is back! Sean recounts his biggest takeaways from Telluride and what can be gleaned for the upcoming awards season, before Sean and Amanda share their semi-serious predictions for an Oscars show that is six months away. To call in and leave a voicemail for our 500th episode mailbag, give us a ring at [phone]‬. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, my name is Kevin Clark. I'm the host of a new football podcast called Slow News Day. I want to tell you about it. On Mondays, Lindsay Jones and I will recap the weekend of football that was, as well as look ahead to what's next. On Wednesday, the normal Slow News Day, the thing you've been watching for years. Current players, current coaches, current analysts talking about the football world. And on Friday, it's a wild card. Could be some college football, could be more pro stuff. It's a video podcast so you can watch it on Spotify or listen to it wherever you get your podcasts.

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Prices may vary at participating restaurants in Canada. It's time for Tim's. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Davins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the return of good movies and awards season. And I'm back from Telluride. Amanda, we're in the studio. You're back to work. What's up? It's back to school day. That's right. Yeah. How you feeling?

I feel good. Yeah? Yes, I do. I'm thrilled to see you. I'm thrilled to see you too. Are you excited to be back talking about all the things that were the origin of this show? Yes. Okay. It's been a wild weekend. It has. The number of texts that I've received in the past 48 hours being like, when are you going officially back to work? Will there be content about certain events? More than five, actually. There were several events. I'm back. It's well-timed. I'm glad you're here. I don't know how I would do this without you, frankly. I had imagined a very gentle pod about my journey to Telluride, Colorado. Mountains. For the film festival. Finding yourself. Yeah, reconnecting with God and all of my self-indulgent auteurs. And the Venice Film Festival also happened this weekend.

And at that festival, Don't Worry Darling premiered. Sure. And that's a film that's coming out at the end of September. And there's been a lot of controversy around that movie. So we're going to talk about it a little bit today. Then I think we'll save the rest of our conversation for when the movie actually comes out so we can tie it all up in one big present for the listeners. And I think we're also going to preview some Oscar takes, some predictions,

some way too early thoughts on the season. So we have about five months of the season to go now. Five months? Five and a half? Six months? September, October, November, December, January, February. That's six full months. Because it's not until March.

I think it's March 17th or something like that. Yeah. So maybe it's like six and a half months of Oscar shows. It's six months, yeah. Okay. We're going to do like maybe once a month though for now. Okay. But this is an Oscar show.

Yes. We're talking about award season and also very good films which may or may not be recognized by the academy and some not very good films that very well may be recognized by the academy that's an interesting okay entry way to this conversation let's start here and we can set intentions for this podcast and also for the awards season okay how. How honest are you going to be? I'll be very honest. You are. I have been inspired by your light. Thank you. You know, no half credit. And I think what I will not do is I will not be mean. Okay. But I certainly saw some films that were highly touted this year that were not very good. It sounds like thus far, the fall festival season has been a real mixed bag in general.

I would say it's not a 2019 is what I'll say. It's a 2022. And so in part because of COVID-19 and the pandemic and a lot of movies getting pushed and production being halted, there's been a dearth of movies last few months. It certainly seems to have affected our award season films as well.

We can talk about that in more detail. There were a lot of things I saw that I really liked, but there were also some things that were like genuine no's. And in fact, at Telluride, Julie Hunsinger, the executive director and, you know, the sort of shepherd of that festival, purposefully, I think, in the press that she did, said, there are going to be some controversial movies. People are going to fight about the movies that we chose for this year's festival. And so I will share with you my thoughts

before you get a chance to see them and probably have similar thoughts to me, honestly. Right. That's the other honest thing that we should say about this podcast, at least, is that I've seen nothing. I did not go to Telluride. I have, you know, been working on the other part of my life,

especially this weekend. I did actually see a film. I went to see Bullet Train. Great. Sure. Yesterday at 3.30 p.m. because God bless my mother. She babysat and it was 100 degrees and I was like, I need some air conditioning. So I was in a full theater to see Bullet Train only because of the air conditioning, I assume.

And as you pointed out, because no other new movies have been released. One full month after its release, a packed house. Yeah. But that's all I can speak to in terms of actually having seen films. I don't think Bullet Train will be nominated for any Oscars. That's my Oscars report. I would have said that too

when I recorded a Bullet Train pod, but now having seen some of these festival movies, I'm not so sure. Maybe it's a contender for the 10th spot at the Academy Awards. Let me ask you some other Telluride questions. Great. We haven't, did you drive or fly? So I flew. Thanks for asking. So last year I drove and I spoke about that on this show, which I had forgotten about until I arrived at Telluride. And among the people

who recognize me or I was chatting with, they remembered that I drove because the first thing that they said to me was, did you drive? Because apparently I sounded like a psychopath talking about driving last year. You did. You always sound like a psychopath when talking about driving. But you love it. Fair point. I do. And it brings you joy. It does, but not enough joy to drive the 14 hours again this year. I flew and it was fine. It was lovely. It was normal. That's good. Yeah. It's very hard to get to Telluride, which I think I had said previously. But if you fly and you have a ticket to the festival, there's a chartered flight that you have to get a ticket for. It's not cheap. This is not

a cheap festival across the board. You have to buy a ticket to get there regardless, even if you're press. You got to buy the chartered flight. It's very hard to find lodging. It's very hard to find transportation. You have to book a shuttle because you can only fly into Montrose or Grand Junction or somewhere that is not close to Telluride. It's tricky. They make transportation. You have to book a shuttle because you can only fly into Montrose or Grand Junction or somewhere that is not close to Telluride. It's tricky. They make it hard on you to make it special. Right. But then once you get there, it is special.

It's very magical. Set the scene. Tell us about your Telluride vibes this year. What was the energy? I arrived on Thursday evening. Gorgeous as always. The weather was perfect. It was as it was 105 degrees here in Los Angeles.

It was 71 degrees every day in Telluride. Just a resounding bite me on that one. It was sunny and the weather was gentle and the vibe was good. I think it was in that kind of, you know, last year at the festival, it was very COVID careful. This year, I would say half the people in every theater were masked and the other half were not. I would say there were no, there was no, you know, protocols specifically in place at the festival. So it was a little bit different, but everyone was very happy to be there as they always are. You know, it's a very moneyed environment and town, but, and it's a very,

it's an older festival because it's very much supported by the patrons of the festival. So you have a lot of, you know, 60s, 70s, even 80 year olds who are at a lot of the screenings, but everyone is so friendly and it's, it's a cliche and it's hackney that, and they constantly talk about how much everyone who's there loves movies, but they do. And in fact, like every conversation you have with someone online, or if you're in a gondola headed to the Chuck Jones theater, or if you're just walking down the street and run into someone, you know, what'd you see? What'd you like? What should I see? Oh, is this actually as good as people said? Like it is, I don't, it is a community of people that really dig movies so for me it's the reason it's my favorite is all anybody wants to talk about is was target was bardo as bad as

everyone says like it had that energy is very real and it's not industry necessarily it's like there's a there's a cineast quality to the conversation which i enjoy do you sean Do you, Sean Fennessey, spend any time outside a Telluride? Well, you have to walk from screening to screening. Okay. You have to walk across the entire town if you want to get from the Werner Herzog Theater to the Palm Theater. That's literally the entire stretch of Telluride. And if you want to go to the Chuck Jones Theater, you have to get in the gondolas. I did pause when you said gondola and then flashback to Sundance and still not being

able to allow to ride the ski lift. So that seems nice. You can actually ride ski lifts as well there. And obviously I've never been to Telluride in the winter, but you can tell that it's a majestic skiing town. So yeah, I spent a little bit of time outside. I didn't do any hiking. Honestly, as you know, at festivals, I'm a sociopath.opath I try to just see as much as I can festivals isn't necessarily qualified there when it comes to movie watching it's very fair um in particular at this festival I try to see four or five movies a day if I can and so if you're going to do that there's not a whole lot of time for getting out on a rowboat and and discovering the lake life that's just not something you have a lake there There's like a river running through the town.

Yeah. Since this is an Oscar show, how was like the awards vibe this year? Well, what do you mean by that? Well, sitting at home, it looked like Venice was very showy, which, you know, obviously the don't worry, darling of it all really plays into that. But everyone was in their glam and dressed to the nines, which is, you know, a little bit the spirit of Venice. And as you said, that's why Telluride is distinct from Venice and why you prefer it.

But I'm remembering that last year, a lot of people went straight from Venice to Telluride. And it felt like Telluride was possibly, if not competing in the glitz factor, like trying to compete in the awards attention circuit factor. Something that we don't talk about as much as other shows or journalists who cover this space is sort of what festivals get what films and what the meaning of that is and what a premiere means versus what it means for just a film to show or screen. In the case of Telluride, because

they withhold the reveal of the lineup, you're just making a bet that they're going to have good films because they always have good films. They have very good taste. They frequently have Academy Award nominees. Many Best Picture films made their debut there. Probably most famously, most recently, Moonlight, you know, first debuted there. Barry Jenkins, who made that film, used to work at the Telluride Film Festival. He was there this year. He was a curator last year. He's an avid supporter of the festival. Anyhow, this year there were some titles that premiered at Venice and then those people flew to Telluride. I think Luca Guadagnino was there for Bones and All in Venice, and then he was in Telluride for quite a few days.

The other thing that's fun about the festival, which I think I mentioned in the past, is just everyone is just around. I mean, I think I just saw Rooney Mara and Jesse Buckley walking the streets like three times. You know, I texted you. I saw Claire Foy the first day I was there. You know, James Gray, our pal, like, I saw him many times. People are just, like, even Cate Blanchett, who was honored at the festival and who was, you know, one of the great living actors and gave us one of the great performances of her career. And Tar, which was at the festival, was just on the street, just hanging out. And so it's a completely different vibe from Harry Styles and Chris Pine and Olivia Wilde and Flo Pugh at the premiere of Don't Worry Darling,

otherwise seeming as though they are protected by a force field of security. It's just a different energy. It's a lot fewer people. People are wearing down vests and boots. They're not in their dresses and they're not glammed out. Even at the premieres of films, maybe a pantsuit, but people will just wear jeans and a sweater and get on stage and talk about the greatness of their career. So it's a completely different energy. I think that helps in some respects with the award stuff because it makes people seem more normal and more approachable. And so inevitably at these parties that happen at the festivals, when Cate Blanchett is being escorted around at a Focus Features party, it doesn't feel like it does here in Los Angeles come February when all the voting is happening. It's a very different energy.

Did you go to the focus party? I didn't go to any parties this year. Wow. Honestly, because I was trying to see as much as possible. Last year when I went, I went to a bunch of parties and the parties are fine, but it's not why I go. I mean, if I want to go, I live in LA. Like if I want to go to a movie party, I can.

That's true. And they're okay. But like if I go to a movie party, I pretty much just want to talk to you anyway. So I don't get a big kick out of talking to the celebrity about their campaign and the work that they did. If I want to do that, I'll invite them on the show and hopefully they'll come on and talk about it. So I have just a very psychotic, cinephilic relationship to these festivals. I like to just see as much as I can. And I did. I saw, I think, 20 movies total at the festival over three and a half days. Do you want to do your overview now and then do predictions later?

Yeah, let's do predictions later for sure. I mean, there's a handful of very big titles, right? So we should probably talk about like the top five things. And then I'll tell you a couple things that I really liked that are maybe a little bit off the beaten path. We could just go by the text messages

that you sent me if you want. It was like a pretty good summary of Telluride. Number one was you by the text messages that you sent me. If you want. It was like a pretty good summary of Telluride. Number one was you saw Claire Foy in a sun hat. I did. Sun protection is very important at altitude. It's true. You look great.

Were you wearing a hat? No, and I didn't wear any sunscreen, but I was in a movie theater all the time. Okay, right. So not a big issue. That's evidence. And then I think you saw Empire of Light. So I saw Empire of Light, which is a film that premiered at this festival.

Sam Mendes had never been to Telluride. He had never brought a film to Telluride. This is a personal film that Searchlight is putting out. It's the first time Sam Mendes did not work with a co-writer. He wrote this film all by himself. It stars Olivia Colman, who we are a great fan of on the show. It stars Michael Ward, who's a relative newcomer actor.

Conal Firth is in the film. And it's sort of an autobiographical story of Mendes' experience at a movie theater in the early 80s in England. And I did not like this movie. No, you didn't. I did not like it at all. And in fact, I had this fascinating sensation

that you could only get at a festival where the film ended and i immediately thought to myself well that did not work um and i i think i said on the show a few weeks ago when we were previewing the fall season i was like mendes is very 50 50 for me and it's usually he rises or falls to the level of the material that he has his films often look great and this movie was shot shot by Roger Deakins. He always gets great performances. He's an incredible director of actors. That's well known. There's an amazing New Yorker feature about him a few years back about the way that he

works with actors, both on stage and on screen. His actors are always nominated. He's often nominated for Oscars. This is a pure Oscar play. I mean, it's like a big performance centric movie. It's a period piece. And it's about the love of cinema. And it is like a hundred strands that never tie together to me at all.

I couldn't understand. I couldn't make heads or tails of like who he was in the story, what compelled him to write about this story. You know, the Michael Ward character, Michael Ward is a black actor and his experience living in England in the early 1980s, I thought was oddly handled. Olivia Coleman is quite good in the film.

She has a difficult part to play. But she is the center of the movie. And then she disappears for a period of time in the movie. And then we move to the Michael Ward character. Colin Firth is a huge part of the first half of the film and then not really in the second half of the film. I thought it was very odd. It felt like it really needed a co-writer. I don't want to be too hard on the movie.

But when the movie ended, I did what all people do, which I looked at my phone. What are people saying about this movie? And so many of the so-called awards pundits were like, Sam Mendes has done it again. Best picture confirmed. And I and a couple of people that I saw the film with were just bewildered by that. And it was an interesting test case, I think, of, like, festival fever. Of people needing to feel like they're getting ahead because I do think that this movie is going to play very well with older voters in the Academy. Yeah.

And so it is very possible that those pundits, whether their opinions mattered or not, are right that the movie is going to play very well in awards season. It does feature Olivia Colman, who will probably be nominated for the fourth time in five years. I could see a world in which Michael Ward is recognized. He's a real discovery. He's a very good actor. And Mendes is beloved, and many of his films get nominated. He's coming off of the success of 1917, a movie that I liked a lot more than this movie. And

I thought it was a dud. And I think a lot of people did too, and some people were a little afraid to say it, because Mendes is very respected, and Searchlight is a great studio, but I really just didn't think it worked at all and so that was interesting for the really like kind of the noisiest premiere because you know Tar was at Telluride but it had premiered at Venice Armageddon Time had premiered at Cannes Bardo had premiered at Venice like this was one of the biggest if not the biggest premiere at the festival and I didn't think it worked so there's me being

honest for you okay you want to talk about Bardo? Speaking of honest? Yeah. So Bardo is the opposite of Empire of Light, which is that there were a lot of preconceived notions because the film was already getting slammed at Venice. Bardo is the new film from Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, two-time Best Picture Academy Award winner, director of The Revenant, Birdman, Amores Peros, Babel, a number of other movies. We also mentioned that we're not huge fans of his. I like some of his movies, but he was already well known to be like a very self-indulgent and very style forward filmmaker. He's made a lot of the movies of Chivo, the great cinematographer.

He worked with Darius Kanji on this movie, who is also a great cinematographer, who shot Seven, among many other movies. This movie, though, I think it's basically like believe the the press believe the negative take i i i i've been thinking about it a lot since i reached out to you about it because when i saw it i was like this is really really bad and i've been turning it over my mind and here's the one caveat that i'll make for it it's a netflix film and netflix is continuing to do the thing that no other studio will do. They're like, here's like $60 million, make whatever you want. And he definitely made whatever he wanted. And what he wanted to make was a three-hour sort of self-portrait of an artist in the second half of his life examining whether or not it's worth it, whether or not he's a fraud or a genius, whether or not like his family life is corresponding correctly with his artistic life. And so he's made this like phantasmagoric, you know, magically real, absurdist, mega,

I don't know, Roman a clef about him, about himself. It's in the form of a journalist who's played by Daniel Jimenez Cacho in actually a very, very good performance, and there are good performances in the movie, but the movie is like a bad dream. It's honestly ridiculous. The laugh moments aren't funny, and the serious moments are kind of laughable.

It's bold, and it looks good. Okay, let me stop you right there. Because the number of times that you and I have said it's cool and it looks good okay let me stop you right there because the number of times that you and i have said it's cool that they tried it looks good it's bold i mean it does those things are true yes that i mean and that is true and that's great and this is related to no half credit but this is separate and this goes back to the netflix thing that you were saying at the beginning of this disquisition, which I want to set some rules for fall 2022, for this Oscar season, for our new lives, you know, back to school, new school year.

We're glad that interesting or non-IP things are getting made. On this podcast, we support movie theaters. We support artists. We support trying things. We support things that look good. We want to live in a world where all of those things are happening and we're starting from that. And here's the thing. Sometimes you try something and it doesn't work and that's okay. And you should keep trying, but also we're going to say it doesn't work. And that doesn't mean, so if you are one of the Bobs, or you're Zazz, or you work for them, and you're sitting in your little studio, and you hear us say, this doesn't work, I don't want you to take the lesson that you shouldn't keep trying. Always keep trying. I agree. You're right.

So are you saying I should never have any of those caveats in any review of any failed auteur experiment ever again? I mean, no, I guess we have to say it because people don't listen to every single episode of this podcast. I guess I don't want to like body slam the movie the way that I might body slam like the Fast and the Furious movie that I thought was really lousy last year. Like, sure, it's a different experience. There is a sliding scale. The thing is, is that, OK, Bardo does something that I really,

really, really, really don't like, which is that it attempts to be both self-conscious and self-abnegating. And,

like, it's, it's like, I'm so sorry that I did this and I'm going to try to get out in front of all of the criticisms in the movie. I'm going to have the character say

what the critics will say about me. And, you know, it's obviously a riff on Fellini's Eight and a Half. That's a huge influence on this movie. I'm going to have the character say what the critics will say about me. And, you know, it's obviously a riff on Fellini's Eight and a Half. That's a huge influence on this movie. A lot of filmmakers make these kinds of films.

These sort of like, who am I? Why am I doing things? Are my films meaningful? Has the work that I've done been meaningful? And you understand why you get to a certain period

of your life and you're sort of like reflecting at this midway point or a little past this midway point on everything that you've done. And like, is the awards that i've received are they total bullshit there's literally a huge award ceremony sequence in this film and party afterwards um it i i use the word bold because you will definitely not see another movie that is like this that is made this year even though there are a lot of films from filmmakers who are telling like stories about themselves but it's 174 minutes i i mean will

20 of the people who start this movie on netflix finish it i i've such a small number will and i you know inari too i think has been on the defensive in the last few days saying that like there is a racist undertone to some of the reaction to this film, and then him talking a bit about his identity as a Mexican filmmaker, but spent living in America, and is he too American for Mexicans and too Mexican for Americans? That's something that he said recently. And there may be some aspect of that to the criticism of the film so far. That had nothing to do with it for me.

To me, I'm like, I've seen a lot of world cinema. It has nothing to do with the concepts of identity identity in the movie it's more about the concept of indulgence and that is the thing that people have really hammered which is like this is a not a self-possessed but a self-obsessed filmmaker and that's not that fun um it's not that fun when it is like deeply autobiographical about a person who's been tremendously successful and all they are doing is constantly making excuses for themselves. So there are things, there are flights of fancy

that I think people will really appreciate in the movie. This movie I think very quickly went from being like a surefire Oscar film to it premiering to it being one of the more like critically brutalized movies of the last 12 months and I think there will be a swing back. I think that it will come back around

again people will especially the academy which has supported him so much I mean there are very few two-time best director winners in the history of the Oscars this is a person who has like a lot of supporters and Chloe Zhao is there deeply supporting him a lot of and his cohort were supporting him so is Barry Jenkins so is Lu Long I did want to ask you it seems like other filmmakers were really embracing this. Part of it is because what he does is not easy to do. So I think people who have this job have real admiration for the lengths that he goes to to put the images on screen that he's able to capture.

It's no small feat. And it's part of the reason why you hear me kind of like mealy-mouthed, bold, and this is so impressive in a way. Because it is so impressive in a way, because it is so impressive in a way. And I think that, you know, the folks that he is both friends with, but also like colleagues with, they recognize that. It's just when we watch movies as common people, we want to enjoy them. And I just did not enjoy the movie. And it's really kind of as simple as that. And I think a lot of people will feel that way. Maybe Academy voters will feel differently. We'll see. Let's talk about women talking. I didn't mean to do that, but there you go. Thank

you. Thanks so much. I'm going to be Terry Gross when this is all over. You're pretty good at this. You don't, you never work in this mode. I know, but you know, there are things we need to talk about. I don't think you texted me about women talking. Well, you texted me about Claire Foy. It seemed like everyone from this movie was just like at camp and telly ride together. And I was like pretty jealous of the girl gang, the women gang that was going on. They seem to have a true bond. I mean, they went to many screenings together. I saw them, I think, three different times.

Like 12 people seated in a row that was sort of reserved for them at all these special screenings. Women Talking is Sarah Polly's new movie. It's her first movie in, I want to say, eight or nine years. It's her fourth feature as a director. People will probably recognize her from Go and Baron Munchausen and a number of films over the years. Canadian actress turned writer-director. She was already one of my favorite directors.

I don't know if I talked about Stories We tell in the best movies of the decade pod, but I think that was in my top 20, top 25. It's her documentary slash fictionalized portrayal of her family's story. She's a really inventive director. You kind of need to be to make women talking work because, as we mentioned on the preview show, it is a very cloistered movie about 12 Mennonite women who have been drugged and raped in their community while they're sleeping. They've been given a cow tranquilizer. And it's a tremendously traumatic story to tell. And the film is effectively just these women deciding what the women in the

community should do, sitting in a barn and having a wide ranging discourse about their role in the community, their role as women, what they deserve and don't deserve, whether or not it is better to go or stay. That is like the fundamental debate. And you've got 12 really, really gifted actors, some of which will be very familiar, like Rooney Mara and Claire Foy and Jesse Buckley, some of which will be maybe not as well known. Sheila McCarthy and Judith Ivey are two of the older women in the cast who I think were the best part of the film. They were extraordinary. And then a few very young actresses were also exceptional. And you can tell Sarah Polly has written in her memoir about her experience as a child actor and the things that were done to her

that really hurt her. So you can see there's like a tremendous amount of care that goes into this. There's a movie that like, it's very hard hard to sell it's very hard to get people quote-unquote excited about it it's way more cinematic than it sounds and it's pretty damn impressive um it's definitely in the race so to speak but i think it's it's a lot bigger than that there's was like a i've i've heard two contrasting kind of takes in the aftermath of it. One is like this is too female centric for the 66 percent Academy Awards voters. And then I've heard the other thing, which is that a lot of men seem to really respond to the movie at the festival and maybe not as many women. Well, it's really funny, as you were saying and you were talking and I trust you and I trust your taste And I also trust you to know my taste.

But I was thinking about how you have been very enthusiastic about this. And A.O. Scott in the New York Times did a Telluride report and wrote about, used women talking as kind of the frame for Telluride and for the movie this year and like the women-centric stuff. And I think that's amazing. And also I was like, I had an instinctive, please stop. Like, everybody just stop. And even as you're describing kind of what it's about and the issues, I just felt myself being like, ugh. But that has nothing to do with you or A.O. Scott or the movie or anything else. It's just what happens when movies are sold these days, I think. And especially like big issues movies and how the ideas get transmuted

and shared before the piece of art itself. And I just need to see the movie. I would love it if, I would love to see this movie. In many ways, that also applies to Bardo. You know, I think you're 100% right. I'm like kind of at the risk of being like, what a good ally I am by telling you how good women talking is. No, it's not. It's fine.'s fine you saw it i haven't seen it i can't speak to it well in

in the aio scott piece that you're referencing he i think in the same way that bardo is kind of self-abnegating he is too where he's like i could tell you that this is a feminist film festival but i won't tell you that because it always has been because you know it's in part run by a woman there are always more female filmmakers i tell tell you, right, than there are in almost any festival, especially the European festivals, which are notoriously bad at including female filmmakers in the show. This one is very much about what it is to be a woman, not just in this community, but in all communities. And it's a parable and it's meant to be deeply allegorical and representative of a lot of debates that we have in our culture. So you're just going to have to roll your eyes at that experience.

I do also feel just a little pre-exhaustion at what it means to be a woman discourse for six months. And I would love it if we could have some women filmmakers just make a heist or movie or just make something where that wasn't the central thing. I don't know why. Like Don't Worry Darling? Yeah. Oh my God.

Great, great segue. Wait, is there anything else you want to talk about, Tire Ride West? Just a couple more quick ones. Well, one, Armageddon Time, which premiered at Cannes but officially played here,

had, which is James Gray's new movie, had an interesting kind of bounce back. I think at Cannes it was like, it was well-received, but it was a little bit, a little soft. And I think it's a movie, this is a movie that's really kind of convers back. I think at Cannes, it was like, it was well-received, but it was a little bit, a little soft. And I think it's a movie, this is a movie that's really kind of conversely

going to play very well in America. Most of James' films play very well in Europe. He's beloved in France. This is a very American story. It's a very East Coast story. There's a lot of coastal elites

at the Telluride Film Festival. But as I've said a few times on the show, it's a very beautiful movie. Jeremy Strong was out in full force at this festival. Uh, and I think James and Jeremy charmed a lot of people and I think they really, really liked that movie.

And it felt like it went from being like on the fringe to being like much more of a quote unquote contender, uh, which was great and great for James. And I, I, I can't wait to see that movie again. I didn't watch it a second time at the festival. Is it a Long Island story? Queens. Queens. Okay.

Sorry. Close. Um, and anyone from Queens queens will will recognize its characters uh the the other really really big one to talk about and i i i'm kind of hoping we'll do like two or three episodes about it is tar oh right of course um tar is todd field's first film in 16 years it's the story of a highly acclaimed conductor named lydia tar who's played by kate blanchett this is an epic story of a of a genius who um leads herself astray and there's like three different categories of movies this year, I think. I think there's sort of like the film that is the sort of the best, the most fully realized, which I think is Women Talking. There's the film that I liked the most, which I'll tell you about in one second.

And then there's the film that is by far the most impressive. The word that I used many times was immaculate. Tar is immaculate. It is like an extraordinarily constructed piece of work. It features the best performance at the festival in Cape Lanchette. It has a lot of thorny subject matter in it. I've heard people describe it as a Me Too movie and as a cancel culture movie. I think it is neither of those movies, but those are obviously influences on the story.

You know, it is the most Kubrickian of the movies at the festival. The first hour of this movie I thought was as good as anything I've seen in the last five years. I think the writing in it is really strong. I think there's no denying Blanchett. The second half of the movie is a real object of fascination for me. And I think will make for a very fun conversation on this show. Because I have like flipped my opinion on it a few times over the course of the last few days. And it's the only movie that I have really, really genuinely wanted to know what other people who saw it thought about it.

Because there are some central questions that we can't talk about now until people see it. About what the movie is really trying to say that I don't know. And when I first, when the movie ended, I was like, that seems a little simpler than I was expecting. I was expecting a little bit more mystery and a little bit, maybe a little bit more nuance. And then I had a couple of conversations and people were kind of changing my mind. And then I thought about it some more. So I really need to see it again. It's, it's, it is 100% worth seeing whether you hate it or don't or, or, or love it.

To me, it's not like Bardo where it's sort of like, you can hear me talk about it for two minutes and just skip it if you want to. I don't think you should skip this, but if you come out hating it, I won't be surprised. I'm not going to skip it because I have a job. How do you think Bradley Cooper is feeling right now? They're a perfect double feature. Absolutely perfect. What's he doing? Well, I think- Is it going to be finished? Are they going to sneak it out? I'm talking, of course, about Meister, which is his Leonard Bernstein biopic, where he has just been on the road just talking about conducting and Mahler. I don't think, Mahler plays a huge part in this film as well. Huge part. Are you a big Mahler person? Not really. And I think actually this film reveals why. Okay. And

the kind of person who is obsessed with Mahler, I have some questions about. Okay. I would not rush this movie out if I were Bradley Cooper because I think you need to let this breathe. I think two competing genius conductor films is not a great idea. But in the year 2027, when the dust has settled on all this stuff, they will fit together very nicely because Bernstein is a critical part of the opening stage of the film. The film opens with, I'm not revealing anything, it's in every review,

a long conversation between the real-life New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik at a New Yorker festival and the Lydia Tarr character. And they are talking about conducting. So Adam Gopnik is in the film? He is. Wow. Giving a performance. I don't even know what to say about that. I mean, in some ways, Amanda, this movie checks a lot of interesting boxes for us. Yeah. And some of it is wonderful and some of it is a little bit less wonderful less baked I might say

which is for a movie that is like deeply baked it's odd that there are a couple things that are kind of lingering for me that didn't work but in that conversation with Gopnik in the film

there's a lot of discussion about how Bernstein is really like her idol and the person that she follows so closely when she thinks of Mahler so if you put these two movies next to each other they're going to fit like, like puzzle pieces, I think. Um,

I can't wait to talk about it more. I mean, it's, it's out soon. It's out in one month. So, um, you know, it's definitely going to be in the Academy Awards conversation. I think it's going to be a little too brainy and psychological for your typical kind of best picture touting, but I mean, below the line, folks. It's also, I should just say really quickly, a great cast. Nomi Merlin from Portrait of a Lady on Fire plays Lydia's assistant.

Nina Haas, a great German actress from Phoenix plays her partner in real life. Mark Strong is in the movie. Gopnik is in the movie. It's a very, very good cast. Very good performances. It's going to be a fun movie to pull apart because there's a very, very good cast, very good performances. It's just, it's a, it's going to be a fun movie to pull apart because there's a lot to talk about.

What was your favorite movie? Senior. Oh yeah. So. Oh wait, I did get a text message about this. Yeah. Chris and I were at a party actually. Did we tell, did he tell you this? No. We were at a party, my first party, I think since COVID. I'm not very good at parties yet. So. You are historically quite good at parties, I think. That's nice of you to say. Great host, great guest. I do love hosting a party. I hope that's going to be able to happen this year.

I hope so, too. You legendarily throw a great Christmas party. I know. Knock on wood, but it happens. So we went to a party and went by myself. My husband's out of town. Chris was also there solo, so really, I was there with Chris. And we are sitting there talking to each other because we knew other people.

But, you know, getting back in the swing of things. And then you have texted both of us a screenshot of Robert Downey Jr.'s Twitter feed. And Robert Downey Jr. is, well, at the time, was following five people on Twitter. That was why I sent it. And you were one of them. And so then Chris and I had the, frankly, just lame loser experience of being at a party, trying to make new friends and texting you about who follows you on Twitter. Yep. Normal stuff. Life imitates art something.

It's sad how online we all are. Yeah, well, I mean, I just, I noticed on Twitter that Robert Downey Jr. followed me. And I was like, oh, that's cool. He probably follows like 8,000 people. And he followed, he was following five people. I love that you, 8,000 was your estimate. It's Robert Downey Jr.

But he's not actually running the account. Right, I know. So that's why, don't you think? It's probably like 20,000 people. But anyway. Yes, but he had like 18 million followers. 8,000 is low is what I'm saying. Anyway, the point is that this film, Senior, premiered at the festival.

I guess I should include a caveat. One, the film is directed by Chris Smith, the legendary documentarian. The Ringer is in production on a film with Chris Smith about Vince McMahon. I should say that. I have talked with Chris Smith before. We are working on this thing together. So I guess I am in some ways compromised on this conversation. On the other hand, Robert Downey Sr. is a filmmaker that I really, really love.

And I've always been fascinated by, in part, because Paul Thomas Anderson, since he was a very young filmmaker, really championed his work as a major inspiration for him. And so everyone knows Robert Downey Jr. He's one of the most famous and renowned actors

of his generation. His dad was this like true rebel figure making films on the East Coast for most of his career, like odd underground art films that are also very funny and often very biting

about our culture and society and religion and capitalism and all these big ideas. And he operated fully outside of the system and is a genuine maverick. Words like that are a little bit ridiculous to say about guys like him, but he is extraordinary.

And this movie is a deeply intimate portrait of him in the final years of his life and his son. And his son, who's just, who's Iron Man, you know,

who's just this very, very famous guy who, frankly, we like never see and doesn't really do a lot of press and hasn't made a movie in a few years

and has been kind of elusive. And he is deeply in the movie. And the movie is like, we are in Robert Downey Jr.'s house with his family. We are in Robert Downey Sr.'s home in New York with his wife and his partner. We are seeing loads and loads of archival footage from their lives, from the films that he made, that Senior made. And at a certain point in the film, there's this brilliant choice where Robert Downey Sr. decides that while Chris Smith and Robert Downey Jr. are making a movie about Sr., Sr. also wants to make a movie about himself. And so he grabs a member of the crew and he starts making his movie.

And then the movie becomes about him cutting together his movie about himself, which is inevitably a little bit more odd and a little bit more atypical. And then this slightly more traditional kind of biography documentary. And they both work, and they both work together. And then, you know, I don't, this seems ridiculous to try to spoil something, but Robert Downey Sr. passed away last year. And the film, it follows him

through the final years of his life. As somebody who's lost a parent, I mean, it's like, it's an unbelievably raw and honest portrait of like watching a family member go through that. So I was just blown away by the vulnerability and also like the insane narcissism that happens at a moment like that too. Like Robert Downey Jr., famously like very egocentric person, person who's in therapy. He's literally talking to his therapist in the film at one point on zoom talking about losing his dad it's a there's nothing like this

movie and the other thing too is that senior obviously is a major influence on junior and junior is one of the most charismatic people alive so you can imagine how charismatic senior is and then seeing them talk to each other about what they do and what they love and like having conversations that they never had and saying like dad why didn't you do this or why did you do this or what happened with your second wife or anyway it's a head fuck like and it is it is very very like rich people can make movies of their lives because they can afford it and we can't and how great that they get to have this document but if you get over all that bullshit i just thought it was so cool and and so special and so i really really loved it and it's like it has no distributor right now

yeah i was gonna say when can we see it how can we see i don't know i i have i don't know who's gonna buy it i don't even i mean it's like not traditionally commercial in that way but if you are interested in even just robert downey jr you probably want to watch it because you spend so much time with him um and when the And I saw the first screening of the film on the Friday night of the festival at the Palm Theater, which is one of the big theaters. And it was only like half full.

And Robert Downey Jr. did a Q&A afterwards with Chris. And Robert Downey Jr. just hung out for 45 minutes and just answered audience members' questions about his life. That's very rare. Yeah. You know, like Brad Pitt doesn't do that you know Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't do that they're like the class of actor that that Downey

Jr. is in it's that sort of thing just doesn't happen and he was very charming and very funny very funny talking about his kids and the way that like his kids are used as pawns in the film because he was used as a pawn in films as a kid. I don't know. I thought it was pretty cool. Pretty special. Do you think if it gets a distributor that it can be awards or is it a little too niche? That's a good question.

I don't know. I mean, probably. Just because it, you know, Chris Smith, who made like American Movie and Jim and Andy, the Jim Carrey, Andy Kaufman movie, and who made 100 Foot Wave last year, the HBO series. And, you know, who's genuinely like one of the most creative documentary figures. Like he actually hasn't had a big moment with the Academy. I think usually because his films are a little too left of center. This could be an opportunity for that to be celebrated.

I don't know. I guess everybody loves Downey, right? Yeah. He's Iron Man. But like't know where, I guess everybody loves Downey, right? Yeah, he's Iron Man. But like the world does, right? We know he is a box office megastar. But does the, did you like, like he used to be nominated for Academy Awards when he wasn't making superhero movies. Right. I don't know.

I guess he had, you know, the 80s stardom and then then tough personal times, and then redemption. So some of the redemption came through Iron Man, which the Academy doesn't love. And in some ways, you could pin a lot of the marvelization of movies on him. So maybe not. But also, it's Robert Downey Jr. He's very charming. Yeah, he's very good. I mean, it made me want to see him make more great films.

Yeah. And, you know, he mentioned Chaplin at one point, and he famously played Chaplin in an Academy Award-nominated performance. And, you know, he's the real deal. Yeah. He's, like, he's an amazing person to just watch do anything. Right. So I just, I hope this leads to him being even more reflective

and making more good movies. Is that all for Telluride? There, I mean, I saw a bunch of other things. I had seen Bones and All months ago, the Guadagnino, Timothee Chalamet, Taylor Russell film, which I think is very good and I like a lot.

It is, and I had this conversation with a number of very kindly patrons online at the festival this weekend. It is a film about young cannibalism love. Okay. Like it is about two people in the 80s who are cannibals. That's like not, and that's in

the film. There is cannibalism in the film. So if that makes you squeamish, it is gory. And if you saw Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria, you know that he will do gore for real. He is not afraid of that stuff. By the same token, it's also like a very Badlands inspired romance between two young people in a kind of crumbling America you know like in Reagan's America where like everything is kind of falling apart around you and there are a handful of amazing supporting performances Mark Rylance is like

off of his rocker in this movie Michael Stuhlbarg is off of his rocker reuniting with Guadagnino like there's some great stuff in it I thought it was a lot of fun but there's the immediate roadblock of do you want to watch Timothee Chalamet eat a person? Because that's in the movie. Right. Not really.

It's a real 80s fall, huh? It is. Well, you've got all of these filmmakers reflecting on their youth. That's true. I was also wondering whether it's like the Stranger Things specification of movies. Could be. I mean, I think there's a little bit of post-Trump, how do we compare Trump to Reagan thing going on too,

or sort of like we're coming out of a period where it felt like there was a kind of like an oppressive political atmosphere. And so people are maybe thinking back on that a little bit too. But I liked Bones and All pretty well. I saw a bunch of other smaller films that are very good that maybe I'll talk about in some of the prediction stuff.

And the other thing too is this year there were more documentaries really than like there ever have been at the festival. And so that's not necessarily like we'll talk about those films as they come out over the year. Wait, can I, the last text message that you sent me? What did I send? I don't remember. That you were in line for a documentary about Abbey Road Studios. Oh yeah.

And that you were the youngest person there by like 30 years. There's a small theater at the festival called the Backlot, which is just like a converted, not even a conference room. I mean, smaller than a conference room. It's like an office room

that has 65 seats. And If These Walls Could Sing is a new movie coming to Disney Plus this fall directed by Mary McCartney, who is the less famous daughter of Paul McCartney. And so it's a movie about Abbey Road Studios, which used to be EMI Studios and has since

been, you know, renamed since the Beatles basically made it the most legendary recording space, I think, in the history of popular music. And a lot of really great records have been recorded there. Dark Side of the Moon and Goldfinger and, you know, Elton John recorded there and a number of legendary figures. And they're all in the movie because, of course, Mary McCartney knows all those people. Mary McCartney wrote the cookbook. Did she? Yes.

And so I think she sort of is the steward of a lot of Linda's pursuits and works with Paul. That's kind of her role in the family. And she did do a cookbook, I think, of Linda's recipes. And as a result, was on one of my favorite podcasts, Table Manners, with Jesse Ware. Not familiar. Oh, yes. Yes. The singer Jesse Ware. Yes. And she brought Sir Paul along. So Sir Paul's podcast appearance, and it involves him giving his uh recipe for a margarita and also how to make a bagel sandwich i i mean he just does it for an hour that's elite with his daughter mary so i recommend that two things i love margaritas and bagel sandwiches it's weird it has orange juice in it but oh i don't like that you know he presents it like you know i have traveled a lot

of places and so i need to have some stability or some things that are the same, so I just give the recipe to the bartender always. Which is, imagine Paul McCartney walking in and being like, I need you to make me a margarita and put a splash of orange juice in it. I would be stressed out were I the bartender. Unsurprisingly, Sir Paul is a big part of this film. Great. He speaks quite often. He's extremely charming I don't know

if it's a classically great documentary this is Mary's first film as a documentarian but there's a 100% chance you will like it because I like that you

went with the boomers in the mountains of Colorado everybody there was 70 but me except for one father who was there with his 13 year old daughter

who was sitting next to me and every time something would happen he was doing a thing that I will inevitably do when I watch a movie like this with my daughter. Which is like, that's Roger Waters. He was in Pink Floyd. But he's not in Pink Floyd anymore because he had a fight with Dave Gilmour.

So now he's on his own. But it's cool that he's talking about Pink Floyd in this movie. Like I could hear him doing that for every single scene. That's very sweet. Yeah. That's nice. So that was a nice movie. A couple of other Telluride things really quickly.

One, first question everybody asked me as soon as they saw me, where's Amanda? Okay. Hi, everyone. Everybody that approached me was so nice, so cool, so flattering. Like, it was just really, really sweet that people listen to the show, like, for real and know way too much about us. And that's creepy when they're like, how's your daughter doing? You know, like, that is odd

but also very nice. But the best thing that people say always is, you guys get me so excited to watch movies, which is like exactly what we want to do on the show. So,

despite crapping on some of the movies that we saw this weekend, that was very, very nice. And, I would say it was like, it was a good festival.

Like, it's definitely the most well-run, fun, easy to navigate festival. Like, I was already well-run, fun, easy-to-navigate festival. I was already seeing a lot of reports of people who were going to TIFF who were just like, there's a disastrous ticketing situation right now for people. And that's a great festival. It's a very big festival.

It's a totally different kind of monster than Telluride, which is highly curated. Will you ever take Alice to Telluride? I want to try to do it next year. In fact, I was chatting with a guy on the way home who did it, who came with his kids and his kid and his wife last year. And they had a great time. Yeah. And I also, I want Eileen to be able to see movies.

Like, I think that would be a lot of fun to make like a family affair because it is such an amazing town. That's the other thing, too, is so beautiful. There's a lot to do. It's not just about the movies. It is a great place to be. Eileen loves mountains. Well, she would kill to hike there. That would be her favorite thing. So we got to find a way to make it happen. Maybe just make it a longer vacation and bookend it. This is what I'm trying to do with Cannes and Venice next year. Yeah,

that's harder to get to. Yeah, but then you're there. Then you're there. And then you get to witness, watch this segue, some of the greatest events in pop cultural 2022, if not history, which was the Don't Worry Darling premiere. What's going on? I don't know how to talk about this. I mean, we have barely touched on the quote unquote scandals of this movie on the show. Which is pretty ugly. It's been ugly. You know, you and I had a very brief conversation after the Golden Globes last year where we talked about Jason Sudeikis.

And I think I made a snide comment about Harry Styles and I immediately regretted it. And I was like, you know what? That's not really what we do on this show. Like, you guys do a much better job of that on Jam Session. It's not really something that ultimately interests me that much. I want to stay away from it. it was like i felt it was like a little bit of a turning point where i was like i'm not gonna be i'm gonna try to not be snide

about some of this stuff on mike and then this situation like became basically like you have like it needs to be unpacked and discussed it is the marketing of the movie it is it's and the It is. 4 a.m london time and appeared under the influence of some things he did then later clarify to zach my husband in a gq cover story that he was not actually stoned he just appeared stoned he's a great actor um he's he's a great actor and a funny guy uh it's it's bizarre and there are so many angles of it and i think think the previous two weeks, which have been the Olivia Wilde press tour and then the Shia LaBeouf side press tour, have been... I've consumed all of it, let's be real. I'm not above. I'm not going to pretend like I didn't watched the video, which was part of the materials that Shia LaBeouf leaked or not even leaked, provided to Variety to rebut some of Olivia Wilde's claims about what went on on the set of Don't Worry Darling. And the basic version of it is that Shia LaBeouf was originally hired in the role that Harry Styles plays and he left the film olivia wilde has made a lot of um unquote no assholes policy and firing shia shia maintains that he left for different reasons he also um you know has been accused of some truly horrible behavior by fka twigs that came around that time and that he has

tried to wind into his defense of himself which is like gross i mean all of it's very gross it's a very unseemly story all around it's a very unseemly story and it seems that olivia wilde is just out here trying to sell her movie at all costs which i mean she is um but possibly not being the, maybe being an opportunist of some uncomfortable situations. I've been trying to figure that out. Like how much of this is sort of coordinated and managed, even in her own mind, like even outside of the apparatus of promotion and everything. Whether she thinks that it's helpful to just be a little provocative. And frankly, this is something that all filmmakers do when they're trying to sell a movie,

especially a movie that, truth be told, is just really not good. And we'll talk about more when it comes out. But maybe she anticipated the fact that there was, this didn't come off the way that she wanted it to, so that she had to do something to draw some attention to it. I'm quite certain she didn't anticipate Shia's rebuttal

in quite the way that he provided, quote unquote, like all of the receipts, know like video evidence and emails and all this stuff that clearly indicates at least from my vantage point that he wasn't properly fired that's not something different and then that led to the you know the Miss Flo comment which then kind of revealed this fissure between Florence Pugh the star of the film and and and Olivia Wilde which was the the Florence Pugh Olivia Wilde thing had sort of been simmering and many people had noticed that Florence Pugh who's usually very enthusiastic about promoting her work was not really promoting Don't Worry Darling in any meaningful way kind of doing

really the bare minimum. We should add at this point that because Olivia Wilde has been dating Harry Styles since the production of Don't Worry Darling, she has been the recipient of a lot of attention, which is definitely a euphemism, from Harry Styles fans. Attacks. She's been attacked. Yeah, there's sort of a Johnny Depp-esque thing going on in terms of the online stuff, which definitely exacerbated the receipt stuff. And you wonder how much Shia LaBeouf is playing into that. And I certainly saw the video from a Harry Styles stan account, you know, just because with a lot of commentary.

So all of it's pretty ugly i i would say at least at least those things are just kind of no one looks great well it transitioned over the weekend from tawdry hollywood scandal and frankly we don't have a lot of on-set production scandals these days this stuff is very well managed and well taken care of so there was something very like kind of like, you know, awfully appealing about it as something to discuss. But then maybe we wouldn't totally unpack on the show to just like rank absurdity at Venice. And honestly, a lot more fun. Very funny. Because Lawrence Pugh definitely seems to not be thrilled about this project. And once the video was leaked in which she was referred to disparagingly as Miss Flow by Olivia Wilde in a video message that she took while driving and sent to Shia LaBeouf, which I just putting everything else aside.

Is this how people are communicating? Because we got to stop. I might start doing that to you. No. Just start driving, send you video messages didn't why notes on your podcast performance it is so strange and unnatural not to mention careless anyway florence pugh has leaned into this and the machine has become aware and i she i don't know how she and olivia wilde feel about each other and I don't know how she and Olivia Wilde feel about each other. And I don't really care.

It's become clear that she's going to use it as marketing for herself. So smart. And it's hilarious. And so she is currently filming Dune 2 and has thus let every outlet know that she will be doing absolutely nothing to promote this movie. And behind the scenes a little bit, it takes a lot of effort. That's intentional. Like some emails are sent out to everyone to purposefully state, I'm not doing this. She's going out of her way.

She did not appear at the press conference. She did premiere at the premiere, but has not spoken really about the film in weeks. Right. And won't be speaking about it. And she arrived in Venice almost exactly at the same time as the press conference that she did not attend in Valentino looking fantastic with a cocktail. You have to wonder if that was timed. I just also want to note that her stylist for the premiere, where she also looked fantastic, posted photos of her with the caption, Miss Flo. So they are logged on. They know what's going on. Meanwhile, the press conference

was a tremendous meme event, but one of the most awkward and kind of annoying things that's ever happened. Olivia Wilde was asked about Florence Pugh and she practiced her answer and kind of brushed it aside. And then the Venice Film Festival intervened to prevent any follow-up questions specifically about Shia LaBeouf. So she was protected from answering any questions about that,

which is not great journalism, but I don't know. It's a film festival press conference. Yeah. You can... This is not Watergate. Exactly. Harry Styles just said some nonsense about not knowing how to act.

And Chris Pine sat there just stone, like not stoned. I just glazed over. Yes. Perfect. Staring into the distance. Sort of our new sad Ben Affleck, if you will. Just an amazing haircut right now. Is this for a film, the shoulder length hair?

I don't know, but he looks so good. It's incredible. He has always been one of my favorites and I get a huge kick out of him. He's pretty good in the movie, but he has entered like a limbic zone in the press tour. Yeah. You know, he is almost like like has he said any words i

haven't even seen him speak yet no i don't think but there are so many dynamic images of him not speaking which is again great self-preservation you're stuck in this just disaster scenario lean into it so that's the press conference fast forward to the premiere everyone does walk the carpet for the premiere the the the movie gets i i didn't take note of how many minutes the standing ovation was it was four minutes four minutes which was significantly shorter than most of the films that premiered at venice which four minutes is a really long time to stand up clapping i don't you know i don't really i don't even know where the scorecarding thing, like when that started, you know,

we're clocking how long people are cheering for a movie. But by contrast, The Banshees of Edishiran, which is the new Martin McDonough film, which was widely acclaimed

out of Venice, probably the most celebrated movie of award season so far, interestingly, had a 12-minute standing ovation. Some estimated 13 minutes. So four minutes

is piddling by comparison. Sure. Don't worry, worry though i didn't even mean to do that i'm really sorry i'm walking into a lot of puns today but um there was video footage of all of it of the entire and it's just been dissected online so first we got the kind of straight ahead standing ovation video which was a fl Florence Pugh studiously avoiding any eye contact with Olivia Wilde. And they're seated apart from each other. There's, I believe, the seating arrangement. Olivia Wilde is on the aisle. I'm doing this from memory. Then it's Chris Pine. Then it's

Harry Styles. Then it's Gemma Chan, who's in this film and who's been trying to be the peacemaker. And then Florence Pugh. And then Nick Kroll, who I did not know was in the movie until this footage. So good marketing again, I guess. Just want to say for the record, I love Nick Kroll. Okay. He is Nick Kroll innocent. That's my take.

So Florence Pugh's getting a lot of love and interacting with everyone without even looking in the direction of Olivia Wilde. Pretty funny stuff. Then last night, a video hits the internet. This is where you become Jim Garrison in JFK. How? By the way, let me just say right now, you and Chris Ryan did not respond to my texts about this. I was on a plane. I was on a plane. Whatever. Respond when you land, okay? It's an emergency. It was a very stressful exit. Has Sean landed yet, okay? It was a very stressful exit from LAX.

It was nine at night. I'm texting everyone I know, getting no responses. Like, what is this? Well, I knew we were in Save It for the Pod territory as well, honestly. A video hits the internet from two angles, but we'll start with the original head-on angle as harry styles comes to take his seat next to chris pine there is a moment where he purses his lips and appears to spit on chris pine's leg and then you watch chris pine stop clapping and make a look you make a face that's kind of like that asshole i just can't believe that happened and the harry styles sits down and from another angle from the side angle as well

there is there is just a there's a movement that harry styles makeup makes a very deliberate, something is going on. He could be coughing. He could be saying something, though his lips aren't really moving. And then Chris Pine looks at his leg in dismay and, you know, peak. Did he spit on Chris Pine? Did he not? Only you have the video. You have the tools. You guys can all decide. I can't think of another explanation. It really looks like he's spitting on him. This is your back and to the left. Back and to the left.

This is... What else is Chris Pine reacting to? Why would he have spit upon him is the question that no one is asking. Because Chris Pine is not a participant in this controversy. Thanks so much, Sean. He is clearly Team Olivia. I would refer you back to some red carpet photos that were taken where Chris Pine has a disposable camera and is taking photos of Florence Pugh. And Florence Pugh is smiling and vamping and they're clearly having a moment

together. They're friends. They're excited to be on the Venice red carpet. So Chris Pine is aligned with Florence Pugh surreptitiously and Harry is aware of this. And so he is spitting upon him in public to render his dissatisfaction. Well, I don't know about that reasoning. I still am having trouble with the jump from we don't like each other to let me spit on you in front of, you know, a thousand cameras and video footage from every angle. This movie's not out for like two and a half weeks.

I know. Why? What happened? Like, why would he spit on him? Why is everyone so mad at them? I mean, I understand they started a relationship on the set. It sounds like they were maybe not the most professional. And you can also add in the fact that it sounds like Olivia Wilde didn't, aside from her personal life, didn't create, like, the best environment for Florence Pugh on set.

So I guess those are reasons to be frustrated with people. How did we get to spitting in Europe? I don't know. My take is that he didn't spit on him. That's no fun. I know, but it just seems highly unlikely. What did he do? Harry Styles is perhaps the most famous person

under 30 in America. Like he, in the world maybe. He's very charming. But what is Chris Pine reacting to? I don't know. Chris Pine's just got one of those faces. I feel like he's smirking every five minutes. Yeah, but he pauses.

He pauses and he's like, you know. Here's what it reminds me of. In football, there is an ongoing debate, especially since a Dez Bryant catch-non-catch many years ago, of what is a catch? When do you control the ball? I hate this dialogue in football. It's really annoying. It happens all the time because often what appears to be an extraordinary play in the sport then goes under instant replay. And we look frame by frame at the catch, and we see that the player did not actually have the 100% control all the way to the ground

that is necessary to confirm a catch. On the flip side, if the receiver so much as like hits the pylon with half of a pinky finger, it counts as a catch and a touchdown. That's correct. As long as they have control. But even if they, like frankly,

they didn't make it in the end zone. And so like the, the basic eye test of is it a catch or is it not a catch, which you or I, as humans with, you know, basic understandings of, I don't know, what we see, could decide that was a catch or that was a touchdown, this is not a touchdown. The NFL often rules in the opposite way. Well, okay. There's a whole lot to unpack here. The ball has to cross the plane regardless. Whether it crosses the pylon as the plane or not,

that's how we determine a touchdown. But in general, what I'm trying to say is that when you slow something down to the instant replay of vacation,

which is what is happening with the spit moment, our eyes deceive us. There is a moment in Empire of Light where Toby Jones, who plays a projectionist at the movie theater where the film takes place, explains how film works and how when

we collect these images together and run them on a reel, we see them as a moving image as opposed to a series of photographs that are shown consecutively because of a flaw in our optic nerve. And that is part of the magic, the scientific magic of watching movies. It's a very good scene in a movie that I didn't like very much. This is the same thing. We are removing, by running this film at such a slow speed, that flaw. And we are trying to correct

the flaw in our imagination. And we are trying to think that something that didn't happen, did happen. That's what I think. The same way that it is a catch for all of these damn receivers who keep getting screwed and getting touchdowns taken away. By the same token, it is not spit. Now, could I be wrong? Of course. I don't fucking know. This is already a ridiculous story and it's totally conceivable that Harry Styles spit on

Chris Pine. But Harry Styles is that untrained as a human? I don't know. I do agree with you that I don't have an explanation. We have reached the point where people are doing things that just don't make sense to me in terms of emotion and motivation. Just why would you do that? Like, what was going through your mind? I don't know. I don't know. I don't have an explanation for it. That also applies to certain events at the Oscars last year that we still haven't talked about.

That's a good point. Sometimes people do wild things. And your first reaction is, I don't believe it happened. And then it did happen. You know what? I can't debate that. That's a fabulous counter-argument. If you told me in 2020 that in 2022, here's what would happen to the Academy Awards with Will Smith, I would not believe you. So maybe you're right. Anything is possible in this crazy town. I don't really know. I am happy to announce that Jam Session is also coming back today. You better believe. I can't believe you just did all that and now you're going to do it all over again. Yeah, but Juliette is like the Harry Styles going back to One Direction expert. So she probably has explanations that I have not even achieved. I also, I'm an hour out of date

at this point. Okay. She'll have fresh material. Yeah. While we're recording, new angles, new info could be out in the world that we just don't know about. I think we'll talk a little bit about this more as it unfolds before the movie comes out. But the movie itself, which is, you know, getting really panned right now, which I think is in some respects a reaction to the story. But honestly, like I saw the film before most of this news broke. A handful of the critics who I've talked to honestly like i saw the film before most of this news broke a handful of the critics who i've talked to about it also saw the film before this broke and there was a little bit of like a dialogue among a handful of critics were like is that really

as bad as i thought it was because i i really thought it was quite quite unsuccessful as a movie now it's a very hard kind of movie to pull off because of the the i don't want to give away too much about it but the the genre that it's operating in but it's just a big miss like a big like they didn't get it right at all in my opinion at least um and i wonder if it's the rare case where like you probably can read into the production difficulties really significantly affecting the tone and execution of the movie because it's just off something is off and if it was a very unhappy set frankly florence pew is the only person holding the movie together. Right.

So, which a lot of critics have already noted and it's definitely true. I should also just say very quickly, she was the star of a movie that was also a telly record called The Wonder, a Netflix movie by Sebastian Lelio, the Chilean filmmaker, Academy Award winner. Excellent movie.

Definitely one of the five best movies I saw there. Do you think, I didn't put this in my Oscar predictions, but could she be nominated for the wonder as like a could she just coast on this that was my sixth prediction that i didn't include which is that florence pugh will be nominated this year but not for don't worry darling it's so great i love it it would be great i don't know if the wonder is going to get big enough it's a little bit of a smaller story they're always small like what you need is the big name and the attention and the discourse it's very cool it's it's like a kind of like a realistic gothic horror movie but it's not like horrorish in the way that you might imagine about a young girl in

a small irish village who doesn't eat and apparently does not need to eat to live and is identified as a kind of miracle and floren Pugh plays a nurse who visits her to observe her and her not eating. It's a very good movie. And it's a confirmation of something we already knew, which is like, she's really one of the best that's come along in a long time. She's really, really great. And she's very good in Don't Worry Darling. But she has so savvily vaulted or catapulted herself over the controversy and such smart the instagram

shit yesterday was so funny it's really really good i i don't know i i wouldn't have said that olivia wilde is this bad at the marketing of all of this and i don't know how much of it is missteps and how much of it is kind of the online echo chamber and a lot of things that aren't her fault and even the attacks from the fan. But it just seems like a miscalculation in every term that is separate from the fact that, frankly, I think this movie looks dumb. I mean, just like that trailer looks dumb and sometimes things are stupid. It's just misconceived. Almost every single step of the way, this entire rollout has been misconceived. The making of the film clearly was troubled. The actual film is troubled when you watch it. The press tour has been troubled. The marketing approach has been troubled. This happens. curious about what the yeah because the reviews have been so scathing um and the controversy is so intense and if there's just us talking about it right now it might black mark us um but it is what it is i mean it's a part of the story we have to talk about it now and at this point if

warner brothers were savvy they would just lean into it and maybe they are but also they've got some other things going on over there there's already come back around again to sort of like the inherent misogyny in Hollywood and the idea that female filmmaker, I mean, Matt Bellamy, when he wrote about this a week ago was kind of ahead of the curve on this conversation. We were sort of like, let's try to take this with a grain of salt because if a male filmmaker had an affair with his, you know, female lead and his marriage fell apart in the face of that, but he made this really provocative, daring genre movie, you know, we would probably applaud him. Or at least in the face of that, but he made this really provocative, daring genre movie, you know, we would probably applaud him.

Or at least in the past, we have not absolutely crucified male filmmakers for doing this. Matt's right about that. Yeah. But it's still a bad movie. And it's still been an absolute tire fire of a press tour.

So, you know, there's already a lot of discourse about the way that she has come under attack in an unfair way. And I think that the Harry Styles stuff and the kind of Johnny Depp, Amber Heard aspect of it is troubling and weird and very difficult to kind of navigate the truth.

And just, and seeps into other forms of coverage in a way that, you know, I think all of that is nonsense and gross and troubling and sometimes gets conflated with other more valid criticisms so you know we can be like who cares that she's dating carrie styles i don't care nobody cares yeah no one cares and that can be very separate from the fact that she wasn't creating a great environment for florence pew to you know who does a lot of sex scenes and a more uncomfortable, vulnerable production and, and maybe hasn't handled the marketing well, but the way the internet works, all of those

things get conflated together. And suddenly by criticizing her, you're promoting the agenda of these people who need to go outside. Um, I only speak for myself. You know what I mean? Like I can only talk about the experiences I'm having with it. It's a weird story because it's a story that it's not a story about a private person it's a story about famous people in some cases very famous people who are whose personal lives have intersected with their art and their professional lives and so like you guys talk about this on your shows all the time we don't talk about it as much on the big picture but it's a unique case where the idea of um again going back to the women talking thing like what it means to be a woman the idea of power in these complicated environments like that's actually in the movie these are like themes in the film so it feels a

bit like we're through the looking glass but i don't know more to come i guess and don't worry darling i guess so okay uh you want to do some predictions yeah okay um so as you noted at the top we're six and a half months uh so this is a stupid act but i did just see a lot of movies and you certainly observed a lot of the fracas overseas and so things are starting to take shape. So we're going to do some ridiculous proclamations. I think some of them I might be right, honestly, but we'll see. Do you want me to start? You want to start?

They might be right. Let's reiterate. I haven't seen anything. So these are incredibly irresponsible. But is that a referendum on me or is that a referendum on the Oscars? Right. So I think it's the latter. And I will say, honestly, most of the time you don't need to see the movies to make these kinds of predictions. You need to read the trades.

You need to talk to people in the world. Seeing the movies, which is my favorite part of this, is often secondary to the horse race. But the horse race, you know, it's still a thing. It's probably going to be a smaller thing in the future. You know, have you noticed the way that the Academy has like very clearly shifted as they move into new governance new leadership they are saying the things that i think at least i was trying to say that i think a lot of other oscar followers were saying which is like worry about people who watch the oscars yeah you know like last year was a breaking point for me where i was like i don't know why i'm trying to get 30 million people to watch this show it's never gonna happen Worry about people who care about movies.

Don't. You've been there for years. I salute you. Last year's Oscars was so bad. Terrible. Aside from the incident. Yeah. If the incident had not happened, it would have been just yet another consecutive ignominious telecast.

But it was like actively really, really bad. Agreed. Okay. They're trying to change things by saying like, all we're going to do now is focus on the best films and the history of the show and the history of the films that we've honored. And that's what we want this to be known for and about. We need to get past the slap.

And, you know, thus far, I think it's kind of a soft year. I don't think we have, you'll get into some predictions of movies we've already seen. I think it's interesting that it certainly feels like there's more contenders that were released in the first half of the year than the second half of the year. I can't remember a year in which that was the case. I mean, that's also just because the contenders are few and far between. They very much are.

And the films that look like they could have been contenders don't look as strong as they did six weeks ago. I'll start with a very simple one, just as like an end cap on Women Talking, which is that I think it will definitely be nominated for Best Picture. I think there's a strong chance that Sarah Polley will be nominated for Best Director. A lot of the conversation out of the festival was, could this be three women in a row winning Best Director at the Academy Awards after Chloe Zhao and Jane Campion? It's possible. It's not the same kind of visual feast that Nomadland and The Power of the Dog were.

So that branch usually likes to award someone who captures extraordinary vistas and things like that. But I don't think anyone from the cast will be recognized because there's 10 actresses and there's no lead. And this is not a prediction so much as it is like I'm begging

to just create an ensemble award for the Academy Awards. Like this is the movie for it. It wouldn't make sense to nominate Rooney Mara over Jessie Buckley for the Academy Awards. Yeah. Like, this is the movie for it. Like, it wouldn't make sense to nominate Rooney Mara over Jessie Buckley for Best Supporting Actress, even though they're both great. It just wouldn't make sense. I mean, that will happen anyway.

It's possible. Or you could get three. It's possible. You could get multiple people in the same category, but usually when that happens, it's when there's a cast that has, like, three really great supporting performances. This movie has 10 really great supporting performances.

So what do you do? You know, like unless they really throw their lot behind, say, Judith Ivey and try to say, you know, this is a story about a woman who's been a working actress for 40 years, 50 years. She deserves as much recognition as her movie star cohort. But it would be that rare case of the big movie that has a big cast that doesn't get any acting nominations. I think that's what's going to happen. That seems there are too many names in it, though, and people are excited about it. You'll see. It's very evenly distributed, the movie. Well, you know, then people got to make some tough decisions about how they're going to market stuff. Your girl, Claire, is good in it. She's a wonderful actress. She is. Okay. My prediction is less surprising. It's Top Gun Maverick.

It's a call. Let's make this happen. I'm secreting this. Top Gun Maverick, best picture, yes. Every technical award, yes. And possibly Joseph Kuczynski for best director. That is the one that feels the boldest of your predictions. But I think it could happen.

Okay. I don't think Tom Cruise is going to get best actor. I think they would do well by nominating him. Sure. We haven't seen, whatever, 70% of the films that will be nominated. I'm going to be honest. Given the events of last year, and once again, we come back to the incident, let's keep him marketing the movie and not himself did you know

this movie was number one at the box office this weekend i did as i said i went to the movies to see bullet train and it was full and i asked the people at the movie theater has this been true for everything because it's been very hot in los angeles doing some reporting um i mean i don't know it was while i was waiting for my m&ms they're very nice nice, the Regal La Cunada. And they said that the only other movie that had been sold out all day was Top Gun Maverick. Top Gun Maverick was

the number one film with a box office over Memorial Day weekend and the number one film with a box office over Labor Day weekend. Well, it's fantastic. It truly is.

It will be nominated. I'm pretty certain it will be nominated for Best Picture. Kaczynski, I think he's deserving. I think what he accomplished in part with,

you know, Macquarie and Cruise, and, like, he was fortunate to be working, and Bruckheimer, and, like, people who really know how to make crowd-pleasing movies, and they had a lot of time

to make it. They held it for a long period of time. They were able to reconceive certain aspects of it, but they nailed it. Yeah. It's the most universally acclaimed movie since Endgame. Like, honestly, like, the most universally acclaimed movie since Endgame?

I'm like, honestly, like the most amount of people who have all said, I love this. Probably, right? Definitely. I don't put it in the same sentences in Endgame.

But you know what I'm saying. I know what you're saying. I know what you're saying. The Bill and Chris instant rewatchables or like two month later rewatchables was very delightful. Very funny.

Very funny. Bill, big fan of Jennifer Connelly. Not sure if you're aware of that. Well, me too. Me too. Okay. I think that's a good prediction. My next prediction.

So one movie that we have not discussed is White Noise, which was premiered at the very beginning of the Venice Film Festival over the weekend. And I would say had a mixed response. Some acclaim. Most of the acclaim came from European and British critics. I would say the American critics

were very kind of tepid on the movie. This is Noah Baumbach's adaptation of Don DeLillo's novel. This is a big Netflix movie. You and I are very much anticipating it.

It's hard to not have your enthusiasm dim just a little bit when you see so many mixed reviews. I like to think of it as resetting expectations in a positive way. That might be good. That might be-

Because I think we were getting a little too hot. You're right. You're right. And also, I made a mistake on our last conversation about this. I said that this movie was shot on digital. It was not. It was shot on 35 millimeter. It's just when you watch a trailer on your computer, it doesn't look good. Yes. Or when you watch it at home. Can you stop just making side comments about my home setup? My home setup is great and I have invited you over to fix it.

I don't work for you. Okay, well, I'm just saying. No, it's a good bit and I'm going to keep it going. Okay. Everybody is invested in it now too. Everybody's invested in the fact that you are watching,

you know, like a TV from 1972. I'm not. It's a beautiful new television. And I turned off motion smoothing. I have to do the Neil settings that Joanna was talking about. Maybe Joanna should come over. That would be great. Is she going to be in LA soon?

I don't know. Okay. Well, we'll investigate. Should we make our own Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie video? Just being like, I would like to help you watch movies at home. It's honestly a great idea. And yes, we will. I usually don't want to do any video, but that is something I would do with you.

Okay. We got to do it in your ADU though. Oh God. I'm not sure if I'm ready to reveal that. That's a scary place. So White Noise came out or premiered at Venice. We're both still excited about it, but it's Oscar chances. I think we're softened for sure this weekend.

Bardo, which all caveats aside, kind of got slammed this weekend in a way that films from big filmmakers very rarely get slammed. So that leads me to believe that neither of those films are going to be Netflix's best picture nominee. I think it's going to be Netflix's best picture nominee is Glass Onion and Knives Out Mystery. I think that's the movie that is the most likely to get nominated for Netflix, which is really interesting because, you know, they're on this streak now of getting a lot of films nominated and a lot of best picture nominees and, know 10 noms for power the dog and then not walking away with the big prize it's becoming an ongoing story for that yes and so they you know

and the people who work there and the people who are in the awards campaign are great at their jobs and they just have never had the movie honestly they just have not had the movie that was going to win and it seems kind of unlikely that they're going to have the movie this year it's hard to say i haven't seen white Noise or Glass Onion. And Knives Out famously, I think many people thought when it came out, it was the 10th film, but it didn't actually garner enough votes to be included. Rian Johnson is very well liked in Hollywood. It has a great cast.

It's premiering at Toronto, which is a crowd pleaser festival. If you see that movie win the audience award, take a cue. That might indicate that it has a good chance. Then Top Gun Maverick and Glass Onion Knives Out, two sequels that we love. Well, we haven't seen Glass Onion, but we love Rian Johnson.

I love Knives Out. I'm glad that that movie is becoming a franchise. Me too. But that is both franchises that Iman Adabans can stand and franchises that the Academy can stomach, even though they can't deign to accept a Marvel movie. Though, there is Black Panther 2 this fall as well,

and Black Panther was nominated. And Avatar 2. Oh, that's right. So this could be a fascinating, sequelized Best Picture category. That's not a prediction, but how interesting would that be? Now, this would be so good

for the Oscars. One, if Wakanda Forever was great, if Avatar The Way of Water was great, if Glass Onion was great. That's just great for us making the show. It's great for movies. Those are mainstream movies.

The industry is basically banking on Black Panther 2 and Avatar 2 to be successful this fall. But if all four of those movies made it in, that's unprecedented. There's never been four sequels.

There's frankly never, it's probably been about 10 years since four movies that are kind of quote unquote as like big and mainstream would crack the top 10. I mean, that's what's- In all likelihood, like none of these movies

are getting nominated for Best Picture. I don't know though. Can't you see it now that we've, and the Academy have given up? Well, now that you and the Academy have given up on this idea of we got to get all the ratings and the people and make it mainstream. Then they finally do it. Yeah, then they finally do it.

That's how life works. That is so true. That would be very funny. I'm open to it. I think it's unlikely given the makeup of the Academy these days, but I would be so down. Yeah. All right, what's your next prediction?

Two best actor predictions in one. Okay. Brennan Fraser, which we talked about on The Most Anticipated, but The Whale, Darren Aronofsky's new movie starring Brendan Fraser, debuted in Venice, got more of a standing ovation than Don't Worry Darling. It did. And I think Brendan Fraser was very moved by that, and it just seems like that is just rocketing.

The film itself, there were some mixed reviews on, but the acclaim for him was universal. Yes. So that seems like almost certain for a Best Actor nomination. And then also Colin Farrell in the new Martin McDonagh movie, The Banshees of Finisheran, which got the longest ovation at Venice. Which again, this is sort of like the new Rotten Tomatoes score, forgive us. Doesn't mean anything, but people are excited about it and people are very excited

about Colin Farrell's performance and seems like it could be his first Oscar nom. I want him to be nominated for playing the penguin. Okay. Maybe they could do a double. I love him as the penguin. They could do a double. Oh, what are you doing?

What are you showing me that for? Oh! Okay. That's a really great performance. I'm very excited for the Martin McDonagh movie. I'm very excited to be past the three of the billboards discourse. Sure. Which, you know, one of like my most,

I tried very hard in the column that I wrote about three billboards four years ago to write a piece that was sort of like not hot takey and really neither here nor there. And just try to be as thoughtful as possible what the filmmaker set out to do and then how the film was discussed i remember this very vividly i never talk about like pieces that i wrote on the pod but that one in particular i was like i'm really gonna try i'm gonna read as much about this as possible i'm gonna try to deeply understand like the mythology that mcdonough's trying to unpack publish the piece i felt good about it i was like this is this is kind of as good as i can do at

this kind of thing and then the first person on twitter it. I was like, this is, this is kind of as good as I can do at this kind of thing. And then the first person on Twitter replied to me was like, you're a fucking racist. And I was like, what? So,

and that was, and that had nothing to do with me. It was the tenor of the discourse about that movie. It was ugly. And I would like

to be past that. And I would like to be talking about the guy who made In Bruges who was a filmmaker that I love. I do say How Come Chief Willoughby

a fair amount in my day-to-day life it's a good bit yeah it's one of the better memes i mean it's not it's whatever i'm i'm looking forward to it as well i don't know that either of them will win i think that's my other prediction okay so who who is going to win best actor i don't totally know did you see no this was the sun a telluride after sun the sun oh the sun the hugh jackman yes uh no it was not a telluride i believe it is premiering at toronto okay um this is florian zeller's follow-up to the father i actually sent this to bill simmons in a text message this weekend because he was asking me about brenton fraser and the idea of his comeback

and i told him that my gut is still, having not seen either of those films, that Hugh Jackman will win because Hugh Jackman is beloved, is a former host of the Oscars, is a very, very good actor, who I think has maybe only been nominated once. I don't know. I'm not sure. But, you know, obviously, Florian Zeller just directed Anthony Hopkins to a Best Actor Academy Award. Yeah, I was going to say, we've seen it happen before.

Memorably. Um, but that's a good call. It could be Hugh Jackman. Brendan Fraser, definitely a contender. I'm sure Adam Driver will be in the conversation there. Um, should be an interesting best actor race. Tom Cruise. Tend to agree with you.

I don't think that's happening. Okay. What's my next prediction? Uh, speaking of best acting categories olivia colman and kate blanchett are about to be in a knife fight for their their second best actress oscar yeah it's gonna be it's gonna be quite a fall that's great between the two of them i love them both they're both very gifted they're both very good in their films uh it was interesting that kate blanchett was there. Olivia Colman

could not make it. She appeared via Zoom at the premiere of Empire of Light. Charming as always. She called Sam Mendes her favorite director, which is an interesting

comment given that film. Well, as you said, he's a director of actors. Yes. A lot of theater experience. Yes. I don't want to give away too much about her character,

but she is asked to do some quite actorly things in the film. She often is. She has a couple of big scenes. The Cate Blanchett performance to me is like Titanic.

It is total immersion. She learned German for the part. You know, she learned how to play the piano for the part. Like, she did all the stuff. The Oscars do like that. They love that. And it's a totally original character that feels like a real person.

I heard multiple conversations of people asking, is this based on a real person, Lydia Tarr? So to me, it felt coming out of that movie like she had already sewn something up. This is, of course, Fool's Errand, six months in advance to be predicting who's going to win Academy Awards. But, you know, she's won twice already. Best Supporting Actress for The Aviator for her performance as Katharine Hepburn. Then she won, I guess, about 10 years ago for Blue Jasmine, the Woody Allen film.

And she's amazing. So, you know, Olivia Colman probably has like the highest approval rating of all humans in the Academy. They just love her. This would be her fourth in five years. Cate Blanchett, I think most people have kind of come around to the like,

she's like the true inheritor of Meryl Streep's crown, right? It was like kind of best living actress and reliably, even when she's in a dumb movie, like even in Thor Ragnarok, she's kind of amazing, you know? And a similar, not quite seen chewing presence, but big. Yes. And you got to make room. It's a very good description of the Lidia's heart character, too.

She's really big, but it's not like Al Pacino in Two for the Money. You know what I mean? Yes. So... Gambling again! Can I... My next prediction is building off of these two. Okay.

I think Cate Blanchett and Olivia Colman are going to cancel each other out with Academy of Voters and Michelle Yeoh comes in and wins for everything, everywhere, all at once. Speaking of people who are at Telluride, Michelle Yeoh was there.

And people who are already, and like, I don't, when we talk about people who are campaigning when, quote, she's running is happening,

sometimes we're like mocking a little bit, but this would be fantastic. I think Michelle Yeoh should go wherever she wants and campaign and do as much. And if she wins the Oscar, it would be fantastic. I was mixed on everything, everywhere, all at once, but I loved her in this film. And I think there's a lot of goodwill behind her.

And, you know, it would be one of those career confirmation Oscars as well and would be a lot of fun. So she was at Telluride in part because one of the surprise screenings there were a couple of different outdoor screenings of the 20th anniversary of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. There we go. Which is obviously one of her best films, really one of the best films of the 21st century. Ang Lee is like an incredible martial arts epic. I was walking out of one of the films. I can't remember what it was, but it might've been tar and it was nighttime. And you know,

there's this long walk from the Herzog theater all the way back to where I was staying. And you have to walk through a, it's a, the Herzog is at a school and there's like a field that has a soccer field and a football field. And there's a giant scoreboard and the scoreboard is kind of draped in um a screen and so there's always a movie playing outdoors on the saturday night and crouching tiger hidden dragon

was playing and it was about 100 yards away it was pretty far away and i just stopped in my tracks and just watched a scene from crouching tiger hidden dragon that she was featured in in which she was doing battle with someone and she's like she was such an amazing presence i mean people who had been watching like jackie chan movies in the 90s were aware of her. But that's the movie I think that really, really introduced her to American audiences. There's a lot of goodwill for her. She was doing a lot of baby kissing, a lot of handshaking at the festival. She was being escorted around by the two gentlemen who run Sony Pictures Classics, who are legendarily good at the Academy Awards.

Yes, they are. And so she was putting in time. And so the idea of her and Blanchett there together was super interesting. Famously, they did not close it for Glenn Close with the wife, and she did, in fact, lose to Olivia Colman. That's true. That's true.

Everything Everywhere All At Once was going to be divisive, though, I think, for voters. Because it's very genre. Yes. And genre does not always play. And it is like, it is fearless about its tone. You know?

Yeah. But people don't vote for the movie. Right. They vote for the people. They vote for the people. Yeah. And Michelle Yeoh is beloved

and she's great. So, that would be cool. Okay. I like that one. So, here's my next one. Timothee Chalamet will

not be nominated for an Academy Award this year. Okay. In part because he's not be nominated for an Academy Award this year. Okay. In part because he's in a movie about cannibals. Yeah. And I think the cannibals bit is going to be tough to play. Certainly in light of recent controversies.

So that's something that people have pointed out is that obviously Armie Hammer was his screen partner in Call Me By Your Name. They famously had Extraordinary Chemistry and another Guadagnino film. Armie Hammer has also been accused of being a cannibal. Cannibal fantasies. Let's not get into it. Okay. You sure? I'm really sure.

That's another just like very ugly thing. And now with his someone, his aunt has like made a discovery documentary that looks bad but then some of the accusers are upset it just seems like that's a remarkable coincidence though is it not that chalme made made this movie with guadagnino it's really weird you i mean it does make you wonder whether he was that was a legendarily very open set and production and people had to get comfortable and so maybe he's sharing some fantasies

that then inspired a movie. I don't know. Well, the movie is based on a book. But maybe they became, I don't know. I'm just putting it out there. I love that idea.

I would. That there was conversation. Okay. We shall see. Is that not like commonly understood that this, everyone thinks it's just a coincidence instead of the fact that Okay. We shall see. Is that not commonly understood? Everyone thinks it's just a coincidence instead of the fact that Timothee Chalamet and Luca Guadagnino made a cannibal movie

that just has absolutely nothing to do. I don't know. Okay. Well, I don't know anything either. I should be legally very clear on that. Okay. What's your next prediction? What is my next prediction?

Big Jim, baby! I don't know why I'm doing this. I guess because I picked it in the auction, and so now I got to go in on this. I have to be honest, Avatar is not one of my 300 favorite movies. I'm not sure if it is for me either, but I do like it. But it's fun. James Cameron is a presence. I think it would be very fun to have this in the mix in terms of movies people have seen and bringing the oscars a little bit back to

the mainstream not because they need to be for some sort of save the ceremony thing but just because i like talking about stuff with other people and it seems like this might be something that other people actually see so Avatar 2 best picture yes I don't know about director though it is James Cameron and if you ever underestimate James Cameron then you're wrong you're just wrong you're always wrong so James Cameron will be on the award circuit. So, and at the Oscars. Big Jim on Variety's Best Director

Predictions, which was published in July, so a lot has transpired since then. But what number do you think he's listed at

in the Best Director Predictions? This is cheating a little bit because I did scroll through these, but I don't have a photographic memory. I'm going to say he was seven he's at 27 what wow those people are asleep at the wheel

i'm now going to do something that i love to do on this podcast which is read every single name that appears before oh my god that's 20 okay 26 names here we go number one steven spielberg alejandro gonzalez inaritu todd, Sarah Polly, Ruben Ostlund, Florian Zeller, Sam Mendes, Daniel Quan and Daniel Scheinert, Park Chan-wook, Chinonye Chukwu, Noah Bombach, Martin McDonough, Baz Lerman, Joseph Kozinski, Damian Chazelle, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Oliver Hermanis, Maria Schrader, Ryan Kugler, Olivia Wilde, Darren Aronofsky, Eigotts Bratton, Scott Cooper, Ryan Johnson, David O. Russell, Sebastian Lelio, and then James Cameron.

I mean, this just hasn't been updated. No, there are many here that are clearly not going to be making the cut. Okay. But 27. Well, I think that their algorithm is not reflecting the current moment. It just hasn't been updated. And that's fine. What we need right now is an ecological fable.

Okay. We don't. I got to be honest. I watched part of the original Avatar recently. Yeah, it fucking rips. No, it doesn't. Are you kidding me? I was like, this?

This is the biggest movie of all time? What are we doing? You need to give yourself over to the power of cinema. I did. I enjoyed Avatar when I went to see it in theaters in 2009. Yeah. I went three times by myself. Okay.

Well, we can impact that at a later date. I feel good about it. I love Big Jim. I like that prediction. My final, is this my final prediction? Yeah. So let me just like riff on the international feature Oscar a little bit. You can't read every single one.

I won't read every single thing. And I say that with major support of world cinema, and I'm excited to learn about it. But you just wrote two pages of lists of film names. And you just read a list of directors' names. So we got to be aware of our brands. Just like respect my passion for reading lists that's what i like to do it is nice to be back in the spreadsheet life with you i i i thought about taking this out and putting in a separate document but i just wanted it all here in front of me while

we spoke so the one of the last films that i saw at the festival was um lucas don'ts close he's a belgian filmmaker his first film was called Girl. It came out in 2018. It was submitted for Best International Feature, but didn't even get shortlisted. It's probably the most emotionally received movie that I was a part of the screen. I went to a 9 a.m. screening of the movie, and there was so much nose-blowing and open crying at the end of the movie.

It's a very powerful movie about a young boy going to middle school in, in Belgium. And the, the lead actor is extraordinary. It's great performances, very intimate movie, very powerful movie. I feel like this is the front runner now for,

for best international feature, which is kind of a ridiculous thing to say about a small drama like this. But I think when people start to see, and it's an A24 movie. Yeah. And I think if they put their weight behind it, they might be able to pull this off. It's a really interesting year though

for International Feature because I think Decision to Leave, the Park Chan-wook film, which I've still not seen, many believe is the front runner. He's not won in that category before. There's a couple of other wrinkles that i think would be fascinating a few of these films like holy spider which is out of denmark

and um godland which is out of iceland and one other one and and broker which is out of japan but is set in korea um are all going to be contenders there've been a few other films a lot of these films where it can probably the best movie that i've seen in the last month is rmn which is christian munju's new film that's the four days three months filmmaker the romanian abortion drama um but there's a chance in the mold of top gun maverick to do something really cool this year which is for the academy to nominate RRR, the Indian sensation. Now, they very rarely nominate movies like this, genre epics in international feature. A lot of the time what you see are very serious, stately films that represent a tale about the nation that, you know, you have to see because it is your, it is a necessity as a human rights activist. And in some ways, RRR is that. It's a tale about revolution.

It's a tale about these historic figures in Indian history. But it's also kind of like a Michael Bay movie. It's a big movie of explosions and leaping tigers and craziness all over the place. And so that got me thinking about, one, I think the Oscars should continue to celebrate mainstream-style filmmaking and film going with not necessarily worrying about like should 30 million people tune in just like

Top Gun Maverick is good like there's no doubt about it it has a lot of craft and artfulness and even though it's a sequel to a movie about guys who fly planes like it's a great film and RRR is the same way and India is like hugely underrepresented in the history of the Academy Awards there's never been an Indian filmmaker that's won Best Director. There's never been an Indian film that's won Best International Feature. And going back to when it was Best Foreign Language Feature, there's only been a couple that have been nominated for Best Foreign Language Feature. India has one of the richest film histories of any nation.

Bollywood is a massive part of the global film culture. RRR is actually a Tollywood film. It's not a Bollywood film. But there's so much to represent there. Sadejit Ray is probably like the best known and best celebrated. He was given an

honorary Academy Award 30 years ago. But most of the time when India is recognized at the Academy Awards, it's for films that American or English filmmakers make in India,

like Slumdog Millionaire. And, you know, there's like, I guess there's one notable exception, which is Ishmael Merchant, who was James Ivory's partner, both professionally and personally.

And they made a lot of films together, but those were all English language films. They're often set in England. They're often period pieces. They weren't about India. RRR is about India. And so seeing close, seeing that Tori and Loki did the Dardens,

also Belgian filmmakers had their film at Telluride, getting excited about what looks like a very good year for international cinema um i still think that they should nominate the crazy leaping tiger movie yeah so it just would be a lot of fun it'd be a lot of fun for people to discover this movie which is on netflix right now you can watch it can i say one sincere thing yeah we bitch and moan a lot about how streaming has ruined movies but all of these movies are a lot more available because like rr is on netflix and this it does feel that streaming accessibility has made the international feature and world cinema just a lot more central to these discussions and that's really cool i completely agree and i hopefully all of these movies will

be available for people to watch widely. I think too often a lot of films that qualify for this award, like don't even get released until after the Academy Awards and are only seen on like one or two screens. I feel like they should go in the other direction. I mean, I, you know, I think Close could do pretty good business. I think with word of mouth, like it's a very touching movie and very, very well made. You know, Bardo will be competing for this award too it's a mexican production yeah so and nina ritu kind of all criticisms aside is beloved and has huge success with the academy so you could see that being a pretty strong contender but should be an interesting slate

this year and there's still a few films that have yet to come out that are that are going to be in the mix as well um you got one last prediction yeah that was the highbrow last prediction this is the it's not about cinema. It's about the show itself. Chris Rock is going to be there. I know he says he's not. I know he says he turned down the hosting gig. I know he's on a tour. He's in Europe right now and he's been talking a lot about it, working out his material. He's, he'll be back in, in some capacity. And I think it will be just an incredibly uncomfortable six minutes. Not because of, because Chris Rock will just go for it. So did you see his comments

about the Will Smith apology video? No. He said something to the effect of miss me with your hostage video. Yeah. Okay. I did see that. Yeah.

It's, the more that Will Smith gets back to, you know, zany Instagram guy trying to pretend it never happened, which frankly I prefer to, my central trauma is letting people down or whatever the hell that video is about. Um, I, I, anyway, I love the prediction. I don't know if it'll come true, but I love it. I don't think he'll host because that just is a lot of work that he doesn't want to do. But come on. It's an opportunity to further burnish his,

to not his role in all of that, but to take advantage of it. I think it'd be good for the ratings, but not good for the show. Yeah, I agree with that. You know what I mean? But what are you going to do? Academy Awards, huh?

Yeah. Six months from now. Is that real? Is that what it is? It's really six months. That's what it is. I may have overestimated the public's interest in this

doing an episode in September. We're going to do it less. We're going to do it less. Okay. Any closing thoughts? It's lovely to see you. Good to be back. We have a very

momentous next episode that we're taping very soon. Oh, yeah. So on Friday, we'll be publishing our 500th episode of this show. Yeah. taping very soon. So on Friday, we'll be publishing our 500th episode of this show, which is very exciting. We've asked listeners of the show to call in, leave a voicemail, send us a message, a question. Are you afraid of this convention for this episode?

No, I think it'll be nice. It might be a little intimate for my tastes always, but I'm working on that. I'm trying to open my heart up more. Bobby revealed to us that we have already over 100 voicemails, which is terrifying. And we'll welcome some more because Bobby has to listen to all of them. And we want him to have a very busy Tuesday night. So good to see you, Amanda. It's great to see you.

Welcome back to work. Thanks. Welcome back to the Oscars. Thank you. Thanks to Bobby Wagner, our producer on this show, for his work, which is amazing as always. And yeah, we'll see you. Welcome back to work. Thanks. Welcome back to the Oscars. Thank you. Thanks to Bobby Wagner, our producer on this show, for his work, which is amazing as always. And yeah, we'll see you at 500.