The Big Picture - Spider-Man: No Way Home’ for Best Picture—Why the Hell Not?

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

Sean and Amanda look at a debate that has been roiling the movie industry for nearly 15 years: Should the Academy Awards more accurately reflect the interests of moviegoers? And if so, should franchise films be regularly competing for Best Picture? The campaign for the new ‘Spider-Man’ movie raises new questions as the theatrical movie business endures a historic period of transition (1:00). Then, they discuss Maggie Gyllenhaal’s feature directorial debut, ‘The Lost Daughter,’ now available on Netflix (42:00) and power-rank the Best Picture contenders (59:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's Peter Rosenberg from Cheap Heat. Join me and the fearless, physically large stat guy, Greg, and of course, super agent 35 Under 35 Dipperstein as we tackle the biggest stories in pro wrestling each and every week. To hear us, follow The Ringer Wrestling Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay mage and enjoy yourself. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins.

And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the Oscars and superheroes. On today's episode, we're looking at a debate that has been roiling in the movie industry for nearly 15 years. Should the Academy Awards more accurately reflect the interests of moviegoers? And if so, should franchise films be regularly competing for Best Picture? We are talking about this because on the eve of Christmas this year, Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter issued a piece that featured the voices of a few producers and one of the stars of the biggest movie of 2021 by far. And that movie, of course, is Spider-Man No Way Home. And in that story,

those producers and that star lobbied, campaigned for Best Picture at the Oscars. I am not surprised that this happened, but I think that it raises an interesting conversation. I'd like to try to have a rational and reasonable conversation with you about this, Amanda. Okay. When you saw this, Amanda. Okay. When you saw this story, what'd you think? You know, good for everyone doing their job. You know, even on Christmas Eve, the content mill doesn't stop

and we gotta have something to print in the trades and Sony's gotta take their victory lap and Tom Holland's gotta take their victory lap and someone was gonna start having this conversation. So why not own it, you know, in the grand tradition of campaigning for movies? This is going to be an interesting conversation because I feel perfectly like rational and calm about it. And you are having your own meltdown within the confines of this outline.

So it's going to be a challenge. Can you stay calm? Can you, you know, bring together all of your interests and feelings? And also, I have a couple needles that I will poke at you. And can you handle that? Well, we're about to find out. Let's go to the big picture's big picture. This is a problem in the big picture. Do you know what I mean? Okay. So I think the thing about this is the desire to be nominated for Best Picture is completely reasonable. And we have seen Kevin Feige in particular, who is the president of

Marvel Studios, lobby for his films in the past. We saw Endgame a couple of years ago, essentially put up as a potential contender. Obviously, Black Panther was nominated for Best Picture. Spider-Man No Way Home is a slightly different example. And what makes it different is sort of what makes it fascinating. I don't think at the end of this conversation, I'm going to say to you, it should be or it shouldn't be. Because I don't think that that's ultimately how the Oscars works. I think we can have our opinions about what the best movies of the year are. And we can say, I would love it if this movie was recognized. But it arrives at a time when the conversation and the energy around the

Academy Awards has never been more fraught or more dire. And obviously the energy around the Academy Awards, the Academy Awards have never been more fraught or more dire movie movies. I mean, movies actually have historically had periods of real distress and they come through and that's, you know why we all believe in the movies. And that's why we all went back to the theaters to see Spider-Man No Way Home, like good citizens. But yeah, this

is a really bad stretch. This is a bad stretch for the industry. This is a terrible stretch for the Oscars themselves. So it's not just people being, you and me being distressed. I mean, I guess it is because no one else cares, but those of us who still pay attention to the Oscars. But it is a period of real flux and something's got to be done. So part of the issue is that the ratings have been plummeting for the show over the last few years

as they have been plummeting for virtually all live television, save the NFL. They've also been, I think, increasingly out of step with the interests of moviegoers. And whether or not that matters is kind of the thing that is scratching at me here that I want to kind of spend the most time discussing. Because I think that there's the most room for kind of philosophical examination around whether or not the Oscars should be that, have any real necessity to be that, or if they should just continue to exist in their own

little bubble of taste and interest defined by the 10,000 members. So let me just talk about a couple of the things that appeared in Feinberg's piece. One, I thought the biggest error of the piece, though inevitable, was Tom Holland speaking directly to Martin Scorsese. I presume he was answering a question that Feinberg asked him, but Holland said, you can ask Martin Scorsese, would you want to make a Marvel movie? But he doesn't know what it's like because he's never made one. Tom Holland then went on to talk about how he has made Oscar-worthy films, and so he knows. I think he's referring to The Impossible, the film he made when he was a teenager, which is a perfectly fine movie, but I'm not sure that that film is Raging Bull. And I wish that that wasn't in this story because I think that that kind of loaded it up and relaunched probably the dumbest fight

in movie discourse over the last 10 years, which is Martin Scorsese versus the superhero movies. And I would like to call for a ban on this chat going forward. Will you support me in that ban? I do support you. I don't support banning Martin Scorsese from saying Martin Scorsese from saying martin

scorsese can say whatever he wants to say and and basically he was right and and i agree with him so i was also right which is convenient um this was not the best part of tom holland's interview with the hollywood reporter let's just put it that way and my guys it's been a long promotion cycle for this guy he's clearly been feeling it. He's really been giving his best to everyone. I understand that the wheels come off a little bit, like two days before Christmas, but not his high point. So let's just set that aside now.

No more Scorsese, no more discourse about whether superhero movies are real movies or not. They are movies. Let's just settle and accept that no matter what Martin thinks. And frankly, Tom Holland's suspicion that he can make films that are as meaningful as Martin Scorsese is completely irrelevant to this conversation. I thought this quote from Kevin Feige was the heart of the story. This is what he says. Making a commercial film that can say something and mean something to a lot of different types of people around the globe is extremely difficult to do and I think is dismissed often as easy.

Quote, well, you have a superhero in it and that's a cheat code to success. It's not. Putting on a costume is not the secret. The secret is having artists and storytellers and craftsmen that can bring an audience on a journey. And when critics recognize that and audiences recognize that, it feels like it's worthy then to talk about the Academy recognizing it. And it and that i think is what we'll continue to talk about over the next few weeks do you agree with that sure i i do generally i think that where kevin feige and i disagree and where you and i disagree and possibly where some academy voters disagree, though I could be wrong, is how we define storytelling and crafts and a journey. And what is actually not even good because that's a fool's errand and frankly pretentious and annoying.

But what people respond to, what works for people. But generally speaking, that if you make good entertainment, number one, it's good and entertainment's not a pejorative. And also that it should be recognized. You and I have been arguing that for like the existence of this podcast. And even before that, let's talk about what the Academy's reception to this concepts should be. Because obviously the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,

not a homogenous body, 10,000 individual humans, thousands of which have only recently joined this group. And so our understanding of who these people are is kind of changing every year, every time we see new awards. They're coming out of a year in which there were fewer films that were eligible.

Many films were held back. And so theoretically, we have this bounty in 2021 of films to look at. But when you look at that slate, and we'll talk about that slate a lot more later in the episode, not a ton of commercially viable pictures, not a ton of movies that a lot of people have seen. And so there's been a bit of anxiety, and I think there will be a lot more anxiety in the coming months about whether or not there need to be more movies that people really like in the mix. In the past, they have pretended as though

superhero movies are operating in a different orbit but also obliquely responding to them. I feel like the most important thing that happened to the Academy Awards in the last 15 years is the post-Dark Knight Oscars in which that movie was not nominated for Best Picture, though Heath Ledger was nominated and won for Best Supporting Actor. And after that, and after the, I guess, relative outcry slash concern about ratings, they expanded the pool

to 10 Best Picture nominees. And then over time, that kind of changed a little bit where it became a kind of expandable and retractable number based on the passion for the films and the voting. And then this year, they're returning to 10 films. Now, the intention there was to broaden the number of films that could be recognized. Certainly smaller films and smaller films have been recognized more than ever in the last 10 years at the Academy Awards, but also bigger films. And in some cases, bigger films have been nominated. Films like Black Panther, films like Get Out, genre movies like Parasite. So stuff like that is starting to get in the mix.

Last year did not feature that. It doesn't really feel like with the exception of Dune, this year is going to feature that. And so I guess ultimately, in your opinion, does the Academy Awards and the Academy itself have any responsibility to reflecting not just their own taste personally, but the taste of moviegoers and the movie industry at large? Because that's, I think, what is basically going to be on the ballot is,

do we have to step up for theatrical moviegoing and recognize this movie and this business? Those are two different questions. Reflecting the taste of the people at large and repping for movies that are successful in theaters are completely different at this point. And this is like the thing that drove me insane all last year and is a huge problem for the industry. And it's also like we're in a transitional period, right? But people aren't going to theaters. And so the interest of what movies mean to most people, even, by the way, people who are going to tune in on a television to watch an awards show about movies, is very different from what they are willing to go see in theaters at this point. So is it the Academy's job to prop up the theater industry? I don't think so. And I think that that would be like just bad strategy, you know, like guys just count five years down the road and things are going to look very different. And the Academy has sort of been trying to adapt to it in a COVID sense and films that are, you know, streamed only in the last few years have been eligible. They keep saying that that's like provisional.

I wonder if that will be made permanent at some point just because of the reality of the way that people are seeing movies. So I do not think that the Academy should try to save the theater industry, though I love the theater industry. I think the Academy needs to recognize not just how movie watching habits are changing, but also movie tastes as well. And you know, this becomes really complicated because like what kind of movies do really well in a theater versus what does really well at home and like different audiences or different places and who's seeking them out do i think that they should try to speak to movies that people had not just have seen but like are responding to like yes a bit more because that is part of a successful movie experience and you know that has always been the case it's not like campaigning and trying to like you know juice an award season

and make your movie really popular like has just been invented with tom holland in the hollywood reporter in december 23rd there's this long tradition of this so i think they gotta start thinking differently but you the theater of it all is just a different conversation. It just is. So there's a few ways to address that. One, there's a friction because most of the filmmakers who are likely to be recognized by the Academy want people to see their movies in movie theaters. It's just that for the most part, they're not seeing them in movie theaters. And so invariably, the business does affect that. And maybe 10 years from now, that won't be the case if the business evolves in such a way that it's just more common for people to be more like

steven soderbergh now where he's just like every movie i make just goes to hbo max that's it that's life but if you listen to denis villeneuve or you listen to christopher nolan or you listen to quentin tarantino or jane campion they want people to see their films in movie theaters yeah i know and i want a pony like and like and months of vacation. And by the way, I admire all of those people and I prefer seeing things in movie theaters. But it's, I mean, look around. Where are we? And the more that we insist that all of these movies are only available in movie theaters, the less people see them, the less available they are. I don't know if you had this experience over Christmas break. Many movies that we were

talking about were finally available at home on streaming. Everyone in my life watched a bunch of movies. You want to know how many don't look up takes I've gotten from people who are not on Twitter? Hallelujah. Thank the Lord. Everyone log off. A lot of people just wanted to argue the last duel with me. I was like, oh, great. Thanks for joining the party. But at some point you do actually, an audience is part of the experience. So I sympathize with them. I would love to have the Hollywood Arclight in my backyard and open again. And for me to be able to go see it all the time.

But I do not. So I don't know. Not everyone gets their pony. Here's a crackpot idea that will never happen. Yeah. Do you think it would be interesting, worthwhile for the Academy or maybe just some other voting body to alter the way that they vote on their awards and to do it more along the lines of the way that the NBA votes for the All-Star Game?

How does the NBA vote for the All-Star Game, Sean? So I want to make sure I get this correct. So for the NBA All-Star Game, the 10 starters, two guards and three front court players per conference, are chosen by a combination of fans, 50% of the vote, current players, 25% of the vote, and basketball media, 25% of the vote. The players and media were granted a vote in 2017. Only fans selected the starting lineup before then. Then the 30 NBA coaches select the 14 reserves.

So you've got this agglomeration of parties who are participating in naming the best in the space. Now, I'm not saying that the breakdown, the percentage breakdown in terms of, you know, the fans would get this and film journalists would get this and actors or directors or below the line folks would get this and film journalists would get this and actors or directors or below the line folks would get this. But even if you heavily weighted it towards the Academy, even if you said 75% of the voting is driven by the Academy, but 25% is driven by this loose collection of journalists and fans or, you know, a quorum of randomly selected people, would that make this a more exciting and worthwhile

endeavor that accomplishes both things, that recognizes great achievement in the world of filmmaking, but also reflects the attitudes of filmgoers and also film journalists, which as we know is different. One of the movies I want to talk to you a little bit about here is Drive My Car, which of course won the New York Film Critics Circle and LA Film Critics Circle Best Picture, which I don't think that has ever happened in the history of those two bodies. And so there's this big conversation about Drive My Car entering the Best Picture frame, which I just don't see happening at all. I think it's completely unlikely that a film that is that quiet and graceful and artistic is going to be recognized by the Academy. But that is a movie that if you integrated maybe the voices of some arts critics

could have a chance or a better chance. And simultaneously, there could also be the chance for a movie like Spider-Man No Way Home to make it in the mix. The Academy would really need to bite down and accept that it doesn't matter like it once did to change something like this, but should they consider it? I think they should consider anything. I do wonder how much it would functionally change things because I understand that in reality, it's only

Academy voters voting for the Academy Awards, but they're voting at the end of the season where critics' bodies and ambiguous groups of journalists whose work is not entirely accessible beyond the awards show that may or may not be broadcast on a television near you, referring both to the Golden Globes and the Critics' Choice Awards in that one, just so you guys know,

do have a major influence. And that taste is slightly different from the critics' taste. We spend a lot of time talking. I don't think you and I have any real influence, unfortunately, though I would love to, but there are plenty of pundits. I mean, anybody with an Oscar ballot and you're just feeling confused. This is probably illegal, but feel free to email me. I'm willing, but there are journalists who have a say. I do think that there is always a public element in the sense that not all Academy voters are doing all of their homework and logging in like the day that everything is available and watching everything and voting. There is sway and different factions and different interests that are all available. So really the only group that isn't represented

is the $100 million worth of people that saw Spider-Man in its first 24 hours of release. I don't say that in a disparaging way. Shout out to those people. So they could consider it. It feels like us. Who cares about a slippery slope when we're talking about award shows? These are all made up.

That's right. They are all made up. But like pretty soon you're the critics, you know, People's Choice Awards. Like, I don't know what to say. And we don't take that seriously. We don't. And I don't know how you maximize or even protect whatever prestige is left with the Oscars, which is really the only thing they have going for it. Is it, though?

Is that something they have going for them? I don't know if they have it anymore. This award show that just gave Green Book Best Picture like two and a half years ago? What are we protecting? I agree with you, except I was thinking about the Emmys a lot because at this point, the Emmys have like an alert, a larger audience base in terms of more people watch TV than go see movies, probably if you add it all up and they have moved from honoring, you know, the kind of broadcast standards of the early two thousands, you know, think about West Wing show. I love.

And then what was the Christine show that Julia Louis-Dreyfus won for for like nine years straight? You know what I'm talking about, though. I do. I was thinking of Frasier. Frasier is like the common, like Kelsey Grammer, David Hyde Pierce

being recognized every single year. I like Frasier. I'm not criticizing Frasier. But Frasier had like, you know, every year won five Emmys. Right. But so I bring up the Julia Louis know, every year won five Emmys. Right. But so I bring up the Julia Louis-Dreyfus show that I don't remember because she won like a passable of Emmys for that. And then she moved to HBO, did Veep, and won another passable of Emmys for that.

And as TV became more prestigey, the Emmys mostly tried to follow it. And it's mostly HBO and premium cable shows and shows that don't have 40 million viewers. I mean, I guess 10 million viewers at this point because it's 2022. And it's not like that brought equal Emmy, you know, prestige, the idea of winning an Emmy in the same way that like the Oscars still do have some sort of like brand awareness or whatever I agree that it's like

slipping away and and maybe you just can't restate it but it's the only thing that they really have left it is and and this year I think will be a well it will seem at first like a relatively prestigious slate and then when you go a little bit further down the list I think that's part of what is kind of gnawing at me in this conversation because like ultimately emotionally I don't really care if Spider-Man No Way Home is nominated for Best Picture

it was not on my top 10 of the year I don't think it's one of the 10 best movies that was made this year I don't think it's one of the 20 best movies that was made this year I do know that I had a lot of fun seeing it in the movie theater don't think it's one of the 10 best movies that was made this year i don't think it's one of the 20 best movies that was made this year i do know that i had a lot of fun seeing in the movie theater i really enjoyed it i will watch it again i think it's like but it's more a question of like when you look at five through ten in the nominees this year and you're like okay so like being there are cardos and don't look up like might be nominated like spider-man away home is legitimately a better movie than those movies and so it it is this kind of game every year where we're sort of balancing our own personal taste with what is good for the Academy Awards with what seems like a subjective but ultimately emotionally objective point of view, which is like you just can't tell me being the Ricardos is better than like a hundred other movies that came out this year.

And so it makes the Academy look ridiculous when it rejects something that so many people love and it turns people away from the show. I genuinely think that that's true. I think in the case of something like The Dark Knight, that actually turned people away from the show. They're like, this is absurd that it's not being recognized. Now, whether those people like, they have what they want. They got their comic book movies. You know, they got the thing that makes them happy. They don't need also the Academy Awards. I'm not saying that they need those things, but everything has a degree of variance. You know, if you said to me, Dune and West Side Story and The Power of the Dog and King Richard, like these movies have to be

recognized. I agree. I thought all those movies were great. And we will continue to celebrate them for the next few months on this show. But because they have expanded and they have made this effort to widen and deepen what is recognized. And we're getting our dander up for Drive My Car being nominated, which I don't think it will be. Then like what ultimately is the point of all this stuff if it's accomplishing neither? If it's basically just recognizing increasing mediocrity with gold-plated names. That's what worries me. Yeah, I agree.

I don't know if I've said this, but like nominate Spider-Man No Way Home. like I'm fine with it I'm not gonna lose like a night's sleep about it I agree do I think it's one of the 10 best movies of the year no I do not did I have a nice time watching it yeah I did I had fun and also let's just let's read some of the 5 through 10 movies from the past 5 years okay here's some movies i won't do last year because that was a weird year and that's yeah that's unfair all right 2019 uh well we all know how i feel 2019 was a pretty good year but we all know how i feel about joker and obviously ford versus ferrari i guess bobby you really like that. So that's okay. That can be for you. 2018. Here we go. Green Book won. We got Bohemian Rhapsody in here. Remember when we thought Bohemian Rhapsody was going to win Best Picture? What a disaster that was. Jesus Christ.

Also Vice, which I liked, but you know that there was some concern about that 2016 okay well okay lion why is lion in there respectfully you know it's a perfect example of the kind of movie that we're talking about it's like it's an okay movie right i mean same with darkest hour darkest hour is okay oh that's right i forgot about darkest hour no shape of water one it's like it's okay it's pretty good and then there are personal favorites of ours but there are other people like Lady Bird is a huge movie for you. I think for many people, they're like Lady Bird was a nice coming of age story. Is that the greatest movie of all time?

No. Is it one of the top 100 movies of all time? Not for most people. And so that is how, I think I'm trying to tap into that mentality. Now I would say 2017, 18, 19 was actually a great time for the Academy. It was a time when I thought there was some balance

between films like Black Panther and Joker and Dunkirk, these big, noisy, auteur-driven, you know, event movies were being recognized, but also movies like, you know, Phantom Thread and Get Out and Call Me By Your Name. And there was this- Marriage Story, Little Women, yeah. Yes, there was this sense of balance coming into place.

Last year, tipped everything on its axis. Last year, the panic meter that was slowly rising on this show over the course of four years hit the red line, hit number 10. It was like, oh, no, they may not be able to get this back. They may not be able to get there. Forget about getting back to 40 million viewers. They may never get back to 15 million viewers. And that obviously is is part of what is animating some of these comments and some of this the the ideas in this piece you know tom

rothman who runs sony kind of like hilariously said i thought we shouldn't recognize this film because it will help the ratings for the academy show i don't care about the ratings what i care about is that this is one of the 10 best movies of the year and like it's his job to say that and i understand why he's saying that but there are a lot of people who believe that and so whether or not the academy has any desire and or necessity to recognize that is the thing that kind of creeps up because you just mentioned joker and black panther being nominated in the past few years those are really the only two examples i think that rose to the fore in the aftermath of the dark knight decision you could make the case that movies like get out and parasite

were very rarely recognized these kinds of genre thriller type movies and it's cool that the pool has been expanded to recognize those are movies like ladybird or call me by your name that maybe might not have made it in the past but primarily black panther rare exception made they ran a very good campaign for that movie it was a monster hit and also there was this understanding that there was huge social imports that movie black filmmaker black story almost entirely black cast incredibly well made satisfying culturally relevant a movie that like people saw and were touched and they saw themselves and they felt moved listen to van lathan talk about seeing black panther tells you everything you need to know about it academy award

winner van lathan. Likewise, Joker is something that I think really flatters sensibilities across the Academy. It's an actor's showcase. And the actor who was the star of that film won Best Actor. And so it's very understandable that a movie like that, which is also kind of borrowing these

visions of kind of gritty New York City from 1970s dramas made by people like Morton Scorsese, it flattered sensibilities that make sense to the Academy. Spider-Man No Way Home doesn't do any of those things. It has some good performances, and it certainly is, it has social importance so far as a lot of people socialized by seeing it. Otherwise, it has been identified as this sort of culmination of 20 years of Spider-Man storytelling.

Now, I'm stoked about 20 years of Spider-Man storytelling. But does the Academy give a shit about that at all as the premise for nominating the film? It is also a coming-of-age story. And you have in your outline that like it, this should have been a vendors end game, which is where I'm just like, you are disqualified from this podcast forever and ever because Avengers end game was the culmination of comic book storytelling and studio machinations and everything of like,

look what a producer can do over time. And look how we can reinvent. I guess the movie business which congratulations you did all of that but was it moving if you weren't invested in all of it did it have the same level of performances or even just something for people to hang on to that black panther or even spider-man no way home does i would argue no i still think you know the simplicity there's a simplicity to all spider-man stories It's a kid who's trying to figure out his life and he's got some extra things that are, that are going on and he's just grappling with it. And he's like making some bad decisions and also swinging

around a lot. And I don't think that you have to be an expert on all the previous Spider-Man films to get the references of the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield appearances and what they're doing. And there is like a gross corporate meta aspect to it, but there also is a sweet story aspect to it that even like a lay viewer can understand. So I do honestly think it's a bit different, which is why I'm more comfortable with it. That point that I was making here was much more about not why it should be nominated, but under the campaign premise. The campaign premise being that it is this culmination, this movie. And that's something that is probably coming from Sony. But to me,

the culmination really was Endgame insofar as it was the ultimate movie going experience of the 2010s for most people. It was the successful movie it was the movie that i mean we've seen to the point of parody the like reaction videos now which are like a huge joke meme on twitter when a character is revealed or something happens or an adventures assemble moment happens but it's not as if that isn't real people in a movie theater having a great time it is that's exactly what it is and that is what the academy really ultimately wants to respect i think your point at the beginning of our conversation is right on, which is like the transitional moment. Theatrical movie going may not be the lifeblood of the Academy Awards going forward. The Emmys have gone to great pains to shift the kinds of work that they recognize. I would argue, though, that like audiences shifted in full with them. Now, like Game of Thrones was born out of the success of The Sopranos and Sex and the City, and it got to a point where Game of Thrones became legitimately the most popular television show in America for a period of time there. We're not at that place of streaming yet,

and we might not be at that place of streaming movies for a while. Most of these studios, these streamer studios, with all due respect to them, don't really know how to make movies like that for streamers. Kim Masters at KCRW and THR for a long time has talked about one of the interesting failures thus far of streaming movies. I always thought this was such a smart point, was they do not yet know how to make something that you could then build a theme park out of. And that most of these corporations, these entertainment media conglomerates are diversified. They're multinational multi-hyphenates. They don't just make a movie and then you sit home and watch the movie. They make merchandising. They make amusement parks. There is not yet a thing in the world

that comes from Apple TV Plus or Netflix or Hulu or what have you that that could be built upon. And until that happens, it still feels like there is a clear divergence between this movie is a movie for streamers and this movie is a movie for theaters. And the chasm

is getting wider and wider. And it's doing something that is kind of corrupting the identity of what a movie is. Like that is really what I feel like the premise of a lot of the conversations we've had over the last few years

are like, really, what is a movie? Like what deserves to be recognized? It's easy sometimes when you see Licorice Pizza and you're like the premise of a lot of the conversations we've had over the last few years are like, really, what is a movie? Like what deserves to be recognized? It's easy sometimes when you see Licorice Pizza and you're like, that's a fucking movie. You know, like that movie just makes me feel good, makes me happy. It doesn't have to be, doesn't have to have a superhero in it. But like it is, it is from a singular voice, but made with a group of people who are collaborating in this exciting way. It makes me laugh.

It makes me cry. It makes me excited to see another movie. But the identity crisis, I think, rears its head most clearly during awards season because it makes people who 10 years ago would have watched the show that told you what the best movie of the year was look at the results of that show now. Not even watch the show. Just look at the results and be like, I don't even know what these movies are. And that's such a dangerous place to be. Now, the canary in the coal mine here could also be Dune. I think, obviously, a lot of people watch that movie, and it does tick a lot of the boxes.

And we've been saying for a few months that it should be recognized. The Spider-Man thing, though, is so interesting because it is such a massive hit. Right before we started recording, I sent you that link to the data point that Spider-Man No Way Home represents 77% of all movie-going revenue over the holiday period

across the country, 77%. This is usually the biggest time of the year for movies, this Christmas window. And Spider-Man No Way Home is basically the only movie that people are seeing. So it's everything is just, I think the reason I find this such an interesting conversation,

even though I understand why all the people behind the story were pushing the concept, is because it feels like they have a better point than they did two years ago or five years ago or eight years ago. And so I'm fascinated to see how it plays out, whether people will continue to kind of scoff at the idea of recognizing the multiverse movie, or whether people will be like, this might be actually good for our business to just say, hey, why not? Number nine, Spider-Man No Way Home. I think you have to do the latter if you want any chance of survival. I mean, this is the, as you said, and as I also said, sorry to repeat myself, it's just a transition moment.

Like, I don't think that you can make any long-term judgments based on what's happening this year. Just as like last year, sure, it felt really desperate and ratings were down, but also there was a pandemic and no movies were released. You know, it was such an extraordinary year, not just in the world, but in the industry. This year is the same. I mean, we got more movies in theaters, but, you know, different variants,

things, rules changing all of the time. No one went to see any movies in theaters besides spider-man no way home i i don't think that this will look the same in five years now i think we both agree that the types of movies that people will still go out to see will probably look the same but you know like box office shares how much money does someone crack the streaming thing you know by the way i don't think it's an amusement park that you're building off a streamer it's a video game they just gotta like they gotta turn that around and netflix is trying to do that apparently that is the big focus of exactly 2022 is trying to create metaverses and game experiences around these things.

And that's a great point. So at some point, things are a bit more settled than they are right now. And I mean, do we like the way they're going to settle? I have no idea. But in the interim, it seems like maybe you should work with what you've got. I don't mind being strategic if you're the Academy or anybody else, really. Another question for you. Was the popular Oscar actually a good idea? No. I still think that the Academy's got to figure out a way to recognize movies that people actually see. Just like the movie industry

has got to find a way to let people actually watch their movies besides Spider-Man No Way Home. Like that statistic that you shared is an amazing testament to Spider-Man and all the work that they've done over 20 years. And then everybody else just screwed up. Yes, there was a pandemic. Yes, there was extenuating circumstances. But let people see your movies. Find your audience. So I think the Academy needs to find its audience.

I think movies do too. Do you think this is going to work? I think. talk about tom holland hosting the oscars sure just incredible incredible interview performance by him he's asked during the interview would you like to host the oscars and he's clearly overwhelmed and lists the 15 things that he can't do that he has to do and why he couldn't host the oscars and then he calls back two minutes later surely at the behest of someone who was listening in on the conversation. And it's like, that was so crazy. I just went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror and thought, who says they don't

want to host the Oscars? I'd love to host the Oscars. Let me host the Oscars. Congratulations to that publicist. You did earn your keep that day. And also let Tom Holland host the Oscars. Sure to that publicist. You did earn your keep that day. And also, let Tom Holland host the Oscars. Sure. Why not? I believe it was the New York Times' Brooke Barnes who suggested on Twitter a few weeks ago that if the Oscars were smart, they would throw a Brinks truck at Tom Holland and Zendaya to host the show, that that was the move to entice young

people to care about the Academy Awards and so i presume that that was what informed scott's idea to ask him about that and um i i don't think that tom holland and zendaya hosting the oscars like radically improves the ratings for the oscars but it does recognize that they need to do something that changes things up significantly and they should probably put somebody in the center of the frame who really does represent what movies are. And right now, at least in part, Spider-Man is movies. And certainly someone like Zendaya is also movies.

She was also a part of Dune. So that's even more so the case. And the idea that somebody like her actually, who was in a Netflix movie in 2021, who was about to be on a streaming, an acclaimed streaming show in 2022, and who is in the two biggest franchises right now going for two major old school studios in Warner Brothers and Sony, that's pretty representative of where things are and where they're going. And so in that

respect, I think it would be clever. I also just think, obviously, they're both uber talented in a number of different ways. Tom Holland has a little bit of a Hugh Jackman, like, am I a song and dance man? I kind of could be like the MC of your party in addition to being your Spider-Man thing going on. So, and Zendaya has been a star since she was like 10 years old. You know, it's like in her bones to know how to be a performer.

I guess there is a little bit of concern that you could get into James Franco and Hathaway territory here, where if this goes badly, your reputation is greatly damaged. If I had to wagerager on it I would wager that they will not be hosting the Academy Awards but it's fun to talk about I think that we can't hold the James Franco and Hathaway thing against everyone for the we can hold it against James Franco that's we can hold it against James Franco and even a little bit and Hathaway. But if we don't let anyone under 50 host the Oscars ever again because that one year didn't work out, we're in trouble.

Who's your leader in the clubhouse for hosting the Oscars right now? If it's not Zendaya and Tom Holland, I think you're probably right that why would they risk it at this point? Even though Tom Holland, he's just a salesman. He called back. Iand he's just a salesman you know he he called back i think he's he's willing he likes being in front of people and they both are very charming on their press tour it's it's really hard to do that and be at ease in the way that they were i still think the rock even though you know we sort of he's not the antichrist because that's Ryan Reynolds, but he was in Red Notice, so that's tough. Yeah.

The Rock, too, I feel like it's too risky at this point for him. And also, I'm not sure that he confers the same message about movies. Not that that matters. Not that Steve Martin or Whoopi Goldberg or Billy Crystal always conferred the same message about movies. But I guess I'm just looking for someone slight. On the other hand, maybe it's just better if it's someone who's more like a variety entertainer. I was thinking about how if this is going to be a PTA year and it seems like it's going

to be, it seems like he's going to get a lot of recognition. Maya Rudolph is like the kind of person like Maya Rudolph and Martin Short had a really funny variety show for like one year, eight years ago. Maybe they should be trying to enlist a pairing like that. Yes, but Maya Rudolph is the highlight of every single Oscars at this point. And it's also the three minutes where you and I are cackling and

everyone else is like, what's going on? Because I don't understand that. I mean, truly my hero. Always wearing like incredible Valentino. There's no one better in the world. But you need someone. You got to open it up a little. I know for a fact that you haven't watched this, but I'm going to ask you for podcasting purposes.

Have you checked out the MacGruber show on Peacock? I've heard from people who would think that it is good, that it is good. No, it is so good. I am loving it. But once again, I'm on theisten wigg island where i'm like this person is still fucking genius there's she has a scene in the first episode of the show i'm like this is the funniest person who is living in the world right now and uh maybe just for my personal oscars kristen wigg can host i mean christina that's the other thing too is like they missed

their boat on like kristen wigg and will ferrell or like one of those kinds of things they like miss the boat but also those five minutes are always the most puzzling five minutes it's and it's great to have five minutes of people like pushing the boundaries or whatever but you're a mister the oscars need a host in five clips and like let's explain everything to the audience all the time because they don't understand. And this is a broad advertisement. Kristen Wiig is very talented, but it's not really you're like, here's why cinema is important. Well,

if they nominate Dune and Spider-Man No Way Home and Venom, Let There Be Carnage, I don't think we need clips because everybody's actually seen those movies. So that's, that's really the issue at hand. Anyway, it's an interesting topic. I'm fascinated to see how it shakes out.

I think I am I continue to be a firm believer in the fact that there is correlation between the success of the films that are nominated and the viewership it is not what it was 20 years ago when if you had huge movies or even 12 years ago like Avatar

being nominated meant a significant bump in the ratings but I still think it matters you know 2019 what did the 2020 like Avatar being nominated meant a significant bump in the ratings, but I still think it matters. You know, 2019, what did the, the, the 2020, 2019 Oscars did fairly well because there were a lot of people watching for, you know,

movies like once upon a time in Hollywood, 1917 year before that, obviously black Panther and get out. There has to be like a rooting interest at home. And I don't think that the Academy should contort itself to recognize fast nine, but when an opportunity presents itself, especially one that has like Andrew Garfield giving an authentically great

performance, you know, like that has Marissa Tomei and Willem Dafoe and Alfred Molina and this sort of like the, the veneer of credibility. I don't think it would be such a bad thing. I'm curious to see how it goes. Heart of credibility. I don't think it would be such a bad thing. I'm curious to see how it goes. Heart of hearts. I don't think it's going to happen. Just going to put that out there. Okay. I think probably not because when you think about the

average Academy voter, you know, they've added thousands of viewers of voters. They've done their best. It's still like someone who rolls up to a SAG screening 15 minutes early and complains about their seat bitterly until like a poor publicist has to find them, you know, a different space with aisle access. And they're just like outraged. So that person's just going to vote for being the Ricardos. You know, that's why we got to shake those people. I agree. Shake them up. 25% fan vote.

25% journalist vote. Let's go shake it up. All right, let's go to Big Race. Well, mama, look at me now. I'm a star. Okay, did you watch The Lost Daughter over the break? I did. How'd you feel about it?

It was great. It's fantastic. It's as good as everyone says. Just genuinely that this is maggie jillian hall's directorial debut and also that she adapted it from an elena ferrante short novel that i haven't read but i have read some ferrante and it doesn't like scream out here's here's a screenplay for you so it's like an incredible achievement. I thought so too. It's a really incredibly well-crafted and keenly observed movie.

So I've not read any Elena Ferrante. I was going to ask you that as a point of, like an entry point of conversation here about this movie. Like, can you kind of describe her fiction, you know, in a snapshot and maybe describe like how something like this could come to be? Like, what is it that Maggie Gyllenhaal

is kind of visualizing that wouldn't be on the page sure so i have read my brilliant friend just just the first book in the series and that that that series is kind of what made her a breakthrough success and i've also read days of abandonment and the novels are all very closely um i think they're all if they're not first person, sorry, I should have gotten out my front. I don't think that it's unpacked, but they are subjective. They are from the perspective of one woman and they're, you're very much in the woman's head and from her perspective. And it is an often jarring and I don't want to say difficult because we're not going to use the unlikable word, but she's interested in female characters who do not do what is expected either in the world or in fiction or just in our concept of what a woman means, whether it's a friend or a mother or someone in a marriage.

And they are characters who are both very in touch with their difficult feelings or their unexpected feelings and can really state things very clearly, but also not at all in touch with their emotions. And so there's this kind of, they're unsettling characters and there's wacky things are happening and you kind of can't believe that the person is going there and it's bracing. And many people would say honest in a lot of ways, but also often provocative, I would say.

It just, your shoulders are up a little. Yeah, so let's talk about that in the context of this movie, because this movie is very much about those feelings and rendering those feelings on screen. In the movie, Olivia Colman, who is widely tapped as a best actress contender once again, stars as a woman named Leda. She's an academic and a professor,

and she's on a kind of like solo working vacation in this remote seaside town in greece and her vacation is interrupted by a very large family from new york they appear to be a greek family and they have a series of confrontations on the beach and we see this sort of thorniness from coleman's character and frankly a thorniness from all of the characters as they butt heads early on in their vacation going. And at a certain point early in the film, the young girl, one of the daughters,

the daughter of Dakota Johnson's character, goes missing. And it's Olivia Colman who turns out to find her. And then after she finds her, the movie kind of unravels into this odd psychological thriller, I would say. That's kind of the framework. And Maggie Gyllenhaal has talked a little bit about how that's not really necessarily the tone and tempo of the novel,

but she brought a little bit more of a thriller mentality to it. But in revealing this story about mothers and motherhood, she's basically doing this psychological portrait of a person looking back through the periods of her life and her life as a mother. And I thought Maggie Gyllenhaal said something very interesting in the New York Times about this movie. And I'm not a mother and I will never be a mother, but I am a new parent and I have access to a new mother. And so this movie, I think, certainly affected me. And I saw it in a way that I would not have been able to see it one year ago. But she said, she was asked, the film shows the joy of being a mother, but also the frustrations. Why do you think it's so rare to see that tension on screen? And Gyllenhaal said,

I think it's a combination of two things. Partly there hasn't been a lot of space for women to express themselves. So an honest feminine expression is unusual, which is of course true. But then she also says, but there's also a kind of cultural agreement not to talk about these things because we all have mothers. We're all like, I don't want my mother to have been ambivalent. And the film is, I don't know if fearless is the right word, but it is uncompromising in showing that sometimes a mother will say like, this sucks and I hate it. Or I'm not necessarily made to be the kind of mother

that you would see in a Donna Reed TV show. That not everything is seamless. Not everything is emotionally cogent. I don't have all the answers. In fact, sometimes I hate this experience and very few movies are able to get a story across like that without falling into that, like unlikable or likable or difficult woman or all of the kind of like

coded language that we sometimes bring to these stories. And this one, I thought very kind of like gracefully, almost alluringly portrayed a lot of these people and certainly you'll watch olivia coleman's character do things in this movie and be bewildered by them or be frustrated by them in the way that you sometimes are by movies when characters don't do exactly what you want them to do which is quote unquote the right thing but i thought this was such an impressive like collision of performance and

point of view from the filmmaker where like all of the actors were the right people to render these feelings and her very specific sense of how to tell this story guided it into something beyond a kind of like i haven't read the fiction but sometimes fiction can seem um dreamlike and illusory and she made it she makes this movie feel very real. Well, it's grounded in three to four characters, which is the other, and three to four female characters,

which was sort of the exhilarating thing to me. And I did not watch this as much as a mother, but as a woman and a little bit of daughter, which was really interesting, a daughter of a mother. But that you don't see the way that these women are all interacting with each other and judging each other and working with their own expectations and experiences and using them against the other characters.

And it is a very rich, complicated web of like female interaction that can frankly be a total nightmare to navigate in real life all the time, but it's like very palpable and real. And it doesn't get lost in the one person or one person's histrionics. It's like really balanced, which is, I think, a testament both to Maggie Gyllenhaal and all the actors, but specifically Olivia Colman. Can you imagine how wrong this could have gone if you didn't have someone like Olivia Colman in this movie making all of these? the choices or she communicates and the movie communicates i think very beautifully over time and even over like two timelines which can be hard to do how she gets to this place while also

making this character so weird and frustrating um and maybe not frustrating but you are yelling at the screen like don't do that please don't do that please do something else while empathizing with her or being fascinated by her. And someone who's playing those high notes for those high notes, instead of just living in the character would be a disaster, just like a complete disaster and throw off the balance of the movie. I completely agree. There's a kind of what's really going on here, quality to the movie,

because it is not over explained and the performances are not overcooked. Like you could see a version of this movie with Meryl Streep. I'll do respect to Meryl Streep, but Meryl Streep likes to garnish her performances with a lot of enunciation, I would say. And this is much more kind of internalized and psychological. And even, you know,

I think I shouted out Jesse Buckley who plays a younger version of Olivia Coleman lastman last week on the show and i also shouted out dagmara domicic but um dakota johnson who's an actress who doesn't always totally work for me i thought had a very fascinating gravitational pull in this movie where i also was constantly trying to figure out her character's psychology and what she was thinking and, you know, her sense of desire colliding with her sense of motherhood and trying to determine, like, what her life is now that she is a mom but is still also this kind of, like, ravishing young woman. And it's a very unusual movie that does not attempt to simplify any of its psychology or any of its emotionality. It is deeply complex. And I'm still kind of like untangling.

I only watched it one time. I want to watch it again and see if it had the same power on me. I also, I saw this movie in a movie theater and I was like, this is another movie, yet another Netflix movie where I'm like, gosh, I wish people could see this movie in a movie theater because it has such a different effect on you. I watched it at home and it worked and it captured my attention now granted this is set in a beautiful uh greek seaside village with i'm late breaking entrant for apartment of the year or just like home of the year in movies

this apartment that she rents even though the lighthouse is kind of shining through it all the time a lot of rotting fruit in there too. You know, that's the one heavy-handed metaphor for me. The symbolism in this movie is like extremely funny and I'm sure it's from, you know, Ferrante, but Lita being Maggie Gyllenhaal's, Lita being Olivia Colman's character's name, Nina, which I assume is a reference to the Chekhov play, to the seagull.

Yes. Well, Lita and the Swan is literally recited in the film in italian i mean it's right sure callie is calliope which is another you know okay like we got it there's the rotting fruit there's the there's the doll whatever um but it's a beautiful to look at movie but also we mentioned the doll or i mentioned the doll it's like tense there is a propulsive oh my god what's gonna happen is someone gonna find this doll I was very stressed out about everyone walking into the room

with the doll and being like Olivia I need you to hide the doll or just do something with the doll so and I really credit Maggie Gyllenhaal that there is we made it sound like an intense psychological quiet drama which is it is in a lot of ways. And there's not like a huge amount of dialogue, but it is also, it has narrative movement and you want to know what's going on. It has like that very specific, like the hand that rocks the cradle or Pacific Heights,

like that kind of like early nineties thriller energy to it, not in full, but it has remnants of that that I think makes the movie extremely enjoyable to watch in a very unnerving kind of a way. It's a very good movie. It sure seems like Olivia Colman is going to be

nominated for Best Actress. I don't know if she could... Let's talk about Best Actress quickly, okay? Okay. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore

with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. Here's what Variety says Best Actress looks like at the moment. Let me see if I can find this page. So here are the leading contenders. Number one, Kristen Stewart for Spencer.

Okay, whatever. Not your favorite film. Number two, Lady Gaga, House of Gucci. It would be hard for me to be angry at this. Number three, Alana Hines. Also, please just remember

that Olivia Colman finished the very last words of her first Oscar-accepted speech were, Lady Gaga. And then she just ran off the stage. Never forget that. So that would be a good, you know,

handing of the baton. I don't, I didn't remember that, but Bobby, if you can find that audio, I would love to hear it in this episode. Everybody, everybody,

the cast, the crew, Francis, thank you. Oh, thank you so much. Lady Gaga. Number three, Alana Heim for Licorice Pizza.

Number four, Olivia Colman for The Lost Daughter. Number five, Nicole Kidman for Being the Ricardos. On the outside looking in at the moment, according to Variety, is Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Rachel Zegler for West Side Story, who I think is going to get in personally. Frances McDormand for The Tragedy of Macbeth, who has actually gotten not great reviews for this film,

which is a film we'll talk about in a couple of weeks when it hits Apple TV+. Number nine, Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mother, somebody I'm really pulling for. I love that performance. And number 10, Amelia Jones, who is the star of Coda. Do you think it'll be the five that they're suggesting here? How do you think it'll shake out? It sure sounds plausible. I mean, they just can't resist Nicole Kidman

in a wig doing something. And I liked her more than most people in that movie, even though it would be fun to make room for Rachel Zegler. And I agree that Rachel Zegler is such an appealing, but I don't know whose place she takes. Olivia Colman is an absolute laugh. I agree. I think Alana Haim and Rachel Zegler

are probably fighting for the same spot. That would be my guess. Two ingenues. The idea of Kristen Stewart winning this is, I think it's a very good performance. We talked about it on the show. It feels, it's a little bit of the Renee Zellweger,

Judy energy here to me, where I'm like, this is just a real person and that's why you're being rewarded. And certainly it's a different kind of performance than the one that she usually gives. It's a little bit bigger. It's a little bit less internal but i don't know that just

there's some fait accompli in the acting categories happening yet again here with will smith and king richard which i'm excited about but there seems to be not a ton of drama in that respect so i don't know if you want to make some money i don't know anything about gambling i just i always think olivia coleman is a smart bet. People cannot resist her. And I do feel like as this movie actually made it to Netflix and people are just like, wow, this is incredible. And she's so good. People really like voting for Olivia Colman.

I'm just going to put that out there. Can I point out one other thing about The Lost Daughter? Sure. In the credits of the film, one of the great flexes is in the special thanks section uh maggie jillian hall has a standalone line that says special thanks to my husband peter sarsgaard and i really enjoyed her framing her husband as the sexiest man alive in this movie which whether he is or he isn't it's kind of immaterial because she's working

very hard to be like this is the most intoxicating man who has ever lived. Sure. And I thought that was sweet. But also like a vehicle for maybe not disaster, but bad choices. Destruction, yes. And maybe not even bad choices,

but an upending of expectations. But a manifestation of female desire. You know, like that is such a, that was a very interesting decision. It was very moving, yeah. Okay. Well, let's do the quick uh best predict best picture power rankings game okay okay so i i really drove it last time and

i want you to drive it this time so i want you to to go 10 to 1 tell me what where you think things sit because you know i i am so excited to not talk to you about the don't look up you know film twitter discourse that happened over the break but, but it has to come up here. Yeah. I mean, it's not even 10. So let me start with number 10. Okay. What's number 10?

Well, but I'm not great at counting. So that's going to be a problem. Yeah. Can you get up to 10? So we're just doing this right now. So let's have some fun. Spider-Man No Way Home. Okay.

Here we go. I mean, great. You know, these are evolving. Yeah. I'm a woman of the people. I'm trying to have some fun spider-man no way home okay here we go i mean great you know these are evolving yeah i'm a woman of the people i'm trying to have some fun we should probably have these published on uh on social media okay that's great that's that's what i want uh is more discourse in my life well yeah we'll make sure to uh get your handle in there because i know you've been checking your mentions lately yes it's true you know me i love my mentions if we're ever gonna have it on the list it's right now and we might as well just you know bring some I love my mentions. If we're ever going to have it on the list, it's right now.

And we might as well just, you know, bring some of the juice to our podcast. They're campaigning. It seems like this is the likeliest. Yeah. So let's, it could happen. Spider-Man on the way home? Yeah, it could happen. Why not?

I mean, if it happens at the expense of being the Ricardos, who cares? Like, does being the Ricardos need a Best Picture nomination? Absolutely not. Yeah, but it's going to get one. So that's the thing. Okay. All right. So let's see what it's being at the expense of keep going okay i'm gonna do the lost daughter okay because the the critics and the cognoscenti are just nuts for it and i it does seem like everyone who's actually now able to see it it's like wow that was really good and names you

know also again just a beautiful greek setting here's my one note though i if i were olivia coleman i simply would go to another beach club you know which is like again that is like the issue and that's basically would you though i feel like you would stand up for yourself i would probably not move when they asked me to yeah but but no no no here's the thing but just for the sake of peace yeah but the scene the scene when they roll in for the first time and she's like staring at them being like you've ruined my beach vacation i have stared at every single person who has ever walked by me on a beach that way like that was the the realest moment that i've ever seen i probably would have moved before they asked me to just

to get away from them. But day two, I simply would have found another beach club, you know, like day five of everyone going together. And that is like a one sentence summation of most front characters. And also at some point, my like block with front characters, I'm just like, I simply would go somewhere else, but it's what's interesting about it. I'm going the other way. I would have befriended that part-time gangster husband character and I would have ridden around on a cigarette boat with him drinking beers, smoking cigs. Let me say one more scene. God, the teens in the movie theater and Olivia Colman like full of absolute rage. Oh my God. The most important moment in movies in the last five years

don't behave like these assholes she's just out here trying to watch the film that was good that was really good okay so the lost daughter something for everybody okay i have two uh only eight more to go right i don't i mean wesson's are probably will be nominated even though literally no one's seen it it will be you could see i really liked it i don't know i'm i think this is a little low i think it's i think it's actually higher than this but you're right that it it's actually it has done it has actually improved its business over the last couple of weeks there was a strong case to be made that they should just not have released it on december 10th they should have released it on christmas and then it might have had more a better chance of success in the aftermath of the spider-man blow up as opposed to getting kind of

blown off screens hard to say but it has actually improved on its performance over the last couple of weeks right also if they would just make it available at home then everybody would watch it with their family or more people would. More people would. Yes. Okay. Okay. So that's number seven.

Licorice pizza. Yeah. Okay. Great. Okay. This is a chaotic list. I feel like those two should be in the top five, but that's okay. Okay.

Well, Sean, you gave me the controls and you also kind of didn't tell me that I would be doing this. So it's just, this is a insight into Amanda's chaotic mind. The best kind of podcasting. Okay. So what am I saving? One, two, three, four, five. You saving one for Free Guy?

No, I'm not saving one for Free Guy. Okay. I saw that you want me to watch Free Guy at some point this year. And I just got to say, it's not how I wanted to start 2022 free guy hits Disney plus later this year might be our next watch along podcast. I'm just putting that out there because people can join in. Should we do that? We'll put that on social media. See if we should actually do it. Okay. That's definitely the way to get the answer that I want. All right. I'm going to put, I honestly, I think don't look up as low here at number six. I think don't look up as an absolute lock.

I, here is my verdict on the discourse, which is every single person I know, most of whom have not seen a movie in a calendar year, and maybe to send me a lot of text messages about their thoughts on don't look up. And most of them were the effect were to messages about their thoughts on don't look up. And most of them were the effect were to the effect of, I don't know, pretty good. Not, you know, I can think of worse ways to spend 2.5 hours at home than with Meryl Streep

and Jonah Hill and Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. I mean, everybody had thoughts. Everybody's got notes. Everybody's got notes about everything right now. We have too many notes. But most people were like, sure, why not? I watched it with my parents. It was fine. So there you go. That's nice that you talk to real people who are not involved in the film Twitter discourse. I did not enjoy it. I did not enjoy really any of the discourse in either

direction. I find that movies like that instantaneously become something else they don't become a movie anymore they become a a football that needs to be thrown in both directions and it's like in a way that it was i i thought was like not revelatory or interesting and no one was really searching they were like kind of just airing their grievances in one direction or the other and that just kind of bumps me out and like that maybe that is the purpose of satire but in this case i i was just no it's not effective satire but i guess it's effective satire film twitter anyway i didn't i avoided most of it you guys gotta log off you gotta learn when to log off okay this is is you guys me and bobby i mean yes you i would love for you to log off but all of the people you know posting their feelings of you know on december 28th guys it's a

it's an off week just just log off don't give the content away for free we gotta be strategic here okay that's fair don't look up number six you got five to go being the ricardos okay uh movie's just not very good i don't i don't know what to say about that when When can we talk about J. Edgar Hoover? I mean, we said it like five times on the podcast. No, we didn't. We actually never said it. We were like, we're not going to spoil this for people because it's coming out today.

There's a reveal in the movie that essentially the hero of the movie is J. Edgar Hoover. And it's an incredibly stupid story choice. Incredibly stupid. Is that earnest? Or is like, is he? I don't think so. I think it is a declaration of his centrist mentality.

Okay. That sometimes institutions can do good things. Which, maybe that is true. But to have that be represented by J. Edgar Hoover, one of the, frankly, more criminal members of our American government in our history, is incredibly frustrating and incredibly silly. Like, it really just deauthorizes the whole movie then the whole crowd breaks out into applause i was like

is this some sort of like subverted like commentary on the fifth you know does aaron sorkin also know that this is ridiculous and i'm concerned that he doesn't. Yeah. But the other thing with the, the Lucy I'm home, I was like, God damn it. You got me, Aaron. So sometimes, sometimes screenwriting is still good.

I mean, he's extraordinarily talented. So it's like a broken clock thing. Of course, there's going to be five or six things in that movie where you're like, this is really clever or really well crafted or incredibly incisive, but it's just, you said it on the pod.

It's like, just get somebody else to make your movies man just get somebody else to direct your movies you're such a good screenwriter anyway moving on okay number four is king richard yep no no brainer i again i'm not sure how many people have seen this film um and so i think there was an understanding after its premiere telluride that it would be anointed very quickly as a serious, serious contender. And Will Smith has certainly been anointed as a serious, serious contender. I'm not hearing like a ton of conversation about it.

I'm not saying it's going to be left off the list. It will definitely be nominated. Four could be a little high for this movie. I just need HBO Max to put this movie back on its streaming platform. Okay? Just put it back. Let people see your movie. Just let people see your movie.

I forgot about Dune. Yeah. I mean, I think three could be a reasonable place for Dune. Okay. You know, maybe I would put Dune at five. No, this is fine. Dune. Okay.

Dune is ahead of being the Ricardos in my opinion okay all right this is not your list we're making predictions based on the whims of like a group of people who you know like to yell at assistants about the volume at their free screening okay belfast at two and the power of the dog at one i'm definitely gonna have we're definitely gonna do some sort of weird power of the dog podcast somewhere I'm like what does this mean if this movie wins best picture I don't think it's a bad thing I think it's a wonderful movie

but probably underscores it's sort of the flip side the B side of some of the conversation we had about Spider-Man No Way Home I'm not sure how many people watch the power of the dog and we'll probably never find out or maybe we'll be told that 82 million people started it but not sure I would people watch The Power of the Dog, and we'll probably never find out. Or maybe we'll be told that 82 million people started it, but I'm not sure I would believe that.

So this would leave off CODA, which a lot of people feel very strongly about, but it's only on Apple TV+. Speaking of Apple TV+, it would leave off The Tragedy of Macbeth, and I think we'll start to see a much noisier campaign for that movie in about two weeks when it hits Apple TV+.

The aforementioned Drive My Car, Come On, Come On, which I rewatched over the break with Eileen. Just fucking, what a beautiful movie. Dynamite. two weeks when it hits apple tv plus the aforementioned drive my car come on come on which i re-watched over the break with eileen just fucking what a beautiful movie dynamite just a great film um flea which i think is likely to compete for best international feature and best documentary but you're saying no okay um parallel mothers which i think is a stretch even though i think it's terrific uh and then No Time to Die and The Heart of They Fall and a couple of other movies at the bottom of that list. Right. Oh, and Tick Tick Boom.

Don't be surprised. Don't be surprised if Tick Tick Boom is in there. What if we just give Andrew Garfield a supporting actor nomination for No Way Home? I had an idea about this. I think there's another award that needs to be added.

And that's the award for multiple great performances in a calendar year. Okay. I think there should be anytime someone gives at least two great performances in a film,

they can be recognized for that specifically. So Ben Affleck, John Bernthal, Andrew Garfield, all my homies. Except for... Bernthal, Affleck, Gar. All my homies. Except for.

Bernthal, Affleck, Garfield. What a category. I mean, I agree with this, except that I, tick, tick, boom, okay. I love Andrew Garfield. I thought he was wonderful in the popular movie and we don't have to say rude things

about the other thing. Okay. The drive my car thing. You think that's happening? I don't know. I guess not based on what you just said. Well, I,

I, again, hard for people to see movies. And also it's not like the Academy. It's like, great. Let me log on to my screeners that I don't know how to use and watch like a three hour interpretation of uncle Vanya.

You know, they, they have some snotty taste, but not that's not be usually. Um, we basically already done a stock of stock down. I feel like Olivia Coleman stock is up as is Maggie Gyllenhaal's. Frankly,

just a shout out to her tremendous work. I feel like don't look up stock is a little more down than it was before the film went out wide. But I agree with you in general that the Academy is going to, is going to recognize it and they enjoy it. I just worked like everyone watched it. Like did, did you prep a hark?

No, I stepped on my own hark. What was it? Let's just, can you, can we just hear hark? Hark! Hark! Frighten! H hark so here's the thing just just create the campaign just think smaller create this andrew garfield best supporting actor campaign for spider-man no way home just

focus your energies on getting him a nomination in that category now they're not going to do that because he's up for best actor this year so they know that that it's a fool's errand. And if Tick, Tick, Boom had not happened this year, maybe that would have been more likely. But I have not met a single person, even people who have hearts of stone, who despise comic book movies, who have seen his work in this movie and not been like, oh, that part was good. That was actually quite nice. And he was working really hard and he really conveyed something emotional in this silly comic book movie so let's just let's just get andrew his oscar for spider-man what do you say i completely agree okay that's it also aaron sorkin please let other people direct your movies especially when j edgar hoover is involved

should j edgar Edgar Hoover have directed Beanie Ricardos? Would that have been a better film? No. Maybe he did. Who should have directed it? What if like Bennett Miller directed it? Would it have been quite good? It would have been different, for sure. What if Maggie Gyllenhaal directed it? Oh, yeah. That would be interesting.

I don't know about... You need someone who at least appreciates some snappy dialogue. You know who I was yearning for? Their interpretation of this movie was Nicole Holofcener. I was like, can we just get someone like that who actually understands Lucy's point of view as a creative person in the industry who's a woman? That would have been... Anyway.

Any other closing thoughts on what's going on with the Academy Awards and the world of movies? I mean, buckle up, I guess. Or don't. Most people are like, I'm not even getting in the car. But the rest of us buckle up. Drive my car, but for watching the Oscars. Yes, exactly.

That's what this podcast is. Okay. Well, Amanda, delightful to see you as always. We'll be back on the big picture later this week. We're going to be doing our 22 most anticipated movies of 2022. Have you compiled a list? I have one. One in my head.

You're supposed to do 11. We're going to split these. I know, but it's Monday, man. We had to argue about Spider-Man. Is it Sonic the Hedgehog 2? Is that the one? No, it's the same movie. It's my third year

of having this movie on my most anticipated movies list. Is it the Batman? Maybe this is the year that I finally get to see it. Okay. I'm praying for you. Thanks to Bobby Wagner for his work on this episode. And thanks for listening to The Big Picture.

We'll see you later this week. Thank you.