This Had Oscar Buzz - 104 – The Terminal

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

Soak this one up, listeners, because this episode we’re taking one of the very few opportunities for us to talk about Steven Spielberg. The beloved director has one of the best Oscar track records in history, earning nominations for all but five of his feature films – including this week’s misfire, 2004′s The Terminal. Tom Hanks … Continue reading "104 – The Terminal"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Heck. We're headed for home? Uh, no, I am delayed a long time. I'm leaving on a jet plane. I don't know it, I'll be back again.

You are the kind of woman who can get any guy she wants. Why Victor Navorsky? That's something a guy like you could never understand. You ever feel like you're just living in an airport? Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast paying for the rights to the image of the Coca-Cola Bear. And, you know, probably throwing some violence in there against it. Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie

that once upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations. But for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we are here. to perform the autopsy. I am your host, Chris Fyle, and I'm here, as always, with my Heelis flight attendant, who is also a Napoleon historian, who also has her own QVC line, Joe Reid. Hello! Hello! Hello, friend! Hello! Hello! Um, so before we got on Mike, we kind of realized that this month, we've accidentally stumbled into an accidental month-long theme on major directors and bad dialects.

Yeah. Yeah, how did we do that? And yet, here we are, because... I mean, there's maybe not a bad dialect in flawless, but you could say Philip Seymour Hoffman is doing gay voice, if that counts. I think he does a good job. And also, like, gay kind of... There's something very specific about the voice that he is doing in that film.

I don't know. I don't know if it's geographically precise, but, yeah, some of these other accents are also not geographically precise, so who knows? I think they've maybe gotten less and less geographically precise. Yeah. To the point where this week we're just like we made up a place for Tom Hades to be from. Quite literally, it has gotten so off the map of being geopolitically precise that it is just in the ethos of fake country. But yeah, Joseph Gordon Levitt was Frenchy French.

And if you recall Robert Tony Jr. was... Cricie. Australia, might! Yes. And now we are going to the land of Krakosia with Mr. Thomas Hanks. Sure we are. We absolutely are. Yeah, the terminal.

We... I mean, we don't have a ton of excuses to do Spielberg within the parameters that we have set for ourselves on this podcast. because even when it doesn't really go right for him, there's usually an element or two therein. We'll definitely get into the Oscar history of Spielberg. Yes, I mean, in quite the Oscar history, it is. Yeah, I mean, this is a very Oscar-y collection of talent, right?

It's Spielberg. It's Hanks, who was like, you know, Mr. Oscar certainly was there for a while. Catherine Zeta Jones is right on the back of her supporting actress win, only two years prior to this. Tucci hadn't been nominated yet, but he would, it's so, it's so, so, so tragic. Whenever we talk about Stanley Tucci and the Oscars, when we realize that his only Oscar nomination is for The Lovely Bones, perhaps the only role in his filmography that I like less than the role he plays in the Terminal. it's yeah this movie's fine this is like him still in like character actor territory where he's basically playing a bureaucrat he's probably the second lead of the movie yeah in terms of prominence to the story in screen time yeah absolutely

i don't dislike the performance it is not the flavor of stanley tucci that i most want to see if i'm gonna see a stanley tucci performance this sort of unambiguous from the jump like bureaucratic villain like I don't know I don't need it I mean if I'm going to watch a Stanley Tucci performance I'm going to want to watch

him making what was it a negroni in his home during quarantine and calling me poor for the type of vermouth that I use I mean yeah that's the vibe you want which is like queer adjacent

or like you know I mean, even when he's playing, like, in the best Tucci performances, even when he's playing, like, avowedly heterosexual, like, in, like, EZA, right? Where it's him and Patty Clarkson as Emma Stone's parents. There is something sort of, I don't know, like, we're adjacent to him. He's absolutely the most sophisticated heterosexual man. Yes, we do love him. We just, we love him.

And it's hard to love him in the character that he plays in this film. Yeah. I mean, everything's kind of cartoonish in this movie, so it's like, of course, he has to, he's like maybe even the most grounded performance in the movie and that he's not really playing something like that makes this into a fairy tale or... Right, right. Like, he's not a full mustache twirling villain, but he's... Yeah.

There are... Dreadful, dreadful bureaucrat. There are issues of, you mentioned fairy tale, and I think that's right. in that, like, a lot of this movie can be sort of just, like, be chalked up to, like, well, it's a fairy tale. And yet, I think the movie has tone issues that sort of aren't fully papered over by that. And, I mean, we'll get into it when we get on the other side of the plot description. But this is sort of part of a segment of Spielberg's career that feels very very,

very, it's a very interesting little corner of his career, but it like, it straddles 9-11 in a really interesting way. I would say going from AI in 2001, which was made before 9-11, obviously, to the War of the Worlds and Munich double in 2005. This War of the Worlds and Munich kind of make like Spielberg's 9-11 trio of movies. And they're all so kind of wildly wildly different and this feels like the least explicit

of the three that it is about like what our culture was at the time but at the same time is so like mired in it in a way that it's like

we want to make people feel good about all of that's horrible things in the world and that's like that's the thing about the fairy tale of this movie

is that like even the idea of that and putting like that tone in this context like even today feels um maybe not outright inappropriate but it's like why do you want to do that like just trying to like think realistically about tom hanks's character it's like why would you want to have like that type of horrible circumstance and make that into a fairy tale and like it's it's loosely based on a real man who was uh caught at charles de gall for many many

years um many years like almost 20 years that story that story that story yeah so it was an iranian man who was traveling to london i believe and uh was ended up um sort of as tom hanks's character in the terminal is sort of stuck at in this case it was charles de gall airport in paris because his papers had gone missing and there was some disagreement over whether the papers had gotten missing or whether he had sent him ahead to Belgium. And they, but for whatever reason, he didn't have his papers. And this was like an 18-year protracted series of legal wranglings. And, you know, they were going to let him go to Belgium, but he didn't want to go to Belgium. He wanted to go to London. And he wanted to have a certain name on his

forms. And so it's, there was, you know, refugee status from Iran that was sort of in question. And there was a lot of kind of moving parts to it, and some parts of it seemed like he was sort of digging his heels in in a way that from reading the description of it, and like I obviously didn't like go in depth on this or anything, but like it seemed like there might have been sort of like some mental illness at play and whether, you know, I mean, to stay in an airport terminal for 18 years, in not entirely of his own wanting, but But, like, certainly there were outs that he didn't take. And, but also it's just like it's all wrapped up in immigration and refugee status and, like, all these things that are, like, actually really pertinent issues today.

And that's why it's, it's really from a 2020 perspective, watching the terminal, jarring to watch immigration issues be treated and sort of, like, lighthearted, as you say, fairy taleway. More Gauche today than it did at the time. And at the time, it was still like, what are you doing here? But I think it's interesting when you mentioned the Terminal War of the Worlds in Munich as this kind of like 9-11 triptych, which like not one of them deals with the events of 9-11 specifically. But I think they deal with different aspects of kind of the national mood in and around it, whereas like the terminal feels like it's dealing with a lot of. the what what has changed about America in this like very quick aftermath where like what was the biggest change that most Americans saw after 9-11 it was the way in which air travel was impacted right it became a much more sort of fraught experience and a lot of the terminal a lot of the terminal

feels like almost like these childish not child child child like games of what if and one of them is like what if we could make air travel lighthearted again? You know what I mean? And it feels very sort of like Spielberg-y in the way that sometimes the word Spielbergy is used to connote child-like wonder. You know what I mean? That kind of thing.

And it felt like a very Spielberg take on like, what if we could make this one thing that has become really scary post-9-11 into something more light-hearted? And then in War of the Worlds, which I think is his most effective statement on 9-11, which is we are going to invoke... I mean, it directly, like, kind of lifts 9-11 imagery, like, the footage that we've seen

all along and, like, morphs it into this, like, science fiction horror, like, image that's really upsetting. War of the Worlds really sets out to, and I think is really effective at conveying the mood and the terror of, like, of that moment on a sci-fi. scale and then Munich deals with it sort of tangentially but and then sort of like very directly at the end but in this kind of geopolitical way that like plays out in a lot of like political philosophies and I think just like the political ramifications and like what we were thinking as we were settling into yeah um the mid 2000s but the terminal of the three movies

the terminal is my least favorite of them. And I think because of the angle that it takes on 9-11, it's probably the least effective at commenting on 9-11. And if that was sort of like his first crack at it or whatever, it feels almost like, and I've never seen come from away, so I don't know. But like in concept, it seems like that kind of a thing of like, what if the aftermath of 9-11 made people from all sort of like areas and walks of life

sort of forced to come together in this microcosm? And wouldn't that be kind of a lovely balm on what has happened? And the terminal does try and create this kind of, this thing you see in movies a lot where it's this rag-tag little ecosystem of all these different kinds of people. And you got Chai McBride and Diego Luna and Zoe Saldana. The cast is kind of wonderful. I do actually really like the ensemble of this movie. It's a good ensemble, but it's this kind of thing,

that kind of eclectic ecosystem thing, is sometimes hard for me to, think that it's done right. Sometimes it just feels very kind of artificial. It reminded me a lot of Lady in the Water. Lady in the Water did that too. Do you know what I mean? Like Lady in the Water was worse.

No, no, no, no. I mean, I like Lady in the Water. Um, uh, I would prefer that type of like rag tag ensemble. I mean, it takes it to some like very silly places like Zoe Saldana and Diego Luna like have like a love story where they're flirting, but then

they eventually get married. At the airport, I don't know whom among us wants to get married at work. Wants to get married at work, but also, like, they get engaged after seemingly never interacting outside of the airport ever. Yeah. Like, that's weird in a way that I don't think is cute. Like, I don't think it's bad. It's like the part of Spielberg where, like, he just wants to make Capra movies, but it's like he got stoned and, like, misunderstood everything about how

Capra movies work. This movie overestimates its own sense of whimsy a lot. I think it does it in the romance between Hanks and Catherine Zeta Jones's characters. I think it does it in the conclusion

where, and I keep seeing Pagoda from the Royal Tannenbaum's because I can't remember that actor's name. Mumapiana. Thank you. Where he steps in front of this united jetliner that It's taxing down the runway. And it's, of course, this, like, really arresting image of this, like, giant plane stopping just short of this, like, short little man on the tarmac.

But if you, like, prod at that moment for, like, even a second, you're just like, oh, so this immigrant is sacrificing this entire American life that he's made for himself over years and years. And probably go back to his home country and be imprisoned or executed. He left there for a freaking reason, also that Victor Nivorski can have one day in New York seeking jazz artifacts. Like, it's the whimsy of that moment, and it is sold as whimsical, even when, like, the armed, whatever, immigration police are all pointing automatic weapons at this guy. And he, like, goes, like, do you have an appointment? because that's his, like, jokey line from earlier. Like, that is such a miscalculation by such a wide margin that, like, it really made me question Spielberg's handle on the tone of the whole movie.

I would say the politics of this movie do not align with the politics of Spielberg's films, like, surrounding this film. Right. I wonder, I don't, I guess I wonder where Spielberg's, like, in with this material was like why was spielberg compelled to make this movie i feel like it feels right maybe the least spielberg film that i can recall in his filmography like the the touchstones are there but like as you're watching the movie the sense of like scale the sense of control over the material like the sense of like palpable emotion it's all completely off

here's my theory one of the one of the things we know about stephen Spielberg as a director, but most also as a producer, is that, like, he will sign on to produce a lot of projects. He's got, like, a billion things in the hopper. When is he going to end making this movie? When is he going to end up making that movie? And a big part of that is that he is arguably the most powerful creative decision maker in Hollywood, let's say. Anything he could want to make, he can't. He has the resources. He has the cloud. He has the everything. And for that reason, I think Steven Spielberg is a kind of guy who will read a story and be like, I should make a movie about that. And he'll hear about a thing and be like, I should make a movie about that. And that's

why his IMDB page is littered with like announced projects of like, whatever, 25 announced projects that he's, you know, not quite working on yet. And I think for... And like 576 producer credits. Right. And I think for whatever reason, he read this story about this Iranian man at Charles de Gaul and kind of, I mean, not unreasonably thought that would make a really great movie because it's such an interesting story. It's such an unusual story. And in the wake of 9-11, a story that would take on even more sort of interesting implications. And so he thought, I should make that movie. And for whatever reason, this one made its way through the pipeline quickly. than most. And so, like, that, and then so we end up with this movie that you're right, like, you're sort of, you're sort of scratching your head as to how this movie came out in the midst of all these other movies that he's making. But I do feel like that's my best shot at, I also feel like that's how he ends up making something like Ready Player One, right? where he's like...

Player one, though, probably wouldn't have gotten made if he wasn't directing it because of all of the, like, rights issues for all of those characters and all of those IP mentions that go into that movie. Yeah. Like, nobody's going to sign off on it for probably... I would assume a lower, like, fee than what, like, use of those characters would be. Yeah. If it's not Steven Spielberg at the head. Yeah. And I think he was just compelled to make that god-awful movie.

But also, the terminal you could say the same thing about, because what's the one? really notable thing about the production of the terminal, which is he had to create basically an entire airport wing from... Which is incredibly impressive. I think it's the most impressive thing about the movie because, like, you could watch that movie and think the entire thing was truly shot in an airport and then you tell someone, no, that was a set. And like, your mind kind of doesn't wrap around that type of contemporary design.

It really should have gotten an art directing nomination. It did get nominated by the art director. Rector's Guild. Just for how convincing it is. Yeah. It's not, but, like, it's not always that, like, bigger equals more impressive, but, like, in this case, it does. And also, it's weird that the Oscars, who always go for most when they mean best,

didn't go for this. But at contemporary design, they often don't go for it. Right. Although, was this the year that they nominated? No, Marie Antoinette is 05, right? Uh, yes. Were they nominated Marie Antoinette for, uh, for art direction and everybody was like, because just because they shot it at Versailles and like, okay, well, like, Versailles real impressive, but

like, yeah, but art direction is also, you know, like, what you're bringing in, I'm sure they're bringing in sofas and. Of course, but I, but I just remember that being like a line of thinking at the time, which was just like, you know, you're sort of, you're starting at, you know, third base instead of starting at first base when like when you're dealing with versa you know you're you've got a bit of i mean the same is true for the favorite they shot that on a location and then brought in like all of the furniture they like things like canes that people carry around right is like part of art direction you know products yeah um here's one thing i'll say before we get into the

60 second plot description that like makes everything about the movie makes sense and all of its problems, except for Steven Spielberg's participation. This I do not understand. It's three different credited writers on the script and story for the movie, but in like a different combination. So it's Sasha Dravasi, Jeff Nathanson get the screenplay credit. Story credit goes to Sasha Dravasi and Andrew Nicol. Gattaca guy. Right. I love Gattaca. So it's like, it feels like this has been passed off to so many different hands, like changing what the actual script is and not all together. So it feels like something that had been kicking around for a while in different versions. Yeah. Andrew Nicol is interesting because Andrew Nicol is also a writer who occasionally directs

his own scripts. And although not always to good effect, I believe he was Simone. I don't know what in time you're talking about. Yeah. Sasha Javrasi is an interesting sort of element of this because he's the least sort of accomplished of all this, especially at this time. The only feature film he had written was something called The Big Tees that was a 1999 film starring Craig Ferguson, like well before Craig Ferguson got even the late night hosting gig on CBS. And then after the terminal, he writes, and directs, or maybe he doesn't write, he directs that film, Anvil, the story of Anvil, the mock documentary about the rock band or whatever. But that doesn't seem to have any kind of connection to the terminal. He's a writer on a film called Henry's Crime with Keanu Reeves and Vera Formiga

that filmed in Buffalo that I've still never seen, weirdly. And then in 2012, he directs our favorite from the IMDB game, Hitchcock, the Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren Hitchcock film that, like, I have such a hard time sort of following that through line. And yet he seems to be with the one with a story and screenplay credit that feels like he's got most authorship on it. And then it feels like Jeff Nathanson, who had written the screenplay for Catch Me If You Can, just prior to this film. was the guy that Spielberg brought on set or did like the final polish something he's he's Spielberg's guy Spielberg brings him in I imagine and just sort of just like well you know give me the finish product on this but yeah it's an odd little journey and yet like the story was that like Spielberg was the one who saw this man's true life story and bought the rights to

it so like clearly this was not a project this was not a script that was brought to Spielberg This was something that Spielberg had sort of commissioned. So, I don't know. That's interesting. Very interesting. We will continue to get into it, but we're going to do the 60-second plot description. Once again, we are here to talk about the terminal. Or as maybe we should call it, since this is our month of dialects, the terminal.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, starring one Mr. Tom Hanks and then a large ensemble that includes Catherine Zeta Jones, Stanley Tucci. Chai McBride, Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, Kumar Payana, Barry Shabaka Henley. My favorite of Allie's Dad's Friends in The Newest Stars Born. The movie opened June 18th, 2004, a summer Spielberg movie. And, yeah, that's the terminal. Joseph, are you ready to give a 60-second plot description? Yeah, ready to go.

All right, your 60-second plot description for Stephen Spielberg's The Terminal, Star, All right, Tom Hanks plays Victor Navorski, a traveler from fictional Eastern European Krakosia, who flies into New York and learns that while he was in the air, a coup in his home nation means that he currently has no nation and thus can't be allowed to either enter the United States or fly back home, so the only place he can legally reside is the International Terminal at at fake JFK Airport. While making daily feudal attempts to get his papers stamped, Victor also makes himself at home in the terminal for like months. He befriends an eclectic bunch of airport employees and become something of a micro-level celebrity within the ecosystem of

airport. This is all happening under the eye of a sneering Stanley Tucci who wants Victor out of his airport because he's fucking up his chance at a promotion. So he keeps trying to get Victor to break the law and enter the U.S. illegally, so he'll get arrested. And also Victor meets and falls in love with a pretty and sad flight attendant played by Catherine Zeta Jones, who is inexplicably the Napoleon buff. In the end, the coup and Krakosha ends, and CZJ's crappy married boyfriend gets Victor a one-day visa so we can go into the city and get an autograph from a jazz man as part of an emotional stakes raised with a subplot that gets introduced father to truly late into the film to possibly matter.

Tucci tries to get Victor to go back to Kukosia. He blackmailed him by threatening his friends and Pagoda stands in front of a jetliner. Yeah, yeah. And then yeah, Hiko gets an autograph in a hotel lobby. At the Ramada.

Wherever the fuck this Ramada is supposed to be in New York, by the way, but like, they cut to him in a cab leaving the Ramada and then like all of a sudden he's in the middle of time square, which is one of the two most ludicrous cuts in this movie. The other one is when he walks out of the front doors of the airport and like the New York City skyline is reflected in the glass of the of the front

doors of this airport and I'm like I'm not sure what airport you think you're at sir but like there is distinct visual film ever shot by Janush Kaminsky I could not believe well like this really does have the Spielberg all-star team right where it's like it's Janish Kaminsky doing the cinematography it's of course a John Williams score like the worst John Williams. One of my least favorite John William's scores ever. My literal note as I'm writing down my notes last night, I just go, I despise this hootie-to-de-d score so much because it is so, it's so tutely. I hate it. It's just, ugh, it's so bad. It might as well have been like a James Newton-Hawd or something. Listen, James Newton-Howard's done good things.

Can we take it back to him driving through Times Square? Yes. At the end. I do love Times Square scenes in movies, even though Times Square is a cesspool, because it had all of the Broadway billboards in there. So, of course, my eye goes to them. There's a, there's a billboard for taboo. Yep. I saw taboo on Broadway. Oh, nice.

I did that, you know, legend of Broadway bombs. I noticed that sign, that, uh, the billboard for taboo as well. I also noticed the Mamma Mia billboard, the very recognizable Mamma Mia poster. A wonderful town billboard.

Is that what that was? Wonderful Town? Okay. Yes, there's Wonderful Town on there, which had Donna Murphy and Jennifer Westfeld in it, and I saw them. They were great. Was that the one? There was a poster that looked plausibly like the Stepbrothers poster, but obviously it couldn't have been because Stepbrothers isn't for another four years. But I couldn't quite tell what that was because it pans up from Times Square way too quickly. But that always reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in movies is the very end of closer when Natalie Portman goes sort of strutting into New York and disappears among the crowd.

And there's like in the center of the frame for a good 20 seconds, is the thoroughly modern milly. Yes, the marquee. Yeah. Marquis. Yeah, the marquee of the marquee. It's the same part of my brain that if you post a photo online of your home and I can see your bookshelts in it, I'm going to zoom in and see what books you have on your shelf or what DVDs you have.

For the longest time back when like single service tumblers was a thing, obviously like this whole podcast arose from a single service tumbler. So like, but one of, I always would have like a bunch of random ideas that I never had. the time or, you know, whatever motivation to do. But I always wanted to do a tumbler on shots in movies of movie marquees that show whatever, like, whatever the titles of movies were playing at the time, which are always a really great time capsule of just movie theaters in general, but also like it really helps you place the movies, like, when that that film is taking place in a really cool way.

Famously, that's how I figured out the twist in Remember Me before it ended, was that it was taking place the same year as American Pie 2, which I found very strange. Speaking of 9-11 movies. Oh, 9-11. Absolutely insane. I bring up the Broadway billboards, though, because you missed the most important detail of the movie, which is when Victor is being first interrogated by the Tooch, and he shows him, like what his, he's like, I need a cab, I need to go to a Ramada in, I'm going to see cats on

Broadway. Stanley Tucci's like, cats is closed. The funny thing about that is because that's the scene also where Stanley Tucci tells him that while he was in the air, there was a coup in Krakosia and his country is no more, which by the way, put a pin in that because we'll get to in a second. But he makes it sound like cats also closed while Victor was in the air, which is funny because I'm pretty sure cats closed like several years before that. Right, right. Cats, I believe, closed before 9-11. I think, yeah, cats closed, yes. I think that's right. Because Le Miz was very close to breaking the, like, longest running ever during 9-11.

I see. I see. But I thought that was kind of funny. It was just like, well, while you were in the air, your country had a coup and doesn't exist anymore. And also, perhaps even worse, cats closed. No more. No more cats. Because wasn't cats also at the Winter Garden and didn't like... Yes, it was. That's the Mamma Mia theater. So that's where Mamma Mia is at the point of this. Okay, yeah, yeah. Yes.

Yes, yes, yes. Very recent Mamma Mia. I love that in an episode for The Terminal, we were able to bring up both cats and Mamma Mia. I know, and we'll get into more Broadway when we talk about Catherine Zita Jones, because we're going to talk about her Tony win. Okay, so I want to talk, like, not to nitpick this movie to death. I don't want to do, like... Any way that you could nitpick. this movie, though, is pretty low-hanging fruit.

I don't want to do cinemasin on this, but I do feel like there are certain movies where the suspension of disbelief becomes impossible because simple things could have cut the Gordian knot of this movie, right? Where it's just like, it strains credibility to me that they never bring in a translator to talk to Victor, ever.

Yeah, that's so common. In JFK, there is no one in the entire airport that speaks Bulgarian, which is the language that Hanks is speaking. That's the thing. And there's even a scene later on where they make a big deal about they bring in Victor to translate Russian for this agitated traveler. And they say are Russian translators in Newark. And it's like, okay, so you have translators that are at most as far as Newark. They could get here in like.

You can get them on a speaker phone. Right. And so like the idea that we have to go through all of these like lost in translation moments with Victor that are incredibly stressful to watch and whatever. And it's just like, I get that like that's the premise of the movie. But if the premise of your movie hinges on something that is like so strange credibility, then maybe you have to tinker with the premise of your movie a bit. The fact that all, sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. I was going to say like, I think the movie kind of decides fairly early that like, oh, well, Victor will just adapt and

learn English that much. So we don't have to solve this problem for the movie. Like, that's its lame way out sure but like it's still a problem in the early goings of the movie also yeah and it establishes victor in these really cartoony terms that kind of set the whole movie off on the wrong path right there's of course like plenty of jokes about how he says a thing and it sounds like another thing jiego luna says thinks he's saying eat shit eat shit instead of he cheat but like the fact that the movie makes this very clear decision that everything happening in the movie is going to be completely isolated from the outside world.

And the only things that happen in the movie happen within not only just this airport, but within this terminal. And like, okay, but again, it's so unbelievable that there would not be any kind of external pressures or communications coming. There's this been like... Or a diplomat that's at least made aware. That's the thing. Yeah. There is, this is a big enough international story, the Krakosia story, that it's like on CNN, on the televisions constantly. Like, it would not take very long for the State Department or something to become aware.

To realize there's a Krakosian citizen stuck in an airport. And like the news would find out about this. Like the big part about the real life story of the Iranian man was that like he was constantly being interviewed by members of the press because it's such an interesting story. And it just, it's, and again, he wants to make it a fairy tale. The fairy tale is very self-enclosed, right? But also, like, if you're going to make this story as much about, like, an international incident that you have created, it just doesn't make any sense that there's no external pressures or no external communications at all in this movie.

I think, and it's because it's trying to create a scenario where there wouldn't be some type of external involvement so that it can keep this whole fairy tale scenario because like if you're trying to have this concept of this man locked in an airport not in his own country like there's other scenarios you could come up with

like even ones in countries that exist I just yeah it's like it feels like that is a mistake made on the part of trying to maintain this tone of the movie and not have it be so grim

to the point where it's like the the guy with the pills who speaks Russian and Victor ends up helping out with like that scene is so upsetting it's so upset where yeah he's he has these pills that he's trying to get to his father in Canada

and he ends up like holding a knife to his own throat while it becomes this very intense situation with airport security Victor jumps in and like helps out and does interference for them basically so that they can talk again. Why is there somebody that doesn't

speak Russian at this airport? Right. I also love that, like, they're one Russian translator in all of JFK airport. Like, are you actually kidding me? Right. And it's just this really upsetting scenario where eventually Victor communicates, say it's for your

goat so that you don't... Right. You know, so you can go help your dad. I don't know. It's another... It's sort of so much of what happens in this movie, I can feel the screenwriteriness of it that just sort of like, like, and that scene was just like, well, we need a scenario where Victor and Dixon, the Tucci character, can face off. They need to like come up with X number of occasions where that relationship, like, ratchets up the adversarialness, right? And like, that's sort of the most where, uh, Dixon, brings in Victor to help in this situation, and then they end up having this sort of like tense face-off battle of wills kind of a thing. And it's just like, okay, but like that is a function in your story arc, but you have to like make it not only make sense, but as you said,

just like it's so hard to watch and stressful. And I think the emotional stakes of that like sort of really kind of fly off the charts. The other thing that I thought was like unforgivably screenwritery was making the Catherine Zeta Jones character a Napoleon buff. Like that was such a like, we need to give her a quirk or a quality. And it's just like, you might as well. Also, she's a Napoleon buff after reading one book on Napoleon. Right.

But you might as well have made her like really into Rubik's cubes or like, it's also the fact that, like, they make Zoe Saldana's character a Treki so that she and Diego Luna have, like, this weird sort of, like, dorky bond or whatever, and it's just, like, nothing seems organic about these characters, like, at

all, like, Catherine Zeta Jones's character. The movie's lucky that it has good performers in these, because, like, if there's anything charming or made to make it believable, it's always, it's in the performances. I think that, especially if Tom Hanks, like, the ludicrous

final reveal of why he was even traveling which comes so late in the movie far too late for you to establish any kind of emotional stakes at all and like it really I don't understand it I don't

understand why it comes down there because it's so like not seemingly to us in the audience not worth the effort that he and the ordeal that he has to go through um it also assumes that the audience was spending far more time obsessing over what was in the fucking planners can than we were.

Like, they keep, like, Tucci brings that up when he talks to Catherine Zeta Jones when he sort of pulls her aside and gives her the skinny on who Victor really is, where he's just like, do you know, he walks around with a can of peanuts? Why do you think that is? And it's like, I personally wasn't stressing about it. I don't know about anybody else, but the movie really treats it as this sort of like pulp fiction briefcase of a thing. like, what's the McGuffin in the planters can? And it's like, I don't care. The movie doesn't care

up until the point that it does. And all of a sudden now it becomes this like Rosetta Stone unlocking everything about Victor. And it's like, does it? Though, but like to my earlier point, like, the only thing that makes that completely not a table flipping moment in this movie is Tom Hanks' performance, because he at least kind of grounds it in some type of emotional truth that maybe the movie is not selling but the performance is selling if that makes any sense like i do think tom hanks is pretty decent in this movie that is very silly i think you're right in that hanks sells that moment in the script as best he can i don't he's like the only one who can save that moment from completely ruining an already not great

movie i don't love this hanks performance and i don't think it's that he's bringing it down i think it's just that he's unable to elevate it to a point where I need it to be elevated to because it's coming from such a like, you know, such an uninteresting. I don't know, there's just like, whatever I don't like about this movie, Hanks is unable to elevate it to a point where I do like it. And sometimes he just seems like he's being too anticky. Like, I know that, like, that's what the movie is asking him. But, like, all these times where he's like, just sort of like running through the airport and like trying to I don't know it's just I guess to qualify what I'm saying is like there's something about the movie that is oddly palatable and I think that that comes

purely out of the performances in the movie yeah Catherine Zeta Jones's performance yeah I find that a lot in the um the the Diego Luna Zoe Salada subplot which I like on paper is insufferable and weird and I hate these relationships where like the male character decides that this girl is going to be his and he's going to have to do whatever it takes to get her. And it's just a matter of time and he's just kind of like, and there's not like, there's not a whole lot of, it's not like she's telling him no, no, no. So it's like it's not creepy like that. But it's still like on paper it's not my favorite kind of a of a romance. If this whole scenario for them was that they met on E-Harmony this way, it would not be creepy. but because they have this go-between in Victor.

Right, where it's this like quasi-cirin-o kind of a thing where, like, Diego Luna is, like, having Hank's sort of flirt with her on his behalf and whatever, and it's like, and yet, because it's Diego Luna, who I find adorable as a box of kittens, and Zoe Salada, who is, like, always, like, brings a credulity that doesn't really seem earned to that performance, but, like, it's, it just barely,

works for me on a charm level, even though, again, as a story element, I hate it. So, I don't know. Yeah, it's a very, it's a very interesting cast for, again, being this very sort of, you know, rag tag group of misfits. I don't know. The one thing I wanted to throttle for this movie, we can also have the argument that this takes place at JFK, JFK is awful, and LaGuardia is fine. Everybody hates LaGuardia, but J.

AFK is always the one with the problems. But this movie also is like, aren't airports great? Like, aren't Charming? Great. And like, airports are the hell of my being. If hell exists and I go there, it will be an airport. I, all right, all right.

I've got a few things to say about this. I hate air travel. I hate almost everything about air travel. I mostly when I do fly, I will fly, and this is not an endorsement or an advertisement or whatever. But I'll fly JetBlue because it's the one that flies to Buffalo most

frequently and whatever. I also am like a rewards member there. So if like, so if I ever get like a free flight, it's from them. Whatever. The JetBlue Terminal and JFK is actually really nice. It's fine. It makes me the least stressed of any kind of flying situation. So like I'm cool with it. LaGuardia, I'm sorry to say, earns its reputation for being a dump, although the renovations that were happening more recently. The last time I flew out of LaGuardia, it seemed really nice. Anyway. I am in and out of LaGuardia without problem every time.

Okay. I think your priority of an airport, if your priority of an airport is getting out of it quickly, then yeah, I see why you like LaGuardia better. Because you do have to kind of traverse a series of football field length, transoms to get to the exit of JFK. I get it. I do get that. But anyway, the movie, again, sorry. I was going to say what it did make me miss about airports is food courts. Yes.

It's like weirdly felt like the most COVID movie I've seen in all of quarantine, where I'm like, this is kind of what this feels like, but also is a little bit of a fantasy because I would like to be able to have trash pizza and a fountain Coke at any given minute. You are approaching, you're absolutely approaching my point, which it, which... It's also a weird time capsule movie because he pays 74 cents for a burger at Burger King, and can you imagine? No. Even at the time, even at the time, that was wildly ludicrous. Anyway, okay. In an airport at that. That would have been a $50 hamburger. Exactly. But my point is that a lot of the conception of this movie, and again, this is sort of like a why it's

seems so screenwritery to me. It seems to very obviously come from this series of, like, childlike what-if questions of just like, what if, or like, I mean, whatever, like, what if a country ceased to exist while someone was traveling? What would that, what would sort of, like, happen there, right? Whereas just sort of like, like, noodle on that one for a while. But the other thing that I do find, which is why I mentioned childlike, is this idea of, like, what would it be like to live at the mall?

And that's what the appeal of living at this. But it's also a thing that you would wonder if you're like 10 years old. And that's why there are multiple, by the way, movies that kind of spin around the idea of like, there's so much at the mall. You really could kind of live there. Weirdly, Dawn of the Dead is like that. Where the heart is, where Natalie Portman goes and lives in the Walmart is about that. and the terminal.

So, like, if you ever want to have a weird-ass triple feature, do Dawn of the Dead and where the heart is and the terminal, because all of those movies are about what would it be like to live at the mall. And it's a thing that I think a lot of kids wonder because, like, everything's at the mall. You have, it's one of those things which is like, everything's become, there's so much there that, like, there are beds there. There is food there.

There is whatever. And you, you know, how long could you go? living at the mall. And I think that's a big part of the weird fascination with that man's story was he lived in an airport terminal for 18 years because you kind of can. Yeah. I don't know. I would be, I, I, Victor takes this too well.

Yes, he does. In my vision. He never really, he never complains. He never really chafes at the idea of, of the limitations of living within the airport terminal. You're right. Yeah. When, like, the see, the one scene very early where he's, like, bathing in the restrooms, we're, like, splashing water from the sink or whatever.

And, like, I'm not sure we ever get to the part where we find out how he squares that circle. Like, how does he continue to bathe? Does he just, like, forever splash water on his pits from the, from the sink? Like, does he ever have, like, a proper shower in the months and months that he's in this terminal? Where could, where, like, do the employees have, like, a lounge somewhere where they could, like, or a gym? Is there a gym somewhere? Like, I genuinely don't know. But, like, they never really address that. They figure out how he eats and how he makes money and whatnot. He weirdly, like, gets employed by a construction crew. Perhaps the most bizarre sort of, like, corner of this movie where he, like. Possibly the most believable. I guess. But, like, it's just deep. deeply, deeply weird.

Everything that the movie thinks is charming really has a factual undercurrent of upsettingness. Yeah. I used a bunch of words there that don't really belong together. I loved it. I love it, though. So, yeah, it's, in terms of Oscar buzz, obviously Spielberg is like the top of that list of directors where everything he does has Oscar buzz. Because everything he does is A, major, and B, nine times out of ten, will get nominated for some kind of Oscars, whatever. This is, of course, the man...

More than nine times out of ten, probably. Nine point seven times out of ten. We really have very few options when we want to do a Spielberg entry for this had Oscar buzz. And... To illustrate this point, I have a quiz for Joseph. I have a game. I am generating the game this week. Enjoy it.

Soak it up. It's not that complicated. We're going to be, it's all basically trivia based. Wait, are you saying that my games are complicated? No, I'm saying you're inventive. I'm saying I, my quiz is not necessarily that creative as yours, but it all goes to illustrate the point. You saying inventive reminds me of that Seinfeld scene where, um, where Elaine is describing

George to her friend who she wants to date him and she's like, well, he's got a lot of character in his face. Um, he's short. Um, he's, um, he's, Docky, he's fat. Is that what you're saying, that he's fat? Powerful. He is so powerful.

He can lift a hundred pounds right up over his head. He's fat, and Elaine's like, he's powerful. Just like, you're not overly complicated, Joe, you're inventive. I mean, that's, no, no. It's fine. It's good. Give me quiz. I like a quiz.

Give me quiz. Okay, so to jump us off. in this Spielberg and Oscar game, trivia game that I have set up for Joe to give our listeners some kind of idea. 26 Spielberg films, unless I've done my math wrong, have had some type of Oscar nomination success. They've been nominated. Spielberg's films have totaled 32 Oscar wins and 132 nominations, again, unless my math is wrong. So that's quite a bit, Joseph. Yes.

I have a quiz to go through all of, like, different stats for what degree of success Spielberg has had. Oh, this is fun. Okay, I like this. Are you ready? Yes. Okay, so we mentioned there's not a lot of options for us to discuss Spielberg on our podcast. Can you name the five films of Spielberg's, not including the terminal?

Well, five including the terminal. Okay. that did not get any Oscar nominations. All right. Only five. That's, first of all, that's fully wild. Only five, not including any of his TV movies. Right, right, right, right, right.

Okay. So the terminal is one. There are four others. There are four others. Okay, here's my first little roadblock, which is, if the BFG did, I would have needed to see it to watch all the Oscar nominees, because that's well within the era where I've watched all the Oscar nominees. And now I'm trying to remember if I've seen the BFG or not. Or whether I've just, like, totally forgot about it. But I kind of don't think I've seen it, so I'm going to guess the BFG. The BFG is one

of them. Okay, okay, okay, okay. You have three more movies. Three more movies. All right. Oh, did Hook get nominated for like a visual effect or a score? I'm going to say it probably did. See, the thing is you need to catch the ones that were not successes, but also didn't get like a techie thing at the back end. Which is why I'm going to say always. Always. Always is probably the only other movie we could do. Yeah.

Yeah. You could say the BFG, and I'm sure they were here. We could do the BFG. Yeah. But also, I don't want to watch the BFG. I kind of terrible. All right, so two more? Two more.

Two more. You're missing some low-hanging. There's one that's pretty low-hanging fruit for why. Crystal Skull? Crystal Skull is one of them. Okay, okay. Because it's garbage. Okay.

um however i still think that that's pretty surprising that it didn't get like sound or something like that right all of the other though i mean everything about that movie 2008 though 2008 is a really big year for big techie movies right that's dark night that's iron man that's you know wallie to an extent okay okay okay all right one more yes one more it's pretty obvious why it's not an Oscar nominee. To me. And it's not in terms of quality. That I couldn't speak to.

I haven't seen this movie. Okay. Is it like a really early one? It's his movie before Jaws. It's Sugar Land Express. That's, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So Sugar Land Express, always the terminal, BFG,

Indiana Jones, and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, or Crystal Scull, whatever the fuck. Those are his only movies without Oscar nomination. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I would have gotten to guessing Sugarland Express. that alone right there that it's the that little rag tag of five movies yeah tells you why we that alone is why we can do an episode on the terminal to me right right we almost have to what the degree to which spielberg movies have success with oscar however yes can you name his five the five movies of spilbergs with the most nominations there are two ties oh okay What are his two most nominated? Oh, I see.

So two movies are the single most nominated. One of them's got to be Schindler's list. Schindler's list, correct. Tied with the color purple? No. But the color purple is one of the five. Oh, okay. So three more, one of which is tied with Schindler for the most.

Saving Private Ryan's got to be one of them. Saving Private Ryan tied with color purple. They both had 11, so the movie you're looking for has 12 nominations. Okay. I don't think Jaws had that many. I don't think Raiders of the Lost Ark. Is it E.T.? E.T. is the other one in the fifth.

It had nine nominees. Yeah, it's got to be something that had at least an acting nomination to sort of, you can't get that many nominations without anything in acting um oh it's it's got to be lincoln it is lincoln i remember when lincoln uh landed its nominations people being surprised that it was tied for the most spielberg nominations ever yeah yeah because a lot most of his successes don't have acting nominations like in terms of like his big sort of like E.T. Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Dark, well, close encounters had Melinda Dillon at the very least. I don't think Dreyfus got... And on top of that, he hasn't had many acting winners who, besides... Daniel DeLewis?

Daniel DeLewis, Mark Rylance. Right. I think that might be it. Nobody won. Obviously, the color purple, didn't win anything. famously one of the most nominated movies to have no wins Nieson and Fines both lost for

Schindler's list Hopkins lost for Amistad, Hanks lost for Saving Private Ryan, Walkin lost for Catch Me if you can, no acting nominees for Munich, no acting nominees for

War Horse. Yeah, I'm looking at the list of Spielberg winners, and I think it is just those two. So it's even a recent thing that actors have won for Spielberg movies. Yeah. Streep should have won for The Post. Can you name how many Best Picture nominees Spielberg's has? Is it 10, 11, or 12? Oh, boy.

Okay. How many of his films have been nominated for Best Picture? 10, 11, or 12. Can I try and count them on my hands? That's going to be your next question. Oh, which ones? Oh, okay. 10, 11 or 12

12 seems like a lot I'm going to say I'm going to say 10 It's 12 It's 12, are you kidding me It's 12 best picture nominee That's so many You name them

Jaws Yes Raiders Yes Close Encounters Yes Shindler Saving Private Ryan Lincoln

Uh-huh. That's what, six? I'm halfway there. Color purple. Uh-huh. That is six. No, I'm counting. Wait.

You have Jaws, close encounters, Raiders Little Lost Art, Color Purple, Schindler's List, and saying, Private Ryan, that's six. And I said Lincoln, and I said Lincoln as well. Oh, okay, I didn't hear you say, Lindsay. So Lincoln makes seven, E.T. makes eight. Uh-huh. Warhorse makes nine.

Yes. Post makes ten. Yes Bridge of Spies 11 Uh huh What am I missing What am I missing? Not

1941 Not Empire of the Sun We have talked about this movie This episode already All right not oh it's Munich it is Munich 12 yeah wow wild best picture nominees okay so now we're getting into the really fun portion of my game for you I am going to have you I'm going to give you three titles of Spielberg movies you have to rank them from least nominations okay all right in in terms of how many

nominations they got. I'm going to give you the movies alphabetically. You have to put them in order of least to most nominations. Okay. Okay. Starting off with three big ones for you. Okay. I'm giving you Jaws, Jurassic Park, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Okay. Well, Jurassic Park got at most, let's say four. Visual both sounds in like maybe an editing or maybe probably not even cinematography. So I'm going to say Jurassic Park is least. Okay. I'm going to say,

I feel like, like, Jaws got Best Picture nomination, but like, no acting, no directing. I'm going to say Jaws is second least and Raiders as most. Well done, you got it exactly correct. Jurassic Park has three nominations. Jaws only has four

which like and Raiders of the Lost arc has eight what I think is interesting about Jaws only having the four nominations is that famous video of Spielberg freaking out because he doesn't get directed for he doesn't get nominated for best director it's like the movie actually

didn't do all that great well that's why that's why I also that's how I got that because in in that video after he like pitches a fit about him not getting nominated he also is like, but did we get this? Did we get that? Did we get that? And they're like, no, no, no.

So it's like, I knew that like Jaws generally underwhelmed, even with the best picture nomination. Well, with that best picture nomination, it probably speaks to how widely liked that movie was or the power of like what a big blockbuster it was. Jaws, by the way, is a perfect movie. Jaws is great. Jaws is also a great COVID movie. Yes. Holy shit, yes. How many times have you seen that on Twitter? I watched Jaws. the week of Fourth of July, which I normally don't do, but is a tradition.

It's a great Fourth of July. And it was like, as everything was reopening, and I was like, all of these governors, like, local government people need to rewatch Jaws and learn something. You're all the mayor of Amity Island, for Christ's sake. Hi, listeners. Stop going to bars. Yeah. Yes. For God's sake. We'll get on. I want to go to Tiff in 2021. For God's sake, stop going to bars. We're dying inside. The thing about Jaws, though, before we move on to your next ranking, Jaws only had those four nominations, but it won all of them besides Best Picture.

Would it have been, well, there was no competitive visual effects, but did it win, like, a special visual effects? Let me look that up, because I did not include any special awards in any of these, and I'm sure one of them might be. Because I don't know even, like, what the state of the sound awards were back in 1975, I know. All of Jaws' three Oscars were competitive. it only lost best picture. So, yes, that's my little asterix, I guess, I should have said earlier. What were the... None of the awards or mentions that I included in this are special prizes.

Gotcha. Cool, cool, cool. What were the ones that it won? Jaws won for sound, film editing, and original score. There we go. So it, like, wasn't a cinematography nominee. It wasn't a screenplay. Back when sound was one category, just like we're going back to.

Mm-hmm. Very excited to see. never rarely sometimes always and I don't know the wretched nominated for Best Sound this year. Invisible Man, Invisible Man, Invisible Man. Ten movies, that'll be eligible. Anyway, like I said, we're getting off the

soapbox back to the game. Okay, so your next three rankings, again, from least to most nominations, I have for you. Catch Me If You Can, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Munich. Okay. Catch Me If You Can is going to be the because it was, like, infuriatingly not nominated in all sorts of categories that it should have been, including score, and I'm pretty sure it didn't even get, it might have gotten a

costume nomination, but maybe not even that. Like, it got Walkin, but, like, frustratingly little else. What are the other two? Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Munich. Okay. Munich. Speaking of special awards, Catch Me If You Can, should have gotten a special Oscar for its opening credits. Absolutely, it should have.

And again, but the score is such a big part of that. So Munich got picture and director, no acting nominees. I think it got a screenplay nomination and probably like a couple others, but like it wasn't a huge nomination leader, probably somewhere between four and seven. And then, sorry, one more time. What's the other one? Close encounters of the third. So Close Encounters was during that era where Spielberg wasn't getting director nominations.

It did get at least one acting nomination. It probably got sound and editing. So I'm going to say, catch me least Munich second close encounters first. Well done. Exactly right. Catch me if you can. as you said, had two, Munich had five, and close encounters had eight. Yeah, okay. All right. Moving along to the next batch, 1941, The Adventures of Tintin and the Post. Ooh. Post famously only got two, picture and actress. I'm so, 1941 is such a blind spot for me. I've never seen it, and I'm not very conversant in its Oscar successes. And then Tintin.

got like... Hmm. Okay. If the post only got two, and there's no ties in this, I'm going to guess Tintin either got one or three. And three seems like a lot for Tintin. I'm not sure where those three would have come.

So I'm going to say Tintin least, post, second least, the 1941 most. Exactly correct. The Adventures of Tintin had one nomination. The Post had two and 1941 had three. Okay. All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Your next batch of three is Amistad, Hook, and Ready Player One. Okay. Amistad, Hook, and Ready Player One, all of which feel like they would have been one nomination movies, truly. All right, Amistad had Hopkins, and I think one more. I think ready player

one, I think this is another maybe one, two, three. I think ready player one had the least Amistad the second least and and the hook maybe got like three. That's my guess. So you're saying Ready Player One Amistad Hook? Yes. Thought I would have caught you on that.

You are correct. I am impressing myself. Ready player one had one nomination. Yep. Amistad had four. Whoa. And Hook had five nominations. Hook is like one of the better... Can you please tell me the five nominations that Hook got?

Like, not to, like, extend this, but please. I will absolutely look that up right now. While I'm doing that, I am here to tell you that you are actually wrong. His first Best Director nomination was for Closing. It was for... Well, with eight, I imagine that, yes, that was... That whole legacy of him not being nominated for Best Director for a long time. A, that would have made his first Best Director nomination for Raiders of the Lost Ark,

which would be super weird, and I think we would talk about that. Yeah. But it's really just he wasn't nominated for Jaws, and then it got exacerbated when he wasn't nominated for Color Proble. Right, okay. All right. That's the interesting thing about Color Purple still losing all those nominations. It wasn't nominated for director.

Okay. Hook's five nominations, art direction, costume design, visual effects, makeup, an original song for the song when you're alone. No. Yes. I genuinely have no idea what that song is. Hold on. Let me look up the song credits and see who this is the most fascinating thing that when I was doing all of this, when I was looking up all of these songs for, looking up all these movies in his Oscar history, Hook getting five nominations. That's wild.

It's truly the best. It was sung by Amber Scott. Sure. When You're Alone by Amber Scott. I wonder if she performed it on the actual Oscar ceremony. Is it sung by a child? I mean, maybe. Is it like, does it like little daughter sing it or something? God. I guess.

No, yeah, she plays Maggie Banning. Oh, so like the little girl from the movie is the one. At night when I'm alone, I lie awake and wonder. Which of them belongs to me? Which one I wonder? In your nom, then bitter dreams grow, heart locked in the Grand Torino. It beats the lonely rhythm all night long.

I wonder. It sings the song, and it got nominated. Wait, I wonder who wrote it. Now I'm looking it up, too. Oh, it's John Williams did the, did the lyric. Yeah. The music, rather. Wild.

So, Hook is maybe actually the, like, pristine example of Spielberg getting Oscar buzz for just about anything, because Hook is maybe the most reviled movie in his entire filmography, and it got one, two, three, four, five nomination. Wait, can I also give you a little tidbit now that I've also looked this up? The lyricist on that song, Leslie Bracuse, also wrote Goldfinger from the Bond movie and La Jazz Hot from Victor Victoria. Aconic. So clearly the pedigree carried. Was there. Yeah.

Okay. All right. This next batch of three is all Spielberg sequels. I have for you, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusoe. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Oh, you motherfucker. And Jurassic Park, the Lost World. Okay.

Okay. I would believe that the Lost World Jurassic Park would have gotten sound, sound visual. So let's say three there. So Last Crusade, I remember being decently well-received. and I was not old enough to have noticed what the reception for Temple of Doom was. But I do feel like it was seen as a letdown. So I'm going to... Part of the reason we have the PG-13 rating.

Yeah. I'm going to... All right, this is probably going to be the one that I screw up. But, which makes a lot of sense. I'm going to say Temple of Doom leased, last crusade, second least, and lost world the most. No, actually. You did screw this up. Yeah.

Would you like to give it another guess? Is it Crusade least, Doom, second least, Lost World most? Nope. Okay. All right, so the answer is Lost World had one nomination. Oh. Temple of Doom had two, and Last Crusade had three. All right, okay.

All right, so the next one, I have a science fiction grouping for you. AI, artificial intelligence, minority report, and war of the worlds. So, both AI and Minority Report were, again, much like Catch Me If You Can, frustratingly underrewarded. I would argue that all of these were probably underrewarded. Yes, although, I mean, I have my problems with War of the Worlds when we get beyond the visual. I don't love Minority Report the way that everybody loves. Oh, I love Minority Report. Okay.

I think War of the World's got a bunch of texts, though, is the thing. So I'm going to say that Minority Report had the least, AI, the second least, and War of the World's the most. Exactly correct. Minority Report had one, AI had two, and War of the World's had three. Yep, yep, yep. All right, your last ranking option is Bridge of Spies, Empire of the Sun, and War Horse. Okay, Bridge of Spies, Empire of the Sun, and We're hoarse. Empire of the Sun, much like 1941, is a blind spot for me. Empire of the Sun is great.

I keep hearing this. And yet, it's never a thing where I'm like, I want to spend my time in that space. Sure, sure. It's a very long, huge movie, but it's fantastic. Bridge of Spies had Picture and Rylance, and maybe not much more. War Horse had kind of a few, including Picture. I don't think it got a director nomination. I think 2011 was Hazanoviceous, Alan, Malick,

uh, uh, Alexander Payne, and maybe Ben, Bennett Miller Anyway I'm going to say Bridge of Spies the Least War Horse the second least Empire of Sun the Most No would you like to guess again

Bridge of Spies the Least Empire of the Sun's second least Warhorse the most No they all tied for six nominations I hate you you suck I hate this Wait they all had six nominations that's way more than I thought any of them had. Yes.

Wow. Empire of the Sun's the only non-best picture nominee there. Right. Right. Yeah, because Bridge of Spies nomination morning overperformed what people were expecting it to. Right. Okay. And when War Horse didn't get the director nom, people were like, okay, it's not going to win anything.

Right. But also War Horse, I think, was expected to get a lot less than it got nomination-wise. Like, I feel like a lot of people just thought Warhorse was going to get completely left off. Yeah. Anyway. I did, okay, until you, like, brought that bullshit at the end there, I did really well in that game, I have to say. You did very, very well. I had to be evil to you at some point because I am usually nice to you, and you're usually

evil to me during games. Okay. All right. That was a very fun game. I just want to take, before we move on, I have just a little quick bit about the movies that are of his wins. Yes. Can you name his foremost winning films?

Schindler. Yes. Schindler is the most awarded Spielberg film. It won seven Oscars. I mean, Lincoln was nominated for a lot, but, like, didn't really win much, didn't even win screenplay, which was like... Which is, like, how, like, I see that more as a Tony Kushner, like, scripted film than I do, like, attributing it to Spielberg. Yeah. that screenplay is incredible and nobody cares for whatever reason it's funny that

Argo beat it and certain people have never let that grudge go um all right schindler gosh now we get into like raiders et close encounters like how much did they wait i mean all right i'm going to say how many how many of his most of my name naming? You are looking for a movie that won five and two movies that won four. All right. So really, he doesn't have these movies that kind of run the gamut, to be honest. No, no, he doesn't. I'm going to say Raiders is one of them. Raiders won four. Okay, so I need a five and a, and another four? Five and a four. Five and a four. Is E.T. one of them?

E.T. one four. So we need a five. Okay, so Jurassic Park didn't win five. And we saw that Jaws only got nominated for four. So I'm going to say Close Encounters. Nope. Close Encounters has only won one Oscar. I believe it was a cinematography Oscar. So what has won...

It's not a cinematography Oscar. It should have won that, too. Five. Oh, Private Ryan. It's right there. It's Private Ryan. Yes, Saving Private Ryan won five. It was the most awarded movie.

that year did not win best picture Jaws 1 3 can you name his other movie that won 3 Is that Jurassic Park That is Jurassic Park Yeah Lincoln 1 2 you mentioned that Yep

Close Encounters got one Oscar Can you name the three other Spielberg movies that got one Oscar Ooh that got one Oscar Bridge of Spies Yes Two more movies I don't think

War Horse won anything Um two more Did Empire of the Sun win one out of those six nominations? No. No. Color Purple obviously didn't win anything. Oh, Jaws.

No, wait, you said Jaws won three. You did Jaws won three, of course. Jaws won three Oscars, and you have two more movies to guess. I don't know what you're doing there. I don't know what you're doing there. I know you think you're giving me a hint. And yet,

so two more movies that won, one, one, a piece. Yes. And you're saying three, two, ready player one didn't win, did it? No. Okay. Did not. But you're obviously... Thank God.

I hate that movie. I know. That is my least. favorite Spielberg movie. I think it's his worst movie. You're giving me a clue. Oh, 1941? No.

What is this fucking clue you're giving me? I said Jaws won three Oscars, and you're looking for two movies. If everybody listening to this knows what Chris is talking about, and you're screaming at nothing as you're listening to this podcast, I'm so sorry. Love having the listeners on my side. Listen, no, maybe they're just being like, Chris, your hint is insane. It's not insane.

I am giving you such a... I gave you a one, two, three hint. I know. What are the movies that we've talked about? Okay. One of the movies that is his most awarded, it got four Oscars is Raiders of the Lost Ark. Oh, is it Last Crusade? Yes, Last Crusade and...

Temple of Doom. Temple of Doom. Both Last Crusade and Temple of Doom won one Oscar. One Oscar apiece. Sorry, listeners. Sorry that took me so long. Yeah, this is not the roundup of Oscar winners for Spielberg I would have expected. Schindler's List, saving Private Ryan, Raiders of the Lost Dark, E.T, Jurassic Park, Jaws, Lincoln Bridge of Spies.

The Last Crusade, Temple of Doom, and Close Encounters are his own. only scare quotes, movies that have won Austin. I was going to say, oh, only those ones. Poor guy. But it's a weird group of movies. It is. A lot of his best movies won zero Oscars. That's pretty wild. That's my game for you. And I think

that, like, that alone kind of can tell you the Spielberg conversation as far as it relates to the terminal for Oscar and Oscar predictions. Yeah. So, I want to now that we've spent all that time on Spielberg, and rightly so, he's the reason, he's the biggest reason why this movie had Oscar buzz. I need us to downshift into Catherine Zeta Jones for a

second. Because... I always need us to downshift into Catherine Zeta Jones, specifically into, as I refer to it, the Casa Zeta Jones. We're going to settle on into the Casa, and because the terminal is right at the forefront. So, Catherine Zeta Jones, up to the point where she wins for Chicago, she's really on a spectacular upswing where like she breaks through in the mask of Zorro opposite Antonio Banderas It's this very kind of And it's a really

It's a cool breakthrough for her And then the very next year she makes entrapment With Sean Connery Which is why he says Catherine When he hands her her Oscar for Chicago, Catherine And The Oscar goes to

Catherine. Entrapments, super great and fun. She makes The Haunting in 99, which is a disaster, but whatever, that's not, that does not get hung up on her. I like that dumbass movie. She has a really fun little small part in high fidelity,

actually, of all of the like ex-girlfriends. Like, she really pops in that movie. She's phenomenal in traffic. It's a Golden Globe nomination, almost gets an Oscar nomination, probably, deserved an Oscar nomination. And then 2002, she gives an unimpeachably fantastic performance in Chicago. She wins the Oscar running away.

It is a huge high point for her. And at no point during that run, was anybody like, this is bullshity. You know what I mean? Like she's only winning because she's Michael Douglas's wife or whatever. No, none of that. It's not like she's being, she's not being carried on like the wings of superstars. or anything. It is a deserved and perfectly

sensible Oscar win. And then immediately after she makes the most insane string of movies where like it is, we talked about during the Naomi Watts series about like working with the right directors in the wrong time.

We don't talk enough about how Catherine Zeta Jones drove her career into oblivion by doing exactly the same thing, where she's like, what's her Cohen Brothers movie? It's intolerable cruelty. Perhaps their worst movie. I think so. Her Spielberg movie is the terminal. Easily

his worst movie of this whole run. In the conversation for worst movie that he's ever made. Oceans 12, which a lot of people really like, but is a huge both departure and disappointment from Ocean's 11. So like

she hops on that train at the exact wrong time. Legend of Zorro, which is the sequel to, Mask of Zorro that nobody remembers actually happened. Way too late for a sequel for that movie. Critics hated it, but like, that's again, like, it's her Martin Campbell movie. She's like, back with Martin Campbell, does nothing. She goes back with Stephen Frears for, because he had directed High Fidelity, and makes a movie. So, okay, after The Legend of Zorro, it stops being even movies that exist that don't do well. It is no reservations doesn't exist.

Her Stephen Freer's movie is called Lay the Favorite about gambling. Doesn't exist. A movie called The Rebound, directed by Bart Freundlich, Mr. Julianne Moore, doesn't exist. A movie called Death Defying Acts directed by Jillian Armstrong

doesn't exist. A movie called Playing for Keeps doesn't exist. Broken City doesn't exist. The only one in this entire run from 2007 to 2013 that exists is Rock of Ages, which even among disaster musicals nobody chooses to think about anymore because it was so universally just everybody was just absolutely not she sings hit me with your best shot while uh brian cranson

is being spanked with a ruler in that movie it is horrendous she actually does a decent job with the actual performance of hit me with your best shot but like oh i'm sure that she's the best part of the movie she is she is but like that movie is a obnoxious disaster. And I say this as somebody who saw that show on Broadway and had a really good time with it. But like the movie is an unmitigated disaster. And then it's not even till she makes side effects with Soderberg, reuniting with Soderberg. One of her many iconic lesbians. Right. Like side effects is the, it's the point where like she like comes up for air. And but then that doesn't even lead to anything. She only has made two feature films since then, one of which

is Red 2, which, sad. And one of which is, again, another movie that does not exist called Dad's Army, which is a British War comedy. In the midst of all that, she's on Broadway once. She's in the lead role in A Little Night Music. She wins the Tony Award in a famously weak Tony year. Her winning speech is wonderful. She talks about having sex with Michael Douglas.

It is, but also at that Tony Awards, she sings, send in the clowns in one of the most notoriously bad Tony Awards performances that, like, constantly gets brought up. It is, from everything that I've heard from people who saw that production of a little night music, everybody liked her in the actual show, right? I didn't really hear a whole lot of bad word about her. But then she performs really poorly at the Tonys. And then that Tony Awards year, the 2010 Tonys, was the year where she won. Scarlett Johansson won for View from the Bridge. And then Denzel and Viola Davis won for fences. And while nobody was like saying that Denzel and Viola Davis didn't deserve for fences,

that year became very much like Hollywood is taking over the Tony Awards, right? And like that was the story. Because, again, it's a really relatively weak Tony's year. That was the year that, like, Memphis won best musical, and it's not like Memphis was bad, but, like, in terms of, like... Nobody remembers Memphis. Catherine Zeta Jones, I looked it up because it was like, oh, God, what, like, great performance did she beat that, like, everybody's up in arms about. But, like, she beat Cape Baldwin for Finian's Rainbow, which, like, people really liked Finian's Rainbow, but it didn't do very well. It bombed.

Montego Glover for Memphis, who probably should have won, but, like, you can... That was the one that everybody kind of wanted to win at the time. I really loved Christian Null and Ragtime, but again, that Racktime. But again, that ragtime bombed. And then Sherry Renee Scott in Everyday Rapture, which I did not see. Hell yeah. But like Sherry Renee Scott is like the definition of like a niche. Well, and also just like her her sort of fandom is pretty niche, I think.

Yeah. She was playing herself. It was a one woman show. It was a one woman show. Right, exactly. But like, so you see why Catherine Zeta Jones won. But you also, again, with all those other, I think Redmayne also one that you're although Eddie Redmayne wasn't, like, super known as a film actor at this point.

So, like, but the tone of that one afterwards was just like, we got to get, we got to stop giving Hollywood stars all these Tony awards. And it really, since then, the Tonys really kind of have rallied around their own in a way that, like, Hanks doesn't even win for the Nora Ephron play that he did, even though everybody assumed that he was going to win. Philip Sumer Hoffman doesn't win for Death of a Salesman. he loses to James Corden, who at that point was very much a Broadway guy. So Catherine Zeta Jones is almost like the point of no return for Hollywood stars winning Tony Awards. But like, I don't know what are your thoughts and opinions and what do you make of this post-Chicago run for Catherine Zita Jones, where she just never was able to, A, harness that momentum or B, even get back. into things.

I'm honestly just so happy that she has her Oscar for Chicago because it's very much, I mean, like you can say some of this is musicals, but I don't just necessarily mean musicals. It's very much the type of performance that we don't see a lot of because we don't make we, as in you and I sit around making movies, but like the current tastes and the current culture doesn't make movies

that allow for performances like that anymore. And I think that she is one of those performers. A, I mean, it's a lot of sexism and ageism, too, that once you become a woman of a certain age, there's less roles for you. Right. Or, like, less space made for you to perform whatever.

But I think that, like, that type of, not even camp, but, like, broadness and hugeness, there's not a lot of things like that now. And I think she's just that type of performer. Like, we don't have. really Roz Russell anymore. Yeah.

And that's where she is best because I think of even like a movie that I have a lot of fun with like entrapment like that's not really her movie.

She's not really having fun. Like I think the closest thing to the type of screen persona that she is giving in Chicago is maybe Mask of Zorro like in terms of

like what I'm what I'm getting at the type of Yeah. Well, like you can see what the appeal of something like a Rock of Ages was, where it's like, oh, it's another movie where I can sort of hoof it. And, you know, I'm playing. I get this like sort of spotlight moment. Like people forget that Rock of Ages was considered like a prestige product before filming happened. I know. Amy Adams was almost in that movie. It was a big deal that they got Tom Cruise in that movie. Tom Cruise, though. See, Tom Cruise in that movie. wants to be what John Travolta is to Hairspray. And John Travolta is exactly bizarrely what that Hairspray movie needs, whereas Tom Cruise completely sinks the ship that is Rock of Ages, which isn't to say that the rest of Rock of Ages

is great, but like Tom Cruise is the fatal flaw at the heart of that movie that like everything bad sort of radiates from. unmitigated disaster. It's so bad. But like that kind of thing even makes more sense. The thing that doesn't make any sense to me is why is she not at least getting better movies than no reservations lay the favorite playing for keeps? Like why? Why is it all these movies that just absolutely make no impression in the culture? That to me is the most puzzling. I mean, I think it's just that they're not roles that are right for her, whereas, like, a huge portion of the reason why Chicago is as good as it is,

is because she's so perfectly cast and gives a great performance. I mean, you could talk about, like, feud and how Lydia Allen basically wants to murder her. Captain Zeta Jones, we love you. Stay alive. If anything, if anything bizarre should happen, bizarre and unfortunate, we know who did it. But also, like, her performance in feud is sort of like, I feel like we've now settled into this era where, like, Catherine Zeta Jones is well deployed if you have a supporting role that can go very campy. Because I think that's also where her side effects character succeeds so well. is it's so, it's just like, but it's so much like scheming lesbian doctor that like it's a throwback.

Kelly also scheming iconic lesbian. That's true. Yeah, the contributions that Catherine Zeta Jones has made to queerish cinema are definitely, definitely recognized, definitely should be recognized. What I almost wonder is like if it is even a. aside from Chicago and like that level of what type of performer she is, if this would all maybe be different had she gotten the nomination for traffic and had people considered her seriously as like a serious dramatic actress. Maybe she would have gotten more roles like what she gets to do in traffic. It just, I have a hard time believing that she's, that she at least wasn't getting offers, getting the offers in, let's say, the. rest of the aughts. Like, I can see where, like, now she's probably not getting the offers. But, like, I have to imagine that in, like, that stretch of, like, 2007 to 2012, when she made no

reservations and the rebound and lay the favorite and death-defying acts, like, she had to have been offered. Because, like, even in those movies, she could be giving, like, a-plus level performances, and no one would know, because, like, those movies barely got released. right it's just it's so puzzling to me and like you look at like she won her Oscar the same night that Nicole Kidman won her Oscar they both you know they both had kids from there they both sort of like you know had to negotiate their careers around also being mothers and that whole kind of thing and like Nicole has made definitely her share of you know odd choices and not all of them work but like and I mean I guess it's unfair to sort of like stack anybody up against Kidman because, like, Kidman has navigated her career probably better than anybody else. Well, Nicole Kidman also had, like, the type of roles that she's still doing now, she had that kind of as a foundation in her choices and her roles before her Oscar win, too.

And I don't think that's true of Catherine's Hades Jones. Yeah, Catherine's Oscar comes, like, she's, she makes, Catherine's Oscar, comes after a surprisingly few. Like, by the time she wins for Chicago, she's an A-lister. But, like, she had really only made five movies or so that anybody had ever seen by that point. Traffic, high fidelity, mask of zero entrapment. And I guess, I guess the haunting in America's sweetheart, so six. But, like, the haunting and America's sweethearts are both, like, big disasters. Well, in America's Sweethearts, too, is, like, the role she's playing is very villainous. So I wonder if that had some, like, perception issues there.

I don't know. But again, all of that... Sorry, go ahead. No, I was going to say. Say your point. Well, all of that leads up to Chicago, and Chicago is such a peak that it feels like whatever happened before Chicago, Chicago still happened. So, you know, coming off of that, it's just...

People talk about, I think, incorrectly, this idea of an Oscar curse or whatever, that actresses who win Oscars are cursed with their careers sort of like downshifting. And I think part of that is that the kinds of roles they get offered change and the kinds of roles that they accept change. But like, I've never seen quite so stark a plummet from an actress as a listy as Catherine Zita Jones. You can make the argument for up until last year. you could make the argument for Renee Zellweger.

You could. Yes, I think that's the other one. It's the, wow, maybe Chicago's cursed. Yeah. Truly only Christine Beranski was able to go on the upswing from Chicago. And like Lucy Lou. Yeah. What else to talk about?

Can we talk about her in the terminal a little bit to bring it back? Yes. I think she's legitimately terrible in this movie, but she's also playing. It's a horrid character. Bonkers character. It's a terribly... Makes no sense. Underwritten, given the most stock motivation, where she's, you know, the love Lorne stewardess, dating a married man.

I know I should leave him, but yada, yada, yada. And played by Michael Norey, by the way, who I know was in Flashdance, but I still know him best as Summer's dad from the O.C. And also as what's his name, Ron Rifkin's boyfriend from brothers and sisters. Anyway, I think, first of all, this movie is two hours and ten minutes long. I think the movie maybe gets actively better and makes, like, it's more palatable if her character just isn't in the movie. I don't understand why this character, in the circumstances he is in, has to have a love story. I was going to say this, it feels very much shoehorned in to the idea because it's not like he ends up with her. It's not, the movie is not a love story.

It's just a subplot that somebody along some point was like, well, you got to have a love interest. And she gets introduced pretty late into the movie relatively and relative to most of the other characters. And it was evident that the audience didn't really like her character. there was a in test screenings of the movie there was a completely different ending where they like go off into the city together and the audience was like don't need it cut yeah don't need her let him go to the ramada by himself yeah let me go cry and listen to some jazz just listen to some sad jazz at a hotel bar yeah i i feel bad i agree with you that i don't think she's very good in this movie but like it is her fault it's an impossible character to make work.

The movie comes to a dead halt whenever we have to deal with this love story. One million percent, absolutely. And, like, it even makes these, like, sort of half-hearted, like, you know, at some point, she has to find out, for whatever reason, they decide that they're going to keep it secret

from her that he's a refugee living in the airport. And then, A, for no reason. But, like, no reason other than the fact that, like, the movies have decided that, like, all romances need to have an element of deception in them at all times so that she can find out that he's not a traveling businessman independent contractor, that he's a political refugee,

and that's supposed to make her like angry? Like she gets like this like momentarily angry. It's just like, oh, men lie. And it's such a inconsequential blip. It gets papered over so quickly. But like to the point where it's just like, well, why was she even mad in the first place, it's not a thing you get mad about. Why was he lying about it in the first place? It's such a contrivance. It's such a, again, I keep bringing this up. It's like somebody wrote this while like skimming the index of a screenwriter manual of just like, you need to have this, you got to have that, and it's just, none of it feels organic at all. Yes, I fundamentally agree with all of it. Like, all of the script problems are like in their

prototype under her character and it would save us 20 minutes from the movie. She's really not in it that much. No. She got second billing above the title for this. Because it's her big post-Oscar movie. Mm-hmm. Working with Spielberg. Tom Hanks. She's the love interest.

Yep. I don't know. I felt bad for her watching. No, I did too. I did too. Should we mention Tom Hanks a little bit? I know that we're like... We're pushing it. We've been here for a minute. Yeah. I don't know if there's that much to say for Tom Hanks beyond the performance.

What's interesting maybe about it is that it is, like, as we mentioned with De Niro a few weeks back, it's in that gap, that long gap between his nominations, but I don't think anybody was really clamoring for it. I'm a little tiny bit surprised that he wasn't Globe nominated

for it, but like the Globes didn't really, like, it's not like it was a Globe's musical comedy year where they were scraping the barrel for nominees. Like, even Spacey, who's in Beyond the Sea, which I haven't seen and you say is terrible, at least got that musical distinction. So it's like that nomination was never not happening probably.

Of the Hank's performances post-castaway that I would have rode hardest for for him to get a nomination, road to perdition, catch me if you can. Captain Phillips. Yeah, Captain Phillips. Like the terminal does not make that list. Yeah, I think those are those is a big ones. A lot of people really love him in Bridge of Spies. I think he's, of course, very good in Bridge of Spies, but probably not.

A lot of people fucking love Sully. I still don't understand it. Sully is a nightmare. And I would have nominated him for the post. I think he's phenomenal in the post. But yeah, the terminal does not approach those levels of, you know, justice for Tom Hanks. I'm not going to, I'm not going to campaign for Victor Nivorski as one of the great Tom Hanks rolls. I'm just not going to do it.

Also, like, in terms of, like, the wider failure of this movie, it actually didn't quite bomb in the way we maybe think of it now in terms of being this big Spilberg bomb, like box office-wise. It's in the range of the post and Bridge of Spies. It's certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, which shocked me. I mean, there's several movies have hit. I mean, Hook is his, I think, lowest on Rotten Tomatoes. The Lost World is even less than this movie is on Rotten Tomatoes. I will say, and, like, Ebert gave this three out of four stars. Like, a lot of critics really loved it.

Even, like, kind of, like, I was surprised that, like, Kenneth Turan has a fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and all this stuff. Of course, Rex Reed loved it. But if you were to give me the choice of watching The Terminal ever again versus watching Hook, for like the 17th time or whatever, I would absolutely watch Hook every single time. No, fully. 100%. Like, I could probably, you know, objectively, hook has a ton of problems and probably deserves its reputation,

but like every single time I would choose Hook over this movie. Gwyneth Cameo. Should we move on to the IMDB game? Let's. All right. Explain what the IMDB game is to our listeners, new and old. Sure. Every week we end our episodes with the IMDB game where we challenge each other with an actor or actress to try and guess the top four titles that IMDB says they are most known for.

If any of those titles are television or voiceover work, we mentioned that up front. After two wrong guesses, we get the remaining titles release years as a clue, and if that is not enough, it just becomes a free for all of hints. And eat to bites. Quivvy should have been called eat to bite. You fucked up, Quibi. Only in that way did you fuck up, Quibi. Literally just that name.

Would you like to give or guess first? I'll give first. Why not? What do you have for me? So I went down the Jeff Nathanson Root screenwriter for this film. We mentioned that before this film he did catch me if you can for Steven Spielberg. But his first notable, truly notable film screenwriting credit was on the seminal 1997 action sequel speed to cruise control.

Bring me Jason Patrick. No, no, we've already alighted the Jason Patrick thing. That film did star Jason Patrick and Sandra Bullock, but the villain in that film was, of course, as we all remember, Willem Defoe. So give me Willem Defoe is known for.

Oh, cuddly little bug. Only you, Yamaniac, would say that Willem DeFoe is a cuddly little bug. Okay. I mean, the Florida Project come on like that is his cuddly little bug performance among the cuddliest man fine i mean depending on what you're into you could cuddle up to him in the lighthouse okay all right um okay um the question is what or of his oscar nominations will be in there willam defoe stealthily amassing

an amy adams-esque uh will he ever win resume he uh he's got a lot of oscar nominations especially Lest we forget, he got nominated for At Eternities Gate. Indeed, he's a four-time Oscar nominee, so there's already more Oscar nominations than there are, or there's exactly as many Oscar nominations. There are slots. I'll get it out of the way and say Spider-Man. Indeed, Spider-Man 2002 is the first of his known for. Platoon.

Platoon's got to be in there. His first Oscar nomination is not one of his known for. Damn. It's got to be because he's one of the, I think he's lower billed, right? No. Than sheen? Yeah. Hmm.

The Wes Anderson stuff shows up for everybody. I think he's in the Grand Budapest Hotel. Is he in the Grand Budapest Hotel? Yeah, he is. Grand Budapest Hotel. It's a very good guess, but that is also wrong. So that's two wrong guesses, so you're going to get years. Your years are 2017, 2018, and 2019.

Oh, well, there you go. Okay. Why is At Eternity's Gate on there? I don't know, but it is. That's so stupid. It's so stupid. I mean, he's first built. Probably all of the photos have him tagged.

Yeah. Again, you try to figure out the algorithm, and the algorithm will fight you at every turn. yeah uh well 2017 is the florida project and 2019 has to be the lighthouse indeed you have got them all the florida project and the lighthouse it is kind of shocking that his known for is so heavily recent and yet doesn't have something like aquaman which was both like popular and well known do you know what i mean but also it doesn't that i i would have he's got to be like eighth build in aquaman though. That is true. But you guessed Grand Budapest, the West Anderson, I would have probably guessed would have been

the Life Aquatic, but like neither one of those. He's a voice in both Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, kind of surprised. Not that. Like his filmography is, first of all, so satisfying because there's every type of movie in this.

Like he's... Telling you, if the Florida Project came at the end of this run, instead of the beginning, he would be an Oscar winner. I mean, the Florida Project, he's only had the one nomination since. I guess what you're saying is if the Florida Project and Ad Eternity's Gate flipped years, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, the thing about the Florida Project ran into this brick wall of everybody came around on Sam Rockwell all at once, and, you know, whatever, I'm not going to get into the three billboards discussion. People had problems with the actual movie of the Florida Project, too, just the bleakness. of it. Yeah, but it's surprising that because he's such an antidote to that bleakness in that movie, it would have made a lot of sense for people to have latched on. I think, honestly, I think not enough people saw that movie.

I think if more people had seen that movie. It's actually smaller than it seemed. Age 24 had other priorities that year. Right. Yeah, 824 was real spoilt for choice. I don't think I sobbed at anything, at any TIF, like I sobbed at that goddamn movie. I love the Florida Project, and I am probably not. in like the top

20 percentile of people who love that movie like people fucking adore that movie it is I saw it at the TIF premiere I was literally across the aisle from Willem Defoe and Brooklyn Prince I was like when they came out I was like oh I'm toast I'm toast I'm gonna

I'm gonna weep my face off it's fine All right well well done well done on Willemdef All right for you instead of the writing I actually went to the cast route the large ensemble. I knew that Diego Luna would be exactly your

type of afternoon snack. So I went with his yank buddy from Itumama Tambien. For you, I have Gael Garcia Bernal. His yank buddy from Itumama Tambian and possibly more. We don't know what happened in that cut masterpiece. That movie's incredible.

Cut to them lying in bed, draped over each other at the end. I fucking love that movie so much. Okay, Gail Garcia Bernal. Okay. There is one television. what is oh um Mozart in the jungle that's so chaotic globe winner Mozart I was like wait a second what did Kyle Garcia and Bernaldi on television that's it that's the one okay um is I too Mametambia be on one of them yes okay good it should be um

god he's such a cutie patuti that one isn't he um is Bad Education, one of them? No. Should be. His best performance. He is so great. His... Should have been a best actor nominee.

You know, I am a connoisseur of butts in movies, and that is a great one. Definitely a butt in a movie. Definitely a great moment in But Cinema is Gail Garcia Bernal, both in underpants and out in mid-education. Looking like Julia Roberts when he's in drag. That's true. It's because they both have that lip thing where they don't have the divot in the middle of their upper lip. I'm not the one who made that distinction. I remember Pedro Al Motivar saying he looks like Julia Roberts when he was doing interviews for that movie. That's cool. All right. So not that. I'm trying to think of if there's a lot of like anglicized, Americanized stuff. But like he really hasn't done a ton of, you know, crossover stuff, actually.

So I'm going to guess, like, motorcycle diaries. Yes. Okay. So what, do I have two? I have three. You have three. You have one wrong guess. Okay.

Waiting one more title. Will me not guessing the crime of Father Amaro make Salmajaheke angry, do you think? Do you think she'll, like, sneer somewhere where she is and not know why? Germany for nowhere in Africa. God, what's the title of that movie? It's not going to be this one. But, like, that title of the movie where it's him and Kate Hudson on the poster, sort of, like, smiling.

She's, like, very much, like, smizing at the camera. That movie only exists in poster form. I've never, I don't know a single soul who has seen it. And it's only the one voice, so it's not him in... Trying to find what this movie is. I don't know if I can... Just look up Gail Garcia-Bernal, Kate Hudson, and do an image search, and it's got to come up.

Okay. While I try and wonder, what? There's a lot of things that you can still guess. I know. I'm going to guess because I think this came up on a recent one for somebody else. I'm going to guess letters to Juliet. No.

Fuck. That is wrong. Also, the movie with him and Kate Hudson on a poster that is also not a movie, it is just a poster, is titled A Little Bit of Heaven. Sure, a little bit of heaven. Okay, so I've got two wrong answers, though. Yes, your year

is 2000. Oh, so pre, oh, it's got to be Amores Peros. There we go. A movie about dog fighting children. That is dying. Yeah. That is like early, that's like

the canary in the coal mine for Iniaritu, right? Where it's just like, you should know what's what kinds of things are coming if you watch amores peros huge like international hit movie that i did not that was another one is that another one where the narrative is chopped up into um and like rearranged or am i wrong about that yes it's three different stories that all like intersect and its different timelines yeah i didn't love it i didn't love the experience of watching it you could see where there's like you know um you know, accomplished stuff happening, but I didn't love it. That's it. That's it. That is our episode. If you want more of ThisHad Oscar Buzz,

you can check out the Tumblr at this had oscarbuzz.tumler.com. You should also follow our Twitter account at had underscore Oscar underscore Buzz. Joe, tell our lovely listeners where they can find more of you. See me on Twitter at Joe Reed. Read is spelled R-E-I-D. Also find me on letterboxed. Joe Reed, read spelled the exact same way.

And I am also on Twitter. you can find me in Terminal B-24 at Chris V-File, that's F-E-I-L, also on Letterbox, under the same name. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork and David Gonzalez and Gavin Medius for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, wherever else you get your podcasts. Five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcast visibility, so please give us the green stamp and not the red stamp. That's all for this week, and we hope you'll be back to next week for more buzz. Bye. Losing my timing this late in my career.

And where are the clowns? There ought to be clowns. Well, maybe. East Ye