This Had Oscar Buzz - 216 – Snowden

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

Welcome all our new CIA listeners, because this week we are talking about 2016′s Snowden. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as controversial whistleblower Edward Snowden, the film follows Snowden’s journey through exposing the surveillance state and his exile to Russia, all while maintaining his relationship with girlfriend Lindsay Mills (played by Shailene Woodley). With Oliver Stone at … Continue reading "216 – Snowden"

Uh-oh, wrong house. No, the right house. No, I didn't get that! We want to talk to Marilyn Hacks. I'm from Canada, Water. Very happy. Thank you. You ready for a little action?

Oh, this looks juicy. How is this all possible? Think of it as a Google search, except instead of searching only what people make public, we're also looking at everything they don't. Emails, chats, SMS, whatever. Yeah, but which people? The whole kingdom's not white.

The NSA is really tracking every cell phone in the world. Most Americans don't want freedom. They want security. People, they don't even know they've made that bargain. Are they watching us? There's something going on inside the government that's really wrong, and I just can't ignore it. Hello, and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, the only podcast that thinks you killed our goat. 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. your host, Joe Reed. I'm here, as always, with the snow white to my rest of the snow white metaphor. Chris Fial. Oh, Chris. Quite the half-ass snow-white metaphor at that. And yet, it keeps on going. I mean, they, it was like they portrayed it like it's supposed to be this metaphor, but really, if they called him snow white, it's just like toxic masculinity, right? It's just dudes trying to be like, hey, woman. I will say, first of all. Their male compatriots. Yes. I will say, and you know I love Lil Ben Schnitzer,

so I will give him credit for going for it. Like, if that's the chicken shit that they give you, then at least, you know, keep on, keep on keeping on with it. Our second Ben Schnitzer, which I don't think this is our... How many Joseph Gordon Levits have we done? It's only like two or three, actually, because it was a Zewak and

hold on Oh, that's right We did do Zawak Yes, we sure did Yeah, so it's only our second Joseph Gordon-Levett Yeah, our second Only our second Melissa Leia

Which is actually maybe even more surprising I mean we are inherently a Melissa Leo podcast Because we are a podcast That is carrying on the image Of her Consider campaign Well, yes, We hold that campaign in our hearts

Pretty much constantly Intrinsic to the blood of this favorite podcast Yeah, exactly We will definitely talk about the kind of Wide-ranging cast of this movie At some point, because it is Sort of the typical Oliver Stone Cast a Wide Net,

You know, get a lot of name actors or whatever And we'll talk about the various sort of successes and I don't know if there's anybody who's too terribly bad in this, although apparently the Razzie's disagreed, but we'll get into that at some point. Before we get into Snowden, though, I wanted to take a little time and enjoy the view, but also talk about the New York Film Festival, which I attended, though not as robustly as I would have liked this past few weeks. Of course, as you may know, the New York Film Festival, Festival takes its dang time and runs from essentially late September through mid-October

and starts its press screenings even earlier than that. So it's in many ways kind of a month-long sort of leisurely expanse of movie screenings, which A, makes it very hard for somebody to cover it from out of town. Our beloved friend, and past and future, soon future guest, Katie Rich, managed to drop into town and see a heroic, I would say, amount of movies in a very short amount of time. And I give her a ton of credit for that. But in general, it takes a while. And so you can't like take a week off of work like you could for TIF and just sort of binge a bunch of movies and then you've seen all the TIF movies. With New York Film Festival, you have to sort of like, It's almost like death by a thousand cuts in terms of like taking time away where it's just like, I got to be out for this morning and this afternoon and this morning. And my work situation didn't super allow that for me this year. And also I was feeling sick for a portion of this. So it was...

How dare you be a responsible citizen and stay home if you're sick? Oh, it wasn't even like COVID-y-sick stuff. It was like stomach-y-stick stuff. Regardless, regardless. You are, you are a concerned citizen not wanting to give whatever sickness you had. This is true. To anyone. This is true.

So I had to miss a bunch of stuff that I was really excited to see. I had to miss, she said, which just recently premiered at New York Film Festival. I had to miss, which is relevant to this, this movie that we're talking about today, Laura Poitras is All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. Tiff, one of my favorite movies of the year. I know. So now I've gone through two film festivals where I've missed all the beauty in the bloodshed, which is like a real bummer because I am very excited to see it.

I had to miss Kelly Records showing up, and Paul Schrader's Master Gardner, and Claire Denise stars at noon. Which I saw last night, by the way, everybody who ate it in a can is wrong. Oh, okay. It's a rad movie. I mean, it feels predictable. Take that can, people. It feels utterly predictable.

that like, you know, the second wave crowd gets to see it and of course there are notable defenders for it, myself included, but like, it's a good movie. And it's also pretty fucking straightforward for Claire to need. Like, I don't understand.

How long is it? How long? It is her longest movie. It's like two hours and 15 minutes. So... You can rent it right now on iTunes. By the time this episode comes out, be on Hulu. Chris and I are currently in the midst of a project for something that we can't talk about right now, but it was requiring us to watch catch up on a lot of movies that are

very, very, very, very long. Like, very, very long. Like, I was going through the spreadsheet about it, and I sort of made a little... I should add that to the spreadsheet. I actually, I'll do it, because I made a copy of the spreadsheet for myself, and I added those in. And a lot of it is like 190 minutes 220 minutes and it's just like these are like this isn't just like your usual like two hours and change kind of stuff

I'm telling you the the 220 that I think you're referencing you really got to try to see it in a theater and I'm sure you can I missed one yesterday I'll say that because I the concept of

sitting in a place for more than three hours and almost four hours, I really got to trust that that theater's got comfortable seats or else, like, I'm going to ruin my week. Well, not to, like, get people to know what movie we're talking about, but, like, you'll get an intermission. They do, it's programmed with an intermission. Still, still and still.

We'll talk about it off, off mic. But anyway, New York Film Festival. So what I did see, I saw a strong five. And, but I will say, I really liked, I at base was interested in all five. And four of the five I thought were really good. So the one I thought was the least good. We'll start with that one. Um, uh, Don DeLillo's not for me. I think I have decided. So I was a little nonplussed by white noise. And I love Noah Bomback. I love especially Noah Baumack and Greta Gerwig. And, and. Adam Driver in tandem. And Driver is very good. I think Gerwig is very good. I've seen some reviews that have sort of pointed her out as a weak spot, and I don't

think I would agree with that. I think it's the source material that I'm just like, it's so... I don't know. I don't want to talk about it too much since you haven't seen it. But it's... You've seen Cosmopolis, though, right? Yeah. So you sort of like...

get the vibe, right, of this sort of like, I'm going to be saying big things about like the way we are and what, you know, humanity is, is doing. And I'm going to do it in the most elliptical and portentious way possible. And I appreciate it. And if people are like into that, I give you all the credit in the world. I find it a little tedious and I find it a little alienating. And I don't know. I sort of throw in the white flag at that point. I also feel like, just in general, this being Netflix's late December release, that, and I have to imagine the people of Netflix have realized this by now. Like, this is not the Oscar horse that you were looking for if you are Netflix going into an award season where they have remarkably

fewer Oscar contenders than they have in years past. They've been on a streak of... And fewer well-liked ones. Well, but even just in general, like, even just like what they're coming to the table with is a lot fewer. And, like, they're running on a streak of several years in a row with two Best Picture nominees, you know, per year since the, uh, since the Roma year?

Was there a second one? The very least since 2019, 2019, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20. 2021, I think they've all had multiple Best Picture nominees. And it ain't going to happen this year. I still feel like Bardo could happen, but it's going to take a kind of wholesale rejection of the critical consensus about that movie, which is possible. Like, that does happen. I'm going to like that movie.

I'm just warning everyone right now. I haven't seen it either. The signs point to it not being the kind of thing that I would like, but who knows? Hope Springs Eternal. But I was, everybody I've talked to after I've seen white noise and sort of, we've all sort of have, I think I've gotten mostly agreement that like white noise is not going to be a huge Oscar contender. The one that seems to continue to stand out now and I really hope that they push is Glass Onion because people have seen it. It's their best bat. People have liked it.

It is a huge crowd pleaser. it will require sort of reversing the angle on the Oscar narrative of Knives Out, which is like, oh, it's just a screenplay movie. But the goods are there. And I'm really, really hoping that Netflix decides to really heavily put their chips onto Glass Onion, because a Best Picture nomination is possible. Acting nominations are possible in addition to things like the craft aspects of the movie, which are tremendous, I think, in terms of art direction and costume design.

And so I'm hoping that that is the case, but we'll see. If people can shut the hell up about the movie and stop ruining it bit by bit for the people who haven't seen. I know. Listen, I understand why the Angela Lansburyness of it all got leaked. I don't even know if it was leaked. Like, it really seems like Netflix put it out there. Major publications were running it, were running headlines of it. Right.

It was, it was with, it seemingly felt like it was with Netflix's blessing. And I get it because all of us, like, there's, because Angela Lansbury died, you don't want to maybe play a gotcha with somebody who just died.

And like, I get it. Sure. But. At least the context in which she appears is not really getting spoiled, because that is, too good to spoil like yeah yeah we won't we won't talk about it further um what else did you see it in new york so in terms of what you have also seen i saw after sun which my is maybe my favorite movie of the year so far i don't want to sort of start locking things

into place but it is definitely up there it's incredibly up there and it's opening the week of this episode at least in limited release or it will have opened and it's a small movie and And so listeners were about to be very effusive about this movie. Please give it your dollars. Like, it's going to have, I think, a tricky theatrical road. This is the, it's a debut film from Charlotte Wells, right? I believe. Debut feature.

Debute feature. Written and directed by Charlotte Wells, produced by Barry Jenkins. You're going to hear a lot about people being like, oh, I spent the last half of that movie in tears. And it's like, it's true. But, like, this is not a difficult movie to watch. this is not something that is going to like ruin your week after you watch it. I found it like, yeah, I was in tears too, but I found it incredibly, um, sort of affirming. I would say it's probably very cathartic about things that we in everyday life do not have

catharsis about. And that's one of the things that makes it very special. Well, it's sort of a memory movie, uh, not even sort of, it's a memory movie. To me, if I were to give like an elevator pitch or whatever, uh, it's to be, At risk seeming a little bit trite, I walked out of it being like, oh, it's somewhere meets Fun Home meets something Scottish. And like in all the best ways, and you know how much I love somewhere. And I also love Fun Home. And there are aspects of both in there.

Paul Muscal, who plays a divorced father of a teenage, tweenage, how old is she in this? Burgeoning teenager, about to be teenager. Right, young daughter, and they're on vacation in Turkey, and it's this sort of leisurely thing where they don't really have, you know, there's not really a ton of plot necessarily, but the emotional terrain that is being covered in a very like not fraught way is really really something it's very delicate it's very

slowly the stakes of what you've been watching come into focus and you know it I wouldn't use a word like abstract but like there are some you know unique formal strokes that are being taken in this movie that have a real impact on the emotional effect of this movie.

Yeah. I've heard from some people that they were like, I didn't get it, I didn't know what I was watching in some of this, and I don't kind of understand that, but to like be prepared to use a little bit of your brain to understand the movie. But like it's not a pretentious movie.

No, this is the thing I wanted to talk to you about, though, with regards to this movie, which is, in terms of, the, in terms of Oscar context, and the kinds of things that we talk about, is you get a movie like After Sun, which I have seen overwhelmingly received positively at the film festivals that it's appeared at, from Cannes to, uh, was it at Venice or, okay, Can to Toronto to now New York Film Festival. I've seen... Telluride, too. It showed up as a sneak preview at Telluride.

So most, the grand majority of people seem to really, really like this movie. And yet, throughout its festival run, it has been received as a non-entity in the Oscar conversation, right? It's great. It's not going to be an Oscar movie. How does this happen? And what is to be done about it? Because, like, I just, it's so, it's one of those things. It's frustrated.

I mean, I sometimes take that kind of thing for granted because it's like, oh, yeah, like, there are just some movies. that are outside of, you know, the Oscar conversation. And I sort of paused with this one. And I was like, but why? Like, I don't understand why. And it's part of it as I guess A24 has its priorities elsewhere. Scale number, the number of unknowns, though, like, the production team is Barry Jenkins and Adel Romance. So, like, what else do you need?

I think, and I know that, like, when you hear, like, a certain level of, like, everybody doing advocacy to make sure that movies sell tickets like we were at the top of describing this movie. I know that gets annoying, but like, that's ultimately what this movie would need to probably get into that type of conversation. It would need a lot of people seeing it, a lot of people loving it, and a lot of people reacting to it. And I guess the idea is that nobody seems to feel like that's going to happen, so might as well just sort of push your efforts into other things campaign-wise? I mean, it, A, 824 is basically doing a fire sale of all of their product right now, stars at noon, for example.

So this movie is lucky that it's getting an exclusive theatrical release. Well, and at the same time, they're going full court press for everything everywhere all at once, which seems like it's poised to pay off in some pretty big ways. It's a long season, so we don't know for sure. but um so like i get that like small studios with financial interestingness um have to you know pick their battles but it's just a bummer that like we all seem to be in agreement that like this is a really really great movie and it's the best it can do is like show up on top ten lists like i will be even surprised if this ends up getting

critics awards which is too bad because paul moscow deserves Paul Muscle is one of the best performances of the year and everybody's like wow this best actor year sucks this best actor year sucks and I'm like you've got to be kidding me what is wrong with you people connect these dots I'm at least hopeful that Charlotte Wells gets some attention in first filmmaker awards

or you know something like that because I don't know it's very much deserving so go see it go see Afterson for Pete's sake and then talk to us about it I Sautar I'm going to wait to talk to you about TAR until you've seen it. I'm possibly seeing it on Tuesday.

Yeah. We'll push that. There will be plenty of occasion to talk about TAR because this movie is going to definitely be a player in award season. So we'll talk about it. I think it's a really, really good movie, and yet there is some little thing in me that is not as effusive as everybody else, and I genuinely don't understand what my problem is. You've had a busy few weeks.

you maybe just needed more space around. I also, like, while I watched that movie, was, like, coming to, like, big personal crescendos in my, like, I was thinking about a lot of things as I was watching Tars. So, like, maybe that was it. That's also not a bad thing. Well, but I think in the, I think in the case of me, maybe finding room in my heart for enthusiasm for this movie, maybe it was, it was a lot to ask. Anyway, we're all people, we're all human beings.

We watch movies in our own little personal tempests, and the world is an unexplainable place. Bones and all. I saw the bones. I saw the bones. All of the bones. All the bones and the bloodshed. I really liked it. I'm excited for you to see this as well.

Can't wait to see this movie. I think I'm going to like this movie. Taylor Russell and Timmy Chalamee are really, really fantastic. Mark Rylance, I said when I saw this movie, exists in this movie within the Rose the Hat cinematic universe, and I will stand by that. He's on one for sure. Which is my only reservation,

because I have, this is going to be the movie that fully tips me over into the edge if it doesn't work for me of I hate Mark Rylens. It could do that. Because he's so bad in so many movies. How many times did you see him on stage? anything. Huh?

How many times have you seen him on stage in anything? An absolute zero. Okay. I've only seen him one time, but it was in Jerusalem and he was phenomenal. And so, like, I feel like he's almost earned a lifetime pass for me for that. So, but you're not wrong about the film performances. And I'm not fully optimistic that Bones and all is going to change it for you. But, you know, who knows?

It's, Luca's going all in on this kind of, you know, cannibal romance and I think it's really good and it can be really romantic and also very gross and also in at least one instance incredibly sexy in a way that

I feel bad for finding it sexy so that's all I want out of a Luca Guadanino movie as far as I'm concerned and then the last movie I saw was James Gray's Armageddon time which is proving to be a little bit more divisive than I thought

it would be actually. Given the logline, I was like, I can probably tell you exactly how this is going to be divisive. It is divisive in exactly that way. It's a sort of memoir movie about James Gray's childhood growing up in Queens. The young character in this has a somewhat, like, I wouldn't say fraught home life, but like it's a home life that sort of belies any kind of notions of, you know, nostalgic purity or whatever it's also a movie that has surprise Trump illusions I say surprise because I had totally forgotten that that's a conversation

when it played a kid that's who Jessica Chastain plays but also that a major part of the movie is young not James Gray but James Gray befriends a young black kid at his school at his public school that he goes to, and then he transfers to a private school, and there is a sort of paralleling of experience between what happens to a young white kid who gets in trouble in that time, and a young black kid who gets in trouble at that time. And there have been people who don't feel like Gray carries off the burden of that responsibility to tell that story very well.

I don't agree, but I'm really curious to see it because it also sounds like it's not just his own personal examination or just exclusively this white guilt movie, but also examining his experience in the Jewish faith and the Jewish tradition. And that is more so the emphasis of what he's trying to examine in terms of this. Right. Well, and it's also about how our parents can fail us and how. our older generations can endure horrific things and yet fail to connect the dots or or or not be able to as successfully as we want them to be able to connect the dots to what's happening to other people and it's a really interesting movie i think it's a tremendous interesting movie i think in terms of oscar stuff i wouldn't be shocked

If there's a successful Anthony Hopkins supporting actor campaign, he's a very, he's good. And it's also a very sort of Oscar-friendly, very sympathetic role. It's very much like the character you like best in the movie. He has a couple good monologues. He serves an interesting parallel to what Judd Hirsch does in the Fableman's, not in the same tenor, not in the same pitch, but like, function. there are parallels and it would be interesting to see them both nominated

in the same category. So that was my New York Film Festival experience. I wish it had been more. Like I said, I had heard encouraging things about she said, which I was sort of trepidacious about going into showing up the Kelly Rockert movie

isn't going to show up until next year. So we'll push that conversation to next year. I was really surprised to see basically no conversation around the Kelly Reichert. I think people seem to like it. From everything that I saw on Twitter and from people who had seen it, they seemed to like it. People could also just be saving their energy, too. I'm not sure if Master Gardner is going to open this year or...

Doesn't have distribution yet. Okay. So that'll also probably, as is the Paul Schrader way lately, movie screens at a festival and then it opens early in the next year. So, If I can shout out a movie that I saw recently that played New York Film Festival, but I missed at TIF. I served on another film festival jury. I served on the Hot Springs documentary film festival jury where we gave our critics prize to DeHumani Corporus Fabrica. Oh, this is the body horror documentary. Basically. It's a documentary that they filmed throughout several French hospitals, emphasis on,

the body and the bureaucracy of hospitals. All the body and the bureaucracy is the subtitle. All the beauty and the bureaucracy. We, you know, there's a lot of footage inside the body while all of these surgeries are happening. You're seeing a lot of dramatic body experiences, but it's also... I'm doing the Isabel Huper at the round table, just like frowning and shaking. shaking my head and saying, no. You know, I thought I would be, I was like slack-jawed for half the movie, but I wasn't

like stomach turned. Sure. But it, you know, it's a really kind of brilliant transfixing movie that makes you kind of think about your mortality. I was kind of describing it as, you know, we talk so much about like death and the degradation of the human body and we think that God is indifferent. I think this is a movie that doesn't, that says, God is not indifferent. system is indifferent to your body's suffering.

But it was also really funny. There's like a dick surgery happening where the surgeons are having a full-blown argument in the middle of it, and I could not help but laugh. Probably not an Oscar player, but it would be amazing if it was in the dock race. I would live. Then I'd have to see it, though. And it sounds like it would freak me out. On a, on a hypochondrial level, I feel like it would, it would do damage to me.

Adventurous listeners, seek it out. Okay. All right. Let's move back into the gentleman of the hour, Edward Snowden. If you are ready with a plot description, I feel like now is no time like the present to do that. I should have done a vocal warm-up. I feel like I need to just To do this episode

We both have to drop our voice Three Edward Snowden Octaves Yeah And that is That's what it's all about Snowden is directed by

Oliver Stone I've also made the realization That The template that I think Cary Mulligan is using To do an American dialect Is Joseph Gordon Levin in this movie Because it is very

What exactly are we looking got here um it is that's just what she's doing right she's just not telling anybody sure sure yes very good um i think it's i think we've moved on from the um christian bale ryan gosling school of like we're gonna be tough new yorkers yeah i know that i'm a tough i'm a tough guy i'm gonna change my voice to sound like a tough guy listen i love rang Gosling. No complaints, no notes. All right. We're going to be talking about Snowden, directed by Oliver Stone, written by Kieran Fitzgerald and Oliver Stone, starring deep breath, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Scott Eastwood. If you can, if your eyes can pick up Scott Eastwood on the visual plane, then he's in this movie. Otherwise, it's just a blurry face moving across the screen, and that's fine. Logan Marshall Green, Timothy Oliphant, Ben Schnitzer, Baby Boy,

Lakeith Stanfield, Reese Ifans, Jolie Richardson, Ben Chaplin, and Nicholas Cage. We'll talk about poor Nicholas Cage soon, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 9th, 2016, and it opened in wide release merely a week later, September 16th, 2016. We'll talk about that as well. Chris, I'm going to pull up my little phone, and I'm going to give you the opportunity to do a 60-second plot description. when you're ready. Absolutely, let's go. All right, starting now.

All right, we're following Edward Snowden throughout his life in various mismatch points, you know, we're hopping around in time. Just for the sake of brevity, we'll go from the beginning when he's starting in the U.S. Army, he eventually auditions, interviews with the CIA to be basically

like a hacker for them and he does in their systems to like, you know, do CIA shit, basically. And he ends up working both as a subcontractor. He leaves the CIA for a while because he discovers three baby boy Ben Schnitzer that the U.S. is actually spying on everyone. Just every U.S. citizen, basically, blah, blah, blah, blah, instead in the name of terrorism, but it's really about maintaining a global power.

Anyway, so he leaves. He comes back. And then eventually he, you know, exposes them or, like, releases these documents. Laura Potra shows up with Zachary Quintz as Glenn Greenwald. And then they make a citizen full. and then he's eventually reunited with his girlfriend who has had, like, a blog. Boom, 59 seconds. Very good. I mean, doing a 60-second plot description of a biopic, it's like, we know.

You flagrant homosexual describing him interviewing for a job as auditioning, which now I'm just going to imagine Joseph Gordon Levitt as Edward Snowden coming in with, like, sheet music for the wizard and I, and just being like... I will be doing... Today I will be performing for you. the wizard and I from Wicked and a monologue from Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Okay, now our Edward Snowden is like creeping into the Amanda Seifred as Elizabeth Holmes category too, which is delightful. I also don't, this is going to be the episode where I sound incredibly stupid because I don't understand computer stuff.

I don't understand how, and like, also, So we know who Edward Snowden is. Well, this is the thing. So this is, if I'm going to sum up the Oscar failure for Snowden, because here's the thing. I think Snowden, the movie, the Oliver Stone movie, starred Joseph Gordon-Levett, is a pretty watchable movie. And it's long, but I didn't want to slip my wrists. And there are some interesting things about it.

And I think it's like if somebody's parents came across this movie on cable, and watched it and then emailed their kid about it or whatever. And, like, I saw this interesting movie about Edward Snowden or whatever. I'd be like, yeah, good. You might be able to slightly change their politics. I'm glad you saw it. Or, you know, I always forget that, like, people have to change their parents' politics. I'm incredibly fortunate that I don't have to do that with my parents.

I don't really have to change. Well, I mean, we all have our own little. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just want my mom to stop being on Facebook so much. I don't think she's been co-opted by the bad parts of Facebook, but, like, it's always lurking out there, and I just want to, like, nip anything in the bud. Facebook is bad. Anyway, the problem with Edward Snowden, particularly the problem as an Oscar case, is

Citizen 4 is right there. Citizen 4 happened two years before this. It's a superior movie. It's a superior delivery system for the Edward Snowden story. It's more exciting. And I think Stone somewhat, like, admits to that by the end of this movie, because the last 10 minutes of this movie veer into the whole thing where everything that happens after he leaves Hong Kong till when he ends up in Russia is delivered as a documentary. And then his closing

monologue gets seated to the real Edward Snowden in Russia, which part of that is like Oliver Stone's weird Russophilia, and we'll get into that for sure. But also... It's also kind of impossible to go through, you know, his sudden notoriety. And, and he'll get into that. And and, you know, the release of these documents because, like, how do you do that without Laura Poetris and Glenn Greenwald? And then essentially a nod to Citizen 4 because they were there during the whole, during that experience. And Citizen 4 won the Oscar. So, like, where, what room do you have to, like, maneuver above that? Like, you really don't. And I think you have room to maneuver above that if this movie is anything more interesting than a very standard biopic.

Well, if it's an Oliver Stone of the 90s kind of a movie, right, where it's audacious. An Oliver Stone of the very early 90s, you know, where it's like there's... Mixit was mid-90s, and like, I feel like that was, you know what I mean? But like where he's taking... I mean, I don't think he doesn't think he's taking these creative leaps because, like, all the CGI in this movie is a little ugly and... Well, and but it's, but it also ultimately is pretty... facile in terms of like the audaciousness of it like I want like I want big like Bob Hoskins as

Henry Kissinger kind of swings you know what I mean like well and there's like no real political statement made by this surprisingly so really surprisingly so unless you think that saying Edward Snowden is merely not a traitor that that is some incendiary political statement right Because ultimately... And you're not going to be really, like, energized into conversation. Oliver Stone's portrait of Edward Snowden is, this is a guy who really loved his country, and he went to the military, and he argued with his, you know, lefty girlfriend about the liberal media, and he really wanted to be pro-American, and he wasn't able to because the surveillance state was beyond the pale,

but he still didn't want to put... And, like, a lot of this is based in fact. He didn't want to put his fellow, you know, CIA, you know, tech, what is the term, analysts or whatever, in danger. He was very careful about that kind of thing. He wasn't reckless. And the movie feels like it's trying to make the case that, like, Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the American surveillance state as responsibly as he possibly could have. And it's like, that's not necessarily an incorrect state. so much as it's like, it's not an exciting statement,

and it's not the most Oliver Stone way, I would imagine. It's not really the foundation for a movie. Where's the rage at the American surveillance state in this movie? It really doesn't exist. It exists more in Citizen 4, I would say. There's more, I mean, I do think that there's a few targeted moments towards, like, Obama. Sure.

Well, but I also think that's because we are, conditioned to expect not very much invective against Obama. Well, but like even those moments are, again, pretty facile. Like, you know. Yeah. Yes, I agree. So it's, again, I think it's a watchable movie with good performances. And I think it's it just anybody who says to me, oh, I saw Snowden.

I thought it was pretty good. I would immediately be like, here's where Citizen 4 is streaming. go watch that it's much more exciting it's much better um i think the movie i have to admit i was even a little kind of bored by citizen four like i i don't even think citizen four really tells his story as great as some other people think it is i would maybe be less kind than you are to this movie i imagined you would be i'm i'm stretching to think of a good performance in this movie. Some of it feels a little bit like dress up.

I think Joseph Gordon Levitt is good in this movie. I think the voice is entirely unnecessary and it distracts from what I think is a pretty good performance. I mean, like, I think the voice is also so distracting because it's like the one proximity he can get to Edward Snowden because he fully

looks absolutely nothing like him. But also, this is my thing with the voice, which is, I get that like, this is again the movie nodding to the fact that a lot of people would have seen Citizen and four. But like, is Edward Snowden's particularly vocal timbre so instrumental to him as a person that if we didn't have it, we would spend the whole movie being like, well, he hasn't sound like Edward Snowden. I can't buy this. Get out of here with this. Like, no, I don't imagine

that that's the case at all. Like, it's, there's, it's not like Kate Blanchett playing Catherine Hepburn, where it's like, the voice is wild, but you can understand why it would feel necessary because, you know, Catherine Hepburn has a very incredibly distinctive voice that we've experienced throughout the years. Whereas, like, this, it's like, yeah, we've all heard Edward Snowden's voice, but I imagine if Joseph Gordon-Levett went through a movie

talking like Joseph Gordon-Levett, I'd be fine. Like, I'd be good and fine. So it just, it ended up being more distracting for being so unnecessarily weird. But I think in general... For what Stone is asking him to play, which is, I think, pretty unremarkably conflicted and well-intentioned, I think he does that pretty well. I mean, I think generally you like him more as an actor than I do. I do. I kind of found him a little, I don't know, under-salted in this movie. I needed a little, I needed something at least in the performance to be like, I understand who this man is, why he is significant to, you know, our times, but I need to know why he as a person is interested.

I need some type of like, not flair, but like. Yeah. I mean, again, I think this. Something like precise about who he was as a person beyond. But, and I do think that that's a limitation of the script. So I'm not really trying to dog on JGL for this, because, like, I think he's playing the lead in an uninterestingly scripted biopic, you know. So where does this come in terms of his career? Because we've talked about the walk.

And... Zawak is before this. What's interesting is, like, both he and Oliver Stone kind of go away after this movie. He's not really in anything. Like still shilling out JFK docs that no one wants or will watch? Well, for the most part, he's doing that. But the thing that Oliver Stone really went hard into after this was Putin. He made the Putin documentary for Showtime.

He spent years sort of, and this is why it's interesting watching this movie because also Glenn Greenwald is a major character in this, and we want to talk about that for sure, because Quinto's performance is hysterical. Bad. Yes. but like but also weirdly appropriate like if you've ever seen glen greenwald interviewed on television where he's like why are you so pissed off just at like the prospect of existing like he always looks so like pissy and mean and whatever and like that's the energy that zachary quinto is bringing to this performance and like

there were a couple scenes not incorrect well not incorrectly but so greenwald has gone sort of all in on the the Russophilia thing. And like Oliver Stone, I think perhaps as a condition of being somebody who has spent the major part of his career, exposing the United States for its malfeasance in the foreign policy theater and for being, you know, hypocritical in its stance as a world leader, whatever. He has adopted a enemy of my enemy as my friend attitude towards Russia in a really, really, I think, fairly immature way and went all in on sort of lionizing Putin, even as the Russian state was doing things like cracking down on gay people and, you know, cracking

down on human rights and that kind of thing. And at the very least, I did do a quick Google search just to sort of make sure that, like, I was as current as possible. And after the invasion of Ukraine... Because there's more, certainly, but no one's listening to this man anymore. After the invasion of the Ukraine, he at least had the grace to sort of, like, make a long Facebook post and be like, Putin's gone too far with this, while still being like, ultimately, the United States backed him into a corner and all this, like, bullshitty, propaganda, propaganda. But that to me is what's sort of defined. He sort of went all in on people like Fidel Castro and Vladimir Putin and all of these, you know, all the boogeymen that America has told you to hate were actually good, like kind of. of a thing. And it has, I think, obscured the kind of fascinating firebrand that he was for a while in his career in terms of exposing these kind of American myths. And Vietnam being one of the

major ones. He dedicated a huge swath of his career to kind of re-helping to, I'm not going to solely credit him with this, but, like, being pretty instrumental towards redefining Vietnam in the American, uh, in the back-to-back best director Oscars. Yeah, yeah, which is why we will always be talking about Oliver Stone movies on this podcast, because back-to-back director Oscars means you're always going to be, at the very least, in the conversation. So, um, but, so there's this. I don't know how I was tying that back into what I wanted to say about Snowden. I guess it's just sort of the idea of watching this portrait of Edward Snowden, who now is

a Russian citizen and had sought asylum in Russia, and that was basically the place that took him in. I tend to not want to sort of draw qualitative evaluations as relates to Russia, as it relates to Russia because it's like, that's where he had to go. You know what I mean? It's like, but it's also a movie now being directed by Putin apologist Oliver Stone featuring Putin apologist Glenn Greenwald. With absolutely like no even reverence or question for why that might make him a more complicated figure in an interesting way, especially when it's like the movie doesn't really interest itself in any type of complication in its portraiture. Right. Well, and it spends so much time on these kind of trite biographical details for as much as I think Shailene Woodley does her best in this movie. She's ill-served in a role that ultimately feels very stock, right? She's the girlfriend who's the impediment to what he's trying to do.

Way more interested in the fact that she taught pole dancing than anything else about that woman, which, like, Oliver Stone was not going to let that go unnoticed. But there's potentially a lot of meat on the bone in terms of what happened to Edward Snowden after the story was published, and even after Citizen 4 came out, right? Like, there are, you know, and I know that this was made in 2016, so there was, there's a lot of sort of stuff that happened since then. But, like, it's frustrating to me that how he got out of Hong Kong and made it to Russia is glossed over in, like, I said, 10 minutes of documentary, like, newsreel footage almost. And it's like, well, this would have been an actually really computer. story to tell as to how he managed to navigate that. I think the smaller, the more granular story that you tell with an Edward Snowden movie is far more interesting than this broad, basic, like, biopic.

Like, what you just said is a perfect example of that. How did he actually get there? That in itself is a movie entire. The two most compelling scenes in the movie, to me, are A, the, microchip on the carpet scene where Lakeith Stanfield has to like hold his foot over it and then he gets it smuggles it out with a Rubik's cube and the other one is

when he's in Geneva with Timothy Oliphant and sort of getting the full picture of the way that the CIA sets people up and and you know railroads people and whatnot they sort of stand out

I would say the two like interesting scenes which like one of them we've kind of already talked about that I think there's a better movie in there than what this is is the scene where they're talking outside he and his girlfriend partner Lindsay are talking outside of their home in Hawaii and he's basically saying we're being surveilled and such the the movie that is about how does that relationship function under these circumstances sure sure is an interesting movie I have questions that I think a movie could examine thoughtfully and then I would also

say, even though I think Zachary Quinn was very bad in this movie, the scenes of Glenn Greenwald fighting with Jolie Richard since Janine Gibson. I agree.

I think that I think the movie that is examining the kind of journalistic ethical questions is the Oliver Stone Edward Snowden movie that we want to actually see that maybe can have

a strong opinion of something or examine, you know, things that actually still remain controversial. Like, if you're going to have a, like, what is, where is the least consensus about what Edward Snowden did? You're going to be talking about journalistic ethics and, like, the things that still upset people. And, like, in 2016, which, like, this movie opened right before the election, let's not talk about it. Um, yeah. that's maybe the one where you can actually have a compelling yeah uh you know not to just say controversial but like one that's one that's going to like maybe actually upset people or get

conversation started the frustrating thing about snowdon is you watch it and you find all sorts of like oh the movie could have been about this because i think along that same line the movie could have also been about what happens after these revelations are made public and then the story becomes was Edward Snowden a traitor or was Edward Snow in a whistleblower and kind of obscures like there's the moment in the movie where they're like what's the worst possible outcome of this and he's like that ultimately people learn this information and they don't care and um there is a movie to be made of the way that we sort of crunch and process scandalous information now that goes through this kind of new cycle of nonsense issues and totally obscures the more, you know,

appropriate. Like, this is where I would like somebody like Oliver Stone to fuel their frustration and their anger is into something like that. And then all of a sudden, the message of these, the, the, surveillance state stuff gets obscured by these questions of, you know, turning Edward Snowden into a figure of debate, should he be in jail, should he be not in jail? And sort of this is what we as a culture do. And maybe if that entails, you know, Uncle Oliver wagging his finger and yelling at all of us for like not, you know, processing information, well, then like, so be it

because like maybe we do deserve that. Uncle Oliver yelling at us for having Alexis in our home. I want to, before we get off of the subject, though, of what I think is some of the movies more compelling stuff, the stuff with Melissa Leo and Zachary Quinto and Tom Wilkinson playing Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald and Ewan, uh, something with a Scottish thing, Ewan McCaskill, sorry. Sorry, U.N., sorry to this man. Tom Wilkinson also doing dialect work That is really good, but also really funny Yeah, well, I mean, he brings that accent to bear And he's going for the Scottish in a way that I really, really appreciate He does it with just enough of an inflection That it feels like he might think that he's in a comedy

Granted, what he showed up for, and it feels like everyone is just playing dress up You know, you can't blame the man Melissa Leo, though, as Laura Poitris, less interested, like, the performance is fine. I'm interested in the fact that it is an Oscar winner playing an Oscar winner, which is a curiosity that, like, doesn't happen very often. And it made me sort of, like, go into, and I sort of, like, jotted some down. Speaking of Kate Blanchett playing Catherine Hepburn. I was going to say, Kate Blanchett has played two Oscar winners in her career, as far as I can tell. Can you name them?

Lydia Tar Okay She's like three now Lydia Tar is a famous fictional egot winner Yeah so now this is her third Any guesses as to who is the other one Okay I should know this right off the top of my head Did Bernadette win one? Did she win

Art Direction Oscar? No, a real person who won a real Oscar Happened after the Aviator but before tar. Oh, Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Yes. Bob Dylan.

Which I'm not there has three Oscar winners playing an Oscar winner in that movie, which I find really, really fascinating as a footnote, because it's Kate Blanchett and Christian Bale, who won his Oscar, and Heath Ledger, both of whom won their Oscar after they did. But still, I say historically it counts. Several have happened on TV in the Ryan Murphy verse. Can you name the three that I'm thinking of? Jessica Lang.

Uh-huh. As Joan Crawford. Susan. Susan Strandin is Betty Davis. Catherine Zeta. C.C.J. Oh, so four. Because yes.

You're right. Catherine Zeta Jones is Olivia De Havilland. Yes. The other one's a male actor. I'd never watch Feud. Gay people, please don't get them. Well, it's not anybody else from Feud. Because Tucci played Jack Warner, but Tucci's never won an office.

Oscar. No, it's not, it's not in feud. Oh, but it's in a different Ryan Murphy project. Yes. Played by a male actor. Is it Hollywood? I think everybody in Hollywood. No, there are real people.

Are they all fictional? Yeah, no, they're not. It can't be American Horror Story. Oh, you know what's funny? I've always thought that Murphy was a producer on this, but I guess he wasn't. was another fox or another fx thing though oh uh fossey verdon yeah yeah sam rockwell sam rockwell and fossey burden um and then who else today write down a recent oscar winner has done it even though um the person she played didn't win a competitive oscar they won a lifetime oscar no they won a juvenile

Oscar. Oh. Well, Renee. Renee, as Judy Garland. And then the other one I thought of... Looking back to Bob Dylan from her speech. Referenced Oscar winner of Bob Dylan, yes. Cast the rest of the...

Well, maybe not all of them. Of everyone that René Zelliger mentions in her speech, let Kate Blanchett play. We'll say most of them. Most of them, yes. Then the last one I thought of was an act. playing an Oscar-winning screenwriter, although he didn't win his

screenwriting Oscar until after the portrayal. An actor playing a screenwriting Oscar winner. There has to be more of those. I would have thought so. I went through all of them, and, like, I didn't have time to, like, look up, like, did... I mean, thank Christ Brian Cranston didn't win for Trumbo.

Who's played George Bernard Shaw in the supporting role and whatever? Like, I didn't have time to, like, look that up, right? But this one was from the aughts, and The win is from the aughts, okay No, the movie in question is from the odds The screenwriting win is also from the odds

The actor won his Oscar in the... Oh, right, they didn't win their Oscar for playing the Oscar winner But they were nominated for playing the screenwriter. Is it Kenneth Branagh? It's not Kenneth Branagh. Though I suppose he counts. Yes. No, because he's not portraying.

the kid in Belfast. The idea is an Oscar winner playing an Oscar winner. He's played Lawrence Olivier, right? Who's he played? Oh, yes, that's true. He's played Lawrence Olivier. Now that does count because he played Lawrence Olivier and May Week with Maryland.

Yeah. Yes. Performance everybody remembers, talks about regularly. Hallowed. No, this is an actor who played a screenwriter in a movie written by that screenwriter. Oh, wild.

Okay. About a screen, about the screen, the screenwriter writing about their own life. Yes. Huh. Person was nominated, but they're a previous Oscar winner. Yes. I'm guessing this is lead, or is it sporting? It's also somebody who's in the movie we're talking about today.

Oh. Who's Oscar winner's in this movie today? Melissa Leo. not Tom Wilkinson deserved an Oscar for carrying those massive begets begets sex full of baguettes Marie the baguettes was actually

prophetic in that it was about Tom Wilkinson's role in Michael Clayton it's not Nicholas Cage is it? Oh yes of course because he plays Charlie Kaufman in adaptation yes yes so anyway I thought there's any any Gary's out there who

want to tweet at us with other examples of Oscar winners playing Oscar winners in movies, let us know because we would, I'm curious about that. And I, trivia-minded that I am, I'm always sort of curious about that. So, yeah, I, Melissa Leah was Laura Poitras, I think is pretty good. I liked the one little scene where she's sort of having a heart-to-heart with Edward. That's very good. It's also not Melissa Leo going big, which is good. It's not, we are an effective team.

It's, you know. I love her in oblivion. Can I tell you, I love Melissa Leo in that movie. I love Melissa Leo, but I don't love Melissa Leo when she goes big. When she goes big, I sometimes do. I don't always, but I sometimes do. I liked her in prisoners a lot. I mean, I do maybe in, like, passengers where it's like, it's not necessarily big,

but it's like the costume does the bigness for her. Wait, who was she in passengers? Wait, what's that? Prisoners. Prisoners. Yes, prisoners. I like her a lot in prisoners. Yes.

Yeah. Listen, if Paul Dano's going to do what Paul Dano does in that movie, then you need to have somebody do even more. And that is Melissa Leo. So, yeah. Greenwald, we talked about Quinto. I think Quinto's somebody who I don't always think is a very good actor. I saw him on stage in the Glass Menagerie,

and I thought he was the weak link of that one, opposite Cherry Jones. But, like I said, I think the sort of scowl-faced perma rage of him at least made me laugh, so that was good. What are the other performances? Risi Fons is in kind of a lot of this movie. He's kind of bad in this movie, too.

I don't know about bad. He's kind of mustache. twirley, though. He's very capital v villainous. I think Oliphant is actually very good as kind of the slick CIA guy who disillusions Snowden

in the field. You don't realize that, like, Timothy Oliphant has become such a TV actor that, like, he's not really in movies a whole lot. He's in Amsterdam, and one of the things I told a friend

after I saw that movie, was like, Amsterdam is worse for Timothy Oliphant fans than it is for Taylor Swift fans. Like, it's, I, I was shocked at like what he has to do in that movie. Oh, that pumps me out. I mean,

the rest of the movie will bob you out too. Sure. I'm, I'm debating whether to, because there's still, there's right now, a lot of movies in theaters that I haven't seen because they haven't been able to see anything in a couple of weeks because the aforementioned work plus health issues.

I would be willing to bet that by Thanksgiving, Amsterdam will be on Hulu. That's the thing. That's the thing. But this is the danger of me being able to wait a few, you know, weeks for things to show up. There'll be more for you to immediately have to see it. Well, and also it's just a disincentive for me to see things in theaters, and I want to keep seeing things in theaters. Yeah. Logan Marshall Green, Ben Schnitzer, Lakeith Stanfield, as this sort of like cadre of co-workers inside the NSA that he's working with,

which again if that's your movie I could see an interesting movie being made out of that but like this again just feels like I'm not quite sure what Stone wants the movie to be about so everything seems like it's a distraction from what the movie is supposed to be about so but I think they're all really good again so the thing about baby boy Bench-Netser

who I absolutely adore who was in a really bad movie that we talked about on this podcast before. Life and death of Jonathan, or death and life. I was going to say, how dare you? But also, first thing I ever saw him in was pride, which we have to do. We cannot allow another June to go by without us doing pride for this podcast. We could talk about it for Bill Nye, Bill Nye, hopeful best actor.

Yeah, but why don't we just wait for Pride Month and do it then? All right. We'll talk about it. But anyway, Bench-Nutzer as the sort of firebrand lesbians and gays support the minors kid. But part of it is maybe that I'm a dumb-dum, but, like, I was fully sold on his accent in that movie. I thought he was, A, gives a really, really great performance in that movie, and then finding out not only is he American, but he's the son of one of the most indelible soap opera performers of my childhood who is he's nepotism baby uh yeah listen i love nepotism babies i have nothing against nepotism uh his dad is stephenzer who played cast winthrop

on another world through like my entire childhood and like was this sort of um he was the lawyer he was the like hot shot lawyer in town and he was this like huge ladies man even though look him up Like, he's a handsome guy, but he's not, like, this devastating James Bond type, which is kind of how he was written as this just sort of, like, absolute, like, crushing it all over town. And everybody was in love with him. And just a really interesting character. And he and Linda Dano's character were, like, I think one-time former lovers, but, like, by the time I started watching, we're just, like, best friends.

And they were, like, kind of cosmopolitan. in a way that, like, another world is really interesting in that way. We're, like, I don't know, like, this was sort of when soaps were really fucking great. And so he and Linda Dano were this sort of, like, platonic, like, cool, hip pair of adults. And it was interesting that, like, I sort of just grew up kind of idolizing them. But finding out that he was Ben Schnitzer's dad blew my mind and endeared me to the kid even more. and he's asked to play the most ridiculous character in this movie, who is like the tech whiz who's like irreverent.

And like he's kind of like... Skeezy. I'm not a regular tech analyst. I'm a cool tech analyst, right? Like I've got my flannel and, you know, my facial hair is all unkempt. And I don't care about like talking frankly about everything that, is going on and I'm going to use my weird overly aggressive snow white

metaphors and and yet I am helpless to find him anything but endearing so I'm like awh look at him spy it on everybody like that what's that

Helpless is a great word choice for what you're describing because I do truly think that's the that's the charm there No, I was like When Ben Schnitzer showed up Because of death and life of John F. Donovan I was like, oh no

Oh no And he's actually one of the better performance in this movie Yeah, yeah He's interesting Can we talk about Shailene Woodley for a little bit? Let's. So I want to sort of bring up where she's... I don't think she's bad in this movie

Granted I don't either What she's scripted to do is The most thankless If I was the real woman I would be so pissed. Okay, so here's what I also thought. So, like, Edward Snowden is not allowed to return to the United States.

It's sort of a man without a country. He's, you know, they're trying to find a place to go without extradition or whatever. He ends up in Moscow in the 2010s. And we find out at the end of this movie, and this is the thing we already knew from watching Citizen 4, that she, at the time this all happened, was in the United States. sort of hunkered down with her family and was not forced to leave the country. And by everything we know, probably wasn't able to be charged with anything. It's not like she was under like federal indictment or whatever or else they wouldn't have let her leave the country. But this is a woman who, from her own free will, decided to move willingly to Russia, to live

forever with Edward Snowden. And I'm going to tell you this right now. I am not I don't care how much I loved a person or was fond of them You will never be down so bad I will absolutely You can count on it If there is a situation

Where it's me moving to Russia to be with your ass Or me staying here and like being sad about our breakup I will be sad about our breakup I am not moving to Moscow Or wherever Outlier Town in Russia in 2013 for you. Okay, but this is also one of the problems of the movie

because, like, that obviously takes, you know, some decision making and that, like, that is something we don't understand. Does the movie take any attempt to make us understand it or make us understand her, even if we don't understand the decision? Absolutely not, because she is in the States until she is not in the States.

And we don't see, we see there. relationship leading up to him fleeing, but we don't see anything part of that decision-making process. And I feel like it's partly because, like, in reality, there's a lot of, like, it doesn't seem like they talk about how much in communication they were together. Obviously, they would have had to have been at some point. She can't just go find him and be like, hi, do you still want to be together? Because I have no idea, because we haven't been talking. Like, so, like, maybe that's part of the reason why we don't see any of that in the movie, but, like, that in and of itself is a movie, deciding to make that type of leap for the one that you love. And she's, Lindsay is just weird blogger who likes taking pictures of herself naked and also teaches pole dancing class.

I would be pissed about this movie if I was her. I would be, too. human being and it's just like And again, made a choice that I would have never been able to make in my entire life. And like that speaks to somebody's character or how much she loved him or

like some kind of extreme emotion that I would like to be able to tap into. I want to talk about Shayley and Woodley's career at this point though. She was somebody basically debuts, her film debut more or less is the descendants.

Certainly the way that she's sort of like thrust into the Hollywood conversation. I had being a dumb-dum, but also I think maybe for work I had to do this. I watched a good bit of the early season or two of Secret Life of the American Teenager, which was a terrible show on ABC Family at the time, which was this like, you know, it was the woman who created Seventh Heaven. This was her like follow up to seventh heaven And you could kind of tell And it was you know

The teens are up to they're having the sex And they're taking the topless photos of themselves And everything is crazy And the cast was like Cuckoo Bananas weird Were like Molly Ringwald I think played her mom And it was not a good show

So imagine my surprise then When like Oscar buzz Comes wafting out of the new Alexander Payne movie In 2011 the daughter of George Clooney's character is getting Oscar buzz and lo and behold it's Shalene Woodley and I'm like oh the terrible actress from the terrible show

I don't think she's a terrible actress but I think that show made me think she was right she kind of rudely is snubbed for the descendants which isn't to say that I think she's so great that she had to be nominated but like it really really seemed like she was going to get nominated

and it was a pretty big surprise I think that she wasn't, even though... Right. She's one of the better things about that movie that I hate. The two surprises that morning in that category were McCarthy and McTeer, right? People thought maybe one or the other, but not both. And so, because it was Octavia Spencer was definitely getting in. Jessica Chastain was definitely getting in.

Berenice Bia was definitely getting in. And so people sort of assumed Shailene Woodley and then either Janet McTeer or Melissa McCarthy. And most people thought, well, Melissa McCarthy is in a broad conference. comedy. It's not going to happen. But like Janet McKeer was also a previous nominee. Right. But she was also in a movie that like everybody thought was bananas, Albert Knobbs. And so, oh boy. Both of them get in. Shailene Woodley gets left out. And she's never really come close again. Although 2013, she's in the spectacular now. Her and Miles Teller. And she's really good in that. Like that's a movie. Remember when we had our conversation with. who, when

Roxana was on, about film directors who we love, who sort of like retreated into television because that's where the work was. I would like James Ponsol to go back to making movies. Because what did he end up doing? The Circle.

Well, yeah, the Circle was a movie, wasn't it? He also did this movie at Sundance about kids. I think it's called Summering and no one liked it. so maybe that's the problem there maybe isn't television although it felt like to me that like he you know got sucked into developing some sort of television show oh it was um sorry for your loss

the elizabeth olson show on facebook watch which by all indication everybody i've heard who's watched it said it was great and she was great but it was facebook watch so like nobody fucking watched it um ironically so but anyway i think that the spectacular now is a pretty good movie Smashed is really good. Smashed is tremendous. She's like, it's Mary Elizabeth Winstead, right? Yep.

And Aaron Paul. So fucking good in smashed. Smash is for me, and I know there's different things, but remember how like everybody flipped for heaven knows what as this sort of like arduous movie about addiction or whatever. And like, smashed to me does what a lot of people I think really liked about,

that movie. Anyway, she's Shailene Woodley, back to Sheenley. She's in the Gregorackie movie, White Bird and a Blizzard that, like, nobody saw. But me, I saw that movie in theater. It's not bad. It's kind of interesting. And there's some eye-opening queer shit in that movie

that, like, isn't enough of the movie, but like, whatever, whatever. She's... Come back to this Gregoraki. She kind of... gets caught in the wreckage of the Amazing Spider-Man movies, the Mark Webb

Amazing Spider-Man movies? I wanted to bring this up because this is the era or thereabouts. She... Okay. Yeah, go on. Go on. Well, where she plays... Mary Jane. She's cast as Mary Jane Watson

in an uncredited cameo. I don't remember exactly how much of it was cut out of the movie and what... She had... several scenes that were cut out of Amazing Spider-Man 2, and they said they were just going to put them at the beginning of Amazing Spider-Man 3. And then there was no Amazing Spider-Man 3. Because Amazing Spider-Man 2 is an amazing piece of shit.

Well, but also, I bet you- Too much going on. So, like, it's totally a movie you can tell they cut entire plot strands out of. But I also feel like we probably would have gotten an Amazing Spider-Man 3 if the Sony Marvel deal wasn't on the horizon because I think they basically were like let's put the brakes on that until we see what we can do with Marvel and then by

it's 2016 that I think I'm not going to ask you because you wouldn't know Captain America Civil War which is when Spider-Man first shows up in the MCU I think that's 2016 It's 2016 or 27th So like that was probably like Shailene kind of got screwed by that whole thing Well, but also nobody really liked the Mark Webb ones.

Right, but I imagine her bank account would have been enhanced by her being able to star an Amazing Spider-Man 3. But 2014 is really good for her bank account because she stars in the Fultner stars, which is like a huge surprise success. And it's sort of the, she becomes the Y.A. girl at that point because it's the Fultner stars and Divergent are both in the same year. And it's like both sides of the Y.A. coin, right? It's the romantic drama about a girl who's dying, which is like a subgenre in and of itself. And then the Y.A. Fantasy, dystopia adventure, right? Which is Diversion, which starts great for her. Like, the first Diversion movie is a success, and she's at the center of it. And it's like, this is going to be her Hunger Games. and very quickly

they did not waste any time churning out the next two which was probably the best possible solution because ultimately people lost interest quicker than they could churn out the movies and they got rapid I mean like they were never good but they got rapidly much worse too well and the original plan was to

very much like the Hunger Games movies split the third movie which ended up being called Allegiant, which is also, like, this was also when I think we knew that, like, things are not good in Divergent land is when the sequels were called Insurgent and Allegiant, just because, and I know that's what the books were, but, like, it's dumb. I forget what, I don't think that the, the unfilmed finale, because they split the third book into, and I think they announced a different title for it, and I don't think it was Allegiant Part 2.

Well, I think the working title was Allegiant Part 2, and then I don't know what. what it ended up being. Maybe it was just like there was a meme online of like, what the hell are they going to call this dumb thing? I never saw it. I saw Insurgent. I did not see Allegiant. And that Allegiant is released the same year as Snowden. And so this feels like down bad, kind of like things are not great.

But good things are around the corner because 2017 comes along and she's in big little lies. And from the outside, people looked at that cast and was like, Reese, Nicole. Uh, you know, it's just like, big things are happening. Adam Scott's in this and Laura Derns in this. And so he cravices in this. And then it's like, Shailene Woodley sort of felt like, I think from the outset, a lot of people were like, oh, she kind of sticks out as, you know, not as good as these other women. I think she's very good. I think everybody, I think everybody on Big Little Eyes was really good, actually.

Um, and the first season of that show. especially, is good for everybody. I think everybody's career gets a good, solid boost from that. And she didn't really do a ton with that in terms of her movie career. Like, she's in a drift, which I didn't see, but that was the one where she's on a boat, right? I did see it. It has the dumbest, dumbest, dumbest, dumbest twist. Funny.

She's in the Mauritania, where she's, like, Like, Jody Foster's assistant or, like, co-counsel or whatever the hell. I was like, wait, oh, already we're like, what's the Mauritian? Exactly. Well, I mean, do you talk about, like, of the movies that, like, were swallowed up by pandemic era, like, the Moritanian really true. No, that movie did better because of the pandemic. If that movie, if the pandemic hadn't happened, that movie would have been straight to VOD. But I mean, in terms of our memory.

Like, you know what I mean? Like that, I think I think we don't remember it because of that. And instead, we got Jody Foster accepting a golden globe over Zoom in pajamas. That's right. With her dog. With her, with her partner though, so that was cool. But and their dog.

Oh, and their dog. Right. But it was at the very least on Jody Foster's long and leisurely timeline towards publicly coming out. I feel like that was finally being on a Zoom, accepting an award in your PJs, with your wife is a good one.

So, interestingly, though, she's got a few kind of fascinating movies coming up. She's going to be in Ferrari, the Michael Mann Italiano. I'm doing the hand thing with Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz. So that's cool. You know what I mean? Like that, at the very least, I'm interested. She's also currently apparently filming, we're right around this time, the GameStop movie with the Craig Gillespie directed GameStop movie with Seth Rogen and Sebastian Stan and Paul Dano. So that's cool also.

I'm interested in that. So like, good things perhaps, you know, coming down the line. And she's also in an upcoming series on Showtime called Three Women with. Betty Gilpin and DeWanda Wise so that's cool um I'm interested I'm hopeful for Shalene I think she deserves good things because like she's she's had a real weird career for somebody who's so young so good for her Snowden does not do anything good for her but um yeah who else in this so okay Nicholas Cage we got to say it is in essentially a scene and a half in this show.

Yes. He's Snowden's early... At the very beginning of a long movie. Early, early mentor. On the long line of mentors, he's the earliest one. He's, by all accounts, like, a good one, right?

He works in the security state. He works, you know, for the government, but he's, by all accounts, a good one. And at the end of the movie, when it's a hilariously dumb scene, where Snowden goes public with the thing, and we see Nicholas Cage in his living room being like,

the kid did it like all proud of him or whatever it's so stupid but like i don't think this is like laurence olivier at work or whatever but like it's a scene and a half i don't know how you can devise any kind of like qualitative judgment about this is why they're not a serious organization it's just that nicholas cage was in a movie they chris is talking about the razzies the razzies nominated nicholas cage for worst supporting actor and at this point again it's the razzies at work it's a essentially them going by reputation, which is weird because by this point, I guess Cage hadn't quite yet rebounded into the sort of Mandy and Pig phase of his career, where now I feel

like we are rebounding a bit on Nicholas Cage's good, actually, after, this was probably in the midst of a lot of his like direct to streaming, direct to video sort of stuff, which was not a great era and is not exactly over. He's still making 8 billion movies that people don't ever hear about. But yeah,

2018 was the year where he makes Mandy and like people really like that. And he was the voice in Spiderverse, which like was really cool. But like he's just making a movie like something called Looking Glass and something called the Humanity Bureau and something called

Between Worlds. And they all have the same kind of poster which is just sort of like floating heads over some sort of like dystopia looking thing or like maybe it's a thriller or whatever and it's just like

cash grab after cash grab and this happens I mean again it's like still kind of happening but like Pig last year I thought was a highlight I thought one of the best things he'd ever done. He's tremendous in it If this Renfield movie ever gets made.

Oh, no. I'm at least excited to see it, where he's Dracula and Nicholas Holtz is Renfield. Like, I hope we eventually get to see it. I don't know if it's going to be great, but I'm into it. He was in a movie at Tiff this year that I don't think anybody I know talked about, which was Butchers Crossing, which was the western. Yeah, I didn't hear anybody talk about that either. That was the one where he was filming, where he was on the horse named Rain Man,

who he ended up talking to who was the other person in that roundtable who had ridden rain man I know Andrew Garfield Jonathan Majors Jonathan Majors because Andrew Garfield was on the other side of the table like living his life

laughing his ass off at the story it was we've clipped it before it's really good I also didn't see the unbearable weight of massive talent did you see that? I didn't see it either

I like I'm back into a more positive Nicholas Cage frame of mind lately but like not that positive, where I want to watch a movie where the whole idea is like, you know, self-referential Nicholas Cage is, you know, a real life James Bond kind of a thing. I don't know what the exact deal is with that, but it felt like a little too winky for my taste. Exactly. I'll see it eventually. I'm glad you kind of tangentially brought it back to TIF because this is a TIF world premiere. And when we talk about like DOA TIF world premieres, like this is a movie, I definitely lump into that category. There are those movies. We refer to a lot.

There are those movies where you go into TIF and you look at the schedule and like choices have to be made and you have to be a little bit mercenary about what you're seeing and what you're not. And a lot of the times the stuff that's going to open soon, you tend to not see because like, again, you need to like make your priorities and I'll be seeing this soon eventually. And then, even further than, there are the movies, which is like, oh, this movie opens while we're still in Toronto. So, like, that tends to be, at least lately, a foreboding omen. And I guess it wasn't always this way, because I went back as far as 2010, which is sort of, I feel like, I feel like everything after Slumdog Millionaire feels like modern Tiff. Yeah. So 2010, the movie that opened at the end of the festival was the town, the Ben Affleck movie, The Town, which eventually, like, things turn out pretty well for the town. It gets almost a Best Picture nomination.

It gets other Oscar nominations, Jeremy Renner is nominated. It is seen as a decent success. People seem to like it. I don't really like that movie very much, but, like, people seem to like it. And, like, certainly that movie isn't, like, a cursed movie. 2011 Drive plays Toronto and then opens at the end of Toronto

But it had played Cann And it was a little bit of a well Unknown quantity And Tiff was almost like The Premier You know what I mean for it? Sometimes studios Use Tiff as like

A way to piggyback onto Someone else throwing you Your Premier Party Right? You know what I mean? And that seemed to like And Drive ultimately Falls short of Oskine

expectations. I think a lot of people were expecting Albert Brooks to get nominated for that movie. Does it get nominated for... It gets nominated for sound, right? I forget if it's sound mixing or editing. But one of those two. Yes, one of the sounds. Right. And then 2012, the master screens a TIF and then opens

very, very, very small right at the end of TIF. And that... In the 70 millimeter run for that movie. So that movie ultimately, I think overperform. at the Oscars, and relative to what I thought it was going to. I kind of thought, because remember, the reception for Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master was a lot of people being like, I don't get it.

A lot of people scratching their heads. And like, even if you want to say it overperformed because it got those three acting nominations, that's big. That's still only one branch of the Academy, though. Like, that's, that doesn't mean that it's a movie that was liked. But it's three nominations in the like most visible. It's your favorite. Paul Thomas Anderson.

It's my favorite. Really? Tell me more. Yeah. I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated by that. I'm always been sort of cold to that movie. I love it.

Okay. It's great. Okay. We're never going to be able to do an episode on it, so now's your chance. Tell me why the master is so great. I mean, it's been a minute since I've seen it. I think, you know, we can't even call it late stage Paul Thomas Anderson movie. But I think ultimately it's kind of an examination of, like, a lot of the controversy at the time was, like, Scientology, right?

People were expecting it to be the Scientology movie. I watch it in, you know, Scientology was not the only, like, upstart American religion at the time, too. And I just think it's kind of a movie about a certain type of generation of men who, you know, you. you know, especially at that, like, point in American society, you know, you were given this guidebook of what, uh, what you needed to have a good life. And of course, that's a perfect time for, you know, proprietary religions or, you know, manipulative bullshit religions to take advantage of people too. And I, I mean, like, that movie ultimately, like the emotional journey of it and what this, uh, very damaged man needs.

to find peace and happiness is outside of the rules that are all given to him. And I think the way that it examines that and examines the controlling sides of American life are very interesting and move me. I think Philip Seymour Hoffman's tremendous in that movie. That's probably my biggest compliment that I'll pay to that movie. I think he's very, very good. um 2014 certainly the greatest oscar nominated performance where someone says pick fuck 100% um 2014 i put on the list the disappearance of eleanor rigby i'm not sure what the ceiling was on expectations for disappearance of eleanor rigby but that was one that at least a lot

of people had their eye on early in that season and then after tiff it sort of fell off the map sort of got lost in a morass of what's the real version of this movie it was split into his hers and then it also screened as the combined movie and nobody knew even like among the small fraction of the population who even knew about this movie they didn't quite know what version they were supposed to see and or even which version they were seeing when they sat down in the theater right so uh that wasn't great 2015 i think is where this sort of bad omen of the movie the tiff movie that opens at the end of the festival, it starts. Because in 2015, you have Black Mass, which is like an unadulterated flop, like had big Oscar expectations and nobody liked it and

it fell flat. Sikario, which was liked by quite a lot more people, but ultimately did not score with the Oscars the way I think it maybe could have if it had been, if it had rolled out slightly differently. I know you don't like that movie. I have complicated feelings about that movie because I initially really loved it, but the more you kind of sit with that movie, I think the problems with the script, and it's scripted by Taylor Sheridan, who we all know I don't like, I think it's a movie that directs itself in one direction, but can't get past the fact that, like, I think where it's coming from on a script level is quite comparable. I think Emily Blunt's tremendous in the movie. I think she deserved a Oscar nomination. Also playing Tiff that year that opened at the end of the festival, Pond Sacrifice, which was the Bobby Fisher Chess movie.

Sure. That didn't really do much of anything. Also, it didn't play Tiff, but Everest opened that same weekend at the end of, and it just feel like... Didn't that, like, open Venice? It was another one where it's just like, there were these big expectations that ultimately, like, Everest isn't a bad movie. but like it became a real non-factor in that award season even in categories like i don't even think it got

like visual effects it didn't get any nominations yeah we could talk about it um but i just think feel like this even if you're not a tiff movie making a weird transition into opening it's just a dead spot in the calendar because everybody's attention is elsewhere it also by the way is usually right around when the emies are you know what i mean like just the the the the attention economy is not on your side. 2016, Snowden opens right at the end of TIF after playing TIF and

Craters. Yeah, craters. 2017 is the great mother debacle where we've all, we've talked about it at length. People were mad at the movie and the cinema score was an F

and it's the rightful number one F-cinnoscore movie, some might say, and some people's allies might have abandoned them on the quest to put it up to that position. I think it was a cosmically correct placement. We can talk about it forever. Listen, as someone who watches a survivor at a compulsory level at this point,

sometimes your strategy, you just got to, in strategies, you just got to let dead fish die. Wow, are you referring to me as a dead fish? you are not the dead fish. An ally who has helped you get past the merge. You didn't realize what the dead fish was. I would have used my immunity idol to save you. But you abandoned me on the battlefield. What season are you on right now? What season are you watching right now? I just recorded with Kevin Jacobson yesterday. We were talking Survivor. I am on 26, which a friend and former guest Kevin said is one of his least favorite. It's a fans versus favorite Karamo. I keep in my head saying fans versus favorite Faramone. Come on, fan favorite. Karamohen, there's a lot of ugliness to Karamohen, but...

It's a very bitter season. I definitely have a favorite that is maybe a surprise to me at this point. Do you love Malcolm? I hope you love Malcolm so much. Malcolm was just eliminated. Oh, so heartbreaking. He pulled off one of the best moves that season. I don't love Malcolm this season.

because I'm like, I do think he makes a lot of the wrong decisions. Like, he attaches himself to ultimately, I think, what will be a dead fish. Malcolm's options were limited, though, because Malcolm was on the outside of that real creepy Philip Shepard hierarchy on the favorites tribe. And Malcolm was never going to succeed there, so I think he just sort of decided to play the insurgent. Okay. In 25, I do like Malcolm a lot more, save for a few moments where he's like, oh, well, her estrogen is making her make this decision. I was like, you better fucking watch it funny because I want to like it. He's a bro at heart who I think is a bro with a heart of gold. But he has his moments. But like Malcolm and Denise and Philippines were amazing. I love them so much. I would just argue that I don't know. Well, no, because he and Denise kind of orchestrate a really big move in 25. that was very successful. But broadly, I don't think Malcolm has made great decisions. You're not wrong.

You're not wrong. No. Who do you like? So who's your face? I think I'm rooting for Cochran in 26. Oh, is this controversial? It's not controversial. I think he's a sort of divisive character in Survivor.

That's probably fair. And granted, I haven't seen his original season. I like somebody who can I tend to root for people on Survivor who can assess the whole group dynamic as it is and I think he's doing that the best. He's playing a... I also really despise Reynolds. So anyone who can...

I also despise Reynolds, but he's one of my favorite villains who like never came back for a second season. I always thought they should have brought back Reynolds for another season because he's so very much himself and such, like, a stereotypical, like, I don't know if he works in finance, but, like, finance, bro, right? He's a real estate agent. Right, which, okay, similar. Same thing. That's why they're always like, he seems like such a car salesman.

Because he is. Because he is. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, Cochran had a tremendous read on that season, and at the point that you are at, he really had that game in the palm of his hand, I will say. um brenda is finally starting to be more of a character and like she's at this point a clean slate you know there's no reason for me to not like her so i'm rooting for her but at this point i'm like she's probably not lasting much long the interesting thing about brenda is she was one of the most

dynamic people on her original season she was like she really like tried to take the game in her hand she had like she played big for a while and it's interesting that she came back to caramowen and played small. Is it Karamoan or Karamon? I've been saying Karamohen. I think Jeff Probst called it Karamoin. But, um... Oh, okay.

Yeah. Well, see, and I'm pretty sure, like, the first confessional from Brenda this season happened, like, an episode ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. It takes a very long while for her to...

I mean, and the rest of the team, like, I want to root for Dawn, but, like, I don't know if that's going to happen, but also she is all. also frustrating as well. Philip, I understand why that would be really hard to be around a lot. However, I thought Philip was great TV

in the way that Philip I couldn't. Was so unintentionally funny sometimes that, like, that man was comedy gold with some of the shit that came out of his mouth. The way he treated Francesca was so odious to me that, like, I couldn't, I could never get past it. Yeah, I agree.

And then, I mean, like, it's not a season where I really feel like I'm rooting for anyone. So it's like, it's Cochran that's, like, rising above. I think it's an interesting season that doesn't have a whole ton of rooting interest beyond. Like I said, like, I was hardcore rooting for Malcolm for a while. And then when he went out, I was like, well, I don't know what I'm doing. Well, okay, so Andrea is the one who, like, fully got into the staring contest with Malcolm, right, over this idol that he never dug up. Yes. I loved that.

That made me like her. lot more, even though I think she's been playing a terrible game. Andrea's another interesting one, because her original season was the season where it was like Boston Rob's fourth season, and it was basically designed to let Boston Rob win. And it's my least favorite season of all time, basically

because everybody totally rolls over for him. And she was like the one person who tried to make a move on that season. And it couldn't happen because nobody else would work with her. And that made me want to root for her subsequently after.

Yeah. But it's interesting. I'm glad you're into Survivor. More talk about this. I root for anyone who is opposed to Boston Rob. Truly anyone. Same. All right. Back to the Tiff thing. Yes. Okay. Sorry. Uh, listeners who don't do Survivor. Sorry also, but also you should watch Survivor. Um, 2018, White Boy Rick, uh, opened at the end of Tiff and genuinely, truly did not talk to a single person who saw that movie at that festival. But I think that's the thing is you, you are, disincentivized to see, usually. We'll talk about the next year. It wasn't the case. But, like, you can be disincentivized to see a movie like White Boy Rick at TIF because it's opening so soon,

but then you don't get the TIF boost because of that. And by the time you open, people are still in TIF mode. So, like, it's a real tough needle to threat. Um, 2019, hustlers managed to hold on to the attention. But ultimately, the Oscars, the Oscars fail hustlers more than like i would say more than anyone else no hustlers was probably smart to go to tiff right before it opened because like it helped get at a big opening box office the movie eventually was a hundred million dollar movie like yeah the thing that i said talked about about like using tiff as your premier party like that worked out really well for that

the other one the other side of that coin was the goldfinch also opened right after tiff and that one that could have opened whenever and i don't think it does any better so i don't think that's a strategic thing. So we arrive at 2022, and the case study this year is the Woman King, which kind of did the hustlers thing, where it premiered at Toronto. People really liked it, I think more so than they thought they would, because I think the trailer had a lot of people scratching their heads, including me. It's because they kept all the good stuff out of the trailer. It's not just that, though. I think the trailer is strategically dubious. Avoiding plot lines. Not just avoiding plot lines.

I think it's trying to sell a movie that the movie isn't. And I think it's made the trailer made it seem like they were covering for deficiencies in the movie. And it's the Natalie Portman, Milosh Foreman, you know, you're acting like you're a trailer for a bad movie, but you're a trailer for a good movie. But anyway, people really like the Women King at Toronto. And it premiered, it used that boost to premiere to really strong box office numbers. Perhaps not as strong as we wanted, but, like, strong. Like, The Woman King is a box office success. Right.

And so now the question is, what do they do with it? Where do we go through Oscar season? Because it's a movie that deserves to have a strong presence in the Oscar season. I'm curious as to how much it will. I think Viola is a very strong contender and best actress, but not guaranteed. I think you could make a supporting actress case for Tussu Mabedu, but I don't know if it'll happen. And craft stuff is possible kind of across the board, but I'm not sure it'll happen. Well, there's the two, I think, biggest questions on the rest of the season, or maybe even three, if you include Babylon, are all these large-scale, expensive, though much more expensive than the Woman King actually is.

But, like, in terms of scale of the movie, it's, you know. Avatar, Wakanda, Babylon. Uh-huh, because it's these big, splashy, epic, storytelling, you know. I thought you were going to see that the big unanswered question is whether Maria Bello is going to get an Oscar nomination as screenwriter or producer for the Woman King, which if it gets nominated. Original screenplay is very competitive. No, but if it gets a Best Picture nomination, which, you know, it's a list of 10, so I think it's on the board for it. then Maria Bello, Oscar nominee at last because she had been snubbed for the cooler and history of violence. Finally, her moment, as we all expected it would be, for a movie about female warriors

in Africa starring Viola Davis. And that's finally Maria Bello's moment. So yeah, so the sort of, I hesitate to call it a curse of TIF, but there is something to be said of, you know, opening your movie in the shadow of this big film festival. Right. In the shadow of a hundred other movies. Right, right. Okay, so let's start to wrap up on Snowden. Are there any other

stray thoughts you have about this film? The terrible Peter Gabriel song that ends the movie. Oh, I wanted to look this up and I forgot. Which, like, was maybe the closest thing lingering it around in the

Oscar season, like, as it got closer to nominations. Got a Grammy nomination. It sure did. So Peter Gabriel, I feel like has had at least a few Golden Globe nominations throughout his career, and I'm looking this up right now.

He's been nominated for one Oscar in his career. He wrote the song from Wally down to Earth that he got an original song nomination for. He's a three-time Golden Globe nominee. He wrote the original score for the The Last Temptation of Christ

Not the Passion of the Christ The Scorsese movie The Last Temptation of Christ He also wrote the original score For Rabbit Proof Fence The Philip Nois movie And both of those got Globe nominations And then he got again

An Original Song nomination For Wally Grammys He's I mean Like Grammy like obviously his music career and whatever

but as a songwriter for movies I feel like he's one of those people like Bono where you go to him to write a movie for a song about something sort of pertinent

and like world history like current eventsy I want to say he wrote who wrote the song from Mandela Long Walk to Freedom was that Bono or was that That's Bono. That was Bono. Okay.

But I feel like Peter Gabriel has some of the stuff. Again, I really wish I had remembered to go and search the stuff out. I feel deficient in this. Oh, and now it's just soundtrack credits. Sorry, everybody, I failed you. But anyway, I just feel like in general, Peter Gabriel, every once in a while, will show up with a song to a movie. And it's like, well, you couldn't get Bono.

so you got Peter Gabriel because Peter Gabriel is another one of those people who like involves himself in like charity stuff but also just sort of like humanitarian efforts Thank you that's the word I was looking for humanitarian stuff

I remember back in the day oh god I was such a VH1 boy what a weird nerd I was I watched a ton of VH1 VH1 had a like VH1 honors thing for a while where they would do this like concert with you know, for a charity

and this one was for Peter Gabriel's charity I believe and like he basically was like the focal point of, but it was him and it was Natalie Merchant and Michael Stipe and Joan Osborne and the Tony Rich Project and I'm trying to

remember who else and it was this very sort of like earnest like imagine a night with Peter Gabriel Natalie Merchant Michael Sipe that was earnest like I you know try to hide your surprise but anyway this very sort of like solemn and earnest sort of concert for whatever humanitarian cause Peter Gabriel was supporting that year and like very admirable but also like he's he wrote

the song about Stephen Biko that I don't know whether was part of cry freedom or was sort of like parallel to it but anyway so I always sort of slot him mentally with Bono in these sort of you know solemn humanitarian songwriting efforts And I think that was... Well, and from an Oscar perspective, too, it's that level of musician or rock star that, like, absolutely, it's a little bit closer of an off-ramp to an Oscar nomination

if they ever, you know, do it. Granted, Peter Gabriel only has one, but, like, he's certainly of that, you know... Yes. Eschalon. Yes. I think you can probably... My guess would be you can pencil in LCD sound system

this year for white noise, for that very reason? It's my favorite part of that movie, pretty much. And I really, really hope it gets nominated. I'm also now looking up, obviously, I wonder if it sticks in Peter Gabriel's Craw that Phil Collins has an Oscar, and he doesn't. I wonder if there's like lingering Genesis resentment there. Like, Phil Collins, a three-time Oscar nominee, we should remember, for songs for

He did Against All Odds, of course. He had that song, Two Hearts from that movie Buster that he starred in in 1988. And then, of course, he wins the Oscar for the Tarzan song, famously beating Amy Mann and the South Park guys and when she loved me from Toy Story 2. And it's just like, fucking Phil Collins! Everybody's so mad. All right. I don't think I have anything else in my notes.

Let me see. Glenn Greenwald. Oh, yeah. The rare movie that's asking us to enjoy ourselves while we're getting Glenn Greenwald and Pierce-Morgan in the same movie, which, like, oh, boy. Bah, pa-pa-pa-p-pa-pa-ba-ba. Oh, with Rees-Efons and Nicholas Cage

is, I think, somewhat chaotic with and in a movie. Not necessarily as deserved, but, like, just any movie, which is like you're getting a with Rees-Efons and Nicholas Cage, is probably promising a lot. Can we talk about the most chaotic with and I have ever seen? Please. John C. Riley, in Stars at Noon, gets and with John C. Riley.

What? That should be illegal. Claire Deney, you are being deliberately provocative, I feel like. You are poking at us with that. I don't know. Or John C. Riley's people, his manager, agent. All right. Well, good for John C. Riley's agent, I guess.

You've earned your Christmas bonus this year. All right, Chris, we're going to play the IMDB game. Would you tell our listeners what the IMD game is? Absolutely. Every week, we end our episodes with the IMDB game where we challenge each other to name the top four titles that IMDB says an actor or actress is most known for. If any of those titles are television, voice-only performances, or non-acting credits, we'll mention that up front after two wrong guesses.

We get the reigning titles release years as a clue. That's not enough. It just becomes a free for all of hints. We do love a free for all of hints. All right, Chris, would you like to give or guess first? How about a give first? All right. Switch things up.

Get a little crazy. All right. So I went into the Oliver Stone filmography. As we mentioned, he's not doing as many fiction movies. However, Joe Reed, one of his most recent ones, Joe is a massive fan of the motion picture Savages among the headliners of the film Savages is one constantly being told is a movie star

though box office will tell you he is not people are rejecting it is Taylor Kitch Oh I think we've stopped calling Taylor Kitch a movie star at this point Yes but there was that like four year period It's like, bogs off his dog. And everyone was like, no, he's not. Yeah, that was Mary, we rejected it.

I feel bad. Listen, Taylor Ketched on Friday Night Lights very much earned the shot that Hollywood took on him at that point. Like, he was so good on that show. And it just... Speaking of which, there is one television on his TV. Okay, so Friday Night Lights. Friday Night Lights.

Okay. I imagine, even though they were flops, he was the headliner of both John Carter and battleship, so I'm going to guess both of those. Both of those are correct. Okay, so now it's a matter of... Was he Gambit in X-Men Origins Wolverine? I'm going to guess X-Men Origins Wolverine. Did I get it?

Four-for-four? You got it. You got a perfect score for Taylor Kitch. Fuck you. He is not Gambit. Famously, Gambit has, I believe, never shown up in any of the X-Men. T and X-Men Origins. Someone named Remy LaBeau?

That's Gambit. Yeah. Does he throw cards in the movie? Yeah. Okay, then I got it totally wrong that Gambit is not in these movies. Yeah. Why isn't he just called Gambit? I don't know.

Is this Gambit Gritty Rebo? It's a bad movie. Like, take it up with the movie. Yeah, right? Remy LaBeau is Gambit. I'm looking this up to make sure. I never saw this movie. I abandoned the X-Men movies.

Basically, I basically abandoned the, the X-Men movies around the time of Wolverine stand-alone movies, but then I saw First Class, which I like, and I saw Logan because of the Oscars. Okay. Well, plus it's a Western, and you know you love Westerns. Yeah, yeah, he was Gambit. Anyway, all right, for you, I also went down the Oliver Stone route. I went into the sprawling and tremendous cast of my favorite.

favorite Oliver Stone movie. One of my favorite movies of all time, JFK. Could literally be any actor or actress in the world. There are so many. That movie is star-studded and every single one is a serve. Even if they're bad, they are bad in a tremendous way. I've still, it's been decades and I still don't know whether Joe Pesci is good or bad in that movie, but the point is that he's tremendous. I've not picked Joe Pesci for you. Who I have picked is one of the greats, no longer with us, but he plays, what's his character's name? Jack, I want to say. He plays

a sort of two-bit private eye who gets pistol-wipped by Ed Asner in JFK, unfortunately. Mr. Jack Lemon. Jack Lemon, one of the greatest ever. I mean, catch me

on most days, and I'd probably say the greatest movie star ever. Interesting. Jack Lemon. I'm wondering if either of his Oscars are on there. So I'll say the apartment. The apartment, yes. Some like it hot.

Some like it hot. Yes. That's good. I was worried as soon as the words were out of my mouth because it didn't show up for some, for, maybe it doesn't show up for like Maryland or something. I don't think we've done an IMD game for Tony Curtis yet. but, you know, hope springs the time. Grumpy old men.

Correct. Three for three. Oh, God. What if we both get perfect scores? That would be a first. I don't think that's ever happened. Okay. I'm going to say neither of his Oscars are on there.

But I am going to go with... Glicklary Glenn Ross shows up for other people. So it would be weird if it doesn't show up. for Jack Lemon, so I'm going to say Glenn Glary again, Ross. You have to pronounce it correctly. I can never pronounce it correctly. Well, if you don't pronounce it correctly, you don't get credit for you. I am a mush mouth.

Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. Perfect score, Chris Files. Yeah! Very good. Both of us. That's never happened. That's never happened. That's very fun. Good for us.

Good for us. Thank God for us. All right. That was a fun episode, Chris. I was wondering if we could make it enough of a conversation about Snowden, but I think we managed. Thank you for the assist. Thank you, New York Film Festival, and thank you Survivor. Yes, that's a good point.

All right, that's our episode. If you want more that's had Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at this hadoscarbuzz.tum.com. You should also follow our Twitter account at Had underscore Oscar underscore Buzz. Chris, where can the listeners find you and your stuff? You can find me on Twitter and Letterbox at Chris V-File. That's F-E-I-O. I am also on Twitter and letterboxed at Joe Reed, read-spelled, R-E-I-D. We would like to thank Kyle

Cummings for his fantastic artwork. Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mevious for their technical guidance. Please remember to rate, like, and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, wherever else you get podcasts. A five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple podcast visibility, so throw a blanket over your head so no one can read your passwords and then leave us a nice review. Thank you. That's all for this week, but we hope you'll be back next week for more Bose. You never fail to satisfy It's good.