This Had Oscar Buzz - 308 – The Monuments Men

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

With another George Clooney film on the horizon with Wolfs, it’s time to revisit the diminishing returns of his directorial career. In the 2013 season, his WWII quasi-comedy true story ensemble film The Monuments Men was an on-paper awards magnet. With a cast that included Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman, and Bill Murray as a team … Continue reading "308 – The Monuments Men"

Gary's and gentle Gary's. We are happy to relay the news that the Vulture movies fantasy league is coming back for the 2024-25 award season. If you played the league over the last two years, you already know what's up. So if this is news to you, here are the details. We at Vulture have devised our own version of fantasy football only with movies. You select a roster of eight movies within a set budget. Then you watch those movies accumulate points throughout the rest of the year and through Oscar night. The Points come from accomplishments at the box office or from awards and nominations. It is quite simple and quite fun. Quite fun. And just like last year, you can join a mini league and compete against your friends, peers, or if you should so desire, against your fellow podcast listeners. Last season, the Gary showed up huge. We were by a large margin, the biggest of the mini leagues.

And Gary's represented through the season in the top 10 rankings. and we want to see that happening again. That's right. This year, we're running it all back. Registration kicks off for the movie fantasy league on September 10th. You will have until October 3rd to draft your team. If you would like to participate in the This Had Oscar Buzz specific mini league, you need to select that option when you create your team.

Be very, very sure of this. This year, Chris Fyle himself has devised a demented yet simple name for our mini league. What else can you expect from me? Garyators Like Gladiators But Garrys You can say it like Elizabeth Taylor If you'd like to

Just make sure you spell it G-A-R-Y-A-T-O-R-S G-G-E-O-R-S GARITERS Lurl Because for Gladiator 2 Get it? Missed Opportunity, Ridley Scott

We'll be throwing in reminders to sign up every week until the league kicks off It's worth noting that there are going to be way more podcasters participating each with the potential to create their own mini-leagues.

So we have to be vigilant. What we do in the movie Fantasy League will echo in eternity. Go forth, Mighty Garriators, and sign up. I'm from Canada water The Gipooke. Dick Pooh. The Nazis are on the run. They're taking everything with them.

So we have to get as close to the front as we can. I'm interested in what you saw there. Thousands of pieces. They would photograph the art then take to Hitler. We're going to have to jump ahead of the Third Army and get into Germany. How can I help you steal our stolen out? You can wipe out an entire generation. You can burn their homes to the ground and somehow they'll still find their way back.

But if you destroy their history, you destroy their achievements, and it's as if they never existed. Hello and welcome to the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. The only podcast that went to college in Boston. Well, not in Boston, but nearby. No, not Tufts. Every week on this at Oscar Buzz, we'll be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had Lofty Academy Award aspirations,

but for some reason or another, it all went wrong. The Oscar hopes died, and we are here to perform the autopsy. I'm your host, Joe Reed. I'm here, as always, with the child to my Madonna, Chris File. Hello, Chris. Thank you for confirming that I'm baby. Yes, of the two of us, you are definitely baby. So, yeah.

I'm baby, you're bratty. Yeah, sure. Yeah, why not? We are both works of art, though. That is, we are coveted works of art. How are you on this fine day? I am okay. We have been recording tons and tons of episodes.

We sure have. We sure have. And, well, you have things going on, but next weekend... We get a break. It's true. That is true. And I'm thrilled. Hey, next weekend I'll be seeing the Jellicle Ball, so it's not all busy, busy.

Oh, okay. So I'm no longer thrilled, and I'm pissed. And I really wish that the Jellicle Ball had been open this past spring. Yeah. And I was actually in the city. You must have missed it by just mere weeks, I would imagine. Do we know how long the Jellicle Ball is running? I'm seeing it because it got extended.

So who knows whether it could get extended again. Maybe I can make it happen. Maybe it can make it happen. Who knows? Anyway, we're not here to talk about cats dancing around. We're here to talk about other priceless works of art. And George Clooney's attempts to create an old-style movie, an old-style war movie with some lightheartedness to it. Here's the thing about

the Monuments Men, and we'll get into it as we go along, is there's a real specific tone that you can tell that George Clooney kind of had in his mind when he set out to make this movie, and he can't quite grasp it. And I think the movie

very obviously struggles for that. That is my impression of this movie. I imagine you agree, but maybe Oh, I 100% agree. He's trying to make Mr. Roberts. Like, he's trying to do...

Oh, I've never seen that movie, but that's an interesting comparison. He's trying to do The Sand Pebbles, a movie I don't like. But, like, he's trying to do a very mid-century classic Hollywood polished ensemble, military drama with comedic elements. One of the movies that he cites in when he talks about, about the movie's sort of production difficulties, and we'll definitely get into that, he cites The Great Escape,

which is definitely a movie I have seen, and that's a movie I thought of quite a bit while watching this movie. The thing about the Great Escape that also pinpoints what the problems with this movie is, I don't know, I think some of the things,

I understand using those films and like that vibe, that era of films for an inspiration for this type of movie. And I don't think I want to say it needs more modern sentiment, but there are more modern examples that do what this is trying to do well, that like it needs, the movie needs to be more focused on those elements in order to pull off the big picture that it wants to do. It's interesting that Clooney had such a contentious relationship with David O. Russell

on Three Kings, because Three Kings is a modern movie that does sort of... Not in the same way, but does sort of blend war movie and ensemble comedy or, like, you know, character comedy in a way that this movie could have maybe used a little bit more of. This episode's going to be us doing a decent amount of dogging on George Clooney. Because my comparison, my immediate comparison, it's so interesting that you say Three Kings. My immediate comparison is the Oceans movies. I think the problem with this movie is none of these characters are ever really. established or distinguished from each other in a way that makes us interested and stay involved in a movie this episodic, you know, like, it's never enough about character.

And that's also an interesting element when you, like, look at the details of, like, the conception and writing of this movie, because they're not actually based on the real people who did it. They're kind of, like, vaguely like the real character. they're supposed to be they change everybody's names certain ones are closer to the real life antecedents than the other ones and we'll talk about that one it's pretty close right we'll talk about that for sure because there's a specific reference to that that i'm definitely going to make so yeah but it's just like i i think the big failure of this movie because like i think i think people are too harsh on this movie maybe i agree with you i think they're too harsh but like it

It doesn't fully get there. It doesn't get to... I am decently... The version that's great of this movie is so clear at every point of watching this. I know I say this about other movies, but like the movies failing is that you can see the version of it that's so much better as you're watching it. And I think a lot of that comes down to we don't ever really get to know these characters. There's nothing really that, you know, sets one apart from the other. other, to the point that it all kind of just becomes vague and uninvolving.

I think if I'm going to use other George Clooney movies as comparison points, because I will say, by the end of this movie, I was a little bit charmed by this. I was a little bit charmed by what it was doing. I was like, it doesn't fully get there. It doesn't get where it wants to go and it doesn't do what it ultimately wants to do. But I'm decently charmed by what this movie ends up doing by the end. In the realm of George Clooney directed movies that flopped in one way or another, I thought it was far more engaging than something like leatherheads. I thought, which we've done a whole episode on, could not tell you thing one that happens in leatherheads.

Right. I think it's less frustrating than the aides of March because the Ides of March is going for something that is like right up my alley. If the Iads of March was the movie it wanted to be, like the Iads of March kind of wants to be Michael Clayton crossed with an Aaron Sorkin kind of a thing, right? Obviously, you know. Crossed with Sidney Pollock. Yeah. Crossed with Sydney Pollock. So like if that had happened the way that he had wanted it to, that's a fastball right down the middle for me. Like I love that. And then because it falls short of that, I'm all the more frustrated with the Iads of March. Where the Monuments Men, I'm like, it doesn't get where it wants. wants to be, but it settles into a decently entertaining pocket. So I think people are too harsh on this movie, but I do agree with you that, like, there are, there are quite obvious areas. I mean, everything that I was writing down about this movie, about like, not being able to nail the tonal balance. And then after I watch the movie, I go and look up, you know, the interviews that Clooney gave when the movie was pushed back because it had to be

tinkered with more. And I'm like, oh, yeah, like, that's everything that, everything that I was noticing is the stuff that Clooney's saying about how hard it's been to balance tones. The thing that they pushed this movie back for, they didn't fix it. I wonder how long it originally was. Like, I wonder if part of the problem is they cut out a lot of stuff and in the end they ended up cutting out the good stuff. And maybe cut out stuff in the early going to be like, let's get on with it. Let's get to the part where they're in the war. Right, right. Yeah, because that's how we're doing this movie. This was a movie that skipped the festival season. and I forget when it was ultimately pushed into the next year because there was a trailer that was released in the summer for that movie and it was expected to be at ball festivals, did not show up at any festivals.

I feel like it got pushed pretty late in the game. Yeah. Because I think it got to the point where it was like, oh, this movie could be at AFI back when AFI mattered at all. Yeah. Yep. And ultimately, they pushed the movie. And the thing is, they push the movie And then it's financially successful

So I think the thing about Surprisingly so I was surprised to see how much money this made Even domestically For a movie in February Which this is also still Much closer to the time Of Oceans movies

Making twice as much as this movie So you could see how it was Yes A disappointment But if this movie made $75 million today We would be like smash It is a hit Exactly, exactly

The Boys in the Boat fucking wishes. You know what I mean? Do you know anyone who's seen Boys in the Boat? I came very close to seeing it back in December and I just didn't. For me to know, nobody who's seen them. Okay, so that's a good comparison point to the Monuments Men. I think

the Boys on the Boat made more money than expected to probably a similar degree as the Monuments Men, but because we've like slid down the scale in expectation. Because what, Boys in the Boat, give me a second, it made like 20 million was 50 million good golly 50 million dollars sister you're totally right yeah and this is another area i think people are too harsh on this movie for because the monuments

men when people are talking about movies that cluny's directed it feels like monuments men is the punchline like that's the one that people use but it's like it's made more money than most of the cluny movie cluny directed movies did yes more than the more than the more than the more than the the one that was like the Oscar success. Good Night and Good Luck. Yeah. And it's not the like creative disaster that like Suburban or Midnight Sky is. I'll tell you why this is this, this is the punchline. There's a few reasons. One of which is it's, it's just on a comedy construction manner. It's the funniest title to say, the monument's man. It just sounds a little silly. On the second level, it's the movie where I think we all sort of came to the realization that like, oh,

Clooney maybe doesn't have it because it's now his third straight. It's not a good director. It's third straight failure. And then it also, if you try to use like the tender bar as a punchline, people are like the what or what? Yeah, people don't remember that Clooney directed the tender bar if they even remember. If they remember that that movie exists at all. Exactly.

So like it has to be the Monuments. Well, yeah. And I suppose for Monuments Men, the bar for success is itself higher because it's a larger scale movie. It was before we lost faith in Clooney. so we had expectations for it as an Oscar movie. Yeah. Even though I...

Also, all of this talk of Clooney is because the profile diminishing by the minute motion picture, Wolfs is coming out. Boy, here's the thing. I had my guard up about wolves from the beginning anyway because for as much as I will often defend Apple TV Plus when people try to sort of like brush it off as like just crap. I'm like, there's diamonds in that. There's plenty enough diamonds in that rough to make me, like, not brush off everything that Apple does on a TV front or on a movie front. And yet, I was like, this is an Apple movie that seems very much like a Netflix movie.

It's like a Netflix movie that had the budget of an Apple movie. So we got the A-lister's instead of the B-listers. Do you know what I mean? Right. And I got to say, by comparison, though, between Wolfe's and other. Apple TV movie. Earlier in the summer, I was like, oh, Matt Damon and Casey Affleck made a Doug Lyman movie for Apple TV.

I bet that'll be a thing. And then you see the trailer for this thing. And it looks like garbage. It just fully does not exist. It looks like a vertical entertainment release. It looks direct to VOD. I have continually mentioned that I'm the dummy who doesn't quite understand when people talk about like the Netflix aesthetic.

the sort of like the, I imagine, it's people say it's overly bright and whatever. And like, I, I'm still not great at, you know, processing aesthetics in that way. And yet I watched the trailer for Wolfe's and I was like, oh, that's the thing that people are talking. That has the thing that people are talking about in that way. So does the Doug Lyman movie. Go look at that trailer and you're like, oh. Has that movie come out by the time we're talking about? I believe it is currently in theaters as where, currently in theaters are,

same, maybe simultaneously in Apple, it is playing in my city. And I was like, the thing for me, now that my, my shorthand for that is, like, if it looks to me like a car commercial, if it looks to me like I'm expecting it to be like, you know, to see a Lexus sort of roll into the screen and that's like a car commercial, that's sort of when I kind of check out and just like, oh, I'm not, I'm not into this. The aesthetic everybody's talking about, like, if I can help push you along is everything just looks conceivably fake or AI or like just you know was rushed etc but can I can I express a little bit of outrage that will be wildly outdated by the time this episode comes out that wolves got truncated down to a week we'll talk about it after we talk about this okay I could

go right now in a and to a movie theater in my city and see this Doug Lyman Apple TV Plus movie that I still can't even remember the name of and it looks like dog shit what can't I go to a movie theater and see right now? The deliverance fuck you Netflix I want to see that movie in a theater the tweets I've

already seen about Glenn Close's performance and Andrew Day's performance I am so mad I don't get to see it in a theater we want to go support Lee Daniel I am currently and this will air this this episode drops much much after the fact anyway but I am currently

trying to strategize a way to see the deliverance while I'm in New York City and my options are real slim and they are literally at like the opposite ends of Manhattan where it's like it's either at the Paris Theater or at the I pick theater and it's just like I want that

thing to be available in a fucking AMC I want to get a nice Well it won't be available in an AMC Well but you know what I mean? Like I want that movie to be available in more places than because it's a Netflix movie Rearrange your schedule

figure it out. Oh, I'm gonna, but I'm just saying, like, it's more challenging than I want it to be. I'm just saying, if this was not releasing in late August, and if this was in Toronto,

it would be a movie I would rearrange my schedule or I can't wait to watch it. The Lee Daniels horror movie with Monique and Glenn Close? Yeah, absolutely. 100%. But back to Clooney.

Wolfe's. Wolfs, which was supposed to, to have an iMacs release and will now have a limited release for a week before now we've got on the platform we've gotten used to studios doing this especially studios that have sort of streaming arms HBO has been or whatever Warner brothers has been doing this to put things on HBO max um Disney has done it and obviously you know Netflix and Apple TV all you know feel like their theatrical runs are begrudging anyway but Um, my thing with the Wolf's thing was when they announced it, they tried to sell it.

They tried to spin it as Wolf's is so good that they've already greenlit a sequel and they want to make sure that you see it as soon as possible. So they're shortening the theatrical window and they're putting it on Apple TV Plus in a week. And I'm like, you disingenuous sons and guns. I was like, cut it. And they're like, it's like Michael Clayton, but there's two Michael Clayton's. And it's like, inside you are two Michael Clayton's. No. The John Watts Cinematic Universe, you have Spider-Man movies and something I would never watch called Cop Car.

Like, no. Yeah, John Watts is like the least file core filmmaker and all of history, I feel like. that's, he's batting zero for forever with you. We're definitely going to get into the Clooney filmography, both directing and acting, because now a certain director has put that on the table as well. If I have fingernails, you would hear them clacking. Yeah, Chris is ready to dig into. But here's the other thing about George Clooney is that ultimately, I don't relish sort of

dismantling his career in this way. He is somebody who I don't find to be a talented director, and yet I appreciate him as a celebrity to the point where it's just like, well, I don't have any ill will towards him. If this is, if he likes directing and he wants to keep trying to do with it, I would like to see someone help him improve. You know what I mean? Maybe he can get like a tutor. You can get some extra help after school. You know what I mean? in terms of movie making, go, have a few more conversations with Steven Soderberg. But I feel like various streaming platforms are like, just let him do another tender bar. He can call it whatever he wants.

Just keep him occupied. Keep him busy. It's like handing a child an iPad. And maybe he needs somebody to challenge him in that way. But like I like him as, I think he is ultimately seems like a good-hearted person. I think people like him, you know, co-stop. people who have, you know, worked with him. I imagine people on the studio side really like him.

And he's, you know, talk to a Biden or bust Democrat and see how pissed they are at him for his role in helping get us to the more optimistic version of electoral politics. I mean, like, you know, I guess. He didn't do what Pelosi did, but like, he threw his hat in the ring and, like, he contributed a little bit. Good for Clooney and doing that. Where is his very public and very large donation to the Harris campaign? I do have to ask that question. Maybe by the time this episode drops that all have happened. Maybe he's waiting for his keynote speech at the Democratic Convention,

which is this week as we are recorded. Oh, they just released the lineup. The lineup. Is it one of those Coachella posters where it's like Tim Walls in the big font? And then in the smaller fonts, it's, you know, Amy Clooburn. Prichard, Pete Buttigieg. George Clooney. It's not as good as you would want it to be.

But whatever. Honestly, the Democrats, the way that the Democrats have been campaigning, I'm kind of surprised they haven't released one of those. I literally, just as we sat down to record, I saw Tim Walls put out his summer playlist, which, like, is so... Which is like so dad-core that it feels like it's making fun of the Obama ones. And then it throws in... And then it throws in Chapel Rowan right at the end, which is the one that people were

sort of getting on Obama's case for not having. I was like, this is kind of shade. It is absolutely making fun of the fake Obama plays. Yes. I kind of appreciate it. But so, like, I'm kind of surprised with all of that, that they haven't released a Coachella style poster of everybody speaking at the Democratic Convention. I just want Tim Walz's like summer reading list. It's like three 30-year-old Clancy books and Long Island compromise. It's like one of the first ten Stephen King novels. It's like David Halberstam baseball book or whatever. Dean Kuntz. Yes, absolutely Dean Kuntz, 100%. Joyce Carol Oates and Ocean Vuong. And then just at the end there, it's like Song of Achilles. You know what I

mean? It's like, that's like the last thing. It's, um, oh, boy. Boy, the vibes are decent. I got to say, I know I'm setting myself up for whatever. But like, as a friend and former guest of this podcast, Lutz Pitesman has tweeted publicly, but also said to me privately, it was like, we're going to win or lose whether we win or lose. Like there's no, you know, might as well be optimistic and might as well use that to our advantage while we have it. And so I agree with that. So full speed ahead, Tim Walls with your dad ass. Chris, before we get into the Monuments Men as one of the French contingent of the Monuments Men is by the way, 100% on Tim Walls' best movies of the year. Tim Walls really liked the Monuments Man and this episode's for you, Tim. It's on his best of 2024 list. He watched it this year. Okay, sorry, we got lost on the Tim Walts Dadcore.

This movie is definitely Dad. or everybody's father has probably fallen asleep on the sofa watching this movie. I need to ask my dad whether he's seen it because if he had, I almost certainly would have gotten the, saw an interesting movie on TV last night, George Clooney, and they were in World War II and they were rescuing the paintings that the Nazis has stolen and then they'd be like, oh yeah, Monuments, men. But instead, Spike TV. But instead, it's just, The Gentleman was on HBO again last night. Great movie.

That's right. Your parents love the gentlemen. Not my parents. What else is on Tim Walz's best movies of 2024? Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sure. Sure. The sand pebbles.

What's the Dunzel Washington football coach movie? Remember the Titans? 100% is on his best movies of 2024. Remember the Titans is on his letterboxed four. What's his letterbox for? Remember the Titans, for sure. Oh, his letterbox four are, Remember the Titans, um,

close encounters of the third kind, The Godfather, part two. Yes. And, um, what's like a, like a, we should have clay color on here to do like a full like Minnesota,

a deep dive into what Tim Walz is, uh, top four letterbox four would be. All right. Chris. We could talk about Walls' core all day, but we're not going to. What other top movies of 2024 for Tim Walls are love story and Ocean's 11 and evil does not exist. Sure.

But he also will throw in there like something really kind of like he'll throw I Saw the TV Glow in there. Right, right. That's his evil does not exist. vote. Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, Chris, tell the listeners why they should, if they have not already, sign up for this at Oscar Buzz, Turbulent Brilliance. All right, so if you have not joined us over on our Patreon, which we call Turbulent Brilliance, now is the time to do so. I am going to promise you two months that are coming in hot. This is a, is this a September This is in September.

Listen, September is kicking off to very lot of months. We're also still in Toronto for this episode. We're still in Toronto for this episode? This comes out on the 9th, I believe, yeah. Okay, fabulous. I'm usually the one keeping track of time. Thank you for picking up my slack today. The, what do we do over on Turbulent Brilliance?

You're going to get two bonus episodes every month. The first of which arrives on the first Friday of the month. It's called an exception. These are movies that fit that this had Oscar buzz. rubric that managed to score a nomination or two. What are we doing in September? We've done Children of Men. It was a runner-up, a very close runner-up in our last listener's choice, and we decided, hey, let's just do this great movie. Other movies we've recently done, we've had our friend Jorge Molina on for Knives Out. That was the winner of that listener's choice poll. We've

done movies like Vanilla Sky, My Best Friend's Wedding, the Lovely Bones, Nine, Pleasant Phil. Come check those movies out. The second episode, we call an excursion. These are deep dives into Oscar Ephemerah. We love to obsess about on this show. It arrives on the third Friday of every month. We recently did a games-only game night edition that was maybe among the most unhinged things we've ever done.

I had so much fun. It was quite a bit of fun. We might give you a little tease this episode. for what you might expect in that episode. We also have done things like award show recaps. We've recapped Indy Spirit Awards, MTV Movie Awards. We've talked about EW Fall Movie previews. We do our annual, well, it'll be annual once we do it again.

The Superlatives episode. In September, however, we went back and rewatched all of the Oscar nomination morning announcements from the 1990. 90s, and we will be giving you a recap on that. What are you going to expect in October? Listen. We put up a poll. Joker Folly Adieu is coming, whether we want it or not. And it is going to be a very gaga month.

We will be talking about House of Gucci. And for the excursion, our listeners have chosen. At this point, the poll is not closed, but it is definitely winning the 2018 actress roundtable from the Hollywood Reporter. We're talking Gaga. We're talking close. We're talking Han. We're talking vice.

Who are the other? Who are the other? Gina King. That's right. Boom. When Nicole Kidman... All in red. When Nicole Kidman is like sixth build in a roundtable, like, you know, it's a

banger. So, yeah. Come join us. Patreon.com slash this head Oscar buzz. Indeed. $5 a month. $5 a month. Who are you to refuse?

All right. We are talking. This week, while Chris and I are busy, what's our, do you have, what's, what are we seeing on the 9th? Do you have, what's in our, like, tentative schedule. I've reached the chaos point of my TIF schedule. It's definitely not set in stone for sure. Yeah. And yet.

Oh, my first, my morning slot, I have like four movies picked that I'm like, well, we'll see how it goes. And I'll go. This is the day I currently am scheduled to see Pedro Al Motivar's the room next door. Oh, are we going to that same screaming? I don't know. Right now, there's question marks on everything, but we'll see. We'll see how it goes. This will also be the night of the TIF premiere of Queer.

Hell yeah. Oh, yeah, Luca. I will be losing my mind if I'm not at that screening. All right, but today we are talking about the Monuments Men, directed by George Clooney, written by George Clooney and his frequent collaborator, Grant Heslov, starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Hugh Bonneville, Jean Du Jardin, Bob Balaban, Dimitri Leonidas, boyfriend, Dmitri Leonidas, my goodness, and Cape Blanchette, with the end credit. It premiered on February 7, 2014 at the Berlin International Film Festival, and pretty much simultaneously released in the United States that same weekend. Chris File.

Hi. I'm going to put my stopwatch on. You will have one minute to summarize the plot of the Monuments Men. Are you ready? Sure. And begin. All right. It's World War II and we assemble a crew to go over into Europe to help rescue basically art that the Nazis have stolen or in the process of keeping for themselves or maybe even destroying Cape Blanchett as the one lady who is working in France and being like forced to.

by the Nazis. They take a bunch of her art. We try to get Clare, uh, Cape Blanchet to work with us. She's like, no, you're Americans. You're just going to want to take it for yourself, which fair. And ultimately, she eventually trusts them and gives Matt Damon the guide to where all of the stolen art is. In the meantime, this team suffers some losses, including Hugh Bonneville and Jean-Duchardin. Anyway, the, basically the war in Europe is ending. Germany is surrendering. Hitler is dead. And they have to go and find a few of these. major art pieces including one giant art piece from

Cathedral and the Michelangelo's Madonna, they find them basically buried in a cave and they all rush out the Madonna in a like Indiana Jones mine cart thing and eventually they save as much art as they possibly can George Clooney tries to get President Truman to

continue searching for this art and because we know that Truman was maybe skeptical of some of this, he might have said no. The movie does not tell us whether or not Truman does it or not. 27 seconds over. Had Truman in this movie been played by Gary Oldman, I think we would have gotten. We would have maybe been like, oh, Harry Truman is going to be like, fuck that faggy. Oh, okay.

Yeah, exactly. Get this faggin out of my office. Apologies. Apologies for using the. F slur. I can do it. Okay. Yeah, we're allowed. We're allowed. Okay. So, right. But that is the vibe of that Oppenheimer scene. He's like, look at this queer. 100 million percent. I never want to speak to anybody so faggity in my entire life. Yes. He essentially does what the current cool Pope also said.

Right. Fagiotini. Exactly. Okay. But wait, I was going to spin off of, one of the things that you had said in your plot description. What was it? One thing that I left out is they find like basically a horde of artwork in a Bavarian castle. And when the Bavarian castle is revealed on screen, that this had Oscar Buzz universe collapsed on itself. And I was like, we are suddenly in something for everyone. Yes, it's the same castle. It is the very same castle. I wrote it down. It is

a new schwanstein castle in Bavaria, yes. But the rush is basically to get as much of this as possible because the Nazi plan is if Hitler dies or Germany falls, they're just going to get rid of it as quickly as they can. They're going to destroy, you know, centuries worth of human history and human expression and human art. And so it's like they're... multiple times throughout this movie, I just literally wrote down, God, the Nazis are such

assholes. Because like it's, it's, there's, you don't say. Well, but most movies will be just like the Nazis. Inhuman monster, you know what I mean? Like this sort of like this grand, which obviously true, obviously these grand sort of acts of unbelievable monstrosity and wild evil. And this movie's like, Yes, but also on an individual level, what a bunch of petty little assholes. You know what I mean? He has a hard time walking its fine line of being about this specific thing about the Nazi regime, but none of the other awful atrocities of the Nazi regime, and not really talking about that because it wants to talk about this specific moment

or this specific aspect that's under-discussed about, you know, that could have wiped all of it and wants to take importance in this artwork and acknowledge that maybe other people wouldn't. But it doesn't quite do it that well because it's that thing that you're talking about where it ultimately reduces the Nazis to, you know, like we don't see any of these human atrocities that are happening. We're not seeing... I mostly think that's fine in that, like, if you're going to sort of drill down in this movie to this one specific aspect of World War II, I'm fine with that. I think the movie makes some sort of nods toward the greater thing. There's a moment where Matt Damon and Cape Blanchet are in some, you know, trove of

stolen art. And Matt Damon, somewhat unrealistically, naively, is like, what is all of this? Or who does all this belong to or whatever? And she just says the Jews. And then there's the other moment where they find the sort of barrelful of gold teeth fillings. And that's this really sort of like somber moment. So I think those things are definitely like woven in there. And obviously, like, nobody's going to, nobody's at risk of sort of forgetting what, you know, the, the atrocities that the Nazis committed. But I think this movie is committed to drilling down into the making a case for why the Monuments Men, why what they did was important, right? Why what they did was valuable. And I think it's in terms of the context in which, you know,

they get overlooked in history. Right. And I think it's intermittently successful. And I think it doesn't quite get where it needs to go there. But I think the movie's major failures are something that you mentioned very early on in this episode, which is we don't get a good sense of who these characters are before we start pairing them off and siloing them into their own little, you know, adventures, right? And I think because you have good cast members in this, they do an okay job of filling in those blanks.

You've got Murray, Murray and Balaban are in their own little twosom. Goodman and Dujardin are in their own little twosome. The artist reunion. Right, yeah. I kind of imagine Murray and Balaban were together in something, right? Some Wes Anderson. I think they're both in Grand Bud. They're both in Moonrise Kingdom, yeah.

Oh, Balaban's so good in Moonrise Kingdom. He really is, isn't he? Well, to take it back just a ten, you don't have to show the actual violence of the Nazis for us to get the bigger context, for us to understand the atrocity that's happening. Right. Like, you don't have to actually depict it to get that. But the movie has a certain level of glibness, and I would even argue hand-wringing of like, how funny is this movie allowed to be to the point where it's like, it's, it's so, like, not, it never is sure-footed in any direction to the point that it actually misses some of the important content.

Do you think that part of that is the fact that this idea that like, oh, you couldn't make a movie like the Great Escape today because people wouldn't be able to countenance a movie being that sort of, lighthearted about World War II in the Holocaust in the same way that people like now, you know, I would say with good reason, bash something like life is beautiful or something like Jojo Rabbit. But Jojo Rabbit was pretty

successful in all things considered. So successful as a... This movie made like twice as much as Jojo Rabbit. Sure, but I... We call this the failure. Well, sure, but the Jojo Rabbit's the one that got an Academy Award. You know what I mean? So...

And it's also just like they cast basically an entire supporting cast of people who are proven to just be on screen and be funny. But it never really gives them an avenue in which to be funny or be specific, you know. And they're like very specific comedic performers. Bob Balaban is maybe the most successful in this movie of being funny, just being present. because he's a very specific comedic performer. He also gets the best sort of written comedic scene, which is when he tricks the Nazi children into saying Heil Hitler, which I think I was like, okay, I enjoyed that.

That was, again, that was funny. That was good comedy rung out of, you know, Nazis. And, like, well, not to bring up Quentin Tarantino before we really want to get into Quentin Tarantino, but, like, he was able to do that pretty successfully in InGlorious Basso. So it is... Inglorious Bastards is a good movie to bring up, though, because this comes out five years after that movie and it, you know, if maybe some of this hand wringing has to do with also setting itself aside as a movie from that movie, which was incredibly successful. Well, In Glorious Bastards very much was like, you know, We're going to be very bold, very postmodern.

We're going to rewrite history, obviously. This very sort of like things that probably only Tarantino could have pulled off. You know what I mean? With that kind of chutzpah. I think the Monuments Men is very much trying to be a throwback to, you know, those movies that you mentioned, Mr. Roberts and the sandpubbles and the Great Escape and this kind of thing. And I think it's maybe harder to do that because movies are so tied to their eras. Do you know what I mean? I think Inglorious Bastards was a movie for its era.

And I think The Monuments Men is a movie for, you know, 30 years prior, 40 years prior, something like that. It could be. I mean, like, I do think that there is a sensibility that. that's maybe tricky to achieve. But, like, in making these characters all be strongly defined in a way that is both comedic and we want to watch them and root for them, it feels very, like, Soderbergian, right? You know, like... Yes.

Of, like, the version of this movie that works has an ocean's vibe to it, like... Sure. But if you look at all of Clooney's movies, there is, there seems to be a palpable desire. to recapture something, some quality of a kind of movie that he grew up enjoying, right? Leatherheads is supposed to be this like throwback to screwball. And the Ides of March is meant to be this throwback to like 70s political thriller kind of stuff. Sidney Pollock, you mentioned. Suburicon is this sort of, I don't know what the fuck that's supposed to be.

Except, well, it's playing in the sandbox of sort of Cold War paranoia. It's playing in the sandbox of Cohen's too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an old Cohen's script. Midnight Sky's the one where I kind of can't make sense of what he's trying to do there. Mostly because I was pretty disengaged from all of it. I mean, and it's a terrible movie. It does feel like what is his movie that is his, and it's maybe Good Night and Good Luck,

though that does obviously have its stylistic, you know. Very stylized. Very stylized, but in a way that feels postmodern, it feels very like we are going to take this kind of Edward R. Murrow, black and white, you know, the news as, you know, drama, you know what I mean? You know, the news as something very fraught with, you know, and at that moment in history, you know, very imperiled by the politics. that surrounded it. And I think you look at something like Good Night and Good Luck, and even something like Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, these are his first two movies. And they're the two kind of bolds, they're the most boldly modern movies on his filmography. I think he really, starting with leatherheads, try to pastiche it too much. Do you know what I mean? In some way or

another. It's not only that, but I do feel like, as a viewer, the, the effect I get is of George Clooney trying to chase other directors rather than find his own creative identity. Absolutely. There's, there's so much of Monuments Men that feels like it's Clooney trying to be Spielberg or trying to do a Spielberg, especially the final scene of the movie. Or even a CAPRA, you know what I mean? Like, even that kind of a thing. Yeah. And, and maybe I don't get that. from Good Night and Good Luck. Granted, it's been a while since I've seen it. Same.

But, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know either. I, again, I appreciate the swing. I don't know. Maybe I'm being, you know, more generous than I would be with another director who I may be find to be pretentious or whatever. And I don't find that from Clooney.

I think Clooney is somebody who loves movies, loves all kinds of movies, and has the rare benefit of having, you know, the means to get financing to make movies like this kind of a thing. And I don't find, to me, that's not dilettant behavior. To me, that's like he's, you know, I always talk about like if I had the means, what would I do? I'd run a, you know, rep movie theater. And that's much, that's as much me playing in the sandbox of the things that I love as much as he is. Do you know what I mean? Right. But maybe the way forward for him to do that is to not be a director. Produce. Right. Right. Exactly, exactly. Use those resources to, like, bring up a generation of directors who can pull off the visions that you have in your head. I think Clooney has kind of interesting visions, and I think he has trouble sort of executing those. And so maybe producing is the best of both worlds. I think even like a Damien Chazel would have something to do with Monuments Men, like that would be more successful and interesting than what he. has done, though Damien Chiselle is not really young and upcoming, you know, he is basically the Hollywood establishment. The Damien Chiselle

of 2014, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that's whiplash, Damien Chazel. But Clooney was also a frustrating element on this rewatch as a performer. Oh, always. It felt a little you know, the role

he gives himself in this movie, which is not even the real person. It's a version of the real person that he's playing. All Clooney really exists to do in the movie as an actor is monologue and, you know, tell the audience what they're supposed to think about any given moment. And it gives this effect of Clooney himself. Cluny the director existing. Being kind of patronizing. Yeah, you're not wrong. Well, there's a, there's a line that I wrote down because I thought it was so on the nose that I found it to be egregious. Um, and it's, they find,

find a trove of art that has been, you know, kept preserved and whatever. And he says, it seems the Nazis took better care of paintings than they did people. And it's like, George, like, that's so greeting card. That's so, you know, Pat. And it's like, we're already on your side, dude. And you do all these patronizing monologues in this movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also feel like maybe Damon is the actor who can pull off those monologues.

better than he can. So it's like, the movie is probably improved a little bit if you have them swap roles even. Or just write out the Clooney character entirely and have Damon be the guy who runs the show. Let Clooney have one of those monologues, just the one. Have him cameo. He cameos as the person in the office who's, you know, sets them on their task or whatever. You know what I mean? That.

So here's where I want to bring in our friend Quentin. So why don't you lay the stage for this recent little spat between former on-screen brothers from dusk till dawn, Quentin Tarantanino and George Clooney. So as part of the Wolf's promo cycle, Clooney did a GQ interview alongside Brad Pitt, his co-star, frequent collaborator. co-star, yes. bemoaning effectively that Quentin Tarantino has said that Clooney is not a movie star. The quote is the quote that he quotes, because this is apparently something that Tarantino said in a podcast, that he says, Clooney says that Tarantino said, he's not a movie star, and then he said, he literally said something like, Name Me a Movie Since the Millennium.

Now, George has him on this. in that, like, 90% of Clooney's movie star career has been since the millennium. Like, Tarantino is wrong on the timeline. Tarantino, I don't think, is wrong on the merits. It's just that he sets the boundary at the wrong moment. When would you set that boundary? When is the moment that, like, Clooney stopped giving good movie star performance? cluny's last theatrical picture before ticket to paradise which made more money than people think it did though no one likes that movie yeah his last theatrical movie before then was money monster right which was six years prior even on a technicality tarantino's right because cluny doesn't do movies and i'm sorry midnight sky for the purposes of this conversation does not count a movie that

I was on streaming in COVID and no one watched. And I would also say that if you are talking about George Clooney being effective as, you know, the movie star that we sort of, you know, the A-Lister who brings, you know, gravitas and, you know, a headlining performance in a movie, I don't think we've seen that guy since 2011. and the two movies he did in 2011 are wildly divisive in terms of whether people like them or not. That's when he does Ides of March and the Descendants. Now, neither one of us are big fans of the descendants, but obviously enough people who were in that it was nominated for Best Picture. He was nominated for Best Actor. He was sort of tapped to be one of the people who could maybe win Best Actor that year.

He's co-starring with the guy who beat him in The Monuments of Men. He's a Jean-Drew Sheridan. I would argue that since 2011, these are his roles, these are on-screen performance since that, Gravity, the Monuments Men, Tomorrowland, Hail Caesar, Money Monster, as you mentioned, an animated movie called Trouble, which we can sort of set that aside, the midnight sky, ticket to paradise, and then like a couple of cameos in, well, he's in the flash against his will, and then he's a voice in... If. So of those, gravity, supporting role to the point of being a glorified cameo, right? Supporting role to the point where we can't say that it's a supporting role because that is like an act one spoiler. Right. The Monuments Mountain, we are in the midst of talking about why that's sort of a insubstantial performance.

Hail Caesar, major role, but not really. You know what I mean? Like, he's, that's, that's Josh Brolin's movie. That's Channing Tatum's movie. That's Aldenarine Reich's movie. That's not really, like, what Clooney is bringing there, I think, is on a level far, far, far below what a lot of other people are. Yeah, nobody comes out of that movie really talking about Clooney. That movie gives you a lot to talk about, and no, I've never really seen anybody talk about Clooney's performances.

So if we're talking about Legit Lead roles, we're talking about Tomorrowland, Money Monster, the Midnight Sky, and ticket to paradise. And I would argue that in none of those is he bringing the kind of performance that you would expect an A-list movie star to bring. You know what I mean?

Here's the movies that he's in that have made over $100 million. If, as you mentioned. Yeah, we're not going to credit him. I did not know that he was in if, right? Going backwards. Gravity. The three oceans movies.

two spy kids movies The Perfect Storm and Batman and Robin That is it for movies that have made over $100 million that he is in I think that the nuance of is George Clooney a movie star Lies in those 2011 movies you mentioned Because this is what is consistent of Clooney's career in terms of movie stardom You have movies like The Descendants that

do better than another actor might have pushed those movies to box office-wise, but by no means, a blockbuster. And then the Ides of March that you're like, that movie probably should have made more money, right? Right. That is what the status of George Clooney's movie start. It's always been. Iads of March, we got, ultimately we're going to end up doing Iads of March on the Patreon,

which is another reason to sign up for our patron. Because that is a fascinating narrative of, like, unrealized expectations. And one of the things that is part of that is that movie sold quite literally on the faces of George Clooney and Ryan Gosling, like side by side, two actors who in very kind of similar ways are not as are bigger stars in, I don't want, okay, I'm just going to say it this way and like, give me a second to follow it up. They're bigger stars in media than they are with the public. And I don't want to say that they are creations of this kind of like media bubble. You know how people talk about when they're like, nobody really ever watched Succession? It was only people who worked in media. And I think that's a little, that's a little self-flagellating on the part of people who, you know, whatever.

Because I think you'll hear that from people who watched and loved Succession, but like, let's be real. You know, it was only people in a media bubble. And it's like, isn't that quite true? If my mom watched it, that's not true. Like, it's my, you know, I use my parents as a barometer and my dad definitely watched succession. Anyway, but I think both Clooney and Gosling have always had a lower ceiling on their box office than a higher floor maybe with Clooney, certainly, but a lower ceiling. Gosling's also, we talk about all the time about how like, oh my God, I would expect somebody who has the kind of cute. rating, to use an outdated term, as Gosling, to be like a $200 million guarantee at the box

office. And he's not, you know what I mean? Never been. That's the thing about both. They are a good comparison for each other because I do think it's the two-fer thing of they have movies that because they're in it, they end up making more money than it normally would. Or it's movies that look like they should have made more money. The thing that... Which does not include the fall guy. The fall guy. The fall guy made an appropriate amount of money. The fall guy was sneakily successful. The thing that Tarantino, I think, and maybe this is the thing that maybe Clooney's,

you know, brushing up against is that Tarantino feels like he's being purposefully ungenerous because of the fact that from 2000 until 2009 or 2010, Clooney was a great movie star. You know what I mean? those Oceans movies, for as much as they're Steven Soderberg triumphs, I don't think they work to the degree that they do without Clooney in that main role. He's, his personality is so integral to those movies succeeding to the level that they do. I think he brings, and I think he also at that time was a really good movie star for doing mainstream stuff and then art house stuff. While he's doing Oceans movies, he's doing Solaris. And he's doing Solaris. And he's

doing, you know, Siriana, which he wins his Oscar for. He's doing a weird, you know, black and white, you know, the good German. He brings all of his movie star charisma to something like Michael Clayton. And that's a huge success. He does shit like the American. Do you know what I mean? And there's, and then while also doing that, he's in like mainstream, you know, middle brow. good movies like burn after reading and up in the air and, you know, the perfect storm, you know what I mean? Like that kind of a thing. So I think for that decade, he's a great movie star. And I think if you want, and you can even like, you'll believe that in the late 90s, you know, out of sight is a good example of that. Three Kings for as much as he and David O. Russell fought was a good example of that. And so if Tarantino wants to say like in the last decade that Clooney has stopped being a movie star, I would 100% agree with him. He's also started being a parent too.

So it's like. Sure. Sure. There is a, there is a degree of Bianca Del Rio. Tell me one thing you do successfully quickly. Because like in terms of just in the last decade, I don't want, I don't, again, I don't want to be too mean to Clooney. No, I mean, I also think there's a certain degree that in terms of their taste, weirdly enough, Tarantino is more of a populace than George Clooney is. Yes. Yes. Tarantino hasn't seen two-thirds of these movies because the majority of the population doesn't care about these type of movies.

But also the ways in which Tarantino is, you know, transcends populism is on the complete other end of the spectrum. He's not seeing, you know, the tender bar and he's not seeing, you know, the boys in the boat. He's seeing, you know, weird horror you know, quasi-horror shit or like whatever Eli Roth is doing. He probably saw the descendants. He's not going to give

a shit about Money Monster. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. What did you think of Clooney and Hail Caesar? Oh, I mean, he's funny in Hail Caesar. I mean, I think I am pro-Hale Caesar. Even like, I don't know how far down the list of Hail Caesar performances I go before I hit Clooney and turns out of what I like the best. He's not in the top five of performances that you mentioned. Alden-Earon-Rake, Channing Tatum, Tilda Swinton,

Francis McDormand with her with her bow caught in the editing machine. That dude is so funny. Even Scarlet Johansson is like doing a voice that's funny. Brolin. Double tildas. Exactly, exactly. So you go down the list pretty far.

Again, I think he's good. I think he's playing this sort of like bloviating. He, in that, that's a movie. I think Cohen's Clooney is very particular kind of. of Clooney. He sort of hits the same kind of like old-timey actor stuff in Hell Caesar, in O'Brother, in kind of in, well, definitely in Burn After Reading, kind of in intolerable cruelty. He's a little bit more suave in intolerable cruelty. Coen's is like the closest that Clooney gets to being comfortable in an Autour movie because even like gravity like Coron's in Ator I wouldn't really necessarily like no Clooney doesn't have to do a lot of that.

Clooney also doesn't have to be Clooney for that movie to succeed. Clooney just has to be somebody who the audience recognizes. Clooney just has to be someone famous so that that movie can afford to be as expensive as it is. I will say, though, within those parameters, I think he's quite good in that movie for what he has to do. But, like, Clooney also doesn't seem to be very interested. I'm trying to choose my words graciously.

In being in movies where he may have to relent his star persona or maybe his power to the creative vision of someone else. I think the ideal world for Clooney would have been for the Coens to invite him into some sort of professional polycule and sort of work as a creative thruple.

Or for Soderberg to be making Ocean's movies in perpetuity, which I think we all would want. But... Yeah. Well, if... Because like even in those, Clooney does kind of get to do the Clooney thing even though it's deeply like Soderberg doing it.

Here's a thought experiment for you. If Clooney directs Oceans 8 instead of Gary Ross and makes the cameo in that movie to sort of bounce a potential sequel off of it, A, is that a better movie, and B, do we get Oceans 9 and 10? First of all, you will provide the Elliott Gould cameo in that movie from my cold dead hands. Fair. I don't think Clooney could direct an Oceans movie.

Like, I don't think, I don't think he's interested. This is, Monuments Men is the closest thing he'll get to an Oceans movie. Yeah. In that the movie doesn't understand, it needs to be more of like an Oceans movie. Is my suggesting that, is my suggesting that part of the reason why Clooney still gets millions and millions to make movies going forward? Because I'm like, yeah, let Clooney make an Oceans movie. Why not? I say that mostly because I don't think Gary Ross.

hold it off. You know what I mean? And so maybe somebody else could. That movie has some weird unnecessary third act things. Why did they cast James Corden in that role when it should be like... I agree with you, but Oceans 8 doesn't fail because of James Corden. I feel like sometimes because

people in our demographic don't want to, you know, I don't think any of the actresses are to blame, but I think people in our demographic are very easily just like, yeah, fuck James Corden. He's the reason why Ocean's 8 is bad. No, no, no, no. That's not what I'm saying. Yeah. I'm, I think I probably like Oceans 8 more than, I don't need Oceans 8 to be perfect. I just need to have a good time and I solidly have a good time at that movie.

So I don't hate that movie as much as everybody else does. I think where it fails is in accumulation of small misses throughout the movie. And there's a number of small misses throughout. It's just not a sharp movie. And like James Corden in that movie, it's a small, it's one of many. small misses. Yeah. I think it's also a movie that ultimately doesn't quite have a handle on its strengths entirely. I think in some ways it does. I think it's a movie that knows how funny Anne Hathaway is. And I think it's sort of like hands a good portion of the movie

over to her. But I think other people who are giving very good performances like Kate Blanchett and Helena Bonham Carter are sort of left dangling at some point in that movie and never quite picked up again. And I think the Bullock character isn't written strongly enough to meet her talents. I think Sandra Bullock has, you know, could have done a lot more with a concept like that. And I think ultimately it's not written all that interesting for her. This is where I maybe get a little pedantic. But like, if you have a cast of eight characters versus a cast of 11 characters, 11, you know, everybody has less. less burden.

Yes. And Oceans 8, I think each of those characters are burdened with more of the weight of the movie than the other movies are. The other thing, though, is that... In a way, that's not just numbers. One of the great miracles of, I would say, especially Oceans 11, maybe less so with the other ones, is in that limited time that it gives you with each one of those characters, it nails everything. It's so economical.

with, like, you get two scenes of Casey Affleck and Scott Kahn, and it's just, like, gold, you know what I mean? So funny. Bernie Mac. Bernie Mac, same deal, you know what I mean? Oh, rest and peace, Bernie Mac. Might as well call it white jack scene. You know what I mean? Just like, it's perfect.

You know what I mean? You don't really need too much more of that. Carl Reiner, same deal. And I think. Elliot Gould's giving Matt Damon shit. Exactly. Exactly. And whatever.

Is that Elliot Gould or is that Carl? No, it's Elliot Gould. We've talked a tonne about Clooney. Let's get into the supporting cast of this movie. Who do you think is the best performance in this movie? I think we both agree that it's Balabanan. Balaban is maybe my number two. I think Hugh Bonneville is actually quite good on the dramatic side. My boyfriend, Hugh Bonneville. But he dies first, so you don't see enough of people. But he's, he is the dramatic gravity of the movie. I think if he's, if he is, it. If that scene, if that little portion of the movie doesn't work, then Clooney's sort of desperation to find the Madonna is doesn't, you know, doesn't land. And I think that's one of the few things that this movie really does well is this idea that like not, like this all matters a little bit less if we can't find this one particular thing because we need to make Hugh Bonneville's sacrifice worth it.

Who's your favorite performance? Blanchet. I mean, Blanchet with a half-smoking, old-timey cigarette, you know, just like dangling inches away from her mouth saying, you want us to help you steal our stolen art. Like, of course, that's like the best line reading in the whole movie. And of course it's in the trailer. Like, that's your marketing hook right there. Sure, sure. Like, flawlessness in that type, like, you know, knows what the scene needs to be and delivers it in a way that I think some other.

other actors don't in this movie. Who are you talking about specifically? I think Murray is a miscalculation for this movie. I'm not quite sure what Murray is going for in this movie, which is too bad, because ultimately, I think Balaban is doing so well, you know, opposite him. The thing with Blanchett and Damon, to a degree, too, is... Ripley Reunion. Yes, Talented Mr. Ripley Reunion, very much so.

I almost want to see them in their own movie. that's, you know, this kind of Casablanca-esque, you know, romance amid war. You want Matt Damon to be in the Good German? Well, kind of. Yes, it's a more successful, less sort of, you know, determinedly weird version of the Good German. Yeah, kind of. I think their scenes are really interesting together. And then, like, we won't see anything of her for 25 minutes.

because ultimately the movie has other fish to fry. I think, so her character, as many people in the movie, are loosely based on real people in history. So Clooney's character is loosely based on somebody named George Stout. Matt Damon's character is loosely based on a guy named James Rorimer. And then so Kate Blanchett's character, Claire Simone, is loosely based on a real-life woman named Rose Valand, who was a French art curator and member of the French resistance and did basically everything that, you know, Claire does in this movie in terms of like keeping records, keeping track of where all these things are going, so that once, you know,

the Reich falls, she is able to ultimately help recover as much of this stuff as been recovered. I'm going to posit that all of this is rendered more successfully in the drunk history episode from 2018, starring Tiffany Haddish and Busy Phillips. And I made sure to send you the link to that because I hadn't, I didn't know whether you had already watched it or not before, before preparing for this. And I was like top five drunk history. It's one of my favorite, if not my very favorite drunk history. I know that like Tiffany Haddish is on all of our shit list right now and rightly so for

her wackadoo shit she's saying about Israel and Palestine. But, um, among other things. Among other, yes, among other things. This particular one, I think she's really funny, but like all star performance by Bizzy Phillips as Rose Valland in this movie lip syncing to Tiffany Haddish's monologue in like there, there, when the part where Haddish is like, uh, and Rose all this time is just like watching everything. taking notes, taking notes. And that, I use the gif of busy Phillips going,

taking notes, taking notes, like all the time. It's so applicable. Just tremendous. My husband's icebreaker question is always, what would be your drunk history episode? Oh, like, what would you want a monologue? Yeah. What's yours? I always answer the Alan Carr Oscars. Oh, that's a great one. I wish I had more time to think about what mine would be, because I would want it to be, the appeal of doing a drunk history to me is sort of like the appeal of doing a screen drafts and that like it gives me an excuse to just like do deep dive research on something in a way that like I'm enthused about but maybe don't know everything about. But I'm not sure what exactly it would be. Get back to me. Get back to me. We'll find an excuse. Maybe on a future mailbag. Somebody asked me if I, I've come up with what my drunk history would be at some point.

The, the, uh, how the ousting of Tamara Gray led to the ascension of Kelly Clarkson. Honestly, something like that, yes. Or like, well, this would have been better before, uh, sadly Nikki McKibben has passed away. But my like, my, uh, my stone cold certainty that Nikki McKimmon tried to steal Kelly Clarkson's moment from her during a moment like this in the American Idol finale. I won't do that anymore because of respect for the dead. Anyway, there's also the moment of, again, busy Phillips dance in the neney at the end of that drunk history. So funny.

God bless. She's so good in that. Anyway, I think that ultimately gives me a fuller picture of what that character pulls off than the Monuments, Manuantzman just sort of like abandons her so frequently. We should not let it go really unmentioned that Jeanne du Jardin is in this movie who it was like, oh, we're supposed to have a French guy here.

All right, Frenchie. Who's a Frenchie? Oh, the guy who beat George to the Oscar. He just won an Oscar. Why not use him? After Jean-Du Chardin was like, I think I'm just going to stay in the French film industry. Well, if this movie had come out in 2013, he would have been in two movies that year because he was also in the Wolf of Wall Street. That's true.

You know, I'm not a fan of that movie, but I think especially, I think, I look at Jean de Jardin in this movie, and I'm like, what purpose did that casting solve, really? Just because he was in Hollywood at the time of those castings. So here's something that I'll say. We always talk about the buyer's remorse of the Oscar voters minutes after they give the award to Roberto Benign in 1998 for Life is Beautiful. Don't you mean like seconds after the envelope was? Sure.

Well, certainly Helen Hunt was regretful immediately. We talk less about the fact that if given another chance, I very much believe that Oscar voters would have changed their mind and instead of voting for Jean de Jardin would have voted for George, or Brad Pitt in Moneyball. I mean, it's a way better performance. I agree. Maybe Brad Pitt's best performance.

I am, I'm cooler on Moneyball than a lot of people are, but even I would say that, like, that certainly. Yeah, but I think a lot of people were cool on Moneyball at the time. Well, this was a Best Picture nominee. It was a, you know, it was. Was that a, but as an also ran, like. Sure, but I think you can, I don't know if you could characterize the enthusiasm for that movie as cool being, you know, it got a ton of nominations. It got a ton of nominations. It didn't win. But, like, one movie can win, you know what I mean?

Like, that's fair. I just feel like the artist, maybe in general, but, like, the fact that Dujardin didn't do anything with that Oscar win in terms of the American film industry. So ultimately, you look at that and you're just like, did we really have to do that? I think that's no dig on him. If he doesn't want to stay in the American film industry after winning the American film industry's biggest award, you know. That's fine. But if I'm a person who votes for the American film. industry's biggest award, I maybe look

back and be like, man, I could have given this to somebody from the American film industry. Not if you love that performance. And while I hate that movie, or like, I don't care about that movie is probably more accurate. I do think he's good in it. I don't think he's the best performance in that lineup. I say

and as somebody who loves Moneyball more than me, I figured you would co-sign that notion, but apparently not. No. I mean, I definitely don't co-sign the notion of a non-American performer winning an Oscar and then staying in the industry

that they call home. I think if that's the case, though, I want it to be a better performance. You know what I mean? I want it to be undeniable. So you're saying you wouldn't be mad if Zhao wins an Oscar for Mountains May Depart

and then stays being into Shahjanko movies. That's absolutely what I'm saying. Because you're like, well, but when they're that good. When they're that good, then they, yes, they deserve the Oscar if we're, because I think, I think part of the thing, I think part of the reason that John Dujardin won that Oscar was, people sort of looked at him and just like, this handsome French actor in this quasi-American, because like the artist was this kind of co-production. And I think there was this sense that like, welcome, sir, handsome man to the, you know, to the fold. And he was like, you know, merci, merci. And then. And then back to fucking Marseille. I mean, it's not as, like, it's not as cynical as ugly. And we also did get Jean-Duchardin's pronunciation of Jennifer Lawrence, which is how I say her name to myself. Give it to it.

Give it to me. Jennifer Lawrence. That's not bad. The artist is a weird movie to think about in retrospect. I don't know. I don't know. I just feel like. A movie that we only talk about because it is an Oscar winner.

Plus, if Brad Pitt had won for Moneyball, then who wins supporting actor in 2019? And is it? I wonder if there's more space for Songkang Ho. And maybe we would have, honestly, probably not, because it was just so ridiculous the whole time that we weren't talking about parasite performances. Does Pacino win a second Oscar for the Irishman? Probably not because people talked more about Pesci and Pesci didn't want it. Yes. Yeah.

Interesting. I mean, Pacino's the bigger performance, but like, Pesci's the one that I think got a few critics prizes for that. Honestly, Pitt maybe just wins a second Oscar. You know what I mean? Who knows? Who knows? Who else is nominated? You have the two Irishmen performances.

That's the year that everybody, Hopkins. Everybody's nomination was like decades after their last nomination. It was Hanks, Hopkins, Pesci, Pacino. Honestly, we might have had third Hanks Oscar. That never really caught steam because it. felt like Brad Pitt was so out in front. I think you and I were so far ahead of the general opinion on that movie. I think people liked that movie and then stopped talking about that movie.

I think you and I are among the very few people who put that movie on like our top 10. Well, it deserved to be that. I agree. But, you know, anyway. We, yeah, Murray, not quite sure what he's bringing to that. It really feels like he's just cast because it's like, oh, well, he's funny. He can just show up to a scene, and the audience feels lighthearted, but it's like, he, he goes and it's very, outside of Wes Anderson, I don't know whether Murray is comfortable blending into an ensemble. I would agree, me, I mean, Ghostbusters aside, but Ghostbusters is still his show.

Do you like that thing where I'd just, like, throw out a thing as a sentence as a sentence as a, I'm thinking of it and then wait to see whether it's true or not. Like I said that and I'm like, maybe that's right. Maybe what I said is true. Somebody who does do a good job of blending into ensembles is John Goodman, and I think he is quite good in this movie. I mean, he's always really good. He never quite gets to do the John Goodman thing you want him to be able to do in this movie, but I'm always happy to see John Goodman. Are things maybe more interesting if Goodman and Balabin are the pair, and Murray and Douchardin are the pair. One million percent, it's way more interesting.

I think so, too. And I don't really see what's preventing these characters from being swapped between these actors. I don't suspect you're going to agree with me on Dmitri Leonidas, but I thought he was a very sweet boy. That is definitely a Joe Reed cutie. I loved Sam. Sam Epstein in this movie, who, uh, uh, secretly speaking. secretly translates German to all these guys. Loved him.

Loved, love, loved. Okay. Do we think there's any room in the 2013 Oscars where had Monuments Men arrived as it was supposed to, it would have shown up in the nominations? I'm going to be so bold as to say no. Especially because, well, what was... Considering what this lineup of movies is and they're like, even if you can argue about the quality of some of these,

these are bigger, bolder, more attention-grabbing movies than Monuments Men would have been. You're absolutely correct. Here's what I would say. Well, I was going to say, where does Alexandra DeSlau show up? Oh, well, Best Supporting Actor nominee, obviously. There is more than one Frenchman in this movie. Is he French?

No, I said Alexander DeSplah, the composer. Who did you think of? Yes, he's in this movie. Is he in the movie? He has a supporting role in the movie. Do you not know what he looks like? No. Who was he in the movie?

He's in like act one. He's like in a car with Matt Damon or George Glenn. No, I couldn't. He is very inconsequential, but yes, he is. I couldn't pick him. Oh, yeah, he is. I couldn't pick him out of a lineup. I'm, I'm, you got to be pretty, I don't know.

There are like four composers I can recognize on site and he's not one of them. Sorry about it. I was going to say That's crazy to me Sorry, I can't We've seen this man Every year For going on two decades

Have we? He's won How many Oscars has he won? Like two, but like you see him do interviews all the time I've seen him twice When am I watching an Alexandra DeSplot interview? Yeah, but you like see him showing up But like...

Do I? Yes. I've seen him twice. I've seen him when he's accepted his award for the Grand Budapest Hotel and I saw him when he accepted his award

for the shape of water. If you know what Alexander Pla looks like. I'm not pronouncing it that way. Fuck that. That's how his name's pronounced. I don't give a shit.

I'm not from France. Wow. Sorry. Wow. Truth had to be told. I'm not from France. I'm 50% French but I'm not from France.

So sorry. If they're going to pronounce Jennifer Lawrence and says Jennifer Lawrence, I can say Alexandra Desplat. Like, shut up.

Yeah, but we sound like dirty Americans when we do it. Fine. I am. Whatever. I'm not going to feel bad about not fronching up my dialect. Anyway. Anyway. One of the things that Alexander Desplat was nominated for in 2014 was that was when he wins for Grand Budapest Hotel. And a few of those, he's sort of the grandfather in the Monuments Men's score as a tandem for that. So I was like if that comes out in 2013, maybe he gets a nomination for Monuments Men, but that year he is nominated for Filomena, which would have, would have, uh,

overlapped anyway. The things we will pronounce as people say them is how Leonardo DiCaprio says it 100%. 100%. Um, what else is there a talk? Okay, so back to the Clooney thing for a second, because I want to talk about when the movie gets bumped to February. So actually, we can say when it happened. It happened in October because that's when he gives this interview to the rap shortly thereafter. So it was, again, late October into the Oscar season before.

So at this point, they pushed it back to February and we're pretty open to the fact that, like, this is getting pushed back because we haven't quite nailed it yet. And so some of the quotes he gives to the rap, he says, it's been a bit of a dance. We're trying to do the movie in the vein of war films, but you don't want it to sound like the Great Escape.

Those movies that were done in the 50s and 60s, they all had their own sort of life. You don't want to do a replica. You have to do a new version. Which I think is kind of telling because ultimately, I think Clooney knows how to do

a replica of the Great Escape, but I think it's trying to do his own spin on it where it kind of trips him up. He said, we're testing. And if you're trying to find, that in the editing room, you didn't know how to bring your new version to it anyway. He said, we're testing it, which again, I think this is probably a movie that went through

extensive testing. He said, we put some laughs in there. That's important to me, but it's a serious subject matter. This all feels very telling as to the end product. He said, how much is too much? The tone is lighter. He says, the tone is lighter, then they get into trouble. That's sort of how he's describing the movie, which, again, is very true. The tone is lighter, and then someone dies. He said Gone with the Wind works in that way, which, like, it's an odd comparison. This movie, in no version of this movie,

is it comparable to Gone with the Wind, I would say. He says, if we get the tone right, it will be a really fun film. We don't have to do jokes. When you have Bill Murray and Bob Ballabin in the frame together, it's just fun. I think, again, these quotes are all very telling as to why this movie didn't really.

come together. The type of methodology that led to the choices that are made with this movie. The article goes on to quote, an individual close to the movie who said that the hard-to-nail tone was more the issue than the visual effects in terms of why it was

pushed back. And then it also notes that there were two trailers released that struck some viewers as being widely divergent in tone with the first signaling an Ocean's 11 caper-style action movie backed by a swinging soundtrack, and the second, far more serious in tone, reminding viewers that the soldiers were saving art for a culture for a way of life. I think all of this really tracks

to, you know, what we ultimately end up seeing. And yet for all of that, it gets a B-plus cinema score. So, you know, the audiences who showed up and, you know, $78 million worth domestic kind of like this is this is the rare thing i always talk about you know don't just rely on rotten tomatoes because rotten tomatoes is especially today effectively useless but it has a 31% rotten tomato score but then you look at the metacritic and it's a 52 so it's like it got mostly mixed mixed negative reviews but yeah but i think mixed the 31 makes it look like it's a critical bump exactly like people are dragging it agree um

This movie was the winner from the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle for, quote, not so obviously worst film drag. I say save that drag for the tender bar, but... Sure, but that wouldn't come out for another... You do you. Yeah. The obviously worst film from the Oklahoma Film Critic Circle that year was Transformers Age of Extinction. I have to imagine that in the realm of not so obviously worst film, there were worse than the Monuments Men. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It also wins. God, sometimes I love that IMDB just, like, shows me different, like, people I never knew before who were handing out awards. The Heartland Film Award for, quote, truly moving picture. So this is a winner there. As I checked it out, though, this is one of those awards things that, like, everybody wins. It's one of those things where they have, like, 25 winners and no nominees, right? I omitted the list of them from you because I was. want to sort of see your, I want to get your reaction as we, as I go down the list of everything

else that won a Heartland Film Award for Truly Moving Picture. How many faith-based films are in this list? Well, we're going to find out. We start with boyhood, truly moving picture. I agree. The theory of everything, you know, that is inspirational and, and all that. The 100-foot journey. I liked that movie. I think that is. Have not seen? I would support that distinction. Million dollar arm, a sports, a feel-good sports movie. Sure. There's a movie called Earth to Echo. Do you recall this movie at all? I think it's a... No. It's like a kids movie. Oh, with like a... There's a little robot on the poster, and the poster is blue. Agreed. Which, sure. Also, in the realm of kids movie, Alexander and the terrible, horrible,

no good, very bad day. I believe you. I guess. Tell me that is moving. The good, The Reese Witherspoon movie, The Good Lie. I would agree. That is moving. The Lego movie. Sure? Ew. They got to be like a dad acknowledges his son.

I move. Moving down the list, St. Vincent. Maybe. The judge. Maybe. The fault in our stars, which makes you cry. sure. Yeah, I cried.

Melleficent. Would you consider Melleficent a truly moving picture? Is it anti-bullying? Maybe, sure. Meneficent, anti-bullying. For its anti-bullying message, it wins truly moving picture. Anti-bullying messaging queen, Melleficent. Truly Moving Picture winner, Muppets Most Wanted.

That's a silly movie. It is. Maybe that's silly. It moves you to silliness. Um, interstellar, which... Yes, moving. Moving. McConaughey, crying in his little space machine.

Angelina Jolie's Unbroken. Moving, inspirational. Hayama Yazaki's The Wind Rises. Sure. Sure. Like, of all of the Miyazaki movies that I'm going to say, like, moving, the wind rises is maybe, like, the least one. Because the wind rises is the one where I walk out. and just like, wait a second, who bought those airplanes that bombed places?

Like, wait a second. What is his relationship with the military industrial complex? Okay. The imitation game. Today we call them computers. Today we call them computers. Truly moving picture. Also, it doesn't end.

I guess it ends your move to being sad for what happened to Ellen Turing, but it's not inspirational. Maybe it doesn't have to be inspirational. The Hobbit, the Battle of the Five Army. Were you truly moved by the conclusion to the Hobbit trilogy? I was not physically moved to buy a ticket. Truly moving picture, the giver. I don't know.

I don't know about that one. And finally, truly moving picture, American sniper. Yeah. The grimace. Is that the right year? Like, are they only counting the nationwide release for that? No, American Sniper is 2014. Oh, okay.

It's the number one movie. Oh, it is. Yeah. The grimace on your face kind of says it all for American Sniper. Truly Moving Picture. I guess it kind of says who's handing out the Heartland Film Award winners. So I would say at least half of those movies. These are the movies they saw.

These are the movies they saw, exactly. All right. Anything else we want to say about the Monuments Men? Yeah. Oh, can we talk about at the very beginning of the movie when they get their assignment from FDR and they're doing FDR as the Larry David as George Steinbrenner from Seinfeld thing where you only see the back of his head and it's this like somewhat caricature-ish sound alike and they've got the like the cigarette to denote that it's, you know, that it's Roosevelt's. I thought that was very funny. Not intentionally so maybe, but very funny. that this made me think of on the subject of stolen art in World War II, the Simpsons episode, where we find out that Grandpa Simpson and Mr. Burns served in the war together and were part of a tauntine full of stolen art that they had to, that they were the final two surviving members of.

There's a West Wing episode where one of the subplots is that an old woman started freaking out on the White House tour, and they find out that one of the works of art that is hanging in the White House. actually belonged to her grandfather. Okay. So, yeah, that was a good episode. All right. Bob Balaban tricking the little kids into saying, Heil Hitler, the one fantastic part of this movie.

The Something for Everyone, Castle, the Nazis were such assholes, Clooney versus Tarantino. Yeah, that's all my stuff. Yeah. All right. Chris, Tarantino's right. Um, uh, anyway.

I will, so Monuments Men, ultimately, what I will say is not a successful movie, but not a movie I hold particularly virulent ill will towards. Seldom rises above mediocrity, but is not bad. If you catch it on cable, especially like the last half of it, you'll probably, you know, enjoy yourself while you're scrolling on your phone. The structure of it is also the problem. Like, you can tell that they over. over tinkered with this thing in an editing room because it's like it's so episodic that it never really realizes that it's

episode. But if I were to have somebody tell me you know what movie I kind of like is the Monuments Men? I'm not going to be like, oh, you know what I mean? I'm going to be like, you know, I see it. I see it. If you drop into like 15 minutes of this movie, you would probably think the rest of the movie is really good. Exactly.

I would recommend it to my dad. And then your dad will be like, seen it. He, like, saw it. It was on right after The Gentleman the one night, and I watched both of them back to back. All right. Chris, why don't you tell our listeners how we do... Oh, actually...

As teased at the top of the episode. As teased in the top of the episode, we're going to do something different with the IMDB game today. We sure are. We are going... We usually end episodes with the IMDB game. Yes. But today, this is not Sonic. This is Knuckles.

We are doing the reverse IMDB. We are. As we have demonstrated in this had Oscar Buzz Patreon episode, our Game Night episode, we are doing a twist on the IMDB game, which we call the reverse IMDB game. Now, if you listened to our episode on Sliding Doors, you heard our guest, Bobby Finger, suggest this concept to us. And we sort of took it and ran with it. The idea is, instead of getting the name of an actor or actress, we are going to instead start naming. the four movies on an unknown person's known for. We're going to do that one at a time in whatever order that the giver wants to. And the idea is how we played it on the Patreon was if you get it with the first movie named, you get three points. If you get it with, no, you get four points, obviously. Three points if you get it with the second movie, two points if you get it with the third movie, one point if you need all four movies to get it. And if you have to ultimately move on to the free for all of hints, it's a zero pointer. Now, we did 10 apiece when we did Game Night, but that was because it was... And I believe I beat you. You did. No, I beat you by one point. It's fine. Who's keeping track? There's a listener out there keeping track?

Yeah, well, I hope so. I always hope that there's a listener out there. I hope there's a class fact totem quite like in... in School of Rock. Who is our Miranda College Grove? Anyway, so in this one, we're just going to do it one apiece, and we're going to see who does. We'll take our time for any listeners who have not signed up for the Patreon yet. Yeah, we'll walk you through it. I think it's a very fun game. We'll walk through it.

Perhaps in the future, if we get a little, you know, seasoned at this, we'll do maybe multiples just because we don't want it to be too brief, because we want to be substantial game time here. And we're not, we're not switching up the format. This isn't going to be every episode. No, we're just going to do this every once in a while. It'll help extend the shelf life of the regular IMDB game and that we will not be depleting it quite so quickly.

And also, it's a fun new wrinkle for all of us. And maybe it'll entice you to go sign up for the Patreon. Exactly. So reverse IMDB game, Chris, would you like to quiz me first or have me quiz you first? Ooh, what an interesting question. I think I am going to quiz you first. Okay. Now, one of the interesting things about the reverse IMDB game is.

With IMDB games, sometimes we like to make the person in question connected to our movie in some way. In this way, we don't know whether the person in question is connected to the movie or completely chosen at random. And that is, I think, fun. All right. So for four points, who do you... What's the first movie you're giving me? I am giving you as your first movie. The motion picture, the Iads of March.

Oh, so you did go connected. All right. There's a lot of people in the aides of March, but who... Perhaps this is part of the strategy. If you're playing reverse IMDB game, you start with the bigger ensemble. Who would have that movie on they're known for. I'm going to guess

Evan Rachel Wood. Evan Rachel Wood is incorrect. All right. Your second movie is the motion picture spiral. Oh, from the Book of Saw? From the legendary House of Saw.

Okay, so this is for three points. Spiral, a movie that I did not see, and the only person who I know is in that movie is Chris Rock and I don't believe that Chris Rock is in the Ides of March. So I'm going to throw out a guess and say

Grant Heslov. Grant Heslov is incorrect. All right. For two points. Is this, we're at two points? Yes. The television show

The Handmaid's Tale. Okay. The aides of March George Clooney, starring and directing, Spiral, the COVID-released saw sidequil. Uh-huh. Side prequel? Yeah. And the television show, Hulus, the Handmaid's Tale.

So, I'm trying to think of, I don't think it's Elizabeth Moss because I think Elizabeth Moss known for wouldn't have, if she's in Spiral, I don't think it would show up on her. You don't know. the fourth one that I could be hiding from you could be madmen. I don't think this is like an Alexis Bledell because I think ultimately Alexis Bledell is going to at least have Gilmore Girls and a traveling pants. So it's not Alexis Bledell. It's maybe, I don't think it's And Dowd, I don't think it's Joseph Fines, although it technically could be because the remaining one could just be Shakespeare in love and it could be that. I'm going to guess

Yvonne Strahovsky. Yvonne Strahovsky is incorrect. Okay. All right. Your fourth type... For one measly point. Is the social network? So we have the social network,

the handmaid's tale, spiral from the Book of Saw, and the aides of March. So... Not... Now I'm going to go back to the Ides of March. Not Clooney, not Gosling, not Wilkinson, not Giamatti, not Evan Rachel Wood, not Marissa Tomey, not Jeffrey Wright, not Justin Timberlake, not Jesse Eisenberg. I don't think this would be Rashida Jones is known for.

Plus, I don't think she was in a Handmaid's Tale. You may be misjudge how many. people remember Celeste and Jesse forever. I like On the Rocks, but everybody else doesn't like on the Rocks. I doubt this is like Bradley Whitford's known for. Is this, I would be very surprised, but is this Max Minghella? It's Max Mangela. It's Max Mingela. I'm so mad you got it. I was like, if he gets it, he'll get it at Social Network. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Max Miguel, I knew was in Handmaid's Tale and I knew was in Social Network. I did not see, obviously, spiral, and I don't remember.

This is why I chose this one, because I was like, Joe didn't see spiral. Okay, I'm going to put this in order. I think this will do it. All right. And that. Okay, so for four points, for you, Chris, now I need to be devious enough that I get you to get it for one or fewer points. For four points, I'm going to give you. you the Grand Budapest Hotel.

You know, movie with not a lot of people in it. Not at all. So my mind naturally goes to how did you get the Grand Budapest Hotel from Monuments, men. We have two Wes Anderson performers in there. Grand Budapest is also a movie that shows up for so many people, so it's the right choice to say first. It sure does. Because you can be like 20th build and it will be on your known for. I don't think you would pick someone who is in the cast of Monuments Men.

I don't think that would be your inclination. So I'm going to say, Adrian Brody. It's not Adrian Brody. For three points, Munich. um okay so munich also large ensemble lots of guys a lot of guys so i definitely think this is a male performer um munich has like kieran hines munich has matthew almerich munich has um eric bana is not in grand budapest Daniel Craig is not in Grand Budapest. Matthew Kassavits might be in Grand Budapest,

but I'm going to say Matthew Almorick. Got it with three. Matthew Almorick. Yeah, baby. You fucker. You fucker, yes. I got it. Did you think I forgot that Matthew Almorick won like the Los Angeles film critics

supported actor Rice? Well, I definitely forgot that. I thought that you wouldn't have remembered that he was in the Grand Budapest. He won something or was runner up somewhere. And it's like, even from that movie, okay? Like, I guess he was just kind of the guy at that time. But Kieran Hines is so good in that movie.

Do you want to take a guess as to what his other two known for are? Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Yes. Which I'm guessing would have been your last title. It would have been. Yep. Would it be something French? See, I wonder if it's not.

not something French, because he did enough American movies, especially during the aughts, that... I'm just going to point out that you said Matthew Almorick, and I'm going to guess that that is not how French a Frenchman pronounces that. So, there. Matthew Amaric.

There you go. If you want to be consistent about it. Um, you say this like I say De Pla's name with a full, like... It was more how you said Alexandre. Alexand. It's Alexand. Fuck that. Okay. The fourth

Almaric movie, A Christmas Tale. No, it was Quantum of Salas. Oh, he's the villain in that. I don't think I've ever seen Quantum of Salas except for when I saw it in the theater. I sure haven't seen it ever. So, apologies that I'm chewing a vitamin gummy on Mike.

That's gross. Vitamin gummy, a likely story. All right. Anyway, listeners, let us know how you like the every once in a while inclusion of reverse IMDB game. I am currently obsessed with this game. And it's much harder. It's much harder. And it's also harder to pick.

It hits a different portion of your brain. And I like that. We'll be playing it in Toronto. 100%. I 100% intend to be playing this while waiting in line for various movies in Toronto. So, all right. Chris, wonderful episode, I thought, on the Monuments Men. I thought we did a very good job.

Listeners, that's our episode. If you want more of This Had Oscar Buzz, you can check out the Tumblr at This Had OscarBuzz.com. You should also follow our Twitter account at Had underscore Oscar-Bus, our Instagram at This Had Oscar Buzz, our Instagram at This Had Oscar Buzz. Chris, where can the listeners find more of you? You can find me on Twitter and letterbox at Chris V-File. That's F-E-I-L. I, on the other hand, am on Twitter at Joe Reed. I'm here.

I'm all... Wait, why don't I say this again? I am on Twitter and letterboxed at Joe Reed, read-spelled R-E-I-D. I am also hosting a podcast on Patreon called DeMe, myself, and I, where I go through the films of Demi Moore with a cavalcade of special guests, including one Mr. Chris File. That can be found for the low-low price. of $5 a month at patreon.com slash demipod. That is patreon.com slash d-E-M-I-P-O-D. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork.

That gummy was not a good idea because now my mouth is very, very juicy. We would like to thank Kyle Cummings for his fantastic artwork, Dave Gonzalez and Gavin Mievous for their technical guidance, and Taylor Cole for our theme music. please remember to rate, like, and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get podcasts. A five-star review in particular really helps us out with Apple Podcast visibility. So get out of that salt mine before the Russians show up and then write something nice about, won't you? That is all for this week, but we hope you'll be back next week for more buzz.

Boop. Thank you.