Up First from NPR - The Sunday Story: And the Winner Is ...

Episode Date: March 10, 2024

Barbenheimer was the summer blockbuster phenomenon of 2023 around the movies Barbie and Oppenheimer. Both movies made a box office splash and now Oppenheimer is leading in the Oscar nominations race with 13 nods. But there are plenty of lesser known films in the running, including three primarily in a foreign language, vying for best picture. To help understand which films and stars are the favorites to win we are joined this week by Pop Culture Happy Hour hosts Aisha Harris and Linda Holmes.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Aisha Roscoe and you're listening to The Sunday Story. A few months ago, I was lucky enough to get invited to a screening of Barbie at the British Embassy. This is not the normal way I spend my evenings, but I was, you know, blessed to get invited to this event. I guess a lot of Barbie was filmed in the UK. So they threw this big party for the film. I went with my sister. It was really beautiful. Like everything was pink.

They were like these pink Barbie boxes for us to take pictures in. The sushi was pink. The burgers themselves weren't pink, but the buns were pink. And then after that, they put us on this double-decker bus. And we went to the movies and we saw Barbie.

And I really, really enjoyed it. And not just because I had been buttered up with alcohol and food and sushi. Tonight, Barbie will be competing in multiple categories at America's yearly celebration of all things movies, the Oscars. But I got to be honest, I haven't watched a lot of the nominated films this year. I'm a single mom, so I'm really busy. I got about three jobs. And I really just love horror and murder on screens. Not in real life, but on screen.

And that doesn't always show up in the best movies of the year, according to the Oscars. So to help make sense of what I should have seen and what I should still see and what it all means, I'm turning to my colleagues, Linda Holmes and Aisha Harris from Pop Culture Happy Hour. Aisha, Linda, thank you for joining us today. Thank you. Yes. Hi, Aisha. Thanks. Hi. Not just colleagues, friends. Thank you. Thank you so much. So let's start with like, you know, the big picture on the Oscars and really the best pictures. So best picture nominations. the only ones that I've seen are

Barbie and I Saw Poor Things for work, but liked it. What are the other ones that both of y'all think that I should prioritize seeing? Well, for me, I think Killers of the Flower Moon was probably one of my favorite movies of the year. That's Martin Scorsese's film. An epic, really, that is about the Osage County Native American murders that occurred in the early 20th century. How do you do? Bureau what? What is that?

Oh, I was sent down from Washington, D.C. to see about these murders. Hmm. Let me see. to see about these murders. Hmm. Let's see. See what about them. See who's doing it. It's just really, to me, it's really stunning. It is very hard to watch. It's over three hours long, so I get why you may not have gotten a chance to see it, Aisha.

But it's totally worth checking out. And I think to me, I would love to see it win, although I'm not sure it will win. But Linda, I'm sure you have other thoughts as well. Yeah, I do. And look, there are no duds on this Best Picture list. And there are years when there are duds, and there are no duds this year. But the two that I would highlight, I think, would be Past Lives, which is a very, very kind of intimate and touching story about a woman who is happily married, but she gets an opportunity to visit with her childhood sweetheart. He was just this kid in my head for such a long time. And now he is a physical person. It's really intense, but I don't think that that's attraction. I think I just missed him a lot.

It's much more complicated than that, but that's sort of the basics. And then The Holdovers, which is about a grumpy teacher and a grumpy student and a very kind and generous woman who works at the boarding school where the kid attends. And the three of them wind up stuck together at the school over the holiday break. I heard you got stuck with babysitting duty this year. How'd you manage that? Oh, I don't know. I suppose I failed someone who richly deserved it. Rich and popular combination around here.

It's a plague. And, you know, as you would sort of think, they create this little kind of family unit. I think the movie is very charming. All three of those lead performances are really wonderful. And, you know, as you would sort of think, they create this little kind of family unit. I think the movie is very charming. All three of those lead performances are really wonderful. From Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa and Davine Joy Randolph, who is probably going to win Best Supporting Actress, I would guess. So those are the two that I would highlight. And the thing of it is, like we just talked about, I don't want to do math, but maybe about five movies there.

And there are there are 10 overall. Like that's part of the reason why it can be difficult to see all of the best movie categories, because there are so many of them. Why did the Academy decide to make that change and to expand from five nominees to 10 nominees? I don't know whether this is Aisha's sense also, but my sense is that it's pretty widely accepted that the reason was partly to make sure that well-made blockbusters had a chance to get in to the Best Picture field. This was around the time that The Dark Knight had come out. It was not nominated for Best Picture field. This was around the time that The Dark Knight had come out. It was not nominated for Best Picture. Shame. In the first few years after they expanded the field, it didn't really go that way.

And what happened instead was that you got more really little films, which is also okay. But then you did get Black Panther. You got Top Gun Maverick. And this year you get Oppenheimer and Barbie, which are both kind of very different big blockbusters. So that's my sense of what it was for and that this is a year when it kind of worked. There's a time when blockbusters, or at least movies that did really well at the box office, they didn't necessarily have to be like thrillers or action movies, but, you know, they often, they were also considered Oscar-y and overlapped. I think of something like Titanic, American Beauty, Lord of the Rings, Brokeback Mountain, like they were on various, they weren't, they were on various levels of success in terms of box office, but they were movies that like

most people had seen. And so that's less true now in the sort of Marvel franchise-ification of everything. And I think, you know, having 10 nominees now makes it much more likely, like Linda said, that we are going to get like a Top Gun Maverick or a Barbie.

Hi, Barbie. Hi, Ken. Hi, Barbie. Hi, Barbie. Hi, Barbie. Hi, Ken. Hi, Ken. I feel like Oppenheimer

probably would have gotten in anyway, maybe just because of the subject matter. But it's still Christopher Nolan. He's known for bigger action movies than some of these other directors in this category as well. And we should. We didn't know that at the beginning, but there are two Aishas in this thing. So you just have to pick up on the social cues of who they're referring to. I'm sure people would have picked up on that, but just in case. I guess when you look at award seasons overall, how has the growth of social media

changed the way we reflect and consume these types of award shows, right? Like, what has the impact been? I think it's going to be really interesting to see because this is the first one that to me is post-Twitter. Because although Twitter as X still exists, it's certainly not what it was. It's not nearly as popular with the people that I used to follow as it was. So this, for me, is a post-Twitter Oscars. And I do think it'll be different. It's hard to think, like, what would the Will Smith slapping situation have been like if we hadn't had social media? Oh, wow. Wow. Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me. Would it have been a smaller deal, bigger deal? I don't know. What do you think, Aisha?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if Twitter X whatever is quite dead yet, because unlike like Blue Sky, you can't post GIFs and stuff. I do think, though, like from a Academy perspective, you know, they've resorted to some embarrassing tactics in the past few years to try to appeal to social media. Linda, remember the fan favorite and cheer moment categories that they added in 2022 against everyone's wishes. Basically, they had people like vote online and they chose winners for like fan favorite and cheer moment. I don't really entirely know what cheer moment was supposed to mean, but like whoever's movie's

hashtag was tweeted the most was the one that won, which just led to like random, rabid online fandoms for like Johnny Depp and Kamiya Kabeo, like taking over the whole thing. So social media is not really the Oscars forte. But like Linda said, it will be interesting to see with Twitter sort of not being that central water cooler anymore. Will it just be kind of a little more muted than it has been the past few years? Do you think that the Academy wants the super dramatic thing to happen? Maybe not a slap, but just to get people to tune in. Do they need someone falling or someone kissing or something?

I think a fall is probably great. Like a safe fall. A fall, yes. Jennifer Lawrence. Jennifer Lawrence. That was her thing for a while. Jennifer Lawrence tripping up the stairs I think is fine for them. You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell, and that's really embarrassing, but thank you.

I don't think that they would want, maybe they would want another thing as dramatic as a slap. I was going to say maybe not the slap, but like something else dramatic. Well, a moonlight, La La Land. Oh, yeah. I don't think they want that. There's a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won Best Picture. Moonlight won. The mix-up. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. But. There's a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won Best Picture. Moonlight won.

The mix-up. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. But it was quite a moment. It was quite a moment. It was. People paid attention. Moonlight, Best Picture.

You're listening to The Sunday Story. When we come back, we'll dig deeper into this year's nominees and share a few predictions for tonight's awards. Now Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to Our Change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. Welcome back to the Sunday Story. I'm speaking with my colleagues Aisha Harris and Linda Holmes from NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour about this year's Oscars. I guess we should get into the actual nominees themselves because you guys have seen them as we've talked about.

Linda, you've written about this, but something that's happened the last few years is international films are getting more love from the Oscars. How is that playing with this year's nominees? Well, yeah, it's been more common in the last few years to see international films. And in this case, I specifically mean films not in English, which is not, you know, the same thing as an international film. But that's kind of what we mean here, whether it's films like Parasite or Roma. And in this case this year, both Anatomy of a Fall and Zone of Interest are nominated for Best Picture. Those are both international films, primarily not in English. And, of course, you have the international feature category.

But also the documentary nominees, the documentary feature nominees are all international films this year. And they're all wonderful. Sad, but great. So, yeah, it's a good thing to me. And do you think that it's reflective of, you know, a U.S. audience that's more open to other films or films with subtitles? I really hope so. And I would love to think that the the fact that people now maybe on Netflix or something like that have more access. I think you see more people who are going to like watch a K-drama at home that has subtitles or, you know, a show from France or Israel or Russia or something like that. It's foundationally a good thing for people to be willing to watch things that aren't in English because it is a great is a very important part of expanding your

knowledge and your experience. So I sure hope so. It also seems like a little bit of a spillover from what we were talking about earlier in terms of opening the best picture category up, because oftentimes those types of films might only have a shot at getting the best international film prize. And now that's not necessarily the case. And I think something like Anatomy of the Flaw might have been that, you know, one of those films that got stuck in that one category as opposed to multiple categories. Which of the films nominated for Best Picture surprised you most this year? I would say for me, I think Barbie was a much more thoughtful film

than I expected it to be. Maybe not once I knew it was Greta Gerwig doing it because she's always a thoughtful director. But when you first hear there's going to be a Barbie movie, you don't necessarily expect it to be as thoughtful and emotionally complicated as it turned out to be. You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can't ask for money because that's crass. I think I also really liked Anatomy of a Fall. It's a very unusual courtroom drama that still has some of the appeal of a traditional courtroom drama.

So as you can see, an accidental fall is going to be hard to defend, given the height of the windowsill. So that's why there's an investigation for more suspect. Stop. Stop. I did not kill him. That's not the point. I loved that movie. And then I was, you know, as I mentioned the holdovers earlier, that was one that kind of snuck up on me

and that I loved more than I expected to. Yeah, for me, I think the movie that surprised me the most was the holdovers. I think Alexander Payne, the director, has been very hit or miss throughout his career. But this film really snuck up on me. And it felt like a throwback to the kind of like crowd pleasing adult dramas of the 90s and early aughts where you have like these great performances from Paul Giamatti, Divine Joy, Randolph and Dominic Sessa. And it also just strikes a really nice balance between sentimentality and wit. And it just feels, you know, like the type of movie that 20 years ago would have made a lot of money at the box office. So I just really enjoyed it.

And it feels like the kind of film that I might go back and rewatch again at some point. It feels like a good holiday movie that's not quite a holiday movie, if that makes sense. Absolutely. Because it's set during the Christmas holiday break, so yeah. You know, you can't really talk about the Oscars without talking about snubs. People have been talking about Barbie being snubbed for Best Director and Best Actress. And people have all sorts of feelings about Barbie. I think that maybe it's hype kind of got it and ate it up a little bit because it was hard for people to take in after that because they expected, I don't know, they expected something amazing. You know, Schindler's List, and they didn't get that. But what do you think

are some of the biggest snubs this year? Well, I loved Barbie, as I said, and I would have cheered if Greta Gerwig had been nominated or Margot Robbie had been nominated, but the movie was not snubbed, right? It made a gazillion dollars. It's nominated for Best Picture. The movie's doing fine. If I were going to be upset about a lack of nominations in those two categories, I would go back to past lives. Greta Lee, who played the lead, and Celine Song, who's the director, absolutely should both have been nominated. There's no question about it. And those, to me, are truer snubs than Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie. Yeah. snubs than Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie. Yeah, for me, I didn't get to see this until

January, but Origin, Ava DuVernay's really sweeping drama that's based on Isabel Wilkerson's book cast. I don't know what happened. I think the way that rollout went out, it just kind of flew way too under the radar and didn't have enough steam for award season. It's been really kind of shut out from much of the award season. But I want people to see that film and I would have loved to see it nominated. My other snub that I was very annoyed with was May December. It did get a screenplay nod, but nothing for its three leads, Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Charles Mountain. And my goodness, that was probably my favorite movie of last year. And I was very sad to see how underrepresented it was amongst all the nominees this year.

I will say that I don't necessarily have a lot of favorite best pictures because what I like does not get recognized by the Academy. It's snubbed all the time. You know, they're not going to nominate Fast and Furious. They're not nominating No, they're not. Maybe for sound effects or something. And they're not, you know, nominating the horror movies. I mean, I did see Parasite.

So that one, it did have a little bit of a bit of a horror element. A little bit. And of course, one of the best one of my favorites though silence of the lambs now that was that is one of my top five favorite movies of all time i will always watch it um what are y'all favorites for me i have to go with all about eve or the apartment um they're just some of my all-time favorite yeah i know it's For me, I have to go with All About Eve or The Apartment. They're just some of my all-time favorites.

Yeah, I know. It's very predictable. But if we're talking more recent, for me, it would be Everything Everywhere, All at Once, which won last year. But also, you know, Moonlight and Parasite. Yeah, I love those. Yeah. yeah I love those yeah I think for me um I think for me if I actually am saying favorite favorite I would probably go with something that I've seen a million times like the sound of music or something like that but if you are talking more recently that would be as Aisha mentioned Moonlight or Parasite both of which the wins for those two movies were like it was so invigorating as somebody who loves movies and wants to love the Oscars.

Both of those moments were just terrific to feel like that could happen. So you feel like they were kind of the underdogs and they won. Well, they were underdogs and Parasite, again, is a film not in English. There's not a long history of that being a best picture. Well, it was the first, I think. It was the first one, I think. Film to a film. Yeah, so listen, it is exciting

anytime you feel like an institution as stodgy as the Oscars can grow. And so seeing that kind of growth, it is exciting. You don't want to care about the Oscars, but then you kind of want them to be better. And it's satisfying when that out. But are there any predictions that you want to share here? Maybe a controversial prediction or one that you would put money on will definitely happen. Like, is there, just give us a little preview. I think that a lot of the categories this year have clear frontrunners and I expect most of those frontrunners to come through.

I don't think there are going to be a lot of big surprises. I expect Oppenheimer to win Best Picture. That's just my expectation, although I'd never bet against Martin Scorsese. I think that the most interesting category to me in terms of I really go back and forth is Best Actress, particularly between Emma Stone and Lily Gladstone. And I think that's just because, you know, and to that, you know, Martin Scorsese movie audience because she's in Killers of the Flower Moon. I feel like that one could go either way. I'm betting on Lily Gladstone, but I feel like it could go either way. Yeah, that's the exact same thing that I'm feeling now as well. And look, Emma Stone is really fantastic in

poor things. So if she won, I wouldn't be upset. But I do really want to see this for Lily Gladstone. And yeah, we'll see. Nail biting. Well, we will see and we'll hold you both to account for your predictions. Well, thank you. All right. Aisha, Linda, thank you both so much for being here and sharing your thoughts today. It's always great to have you. Thank you. It's always great to see you. Yes.

This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Andrew Mambo. It was edited by Liana Simstrom and Bilal Qureshi. The engineer for this episode was Robert Rodriguez. Our team includes Jenny Schmidt and Justine Yan. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. We always love hearing from you, so feel free to reach out to us at thesundaystoryatnpr.org.

I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up first is Back in Your Feed tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, enjoy the rest of your weekend.