The 2026 Oscar Nominations: Snubs, Surprises, and WTFs

Sean and Amanda break down all of the Oscar nominations and share their major takeaways, including 'F1' (sillily) sneaking into Best Picture and ‘Sinners’ shattering the all-time nominations record, and highlight their biggest snubs. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sean Fennessey?

  This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail-biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime. What pairs with big game on Prime Video? That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're after, Prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. There's nothing better than having friends who support whatever you're into, like re-watching a director's entire catalog in the lead-up to their latest release. And like those friends, State Farm is there to help you feel supported by helping you choose the coverage you need. With so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you.

• 0:42Sean Fennessey?

  So you can check coverage off the list and spend more time debating movie rankings. Go online at statefarm.com or use the easily accessible app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 1:09Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 1:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 1:11Sean Fennessey?

  And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the 2026 Academy Award nominations. It's 7:52 a.m. It's 2 hours and 22 minutes after we learned what's going to be nominated for the Academy Awards. How do you feel right now?

• 1:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Good morning. It's way earlier than I'm used to wearing eyeshadow, but here we are.

• 1:31Sean Fennessey?

  You look great.

• 1:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Thanks so much. I feel, I feel good. Honestly, these are both historic nominations in the sense that Sinner's got 16 nominations, the most ever. Casting was added this year, but still 15.

• 1:45Sean Fennessey?

  Still would have broken the record.

• 1:46Amanda Dobbins?

  It's Sinner's wins, big time, or Sinner gets a lot of nominations. Anyway, we'll get to that. And then also, these nominations were a bit kooky. And I gotta be honest, I like it.

• 1:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I thought they were a pretty, pretty good collection.

• 1:59Amanda Dobbins?

  They're good, but a little, okay.

• 2:01Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty interesting. One of the things that popped in my mind this morning is that the Academy Awards continues to be an amazing paradox in that the body still continues to exhibit, I think ultimately, the best taste of any award show and any precursor historically, but also still does really weird stuff. And sometimes it's unpredictable and sometimes it's just a little bit odd and doesn't feel right. So you mentioned Sinner's 16 nominations. This year, we have this... Kind of bundle, this heavy grouping of heavily nominated films, which we talked about yesterday in our live predictions IG, I don't know what you want to call that. 58 minute excursion into Andor requests.

• 2:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And Andor puns?

• 2:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 2:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:44Sean Fennessey?

  So, six films with A plus nominations. The next highest nominated film is of course, One Battle After Another with 13 nominations, which hit everywhere except one critical place, which we will talk about in this conversation. Frankenstein got nine.

• 2:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:57Sean Fennessey?

  Marty Supreme got nine, although missed in a couple of spots that I expected it to. Sentimental Value got eight and Hamlet also got eight. What do you make of this like heavy grouping of films?

• 3:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, as we discussed yesterday, it's a top heavy race and we've felt pretty certain about the top five or the top six.

• 3:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Since December, I guess, things have been moving in and out a little bit, but December, that was very clear. And then it was really just like throwing darts at a dartboard for the last four. And it does feel like the last four nominations also have a bit of like a dartboard feel to them. You know, we discussed yesterday that maybe this is a year where the, the old school, just five nominations could have fit.

• 3:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 3:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And made things a bit more interesting, but on the other hand, I do think that that would have some below the line consequences. And if you only had five, then maybe The Secret Agent wouldn't have like the, you know, the running that it has here. I don't know if Marty Supreme would go in the same way. So it's, I, you know, it's weird. Again, I think that it is a little bit like, uh, your, you know, your funny aunt like picked some of the nominations, but there are worse things.

• 4:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there are. We had speculated yesterday that there might be as many as, uh, five films with 10 plus nominations, maybe even 11 plus nominations. We overstated that. So it wasn't, they, those films weren't as strong as we expected. And there were a couple of categories that were incredibly difficult for us to predict. But let's, let's talk about best picture in full because we've spent months and months power ranking films, trying to figure out where this race was going. Not to pat ourselves on the back too much, but I think we've had a pretty good handle on this race, especially in the last two months. And here are the nominees: Begonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamlet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners, and Train Dreams. Now, nine of those 10 films have effectively been in our race for the last few months.

• 4:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 4:52Sean Fennessey?

  We added Serat in the last Best Picture power rankings.

• 4:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Was Begonia in our last Best Picture?

• 4:57Sean Fennessey?

  It was. We've been holding Begonia because it's been getting recognized as precursors. And Emma Stone, who was nominated today, though not Jussie Plemons, but Begonia got in in some other places. It got in in original score, it got in in adapted screenplay.

• 5:09Amanda Dobbins?

  We will discuss that.

• 5:11Sean Fennessey?

  So, the big takeaways from this race, obviously those six films that you talked about were locked and loaded. Sentimental Value was as strong as I basically thought the whole time.

• 5:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 5:22Sean Fennessey?

  But even though it seemed a little weaker at SAG, at the Globes, at a couple of other places where we expected it to do better. Were you surprised by that at all?

• 5:29Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I believe that I said yesterday on the Instagram Live, which can now be found via reels, I don't know. It lives on.

• 5:36Sean Fennessey?

  Go to my reels page.

• 5:37Amanda Dobbins?

  That I think Sentimental Value is very strong.

• 5:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yep. It's an Oscar movie.

• 5:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And in fact, it was stronger even than I predicted yesterday. But the way that I came to that conclusion was going through all the below the line categories. I mean, like, no, actually, I do think it's going to get each of these support, these acting nominations. I do think it's going to get screenplay. I do think it's going to get that, this, that, and the other. So, no, not surprised. You, I think in June, maybe July.

• 6:01Sean Fennessey?

  I saw the film in August, and when I saw it in August, I said, I think this is going to win Best Picture.

• 6:05Amanda Dobbins?

  You texted me that. We can find it. I think my text messages delete after six months, so I don't know whether I have the receipts.

• 6:11Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. Wow, that's very Ethan Hunt of you.

• 6:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Never keep any archives, okay?

• 6:15Sean Fennessey?

  Understood. I can't say I'm doing the same thing, unfortunately. Please don't find my text messages. Sentimental Value, very strong here, perhaps a little surprisingly. You could tell when Lewis Pullman and Danielle Brooks came on to announce the nominations, that in the first category for Best Supporting Actress, when we saw the names Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdottir-Lilias, we were like, okay.

• 6:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And Elle Fanning was the first name, Brad.

• 6:36Sean Fennessey?

  It was.

• 6:36Amanda Dobbins?

  So, it set the tone.

• 6:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 6:39Amanda Dobbins?

  You know what? She's been campaigning hard. She seems to be having a lot of fun at all the parties.

• 6:43Sean Fennessey?

  I have been saying, I think she's terrific in that movie. And that scene between her and Stellan Skarsgård near the end of the film, where they're sitting in a nook talking before she makes a critical decision in the film, I think is one of the great scenes in that film and one of the best scenes of the year between the both of them. So, I'm not surprised to see that happen. Let's talk about F1.

• 6:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Well, you fucked up, buddy. It's not you.

• 7:03Sean Fennessey?

  The thing is, is that most people haven't seen the IG live, so pretty much every note I've been getting today is like, "You've been on this. You nailed it." And then, of course, as I always do, at the last minute, after saying for five months that I really think F1 could get in at Best Picture, I blinked, I predicted Weapons. My rationale was so sound.

• 7:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 7:21Sean Fennessey?

  Which is that the Academy Awards has never nominated three non-English language films for Best Picture ever. They love to get a couple of popcorn movies in. There's always a film that has a number of below-the-line or craft strength, like your Avatar, The Way of Water style films. And then I didn't predict F1.

• 7:37Amanda Dobbins?

  You got halfway there. And we are really, we're gonna go back in the archives. I believe it was October when you started predicting this. It could have been sooner. But to bring people behind the scenes. So the nominations are announced at like 5:30 PST here. So we both wake up and the communication doesn't immediately start.

• 7:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 7:57Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, like for the, you know, you're drinking your coffee, you're just kind of watching in silence, or I was, uh, watching in silence.

• 8:03Sean Fennessey?

  I was hooting and hollering after every nomination.

• 8:05Amanda Dobbins?

  And...

• 8:06Sean Fennessey?

  Waking up my four-year-old.

• 8:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Then, you know, and like, there are things I want to tell you, but I'm like, mm, save it for the podcast, save it for the podcast, save it for the podcast. And F1 broke the seal. That was when I just was like, lol, I'm sorry. This is, you, you just, you screwed up.

• 8:20Sean Fennessey?

  Here's the thing. In 2026, I go with my gut. That's, I have to just go with my gut.

• 8:24Amanda Dobbins?

  You've been saying that for a decade.

• 8:26Sean Fennessey?

  I have to stop overthinking this stuff. It's pathetic because I, I knew, I feel like I knew when I saw F1. I was like, this kind of has the shape of the movie, of a movie that, the Oscars, no matter what has happened in the last 10 years with the voting body, they love this shit. And Kozinski has proven himself to be a really, really admired filmmaker, somebody who like brings together craft groups so well.

• 8:46Amanda Dobbins?

  You do not have to tell me.

• 8:47Sean Fennessey?

  We liked F1 a lot. We talked about it.

• 8:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, all right, listen, you, so you were correct and we've, except then you weren't. And you don't, and you never had the strength of your convictions.

• 8:56Sean Fennessey?

  I thought it could have been, could have been a good VP nomination.

• 8:59Amanda Dobbins?

  But I just, I want to speak to F1 for a second, which I, I really admire the work of Joseph Kozinski as documented on this podcast. This is silly. Like this, I'm sorry, this is a silly. Nomination.

• 9:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 9:10Amanda Dobbins?

  It's fine. I understand. We want to honor the box office. You know, it's, it's big and it is very loud.

• 9:15Sean Fennessey?

  I think it, it, it shows you something that makes to me the Oscars different from all the other shows.

• 9:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:20Sean Fennessey?

  Which is that the Oscars is voted on by this big group of people, many of whom work in ways that don't just include acting and writing and directing. All the people who are voting for sound and editing and visual effects, these people vote on Best Picture. And so they have a tremendous amount of admiration for what he does there. Now, script wise, I don't think F1 is that strong.

• 9:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Performance wise?

• 9:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's okay.

• 9:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 9:44Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's not my favorite Brad Pitt performance, as we talked about. But that's not the only thing that goes into making movies. So I'm not going to like denigrate that movie when you look at the history of Best Picture, because there have been so many.

• 9:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Of course, of course.

• 9:54Sean Fennessey?

  Best Picture nominees that are like elegant dramas that are boring as shit. And F1 is not boring.

• 9:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Excuse me.

• 10:00Sean Fennessey?

  What?

• 10:01Amanda Dobbins?

  They are beautiful and they also a lot of crap goes into that.

• 10:04Sean Fennessey?

  We can go through the most boring Best Picture nominations at some point in the future, but to me, it's, it's, it's an interesting nomination that shows balance, basically. Now, do you think that Neon overplayed their hand in trying to get three or four non-English language films into this race?

• 10:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, what is overplaying their hand?

• 10:22Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 10:22Amanda Dobbins?

  They got two in.

• 10:23Sean Fennessey?

  They did get two.

• 10:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, and they got four out of five, an international feature.

• 10:26Sean Fennessey?

  It did.

• 10:27Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a small company. I think sentimental value is incredibly strong.

• 10:30Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 10:30Amanda Dobbins?

  So I don't think you could say that they, you know, spread the wealth at the expense of one film. I, like.

• 10:37Sean Fennessey?

  Well, maybe no other choice, but sure.

• 10:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure. Yeah. And that sucks.

• 10:40Sean Fennessey?

  Which was blank completely.

• 10:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally blanked. What a mistake. And, and you wonder whether they saw that coming because of like the release date schedules.

• 10:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's funny. I felt like that film got a lot of, uh, campaign support from Neon and, and Park Chan Wook and Lee Byung Hoon were out a lot over the last couple of months.

• 10:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:58Sean Fennessey?

  And that has resulted in really good box office for that film. But for whatever reason, and maybe it has something to do with the WGA issue that Park Chan Wook had last year. I'm not sure what it is, but the Academy is not into his films. He's never been nominated. He's never been an international feature. That movie is one of the most acclaimed films of the year. It was my third favorite movie of 2025. And it's not here. It's like probably the. The second biggest complete snub.

• 11:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:22Sean Fennessey?

  Today, there is another one that was completely snubbed, which is Wicked for Good.

• 11:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, I think we're probably quietly delighting a little bit in that because that movie stinks. And I didn't think Wicked won was very good. And it obviously did quite well in crafts at the Oscars last year.

• 11:36Amanda Dobbins?

  It did.

• 11:37Sean Fennessey?

  And this year, it missed in some key categories. It missed in categories that it won last year.

• 11:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:41Sean Fennessey?

  No song nominations, no Ariana Grande, no Cynthia Erivo, nothing.

• 11:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm relieved. We just, we don't have to pretend that we care about this or that there's, there's like hidden merit and whatever, which there is, and it was rewarded for the merit last year.

• 11:57Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 11:57Amanda Dobbins?

  And the new installment was not very good, and we don't enjoy that musical.

• 12:01Sean Fennessey?

  Is there anything else happening here in Best Picture that surprised you or that you took note of? You know, obviously, there was a moment where it felt like Serat could get in.

• 12:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 12:10Sean Fennessey?

  There, you know, obviously no other choices in here. Blue Moon didn't make it.

• 12:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:14Sean Fennessey?

  And when I saw the original screenplay nomination for Blue Moon, I thought.

• 12:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, here we go.

• 12:19Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe this could happen. Maybe that could be in a slot where like The Secret Agent might go, for example, but The Secret Agent made it. The Secret Agent was, is pretty strong here.

• 12:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Never doubt Brazil.

• 12:27Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, got it. Understood.

• 12:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, Secret Agent and casting.

• 12:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 12:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Was, uh, and I, and I guess that's when I knew that The Secret Agent was definitely going to make it into Best Picture.

• 12:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I, I still don't totally understand that because sentimental value, I mean, this, casting is not best cast, right?

• 12:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 12:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's casting. It's the act of casting. It's the work that goes in.

• 12:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, as someone helpfully explained yesterday in the comments, cast Inc.

• 12:52Sean Fennessey?

  That being said, Sentimental Value has four Best Acting nominations, but did not get casting. That's kind of strange.

• 12:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Including a legitimate discovery.

• 13:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 13:02Amanda Dobbins?

  In, um, Inga Ibsdard-Lilias.

• 13:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 13:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Who, so I, you know, I, I think it's really cool that The Secret Agent got best cast because it is, there's an ensemble quality to it, and there are a lot of smaller parts. Donia Sebastiana, you know, not nominated as supporting actress, but the, that they found a lot of people.

• 13:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, like there's some, a lot of cleverness in it. Udo Kier, you know, the late Udo Kier having that small role as the German man living in Brazil. Like, there's obviously, um, real invention. I'm not trying to denigrate, denigrate the casting in Secret Agent. It's very good.

• 13:31Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a new category. We don't understand how the, how they make the decisions. There's a bake-off, uh, element to it, apparently, where they do a presentation, but, you know, we only have these five nominations to glean from.

• 13:44Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think those bake-offs should be made public?

• 13:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:46Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like they should just go on the YouTube channels.

• 13:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, why not?

• 13:49Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, I feel like it would be a good thing.

• 13:50Amanda Dobbins?

  What would be the negative?

• 13:51Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not sure. I mean, just keeping things secret and away from the public.

• 13:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so.

• 13:55Sean Fennessey?

  It could be letting them, letting the public decide what were the best bake offs and then measuring that against what gets nominated.

• 14:01Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no, no, no. That's two people's choice awards. You can like, we can, you know, make the process available.

• 14:06Sean Fennessey?

  No, I don't mean they, we would get a say, just that we could criticize them for choosing the wrong thing based on the quality of the bake off.

• 14:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you know, we do that.

• 14:12Sean Fennessey?

  We do that anyway. Uh, okay. Couple of things about the studios in Best Picture. Netflix got two films, just really nice to see Train Dreams. That was another dream that I've been holding on to for 12 months since I saw the film. Today is of course, the first day of the Sundance Film Festival. The last time it will be in Park City. I saw this movie one year ago. I was really moved by it. You saw it 11 months later. You were really moved by it.

• 14:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I was incredibly moved. It's a beautiful film.

• 14:34Sean Fennessey?

  It's just a straight up good Best Picture nomination. It's a really good film, made by really good people, and I'm really happy about that. Frankenstein less so, nevertheless. Uh, Focus has two nominations here. Warner Brothers has two nominations here. For the first time in a very long time, Searchlight does not have a movie. Testament of Ann Lee also fully blanked.

• 14:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:53Sean Fennessey?

  Unfortunately, that was a late addition to their Best Picture lineup after films like Rental Family and Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere didn't click with audiences or voters.

• 15:02Amanda Dobbins?

  And is this thing on?

• 15:03Sean Fennessey?

  And is this thing on, right? A movie that has been forgotten already.

• 15:08Sean Fennessey?

  So.

• 15:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Not by me.

• 15:10Sean Fennessey?

  You know, a fairly even balance. You don't love the idea of Netflix buying Warner Brothers and then having four Best Picture nominations, but I guess we'll talk about that more in the future.

• 15:18Amanda Dobbins?

  We were also talking about a world in which Neon had four nominations.

• 15:21Sean Fennessey?

  Very true.

• 15:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Not to both sides it, but these, these things can still be a little random.

• 15:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. How many nominations did Paramount get?

• 15:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm, zero?

• 15:30Sean Fennessey?

  Zero.

• 15:32Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk about snubs.

• 15:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Sean Fennessey?

  Snubs, of course, a word that is.

• 15:37Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, this is, this is a place for our feelings.

• 15:40Sean Fennessey?

  It's la, it's a, it's a word that is lacking in describing what we mean.

• 15:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:43Sean Fennessey?

  I'll give you an example. The, probably the most notable and most mocked, uh, race was in Best Actress. Where Chase Infiniti has been in that race for a very long time for her role in one battle after another. She didn't get in.

• 15:57Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 15:57Sean Fennessey?

  Kate Hudson got in.

• 15:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:59Sean Fennessey?

  For Song Sung Blue, a movie that I like.

• 16:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 16:02Sean Fennessey?

  And a performance that I like.

• 16:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 16:04Sean Fennessey?

  But I think I like Chase Infiniti more. However, as I mentioned to you yesterday, Chase Infiniti is not a leading performance in that movie. She's an ending performance. She's the most critical person at the end of the film.

• 16:17Sean Fennessey?

  She's in roughly one third of the film.

• 16:19Amanda Dobbins?

  So as previously stated, I do not care about category fraud. This is all made up.

• 16:23Sean Fennessey?

  The voters may have though.

• 16:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Everything that we're doing, yeah.

• 16:25Sean Fennessey?

  The voters may have.

• 16:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, with respect to you and your opinions, with respect to Almost Famous, to 10 Things, not 10 Things I Hate About You, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

• 16:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 16:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, which is not aged well, just FYI.

• 16:39Sean Fennessey?

  Are you just gonna start naming all of Kate Hudson's movies?

• 16:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, Fabletics.

• 16:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 16:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Which, do you know what Fabletics is?

• 16:44Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, is that her line of workout wear?

• 16:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, it is.

• 16:49Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 16:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and Kate Hudson, who seems like a cool hang.

• 16:52Sean Fennessey?

  She does.

• 16:53Amanda Dobbins?

  She should not be here. Like, I'm sorry, you guys, I, we're all wilding on this one. This is, it's the wrong kind of Oscar nostalgia, you know, like, remember when everybody, it's like Charlize Theron and Monster Light Light, you know?

• 17:05Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 17:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I was, no, is what I say to this. I say no.

• 17:09Sean Fennessey?

  I, I would have, I think I would have preferred honestly Amanda Seyfried over Chase Infinity and Kate Hudson.

• 17:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I would have accepted that.

• 17:17Sean Fennessey?

  That to me is a, a totalizing performance. That is a person at the middle of the movie who holds the movie together. That is a true best actress performance, but that movie obviously is not resonating.

• 17:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I do think, you know, it's, One Battle After Another got 13 nominations, is the presumptive favorite, is our favorite movie of the year. We've barely talked about it this morning. We've really stopped talking about it in award season. And I do think that it's unfair to nominate everybody else in the cast and underrate Chase Infinity's performance. She stands up and goes toe to toe with all of these very big performances and she is the emotional heart of it, along with Leonardo DiCaprio. I don't think that you can get the same Leo performance if you don't have Chase Infinity to bounce off of. So I think it's a bummer.

• 17:59Sean Fennessey?

  I think those are great points. I agree with you. She's nose to nose with Sean Penn and, and owning those scenes.

• 18:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Sean Fennessey?

  Um, so yeah, that's a big one.

• 18:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Sean Fennessey?

  Very little weapons, just one nomination for weapons.

• 18:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 18:09Sean Fennessey?

  You know, sometimes.

• 18:10Amanda Dobbins?

  You took your swing.

• 18:11Sean Fennessey?

  You like to just have a little fun.

• 18:12Amanda Dobbins?

  You took your swing.

• 18:13Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I liked weapons, you know, you can hear me on this podcast talking about weapons.

• 18:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I like it when the children run like this with their hands back.

• 18:19Sean Fennessey?

  I'll give you my.

• 18:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is also how you sleep. I don't know if you've noticed, or do they, they run out to the side.

• 18:24Sean Fennessey?

  Imagine if I slept like this. That would be weird. That would make it hard to share a bed with me. Um, I, among other.

• 18:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna, I was gonna say. No experience, bud.

• 18:35Sean Fennessey?

  I just want to say, I knew this, I knew this in my gut.

• 18:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, what?

• 18:40Sean Fennessey?

  One of the things that I knew.

• 18:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Talk us through it. Talk us through it. Let's go.

• 18:42Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you what I might, when I was second guessing myself and I was doing the Weapons prediction. Not just for this, but for original screenplay, where I also predicted it and it didn't get in, was Zach Craig is making Resident Evil. He's not campaigning. They're not doing screenings. He's not out in the world doing interviews, talking about his movie. Because he's making a movie. He's the only filmmaker that is nominated, that, you know, was up for anything, that whose film was recognized here, who's in the middle of making a movie. That matters. It really matters how much you campaign, how present you are for this sort of thing. Zach is also a really congenial, handsome, cool guy. He would do really well in these environments. But he's just not there. So I think that that hurt him a little bit. That being said, Weapons is a movie in which an old witch has the flesh torn from her body.

• 19:28Sean Fennessey?

  So like, it's also not a classic Oscars film.

• 19:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, but the old witch performance was nominated. And that is in part because Amy Madigan has been places. And Amy Madigan is also very loved and it's a little, it's like, it's her time light situation.

• 19:40Sean Fennessey?

  Very much, very much.

• 19:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And this is, I feel like, the good type of Oscars nostalgia.

• 19:44Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 19:44Amanda Dobbins?

  So I accept that. I would have been happy to see Weapons in original screenplay. And I think in Best Picture over F1, for sure. I mean, Weapons to me is a better pick than F1 for your box office.

• 19:55Sean Fennessey?

  Of course, I agree. And that was my wish casting, is I ultimately just like Weapons a lot more. And if we're gonna be in, if it's gonna be a new Academy, I'd like it to be a little bit more progressive in terms of what it's like, kind of box office and crafts love is. But you can understand why F1, as I said, because it's, it's recognized in three other categories here.

• 20:12Amanda Dobbins?

  When was the last time that you watched F1?

• 20:15Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I rewatched it when I bought the 4K. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. I mean, I agree with you. It's flawed. I'm not saying it's not flawed.

• 20:21Amanda Dobbins?

  We turned it on while my husband was building the mini kitchen that Santa brought for Christmas. And it, you know, it was not maybe the intended setting in which to watch the movie, but that did expose some rickety elements of it.

• 20:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, look.

• 20:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Much like the mini kitchen, you know, just barely held together.

• 20:39Sean Fennessey?

  If you have an 85-inch OLED television and you're watching it in 4K, it holds its power, I would say. If you're watching it, like, you know. On a VCR? Like, it's not really gonna work.

• 20:51Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not a VCR.

• 20:52Sean Fennessey?

  You have a VCR at home, right? You have F1 on VHS?

• 20:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I do, I'm a collector.

• 20:56Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, let's talk about It Was Just an Accident.

• 20:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:58Sean Fennessey?

  Because I guess that's the elephant in the room. It's something that I think we both were sort of feeling like could miss in Best Picture.

• 21:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I predicted it, but I, you know. I was like, we'll see. And that was a little bit of wish casting. I think that this is a shame. I think this is an excellent film that has been kind of just overlooked.

• 21:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's unusual. It's the first Palme d'Or winner to not be nominated for Best Picture since 2021, when Tetan Miss, the movie that never had a chance to be Best Picture. Um, but it did get original screenplay and of course got an international feature.

• 21:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 21:30Sean Fennessey?

  I'm fascinated by the international feature race because you've got Secret Agent and Sentimental Value in Best Picture, and yet I could still see a world in which It Was Just an Accident wins that award, in part because it's not in Best Picture. The sort of like Argo win after the Affleck Best Director snub kind of thing.

• 21:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:48Sean Fennessey?

  That feels like a possibility as an opportunity to get Jafar Panahi onstage, just to talk about what's happening in the world and his perspective and his experience um, as an Iranian dissident. So I, it's sad, and yet screenplay is, that's a good nomination for a film like this.

• 22:04Amanda Dobbins?

  It is.

• 22:04Sean Fennessey?

  And if this film hadn't kind of been elevated in the public consciousness by the Palme d'Or, if a film like It Was Just an, if any Jafar Panahi movie gets an original screenplay nomination, you'd be like, you have to celebrate that. That's a really cool thing. So it's kind of mixed emotions, I would say, about this one.

• 22:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I can't game out how it wins, uh, is the issue, and how you get Jafar Panahi onstage, which I think is something that is important for filmmaking and the world. And, and, and I think like would behoove the Academy, but, you know, original screenplay, that comes at the expense of Kugler, which I think really, which is, who I'm still picking, though I'm getting a little nervous because...

• 22:42Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I think he's winning.

• 22:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I think he is too.

• 22:45Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's the only place where they're gonna be able to get him on stage.

• 22:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. But then, you know, where is sentimental value? I guess is Stellan Skarsgård the only one for sentimental value? That feels a little strange.

• 22:57Sean Fennessey?

  Probably.

• 22:57Amanda Dobbins?

  So, but don't you think that they're gonna wanna get Joaquin Trier on the stage? I mean, I guess not. I don't know. So.

• 23:05Sean Fennessey?

  My gut is that Secret Agent will win international.

• 23:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I think you're right, too.

• 23:08Sean Fennessey?

  Stellan Skarsgård will win Supporting Actor. We can get to that category momentarily. And it was just an accident will not have any representation at the show. That's what just happened at the Golden Globes. And part of my crankiness about the Golden Globes was this feels super duper predictive of the Oscars, and that's just less fun.

• 23:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:24Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't mean that the Globes has bad taste. Their taste is too good now. And that's part of why there's like, there is some surprise here. And there's some cool stuff that the Oscars did and some weird stuff that they did. But there's nothing truly stunning because we've now seen. Now, we reserve the right to be totally wrong. We might have a crazy series of results on March 15th. Nevertheless, let's keep going through this. No Guillermo del Toro in Best Director.

• 23:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I went five for five in Director.

• 23:46Sean Fennessey?

  You did.

• 23:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I did.

• 23:47Sean Fennessey?

  You did. Congratulations.

• 23:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you so much. I'm proud and excited. Congratulations, Josh Safdie.

• 23:51Sean Fennessey?

  This was the opposite for me of what I was trying to do with Weapons, where it was like, I was afraid.

• 23:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't think Josh Safdie would be nominated here because.

• 23:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I did, because I believed.

• 24:00Sean Fennessey?

  Well, he got in at DGA, which is of course very strong. And as you said, there's always four out of five that get in there. But in this, is this five out of five?

• 24:08Amanda Dobbins?

  No, because Del Toro was DGA and Trier comes in.

• 24:11Sean Fennessey?

  So you were right, the Trier went in over Del Toro, which is fascinating. We've heard a lot.

• 24:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I told you.

• 24:15Sean Fennessey?

  You did. You did.

• 24:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Sentimental value.

• 24:17Sean Fennessey?

  You can't rub it in too much.

• 24:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, I know, I know. I just sentimental value is all. That's, I mean, that's what I meant by that.

• 24:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, no, it was, it's very strong, but I'm really happy for Josh. Obviously, this was an extraordinary effort by them to get this movie made, movie success. They've gotta be feeling like they played this right all the way down. The late release date, the Timothy Chalamet marketing thing, the way that Safdie's been selling the movie publicly has been very successful. When Best Supporting Actress was announced and Odessa Azayon missed.

• 24:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Sean Fennessey?

  And then Daniel Lopaten missed in Score.

• 24:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Which we're gonna get to.

• 24:52Sean Fennessey?

  We will talk about it. I was like, oh, no. They're not going for Marty. Marty's gonna get like three nominations. And that didn't turn out to be the case.

• 24:59Amanda Dobbins?

  It worked out.

• 24:59Sean Fennessey?

  It worked out really well. They got editing, they got screenplay, Josh got in at director, you know, aside from obviously Chalamet. Costume design. Costume design. A lot of interesting spots for that movie. So it's kind of where it's strong and where it's not strong was kind of fascinating, but obviously PTA, Kugler, and Kuo Zhao has been kind of locked in place for many months. And Trier is a good one. I think Trier, who was nominated for screenplay in 2022 for The Worst Person in the World, I think his, the filmmaking of that movie was a little bit overlooked. And I think there's like a kind of montage oriented style that he has developed over time. It is really interesting. So I'm really happy about that nomination as well. But you know, none of, you know, the Park Chan Wicks, the Jafar Panahis, Del Toro's missed. What do you make of that? Anything notable around that? Because Frankenstein

• 25:44Sean Fennessey?

  did pretty well.

• 25:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, he got screenplay. Frankenstein has plenty of representation and it is also among the crafts, all the people, you know, it's handmade, they spent so much time. They did, I, we've heard a lot about that, so I'm rolling my eyes, but they did spend a lot of time. And so I think it was honored where it's honored. And then people made interesting choices. I feel pretty comfortable with it.

• 26:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's interesting that the movie is recognized for having a good screenplay, but not for being well directed, not as well directed, you know?

• 26:14Amanda Dobbins?

  You have 10 slots for screenplay.

• 26:16Sean Fennessey?

  That's what it is. Okay, we already mentioned No Other Choice, Totally Blanked, Sorry Baby, Totally Blanked, was disappointed by that, thought there was an outside chance. Did we both predict it in original?

• 26:25Amanda Dobbins?

  We did.

• 26:25Sean Fennessey?

  We did, and Ava Victor did not get in.

• 26:27Amanda Dobbins?

  We believe in the power of Julia Roberts.

• 26:29Sean Fennessey?

  Not quite, yeah. Maybe if it was a little sooner, she could have gotten more people to see that film. I mentioned Daniel Lo-Patton not getting in for Marty Supreme.

• 26:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:38Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk about original score now.

• 26:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Sanctions.

• 26:45Sean Fennessey?

  My guy Jerskin Fendricks got in for Begonia.

• 26:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:47Sean Fennessey?

  And it appears that he took the one spot that could have been held for Daniel Lo-Patton for Marty Supreme.

• 26:52Amanda Dobbins?

  So no Marty Supreme. This comes a year after no Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for Challengers.

• 26:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 26:59Amanda Dobbins?

  This body, this voting group is on notice. It's past notice.

• 27:05Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I mean, let's talk about what's happening here because Serat was not nominated either.

• 27:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:09Sean Fennessey?

  And what that tells you is, is that electronic music is not where this group leans. This voting group is a classical group. The idea of Alexander D. Plotzwork for Frankenstein being recognized here after many, many nominations.

• 27:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:22Sean Fennessey?

  You know, obviously Ludwig Rentson, I think, kind of like makes that complex, you know, because he's using a lot of different styles and he, you know, he's gonna win in this category.

• 27:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and that's deserving, sure, yeah.

• 27:33Sean Fennessey?

  But, you know.

• 27:36Amanda Dobbins?

  This sucks.

• 27:37Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you mentioned No Challengers and No Serat and No Lopaten and I don't, I actually don't know, like, as film scores, like, kind of like the shape and tone of them change over time, how can the body maybe more adequately reflect the shifting styles is something that's interesting. On the other hand, like Train Dreams isn't here either, and that's a kind of like more traditional score that you might find. But Goni is a weird score. It is very orchestral, very string-based, very, a lot of brass, but it's still weird.

• 28:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. It's more, you know, Philip Glass, John, and like, you know.

• 28:13Sean Fennessey?

  More avant-garde.

• 28:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, modern avant-garde, still classical, as opposed to, you know, people who used to be on Pitchfork.

• 28:20Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Yeah, I would have liked to have seen Lopaten there.

• 28:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Still be on Pitchfork. I don't really know what's going on on Pitchfork.

• 28:25Sean Fennessey?

  Pitchfork, you have to subscribe now?

• 28:28Amanda Dobbins?

  It couldn't tell me. I think it's owned by Conde Nast.

• 28:32Sean Fennessey?

  That I know, yeah.

• 28:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Which still will not give me an all-access pass.

• 28:36Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 28:37Amanda Dobbins?

  So despite the free work that I have done for them for going on 15 years.

• 28:41Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not sure if they're totally aware of that free work.

• 28:44Amanda Dobbins?

  The fact-checkers are. They call me.

• 28:47Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. Pitchfork, I used to write there. I wrote there for years. Six years, seven years?

• 28:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:55Sean Fennessey?

  Great experience. I wouldn't be where I am today without Pitchfork. Different ownership.

• 28:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I, I think this is an abomination that Daniel Lopaten was not.

• 29:02Sean Fennessey?

  An abomination?

• 29:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm this, I wrote in all caps, original score committee, you are on notice.

• 29:08Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 29:09Amanda Dobbins?

  You guys gotta have some meetings.

• 29:10Sean Fennessey?

  It's my favorite score of the year.

• 29:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 29:12Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting that Johnny Green, who it still hasn't won and pretty much has no chance to win this year. And this is, to me, this is my favorite of his scores, which I've mentioned in the past. Uh, okay, let's talk about documentary real quick. So this is a hard category to predict.

• 29:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 29:25Sean Fennessey?

  We did our absolute best and we're still pretty wrong.

• 29:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, yeah. You've put this in snubs and I put it under what the fucks.

• 29:34Sean Fennessey?

  Right, so is it a snub or is it a what the fuck?

• 29:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, cause I just, and it was the last one and all I wrote was whatever is going on with the documentary branch, comma, again.

• 29:43Sean Fennessey?

  I, I find it hard to have a strong opinion about this because I haven't even seen two of the nominees here. And so I'm not going to pretend as though I have a definitive point of view about it. I do think Laura Poitras's cover up, her portrait of Seymour Hersh not being here is unfortunate. I'm not surprised that it didn't get in ultimately because it feels more like what gets left out now.

• 30:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 30:05Sean Fennessey?

  Seymour Hersh is not Michael J. Fox, but it is a portrait of a man.

• 30:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:09Sean Fennessey?

  And a well-known person. And the branches is not as interested in that as it is issues oriented or um, kind of dramatic uh, portraits of the world in struggle. And so the nominees in this category are the Alabama solution, which I predicted. Come see me in the good light, which neither of us predicted, which is on Apple right now, if you want to watch it. Cutting through rocks, which I have not seen.

• 30:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:31Sean Fennessey?

  Um, which neither of us predicted. Mr. Nobody Against Putin, which you predicted.

• 30:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I did.

• 30:35Sean Fennessey?

  And then The Perfect Neighbor, which is probably the most watched documentary of the year is on Netflix. Netflix probably struggled to get two candidates in alongside cover up. And Perfect Neighbor is interesting. I think we probably should have a conversation about it and maybe this whole category. It's a movie that when I first saw it, I really liked it and a film that candidly, when the more I read about it and the more criticism I read about it, the more misgivings I had about its approach. I think it's simultaneously a very vital and important film, but one in which it's the way in which it was made. Makes me a little queasy and so I maybe we can save some space for that in February to talk through it a little bit more. It does feel like it is the frontrunner in this category because of the number of people who will have seen it. It is very watchable in a way that some of these others and now this category leaves the branch and everybody will vote

• 31:20Sean Fennessey?

  for it.

• 31:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 31:22Sean Fennessey?

  So something like cutting through rocks will probably have less views ultimately than something like The Perfect Neighbor.

• 31:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I would assume.

• 31:28Sean Fennessey?

  We shall see. So the WTF nature of it is I'm generally agree with you, which is just like, I don't know how to predict this race and I know how to predict like every other race.

• 31:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I've I've kind of given up predicting it.

• 31:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 31:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And certainly, you know, trying to watch everything to make an educated decision.

• 31:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's too hard, even with the shortlist, it doesn't really help.

• 31:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:47Sean Fennessey?

  Because you don't know where things are going to go. Like 20,000 meters to Androvka, the Ukrainian film, like I just assumed that that was going to be there because the filmmaker's previous film was recognized by the Academy and it's a very powerful, vital movie and it's not here. So it's like, I don't, I don't, I actually don't, just don't know how to do it. And that's fine. That's actually a good thing, I think, to not have everything be so predictable. Let's talk about surprises.

• 32:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Sean Fennessey?

  Biggest surprise, I think, is Delroy Lindo.

• 32:14Amanda Dobbins?

  It's wonderful.

• 32:15Sean Fennessey?

  It's great news. One of the best actors alive, a former guest on this show. He came on this show because he was campaigning for Defy Bloods.

• 32:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Really?

• 32:24Sean Fennessey?

  During COVID.

• 32:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Ah, that's great.

• 32:25Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 32:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I'd forgotten that.

• 32:27Sean Fennessey?

  It's a wonderful interview for longtime Spike Lee and Congo fans such as myself. I have a lot of Delroy Lindo stock. I did not think he would get recognized here, but it is a kind of classical Oscar nomination where even if someone is overlooked in precursors, if they have a really strong body of work and they're really liked inside the industry, they will have a chance. Delroy Lindo has not just been working in film, he's, you know, working in television for a long time on What's That Show, the spinoff of the CBS show that Julianne Margulies was on.

• 33:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, right. Okay. The Good Wife, but not The Good Wife, then the next one with Baranski.

• 33:06Sean Fennessey?

  Correct.

• 33:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Hold on.

• 33:07Sean Fennessey?

  Very sorry to the TV lovers.

• 33:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm like, I'm talking and also Googling.

• 33:10Sean Fennessey?

  But he's been on that show for a long time, you know?

• 33:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 33:13Sean Fennessey?

  He's just, he's a real.

• 33:13Amanda Dobbins?

  The Good Fight!

• 33:14Sean Fennessey?

  The Good Fight, yes. An industry veteran, a terrific actor. My favorite performance of his is probably in the movie Clockers. He's excellent in centers. He has that great moment where he's telling the story in the car in centers. That is like your classic clip reel moment. He did come at the expense of some people. You want to talk about supporting?

• 33:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, he came at the expense, quote unquote, of Paul Meskell, which, who will be fine.

• 33:39Sean Fennessey?

  He will be fine.

• 33:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:40Sean Fennessey?

  Paul McCartney.

• 33:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And I hope he'll still be there.

• 33:43Sean Fennessey?

  At the show? I don't really care.

• 33:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I don't know. Jessie Buckley says such nice things to him whenever she's on stage.

• 33:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's great. I would like her to say nice things to me.

• 33:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, I know. He's very, he's reactive, like, he's a good front or second row.

• 33:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, totally. He's a young star. He's a true young star.

• 34:02Sean Fennessey?

  But he was overlooked here.

• 34:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:03Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 34:04Amanda Dobbins?

  That's okay.

• 34:05Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. I think it's okay. I think it's great that Del Roy Lindo's in the other people in this category are Benicio del Toro, of course, Jacob Elordi, Sean Penn, and Stellan Skarsgård.

• 34:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:12Sean Fennessey?

  Feels like Elordi versus Skarsgård. And I do feel that the one battle guys are gonna be splitting the vote.

• 34:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I think you're right. I think it's a bummer.

• 34:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's interesting.

• 34:20Amanda Dobbins?

  You never know, though.

• 34:21Sean Fennessey?

  You never know.

• 34:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I'll be so excited if they say Benicio del Toro.

• 34:25Sean Fennessey?

  I might be banging the jump for Del Roy Lindo.

• 34:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 34:27Sean Fennessey?

  Can we make that happen?

• 34:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Why not? I mean, Sinners has 16 nominations.

• 34:31Sean Fennessey?

  That's what I'm saying. And, and Stellan Skarsgård and Del Roy Lindo are basically in the same spot. Neither have ever been nominated. They're both in, I think they're both in their 70s. They're both tremendously admired. They've contributed a lot to very discreet movements in cinema. And this is a long overdue thing. So it's fascinating to see them both in this category together.

• 34:53Amanda Dobbins?

  That's great.

• 34:53Sean Fennessey?

  This is a good category.

• 34:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I like.

• 34:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's not the best category. We'll talk about the best category, but it's a really, really good collection of actors.

• 34:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I really, really like four out of five.

• 35:01Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 35:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:02Sean Fennessey?

  Um, you hate Sean Penn?

• 35:04Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not that I hate him. You know, it's great to have someone just, like, smoking on camera in the middle of the Golden Globes.

• 35:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 35:11Amanda Dobbins?

  But.

• 35:11Sean Fennessey?

  He just looks like Wile E. Coyote, like, exploded by TNT in every award show and interview he does.

• 35:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I would have used that spot for something else.

• 35:20Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Uh, let's talk about best actress in a supporting role, because one of the other big surprises, as we mentioned, was Elle Fanning getting in there. Which I think is a great one. So two nominees in sentimental value in this category, along with Inga. We mentioned Amy Madigan. We have not mentioned Winmi Masaku.

• 35:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 35:34Sean Fennessey?

  Which you predicted.

• 35:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I did.

• 35:36Sean Fennessey?

  And I did notice more and more pundits getting around to the idea of predicting her in the last two weeks or so.

• 35:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:42Sean Fennessey?

  Despite not being, like, she wasn't nominated at the Globes. She hasn't really won very many precursors.

• 35:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 35:47Sean Fennessey?

  I guess she was in Critics' Choice.

• 35:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And she was nominated at SAG.

• 35:50Sean Fennessey?

  At SAG, yes.

• 35:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Even though, she held on to that even though SAG just completely ignored Sentimental Value and seemingly all

• 35:58Sean Fennessey?

  And Secret Agent.

• 35:58Amanda Dobbins?

  International.

• 35:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 36:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Were non-English speaking roles. Okay, whatever, guys.

• 36:04Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think that matters?

• 36:06Amanda Dobbins?

  SAG or?

• 36:07Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I know that SAG is effectively not predictive.

• 36:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:10Sean Fennessey?

  If your film is not in English. And that's fine. We can accept that as somebody who follows this stuff really closely. Is it important? Like, SAG is an American guild. There are international members. But like, I think about this all the time with like, DGA and PGA and kind of what is their role in terms of what do they represent? Because the Academy has like tilted this stuff so hard. Where all of a sudden now, you know, The Secret Agent is just like absolutely competing in Best Picture.

• 36:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:34Sean Fennessey?

  That never would, it's happened so rarely. That's an interesting thing, but these guilds then, they don't seem, they seem more representative of American filmmaking.

• 36:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:44Sean Fennessey?

  But not totally. Where like, sometimes they'll tilt in a certain direction.

• 36:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:50Sean Fennessey?

  On certain things where you'll be like, okay, so like Sentimental Value got in at PGA.

• 36:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:57Sean Fennessey?

  It didn't really make any money at the box office. It was produced outside of this country. It's obviously a great movie. And it's an act of producing, I suppose.

• 37:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 37:06Sean Fennessey?

  But why is that more significant than what The Secret Agent, or it was just an accident? You know what I mean? Where it's like, there's something kind of confusing about what is really being graded and where and why? That I find

• 37:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 37:16Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. It's not a negative, it's just, it's a developing thing that is happening in this space.

• 37:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, to your question of, does it matter? I think not. Not at all, in the sense that these are all made up.

• 37:26Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 37:26Amanda Dobbins?

  What is, what is the purpose of these awards? Is the purpose to be predictive? Then I think it does, you know?

• 37:34Sean Fennessey?

  But that's not what's in their mission statements, right?

• 37:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but so what is?

• 37:37Sean Fennessey?

  To kind of like honor the best in the thing that they do.

• 37:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so, but why are they honor?

• 37:42Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 37:43Amanda Dobbins?

  What is the point of that? You know, the SAG Awards has been touting the fact that they will be on Netflix this year. So they clearly want like the largest audience possible, which would mean a global audience and Netflix obviously has an international reach. But so if you're gonna do that and then pretend that you only have English speaking, you know, mostly American actors, it's, it's not a long-term strategy, I would say.

• 38:06Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it jumps out, obviously, because of the four nominations for sentimental value in acting.

• 38:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 38:10Sean Fennessey?

  Including Ellen Inga and Renata Ransva and Skarsgård. But to me, the biggest example of it is Wagner Moro, who was like in SAG, was on Narcos for years. Like, he's been in tons of American productions. He's a very, he's a well-known actor.

• 38:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:24Sean Fennessey?

  Um, people may not know his name, but people just sitting at home, like clicking tiles and streaming are like, oh, yeah, that guy, you know, like the cartel king from Narcos. So for him to not get recognized in some of those bodies is just kind of, it's a, it's an interesting wrinkle in this.

• 38:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:40Sean Fennessey?

  And we have similar confusion points with BAFTA. And it's just a reminder that like, take some of these things seriously, but not too seriously. And as I should tell myself, go with my gut when I need to. Uh, Tiana Taylor is also obviously nominated in this category. And I thought she was gonna win for the longest time, and I'm still leaning Amy Madigan now.

• 38:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I think that the two sentimental value noms does cancel them out.

• 39:02Sean Fennessey?

  I do, I agree.

• 39:02Amanda Dobbins?

  So then you've got Tiana and Amy Madigan. The fact that Chase Infinity did not get nominated does not really bode well for how the voters are thinking about the value of the female performances.

• 39:17Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 39:17Amanda Dobbins?

  In one battle after another. Once again, do not, that is not my opinion. I am observing, not endorsing. I disagree vehemently.

• 39:26Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 39:28Sean Fennessey?

  So you said you should at A.K. Dobbins. You're racist. You don't understand.

• 39:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 39:35Amanda Dobbins?

  But yeah, I think, I think you're right that the field might be clearing for Amy Madigan.

• 39:38Sean Fennessey?

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• 40:21Sean Fennessey?

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• 41:39Sean Fennessey?

  Diane Warren.

• 41:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I told you.

• 41:42Sean Fennessey?

  You did.

• 41:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't text you when it happened. You know, that didn't, the dam didn't even break on that one. I was just kind of like, I, this, this.

• 41:49Sean Fennessey?

  Another category, I'm just like, this is poppycock. It's been poppycock for decades.

• 41:53Amanda Dobbins?

  This is the worst category.

• 41:54Sean Fennessey?

  I predicted two wicked for good songs for no reason. Like, I don't know why I did that.

• 41:58Amanda Dobbins?

  That was silly. I predicted one. Uh, this is a silly, silly category. And, and, but Golden will win and Golden is one of the only entrants in this category in the last five years that like is true to the spirit, which is a song written for the film itself.

• 42:15Sean Fennessey?

  And also penetrated the mainstream in a way along the same lines as like, uh, gosh, I don't even know, like the Hustle and Flow theme. You know what I mean? Like there, it's very rare that a song like breaks through and people are really into it from this category. Other, other nominees, so Dear Me from Diane Warren, colon relentless. That's a documentary about how Diane Warren is relentless.

• 42:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 42:36Sean Fennessey?

  Highest to Lowest from Highest to Lowest, which neither of us predicted. And in hindsight, I don't know what we were doing there. We probably should have just predicted that because that's a movie that a lot of people have seen from Spike Lee.

• 42:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's the titular song from the movie. The film ends with its performance.

• 42:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Titular song.

• 42:48Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I lied to you from Sinners, which we both had. Sweet Dreams of Joy from a film called Viva Verde exclamation point, which I had never heard of.

• 42:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Wait, so Highest to Lowest was nominated?

• 43:00Sean Fennessey?

  I thought I saw Highest. Did I not see it?

• 43:02Amanda Dobbins?

  No, and you texted me this earlier and I was like, I was doing my hair and I was confused.

• 43:06Sean Fennessey?

  Do I have this wrong?

• 43:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I am, I'm just double checking a jacket you can cut in. Yeah, you've got six.

• 43:11Sean Fennessey?

  Wait, no. Did Train Dreams make it?

• 43:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Train Dreams made it.

• 43:14Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Well, I take it back, Highest to Lowest.

• 43:16Amanda Dobbins?

  All right. Sorry, Highest to Lowest. It's the titular song, but it does not get an Oscar.

• 43:20Sean Fennessey?

  I'm looking at, uh, The Hollywood Reporter, best original song list from this race.

• 43:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 43:25Sean Fennessey?

  And Highest to Lowest is on it. And that's where I copied it from.

• 43:28Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 43:28Sean Fennessey?

  They just had six songs there.

• 43:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Why can the Academy not just release a PDF? Is this, is it because the PDF doesn't exist? You know, this morning, I guess I wasn't actually looking.

• 43:39Sean Fennessey?

  PDF of all the nominations? Well, I think that's available somewhere.

• 43:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's not because everyone is just scrambling, typing things out as fast as possible.

• 43:47Sean Fennessey?

  This is a mistake made by The Hollywood Reporter that I then made on this podcast.

• 43:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's because.

• 43:52Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, but seriously though, let's just go back for a second. Let's rewind by highest to lowest take.

• 43:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 43:58Sean Fennessey?

  I thought it made sense that this movie would be nominated because people have seen this movie. It's directed by Spike Lee.

• 44:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:02Sean Fennessey?

  But it's not nominated.

• 44:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 44:03Sean Fennessey?

  And a song called Sweet Dreams of Joy from Viva Verde is nominated.

• 44:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 44:07Sean Fennessey?

  What is Sweet Dreams of Joy from Viva Verde?

• 44:09Amanda Dobbins?

  What is Viva Verde? Thanks so much for asking. Viva Verdi is what I think you mean. Not live, long live green.

• 44:15Sean Fennessey?

  Not green.

• 44:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, uh, but Verdi, the composer. Here is what I pulled off of Google.

• 44:21Sean Fennessey?

  We've been doing Spanish in them, so Verde's on the mind.

• 44:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, great. Um, "An intimate glimpse into the lives of the celebrated opera singers and musicians currently living out their quote unquote third act while mentoring international music students who live among them at Milan's unique retirement home Casa Verdi, built by Verdi, the composer, in 1896."

• 44:40Sean Fennessey?

  So did you listen to the song?

• 44:41Amanda Dobbins?

  No, of course not.

• 44:43Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's an operetta. It's not even a song. I don't, I don't even understand. This is a very strange thing. This category is fucking broken. They got, they should probably just delete it.

• 44:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I have been saying this for 10 years.

• 44:53Sean Fennessey?

  They should delete it.

• 44:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I completely agree.

• 44:54Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 44:54Amanda Dobbins?

  It's terrible. They can give it to Golden and then we're done.

• 44:57Sean Fennessey?

  Um, maybe there should just be like, they should just choose the winner every year. Like, don't even do the nominations. Just choose the winner and be like, hey, it's obviously Golden, guys.

• 45:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:06Sean Fennessey?

  Like, we're not even, you know, Lewis Pullman is like, hey, everybody, good news. I'm able to give out one award here at 5:30 in the morning. Golden, step right up.

• 45:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:13Sean Fennessey?

  That actually is not a bad idea, to give out one award on nominations this morning.

• 45:16Amanda Dobbins?

  No, not, not on Good Morning America.

• 45:19Sean Fennessey?

  I have so many good ideas.

• 45:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Not on Good Morning America.

• 45:20Sean Fennessey?

  Why not?

• 45:21Amanda Dobbins?

  We need to update, why are we all up at 5:30? Like, the news cycle is totally different. We've gotta renovate this.

• 45:28Sean Fennessey?

  Oscars, call me. I've got incredible ideas. We could be giving away Best Sound to F1 today. We don't have to wait two more months.

• 45:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Then you would be crying. That's like worse than showing the Sinner's Golden Globe score win during the commercials. No, everybody on the telecast.

• 45:43Sean Fennessey?

  This is the second biggest morning in the Oscars news cycle. The Sound win is gonna go completely overlooked when it happens on March 15th because there's gonna be 23 other awards given out. If we give it out on this morning as a treat, and it changes every year and we don't tell people what, what they're gonna give out, but we tell the nominees so they- They come to at 5:30 in the morning.

• 46:03Amanda Dobbins?

  And so that they have their glam money.

• 46:04Sean Fennessey?

  Come on, this is a good idea.

• 46:06Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's a terrible idea.

• 46:07Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, god damn it.

• 46:08Amanda Dobbins?

  No, everyone wants to be on the stage. Everybody wants to be Julia Roberts.

• 46:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, onstage with Danielle Brooks.

• 46:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 46:14Sean Fennessey?

  Right? And Lynette Howell Taylor, president of the Academy.

• 46:16Amanda Dobbins?

  You know what? I thought that Louis Pullman and Danielle Brooks did a lovely job.

• 46:19Sean Fennessey?

  They did, they did good.

• 46:20Amanda Dobbins?

  That's all. Good job then. I don't need that many speeches from the Academy president at 5:30 a.m.

• 46:26Sean Fennessey?

  Makeup and hairstyling.

• 46:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:28Sean Fennessey?

  So you have not heard of two of these films?

• 46:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I Googled them, so now I've done my research.

• 46:32Sean Fennessey?

  I have, I've heard of both of them that you're referring to. I have seen The Ugly Stepsister.

• 46:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 46:38Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a Scandinavian horror reimagination of Cinderella.

• 46:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I gathered that from The Ugly Stepsister, yeah.

• 46:46Sean Fennessey?

  That is very gross and, and, and good. I think it's, it was a little oversold to me, so I didn't love it as much. And I actually never got a chance to talk about it on this show. Like, Chris and I never talked about it.

• 46:55Amanda Dobbins?

  It was in the midnight section of Sundance.

• 46:57Sean Fennessey?

  It was, and it was picked up by Shudder. You can stream it on Shudder right now. It's a good film. Kokuhou.

• 47:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 47:02Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a Japanese film. It was the Japanese entry for international feature this year. Has had a very strong advocate in the public, and that person is Tom Cruise.

• 47:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Cool.

• 47:11Sean Fennessey?

  He has hosted screenings and talked about his love for this movie. I haven't seen it.

• 47:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 47:16Sean Fennessey?

  It is in theaters right now, in a precious few theaters. I think it's playing the Burbank 16. So I'm gonna go check it out very soon.

• 47:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 47:23Sean Fennessey?

  Other films.

• 47:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I am as well now.

• 47:24Sean Fennessey?

  That were recognized in Makeup and Hairstyling include Frankenstein and Sinners, of course, and The Smashing Machine, which we predicted those other three.

• 47:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 47:32Sean Fennessey?

  As we went through. That's, I think this is good.

• 47:36Amanda Dobbins?

  The Marty Supreme manicure not recognized.

• 47:39Sean Fennessey?

  Neither the manicure nor Timothy Chalamet's acne, yeah.

• 47:43Amanda Dobbins?

  But it did make it in costume design, which I'm pleased about.

• 47:47Sean Fennessey?

  Do you want to talk about costume design quickly?

• 47:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, Miyako Belizzi was nominated for all the incredible stuff in Marty Supreme. Let's see.

• 47:54Sean Fennessey?

  Well, there's one really odd nomination that I actually kind of like.

• 47:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Avatar Fire and Ash?

• 47:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, Avatar Fire and Ash got in there. Frankenstein, we knew would get in. Hannibal, we knew would get in. Marty Supreme, we hoped would get in. Sinners, we knew would get in. So that, a fairly predictable category. However, Avatar Fire and Ash, like, is this for dressing verand?

• 48:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:13Sean Fennessey?

  Or undressing verand, as it were?

• 48:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Have I told you about the mindshare that just the words Avatar Fire and Ash have in our home now?

• 48:20Sean Fennessey?

  You have.

• 48:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, that my, like, Knox just whispers it in moments of like, you know, he's seen the images. So in that sense, the costumes, which are, are. Blue digital makeup.

• 48:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 48:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Are very effective.

• 48:35Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I mean, is this also the costumes for like the human characters?

• 48:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so. Edie Falco's like big machine and her.

• 48:42Sean Fennessey?

  But that's not her costume. Oh, interesting. You think the power loader is being considered as part of her costume?

• 48:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, the Avatar.

• 48:48Sean Fennessey?

  This is another innovation you could make.

• 48:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Is not listed in production design.

• 48:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Best machinery is something we should consider here at the Academy Awards. We're coming up with some goals right now. Uh, what else? Where else do you want to go in this conversation? Um, we've talked about the documentary branch. We've talked about costume design. We've talked about all of the acting categories except for actor and actress. Let's do that right now. The best category maybe in the history of the Academy Awards is this year's best actor race. This is as good as it gets for the Academy Awards.

• 49:19Amanda Dobbins?

  It's great.

• 49:19Sean Fennessey?

  I can't, we've been, we have been predicting for the most part, this fivesome, in part because I think we've hoped it would be the case. We started talking about this way back when Sinners came out because we had hoped Michael B. Jordan would get in. And you know what? He kind of like locked himself into this race and has held in in every single precursor. He's won nothing.

• 49:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 49:36Sean Fennessey?

  He's won nothing. But he's has hung around here and he's here, of course, as are Timothy Chalamet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ethan Hawke, and Wagner Moura. Five great performances, five great movies. Um, you still think Timothy Chalamet?

• 49:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. I'm, I'm working through it. I think so.

• 49:53Sean Fennessey?

  What's going on?

• 49:54Amanda Dobbins?

  So what's, what do I think is going to happen? Or what is my pick? Timmy forever? Don't have the jacket.

• 50:00Sean Fennessey?

  No, I know your pick. But what else? What's going on inside you? Give us a little bit of your interior monologue.

• 50:05Amanda Dobbins?

  We learned from yesterday and what we learned from waking up and coming to podcasts every day with Sean Fennessy is don't be a coward. Trust your gut. And my gut has been saying Wagner Moura for some time, you know? I trust my gut and also the people of Brazil and their love for cinema and their power and their advocacy. So I, you know, I'm, I'm trying to lean in to what I believe on the other, and the secret agent is strong, you know, relatively speaking. On the other hand, I'm trying to game out like the next two months.

• 50:39Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And there are appearances, I guess, there's, you know, tea parties and the Oscars lunch where they all pose and all of that stuff. But I don't know how many opportunities Wagner Mora has to get in front of as many people as Timothy Chalamet has already gotten in front of. And he's not nominated at SAG, AKA the Actor Awards.

• 51:07Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:07Amanda Dobbins?

  So he won't even get like a, um, wasn't that when Michelle Yeoh started to turn the tide against Cate Blanchett?

• 51:15Sean Fennessey?

  And Jamie Lee Curtis as well.

• 51:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. So he won't get one of those. And Timothy Chalamet, if he wins at the Actor Awards, will have just given three acceptance speeches in front of people. And I do think that there's a lizard brain aspect to this at some point. So I don't know. On the other hand, I've just been thinking a lot about Olivia Colman. Lady Gaga, you know, so you never know.

• 51:40Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, here's my, here's where my, my mind goes as I hear you talk about that.

• 51:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 51:44Sean Fennessey?

  If in fact Wagner Mora wins in this category, which is of course very possible, and I'm not saying would not be worthy as a win. This will probably go down as one of those kinds of losses for Chalamet that we talk about on the rewatchables all the time. Which is like, this was the best chance to recognize this person here. And now a long time may go by before they get a chance. And the person that I think about.

• 52:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Is Leonardo DiCaprio?

• 52:10Sean Fennessey?

  No. Paul Newman.

• 52:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 52:12Sean Fennessey?

  Paul Newman, in the 1960s, including, starting in 1959, was nominated for Cat in a Hot Tin Roof.

• 52:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:18Sean Fennessey?

  And then three years later, The Hustler. And then two years later, HUD. And then four years later, Cool Hand Luke.

• 52:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:24Sean Fennessey?

  And he never won. He lost to David Niven, Maximilian Schell, Sidney Poitier, and Rod Steiger. None of those losses are like bad losses.

• 52:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 52:32Sean Fennessey?

  You lost to very famous actors, beloved actors, legendary wins, Poitier winning, Maximilian Schell for Judgment in Nuremberg, a really powerful performance. None of those are like bad.

• 52:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:42Sean Fennessey?

  But if you don't recognize the actor at the top of their game, in their youth, you might have to wait 25 years. And of course, you're gonna have to wait a very long time to win for The Color of Money. And he did win eventually, but the idea of Timothy Chalamet winning at like 59 is just very funny. Like, will Timothy Chalamet ever be 59?

• 53:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 53:03Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's totally right.

• 53:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Will any of us be alive?

• 53:05Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's totally possible.

• 53:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Will movies exist?

• 53:07Sean Fennessey?

  Timothy Chalamet could make a movie in 2028 that is one of the best films ever made and he could win for that film. But we've seen this over and over again. And so to game out that thing that you're describing is interesting. This is how it happens, is really what I'm trying to say.

• 53:19Amanda Dobbins?

  He has always been the new Leo to me. I mean, just in the, you know, the career rise, which is starting as a, it's a teen heartthrob and very, very passionate teen fanbase expanding, working with a lot of great directors, nominated, but not winning. And, you know, they have encouraged the comparisons as well. And certainly now, like the, this Oscar race is like, you know, from Leo to Timmy. But Leo did not win until the revenant. He had to wear like a bear skin.

• 53:52Sean Fennessey?

  I, I said to our pal Joanna Robinson, who I saw in person in the office yesterday wonderfully. Uh, it's just so weird how Leo's not competing in this race. It's so weird because he's so present.

• 54:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Unbelievable. But I mean, this is, this is a larger one battle thing. Once again, it's our favorite movie of the year. It's 13 nominations and we have not really talked about it at all, even in this podcast, unless to say, you know, oh yeah, and one battle was nominated.

• 54:17Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's gonna win Best Picture and we have a lot of time to talk about that.

• 54:20Amanda Dobbins?

  That's, that's true. And I, and I, I'm not gonna concern troll and say, like, is this, you know, inattention gonna extend to Best Picture? And are we just gonna forget and forget? And I, I don't think so either. I don't.

• 54:32Sean Fennessey?

  It got 13 nominations, which is now the third most in the history of the Academy Awards. So I, I think the film is still very strong. You know, we can talk about Best Actress now, now, given the Chase and Infinity snub. Because, uh, Jessie Buckley, uh, Rose Byrne, the aforementioned Kate Hudson, Renata Rinesva and Emma Stone are in here. It's been a Jessie Buckley steamroll through the season.

• 54:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 54:52Sean Fennessey?

  We've seen this before, especially in this race. Someone is anointed and they carry it all the way through. There have been some diversions from that. You mentioned the Michelle Yeoh kind of late surge, given the admiration for her. I'm not sure if there's a candidate here that could do the same. Rose Byrne is maybe a little bit less experienced than someone like Michelle Yeoh. Doesn't quite have the same track record. You could see if it was 10 years later, Rose Byrne could do that.

• 55:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, or if the movie were a tiny bit bigger.

• 55:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 55:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And I love if I had, like, I'd kick you. It was in my top five for last year. I think she's amazing in it. Amazing movie. I think even this nomination, as she said at the Golden Globes when she won for Best Actress in a Drama, like, it'll get more attention, which is, which is good. But it's, it's not Everything Everywhere All at Once.

• 55:36Sean Fennessey?

  It's not.

• 55:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Just box office wise, so.

• 55:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I feel like Buckley is pretty much in place there. That's another race where it's like, how much can we really talk about this for the next two months? Let's talk very briefly about the screenplay categories.

• 55:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 55:49Sean Fennessey?

  Adapted, we both predicted perfectly.

• 55:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Five for five.

• 55:52Sean Fennessey?

  Begonia, Frankenstein, Hamlet, one battle after another in Train Dreams. Not as much on the outskirts there. That this felt, this felt like the single easiest big category to predict.

• 56:00Amanda Dobbins?

  This is the one that they could have just handed out this morning. And I would have been okay with it because PTA is gonna get other awards at the Oscars. And it's like, no one needs to spend the money on the outfits. No one needs to spend, you know, two hours in line at security trying to get in, like.

• 56:15Sean Fennessey?

  So you think it's a lock that he's gonna win here?

• 56:18Amanda Dobbins?

  For Adapted? You think they're gonna try to throw a bone to Chloe Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell?

• 56:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think so. Come on.

• 56:29Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 56:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 56:31Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 56:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I have, I, I do feel that they could just FedEx this to him. I would like to hear his speech.

• 56:40Sean Fennessey?

  Let's go back for a second then.

• 56:41Amanda Dobbins?

  So I don't want them to do that.

• 56:41Sean Fennessey?

  Let's go back to director then. Do you, do you think that that then means that P, that PTA will win Picture, Director, and Screenplay?

• 56:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I do. They did it last year.

• 56:49Sean Fennessey?

  Is there, is that, is that, is there anything wrong with that?

• 56:52Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 56:52Sean Fennessey?

  Nolan didn't get this, right? He didn't win Screenplay, as I recall.

• 56:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's because he wrote the third hour of Oppenheimer, so.

• 56:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's incredibly rude.

• 57:01Sean Fennessey?

  But it is becoming more common, and this is something that was very hard to accomplish for a long time. We often saw splits in director and picture to kind of like

• 57:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 57:10Sean Fennessey?

  Award multiple films and delineate the difference between those two jobs, I think, which is kind of hard to parse, but does exist. As you have said, you don't want producers speaking at the Academy Awards. I guess he is gonna win because I don't think that the other nominees are really all that strong.

• 57:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I would agree.

• 57:29Sean Fennessey?

  I guess that's the case. Okay, original screenplay. Another very cool category with some very worthy nominees. Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident, Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value, and Sinners. And we think it's just sinners.

• 57:40Amanda Dobbins?

  As I said, I don't know what they're gonna do about getting both Trier and Panahi onstage.

• 57:47Sean Fennessey?

  What if Marty Supreme wins here?

• 57:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I would be excited, but I would feel very bad. I think that this is Ryan Coogler's best chance at a speech, and I really want that for him. I think it's really deserving. I think this, as a, it's, this is the coolest award always to us. This always has the coolest nominees. It goes to our favorite filmmakers instead of Best Picture. This is, this is like where the real ones are.

• 58:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 58:11Amanda Dobbins?

  And for this film, which is about how white people have stolen black art for a century, to then be nominated and win

• 58:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 58:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Four screenplay would be great if someone else wins.

• 58:22Sean Fennessey?

  What would you mean if the white boy of the year won?

• 58:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. Right. So that's also, you know, I just, let's, let's Ryan Coogler, you know? Like, it's deserving. It's, it's the correct choice. Let's just do it.

• 58:35Sean Fennessey?

  I can't disagree.

• 58:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:37Sean Fennessey?

  Briefly, cinematography.

• 58:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:38Sean Fennessey?

  Did we predict these perfectly?

• 58:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so, yes.

• 58:41Sean Fennessey?

  I believe we both did, right?

• 58:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's Dan Lautzen for Frankenstein, Darius Kanji for Marty Supreme. Our pal David Sims pointed out that Darius Kanji has three Academy Award nominations, one of the greatest living cinematographers, the French Iranian filmmaker. Those three nominations, do you have any idea what they are? Can you even guess at all?

• 58:56Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 58:57Sean Fennessey?

  You know, well-known for shooting seven, has worked with some of the best filmmakers of all time, he shot on Cut Gems. His three nominations are Evita, Bardo, and Marty Supreme.

• 59:10Sean Fennessey?

  Weird.

• 59:10Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really good.

• 59:11Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Michael Baumann for One Battle After Another, Autumn Derald-Arcapaw for Sinners and Adolfo Veloso. I'm feeling Autumn Derald-Arcapaw.

• 59:19Amanda Dobbins?

  So I, which would be very exciting.

• 59:20Sean Fennessey?

  That would be another place where Sinners could be recognized.

• 59:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:23Sean Fennessey?

  You never know. I could see Darius winning here. I could see Michael Baumann winning here.

• 59:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:27Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I could see Adolfo Veloso winning here. Train Dreams, that beautiful digital cinematography that is so hard to accomplish. Uh, the other nomination that I'm really excited about is Jack Fisk in production design. Uh, I talked to Jack Fisk for the show. You'll hear that conversation very soon. He was not nominated when we spoke, so we didn't talk about that. He's been nominated before, never won. His work on Marty Supreme is insanely good.

• 59:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:48Sean Fennessey?

  I don't-

• 59:49Amanda Dobbins?

  A living legend.

• 59:49Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think he's the leader in the clubhouse for this award. I will stump for this.

• 59:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Who do you think is the leader?

• 59:55Sean Fennessey?

  Well, the other nominees are, uh, Tamara Deverell for Frankenstein, Fiona Crombie for Hamlet, uh, Florencia Martin for One Battle After Another, and Hannah Beekler for Sinners.

• 1:00:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:00:04Sean Fennessey?

  I do think Hannah Beekler is leading.

• 1:00:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I do as well.

• 1:00:08Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and she did win, right? I feel, I feel like she won previously for Black Panther. Correct me if I'm wrong.

• 1:00:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's see. She, yes, she did.

• 1:00:17Sean Fennessey?

  She won. So that's an interesting one. I'd like to see Jack Fisk get one before Hannah Beekler gets two. That's just me. We'll see.

• 1:00:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I would as well. Uh, but this award does tend, it's like, not only do they favor period, but like, the more period, the better. Like, the further back in time you have to go.

• 1:00:34Sean Fennessey?

  You're right. You're very right. Uh, quickly, film editing. F1 got in here.

• 1:00:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, we, we expected that.

• 1:00:41Sean Fennessey?

  We did. Marty Supreme also got in here.

• 1:00:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, One Battle After Another, Sentimental Value and Sinners. Marty Supreme, the only film in which the filmmakers edited the film.

• 1:00:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:51Sean Fennessey?

  You don't see that too often these days. Uh, and we mentioned casting.

• 1:00:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:56Sean Fennessey?

  The confusion about what this category is going to be over time.

• 1:01:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm sure they'll clear that up for us. I'm sure that, I'm sure they'll just, they'll release everything straight to YouTube.

• 1:01:06Sean Fennessey?

  Question for you, just a predictive question for you. How many years will go by before a film is nominated in casting that does not get a Best Picture nomination?

• 1:01:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:01:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that's hard because you have the 10 spots. I, I mean,

• 1:01:24Amanda Dobbins?

  four.

• 1:01:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I asked that specifically because when you look in a category like film editing,

• 1:01:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Sean Fennessey?

  which is historically very important in the package

• 1:01:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:31Sean Fennessey?

  for a Best Picture winner.

• 1:01:33Sean Fennessey?

  F1's there.

• 1:01:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:34Sean Fennessey?

  And it did get into Best Picture.

• 1:01:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:37Sean Fennessey?

  But I wouldn't have predicted that, and I didn't predict it. Um, and sometimes a movie will-

• 1:01:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Even though in your heart, you did predict it.

• 1:01:43Sean Fennessey?

  Even though I did know. Uh, okay.

• 1:01:46Sean Fennessey?

  Looking at the, the board in full again. And looking at Best Picture before we wrap up here.

• 1:01:51Sean Fennessey?

  This is a pretty cool slate of nominees. Definitely, I would say a good morning for the Academy Awards. Nothing like embarrassing.

• 1:01:57Amanda Dobbins?

  True.

• 1:01:57Sean Fennessey?

  F1 is, there will be some notes.

• 1:02:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Silly.

• 1:02:00Sean Fennessey?

  A little silly.

• 1:02:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Kooky. Kooky is the, is my word of choice.

• 1:02:04Sean Fennessey?

  A little kooky.

• 1:02:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:02:05Sean Fennessey?

  Um.

• 1:02:06Amanda Dobbins?

  But you know, as I say about, you know, can't mom and dad have fun? Like, can't the Academy have fun too every once in a while? I guess they can.

• 1:02:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think so. This is for the dads.

• 1:02:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Sean Fennessey?

  That's for the dads. F1 is a dad movie. It's a dad classic instantaneously. And dads can now tune into the Academy Awards. We said that we think One Battle's gonna win.

• 1:02:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:25Sean Fennessey?

  It's got the second most nominations.

• 1:02:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:27Sean Fennessey?

  We just mocked three or four potential Sinner's wins, too. What film do you think will win the most Academy Awards on this night?

• 1:02:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, let's see. So I have one, two, three for One Battle, top line.

• 1:02:41Sean Fennessey?

  And that's it, right?

• 1:02:42Amanda Dobbins?

  And do I have any acting? No, right now I'm leaning Amy Mattigan. Do I have anything below the line?

• 1:02:49Sean Fennessey?

  Editing?

• 1:02:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe editing. Maybe, and maybe, yeah. So that's four.

• 1:02:54Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe cinematography, maybe?

• 1:02:55Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but I think all of that stuff is gonna go to Sinner's. So, Sinner's, I have definitely score, cinematography. Um, uh, I hope, original screenplay, we gotta do it. So that's three.

• 1:03:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:03:09Amanda Dobbins?

  What else? Costume production, maybe?

• 1:03:13Sean Fennessey?

  Those are both in play?

• 1:03:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So that, that's five, which is over four. So right now I think I'm going, I mean, some of this is just numbers.

• 1:03:21Sean Fennessey?

  That's what I was just gonna say. Here's the thing about being nominated 16 times.

• 1:03:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Sean Fennessey?

  You increase your odds of winning more awards.

• 1:03:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 1:03:26Sean Fennessey?

  They have 16 bites at the apple. And like, let's- I don't know how much we're gonna talk about Sinners on Academy Awards Night. And we will talk about the movie again on the show.

• 1:03:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:03:38Sean Fennessey?

  Because we're gonna re-watch it and read and and and talk through like, kind of what's great about it. You'll get finally get a chance to see the after-credit sequence. Congrats to you.

• 1:03:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Just I'm gonna watch it all, you know, in full as it was intended.

• 1:03:51Sean Fennessey?

  But this is a movie that got really stuck in the discourse funnel. It had box office discourse, it had representation discourse, it had craft, you know, skill art discourse. Is this movie actually good? You hear that a lot of times now because it's like a vampire movie. And I think that will be a reaction to 16 nominations is like, really, this is the film that absolutely shattered the all-time record for the Academy Awards? Some of that is a function of just kind of like what the Academy is right now. Some of it is a function of the number of people who've worked on this film who are now Academy veterans, the Hannah Beeklers and the Vigor Ransons of the world.

• 1:04:32Sean Fennessey?

  Like, what did it all mean? What was it all for? Like, we participated in all of it, you know, like, it didn't mean anything. The movie made $400 million, it got 16 Oscar nominations.

• 1:04:40Amanda Dobbins?

  This is why you Sean Fantasy need to stop posting, you know?

• 1:04:43Sean Fennessey?

  No!

• 1:04:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Go outside, everyone. Watch the film and then go outside.

• 1:04:48Sean Fennessey?

  I guess that that I think that's actually the question I'm trying to ask is like, does the posting actually matter?

• 1:04:53Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:04:53Sean Fennessey?

  Because people, because when when the discourse starts and somebody posts something annoying and then everybody's like, shut the fuck up! That's wrong! And then everybody gets all really bent out of shape about what they heard, what they saw on a social media app?

• 1:05:05Amanda Dobbins?

  But then maybe-

• 1:05:06Sean Fennessey?

  Can you actually win back the day by hard posting through it? Can Van Lathan win back the day by shouting down the haters?

• 1:05:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, don't you think that some of the, just like the confirmation in every category is all the rational-minded people being like, stop posting, this was good and I'm voting for it? And like, it's an individual, so-

• 1:05:25Sean Fennessey?

  I think the takeaway might be the opposite.

• 1:05:26Amanda Dobbins?

  So you, so you think posting that, that's great?

• 1:05:28Sean Fennessey?

  But look at Timothee Chalamet.

• 1:05:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I would, I know.

• 1:05:30Sean Fennessey?

  The posting works.

• 1:05:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 1:05:32Sean Fennessey?

  We're in an era of posting.

• 1:05:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:34Sean Fennessey?

  You know, sentimental value. Elle Fanning's just been knocking through X.com for months. Look at where it got her. Thank you to her. Did we even talk about the Mets trading for Freddie Peralta? Everything is going great!

• 1:05:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:05:46Sean Fennessey?

  They did it.

• 1:05:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know who that is.

• 1:05:48Sean Fennessey?

  He was formerly the number one starting pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers.

• 1:05:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:05:52Sean Fennessey?

  Who won the most games in the NL Central last year.

• 1:05:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Sean Fennessey?

  He was traded to the New York Mets last night.

• 1:05:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:05:59Sean Fennessey?

  Jack Sanders and I crying, tears of joy.

• 1:06:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Wonderful.

• 1:06:02Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you, David Sterns. You hath saved us. I'm here 5:30 in the morning, ready to go. I'm falling apart at the end of this podcast.

• 1:06:10Amanda Dobbins?

  You did it.

• 1:06:11Sean Fennessey?

  Any final takeaways?

• 1:06:13Amanda Dobbins?

  You need to man up. You need to believe in your truth at all times. And we're going back to F1, you know?

• 1:06:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I know. You need to get some of that sunny energy.

• 1:06:22Amanda Dobbins?

  You need to stop posting and start believing.

• 1:06:25Sean Fennessey?

  I know. And I've got all these young, these young Oscar pundits coming for me. You know, they're all like, they've all been, they've been watching.

• 1:06:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Sean Fennessey?

  They've been learning.

• 1:06:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:06:33Sean Fennessey?

  And they've been, they've been, they've been one-upping me. They've been like, I listened to Sean, he said F1, I'm predicting F1.

• 1:06:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:39Sean Fennessey?

  And then I didn't predict F1.

• 1:06:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:42Sean Fennessey?

  Shameful.

• 1:06:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Sean Fennessey?

  There's shameful stuff. Uh, well, we're gonna, we're gonna keep talking about this award show. How much?

• 1:06:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. We'll find out.

• 1:06:50Sean Fennessey?

  What do you, how often?

• 1:06:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Together. Who can say?

• 1:06:52Sean Fennessey?

  Who can say? Uh, thank you to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. We'll be back very soon on The Big Picture. See you then.

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

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