The Oscar Noms Mailbag: Is ‘Sinners’ vs. ‘One Battle After Another’ a Race? Plus: Best Picture Power Rankings.

We’re opening up the mailbag! Before diving in, Sean and Amanda break down the poor box office performance over the weekend and highlight some new releases coming this week (2:13). Then, they answer all of your questions relating to last week’s Oscars nominations, talk through topics like whether or not late release dates negatively affected certain films' award chances, and debate whether ‘Sinners’ now has a legitimate shot at winning Best Picture over ‘One Battle After Another’ (11:24). Finally, they update their Best Picture power rankings following the official nominations (1:40:57). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Jack Sanders This episode is sponsored by State Farm®️. A State Farm agent can help you choose the coverage you need. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.®️ 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 LinkedIn Ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not-so-great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that: bullspend. Instead, why not invest in what looks good to your CFO?

• 0:45Sean Fennessey?

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• 1:18Sean Fennessey?

  Hey, everyone, it's me, Sean Fantasy. A quick programming note before we get into today's episode. The Big Picture is now available on Netflix. So you might be asking yourself, what is changing for you? If you listen or watch on Spotify, nothing is changing. You can still get us there right now. If you listen on Apple or Pocket Cast or any other listening app, nothing is changing. If you typically watch the show on YouTube, new episodes are no longer available there. If you want to see us on your TVs on Netflix, you can fire it up. You can even save the show and get reminders from Netflix when a new episode goes live. If you're meeting us for the first time, welcome to The Big Picture, where a conversation show about movies, Hollywood, award season, the box office, stardom, the state of the industry and a lot more.

• 2:00Sean Fennessey?

  We talk about new releases, we make lists, we play little games that I create, and I interview the biggest filmmakers in the world. It's a very normal show, made by normal people. I assure you. That being said, this show is only being licensed by Netflix. They do not own us, nor do they pay us, nor will they influence what we discuss or how we discuss it. If The Gray Man dropped tomorrow on the service, we'd discuss it in much the same way we discussed it in 2022, which was not very nicely. If Train Dreams dropped tomorrow, we'd do the same, which was with admiration and sincerity. That is our promise to you. See you at the movies. Now, onto the show.

• 2:48Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Finacy.

• 2:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 2:50Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the Big Pictureate Conversation Show about the tremors of the 2026 Academy Award nominations. On today's show, we will be digging into the mailbag to answer your questions about the Oscar nominations and reset our Best Picture power rankings. We didn't do it immediately after the Golden Globes. Do you have any regrets about that?

• 3:10Amanda Dobbins?

  After the Golden Globes, but before the nominations? No, I don't, because then we did our predictions. So it's like we were on the record with what we thought was gonna happen.

• 3:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, we've made some mistakes, but we did some things well.

• 3:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:22Sean Fennessey?

  We'll look back at that later in this episode. But first, let's talk about the box office really quickly. Weird Weekend at the Box Office. There was storms across America.

• 3:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 3:30Sean Fennessey?

  400 movie theaters were closed over the weekend, so numbers were down a bit. They're usually a little depressed in January. Mercy.

• 3:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:38Sean Fennessey?

  The new Chris Pratt sitting in a chair chatting with AI movie, which just sounds incredibly cinematic that neither of us have seen yet.

• 3:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:45Sean Fennessey?

  Nor Jack Sanders. Have you seen that film yet? I have not. Okay, all three of us have not seen it. Maybe we will see it soon. Number one, Dethroned: Avatar Fire and Ash, which had sat atop the box office for five consecutive weekends. Any thoughts?

• 3:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm looking forward. Am I looking forward to seeing Mercy? I don't know. I will see it for professional obligations. I know, we really, there's a question about that, and we can just, we can open up the Google Cows live on the podcast. That's what people tune in for. Yeah, people do. This is not what's on people's minds this weekend for a number of reasons.

• 4:20Sean Fennessey?

  It's not. And the only reason that I brought it up here with us this morning is because The Bone Temple, the 28 Years Later follow-up, fell precipitously over the weekend, down 70% from the previous weekend, which was originally an underperformance, and now the movie is sitting at $21 million domestically after two weeks, which is pretty bad, and now has me strongly questioning whether or not the third film will even happen. We speculated about that when we talked about the movie on the show.

• 4:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 4:46Sean Fennessey?

  So it's gotten good reviews, seems very warmly received by those who have had a chance to see it. Most people have not gone to see it.

• 4:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Did they film 28 Years Later and The Bone Temple, like sequentially, or?

• 5:01Sean Fennessey?

  They definitely sequentially, but I don't know how back to back they were. I think they were fairly close together in terms of production, you know, all that iodine staining for refines.

• 5:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, the actual bone temple?

• 5:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, keep that thing built, you know, don't want to deconstruct that temple.

• 5:15Amanda Dobbins?

  So then to add on the third, there's not a huge financial incentive.

• 5:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 5:19Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a shame. These are really good. But come on, they have to. I mean, Danny Boyle is rumored to return.

• 5:26Sean Fennessey?

  He's returning for the third film, yes. He is now putting the finishing touches on Ink, his forthcoming biopic of Rupert Murdoch.

• 5:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, also starring Jack McConnel, right?

• 5:34Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 5:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't want to spoil things for people, but spoiler alert for the coda of The Bone Temple. Cillian Murphy? Oscar winner Cillian Murphy's also supposed to be in the third one? Like surely that would be a bit more of a draw? I don't know.

• 5:50Sean Fennessey?

  I still speculated that because this is a Sony title, and because these films do ultimately go to Netflix, that there is a world where maybe Netflix could come in and co-finance the third film and make it a Netflix exclusive, which would at least allow them to complete the trilogy. My understanding is, is that there is at least a treatment and maybe even a full screenplay for the third film from Alex Garland. So there's material to work with. So I hope this happens. I mean, not that my life will be incomplete if they won't finish the 28 Years Later quintology. Like, I'll be okay, but it does feel like they left us hanging at the end of Bone Temple. Do you want to see what happens?

• 6:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I mean, they just, they set up like, once again, Killian Murphy, Oscar winner. Just make the movie. And maybe people will come also just Duran Duran going so hard in my house now.

• 6:36Sean Fennessey?

  I would not expect Duran Duran to come back.

• 6:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but that, but I just.

• 6:40Sean Fennessey?

  That was a Dr. Kelson thing.

• 6:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I appreciated that gift that they gave us.

• 6:43Sean Fennessey?

  It was wonderful. This coming weekend, a lot of movies, an inordinate number of movies are coming out. I'll be watching a lot of movies because Virtual Sundance starts this week. Some of our friends are there right now.

• 6:56Amanda Dobbins?

  We are not.

• 6:57Sean Fennessey?

  The cold, we are not, we have no regrets about that, the last year of Park City. But in the movie theater. And in theory, on Friday on the show, we'll talk about some of these movies, a bunch of stuff, some of which feels like it's dumped and some of which feels like it's been strategically placed here to kind of win at a quiet time. So we've already seen Sam Raimi's Send Help.

• 7:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 7:15Sean Fennessey?

  Starring Rachel McAdams, we will talk about it on Friday. Jason Statham has a new action movie, you know, every January, he's got a new one. This one is Shelter from the new Black Bear Productions Distribution arm. I don't know what the premise of this movie is.

• 7:29Amanda Dobbins?

  About to ask and I was trying to Google it. Okay, shelter movie premise, here we go. On a remote coastal island, a reclusive man rescues a young girl from a deadly storm, drawing them both into danger.

• 7:41Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, Bone Temple vibes there.

• 7:43Amanda Dobbins?

  No, yes, that, this does seem right. Okay, Shelter 2026, Rotten Tomatoes, sorry, it's the AI results. No, that is correct, okay.

• 7:50Sean Fennessey?

  So it's literally about a shelter. Because sometimes you get a, you get a, a single word Statham title like that. And you're like, well, is he actually transporting anything? Like, what does he, what does it mean to be the transporter? What does it mean to be the, does he literally keep bees? Or are the bees that he keeps a kind of metaphor for the information state?

• 8:11Amanda Dobbins?

  The cast would suggest that it's not just the two of them survival style on the island.

• 8:16Sean Fennessey?

  Got it.

• 8:16Amanda Dobbins?

  And also he's wearing a parka and carrying a very large assault weapon on the poster.

• 8:23Sean Fennessey?

  You don't say.

• 8:24Amanda Dobbins?

  So.

• 8:25Sean Fennessey?

  Jason Statham with an assault weapon, wow.

• 8:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Really large.

• 8:28Sean Fennessey?

  What's, what relationship does this film have to the island, the Michael Bay 2006 vehicle starring Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor?

• 8:36Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, this Google result is not telling me that as we do the research life.

• 8:40Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I'll see Shelter.

• 8:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I'll, I'll watch it at home.

• 8:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Also, Charlie XCX is the moment.

• 8:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Which we've seen.

• 8:47Sean Fennessey?

  Which we have seen, which premiered at Sundance last week, which is a lot of fun. We'll talk about that as well. Melania, did you get your AMC Prime ticket for the new Brett Ratner documentary about our first lady?

• 8:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I did not.

• 8:58Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 8:58Amanda Dobbins?

  It will not be. I've seen some ads, I guess, for this.

• 9:02Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 9:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Though I would say-

• 9:03Sean Fennessey?

  Served to you naturally, based on your algorithm.

• 9:05Amanda Dobbins?

  No, more like, have I not seen, like, posters for Melania out in the world?

• 9:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 9:10Amanda Dobbins?

  But, um-

• 9:11Sean Fennessey?

  That's because we live in a fascist state.

• 9:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly, which we certainly do, and we have evidence of every single day on the internet. Um, those ads are not making as much news in my home as really old ads for SpongeBob SquarePants.

• 9:23Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 9:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yesterday, my son was like, "Momma, can you tell me about SpongeBob?" And I found that I could not.

• 9:29Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 9:29Amanda Dobbins?

  So-

• 9:30Sean Fennessey?

  Huge. That's just huge.

• 9:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, I don't, I don't know what to say. So, I see the ads, and I'm not taking action on them.

• 9:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, understood. Melania also not getting any action, apparently, from movie theater licensors, because it doesn't seem like that movie's gonna go as wide as they had originally hoped it would. I guess it's been financed by Amazon, and they're trying to book it in theaters, and it looks like it's gonna be more of a limited release than a wide release. Can't say I'm upset about that. One interesting movie that is coming out, that I don't really know anything about, but the story of it fascinates me. So, there's a YouTuber, a well-known YouTuber named Mark Fishback. He goes by Markiplier. I know about him because when my little sister Grace was first discovering YouTube some 15 years ago, she was really into Markiplier's YouTube videos. Now, he has since become a content person. He had a, has a podcast with Spotify, like, he's made a lot of stuff.

• 10:19Sean Fennessey?

  He self-financed an adaptation of a video game called Iron Lung, not a game I've played before, but, um, he is getting this film distributed, like, on 2,000 screens.

• 10:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:30Sean Fennessey?

  And I just think that's cool. I just think that's good for movies, when people come along who are able to do something like that.

• 10:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:35Sean Fennessey?

  So, that's also being released. Um, and then I did, I did watch People We Meet on Vacation.

• 10:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:42Sean Fennessey?

  And, uh, which is on Netflix right now.

• 10:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 10:44Sean Fennessey?

  And I know that you podcasted about it on Jam Session.

• 10:46Amanda Dobbins?

  We, we didn't really. We-

• 10:48Sean Fennessey?

  You spoke of it.

• 10:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, we spoke of it. I podcasted at Juliet about it briefly, because I saw the film, and Juliet had read the book many years ago. And then I just asked her to explain to me what the hell's going on.

• 11:02Sean Fennessey?

  Um-

• 11:04Sean Fennessey?

  I have some strong thoughts.

• 11:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, go ahead.

• 11:06Sean Fennessey?

  That run in both directions. I kinda wanna save it for Friday. We're like, Friday will be like-

• 11:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:10Sean Fennessey?

  It's movie season. There's a lot of new stuff.

• 11:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I also have a lot of thoughts. Some of my thoughts are just about the source material.

• 11:18Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:19Amanda Dobbins?

  And-

• 11:19Sean Fennessey?

  And I had some concerns about the way the film is being framed versus what it actually is.

• 11:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's really, it's the title, you know? What do you hear when you hear people we meet on vacation?

• 11:28Sean Fennessey?

  Well, but it's, you know, it's a wry play on that idea.

• 11:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I understand that, but I thought I was just gonna see people having sex on vacation, various places.

• 11:37Sean Fennessey?

  I gotta tell you.

• 11:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:38Sean Fennessey?

  You could really cut some corners there by just going straight to Pornhub. That's kinda what they do. That's kinda their thing. People meeting on vacation, having sex.

• 11:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Not at the production level that I am looking for. Which is also another note that I have about people we meet on vacation from time to time.

• 11:54Sean Fennessey?

  See, I felt like it was, well, we can save it for Friday, but I was like, this is way better than what we usually get.

• 11:59Amanda Dobbins?

  For sure, but it was like, they went to New Orleans, and then everywhere else they went was like also New Orleans, dressed as other places.

• 12:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they went to some other homes. Yeah, they visited some homes, but they were in New Orleans.

• 12:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That was, and the Airbnb, or not the Airbnb, the Italian. No, no, no, the Italian, the Tuscan villa.

• 12:19Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, the villa, yeah.

• 12:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, where the guy from Emily in Paris. I don't think, but it was a nice house. I'd like to go on vacation there. Anyway.

• 12:24Sean Fennessey?

  We're spoiling Friday's riveting conversation. The reason that I even gave a second thought to this movie is Emily Bader. And we will get into that.

• 12:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Same.

• 12:34Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so, it has now been almost five days, four days, since the Oscar noms. Since we burst into this office at 7:30 in the morning and just started screaming about everything. And, you know, I think the general consensus aligns with ours, which was this was a pretty good crop of Oscar nominations this year. Some goofy things, like you said, but mostly good films being recognized, some interesting balance. Maybe some of that teetering towards too few films getting too many nominations. But we'll get into that as we get into the mailbag. Any off-the-rip observations that you wanna note before we answer people's questions here?

• 13:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Sean and I do not vote for the Oscars, so you can send your opinions to us, but not your complaints.

• 13:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 13:17Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I just, I felt like I was fielding a lot of, well, what about this?

• 13:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 13:21Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, I didn't make these choices.

• 13:24Sean Fennessey?

  You know, my cousin Ian, who is a cinephile, but when we were growing up, I would not have thought of him as a cinephile, but he's now in a stage where he's clearly seeing a lot of movies and he's going to film festivals and stuff. And he hit me up and he was like, it was just an accident, bro. What the hell? And I'm like, this is kind of interesting that in our movie culture, in some ways, I think this is a good thing, in some ways it's a bad thing, but like winning the Palme d'Or and then being an acclaimed film throughout the season, getting snubbed in a field of 10, is drawing the interest of people who are not really in the business, who are not really in the film or television media. There is like a higher level of awareness of the game itself, and obviously shows like ours are contributing to that.

• 14:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 14:03Sean Fennessey?

  But I, hopefully that just means people are seeing those movies, you know, like for somebody who doesn't have to go see an Iranian film made in secret about, you know, the control of the fascist operation in that country, that's, that's a good thing, you know, that's a really interesting that, like, something that can be more widely distributed. So even when we mock, or even when I mock a place like Neon for just buying up every movie.

• 14:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you mock them. I, I just think they're distributing film.

• 14:27Sean Fennessey?

  They are just distributing film.

• 14:28Amanda Dobbins?

  The playbook is evident at this point.

• 14:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 14:31Amanda Dobbins?

  But that's fine.

• 14:32Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's like, I'll tell you how, this is very ungenerous, I'm making things worse for myself with this comment, but it occurs to me, like, there's a thing in sports where there are some guys who have like Iron Man streaks, where they play every game. And, you know, Cal Ripken Jr., famously, the Baltimore Orioles infielder, A.C. Green, the Lakers forward, for years, like, even when he was injured, he would check into a game for like one minute and then check out, even if he couldn't play, because he wanted to keep that Iron Man streak going of consecutive games played. Neon definitely is like doing that a little bit with the Palme d'Or and the international feature film, where they're just like, we're not letting go of this.

• 15:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:07Sean Fennessey?

  No matter what happens.

• 15:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:08Sean Fennessey?

  But the upside is, they distribute all these movies in America.

• 15:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 15:12Sean Fennessey?

  Which is fantastic.

• 15:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And they're also, I think they're not letting go of that strategy because it gets them both Oscars and also it is... Their financial strategy right now, it's like-

• 15:22Sean Fennessey?

  It is. It's debatable how effective that is.

• 15:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know how much money they're making, but it's not like, there's not, it's their lane that they've carved out.

• 15:30Sean Fennessey?

  It is their lane.

• 15:31Amanda Dobbins?

  So they're doubling down on it.

• 15:32Sean Fennessey?

  They are.

• 15:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And it does mean that more Americans see more international films.

• 15:37Sean Fennessey?

  Let's circle back specifically on this as soon as we get into the first question. Because I have some thoughts related to that box office question. But Jack, what is our first question?

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Well, our first question is a combination of a lot of different things. By far and away, the most common email we received was, "Bro, what the hell happened with No Other Choice and The Testament of Anlie?" And we had a couple of hypotheses come in. Orin was asking, "Are Park Chan Wook's films simply too transgressive? Is it because he didn't win the Palme d'Or? Does the Academy just simply not like his films?" And later, Kenneth wrote in, "Do you think the later in the year wide releases of The Testament of Anlie and No Other Choice hurt their Oscar chances?"

• 16:17Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let's talk about No Other Choice and Park Chan Wook first.

• 16:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:22Sean Fennessey?

  So it is getting a little weird now.

• 16:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:24Sean Fennessey?

  It is a little bit strange that one of the most celebrated filmmakers on the planet for roughly this last 25 years

• 16:34Sean Fennessey?

  has not been recognized by the Academy. It's particularly strange because we just saw in 2019, Bong Joon-ho, his South Korean compatriot, get recognized for a film with a similar tone and conceit and with a similar level of mastery, right? So you could say, well, it's not that the Academy doesn't care for South Korean cinema, or Asian cinema, or they don't care for satires about capitalism.

• 16:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 16:59Sean Fennessey?

  Or, you know-

• 17:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Begonia was nominated.

• 17:01Sean Fennessey?

  It was nominated. So that's not really at issue. Now, Park Chan Wook was expelled from the WGA last year for what was made to seem like rule-breaking actions during the production of his HBO series that came out last year. Now, he disputed those claims and said that the bylaws were confused and that he didn't do anything wrong, nor did Don McKellar, who is his writing partner, who also has a writing credit on No Other Choice. It's possible that there was a little bit of blowback around that. I have heard from people in the WTA who have said that they feel that this was a harsh penalty for something that is a little bit confusing because it was about working during the strike.

• 17:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 17:43Sean Fennessey?

  So that's one factor. I guess that's possible. Two could be the Neon thing, which is that they just had a lot of titles that were going.

• 17:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 17:53Sean Fennessey?

  And to, you know, Orin's point, maybe not winning the Palme d'Or, not getting that higher level of acclaim could have been a factor, although it was just an accident. Also didn't get nominated for Best Picture.

• 18:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And within international feature, Serat getting in over No Other Choice. Serat also is like a Neon film and-

• 18:15Sean Fennessey?

  Also a Cannes title.

• 18:16Amanda Dobbins?

  And was a surprise. And we saw, we saw inklings of this in the shortlists where Serat was nominated in a bunch of, or was shortlisted in a number of Below the Line categories, as well as international feature. And No Other Choice was like missing a lot of places. And I think we were confused by that. And sometimes it's just sort of a momentum thing where after the shortlist, everyone did seem to be like, I mean, we even put Serat on our Best Picture power rankings.

• 18:47Sean Fennessey?

  That was on our last one.

• 18:48Amanda Dobbins?

  So, so that is just about timing and a lot of, hey, look over here and maybe you should check out this movie. And I guess, I don't know whether you can say that Serat like took the place of No Other Choice, but I think, I don't, I predicted it the other way, I think. And you're right that I think Neon had like a certain number of slots and No Other Choice just didn't get it.

• 19:15Sean Fennessey?

  Well, one of the reasons why it's surprising to me is there's something that happened with No Other Choice where, what I'll describe as the kind of like hardcore cinephile critic grouping, of which our buddy Adam Naaman is a member. He was pretty cold on No Other Choice.

• 19:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 19:32Sean Fennessey?

  And has been a fan of Par Chan Wu's movies in the past, but I think he and some other critics that I've been reading felt it was a little iterative or like- A little bit too cute in terms of how it went about the work. You know, it's very flashy and very formally inventive and showy. And that that might have turned some people off. I loved it. It was one of my five favorite movies of the year. We've talked about it on the show already. But when that happens, usually when a film breaks with that crowd, the opposite tends to happen where the Academy tends to get on board with a film, like one film too late as they might see it.

• 20:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 20:06Sean Fennessey?

  You know, where it's like, it's kind of safe for the normies now. And we're seeing that in a way because the movie's doing really well at the box office. Like, it's probably gonna end up making like $10 million in America, which is very good and is frankly, a lot more money than any of these other Neon movies that are being nominated for Academy Awards. I think Sentimental Value's topped out at like four and a half million. It was just an accident, it's made about two million. So it's connecting with audiences. It's connecting with us.

• 20:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:31Sean Fennessey?

  And some people I know, not all critics, but like I said, the sort of like, the more hardcore critic seems to be a little bit disinterested in it. And so it falls into this kind of nether space that I can't remember a lot of movies being in. Where it's like, it's obviously kind of formally brilliant. Park's been making movies for decades. He's never been recognized. His country, I think, is being increasingly recognized in time as a real hub of creativity. In fact, Begonia is adapted from a South Korean film. So it's, it's just, it's, it is a stumper. Like, the reason that so many people are asking is a good question. That being said, we have known that this was gonna happen. I think that it was not gonna get into Best Picture for like months.

• 21:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, yeah.

• 21:10Sean Fennessey?

  Like, we never even considered it.

• 21:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, so let's talk about release dates. And let's talk about Testament of Anle. Because I do think that there is something there, but I don't know which is the cause and which is the effect. Where I agree, we've known for a few months that it, like, it was not really hitting. You know, it's another one that premiered at Venice and was received well. And I was one of the best things I saw there, but like, didn't really get the festival bump. That, I guess, Frank, I mean Frankenstein didn't either. Frankenstein was saved by the New York Film Festival, I suppose. But we knew, and so as a result, Neon dated it way later than its other films.

• 21:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And so Sentimental Value got the October, November push. I think Sentimental Value was November, but.

• 22:03Amanda Dobbins?

  They were prime award season and rollouts and it was just an accident was even earlier. And

• 22:09Sean Fennessey?

  That had a more limited release, but those were the two that they really put their arms around.

• 22:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly. And you know, Serat is still not available. It's it was like

• 22:18Sean Fennessey?

  February 6th, apparently, is when it's really going out there.

• 22:20Amanda Dobbins?

  After, after the shortlist and after everyone was like, oh, okay, Serat, this is something that like we need to pay attention to.

• 22:27Sean Fennessey?

  Which for the record is not that unusual. Like that is something that has happened a lot historically and I think is smart for them. So I guess February 6th, Serat will be available in New York and LA and then the 13th going more wide. We will talk about Serat on this show. Hopefully people will get a chance to see it. It's a really interesting movie and kind of like very something interesting to chew on. There's a lot in it to take apart. But it does feel like you're, the point you're making is right, which is like, No Other Choice got sandwiched between those three other movies.

• 22:53Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and purposefully, so you kind of, when you're looking at, you can look at those dates to kind of assess Neon's strategy, I think, and see that Neon thinks, okay, this is probably, we'll do it for an awards qualifying run.

• 23:08Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think they saw it as a commercial play. That's why it's a Christmas movie. Yeah. They saw No Other Choice as a movie that can make some money as opposed to get some awards consideration and like, it pretty much worked.

• 23:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 23:17Sean Fennessey?

  So I, I think they're probably ultimately happy, even though the No Other Choice team is really bummed out about this. Ann Lee is a different kettle of fish. So

• 23:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:26Sean Fennessey?

  Ann Lee, which has been in the works for some time, but was only acquired by Searchlight after the festivals and a little late after the festivals, too.

• 23:35Amanda Dobbins?

  A while after the festivals. It was like, who is gonna, is someone gonna pick this up? We hope someone's gonna pick this up. This is really deserving. I hope other people are gonna be able to see it.

• 23:44Sean Fennessey?

  It just was a little too late.

• 23:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:46Sean Fennessey?

  You know, and Searchlight picked it up and I'm glad that they did. And it opened more widely this weekend and it, it did not perform very well at the box office, I think in part because of the weather, in part because it didn't get any Oscar nominations, in part because, as you mentioned, when you first saw it and people walked out, it's like, it's a weird movie, you know? It's a different kind of movie.

• 24:00Amanda Dobbins?

  It's cool, but it's weird.

• 24:03Sean Fennessey?

  But so that film, which as we both said, has this insanely great Amanda Seyfried performance that I think is probably gonna end up going down as one of those like historical, how did we not recognize her for kind of things, assuming enough people see the movie to have that opinion. But if that movie had gotten picked up in August, but pre-festival, and they started that campaign and they made it a November movie, like Sentimental Value, and they let it slow burn through the season.

• 24:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:29Sean Fennessey?

  More and more people see it, more and more people will watch it on the portals. More and more people will go to, you know, screenings that are hosted by amazing actresses telling Amanda Seyfried how great she is. I think it would have had a different fate.

• 24:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Or at least she might have had a different.

• 24:42Sean Fennessey?

  She might have.

• 24:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. I do think part of what we like about the movie is how strange it is. And how unlike anything else I've I've ever seen. And I mean that in a positive way, but you, I understand why it did not make it into Best Picture.

• 24:59Sean Fennessey?

  Me too.

• 24:59Amanda Dobbins?

  It is sort of, it's not, unlike The Brutalist, it is not wearing the clothes of, you know, great prestige, like great man cinema. It's just, it's about some weird people who like shake around a lot while forming a cult of personality.

• 25:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, I think the the musical aspect of it is a little bit off putting for some people. I think Ann Lee's kind of fortitude in the face of a lot of terrible things that happened to her. And then this hard philosophical pivot that she makes as a character.

• 25:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:29Sean Fennessey?

  Is going to be bracing for audiences. And then the movie ends in this kind of fascinatingly quiet, contemplative way that I wouldn't say is satisfying per se.

• 25:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 25:37Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it makes you think, but it, there's no uplift, but there's also no like, well, that was the point of that. You know, like with The Brutalist, which of course is like the kind of companion movie. People had a lot of issues with the second half, yourself included.

• 25:50Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I had, well, that's true. I guess I had issues with the one plot twist and then Dakota.

• 25:57Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 25:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:57Sean Fennessey?

  But it, the first half is like.

• 26:01Amanda Dobbins?

  It's dynamite.

• 26:02Sean Fennessey?

  It's very classical.

• 26:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:03Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it's very, it's very like, man comes to great land to conquer and learn about the space. And then finds out the reality of what it's like to be here. Ann Lee, as you said, is just a little bit more divergent from that traditional structure.

• 26:16Amanda Dobbins?

  The other one if here is that if they actually could have coordinated Ann Lee and the housemaid. And those, those press cycles a little more, which they did their best.

• 26:25Sean Fennessey?

  They did their best.

• 26:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Amanda Seyfried was really out there working and I watched a lot of great content. And, you know, that movie has also been a slow burn.

• 26:35Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:35Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's made a tremendous amount of. Have money, but not like immediately on opening weekend all at once. I mean, it was successful.

• 26:43Sean Fennessey?

  It is exactly like Anyone But You in 23 into 24, where it came out, it did pretty good business in its first weekend, and it has just held on and people are going back and going back. Obviously, I'm sure a strong female contingent of of audience there. And that movie's made $250 million worldwide in a month. That's amazing. And it does kind of confirm, I think Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried can share credit for that. But it's also just the material and that that material could not be more different from Ann Lee.

• 27:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 27:15Sean Fennessey?

  Like, there's not a lot of crossover there.

• 27:17Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, in prior years, we've seen this before, if you had bumped Housemaid up, or you bumped Housemaid and Lee and Ann Lee up a month, and so the success of Housemaid is a little more established before voting. It's a very classic, we'll nominate her for Ann Lee to really reward her for the like the trashy thing that we would never nominate. And it is, you know, again, I do think timing and release dates are just, it was just a little bit too late. And and Searchlight, you know, was just purchased it too late, started it too late.

• 27:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, Damian here also asked around the Testament of Ann Lee shutout, not just, and there's a lot of Kate Hudson questions. We can kind of talk about Kate Hudson and why that, why she got nominated there. But Daniel Blumberg, who just won last year for his work in The Brutalist, who I think very quickly has established himself as a very powerful composer in Hollywood and, you know, helped write some of these songs and kind of restructure these old hymns to, you know, seem like more modern film score. I listen, have been listening to that that score a bit recently. It is a major achievement and it is very unique. And to me, it's not as off putting as the actual like content of the film. So that's another place where like, they didn't campaign it that well.

• 28:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, listen, we we know what we think of this, the score.

• 28:33Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 28:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Branch. They're just really, really, really on notice.

• 28:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 28:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, they they need to.

• 28:39Sean Fennessey?

  Have they contacted you since you made that proclamation?

• 28:41Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I haven't heard from them. I think that they're ashamed.

• 28:44Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 28:44Amanda Dobbins?

  And as they should be.

• 28:45Sean Fennessey?

  Jim and Janet's score.

• 28:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Jim and Jim and Janet's score need to have a meeting with themselves. Reevaluate their priorities. Let modern music into their lives.

• 28:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 28:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, and maybe next year for everyone.

• 28:59Sean Fennessey?

  Sounds good. Kate Hudson.

• 29:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Sean Fennessey?

  So two things about this.

• 29:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 29:04Sean Fennessey?

  I said on Thursday.

• 29:05Amanda Dobbins?

  You like, you love this movie. Yeah, you like it. That's fine.

• 29:08Sean Fennessey?

  I actually preferred Hugh Jackman in the movie, as I said on the episode. I thought he was the best part of the film. Some people, I heard some people say they felt he was miscast, which I don't understand. It's like, you need a song and dance man who's got gravitas. There's only one in Hollywood. He's the one. He's the guy.

• 29:19Amanda Dobbins?

  You have like a Hugh Jackman weakness. You love Hugh Jackman.

• 29:23Sean Fennessey?

  I do, I do. I think he's extremely versatile. And that being said, I've never seen The Greatest Showman. Never seen it.

• 29:32Sean Fennessey?

  Should we do a Greatest Showman pod? I think people would enjoy that.

• 29:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Like a watch along?

• 29:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, it would be a first time watch for me, but.

• 29:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, who says that a watch along can't be a first time watch?

• 29:43Sean Fennessey?

  I guess you're right.

• 29:44Amanda Dobbins?

  We make the rules.

• 29:45Sean Fennessey?

  It was Avatar was a first time watch for Chris.

• 29:47Amanda Dobbins?

  As Taylor Swift once said, "We can leave the Christmas lights up till January. This is our house."

• 29:51Sean Fennessey?

  When did she say that?

• 29:52Amanda Dobbins?

  We make the rules in the song. What song is that?

• 29:56Speaker 02

  I have no idea.

• 29:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Come on, help me out.

• 29:57Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you, Jack, for not knowing.

• 30:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Lover? I think, I think that's lover.

• 30:02Sean Fennessey?

  Lover. Cool.

• 30:03Amanda Dobbins?

  It's about Joe Allen, star of Hamlet.

• 30:06Sean Fennessey?

  I see. Poor guy.

• 30:09Sean Fennessey?

  Kate Hudson, let's talk about this quickly.

• 30:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 30:12Sean Fennessey?

  So one thing that you'll, if you listen to a lot of punditry about the Academy Awards, you'll hear a lot of people say Kate Hudson worked it this year. That she pulled every string, that every friend that she has, she's obviously very well liked in the community of Hollywood. She's part of a legacy family. Her mother is Goldie Hawn.

• 30:28Amanda Dobbins?

  She has a big party in Aspen every New Year's.

• 30:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, sure. I learned that from you.

• 30:32Amanda Dobbins?

  They play the bongos?

• 30:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. She's evidently a good time. She's fun. And people like her and she's been very successful over the years. And she is also capable of great work. If you've seen Almost Famous, you know she's super talented. But she, for whatever reason, has not spent as much time making quote unquote prestige movies. Songs on Blue is not really prestigious, but it is quite serious and in fact, more serious than you would think if you just watched the trailer. And she has to deal with, you know, a character who has had an amputation and who has to sing and dance and struggles with addiction and it kind of like tic tac toes.

• 31:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And wears ugly sweaters.

• 31:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. There's some Midwest camp aspect to it in terms of the accent. So the character that she's nominated for is doing a lot and does feel like a little bit more of a traditional nomination. I tend to favor the relationships angle, especially in this category. You know, the Andrea Riseborough nomination famously was born of this kind of like,

• 31:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:26Sean Fennessey?

  you know, handshakes and baby kissing.

• 31:28Amanda Dobbins?

  And Gwyneth Paltrow and Edward Norton posting on social media before that was quote unquote outlawed.

• 31:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 31:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. No, I agree with you, but I do think it's a little bit of both.

• 31:39Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that there are a lot of people, it does just have that really famous glossy person, you know, dressing themselves in ugly clothing and doing something sad. And then everyone's like, oh, bravo, you know?

• 31:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 31:57Amanda Dobbins?

  This is acting. This is, this is why we show up.

• 32:00Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:01Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think many of those same people are also friends or want to be friends with Kate Hudson. Or they like Fabletics. I don't know. She's very well liked.

• 32:10Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 32:10Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 32:11Sean Fennessey?

  What would that be like?

• 32:12Amanda Dobbins?

  In the world. I don't know.

• 32:15Sean Fennessey?

  You think it's fun?

• 32:15Amanda Dobbins?

  She also likes Aspen, which I'm just on the right, I'm not interested.

• 32:18Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 32:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Can't make me care. It's just.

• 32:21Sean Fennessey?

  Just full of weird opinions.

• 32:23Amanda Dobbins?

  It's cold. You don't like being cold. You like mountains, but you don't like being cold.

• 32:28Sean Fennessey?

  I like to ski. I love mountains. Huge mountain guy.

• 32:31Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I know, but like.

• 32:32Sean Fennessey?

  I love a mountain.

• 32:32Amanda Dobbins?

  But you cry every time you go back to New York now and you're like, I can't do it anymore. I'm broken.

• 32:37Sean Fennessey?

  But I think adventure cold is different from trudging to work at 9 a.m. cold.

• 32:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:43Sean Fennessey?

  And I have a different relationship to adventure cold.

• 32:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, I don't like gear, you know?

• 32:47Sean Fennessey?

  Gear?

• 32:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:48Sean Fennessey?

  But you like après ski?

• 32:51Amanda Dobbins?

  No, not, I mean, not really. I mean, I like a drink, but you know?

• 32:55Sean Fennessey?

  What about just a warm mug of cocoa by the fireplace?

• 32:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, I'm working on.

• 33:01Sean Fennessey?

  Bear skin rug.

• 33:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I like coffee, but like otherwise I'm working on my relationship to warm drinks.

• 33:06Sean Fennessey?

  Fitzgerald on the Sonos, you know, just think of just snuggling up.

• 33:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I, yeah.

• 33:11Sean Fennessey?

  Jack, no, what do you think?

• 33:12Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not my vibe.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  I don't really have anything to add here, I'm being honest.

• 33:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, you know how Zach's always making like a toddy around the holidays? And I'm like, I don't need a toddy. I just want my Negroni. And I just want to go home. I know. That's everyone else loves a toddy, but not me.

• 33:27Sean Fennessey?

  Tardy is delightful.

• 33:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Sean Fennessey?

  Is there anything else around Ann Lee or No Other Choice, Jack, that you feel like we should talk through? Because you're right that it is, we heard from a lot of people about this.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Um, I don't know if there was anything specifically, I'm looking through the doc now, but it was just a lot, it was just a lot of people being like, what the hell? I don't understand this. And I was surprised that that was the most popular email. Like, I found that to be the most common.

• 33:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Our listeners, people who will send an email to us in 2026 are devoted.

• 33:56Sean Fennessey?

  Well, this is like-

• 33:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And they're cinephiles.

• 33:57Sean Fennessey?

  This is an award season podcast, but it's a cinephile podcast too, right? It's like, if you really care about movies and you go see 100 movies a year, No Other Choice is definitely going to be one of the best movies you see this year.

• 34:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, Perkton Wook is like mainstream cinephile. Like, there was a decision to leave Joke on last season of Industry, which I thought was very funny, like, shout out Mickey and Conrad. But, you know, there is-

• 34:18Sean Fennessey?

  He's made movies in America. He's made American TV series.

• 34:21Amanda Dobbins?

  The people who know, know.

• 34:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes. I think he does, he fits that Venn diagram for film lovers. He's not quite Paul Thomas Anderson, but he's not, um, La Diaz. You know what I mean? Like, he's not, you know, a slow cinema artist who's barely known outside of festival circles. So, you're right about that. Okay, let's, let's go to the next question, which is really the biggest question of this entire race.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  I forgot to mention before I ask it briefly is that people started following your request, Sean, of leaving their age with their email.

• 34:49Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, cool.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  But it was like probably 18% of emails and the only people were doing it were my age or younger. So.

• 34:56Sean Fennessey?

  That's honestly wonderful.

• 34:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:58Sean Fennessey?

  I appreciate that. And thank you for the, to the 20-somethings for sharing their age. I wonder if it's the 30-somethings and 40-somethings and 50-somethings are not sharing their age because they're ashamed of themselves for listening to this podcast. Thank you to the 20s. Uh, okay, what's, what's, what's the big question?

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Everybody was asking, do you think Sinners now has a legitimate shot at winning Best Picture over one battle after another?

• 35:21Sean Fennessey?

  My answer is yes.

• 35:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 35:23Sean Fennessey?

  And I've been wondering about what your answer to this question is. Since I saw this question in the document. So we've both been steadfast that we feel that this would be one battle after another all the way through. In the aftermath of the Golden Globes, when Hamlet won Best Drama over Sinners, we had a conversation and I was pushing the idea, maybe this is a moment to kind of, you know, pierce the armor that One Battle has had throughout this season. Maybe just in an effort to keep ourselves entertained through what we thought could have been very boring. But I think it's hard to say, and you may disagree. 16 nominations, just a profound number of nominations, by far the most in the history of this, this, this awards.

• 36:06Sean Fennessey?

  For Sinners means that there's just overwhelming support for it throughout the entire body. And it's preferential ballot. And with preferential ballot, anything can happen when it comes to two movies that are both really well liked, like these two. So my answer is yes. What is your answer?

• 36:23Amanda Dobbins?

  My answer is no, for, for a few reasons. Every, everything that you said is true. And I think I would be shocked, but not surprised if it did win, if that makes sense. And also like excited. It would be great if Sinners won. I think we're choosing between two worthy films here. Even if One Battle After Another was our number one, Sinners ranks very high.

• 36:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 36:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, I mean, like, this is a good thing. So, but you look at the last several years, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Oppenheimer and Enora, you know, decided pretty early. And we've second guessed ourselves and I think people try to make the race interesting, but in the end, those movies were dominant and.

• 37:03Sean Fennessey?

  Enora's track though is somewhat similar.

• 37:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:06Sean Fennessey?

  Because I think that you and I both were pretty confident about Enora. As confident as you could be about a Sean Baker movie, because nothing really rose to the surface that we thought was going to be able to get, get past it. And it, some sort of the weird Sean, it's Sean Baker's time narrative kind of took off, which is fascinating. I love him as a filmmaker, but he's an unusual version of person. But that was more about the field that year. And then The Brutalist won at the Golden Globes that year. And we did move The Brutalist ahead of Anora for like one month.

• 37:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 37:38Sean Fennessey?

  In our rankings. But all along, it was, it was Anora. But I think that that was a similar feeling that I was having where I was like, is something shifting here? Or is this just a smokescreen?

• 37:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I think is legitimate. And I, and we did feel that way. And I understand feeling that that way about Sinners now. But, you know, then not only did Anora win Best Picture and did Sean Baker win Best Director, but, and he won Screenplay, and then he won Editing, which we didn't expect. And Mikey Madison won Best Actress, which we didn't expect. So.

• 38:04Sean Fennessey?

  It was a romp.

• 38:05Amanda Dobbins?

  These, in, in the past few years at least, and the economy is changing quickly enough that you really can only use the last few years as like a really predictive sample size.

• 38:15Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't thought about that, but keep going.

• 38:18Amanda Dobbins?

  In the last few years, once we've decided on a movie, you know, and a little bit to our chagrin as award season podcasters, it, it kind of has been decided. So I, I do think there are those aspects of it. It's, One Battle had 13 nominations. So like, that's, that, that's a lot.

• 38:34Sean Fennessey?

  That's now the third most all time.

• 38:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So it's, it's not like there's not a huge amount of support for one battle after another. I do think that the, the Paul Thomas Anderson, It's Time narrative is very strong. And, and you think about where I, we do think he's going to win Best Director.

• 38:51Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I, I think we should talk about it.

• 38:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 38:53Sean Fennessey?

  I think, I.

• 38:53Amanda Dobbins?

  You think Coogler could?

• 38:54Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think that that's kind of baked into a lot of this conversation. Now, there's, part of this being such an extended season means there is time for everything to change. So from a national perspective, the second biggest moment of award season is last Friday. And the headline out of that award season was Sinners, 16. It was not One Battle 13. Nope. Most people don't know how many nominations One Battle has. But 16 was the first thing you saw if you visited CNN.com or the New York Times or wherever you get your news.

• 39:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 39:25Sean Fennessey?

  And you're kind of a general consumer. Now, obviously, the people who vote on the Oscars are going to have more information about that. But I think when you see a number like that, even if you are a voter in the Academy, it makes you sit back and think like, well. What is it that I'm voting for? Am I voting for a movie that made me feel something? Am I voting for the movie that I like the most? Or am I voting for the movie that feels like the biggest accomplishment? Now, Sinners, one of the reasons why it has so many nominations is one, it overperformed in the acting categories. Winmi Misaku and Delroy Lindo getting in was really interesting. And one little wrinkle to that is that those are both UK-born actors who might be recognized at BAFTA. So you might see another big Sinners BAFTA number coming soon.

• 40:08Sean Fennessey?

  Now, historically, black American performers are not recognized at BAFTA, but this could be a little bit of a wrinkle. So there's that. And then, secondarily, you've got a film about music with score and song recognized. You've got a period film, so costume and production design are being recognized. Plus, you've got the entire legacy team of Black Panther, some of whom are Oscar winners. Ruth Carter, an Oscar winner for Black Panther. Hannah Beekler, an Oscar winner for Black Panther. So these are people who are like, they're the new Colleen Atwoods. You know, like, they're the new, like, the class of people who are always recognized for their work, are always nominated for their work. Kugler has kind of brought this whole group of people. Autumn D'Arald Arcapaw was not the cinematographer on the last Ryan Kugler movie, but she is now like a part of that class.

• 40:53Sean Fennessey?

  And she's a strong favorite to win in that category in cinematography. So when you start looking at the board and you're like, oh, well, maybe it'll just be Kugler in screenplay, or maybe it'll be seven wins for Sinners. Like, there's a world where that exact math that you were describing with Sean Baker, it could move for this film, too.

• 41:10Amanda Dobbins?

  It's totally possible. It could also be that we're there on March 15th, and Sinners hits in every single below-the-line category, and we have that Mad Max Fury Road moment.

• 41:20Sean Fennessey?

  100%.

• 41:22Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, as you get into the deeper categories, the voters have thought, okay, well, I've acknowledged, you know, the cinematography I've acknowledged, the production design I've acknowledged, the score I've acknowledged, the screenplay, and, you know, now I'll do other things. Could be wrong.

• 41:37Sean Fennessey?

  I think both things are totally in play. And that's kind of what's fascinating to me about this, because I just would not have said this. Now, one of the things that I think is working.

• 41:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't even think Thursday morning, we said that we thought.

• 41:47Sean Fennessey?

  Sinners could win. We didn't. We did not.

• 41:49Amanda Dobbins?

  We talked about it.

• 41:50Sean Fennessey?

  In fact, multiple people texted me on Thursday that were just like, are you changing your mind about this at all? And I'm sure that there's recency bias to this level of information. And just people being like, are you sure, buddy? Tends to always have an effect on me. But.

• 42:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, C F1.

• 42:04Sean Fennessey?

  I would, I know, I would still favor one battle after another, but I do think that the Sinners case is strong. I do think that it would be another interesting example of like Coogler going ahead of PTA does remind me a little bit of Bong Joon Ho going ahead of Quentin Tarantino, you know, or it's like,

• 42:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:21Sean Fennessey?

  You know, the apprentice becomes the master kind of thing. The other thing that we didn't talk about at all, which is really interesting, I think Matt Bellany got into this a little bit on The Town.

• 42:29Amanda Dobbins?

  They're both Warner Brothers. I was gonna ask you, yeah, what if they weren't funded by the same studio?

• 42:34Sean Fennessey?

  So what do you, what does that mean for the campaigns? What does that mean for how one film is favored over the other? I mean, you know, One Battle After Another is the, the smaller film in terms of box office and the number of people that went to go see it, but it is historically more in line, I would say, with Academy Fair, you know, a dramatic film about historical violence, I guess, for lack of a better term, like Sinners has that vampire aspect. But, you know, Sinners being a bigger box office sensation, it would be a way for Hollywood to kind of rubber stamp what it means to take a chance on original material and make success. On the other hand, the film didn't travel as well and black films don't always play as well overseas. Sometimes, depends on the

• 43:17Sean Fennessey?

  film, that's the, at least that's the, you know, the phrasing that you hear from executives about why they're not marketed as well overseas. So you've got, there's just a lot of noise in this very particular race. And we're not even talking about Hamlet because it underperformed a little bit on Thursday.

• 43:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:34Sean Fennessey?

  But I'm not totally ruling it out because you could definitely see a like One Battle, Sinners ethic kind of canceling each other out.

• 43:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And then all this, all the Spielbergs of the world. Yeah.

• 43:45Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, what do you think about that?

• 43:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I don't, I don't look forward to that podcast. We have to just start recording. I think we'll say some things that will get us in trouble.

• 43:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And it's not impossible.

• 44:00Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not impossible.

• 44:01Sean Fennessey?

  It's not impossible.

• 44:01Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not where I would put my money, but this is not a betting podcast, so.

• 44:04Sean Fennessey?

  Preferential voting is, will be really interesting this year. Hamlet is still not as widely seen as those other two movies. I'm sure most people in the Academy have had a chance to check it out because it's been so touted, but it's doing well overseas and it still just didn't do that well in the United States. I don't know what impact that would have on the Academy Awards. It's interesting.

• 44:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:21Sean Fennessey?

  We have something to discuss, you know?

• 44:24Amanda Dobbins?

  We do.

• 44:25Sean Fennessey?

  I was, I was a little bit bored a month ago and now I've had my, my, my engines have been refired.

• 44:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Where does sentimental value sit in terms of preferential ballots and can't, other things canceling each other out?

• 44:37Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good question.

• 44:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And then suddenly, there it is.

• 44:39Sean Fennessey?

  I think I said on Thursday that it got eight nominations, eight nominations, but I was wrong. It got nine nominations sentimental value, which is more than Hamlet and is the same number as Frankenstein.

• 44:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:47Sean Fennessey?

  And people love that movie.

• 44:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:50Sean Fennessey?

  I love that movie.

• 44:52Amanda Dobbins?

  You do?

• 44:52Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 44:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I respect that movie.

• 44:54Sean Fennessey?

  Your husband loves that movie.

• 44:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I, everyone I know.

• 44:56Sean Fennessey?

  You know, uh, I think, I don't think it has any chance to win Best Picture. But, but, but where does it sit on the preferential ballot? I don't know. It could be four, it could be seven. It really depends. Again, release the votes.

• 45:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Agree.

• 45:09Sean Fennessey?

  Release the votes.

• 45:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Release them over the course of the broadcast.

• 45:13Sean Fennessey?

  Or just do that.

• 45:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:14Sean Fennessey?

  Who, who says no besides everyone who's nominated and/or votes? We say yes. Uh, okay. What's the next question, Jack?

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Next question comes from Andrew. He says, help me understand why it's not Leo for Best Actor. He just does not understand. Personally, Leo cleared Timmy for him performance wise, but is there any reason other than the time of release states that Leo isn't been taking that seriously?

• 45:38Sean Fennessey?

  Did Andrew leave his age?

• 45:40Speaker 02

  I don't believe so, but I'll go check.

• 45:42Sean Fennessey?

  Was it from at Leonardo DiCaprio at gmail.com or?

• 45:49Sean Fennessey?

  It's curious.

• 45:49Amanda Dobbins?

  What do you, you think Leo uses Gmail? I think he's old school.

• 45:52Sean Fennessey?

  You think he's at Mac.com?

• 45:53Amanda Dobbins?

  No, he's AOL.

• 45:54Sean Fennessey?

  AOL?

• 45:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't you think?

• 45:56Sean Fennessey?

  Does AOL still exist?

• 45:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but people still have the addresses.

• 46:00Sean Fennessey?

  They do. I guess it does. Yeah. Um.

• 46:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Earthlink?

• 46:04Sean Fennessey?

  Does Leo email?

• 46:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, I mean.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  No chance.

• 46:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Know how much time Leo spends on a phone in general, you know?

• 46:10Sean Fennessey?

  Carrier pigeon or Pony Express? How do you think he gets messages out?

• 46:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I don't know whether he's using like a, a smartphone, you know? Like what's Leo Googling?

• 46:18Sean Fennessey?

  You think he's got a, what, a flip phone?

• 46:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I, it could be.

• 46:21Sean Fennessey?

  BlackBerry?

• 46:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, like you saw the end of one battle after another, you know?

• 46:24Sean Fennessey?

  The most underrated part of the one battle after another promotional campaign was, um, in Interview Magazine, PTA and Leo interviewed each other for the film. And in that discussion, which I think came out before the movie was released, they talked about beepers. And whether beepers were for drug dealers or not. And I would encourage people to go out and look into that content because it was very relatable. As a kid who had a beeper at 14 years old on Long Island in the 90s.

• 46:52Amanda Dobbins?

  You got a beeper?

• 46:52Sean Fennessey?

  Certainly. Everybody I knew had a beeper.

• 46:54Amanda Dobbins?

  My dad had a beeper and I knew the number. So if whenever I needed him, I could beep him, but I didn't get one.

• 47:00Sean Fennessey?

  My, I mean, my dad had a beeper because he was a cop.

• 47:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, sure.

• 47:03Sean Fennessey?

  So he needed a beeper. Beeper, what an amazing moment in technology.

• 47:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Jack, you know what a beeper is?

• 47:07Speaker 02

  No idea.

• 47:07Sean Fennessey?

  Are you serious?

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have no idea.

• 47:09Amanda Dobbins?

  What? Oh, you have no idea? Okay, so this is great. Let's try to explain what a beeper was. So it was a little.

• 47:17Sean Fennessey?

  A little rectangular device.

• 47:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:19Sean Fennessey?

  Square digital device that had a small, narrow screen on the top of it.

• 47:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 47:25Sean Fennessey?

  And you could.

• 47:25Amanda Dobbins?

  And it was an attached to a phone number. So in some ways it was like pre-phone and you would call the phone number. And then the beeper would just display the number that called.

• 47:36Sean Fennessey?

  It was like a, hey, I'm trying to get your attention.

• 47:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Sounds really cool.

• 47:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and they had a, um, they were almost always attached to your belt.

• 47:46Sean Fennessey?

  But these were, these were designed to be used by doctors, by firefighters, by people who needed to be contacted.

• 47:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:53Sean Fennessey?

  In a moment of emergency and, you know, police officers all had them for a stretch. They became like something you might even find on a TV show. You'd watch, you know, a cop or something and they would have one right next to their holster. This was for, I don't know, seven years maybe in history?

• 48:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, like 90s, yeah.

• 48:08Sean Fennessey?

  99.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Is a beeper a pager?

• 48:10Sean Fennessey?

  A pager.

• 48:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  Okay, that, that I'm vaguely familiar with.

• 48:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, sure.

• 48:13Sean Fennessey?

  You just don't, you don't know about the phraseology beeper.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  That is correct.

• 48:16Sean Fennessey?

  When it went off.

• 48:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, we're basically working our way back to it. Like we've, like people are trying to brick their cell phones and make them unusable for anything other than like call me right back.

• 48:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 48:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is, so let's, you know, let's bring them back.

• 48:28Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I.

• 48:31Sean Fennessey?

  I had one.

• 48:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:33Sean Fennessey?

  Why did I need one at 14? Why didn't I need to be beeped? Who was beeping me? I don't really understand. Also, if you press star 911, that indicated it was an emergency. So get in touch with me immediately, which kind of obviates the idea of even being beeped in the first place. Like you got beeped. Like, was it not an emergency? Why did you contact me? Anyway.

• 48:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:53Sean Fennessey?

  Some, just some campaign lore. Check out that interview.

• 48:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Leo beepers, that's how we got there. Why isn't it Leo?

• 49:00Sean Fennessey?

  I give, I've given my spiel on this. I think it's weird. I think it's weird that it's not him. It's not, because it's not about who's more worthy. They're both great. Both of those movies are great. Their performances are amazing. We love, we love both of them. It's not, it's actually not an interesting thing to debate like, well, this was a more textured performance, or he really embodied this, or he made me laugh here and he didn't.

• 49:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but like.

• 49:17Sean Fennessey?

  That's not what it is.

• 49:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Just campaign wise, I mean, some of it, I guess, the, the Leo performance is more comedic and the Chalamet performance is more classical, like actor putting it all, like going for it. This is, you know, he gives a speech where he's like, I have a purpose, you know?

• 49:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And so I, maybe it's just like the roles themselves, the Chalamet, the Marty role reads as a little more like traditional Oscar. And certainly the campaign has gone with it. I mean, Leo has definitely been out there. He was on this podcast. He was also on Travis Kelsey's podcast. Like, um, so he's been doing his version. He did actors on actors.

• 49:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that was great.

• 49:58Amanda Dobbins?

  He talked about DVD players, but.

• 50:00Sean Fennessey?

  Hell, yeah.

• 50:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it is not campaigning on the level that, that Timothy is, you know? Leo's not a born poster, so that could be part of it, just in terms of like attention to comment. But I agree that that doesn't really.

• 50:15Sean Fennessey?

  What he's doing is unorthodox.

• 50:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree, and, and Timmy has had to roll it back. I guess, you know?

• 50:22Sean Fennessey?

  It's a really interesting thing that has happened. I don't know if it's completely without precedent. There have been young winners before, but it's unusual for someone who is, for lack of a better phrase, very modern, getting recognized in this way. So we had a question later on about the best, um, Oscar speeches of all time that we'll get to shortly.

• 50:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 50:40Sean Fennessey?

  And I went back and I watched one of them from 2010. And I was looking at who was nominated in one of the categories and there was a standing ovation moment and the composition of the crowd. And it felt, and I don't mean this pejoratively, it felt old.

• 50:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 50:55Sean Fennessey?

  It felt like a bunch of 50-somethings, 60-somethings. It felt like, and you might be able to look back at it and say, this is kind of the last gasp of a certain time for this award show, for the way that we understand movies, for the place that the Academy Awards holds, which is like not a place to recog-- at that time, it was not a place to recognize massive hits. It was a place to recognize great art from people who were overlooked in their 20s, 30s, and 40s and giving them prizes in their 50s and 60s. And this is a bit of a sea change, you know? Mikey Madison is not as much of a sea change because younger actresses do win more historically. But I mean, when's the last time? I mean, I guess Eddie Redmayne was very young when he won and Rami Malek was very young when he won, so it's not like there are never young guys.

• 51:40Sean Fennessey?

  And those guys were both fairly, but they were not well-known. They were not stars. Like, Shalhoub is a star and he's probably gonna win at 30 years old. So, over Leo, who's the star of his generation.

• 51:55Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right.

• 51:56Sean Fennessey?

  And I haven't really been able to figure it out. I've probably three or four times on the show over the last six months, I've been like, why is Leo not winning?

• 52:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you think anything of it has to do with the fact that the critics associations and all of the early chatter? I mean, we all kind of take for granted that Leo is very good in it and instead have been talking so much about Benicio del Toro and a lot of people are Sean Penn and Chase Infinity and Tiana Taylor, who, you know, won at the Golden Globes. And so, just some of the, the acting attention has been dispersed or like focused elsewhere in that movie?

• 52:29Sean Fennessey?

  Possibly. I'm getting the impression maybe that even though the performances are some of the best things about it, that One Battle isn't necessarily being seen as a performance movie.

• 52:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:37Sean Fennessey?

  It does have four nominations for its performances, but Chase Infinity missed. And we have kind of come to this conclusion that it feels like Stellan Skarsgård is gonna win in supporting now. So maybe Tiana Taylor has a chance to win, but what that movie is being recognized for is-- Kind of its cultural import, PTA's vision, some real creativity in terms of the execution, cinematography of the film. And so it's just not the first thing that comes to mind. I think the way that you explained Marty is on point, which is like he's in the middle of the movie and it's a movie about a striver.

• 53:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:07Sean Fennessey?

  You know, meeting his moment. And then the other thing too is that Marty just came out later and people love it and it's a hit.

• 53:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's like a real old fashioned, he put it on his shoulders and carried it. He's going to carry it to like 180 million dollars, which is awesome. And I think there is a little bit of like, maybe one battle didn't peak too early in the grand scheme of things, but it might have peaked too early for this particular category. I don't know. I'm kind of talking through every potentiality here.

• 53:29Amanda Dobbins?

  We don't know, is the answer.

• 53:32Sean Fennessey?

  We don't know.

• 53:33Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not what you would pick.

• 53:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Would you say we don't know to every single question that's being asked here?

• 53:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, no, I felt like I had pretty strong opinions about the best picture odds. Everything else, I don't know.

• 53:44Sean Fennessey?

  Got it. Um, Jack, any thoughts about that race?

• 53:47Speaker 02

  I think also part of it is just like the quote unquote, it's time factor. Like if Leo doesn't have an Oscar for The Revenant, it's hard for me to imagine they're not giving it to him here. And also PTA not having an Oscar. It's like you said, the attention's elsewhere. So.

• 54:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. But if the thing, it's a fun sliding doors. If Leo doesn't get an Oscar for The Revenant, he does get one for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Brad Pitt doesn't because he's giving a more interesting performance than Brad Pitt in that movie. But Brad Pitt got it because it was his time and he's a little bit older than Leo anyway. So, you know, we could play that game all day. Maybe one day we will.

• 54:18Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 54:18Sean Fennessey?

  Oscar sliding doors?

• 54:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 54:20Sean Fennessey?

  You're down?

• 54:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I love it.

• 54:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Uh, what's the next question?

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Next question comes for Christian, who is asking about how to throw an Oscars party. He writes, I've thrown Oscar parties before, but wanted to ask the professionals, what's the best viewing party? How it should go? Drinks, food, Oscar bets? How many people should I invite? Even the right sound system for it? I want advice from the professionals.

• 54:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, so here's the thing.

• 54:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we are professional people who watch the Oscars.

• 54:49Amanda Dobbins?

  So here's the thing is that we watch this for work. So it's not a party. And in fact, the rule, the reason that we'll never host an Oscar watching party is that we have very particular conditions, which are don't talk at all. Like honestly, like don't talk. The only person I know in my entire life who's ever allowed to talk to me during the Oscars is Sean Pennisi. And that is like the closest I will ever come to saying I love you to Sean Pennisi.

• 55:16Sean Fennessey?

  That is so true.

• 55:16Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like, it's literally.

• 55:18Sean Fennessey?

  We've never discussed that.

• 55:19Amanda Dobbins?

  But you can speak and honestly, Jack, I love you so much. Like you're not really allowed to speak when we're watching the Oscars. It's okay. Like you do so much for us. I'm so grateful to you, but we're not there yet. So I.

• 55:34Sean Fennessey?

  But we have never talked about that.

• 55:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Now, well, that's nice. Well, we don't talk about the things, you know? We know when to talk and when not to talk. But so.

• 55:41Sean Fennessey?

  That's so funny.

• 55:41Amanda Dobbins?

  So an Oscars party like we don't know is the answer. However, I can answer this as like a, not as a professional, but as a person who likes throwing parties. And imagine if we didn't have to be psychotic. You know, I've seen what other people do. Like I've been on the internet.

• 55:59Sean Fennessey?

  Should we almost like remove the Oscars and just make it the Emmys or something? Or the Globes?

• 56:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, or like the Superbowl or something where, you know, like an event thing, a viewing party where we aren't, don't have like our entire careers on the line.

• 56:13Sean Fennessey?

  But you also need to like kind of gamify it because people are asking here about the bedding or any sort of like boxes you might have.

• 56:20Amanda Dobbins?

  So ballots for sure. I think that you should do ballots and someone should be tallying during the.

• 56:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 56:26Amanda Dobbins?

  During the run of the show to keep people interested.

• 56:29Sean Fennessey?

  Get those spreadsheets going.

• 56:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, also like we have always wanted an elimination process to be part of the broadcast and they'll, or the show and they'll never do it, but you could do it at home.

• 56:39Sean Fennessey?

  I love that idea.

• 56:39Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, like vote people out. I don't know. I don't know what they lose. Maybe they have to take a shot or something.

• 56:44Sean Fennessey?

  Once you're eliminated, you have to leave the party. We can't see best picture.

• 56:48Amanda Dobbins?

  How many people you should invite? It really depends on seating.

• 56:52Sean Fennessey?

  Size of your home is a factor.

• 56:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, and the size of the screen and how comfortable people are sitting on the floor.

• 56:59Sean Fennessey?

  Can I throw a number at you?

• 57:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:00Sean Fennessey?

  12?

• 57:01Amanda Dobbins?

  That's good.

• 57:02Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like 12 is the right number of people. It's enough that you've got, you can have like multiple islands of conversation, but not so much that it feels like it'll get too noisy that you won't be able to watch when you want to watch.

• 57:12Amanda Dobbins?

  That's great.

• 57:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 57:13Amanda Dobbins?

  One pro tip that I would give as a professional is to make sure you know what time the Oscars start. If you're hosting an Oscars party, our friend Izzy recently went to an Oscars party. She showed up on time for 4pm PST. The hosts and everyone else thought that the Oscars were still starting at 5pm.

• 57:30Sean Fennessey?

  They've moved it up.

• 57:30Amanda Dobbins?

  They've moved it up. So make sure that you're clear on the time. That would be my note.

• 57:35Sean Fennessey?

  Amazing.

• 57:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, let's see. So the food, people really like to do the puns and all the foods and stuff. I'm not a pun person, but like, who doesn't love a theme?

• 57:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, like Marty Supreme Pizza.

• 57:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, there you go, yeah.

• 57:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. One quesadilla after another, yeah.

• 57:51Amanda Dobbins?

  There you go.

• 57:52Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, what else can we do?

• 57:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I just really like dips and potato chips. So I just, people should have more potato chips and produce.

• 57:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, ham and cheese in it, you know, like, keep going.

• 58:01Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really, really good.

• 58:02Sean Fennessey?

  Give me some more titles of films, I can't think of any.

• 58:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Begonia?

• 58:05Sean Fennessey?

  Burgonia.

• 58:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Burgonia, sure, sliders, there you go.

• 58:10Sean Fennessey?

  We need some kind of sinner's themed cocktail, right? Because they're in a juke joint and they're serving up.

• 58:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 58:16Sean Fennessey?

  They're serving up illicit drinks.

• 58:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm really focused on like Frankenstein, so like Frankfurt, like what can we do with Frankfurt or Frankenstein?

• 58:26Sean Fennessey?

  You just, well, yeah, you did it.

• 58:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:28Sean Fennessey?

  There's gonna be a lot of like pork themed items on this menu for whatever reason, you know. Um, I, you know, I think that's fine. I think if you've got the wherewithal.

• 58:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Sentimental value meal and everyone just gets, you know, then you're sponsored by McDonald's?

• 58:42Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 58:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, lock in that spawn con partnership, okay? That is my advice to you.

• 58:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 58:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Get people to sign, get it sponsored. Um, I like drinks, so have drinks if you don't like drinks.

• 58:54Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:55Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, don't, or don't have alcoholic drinks. Where are you on Sound System?

• 59:00Sean Fennessey?

  I think you, if you've got some sort of sono surround, lock in.

• 59:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 59:05Sean Fennessey?

  You know, or, you know, at worst, a soundbar.

• 59:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:08Sean Fennessey?

  I think that'd be helpful.

• 59:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Are you allowing people to talk?

• 59:11Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so, thank you for asking. Now, I would never do this. Now, we, I think we did.

• 59:16Amanda Dobbins?

  We've done Golden Globes, Golden Globes.

• 59:18Sean Fennessey?

  Did we not watch Oscars in like the 15, 16, or 16, 17 era?

• 59:22Amanda Dobbins?

  When Chris Rock hosted, yeah.

• 59:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so we have watched together, but I think it was only like four people or six people at your house. And you and I both were like, no talking, please. And I think our spouses were like, these sociopaths should be examined.

• 59:36Sean Fennessey?

  I, to me, it's very, very similar to a Mets playoff game.

• 59:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, great.

• 59:42Sean Fennessey?

  Few and far between though they are. Not annual experiences, of course, we know. They've only been in the playoffs twice in the last 10 years. However, I don't, I can't watch that with anybody. I can't even watch that with loved ones in my family. I actually need to just be alone, because it's very painful and it's not fun. The Oscars is not painful, but it is like, um, like I'm observing the presentation of my science project.

• 1:00:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:00:06Sean Fennessey?

  After months of preparation, you know? I definitely have an unhealthy relationship to observing what's transpiring, but in a way that I love. Like, I love watching the Oscars. To this day, we joke around and we're like, they suck. They don't suck. This is my favorite thing. I love it. The reason we spend so much time on it on the show is it's a lot of fun.

• 1:00:25Amanda Dobbins?

  We're nerds, yeah.

• 1:00:26Sean Fennessey?

  So, I, I think it would be hard to do a proper party in that way. But a, we should maybe even consider a Globes party.

• 1:00:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Sean Fennessey?

  I would, I would, because I don't really care about the Globes anymore. Now, I'm officially now like, these don't really mean anything to me.

• 1:00:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And there are also breaks for the TV awards, which like I really don't care about. So, you know, you can chit chat or whatever.

• 1:00:48Sean Fennessey?

  Great point. There's plenty of time to socialize.

• 1:00:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And then we could just pause everyone and be like, I'm so sorry, we need to know.

• 1:00:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's international feature, please. This matters. You know, who's getting on stage? Will it be clever Mendoza-Philo? And people can be like, why are you guys so weird about this?

• 1:01:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, good question. I.

• 1:01:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I hope you have a great party.

• 1:01:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Christian, good luck.

• 1:01:09Amanda Dobbins?

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Life is all about choices.

• 1:01:14Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I was thinking about recommending Radiance Films to my buddy Chris Ryan, a physical media company, because I knew he had a real taste for Italian crime films, and no one does it better than Radiance. And of course, I was right. Chris got involved in Radiance, and now he feels great about it.

• 1:01:28Amanda Dobbins?

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• 1:01:38Sean Fennessey?

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• 1:01:54Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, what's next?

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  Next question comes from Vince. Actually, this is going to be a little bit of a two-parter.

• 1:01:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  Vince is asking, "While I was incredibly happy with the Best Picture noms, it's been heavily discussed how we've seemed to reward five of the same movies. Do you think this is a product of going to 10 nominations?" And the follow-up question is from Ryan, saying, "Since the Academy has expanded Best Picture from five to 10, should they also expand the acting nominations from five to 10? With so many more movies being made and more opportunities for acting, shouldn't they expand the acting categories, too?"

• 1:02:23Sean Fennessey?

  So the first one first. It's interesting. We have been circling this idea a little bit of late.

• 1:02:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:02:28Sean Fennessey?

  I do think that the ecosystem of awards campaigning and awards identification around films has gotten extremely strong and extremely skilled at putting big red circles around titles as early as January. For example, I got a text from someone that we both know about the film "The Invite," which premiered at Sundance over the weekend.

• 1:02:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Ah, yeah.

• 1:02:52Sean Fennessey?

  And that text said, "This film will be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay."

• 1:02:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:02:56Sean Fennessey?

  It's January 25th. So, one, that happens all the time. Two, Cannes is now considered a major precursor, which starts in May. That gives you a runway of several months. Three, we have a major, kind of, active and vocal cinephile culture that when a big auteur is coming with a moment, in the example of "One Battle After Another," people will be like, "Well, this certainly feels like it's an Oscar contender." And if the film turns out to be good, then in fact, it gets that five-month treatment where it gets to be identified.

• 1:03:28Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think this is a great thing, but I don't think it's because of 10 nominations. I actually kind of wanted to come out in defense of 10 nominations this year because it kind of is doing exactly what it was supposed to do.

• 1:03:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is getting more movies that people have seen in the conversation.

• 1:03:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:03:44Amanda Dobbins?

  The reason that we're rewarding only five of the 10 same movies is because all the other categories are still five nominees, including every single below the line category.

• 1:03:53Sean Fennessey?

  Well, but is it working in reverse? Where people know what the best picture contenders are? And then they're putting all those movies in those other categories? Because in the past, if you look, there are historically, there were have been more funky like, whoa, this movie in production design? Or this movie in cinematography? And that is changing a little bit, I would say. It's there's, there's more concentration at the top than there was 25 years ago.

• 1:04:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I think that's true, though. You know, makeup design is one this year where I learned about two movies. Like, you know, I knew about them, visual effects. You know, there are still places where things that are not anywhere near best picture.

• 1:04:30Sean Fennessey?

  You're right.

• 1:04:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Make it in. And you're just seeing that in the movies that are, as you said, and I think you're completely right, they're identified January, February, May. You know, as soon as we're guessing what's going to be at Venice, then we're guessing, okay, which are the two? You know, what's the Telluride nomination? What's the Venice nomination? You know, like, we're gaming it out before schedules are. And I think that studios are gaming that as well as they're figuring out releases and festival stuff. So you're right, but then I do think also just the limited number of slots. It is a little bit like Best Picture has five real contenders and five like happy to be here's.

• 1:05:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's been that way pretty much since they went to 10.

• 1:05:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I am happy that all of those films are there, you know? Even, even F1, which like I thought was silly and should have gone to something else. But it's, it's fun to have a big budget film at the, like in Best Picture.

• 1:05:22Sean Fennessey?

  I totally agree, and I kind of like the balance that we're getting there.

• 1:05:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Sean Fennessey?

  Where, you know, it's not just the film like Sentimental Value maybe creeping into the top five, but that The Secret Agent is kind of firmly there. And it's a part of the race. And because it's a part of the race, I feel like it does get. Recognized in other categories that might not otherwise get recognized in like Wagner Moore, for example, that feels like a change and a good change. So I like that. And then on top of that, as you say, films like F1 getting in, it's not a bad thing. Like there are movies that I personally prefer. I would have preferred weapons to get in. I would have preferred no other choice to get in. I would have even preferred the Testament of Ann Lee to get in. There's probably 10 other movies I like more than F1. But F1, as I said on Thursday, is a representation of another aspect of filmmaking that doesn't necessarily always get recognized

• 1:06:09Sean Fennessey?

  by the Academy, that I think actually should be more recognized more frequently. So I actually love what 10 has been able to do. But if you expand the other categories to 10, I don't know how I feel about this. What do you think?

• 1:06:21Amanda Dobbins?

  So I think we just need to add more acting categories. We've, I mean, we've talked about breakthrough for forever, but I think that's like a really easy one and that, you know, Chase Infinity could absolutely win that this year and that would be a nice way to recognize a performance that we both think deserves a nomination.

• 1:06:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:06:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Comedy comedic performance, I don't know how I feel about this, but you know, it's, it's a little bit like the Golden Globes Box Office Achievement Award, you know, you would just wish that actor and actress would actually recognize comedic performances every so often, and they don't.

• 1:06:56Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I have seen some, I don't think I would want to break it down by genre.

• 1:06:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Sean Fennessey?

  Because I think too many films are already operating in category fraud. And it's like, is one battle a comedy or not? You know, we talked about it with the Globes.

• 1:07:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't want to do that. Yeah.

• 1:07:07Sean Fennessey?

  So, but one thing that I would love to see that we've talked about in versions of in the past is the kind of like one-shot award where it's like you get one scene.

• 1:07:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Sean Fennessey?

  Or two scenes, you know, like a kind of an elevated cameo where it has to be critical to the part. It can't be.

• 1:07:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Matt Damon in, well, he's.

• 1:07:23Sean Fennessey?

  Matt Damon in Interstellar for sure.

• 1:07:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:07:25Sean Fennessey?

  You know, that's an example of like, he gets one sequence.

• 1:07:28Amanda Dobbins?

  All of his cameos that are like pretty essential. I don't want to spoil any of them.

• 1:07:32Sean Fennessey?

  No, he's, he's somebody who would frequently be nominated in this category. But like, I mean, Peyton Manning in Is This Thing On this year? Like, I didn't think that was a very effective use of him or idea. I thought it was more distracting than effective.

• 1:07:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought that was funny.

• 1:07:44Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. But that's an example of someone who could be nominated in that spot. And there, every year, there are 10 examples that are really cool. That would be another way to recognize more performances. So you don't have people, you know, it would be the Beatrice Straight Award from Netflix, from Netflix, from network. That's Netflix is the new network.

• 1:08:05Sean Fennessey?

  So that would be cool. I'm trying to think of what are some other?

• 1:08:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I think having more, you know, more performers and more top line or recognizable people, both like on the broadcast and getting awards is, I think, a good, good for the awards, good for the show.

• 1:08:21Sean Fennessey?

  Can I give you another idea that I had that is sort of related to this? I was wondering if they could revise the lifetime achievement award and make it more of a vote within, within the body. And it doesn't mean that you would, there would be a vote, but that vote would not just be among the people on the governor's board. It would be amongst the entire academy, but it wouldn't, the prize wouldn't be, the prize would be given out at the awards, but the, it wouldn't, it would be revealed before that. So like, there would be 20 eligible nominees.

• 1:08:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:08:51Sean Fennessey?

  Who have had a body of work that is longer than 30 years.

• 1:08:54Amanda Dobbins?

  So you're sort of rock and roll Hall of Faming it?

• 1:08:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:08:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:08:58Sean Fennessey?

  And then you get to identify who is the most deserving person in the academy who does not have an academy award and who maybe won't get one.

• 1:09:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:09:06Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, we saw Tom Cruise receive a governor's award this year and he's never won an acting academy award.

• 1:09:12Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's, I mean, it's tricky when you're using that award to make up for the, all of the times that the academy has overlooked very deserving people. And then you're going to let them vote on it once again. And then it just.

• 1:09:23Sean Fennessey?

  This idea comes directly from baseball because the baseball Hall of Fame is voted on by the writers. And oftentimes there are people who go up for that nomination. And if they have, for example, a bad reputation amongst the writers, they won't get as much love as they maybe should get. And that, sometimes that very thin margin of dislike will keep them out of the hall. And then they'll come up for what is called the Veterans Committee, some five or 10 years later. I don't know what the threshold is of time. And that committee has kind of changed a lot over time, but basically their job is to correct the sins of the writers committee.

• 1:09:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:09:57Sean Fennessey?

  And so they'll place people in significant, some years after their career has ended as a sort of like, hey, we're sorry, but Gil Hodges, you know, very legendary first baseman and Mets manager should actually be a Hall of Famer. And then they go in. I always thought that was kind of interesting because it's a different perspective on a person's career and the work that they did at With Some Distance. This would be kind of an interesting way to change things up.

• 1:10:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, it's fine.

• 1:10:19Sean Fennessey?

  This is like my 900th idea for the Oscars.

• 1:10:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's true. I still, you know, the honorary ones don't mean anything to me. Like, let's make it real.

• 1:10:27Sean Fennessey?

  Well, but if you made it more of a race, you know, like, so then you could say, like, the entire Academy agrees that this person should have an Academy Award.

• 1:10:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Tom Cruise deserves a competitive Oscar, you know? That's just, I won't be satisfied until that happens.

• 1:10:39Sean Fennessey?

  I agree, but what do we, what does, um, what does Joan Allen deserve? You know what I mean? Like, there's gonna be some people who are like, they'll never win now. You know, they've been Academy Award nominated.

• 1:10:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's why you need other acting nominations, you know? Give like, that's-

• 1:10:53Sean Fennessey?

  But you can't be like, there's a geriatric award for performances 70 and older.

• 1:10:56Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, another one could also just be ensemble, just take it straight from the actor awards.

• 1:11:00Sean Fennessey?

  I agree, I also think that should happen.

• 1:11:01Amanda Dobbins?

  If we've added casting, then we could also-

• 1:11:03Sean Fennessey?

  I know, they're a little same, same, yeah.

• 1:11:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Kind of close, but if also if you wanna crystallize what casting is and how that is different. If you're trying to recognize like casting directors versus the performances, you just add in an ensemble and then you get more people there.

• 1:11:15Sean Fennessey?

  I like that.

• 1:11:16Amanda Dobbins?

  There you go. I don't know, just, you know, more awards. Awards are good. We've already made up, what, 20, how many are we giving out now? 23 or 24?

• 1:11:24Sean Fennessey?

  I think fewer precursors, more Oscars. Make the Oscars a two-day event. I pitched this idea. Forty-eight Oscars over two days. It's a kind of a Lollapalooza situation.

• 1:11:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:11:34Sean Fennessey?

  You gotta buy a ticket.

• 1:11:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I don't think that that's a good idea. I think that you need to have it in one night. I think you have people's attention for that. You've grandfathered in a certain amount of respect and history for the Oscars.

• 1:11:48Sean Fennessey?

  I am available for freelance awards consulting. I have more ideas than I know what to do with, and I'm just screaming into the void all the time.

• 1:11:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I just don't think that like-

• 1:11:56Sean Fennessey?

  This is the void.

• 1:11:57Amanda Dobbins?

  You alone, just giving out Oscars in a marathon for like five days is great programming. And we wanna, we wanna bring the audience in.

• 1:12:05Sean Fennessey?

  I said two days, just two days. I think that's enough.

• 1:12:09Speaker 03

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• 1:13:22Sean Fennessey?

  All right, Jack, what's next?

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  Next question comes from Cole. What was a performance from this past year that you knew had no chance of being nominated, but would have been in your personal nominations?

• 1:13:32Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, we both picked two.

• 1:13:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:33Sean Fennessey?

  You want to do yours first or me first?

• 1:13:35Amanda Dobbins?

  You, you're one and two. Go ahead. You got to the dock first.

• 1:13:41Sean Fennessey?

  Elizabeth Olsen is really good in this movie, The Assessment, that nobody saw and is on Hulu right now. And I have some notes about the movie and I think it is a bit flawed, but her performance is insanely committed and really good and totally overlooked. So I would encourage people to seek that out. We didn't really spend very much time on that movie on the show, but it's an interesting example of like, it was a fest, I think it was Toronto 2024, and then came and was released in spring of 25 and just kind of vanished. And if they just played their cards a little differently, maybe you would be in a different place where like it's getting an indie spirit nom and then all of a sudden, maybe there's a chance for it. But that movie got passed aside. And then the other one that immediately popped to my mind, and this would have been really more a sort of a recognition of the work that he did all year, but Josh O'Connor for Wake Up Dead Man.

• 1:14:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:26Sean Fennessey?

  He's terrific in that movie. He's excellent in all four films that he's starred in this year.

• 1:14:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna say, I like this as the choice, even though like it could really be this and hyphen the mastermind, because you're giving out your own awards.

• 1:14:38Sean Fennessey?

  And he was like hardly recognized at any precursors for this. Everybody I know kind of universally agreed, even if they didn't love the most recent Knives Out movie, that he's terrific in it. And he's obviously having a moment. He's about to be in Disclosure Day. It would be a way to kind of like continue to promote his growing stardom. So those are my two. What do you got?

• 1:14:58Amanda Dobbins?

  So I got Ralph Fiennes, 20 years later.

• 1:15:01Sean Fennessey?

  Would have been so worthy.

• 1:15:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Great, and also setting up Bone Temple. What a great character, great performance. And just as we discussed on that episode, we don't appreciate Ralph Fiennes enough. That is the man who likes to, he likes to act. He likes to do stuff.

• 1:15:16Sean Fennessey?

  He does.

• 1:15:17Amanda Dobbins?

  He goes for it. And then, I mean, she was nominated for Golden Globe, but I knew it was never gonna happen. Jennifer Lawrence in Die My Love, she's amazing in that.

• 1:15:26Sean Fennessey?

  Were you at least a little bit surprised that she didn't get in at Best Actress? Or you didn't think she had any chance?

• 1:15:32Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no. I didn't think, especially once, you know, like they're like the troubled moms already are dominating that particular category. So she's like the fourth or fifth, like also ran in Troubled Moms.

• 1:15:44Sean Fennessey?

  I know, but troubled mom representation, you know?

• 1:15:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, listen, I like, I felt seen. I loved it. She looks great, but uh, yeah.

• 1:15:51Sean Fennessey?

  This film had a very bracing effect on Eileen.

• 1:15:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:55Sean Fennessey?

  But well, she was like, I admire it, but I will never look at that again.

• 1:15:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. How often do you think that she thinks about the dog?

• 1:16:04Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting question. I don't know. I mean, not a big dog person.

• 1:16:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, no, no, no. I don't mean the.

• 1:16:09Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, you mean the character?

• 1:16:11Amanda Dobbins?

  The, the character of the dog. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, no, about the husband just showing up with the dog.

• 1:16:17Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 1:16:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I think about all the time. My husband has never showed up with a dog. I don't mean as plain or my husband.

• 1:16:22Sean Fennessey?

  Offensive to you?

• 1:16:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but I thought that was just like such a perfect crystallization of just someone just not paying attention. And you're like, are you fucking kidding me with this?

• 1:16:31Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you what would make me not want to get a dog is having a kid. Like, once you have a kid, you're like, oh shit.

• 1:16:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I have a dog right now. His name is Si, and I just have to keep him from eating things he's not supposed to and.

• 1:16:43Sean Fennessey?

  Potty training, yeah.

• 1:16:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, all the time. Yeah, I love him. He's very cute.

• 1:16:47Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, what's next?

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  Next question comes from Bailey. Can we please receive an update on the getting drunk and going to see Mercy situation? As someone who will be getting drunk and going to see Mercy tonight in 4DX, I would love a report back on this situation. P.S. Go Mets.

• 1:17:03Sean Fennessey?

  Go Mets!

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  Let's fucking go Bailey.

• 1:17:05Amanda Dobbins?

  So as I Google Mercy Showtimes and then the zip code, I'm not gonna share with everyone.

• 1:17:11Sean Fennessey?

  I can't see films in 4DX.

• 1:17:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, if Mercy is a film about Chris Pratt sitting in a chair and talking to Rebecca Ferguson, then what is the 4DX experience?

• 1:17:20Sean Fennessey?

  It's a really good point. Is his, is his chair also in 4DX?

• 1:17:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean-

• 1:17:25Sean Fennessey?

  While he's on trial with AI?

• 1:17:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I have to tell you, the most fun I've ever had was sitting on the floor, four months pregnant, watching you do the fall guy in 4DX. That chair was moving so much and you were so unhappy.

• 1:17:38Sean Fennessey?

  I was four months removed from a pretty significant hip injury during that experience and I regretted every minute of it and I was not pregnant. I find 4DX to be uncomfortable.

• 1:17:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Did I ever tell you after that, that I Googled 40, like literally after we went?

• 1:17:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Of course, it only occurred to me to Google 4DX while pregnant.

• 1:17:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:17:58Amanda Dobbins?

  And of course, like the fine line printed, they're like, we don't recommend this. But I wound up on like Mumsnet, which is like one of the UK mom forums.

• 1:18:07Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:18:07Amanda Dobbins?

  And someone's like, I, I went to see Avatar, The Way of Water in 4DX while pregnant and had a very soothing time.

• 1:18:14Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, no kidding?

• 1:18:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I think the baby liked it.

• 1:18:15Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:18:16Amanda Dobbins?

  So there we go.

• 1:18:17Sean Fennessey?

  It's because Kiri was in touch with the mother, with Awa. And Awa was giving warm vibes. What happens if I watch Fire and Ash again and I'm like, I love it?

• 1:18:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, you gotta, you gotta take Knox with you. Knox has gotta confront his fear, you know, to get through the fear.

• 1:18:32Sean Fennessey?

  Varang though.

• 1:18:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Well-

• 1:18:34Sean Fennessey?

  What's it, what, what, how are you gonna feel when, when Knox comes alive at the sight of Varang?

• 1:18:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I tried showing him K-pop Demon Hunters and his face was just, he just covered his eyes. It was like me at a horror movie.

• 1:18:45Sean Fennessey?

  Two different energies.

• 1:18:46Amanda Dobbins?

  So Mercy Showtimes.

• 1:18:49Sean Fennessey?

  You're gonna do this in real time?

• 1:18:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's, what, yeah, what are we gonna do here?

• 1:18:53Sean Fennessey?

  It is playing at the iPic for the record.

• 1:18:55Amanda Dobbins?

  It is playing at the iPic, so there's a-

• 1:18:57Sean Fennessey?

  See that, Jack?

• 1:18:58Amanda Dobbins?

  There's a four, they've got a 4pm and 7pm's this week. So I guess we just gotta discuss.

• 1:19:03Sean Fennessey?

  Neither of those are ideal for my lifestyle.

• 1:19:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, me either, but I can't do 10:30.

• 1:19:08Sean Fennessey?

  You know what I love is a 1pm movie on a Tuesday. That's one of my favorite things.

• 1:19:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I could maybe, so we've got a, we've got a Dolby Cinema 115 tomorrow at the Americana. But like, McGuffin's is not really hitting my cocktails of choice these days.

• 1:19:21Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean there? What are they serving?

• 1:19:22Amanda Dobbins?

  They don't carry Campari, so.

• 1:19:25Sean Fennessey?

  What about a Regal Paseo?

• 1:19:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, let's see, I haven't checked. They've got a 140 here, also a 1205 tomorrow.

• 1:19:33Sean Fennessey?

  1205?

• 1:19:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:34Sean Fennessey?

  With drinks?

• 1:19:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, I think I can do that. I was gonna try to hit an 11 o'clock Pilates after jam session, but I could roll in. Okay.

• 1:19:41Sean Fennessey?

  Get in that chair. Jack, where you at at noon tomorrow?

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  Drinking at noon for Mercy on a workday?

• 1:19:46Amanda Dobbins?

  What else do you have to do?

• 1:19:47Sean Fennessey?

  No, you could, you could have a-

• 1:19:48Speaker 02

  I edit stuff for this podcast called The Big Picture. I, um, I would be down if we, if I can schedule it accordingly. This is, this is gold content.

• 1:19:56Sean Fennessey?

  We can, we can just placebo you, you know, with like water that we tell you is vodka. If you need to be, do some editing. Maybe, might be, might be easier to edit the show while drunk, just for the record. Um, I'm not advising that, nor am I recommending it. But it could be easier for someone who isn't Jack. Uh, Mercy, what if it's good?

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  No fucking chance.

• 1:20:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think it's gonna be good.

• 1:20:20Sean Fennessey?

  I reserve the right to say it's good, if I think it's good. Uh, okay, what's next?

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  Next question comes from Matt. Since the best original song nominations were once again a disappointment, I thought a better hypothetical song category could be best needle drops from this year's movies. Who would be your nominations and winner?

• 1:20:38Sean Fennessey?

  I used to do this every year, and I stopped doing it for some reason.

• 1:20:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:20:41Sean Fennessey?

  So I have lists from the past.

• 1:20:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:42Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and I love this question from Matt. I think it's a good call. I don't think the Oscars, it's a little too like internet-y for the Oscars, you know? It's not prestigious enough as a, because who are you even giving the award to? The music supervisor, I guess? Even though a lot of times these come directly from the filmmakers.

• 1:20:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, and they're, it's written into the script.

• 1:20:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's written into the script, yeah. Uh, you know, like, for example, I wrote Dirty Work from, for One Battle After Another, because that's such a chills moment when you hear the Steely Dan song and you see Chase Infinity for the first time. Um, you wrote a couple of other candidates from that film.

• 1:21:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, both Soldier Boy and of course, American Girl.

• 1:21:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so PTA kind of renowned for his needle drops. In every movie, he's got cool ones. And he spends a lot of time kind of poring over playlists. I know to think about where to pick things. The ones that jumped out of my mind immediately were Beware of Darkness from Weapons, the George Harrison song.

• 1:21:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Incredible.

• 1:21:33Sean Fennessey?

  Canok Chase, which ends Sentimental Value, the Lobby C. Frey song. There's a ton of songs on Sentimental Value. Joakim Traoré talked about it a little bit when I interviewed him on the show about how he picks music and how he does a similar thing with kind of playlists and isn't really like one of the things that they're really good at, and I do feel like a lot of these guys were inspired by Scorsese over time, is they're not really like stuck on timeframe or trying to match anything. It's just like, what's the feeling I want to evoke when I pick? And that's what I'm looking for. I added Boots from 28 Years Later, which we first saw in the trailer, but is actually in the film. The reading of the Kipling poem.

• 1:22:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:22:11Sean Fennessey?

  Firework from Eddington.

• 1:22:13Amanda Dobbins?

  This would have been on mine. Really funny. Also, Ari Aster just using pop music like against all of us.

• 1:22:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, poking us. I thought the punk rocker drop again to Superman was fun. Not a something I really cared about before, but it kind of gave me some warmth towards it after that. Did you add this last one?

• 1:22:29Amanda Dobbins?

  No, you did, but I would have.

• 1:22:30Sean Fennessey?

  And then Everybody Wants to Rule the World from Marty Supreme. And there's a couple of others from Marty that I think are good. There's probably others out there, but it's a good year for needle drops. Yeah. Oscars are not going to do it.

• 1:22:41Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I mean also.

• 1:22:42Sean Fennessey?

  But on my Oscars Palooza, they will do it.

• 1:22:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I do think this reminds me that like a category that's like too amorphous and too like MTV Movie Awards to actually but but still would be fun would be best ending. Like, you know, because two of these are actually like how they've ended the movie and it's and it's hard to land a movie.

• 1:23:01Sean Fennessey?

  Totally. No, that's a great point. And the feeling you want to give an audience on the way out is such a such a challenge. With that in mind, I think also that Bobby Gentry song at the end of Eddington, which is like not exultant, is actually quite devastating and funny and dark. But that's another good example of what you're describing. Okay, next question.

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  Before moving on, did you see Ari Aster wanted to use Empire State of Mind before landing on Firework?

• 1:23:26Sean Fennessey?

  Really?

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:23:29Speaker 02

  I can't imagine it any other way. Firework is perfect.

• 1:23:31Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like there's an, is there an Eddington question here?

• 1:23:34Speaker 02

  There is.

• 1:23:34Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I was gonna say, I feel like we gotta, we gotta address that. Um, what's next?

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  Next question comes from Anthony. My question is regarding the Academy's demonstrated disinterest in sequels. Wicked last year was an Academy darling and this year they basically spit on its face. To a lesser degree, they also didn't really care much for Avatar Fire and Ash. Despite being generally regarded as much better than Dune Part One, Dune Part Two only got half the nominations as Part One. It's my understanding that similarly to Wicked for Good, Dune Messiah has a polarizing final act. Do you think Dune Messiah is destined to a similar fate and will barely factor into the awards race next season?

• 1:24:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, I, I don't think it's gonna win Best Picture. You know, knowing what I know about the plot, even though apparently Chris and I were misinformed. And also knowing what I know about the rest of the awards landscape next year, which involves a Christopher Nolan movie and a Steven Spielberg movie.

• 1:24:31Sean Fennessey?

  Though both summer blockbusters and not necessarily destined for the Academy Awards.

• 1:24:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, I think that's true. I think.

• 1:24:37Sean Fennessey?

  I, by the way, I don't have a gut check Oscar, like, leading contender right now. I was looking at the slate, just putting that out there.

• 1:24:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:24:43Sean Fennessey?

  Not that anybody gives a shit, but.

• 1:24:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Um, I, I think it, I don't think it'll be shut out, like Wicked. Like, if I had to place my bets today. But I know you've been talking a lot about Return of the King and you even, when we talked about the kind of muted reception for Dune Part Two at the Oscars, and you were like, well, I bet they're waiting, like, I bet they're waiting. I don't know if they're waiting.

• 1:25:04Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's really ultimately a question of what is it up against? Because in a softer year, in an Enora-type year, you could very easily make the case that Villeneuve, who will be moving on to James Bond after this, it's, it's an appropriate time to recognize his work. You know, you mentioned that there's a Nolan movie this year, but Nolan just won in the biggest and grandest way you could ever win a year ago.

• 1:25:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:25:26Sean Fennessey?

  So, I don't know if there will be as much fetetization of The Odyssey, even if it's a huge hit.

• 1:25:34Sean Fennessey?

  You know Avatar, The Way of Water also, in the same way as Dune Part Two, took a big hit nominations wise from the original Avatar. The original Avatar, I think, had like 10 nominations, maybe more. And I think The Way of Water only had a few. It did get Best Picture, just like Dune Part Two did. Wicked for Good did not. Look, Wicked for Two was kind of reviled. I mean, people were mocking it. Like, I felt like there was immediate blowback to both of our Wicked episodes. The blowback for Wicked for Good was like half a day long. And then a lot more people got a chance to see it and they saw that like, they shouldn't have stretched that movie, that story out.

• 1:26:07Amanda Dobbins?

  And that is one difference of Wicked and Wicked for Good and everything else we're talking about, which is...

• 1:26:12Sean Fennessey?

  It cut something in half.

• 1:26:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. Versus, and honestly, Avatar Fire and Ash felt like it was a little bit cut in half from Avatar, The Way of Water, and it also was not, did not make it into Best Picture.

• 1:26:23Sean Fennessey?

  And people can feel that.

• 1:26:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:25Sean Fennessey?

  They can tell when something just doesn't feel constructed in this way. Now, Dune Part Three, as you know, I haven't really been spending any time reading it or trying to figure out what's going on there, but it does seem like they're gonna end up having to do some massaging around the Herbert text to make that totally coherent. I'm not really sure. Return of the King was kind of a comet. You know, that whole stretch of movies, even when Jackson tried to kind of recreate it with the Hobbit movies, it was received like very lolly, you know? And, you know, like other examples of this, like the Harry Potter films, which are widely liked and always successful, never really got like that kind of Oscar recognition. There's just a little bit of a bias towards fantasy, sci-fi, event storytelling of this

• 1:27:06Sean Fennessey?

  kind, so maybe that would be a sign of it evolving, but to me, Dune Part Three is not like locked in at number one in the Best Picture race for next year. What's next?

• 1:27:20Speaker 02

  Next question comes from Harry. I moved up the editing question. I know Sean ranks it highly and many other people I know loved it, yet it was absent from any and all awards talk before the season and has been absent from every award show since. Did this movie ever stand a chance? And did one battle after another replace it as the capturing what it's like in America movie? Which Oscar categories would you guys nominate it in?

• 1:27:44Sean Fennessey?

  Well.

• 1:27:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I think part of the success of Eddington, which I also just really liked and was definitely in my top 10 of the year, is that it, it does not pull punches and thus it did not cater to the Oscars at all and it would never have been nominated. And I think an Eddington that was nominated for the Oscars is an Eddington that like I wouldn't have liked. And like Ari Asser really goes for it and that and, and does not care and is trying to alienate you. I mean, that is the part, the point of the movie in some respect is that you're supposed to feel completely grossed out and despairing about this very true and also, you know, funhouse mirror version of the world that we're living in.

• 1:28:28Amanda Dobbins?

  And it, and it's both at, at the same time. It is in many ways like the most accurate movie of the last year, but um, it's, it's, it's provoking. I never expected it to be nominated.

• 1:28:39Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't either. I will say, I don't think Cannes was the right launchpad for the film. And, you know, there has been a big wave of people in the world of movie watching who are, you know, kind of like Eddington innocent.

• 1:28:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:54Sean Fennessey?

  We mistreated this movie.

• 1:28:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:56Sean Fennessey?

  The discourse was really bad. I think Adam may have made a comment about that in our year end episode about the best movies. This is my number two movie. I think this is the best thing Ari's ever done. You know, like it's been fun just kind of watching him over time, like get more and more confident with going for things that are like this and being, not being worried about the um, the kind of like the trappings of genre, like and just making a movie that is about something real, even if it's in a very sort of like outlandish, satirical style. And I agree with what you're saying that it would be very hard for a movie like this to be loved. It's not designed to be loved. But if it didn't come out at Cannes, if it came out at

• 1:29:38Sean Fennessey?

  Where's the inappropriate place for this movie to have come out? Because it was released in theaters in July. So they played the New York Film Festival. And some of the movies that didn't hit as hard as we thought might be hitting, like as the J. Kellys were falling away, you know, as the fire and ashes don't quite reach the summit, as even stuff like "It Was Just an Accident", not seeming as strong as it did coming out of Cannes, like Eddington had no chance of winning the Palme d'Or either. Like, it was not, it was not really widely liked there. You might have said, like, wow, this is almost like a fascinating follow-up to One Battle After Another? Like, this is the real coin? And, you know, honestly, things in America suck right now. People are really angry and justifiably about what's happening in the country. And they've gotten worse throughout this year.

• 1:30:22Sean Fennessey?

  And I think that that, he might have been able to tap into something in this electorate with some of the kind of like, not just the rage, but the like completely scooped-out cynicism of that movie, where it's like, we are so fucking screwed and we are being completely controlled and manipulated by powers that are way beyond our reach, that it might have had a little bit more resonance. I think you're right that in the construction of the movie, it's hard.

• 1:30:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but I think, like, I appreciate the nihilism at the end of the film, but I still think that that, like, people vote for Some Shred of Hope. They vote for, but they vote for American Girl at the end of One Battle After Another, even if you don't, even if that's like an ambiguous, like, is it gonna be?

• 1:31:07Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, man. I already referenced Network today. Like, Network did do really, really well at the Academy Awards. It's not out of the realm of possibility that a movie that kind of like sees the future by looking at the past could get recognized. I'm just trying to find, like, the use case for it getting into the race more. Like, it had no chance. Like, it was at no precursors. This is very clearly to me a really gifted filmmaker, working with like big stars.

• 1:31:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Network didn't win. Rocky did.

• 1:31:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, over, over Network and all the President Smith.

• 1:31:34Sean Fennessey?

  I'm just talking about getting nominated.

• 1:31:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I, totally. I, I think that's true. I mean, the other thing is that I wonder how... I think Eddington is like an incredibly incredible American film about America in this particular moment, but like internationally, I mean,

• 1:31:50Sean Fennessey?

  No, the opposite.

• 1:31:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Do people like it or do they think it's, they think like they really get it?

• 1:31:55Sean Fennessey?

  I think, I think international audiences love when America says like, God, we suck so much.

• 1:32:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that they do, but I do.

• 1:32:01Sean Fennessey?

  Overseas don't like America right now.

• 1:32:03Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no, it's not that. I sometimes find that a more simplified version of like, this is bad and this is good translates more outside of America.

• 1:32:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:32:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And this is like, you know, it's, it is ugly and like, America is really fucked up and this movie knows it, but it's kind of self loathing and I, you know, I just, I don't know how much it travels.

• 1:32:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's really, we'll never know. We'll never know. It's an interesting question and I hope if people haven't had a chance to see that movie that they check it out. I think it's on HBO Max right now. Um, all right. What's next?

• 1:32:36Speaker 02

  Next question comes from Brendan. Much like with Parasite in 2019, where early wins on Oscar night got you excited about where the night could lead, what award early in the broadcast on Oscar night this year would make you feel differently about a film's fate immediately?

• 1:32:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. So supporting actor and actress usually go pretty early.

• 1:32:56Sean Fennessey?

  I'll both go at the top of the show.

• 1:32:58Amanda Dobbins?

  If, if it's a Delroy Lindo, wouldn't we must suck a sweep?

• 1:33:04Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, if they sweep, forget it.

• 1:33:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's over. And that's, that's cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:08Sean Fennessey?

  I think even if just one of the two gets in, I will, that will, my antenna will immediately go up.

• 1:33:14Amanda Dobbins?

  For sure. Let's see. What else? So, you know, traditionally.

• 1:33:17Sean Fennessey?

  And likewise, if Benicio or Sean Penn win, that might also be an indicator.

• 1:33:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:33:21Sean Fennessey?

  That one battle's really strong.

• 1:33:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:33:23Sean Fennessey?

  Because that's a challenge when you've got two nominees from the same film in a category.

• 1:33:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Tiana Taylor wins. What's your read?

• 1:33:29Sean Fennessey?

  Doesn't move me as much.

• 1:33:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:33:30Sean Fennessey?

  Cause I think she's the favorite in the category right now. I, I'm still feeling Amy Madigan ultimately, because I think Tiana Taylor's character is divisive.

• 1:33:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:33:39Sean Fennessey?

  But. To me, I think the point you made is the best one. It's like Delroy or One Meets Masako getting love would be a real huge indicator.

• 1:33:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And then in editing, cinematography, anything else that?

• 1:33:52Sean Fennessey?

  I think if one battle doesn't get cinematography, that's notable. And likewise with editing, if it doesn't get either of those, it doesn't mean that it's definitively not going to win. It's just like, OK, so it's going to be a little weaker below the line. And what does that mean for us in these races? I think it's the acting. The acting tells a story.

• 1:34:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so as well. I mean, we talked already about, I think there is a real chance. And it would be deserving if Sinners picks up production design, costume design at SCOR. You're going to see a lot of those earlier below the line categories. I don't know if that necessarily translates into a director in picture. It could, but...

• 1:34:27Sean Fennessey?

  The acting usually tells you. Like, as you said, Mikey Madison with Enora winning. We saw Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis winning for Everything Everywhere All at Once. We saw Cillian Murphy winning for Oppenheimer. Like, of late, there has always been, there has often been one big acting award affixed to the Best Picture winner. Nomadland, Frances McDormand winning for a third time. That was really strange. Troy Kotzer winning for Coda in 2022. Like, there's almost always an acting award affixed to a Best Picture winner. So, but we'll have a sense of the vibe within the first 10 minutes of the telecast, probably. OK, let's do two more.

• 1:35:07Speaker 02

  OK, next one comes from Rob. With only three Best Picture nominees coming from fall festivals this year and four last year, do you think the fall festivals are losing some of their steam as a place where Best Picture hopefuls must premiere? Seems like the last two years, plus Oppenheimer, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Coda, show that maybe fall festivals don't have the same juice as they once had. What do you make of this trend?

• 1:35:32Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's really interesting.

• 1:35:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's true. Yeah. And I, I mean, as you have already pointed out in the doc this year, like, we've seen examples this year of movies not going to festivals, most specifically One Battle After Another.

• 1:35:46Sean Fennessey?

  Very purposely made that choice, yes.

• 1:35:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Sinners was also not a fall festival. Marty Supreme was like a surprise New York festival screening.

• 1:35:53Sean Fennessey?

  Not really a festival movie, yeah.

• 1:35:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think some of that was just because that's when it was done, but I do, you know, there are two from Venice, I think.

• 1:36:02Sean Fennessey?

  Two from Venice, two from Cannes.

• 1:36:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:06Sean Fennessey?

  One from Telluride. I think that's it, right?

• 1:36:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, one from New York, if you're counting Marty.

• 1:36:13Sean Fennessey?

  Marty, yeah.

• 1:36:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So, and that's six out of, or five, six, six out of 10.

• 1:36:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, this is fall festivals was the question.

• 1:36:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, right, okay.

• 1:36:22Sean Fennessey?

  So, you know, ultimately, I think it's, it's gonna be, what is it? It's Frankenstein, it's Hamlet.

• 1:36:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Begonia.

• 1:36:29Sean Fennessey?

  Begonia. What's the fourth?

• 1:36:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 1:36:34Sean Fennessey?

  Nothing from Toronto.

• 1:36:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Marty Supreme.

• 1:36:37Sean Fennessey?

  Marty Supreme, I guess, with, if you can consider New York, and that's it.

• 1:36:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:36:40Sean Fennessey?

  So, that's interesting. I think you made that point earlier in this conversation about certain films being kind of targeted, like, Hamlet and Telluride was a match made in heaven. That was a perfect bit of programming, was a perfect audience for that movie, that audience flipped for it, it went very well. Netflix is so tied in right now with Venice that they're basically premiering almost everything in that space.

• 1:37:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:07Sean Fennessey?

  I wonder if they think that's effective. You know, J. Kelly and House of Dynamite, I thought did, J. Kelly didn't do very well out of Venice, House of Dynamite did very well.

• 1:37:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:37:15Sean Fennessey?

  But neither of those translated ultimately. Frankenstein's bump really came at Toronto. That was when it really kind of swung back, because it didn't play well at Telluride when I was there.

• 1:37:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And our, our friend David Sims came on the podcast and pointed out that J. Kelly is the most Toronto movie that has ever existed, and would that have gone differently? So.

• 1:37:32Sean Fennessey?

  It might have.

• 1:37:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, I think is wise.

• 1:37:34Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I think One Battle didn't play, because my understanding is, is that PTA doesn't really like the festival scene, and he's premiered movies at festivals, but that's not really what he wanted to do with this. And Sinners and One Battle are, they're audience movies.

• 1:37:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:46Sean Fennessey?

  They're mainstream movies. They're not, they're not like little movies that could. They're 100 million dollar movies that are meant to be seen widely and. You know, a lot of movies that have won recently have had that that color and shape. Oppenheimer was never going to be a film festival movie. So I don't know. It's I don't know if it's that the film festivals are not as important, but they may not be as effective a launchpad. And and obviously, the other knockdown effect of this is just the Cannes is much stronger. You know, the Cannes influences the Best Picture race way more than it did 20 years ago. And so even though it was just an accident, didn't get in, and no other choice didn't get in, and, you know, some of these other films that Eddington didn't get in at Cannes, like. Well, no other choice was Venice.

• 1:38:28Sean Fennessey?

  That was Venice, right, right. But even still, they're starting the conversation there, and with Serat, getting the conversation started there as well. So I think that they're kind of pulling a little bit of energy away from specifically Venice and Telluride. I think are getting a little bit of their life force pulled by Cannes premieres. At Telluride in particular, they do an amazing job of this. They tend to show basically the five best movies that played at Cannes at that festival. It's a great way to see them if you love going to film festivals. Those are sometimes North American premieres, but they're not real proper film festival premieres. So I guess it's something that we can look at as we analyze the slate this year. Yeah. Okay, one more question, and then we'll quickly do our power rankings.

• 1:39:07Speaker 02

  Last question comes from Kelsey. Amanda quotes the iconic Olivia Colman speech all the time. What are your other favorite acceptance speeches?

• 1:39:15Sean Fennessey?

  I shouted out Jack Lemmon in 1974, because he's so surprised that he's won for Save the Tiger. And he gives a really nice speech, but then he says something that that always sticks in my mind, where he says something where he he kind of acknowledges the discourse. And he says, you know, a lot of people are saying that this prize has problems and isn't what it once was. Whether that's true or not, and it may be true, I just want to say, I feel good about this. And it's like, the weirdest, like, he was online that day, kind of acknowledgement. And I don't know contextually, but it's like, we think of 1974 as this incredible period in American film history, that that was really

• 1:39:58Sean Fennessey?

  the absolute apex of the new Hollywood. And he's, you know, a celebrated and beloved actor, winning for a leading part in like, a stormy character drama about a man going through kind of a midlife crisis. And he's like, are the Oscars washed? Perhaps. But I'm happy to have this one. Um, so I think of that. And then I, I thought immediately of Bong Joon Ho shouting out Scorsese and Tarantino when he won for best director, which I thought was just a great moment. And I'm into lineages. I like when a filmmaker is part of a lineage.

• 1:40:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And that was such a special moment. And to like our, one of the last questions, that was when we really knew that the parasite thing was happening and you couldn't, you couldn't believe it. And, and he was so moved and also so engaged with what it meant to win that particular award with that group of nominees.

• 1:40:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, exactly. What else?

• 1:40:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Marion Cotillard is always the one that I think of just because of the last line where she's like, it is true. There are some angels in this city tonight. I just, I mean, it's great. Yeah. Very French. Really good. She was wearing a great dress. And then Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, obviously, just, just yelling at people so hyped. And like, I was the formative age for that. That's, that's, that's when the Oscars came alive to me.

• 1:41:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Someone reminded me of, um, who was it? The guy who edited, uh, Everything Ever All at Once, whose name escapes me now. And he's like, this is only my second movie. This is crazy, bro. That was a really good one. There's obviously a lot of moments like that in history, but, um, the, the, the speech that I was referencing before that I rewatched was Jeff Bridges winning for Country Strong. Country Strong? Not Country Strong? Country Strong is the Gwyneth Paltrow movie.

• 1:41:30Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right. Uh, something heart?

• 1:41:33Sean Fennessey?

  Country Heart.

• 1:41:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Jeff Bridges.

• 1:41:34Sean Fennessey?

  Country Heart?

• 1:41:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Heart.

• 1:41:36Sean Fennessey?

  Heart of the country.

• 1:41:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Oscar. Let's see. Crazy Heart.

• 1:41:38Sean Fennessey?

  Crazy Heart. Wow. It comes for us all. Uh, Crazy Heart. When he won for Crazy Heart. And it was, you know, he got a massive standing ovation. He'd been dominating all the precursors. It was a foregone conclusion that he was going to win. It was one of the years when they had very, um, famous people come out and introduce each of the nominees and be like, Jim Johnson, it was an absolute pleasure to work with you on the film Scabies 2. Thank you for all your service in Hollywood. And, uh, I felt like Jeff Bridges was presiding over something that is gone. And he acknowledged in that speech how much his parents loved show business. Because Lloyd Bridges is his dad and Jeff Bridges got his start as a teenager on films and television shows, working alongside of his dad and his brother.

• 1:42:22Sean Fennessey?

  And watching that last night, I kind of felt like that is gone. Something different is happening. What's happening now is interesting and fun. And it's been fun to actually track it over the last five or so years to look closely at like, wow, Everything Everywhere at Once, Enora.

• 1:42:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:39Sean Fennessey?

  Nomadland. Like, these are best picture winners and performances from these movies are winning. And these filmmakers don't look like the filmmakers who were winning 25 years ago.

• 1:42:49Sean Fennessey?

  But we got addicted to this stuff.

• 1:42:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:53Sean Fennessey?

  With the like, you know, old stuffy, everyone's in the same black tuxedo. And there's a kind of like a rigidity and a kind of grace to it. But it's like secretly racist and weird and exclusionary. But let's not think about that right now because Jeff Bridges is winning an Academy Award.

• 1:43:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And Jack Nicholson is sitting in the front row.

• 1:43:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, specifically, he's literally there for that show.

• 1:43:16Sean Fennessey?

  So, yeah, I don't know, that popped into my head for some reason. That's my final thought about that. Power rankings.

• 1:43:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:23Sean Fennessey?

  So you made a comment when the nominations were announced that we had been ignoring Begonia. And we didn't have it on the list. And I said, no, no, no, no, we had it, we had it. And I was wrong.

• 1:43:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, we did not have it.

• 1:43:34Sean Fennessey?

  We did not have it. I don't know why. We didn't have it in November either, and I don't know why.

• 1:43:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:38Sean Fennessey?

  We should have had it. When you look back at this list, December 19th was the last time we did this.

• 1:43:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:43Sean Fennessey?

  Over a month ago.

• 1:43:44Amanda Dobbins?

  This was before the BAFTA shortlists and all that stuff.

• 1:43:46Sean Fennessey?

  Pre-BAFTA shortlists, pre-PGA, pre-DGA, pre-Globes, pre-all that stuff. We didn't have any of that information. We did have the Oscars shortlist. So we put Serat on the list at 10. That was kind of a little snack.

• 1:43:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, we were being cute.

• 1:43:59Sean Fennessey?

  A little treat.

• 1:43:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:00Sean Fennessey?

  A little something to make ourselves smile.

• 1:44:02Amanda Dobbins?

  It was in the air.

• 1:44:03Sean Fennessey?

  Nine was The Secret Agent, eight was Train Dreams, seven was Sentimental Value, six was Frankenstein, five was Marty Supreme, four was It Was Just an Accident, three was Hamlet, two was Sinners, one was One Battle After Another. Now, all you gotta do is swap F1 for Serat and swap Begonia for It Was Just an Accident. And this is pretty darn good.

• 1:44:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think Begonia is sitting at number four, though.

• 1:44:26Sean Fennessey?

  No, I think it's probably more like number nine.

• 1:44:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and I think sentimental value is at four.

• 1:44:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I agree with that.

• 1:44:35Sean Fennessey?

  So, I mean, do you want, do you want to just keep that? Would you, do you, let's, let's look at how it should go.

• 1:44:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:44:46Sean Fennessey?

  Is one battle after another still on top?

• 1:44:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I think yes.

• 1:44:51Amanda Dobbins?

  But you, I mean.

• 1:44:52Sean Fennessey?

  Let's, let's just.

• 1:44:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, listen, we did that, we just did this, we just.

• 1:44:55Sean Fennessey?

  Let's freeze this moment in time, no, let's freeze this moment in time.

• 1:44:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:44:59Sean Fennessey?

  If, on March 15th, Sinners wins.

• 1:45:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:04Sean Fennessey?

  And we open the show.

• 1:45:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:06Sean Fennessey?

  And you look down the barrel of the camera.

• 1:45:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I'll say, I was wrong.

• 1:45:09Sean Fennessey?

  And you'll say, on January 26th, I told you, dear listener, that one battle after another, nothing to fear. You are in the pole position.

• 1:45:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And you're already saying, Sinners winning would be cool. It's not my number one movie of the year, but you can't put, like, it's not me against Sinners. I just think.

• 1:45:27Sean Fennessey?

  What's more important, you being right or things being cool?

• 1:45:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, that's really tough. I honestly don't know.

• 1:45:34Sean Fennessey?

  I know, that's the ultimate paradox.

• 1:45:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's really tough.

• 1:45:36Sean Fennessey?

  The problem is, you'll never be cool, but you can sometimes be right.

• 1:45:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I'm generally very cool, and that's fine.

• 1:45:42Sean Fennessey?

  Many people are saying.

• 1:45:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I still just think, based on what we know.

• 1:45:46Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:47Amanda Dobbins?

  That it is probably one battle.

• 1:45:48Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:45:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Including all of the racism that you just talked about of historical Oscars past.

• 1:45:54Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's one of the biggest things being held against it.

• 1:45:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's be real.

• 1:45:58Sean Fennessey?

  And there's.

• 1:45:58Amanda Dobbins?

  That, and then the snobbishness about, uh, genre movies.

• 1:46:01Sean Fennessey?

  The vampire stuff, yeah, I agree, okay, so one battle at one, Sinners at number two. I believe Hannibal is still at number three.

• 1:46:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so as well.

• 1:46:08Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think people saw that win at the Golden Globes. It's a different kind of film, it's a different kind of period film relative to everything else that is on here, with the exception, I guess, of Frankenstein. Number four, is it Marty Supreme?

• 1:46:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's Sentimental Value.

• 1:46:23Sean Fennessey?

  They both have nine.

• 1:46:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, but I think that Sentimental Value is.

• 1:46:29Sean Fennessey?

  Has four acting noms.

• 1:46:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly, and it's, and, and, you know, the international.

• 1:46:33Sean Fennessey?

  Screenplay, director, it has.

• 1:46:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean.

• 1:46:36Sean Fennessey?

  Marty has both of those.

• 1:46:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Marty has those as well, but it doesn't have as many acting noms.

• 1:46:41Amanda Dobbins?

  But it has.

• 1:46:42Sean Fennessey?

  On the flip side of this case.

• 1:46:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:46:43Sean Fennessey?

  Marty having more below the line stuff could make it more powerful throughout the academy. Having production design, having, uh, has editing, right? You know, what are the other ones? The costumes, you know, like that's, those are pretty interesting nominations for the movie.

• 1:46:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I, and I think they're deserving and it was my second favorite movie of the year, but I said during the nominations sentimental value, I feel is very strong. It got even more acting nominations. Elle Fanning got nominated. Bless her.

• 1:47:08Sean Fennessey?

  She had an amazing year. We didn't talk about that.

• 1:47:10Amanda Dobbins?

  She did.

• 1:47:11Sean Fennessey?

  You haven't seen Predator Badlands.

• 1:47:12Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but I've heard a lot about it.

• 1:47:13Sean Fennessey?

  So charming in Predator Badlands.

• 1:47:15Amanda Dobbins?

  She's great. She's deserving somewhere forever, but.

• 1:47:17Sean Fennessey?

  Rachel Kemp.

• 1:47:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but listen, I, I just.

• 1:47:20Sean Fennessey?

  They would, so they would make that movie. Netflix would make that movie with Rachel Kemp.

• 1:47:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:25Sean Fennessey?

  But they would not make it with Renata Reinsva. What do you think about that?

• 1:47:29Amanda Dobbins?

  You think that they are underestimating their, uh, international viewership.

• 1:47:34Sean Fennessey?

  Good note.

• 1:47:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And subscribership.

• 1:47:35Sean Fennessey?

  Good note. I'll let Gustav Borg know that.

• 1:47:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:36Sean Fennessey?

  And his producing partner.

• 1:47:37Amanda Dobbins?

  What's up with, uh, Netflix Scandinavia?

• 1:47:40Sean Fennessey?

  That's a good question. Is that how they do it?

• 1:47:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I don't know. They made Borgen, right? They made the new season of Borgen, Netflix?

• 1:47:47Sean Fennessey?

  Is that a fact?

• 1:47:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I think they made a new season. I don't remember if I watched it or not.

• 1:47:51Sean Fennessey?

  Very cool. Uh, okay.

• 1:47:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Borgen?

• 1:47:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I never watched it.

• 1:47:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, it's good.

• 1:47:55Sean Fennessey?

  Um, you asked me that in a very curious way. Borgen?

• 1:48:02Sean Fennessey?

  Hardly newer. Uh, okay. I would say.

• 1:48:06Amanda Dobbins?

  So sentimental.

• 1:48:06Sean Fennessey?

  Sentimental value four, Marty at five.

• 1:48:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:09Sean Fennessey?

  Frankenstein at six.

• 1:48:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Train Dream seven.

• 1:48:12Sean Fennessey?

  Train Dream seven.

• 1:48:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Or do you want Secret Agent seven, Train Dream's eight?

• 1:48:18Sean Fennessey?

  I think, I don't know, and it doesn't matter because this is made up.

• 1:48:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 1:48:22Sean Fennessey?

  But I'm thinking about it.

• 1:48:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I think Secret Agent seven, Train Dream's eight.

• 1:48:25Sean Fennessey?

  I think you're right.

• 1:48:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 1:48:26Sean Fennessey?

  Um, because Wagner Moore got in.

• 1:48:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 1:48:28Sean Fennessey?

  And Joel Edgerton did not.

• 1:48:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 1:48:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so that leaves us with F1 and Begonia.

• 1:48:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Begonia nine.

• 1:48:36Sean Fennessey?

  Are you sure about this?

• 1:48:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I'm sure. No, I'm not sure.

• 1:48:38Sean Fennessey?

  F1 has more nominations than, no, they have the same number of nominations.

• 1:48:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:48:42Sean Fennessey?

  They both have three. Is that correct?

• 1:48:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's see.

• 1:48:44Sean Fennessey?

  F1 has sound, editing, film. Is that it?

• 1:48:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, that sounds right.

• 1:48:50Sean Fennessey?

  Visual effects?

• 1:48:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Does F1, I don't think it has a visual effects, a visual effects nominees. Maybe, I mean, okay. It does. You're right. Okay. So that's four. So Begonia has Emma Stone, a screenplay, score.

• 1:49:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Best Picture.

• 1:49:06Sean Fennessey?

  Four.

• 1:49:07Amanda Dobbins?

  So they both have four.

• 1:49:09Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:49:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 1:49:10Sean Fennessey?

  What a race.

• 1:49:12Amanda Dobbins?

  We'll get the meaningless number nine spot on our list.

• 1:49:16Sean Fennessey?

  This is everything.

• 1:49:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Know the answer to because they don't release the tallies.

• 1:49:20Sean Fennessey?

  This is everything to me.

• 1:49:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Fine. F1, did Begonia also get a PGA?

• 1:49:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Begonia PGA.

• 1:49:32Sean Fennessey?

  I think it did.

• 1:49:33Amanda Dobbins?

  PGA Award nominations, but I, yes, it did.

• 1:49:36Sean Fennessey?

  I think it did.

• 1:49:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:49:39Sean Fennessey?

  I'll say Begonia nine, F1 10.

• 1:49:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:49:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I, if you want to flip it, that's fine with me. What we need to focus on is you having the strength of your own convictions, you know? You need to, you.

• 1:49:54Sean Fennessey?

  Did you see the clip that Jack pulled with what I said?

• 1:49:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I watched it and I, I was mostly concerned with your skin tone. And then I, Jack informed me that he like desaturated it to make it look like old timing.

• 1:50:05Sean Fennessey?

  Many people are wondering about my skin tone. There's just nothing I can do about it. I don't really know. I wish I could.

• 1:50:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm trying. I'm trying to help. I'm doing what I can on a day to day basis.

• 1:50:14Sean Fennessey?

  I, um, no makeup here. You know, this is the real me. Just, this is as close as you're going to get to the real me. I should have predicted F1 and that was stupid. And what I said in October was 100% right.

• 1:50:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:29Sean Fennessey?

  And my instincts specifically around it being a film that did very well internationally are the reason why it's here.

• 1:50:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:50:33Sean Fennessey?

  F1 is an international sport.

• 1:50:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Do you want to put it at number nine or number 10?

• 1:50:38Sean Fennessey?

  Number 10.

• 1:50:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:50:38Sean Fennessey?

  We're done.

• 1:50:39Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 1:50:39Sean Fennessey?

  The power rankings are as follows. Number 10, F1, number nine, Begonia, number eight, Train Dreams, number seven, The Secret Agent, number six, Frankenstein, number five, Marty Supreme, number four, Sentimental Value, number three, Hamlet, number two, Sinners, number one, One Battle After Another. Now, we will talk about the BAFTA nominations on Thursday.

• 1:50:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:50:59Sean Fennessey?

  So that is really the last major event, I would say, that has significant influence on how we feel about a lot of this stuff. With the exception of the actual BAFTAs ceremony and the actor awards, those are really the last two things that we're going to see. So there won't be a ton of Oscar talk on the show until we get into March. There's not a ton of opportunity. We do have a fun Oscar themes draft coming in February, but post BAFTAs, it'll be a little bit of a breather, which I think is much needed. Well, that does it. That's it. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode and for reading those questions and collecting those wonderful.

• 1:51:36Speaker 03

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• 1:52:04Speaker 04

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• 1:52:33Sean Fennessey?

  Questions. Thank you to the listeners and watchers of this show for asking such great questions and being so engaged in this kind of pretty normal chill award season.

• 1:52:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:42Sean Fennessey?

  It actually has not been weird. Have you noticed that?

• 1:52:45Amanda Dobbins?

  It's early.

• 1:52:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's early.

• 1:52:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:47Sean Fennessey?

  Fair enough.

• 1:52:47Amanda Dobbins?

  We still have six weeks to go.

• 1:52:49Sean Fennessey?

  As I mentioned, three hours on Melania coming later this week. Should be a good episode. We'll see you then.