By Joe and Chris
A podcast about movies the awards forgot
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The 70s Spectacular comes to a close this week with actress Natalie Walker joining us to discuss 1979 and Milos Forman’s adaptation of Hair. The brainchild of Galt MacDermot, Gerome Ragni, and James Redo, Hair took Broadway by storm in the late 1960s...
The 1977 Oscar year is famously when Annie Hall triumphed over the cultural behemoth of Star Wars, but elsewhere Martin Scorsese followed up his Taxi Driver Best Picture nomination with a big swing and a miss. The Ankler’s Katey Rich is back on the show...
We’re on to 1976 (go sign up for our Patreon for 1975 and our Exception episode on Tommy!) and Christina Tucker rejoins us to talk about the 70s Spectacular’s wildest movie, The Ritz. From the play by Terrence McNally, the film...
1974 brings us to one of the final films of Billy Wilder, which also reunited a screen duo beloved by both Oscar and audiences, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Vulture writer Roxana Hadadi is back to the show to talk...
In 1973, the Academy embraced horror in a big way by slapping cultural phenomenon The Exorcist with 10 nominations – but then The Sting would triumph over its success on Oscar night. Critic David Sims returns to the show to talk about a different...
The 70s Spectacular is dancing as fast as it can! And we’re spinning right into 1972 with one of the decade’s biggest stars, the one and only Barbra Streisand, and joining us is one of her superfans, writer Jordan Hoffman....
The 70s Spectacular continues with critic and podcaster Katie Walsh joining us to discuss 1971 and Hal Ashby. After making his directorial debut with The Landlord after a career as an editor (including an Oscar win for In the Heat of the Night),...
It’s time to kick off our May miniseries – the This Had Oscar Buzz: 70s Spectacular! For 1970, television writer Chris Schleicher joins us for a forgotten tale of wealth, deception, and Bavarian castles. The directorial debut of stage legend...
May is upon us and that means it’s time for another May miniseries! How could we top last year’s 100 Years, 100… Snubs! success? Well, we’ll be doing a deep dive into the Oscar era that was the 1970s! In...
We’re stoked for Challengers this week, so naturally we’re talking about one of our favorites in the Luca Guadagnino resume, 2016’s underdiscussed and hot as hell A Bigger Splash. Premiering at the 2015 Venice Film Festival and playing internationally in 2015, but opening...
If you think we are too dismissive of westerns, allow this week’s episode to contradict that notion! In 2018, Jacques Audiard made his English language debut with an adaptation of Patrick deWitt’s novel The Sisters Brothers. John C. Reilly and Joaquin...
We’re finally diving into the time capsule that is 2004’s Garden State. The writing and directing debut of Zach Braff, the film stars Braff as a depressed actor who returns to his Jersey home to attend his mother’s funeral. Once...
On top of all the horrors of the pandemic, let’s not forget that that time also gave us cringe cinema directed by Sia. This week, we come to you with another Patreon Selects, where sponsor listener Stuart has tasked us...
We return to the work of Naomi Watts this week for a discussion on 2010’s Fair Game. Costarring with Sean Penn for the third time in a decade, Watts starred as outed CIA agent Valerie Plame with the film detailing the...
Forgotten cinema, you ask? This week, we’re coming to you with 2000’s State and Main, a Hollywood satire and ensemble comedy from lauded playwright David Mamet. A farce about a film production wreaking havoc on small town America, the film featured...
With another Oscar ceremony coming to a close, it’s time to crack the seal on the Class of 2022 movies and we couldn’t wait to talk about Jordan Peele’s Nope! Priming audiences for a big summer alien invasion film, Peele also...
Coming out of the COVID-led doldrums of 2020, the Cannes Film Festival loomed large as a “movies are back!!” starting gate for global cinema. Its opening film, Annette, was a long-in-development rock opera with music by cult fave Sparks and directed...
Attention, Dune-heads, we’re talking about Timothee Chalamet this week! In 2018, fresh off of his first Oscar nomination, Chalamet joined Steve Carell for Beautiful Boy, an adaptation of David and Nic Sheff’s memoirs about a young man’s addiction and his father’s attempts...
This week, we are talking about one of the biggest THOB titles that we haven’t yet discussed: 2004’s Spanglish. James L. Brooks returned nearly a decade after his Oscar success with As Good As It Gets with this story of...
We’re wrapping up our run of Patreon Selects episode with a real doozy! Originally intended for 2019, The Woman in the Window was meant as a prestige adaptation of a popular thriller, packing quite the pedigree. With the attached talents of director...
Our patrons said we must stay in Tuscany! This week, we’ve got another Patreon Selects episode and it has us talking about one of our least favorite Oscar years. In 2010, Abbas Kiarostami returned to Cannes with yet another masterpiece...
We’re breaking into your regular podcast schedule to bring you a special bonus episode recapping our thoughts on the films of this year’s Sundance Film Festival! And we’ve asked Queerty’s Cameron Scheetz back on to tell us what the festival...
It’s here! Our most awaited and beloved episode of every year! We’re here this week to look back at the This Had Oscar Buzz Class of 2023, celebrating all of the films that had some kind of Oscar hopes that...
This week, our Patreon Selects episodes continue and they’re staying in Europe! One of our sponsors has selected for us an Oscar nomination follow-up star vehicle for the divine Diane Lane, 2003’s Under the Tuscan Sun. Loosely adapted from Frances Mayes’...
Our Patreon Selects series continues with another dive into French cinema! In 2002, director Francois Ozon delivered an actress bonanza with 8 Women, an homage of Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock that’s also a musical and also murder mystery and also...
Our Patreon Selects episodes continue this week with a pick from Audrey: the beloved 2019 lesbian romance Portrait of a Lady on Fire. The film launched at the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Best Screenplay prize and skyrocketing director Céline Sciamma...
All January we’ll be doing a series we call Patreon Selects with episodes chosen by members of our sponsor-level tier on Patreon (and they’ll be sharing their Oscar origin stories too)! First up is 1992’s megasmash musical comedy Sister Act! Originally...
Listeners have been asking for this episode for years and today, Santa is bringing it to you! Happy Holidays, it’s time for Eyes Wide Shut! In 1999, the film was hotly anticipated for many reasons: it starred Hollywood’s most famous...
Hayden Christensen arrived seemingly out of nowhere to land the role of pre-Vader Anakin Skywalker, becoming one of Hollywood’s hottest stars overnight and largely untested as a screen presence. After a respected turn in Life As A House(see previous episode!), the Attack...
This week, our first film selected by one of our sponsor-tier Patreon subscribers arrives, and we brought back Vulture’s Roxana Hadadi to celebrate. In 1995, audiences were hyped to finally see an onscreen showdown between Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro...
We who loved his debut Martha Marcy May Marlene (see previous episode!) waited eagerly for director Sean Durkin’s follow-up feature while he worked in television and produced other films. That sophomore feature came almost a decade later with The Nest. Starring Carrie Coon...
We all know that Oscar fawns over costume dramas of literary adaptations… or so we tell ourselves when forming predictions and one with a whiff of prestige arrives. In 2008, director Julian Jerrold delivered a new adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead...
Following Thanksgiving tradition, Katey Rich returns to This Had Oscar Buzz to discussant film with indistinguishable white male actors, and this year we have chosen 2015’s Everest. Directed by Baltasar Kormákur and featuring a massive cast led by Jason Clarke,...
After the Oscar and box office success of Gladiator, director/star duo of Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe decided to reunite in 2006 for a very different kind of film, A Good Year. Starring Crowe as a finance bro who returns to the...
We return to the filmography of Spike Lee this week with his biggest box office success, 2006’s Inside Man. With a star-packed cast led by Denzel Washington as a hostage negotiator, Clive Owen as the bank robber opposite him, and Jodie...
Happy Halloween, listeners! Naturally, this week we are returning to the shallow well of horror films that made it into the Oscar hunt with a recent highly debated and lauded terrifier. In 2018, Ari Aster made his feature debut at...
A few weeks ago, we lost the great and greatly undervalued filmmaker Terence Davies, who listened have heard our love of on our previous episode for The House of Mirth. In 2011, Davies adapted the play The Deep Blue Sea for the screen,...
After Francis Lee’s celebrated queer debut God’s Own Country, the director leveled up with another gay romance Ammonite, this time with Oscar-pedigreed stars. Kate Winslet stars as 19th century paleontologist Mary Anning opposite Saoirse Ronan as Charlotte Murchison; the two develop a...
Last week we celebrated the 20th anniversary of Kill Bill – Vol. 1, so naturally we had to bring you Vol. 2 this week! Six months after the release of the original (and its shafting at the Oscars), The Bride returned to finish...
We’re here celebrating a 20th anniversary for a beloved film this week, listeners! After his longest break between movies to date, Quentin Tarantino delivered a samurai epic while trying to crack the script for another epic, Inglourious Basterds. That ultraviolent actioner, Kill...
This week, we’re bringing you an episode to make you yell “YA BURNT!” Back in 2015, Bradley Cooper was to headline an ensemble dreamed about an unruly addict chef trying to earn his third Michelin star. Switching from the anonymously...
We’re back from our annual trip to the Toronto International Film Festival! Once again, we’ll be dissecting our festival experience, the films we saw, and what lies ahead for the season. We discuss the Peoples’ Choice Award winner American Fiction and its...
Before Tom McCarthy would deliver an Oscar triumph with Spotlight (and a bomb with The Cobbler), his critically beloved films centering on everyday people culminated in Win Win. The film starred Paul Giamatti as a lawyer and wrestling coach who takes in the grandson...
Some might call Yorgos Lanthimos’ Oscar ascent an unlikely one, given the oddness at the core of his films. But with the Foreign Language Feature nomination for the explicit Dogtooth and the Original Screenplay for The Lobster, the Greek auteur...
We’re going back further than ever before this episode and we’ve got writer/critic/author Emily St. James along for the ride! After a consecutive run as an Oscar favorite in the late 1940s to early 1950s, director John Huston gave us...
Ahead of this season’s Nyad, we are looking back at the Oscar history of Annette Bening and 2017’s Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool. One year after missing out on a nomination for 20th Century Women, Bening returned with this...
Are you loving our new original intro music, listeners? We’re joined this week by its composer and our friend Taylor Cole to muse on the genre musical biopic with 2015’s Love and Mercy. The film follows different chapters of Brian...
We’ve come up on another anniversary episode of This Had Oscar Buzz, and we’ve got another favorite that long-time listeners have heard us praise before: 2019’s Her Smell. Debuting on at TIFF 2018, the Alex Ross Perry film is a...
Ahead of this week’s release of Ira Sachs’ Passages, we’re discussing perhaps Sachs’ most lauded film, 2014’s Love is Strange. The film stars John Lithgow and Alfred Molina as a newly married couple forced to live apart in New York...
We are returning to the work of Jennifer Jason Leigh this week, and Jourdain Searles is joining us once again with an underrated and underseen gem. Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle takes on the life of indelible writer Dorothy...