Academy Vs Audience

It's 2017, and it's time for space wizards and award-winning amphibian erotica! Guillermo Del Toro made a Creature From the Black Lagoon slashfic so beautifully realized it ends up winning Best Picture. Marginalized people in the 60s stand up to the US patriarchy to save a possible fish god, a fish god one mute outsider finds extra compelling. Then it's box office time, which means it's time for the most relaxing thing you can do on the internet... talk about The Last Jedi. Kevin Weir returns...

Here in the heart of Peak MCU Times, we pause our trek through the 2010s to look at the actual Marvel Comics event books that at minimum leant their titles to major Marvel Studios movies. Munsi Parker-Munroe joins Dan to dig into the comic version of Civil War, Age of Ultron, Secret Invasion, and more to see why Kevin Feige borrowed the titles and left most of the actual stories behind. It turns out that massive event miniseries relying on dozens of tie-in issues don't fit easily into one mov...

It's 2014, and the gang hits another good news/bad news situation. First up, the Michael Keaton Renaissance began with Birdman, in which a former superhero actor fought a career slump through a big artistic project by playing a former superhero actor fighting a career slump through a big artistic project, all in seemingly one shot. Claire, Erin, and Dan's theatre kid energy is unleashed, as is returning guest Munsi Parker-Munroe's... before the joy of Birdman's rise and fall and maybe rise ag...

While Erin and Claire are away, Dan is left unsupervised, and thus takes us on a journey through the remaining years of the 2010s, looking at popcorn movies (often if not only big hits) that perhaps deserved a Best Picture nomination... or at least deserved one more than some of the actual nominees. Dan argues that perhaps cinematic thrill rides and well-made spy thrillers* are as worthy of Oscar attention as mediocre biopics in which someone does a really good job of playing Stephen Hawking ...

Ben Affleck escapes Hollywood purgatory while the Marvel Age begins as we reach 2012! Affleck directs a tense yet also funny thriller on the Iran Hostage Crisis and makes it an awards darling by skipping over the international cooperation and diplomacy parts to focus on six people being saved by The Power of The Movies, just what the Academy loves. Audiences, however, could not resist the pull of Marvel Studios rolling their previous movies into one mega-hit, the Fast Five of superhero movies...

We reach the second silent movie to win Best Picture, and it only took 83 years. French-made silent era throwback The Artist claims Best Picture, and briefly launches Jean Dujardin in America, through nostalgia, hijinks, and one adorable dog. Erin, Claire, and Dan find themselves charmed, partially from having experienced this era at the beginning of this journey. But audiences were flocking to Brazil, as the Fast and Furious films evolved into their best self with Fast Five, in which Dom and...

As the year comes to a close, it's time to look back at a year of cinema, and look forward to what our 2025 episode may look like. Erin, Claire, and Dan try to figure out what might be crowned Best Picture. Erin compares her heart favourite to what she thinks might win, Claire tries to remember if she saw a movie not for this podcast (She did! Several! Go Claire!), and Dan shows how fun he is at parties by presenting multiple ranked lists. What's leading the Oscar race so far? What Wicked: Fo...

Awards season 2009 came down to a telenovela-worthy duel between Kathryn Bigelow with her war drama The Hurt Locker, and her ex-husband James Cameron, delivering his second consecutive Highest Grossing Movie Ever with Avatar. Kevin Weir re-joins Erin, Claire, and Dan to break it all down. Claire is not thrilled, Dan explains how a later release makes Hurt Locker seem much better, Erin posits you can only like movies about one war. But then it's off to Pandora, to dig into the groundbreaking v...

In the wake of Martin Scorsese getting nominated for his bleakest movie (pre-Silence), the Coen Brothers deliver their bleakest effort (pre-A Serious Man) with No Country For Old Men, pitting an opportunistic hunter Josh Brolin and a pragmatic sheriff Tommy Lee Jones against human Terminator Javier Bardem. Audiences, however, are torn between two threequels that fail to live up to the originals, as Jack Sparrow and Spider-Man face off. Is At World's End a better Pirates movie than it gets cre...

While schedules align, Dan presents a one-man crossover between us and Recovered by asking the question... do the Best Pictures of the 20th century need or warrant a remake? From Wings to American Beauty (at which point they're all so recent it's a hard no), Dan skims through 72 years of Oscars darlings to sum up potential remakes: which could be, which should be, which must not, which already have been, and some fancasts along the way. Do we need a 2020s take on Gone With the Wind? Marty? Pl...

In the wake of Lord of the Rings dominating the Oscars the previous year, the Academy decided to go small and serious again, while the audience remain here for fantasy good times. The Oscar went to Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood's story of three broken people bonding over boxing until boxing breaks them all the further. Meanwhile, audiences around the world had a relapse of Shrek Fever, flocking to Shrek, Fiona, and Donkey in greater numbers than they had for multiple pop culture icons t...

It's 2002, and Hollywood is swinging, be it to all that jazz, or by webs through the city. The Academy, still waiting to see if Lord of the Rings could stick the landing, gave the big prize to musical adaptation Chicago, which managed the singular achievement of blending the gritty realism Hollywood thinks prestige pictures need with the glitzy, showy song and dance numbers musicals thrive on. Meanwhile, only one man could triumph over Frodo, Star Wars, AND the boy wizard in one year...a SPID...

In 2001, the question on the mind of Academy voters was "Well we can't risk just awarding Lord of the Rings three years in a row, can we?" and thus an alternate Best Picture was needed: Ron Howard's call-it-a-biopic of John Nash, genius mathematician struggling through schizophrenia, with Russell Crowe taking us from coming-of-age to espionage thriller to one man's battle with his own mind in maybe too little time for all three of those. The audience, however, was all about high fantasy, and ...