Academy Vs Audience

Two years after the lowest rated Oscars ever, two different Box Office Champions and one sleeper hit vied for the throne! Everything Everywhere All At Once took the title, showing what a multiverse movie can be right as people were getting tired of them, and bringing Ke Huy Quan back to Hollywood prominence. But two long-awaited sequels battled to be The Film That Saved The Movies (Again), as Tom...

While we sort some technical difficulties and get schedules aligned for our final episodes, please enjoy this look back at the end of All 80s Summer/Fall, as Munsi Parker-Munroe joined Erin, Claire, and Dan for Batmen, Last Crusades, and of course, the dawn of the Learning Not to Be Racist Via Chauffeuring Cinematic Universe. The narrative importance of Scudda Hoo Scudda Hey, whether our Oscar win...

It's singing and spiders and Hollywood began to emerge from lockdown! A fierce awards race between two lauded competitors resulted in an unexpected result as CODA took the trophy. Is a simple tale of a Child Of Deaf Parents who dreams of a life in music enough to be the Best Picture? Erin, Claire, and Dan get into it. But there was no debate on who deserved to be the Box Office Champ, as a tr...

In the year of 2020, a global heath crisis shut down the film industry, and the Academy chose to meet the moment by extending deadlines and loosening rules on theatrical release in order to find eight joyless festival darlings to nominate for Best Picture. Nomadland, Chloe Zhao and Frances McDormand's examination of those who respond to trauma and tragedy by roaming the roads, took the top pr...

As we begin to enter the decade of Way of Water and Fire and Ash, we look back to 2009, when Kevin Weir joined Erin, Claire, and Dan to unpack James Cameron's Avatar, and how it lost the Oscar to his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow's war drama The Hurt Locker. The wonders of Pandora and wondering if this  time Erin will recognize Guy Pearce await!  Find all of our episodes and the rest of Writin...

While the stars align to kick off the 2020s, Dan takes a look at what 2026 has had to offer so far: the best of what he's seen up until mid July, the penultimate month before Oscar season starts to take shape, including big hits and the criminally (he says) underrated and also Grogu is here. But to balance that out, Olav Rokne of the Hugo Book Club blob tags in to sum up what may be the worst...

Is 2019 the apex year for Oscars and audience? Some say the Oscars made one of their best choices ever as embarrassment over Green Book caused voters to look overseas to South Korea, and Bong Joon Ho's class-warfare comedy-thriller Parasite, as a poor family worms their way into a wealthy family's life, only to find they were novices on an expert's turf. Audiences, however, were nev...

The dogs were good in cinema, here are Claire's top 10. We've talked about the best in Best Pictures, the champions of Box Office Champions, but have missed a key factor: the best in cinematic dogs. Claire is here to correct that, bringing us the goodest boys (and one girl) from the happy dog stories, the sad dog stories, the adventures and the bonds with their humans. Which dogs reign s...

It's 2018, and Marvel is lurching towards the climax of ten years of interconnected movies, while the Academy manages to trip over itself. The Oscar went to Green Book, now considered one of the century's biggest blown calls, but is it a bad movie, or just a bad pick for Best Picture? Claire, Erin, and Dan discuss, before moving on to the Marvel movies that ruled the box office. Black Pa...

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...

In 2016, the Oscar race seemed to be hurtling towards "White people get their dream show biz careers but are still sad about it," until a mid-acceptance speech twist handed the top prize to Moonlight, a quiet examination of three key moments in the life of an impoverished gay youth in the ghetto. Claire, Erin, and Dan break it down, and how one of our hosts completely missed the point un...

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 o...

2015 is all about nostalgia, be it for classic space operas or this old-timey thing called "investigative journalism." The Oscar went to Spotlight, an unassuming yet star-studded drama about the Boston Globe's efforts to expose child abuse within the Catholic Church, perhaps the most Boston movie the gang has covered yet. But audiences had little time for hard hitting historical hit...

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 the 98th Oscars recede into the background, Erin, Claire, and Dan run down the nominated films and look ahead to our 2025 topic. Dan's seen them all, Erin's seen some, Claire saw none and tries to figure out their plots based on vibes, and returning guest Olav Rokne of the Hugo Book Club has controversial hot takes that have Dan asking how many nominees he actually paid attention to....

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...

It's 2013, and it's all about oppressive systems! And Disney. Award season cleared a path for the historical tragi-horror 12 Years a Slave, recounting the true story of a free man forced into a dozen years of brutal servitude, so clear a winner that the Globes had some record-high category fraud to avoid competing with yet, and yet it fell short in many categories? Audiences were split:...

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...

While Claire and Erin are away, Dan digs into the idea of Oscar snubs, why the term still matters, and which big or acclaimed films of 2025 are conspicuously absent from the 2026 Oscars. Wicked: For Good and Avatar: Fire and Ash are follow-ups to past Best Picture nominees; why couldn't they make the shortlist? And which two films does Dan think the internet is right to feel should have been...

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 Br...

It's a new decade, and intentionally or not, everything is cute. The King's Speech pulled in as many Oscar-bait elements as it could to take the trophy, but the earnest friendship of King George VI (aka Bertie) and speech therapist Lionel Logue is cute and charming enough that Claire and Erin get swept up anyway, although Dan has some notes on their loosey-goosey approach to history. But...

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...

As we take our last between-decade break, Munsi Parker-Munroe returns to challenge Dan to a game. Munsi looks back at franchises from their youths, and asks Dan to guess which they genuinely liked, which they pretended to like because they were popular and boy-coded (and Munsi was at the time also boy-coded and hoping to be popular), and which they would have liked if only they'd felt safe in...

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 c...

After the directors of Goodfellas and Fargo won Oscars for their bleakest movies to that point, Danny Boyle won over the Academy with something basically uplifting: the story of a poor Indian youth chasing his fairytale ending via a western game show in Slumdog Millionaire. First time viewers Erin and Claire ponder Jamal's journey, while on his third viewing Dan finds some grace for Jamal&apo...