Oscars Outsider

Is it category fraud? The Golden Globes just rejected Michael's musical/comedy submission, and Obsession got through. We rule on it. Dylan and Craig play Fraud or Fair across Golden Globes history: Walk the Line, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Martian, Get Out, The Substance and If I Had Legs I'd Kick You. They then rule on Michael and Obsession. They also cover the Netflix firings, Cliff Bo...

With festival season behind us, it’s time to check the receipts. This week on Oscars Outsider , Craig and Dylan revisit some of their earliest predictions for the 2027 Oscar race. Which calls have aged surprisingly well — and which ones are looking increasingly difficult to defend? We reassess our early reads on films and performances including Fjord , The Social Reckoning , Artificial , Fatherlan...

Craig and Dylan ask one of the juiciest questions of awards season: who is going to become this year’s Oscar villain? What actually makes a movie the villain of an awards race? We look back at some notorious examples — The Greatest Show on Earth, Crash, La La Land, and Green Book — and examine how politics, frontrunner fatigue, backlash, and the movie positioned as the “hero” can completely reshap...

It's DRAFT DAY on Oscars Outsider! Craig and Dylan go head-to-head in our second annual Oscars Fantasy Draft, selecting 26 films they think will dominate the 2027 Academy Awards and the awards season leading up to them. With *The Odyssey* looking like the obvious first overall pick, is there any strategy that can beat Christopher Nolan's epic? And how much should we be willing to gamble on...

The Oscar race keeps getting messier. We break down the first reactions to Digger , the New York Film Festival relaunch of Paper Tiger , the growing momentum behind I Play Rocky , and the latest category-placement news around The Odyssey . Then we dive into what may be the most controversial Oscar category: Best Documentary. We make our early documentary predictions and get into NAZA , Musk , 14th...

Is Digger already in trouble before it even opens? With the film’s release approaching, we look at the warning signs around Warner Bros.’ campaign, the strange press tour built around Tom Cruise’s “Mr. Movies” persona, and whether Cruise can still sell an original movie the way his reputation suggests. We also wrap up TIFF, where La Bola Negra won the People’s Choice Award and cemented itself as a...

The fall festival season is starting to reshape the Oscar race. We break down the surprising end of the Venice Film Festival, where Woman Unknown pulled off an unexpected Golden Lion win, before turning to one of the biggest questions coming out of Telluride and TIFF: is Fjord suddenly in trouble? After winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, its North American reception has been much more divided—and t...

The Best International Feature Film Oscar is the most chaotic, politically charged, and scandal-ridden category in Academy history — and Dylan, Craig, and Sean are here to prove it. In this episode: a full history of the award from its 1948 origins to today, including the infamous 1993 Uruguay scandal (a disqualified film, a federal lawsuit, and a French co-production sitting on the same ballot),...

Venice 2025 is days away — and awards season is officially on. Dylan and Craig break down the full in-competition lineup, make their Golden Lion predictions, and identify the Oscar sleepers you need to know before the first screenings drop. On the table: Is Wild Horse Nine the safest Golden Lion bet, or can Lee Chang-dong's long-awaited Possible Love pull off a surprise? Why Florian Zeller&#39...

Is The Odyssey actually WEAK on screenplay? Dylan and Craig make the bold case that Christopher Nolan's writing could be the one category his ancient-Greece epic trips up on — and back it up with a full slate of way-too-early predictions for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2026 Oscars. This week: Tony Gilroy's Behemoth! picked as the surprise Original Screenplay...

The Oscar race just reshuffled — and we've got receipts. Dylan and Craig dig into the latest Best Picture prediction lists from Variety's Clayton Davis and the full Next Best Picture team, then argue about which hyped contenders are going to quietly vanish by November. On the docket: Project Hail Mary goes from "fake contender" to consensus pick, Digger keeps sliding after that t...

Emily Wilson — the scholar whose Odyssey translation Christopher Nolan called his primary source — just published a scathing review in the London Review of Books, and the hosts dig into whether she's right. Then Dylan and Craig go way too early on their Best Cinematography predictions: who makes the five-nominee shortlist, who gets snubbed, and which pick causes the first real disagreement of...

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is a genuine cultural moment — but could it become the most-nominated film in Oscar history? Dylan and Craig break down the full awards race case for The Odyssey, including whether it can beat Sinners' all-time record of 16 nominations, how the Anne Hathaway lead-vs-supporting decision could push the count to 17, and what history says about Ben-Hur's blu...

The Digger trailer finally dropped — and we are NOT impressed. Dylan and Craig break down why Tom Cruise's long-awaited political satire from Alejandro González Iñárritu feels more like Scary Movie than Dr. Strangelove, and what it means for the Oscar race. Then: our way-too-early Best Director predictions for the 2027 Academy Awards. Who makes the cut? Christopher Nolan (The Odyssey), Denis V...

Who is the most overdue actor in Hollywood? According to a Nate Silver model from 2012, it isn't Leonardo DiCaprio — it's Matt Damon. And he still hasn't won. Now Damon (The Odyssey) and Tom Cruise (Digger) are both heading into the 2027 Oscar race with massive 'he's finally due' narratives — and Dylan and Craig are making their way-too-early calls on who gets in and who ta...

It’s way too early… so naturally we’re making our first Oscar predictions. This week on Oscars Outsider , we start building the 2026 Best Picture race from scratch: what already feels like a lock, what feels wildly overhyped, and which movies we’re reluctantly admitting might be stronger than we want them to be. We get into The Odyssey , Digger , Project Hail Mary , Michael , Fjord , Dune: Part Th...

This week on Oscars Outsider, we dive into one of the Academy’s strangest and most confusing categories: Best Original Score. From the early days of studio music departments to decades of split categories, reunited categories, musical exceptions, adaptations, and shifting definitions of what “original” even means, the Oscar for film music has had one of the messiest histories of any Academy Award....

Spielberg is back with aliens — but is that enough to make Disclosure Day a real Oscar contender? This week on Oscars Outsider , we close the book on Cannes, revisit whether the Palme d’Or winner Fjord is now a serious awards player, and dig into the strange politics already forming around its Oscar narrative. Then we turn to the summer movie season: Scorsese’s AI storyboarding controversy, Taylor...

The Cannes awards are here, and somehow the Oscar race feels less clear than it did before. In this episode of The Oscars Outsider Podcast, we react to the major winners from the Cannes Film Festival, including the Palme d’Or win for Fjord, and try to figure out what any of it means for the Oscar race. The big question: did Cannes give us a new frontrunner, or did it make the whole season even mes...

Cannes is almost over, which means it is time to make our Palme d’Or predictions. In this episode, we break down the Cannes competition, make our picks for who we think could win the Palme d’Or, and talk through which films might carry momentum into the Oscar race. We get into the strange energy of this year’s festival, the movies that seem built for jury attention, the ones that could break out l...

This week on Oscars Outsider , Cannes is open, but Hollywood might have left the group chat. We dig into a strange Cannes lineup where the big American studio titles mostly stayed home, while European, East Asian, and international festival heavyweights take center stage. What does that mean for the Oscar race? Is Hollywood avoiding the risk of an early festival reaction, or is Cannes simply becom...

The Academy just killed a rule that's been in place since 1931 — and Sandra Hüller might be the first actor in nearly a century to benefit. We get into all three big Oscar rule changes for the 99th Academy Awards: the double-nomination rule, the new path to International Feature, and the AI ban. Plus the quiet Best Original Song tweak that might actually matter most. Then we look at what's already...

Scamanda is getting messy — and the more you look at it, the harder it is to pin down what’s actually going on. We get into the shifting dynamics at the center of that story, how quickly perceptions can flip, and why this one feels different from the usual Bravo drama. From there, we move into The Valley, RHORI, and some early Cannes thoughts, breaking down the moments, character beats, and produc...

With Oscar nominations just a day away, we lock in our final predictions for who will be nominated, not who will win. This clip comes from our sister show, The Oscars Outsider Podcast , where we go deep on the Best Picture race, debating locks, vulnerable contenders, international wildcards, and whether an animated film like K-Pop Demon Hunters could actually crack the final ten. We also dig into...

Welcome to Oscars Outsider, a limited-run awards-season spinoff from the team behind Bravo Outsider. Each year we obsess over the Oscars, the gossip, the precursors, and the chaos — so this season we’re making it official. In this episode, Craig and Dylan kick things off with our WAY-too-early Oscars Fantasy Draft, recorded before the Golden Globes nominations drop. With almost no precursor data a...