Oscar Season 2025-2026: All Things WICKED; Why Erivo, Grande and WICKED FOR GOOD Are Poised to Miss Major Oscar Nominations; Predicting Gotham and NYFCC Winners

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On this episode of ACADEMY ANONYMOUS:

• WICKED FOR GOOD is gold at the box-office, but misfires with critics
• Did Universal's "studio greed" blow up the chances for a WICKED Best Picture Oscar win?
• Why the Oscars fate of WICKED FOR GOOD is in the hands of AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH
• Cynthia Erivo vs. Ariana Grande? - WICKED FOR GOOD makes the case for co-lead status 
• Historic consecutive Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress nominations in the rearview for WICKED FOR GOOD?
•  The 5 nomination max - analyzing what Oscar categories are still in play for WICKED FOR GOOD 
• Polarizing Gotham Film Awards to announce winners from controversial nominee lineup 
• Will Warner Bros tower over indie films with record-breaking ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER at the Gotham Film Awards? We predict the favorites to win
• NYFCC - prestigious New York Film Critics Circle looks to set the tone on this year's critics' darlings with early winners list
• We predict which films and performances will triumph at NYFCC and boost their Oscar chances
• Can Paul Thomas Anderson finally nab Best Picture at the NYFCC for ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER? Or is A24's MARTY SUPREME destined to spoil its hopes?

Chapters

• 1:03 WICKED FOR GOOD Hits Turbulence on Takeoff
• 56:10 Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande's Oscar Chances Fall Victim To Film's Clumsy Mishandling
• 1:34:04 Where WICKED FOR GOOD Can Still Hope To Score Oscar Nominations
• 1:39:15 ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER Looks To Outmuscle Indie Gems At Gotham Film Awards
• 1:56:12 Will Paul Thomas Anderson Finally Conquer NYFCC? Or is a MARTY SUPREME sized upset brewing?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:14

Welcome everyone to a new episode of the Academy Anonymous podcast, where we are covering all the latest news and updates regarding the Oscar race for next year's Oscar ceremony, um, for the films that have come out in 2025. As always, I am your co-host Joseph. And I'm Jules.

SPEAKER_02: 0:32

And before we get started, just a reminder to all of you that please check out our website, our official website, framesandflicker.com. You can see the website on the poster art for the podcast. And uh we actually have brand new predictions there. We updated all the predictions, all for the major categories: picture, acting, screenplay, all the text, all the all of those have been updated. So check that out. And also please follow us on Twitter at Academy Anon. That's on the poster art as well for the podcast. Check us out. Please, we'd love to have you. And so let's get started. One of the big things we're going to talk about today is a film that everyone has been talking about that had its big premiere um last weekend.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11

And it's public premiere because people have been talking about it for weeks now. People who've gotten the exclusive golden ticket to watch the film. What is it, like two or three weeks ahead of everyone? Right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:22

So and so, you know, it's obviously we're talking about Universal's Big Pony, which is the second part of Wicked. And I'll just say that, you know, you and I had very particular thoughts about the first wicked. I wasn't a big fan, neither were you. When it came down to um predicting what the first wicket was going to amass at the Academy Awards, I think we both fell short. We both predicted like around six nominations, and it actually ended up reaping 12 uh 10 nominations, um, which it overperformed. It did incredibly well. It was a big hit last year. Um, everyone was talking about it, and I think last year it really took a lot of people by surprise. I think people weren't expecting that much from it from the visuals that they had seen, all the commercial, remember it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 2:08

That was part of the narrative, remember it, right? That that idea that like the trailer comes out like in spring or summer and people trash it, right? And then, you know, no one's expecting it to do well, and then lo and behold, right?

SPEAKER_02: 2:21

It does incredibly well. And I think people were having very euphoric and very ecstatic um uh reactions, reactions to the to the first wicked. Um, so I think when this season started, people just assumed automatically, well, part two, of course, is gonna be nominated um for best picture and and probably reap as many as as many nominations as the first one. And we got our first taste of that when you know Variety and Holly Reporter and the pundit, the punditry and social media was getting their first peak at the film, right? The trade organizations, and it started to sound like, oh, guess what, guys? I just saw Wicked, and it's just as good as the first. So expect as many nominations, if not more. If not more, and expect that yes, Ariana Grande is gonna win this time and it's gonna win this category as well, and Cynthia Revo is gonna gun it to win, and just all this sort of hyperbole that was really kind of confusing to read and also felt a little bit to me. I don't know if it if it felt that way to you, but it felt a little bit, it just felt a little strange. It felt a little bit uh what did you think?

SPEAKER_01: 3:26

Well, you know, as with every time that you know a trade publication gets involved in the conversation, you know, at least my mind starts to wonder, you know, it's just important to, you know, sell these movies. These are the movies, you know what I mean? We can't devote an entire cover to a fantastic film we saw the other day by Alain Gardee, Mr. Cordia. Like, we're not gonna devote a whole cover on variety to that, right? Um, and we're not gonna really talk about it too much. Um, so it's more important that we sort of support these tent poles because the industry gets by on those, right?

SPEAKER_02: 4:03

But it was suspicious. It was suspicious because they were like very it felt like they were curating who they were going to let into the fold to get that first sneak peek to get the ball rolling, yeah. You know, to get the ball rolling. It felt like they were inviting people that really loved the first wicked, right? And so where we stood at the beginning before the film was coming out was number one, it's hard for sequels to get nominated uh repeatedly for best picture. It happens, it's of course, and it's happened recently. It happened with Avatar recently, it happened with Dune recently.

SPEAKER_01: 4:32

That's what I was gonna say. Like to be fair, when the year kicks off and everyone is pegging Wicked for Good to be a top five movie, a top three movie, a top two movie, whatever, I do think that to be fair, there's there's this sort of um expectance that if you did well the first time, that you're gonna do well the second time. And so Dune, Dune Part 2, Avatar, Avatar 2, et cetera.

SPEAKER_02: 4:56

Yeah, but I will say that I think that that expectancy in and of itself is problematic and is faulty. Because if we really take a big uh if we if if we take a big snapshot of of how those you know uh original iterations and the subsequent iterations tend to do, they always tend to more often than not underperform from the first iteration. So even a film like we said that, yeah. Yeah, and we always said that. Even a film like Dune Part Two, which was uh really unanimously praised film, I think it has even a bigger Metacritic score than the first one, does.

SPEAKER_01: 5:29

I liked it more than the first one.

SPEAKER_02: 5:30

Right. Um, it was a huge hit. And people, I think, even you know, as we were uh winding down and people were doing their final predictions, it was being predicted for around you know eight, nine nominations, and it ended up with uh about half, half actually, of what the original film ended up with. And that's a that's a critically acclaimed uh part two anticipated that did well in a box office, exactly. Right. It's still it's it's what we always say diminishing returns is the the law of the land. Yeah, avatar as well. It did okay critically, not like the first one. Still got an eye for best picture, but lo and behold, diminishing returns.

SPEAKER_01: 6:06

Could have been nearly half again, from nine to four.

SPEAKER_02: 6:08

Exactly. So this idea that somehow Wicked was going to repeat the nominations as you know, that that the first one had was always, you know, I I always saw it like faulty. Yeah, it it's it it's like you're not taking a a fair assessment of how sequels tend to do, at least in the modern age, in these um in the academy awards.

SPEAKER_01: 6:28

In the academy, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 6:29

Right?

SPEAKER_01: 6:29

Yeah, I I completely agree. And then what I would also say to that is um, especially if you look at something like Dune last year, diminishing returns often has nothing to do with the actual quality. There was nothing wrong with the costumes of Dune Part 2 or the makeup. It's just very much the Academy feeling, been there, done that. Yeah, we just did that. I want to do something new, right?

SPEAKER_02: 6:54

But I'll also say that you know, this idea of you know, uh sequels, continuations, um it's a tricky line because in a film like Avatar, for example, they're all separate films, they're continuations, but they're not sequels. By that I mean they're not one film split into three ways. You know, when you start getting into terrain of a studio really trying to push a product, a product and really trying to, you know, squeeze out as much juice as possible, a la Dune, which split uh an original uh story into two, right? You know, you really run the risk of did you have to split this into two? You know, so you're sort of yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01: 7:37

So you're sort of talking about the idea of, for example, Dune is one text. Um and so the they decided to divide it into to be as loyal to the text as possible. Um, same thing with the Lord, the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, you have three different texts, Fellowship, Two Towers, Return of the King, right? When you look at the Hobbit, I think the Hobbit was, you know, sort of cut up in these ways where they really extended what was initially one work. And so I guess what you're talking about is some maybe studio malfeasance, right? Where they feel like, why would we make one last chapter of Harry Potter when we can make five? Yeah, I'm saying, yeah, that we'll do Deathly Hollows part one and Deathly Hollows part two, like what's it like uh Twilight, the the final installment of Twilight, the same thing, you know what I mean? Let's what if we can squeeze you know, opening weekend twice? Let's do it like twice so we can make double the money. That's what you're referring to, right?

SPEAKER_02: 8:36

So exactly, yeah. You know, Dune is one text split into two, you know, under the guise of we have to be as as as rigorously loyal to the text as possible. But really, why why would we do one Denis Villeneuve uh Dune project? Why don't we do it twice? Because not only will we have twice the box office profits, twice the acclaim, twice the Academy Award nominations. Well, you know, in that particular case, they you know, they had two of two of three um because they had uh good box office in both. Well, one of them was during the 2021 pandemic, you know, post-pandemic. So still solid for the time, right? Um, and certainly critical acclaim was high for both, but you still saw the diminishing returns in the Academy Awards. So when you get a film like Wicked and you divide it in what I guess seems, I mean, the you know, they're they're they're proclaiming that it's because you have to be, there's just not, there should, you know, just to be as as faithful as possible, we just cannot do one movie. I still remember that tweet by John M. Chew or that that uh official statement by John M. Chu saying, you know, we had to split them because that's the best for the project, because that's the only way we can be uh fiercely loyal to the project. And and you know, from the very beginning, that sounded unnecessary, it sounded protracted, it sounded sketchy, sketchy, it sounded, let's call it what it is, and we're gonna get into this topic as we keep talking about wicked, greedy. That's a big, big, big sounded greedy, and so you know, and also the fact that you know, when we're when we're talking about Dune, it takes a master filmmaker like Denis Villeneuve to make that work, you know, under the hands of a different filmmaker, maybe a filmmaker that's not as visionary as Denis Villeneuve, maybe we would have seen kind of what we've been seeing now with Wicked Part 2 happen with the Dune movies. It just so happens that at the helm we have Dene Villeneuve sort of you know guiding it.

SPEAKER_01: 10:34

Even though I will say that, like again, just to remind listeners, Wicked is one idea, it's it's one Broadway play. They didn't split the Broadway play into you know into multiple nights that you have to come in. You come in and you watch the show entirely, but you could argue that the Dune text is more sound because people who have seen the original Broadway play, of which I haven't, and I don't think you have either, right? Right, exactly. Some people do complain that in and of itself it's a difficult text to cut into two movies because the part that you left over for the second movie is not as sound as that.

SPEAKER_02: 11:13

Yeah, I mean, I think it's unanimous among even wicked loyalists and fans that part, you know, the the first act of the show is is much stronger than the second act.

SPEAKER_01: 11:23

And so Denevo New maybe has the foresight to say, well, that the the part of Dune that I'm leaving to tackle in the following film will be able to stand on its own two feet. And that was certainly, you know, so far a miscalculation in terms of the wicked for good team.

SPEAKER_02: 11:40

Right. So it worked out for Dune, but even when it did, there were still diminishing returns. Yeah. So I never bought this idea that somehow this wicked was going to repeat the noms or get close to the noms. That to me sounded, I mean, we'd have to be seeing like, you know, a masterpiece level kind of thing. Right. And let's be honest, you know, for as many fans as the first wicked had, it had a lot of criticism, had a lot of uh judgment from top critics as well. You know, it was not regarded as one of the top three best films of the year by critics at large, you know, top 10 list and whatnot. Right. It did really well at the Academy Awards, and it certainly had a huge box office moment, huge uh fanfare, huge pop culture moment. All that is true, but we're not talking about something that to begin with was, you know, critically a hundred percent sound. We're talking 80s and 90s on Metacritic and Raw and Tomatoes. I mean, Metacritic, Raw and Tomatoes is a different thing. Um, so in an we're the foundation already was, you know, good, surprising, but not perfect. Right. Right?

SPEAKER_03: 12:42

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 12:42

And so when you start when we're gonna split this movie into two, and the second act is destined to be much weaker, um, just based on the source material. And then this happens, where the film underperforms critically, it's a 68 as we speak on Ron Tomatoes. The first one I think is like 90 something on Raw and Tomatoes. Um, and again, that's Raw and Tomatoes, which you know allows for a lot of reviews, uh, an aggregate of reviews from not just top critics, but just you know, anybody who you know is uh an approved critic by Ron Tomato stands. You know, uh well, well, well regarded uh critics from high publications.

SPEAKER_03: 13:32

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 13:32

Um on there, it's a 58. Right, you know, and the first one was a surprising, I think 73, which is a pretty good score.

SPEAKER_01: 13:40

Yeah, which I don't think anyone expected.

SPEAKER_02: 13:42

Right. So we're talking about big drops here. Um nowhere near, you know, catastrophe level, you know, it's critically maligned. You can't say that, but we can certainly say it's uh critically disappointing it could it disappointed critically, right? Without a doubt. Um, obviously it made a bunch of money, that was to be expected. So on that it did well, yeah. Yeah, I guess on that level, we can say that for Universal, they kind of got part of what they wanted. Yeah, you know, because this strategy ended up working for them. Yeah, because the second one is even bigger than the first one um off the heels of the big success that was the first one. So in that sense, I think Universal is happy. I mean can we say?

SPEAKER_01: 14:23

I think I would agree with you, they are happy. It's certainly so far a critical loss, it's a monetary gain for them. But I would also go further and say that, you know, very few, if any, fans of Wicked, you know, the sort of show and the the property, the artistic property, the creative property, very few of the fans, not the critics, very few of the fans are gonna take part two over part one.

SPEAKER_03: 14:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 14:48

You know, so in that sense, it's yet a kind of a a little bit of a loss as well, right? For Universal. Um, not just critics, but you know, fans, fans are not necessarily um as disappointed as critics are. Um, and I'm sure that there are some that are happy, but I do think that from what I've discussed with people who have seen both films, I do think pretty unanimously it just is not as good.

SPEAKER_02: 15:12

It's a step down, it's a step down, even for people who quite like it.

SPEAKER_01: 15:17

And and some people again do you know credit that to the idea that the second part was always much weaker on on like in a story sense. Right. But nonetheless, you didn't have to split it into two movies, right?

SPEAKER_02: 15:30

And and I think that universal, at least on a critical level, and I think you and I are gonna be so bold as to say on an awards level as well, when it comes to the Academy Awards, I think they're going to sort of reap what they sow with the sort of kind of greedy approach that they had.

SPEAKER_04: 15:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 15:47

Um, I think the film will absolutely get much less nominations than the first did. I think we've seen the film and we're gonna talk a little a little bit about our opinion and also about its awards prospect, but I'll just say to begin off the top, um, I expect it to get much less nominations. I expect it to not be nominated for best picture. Um, it it is not gonna make any gains in director or screenplay, which it missed last time. And uh you and I feel very adamant that Cynthia Rivo and Ariana Grande will miss and not be nominated for acting. So I think the film will be absent above the line. I think we're looking at below the line. And I think I'm even being a little bit more skittish about how much below the line. So take I would take it out of editing, which it got last year. I would take it out of score, which made a surprising nomination there. And I'm seeing right now where I feel comfortable, I'm seeing uh production design, cost design, and makeup and hairstyling, and possibly an original song, the one that everyone is claiming is probably the best option for them, which is girl in the bubble. Right. And I'm seeing those four nominations where what it can comfortably count on. And I'm not seeing right now the the pieces falling in such a way where the film can count on more than that. In fact, I think there's a reality where it's it has a shocking miss either in song or has a shocking miss in makeup or production design, a la the shocking misses of Doom Part 2, which had no reason to miss costume, it had no reason to miss um makeup and hairstyling, and it still missed those nominations.

SPEAKER_01: 17:22

I mean, suffice it to say that everything that a lot of established um pundits were saying three weeks out has totally sort of collapsed below them, right? That the floor has fallen through on those theories, in my opinion. And we've always had that idea that diminishing returns is the pattern within the academy, and so there's no surprise there. But I do think after seeing the film and you know having an awards profile on it, I do agree with you. Um, we're at a point where the film has to campaign really well to hold on to the handful of nominations that it can still hold on to. And I certainly think that, you know, it be it, you know, the where it stands right now, it's gonna be very difficult for it to go above the line. I think, you know, nothing is impossible but the board shrinks. Um, but I can't see I you know, I cannot see it going above the line um even with making a lot of money. I think it's gonna be interesting. We'll I I think we'll allude to this as we uh discuss it, but so much of the fate of this movie will fall into the hands of what happens mid-December with Avatar. So much of it will be at stake with the release that they with the release that Disney has for that film and how well or poorly it does in comparison to this one. Um because I do think that no matter what, we need a big, massive Hollywood film that you know half of the industry was invested in. Um and so right now, on paper, sight unseen, Avatar looks like the better bet, even if for seven months of the year it looked like Wicked was the better bet. Um, I do think you know the floor has fallen through a little bit in that theory. And just if Avatar can manage to match way of water or exceed way of water in terms of money, in terms of critics, in terms of general audience appeal, it is certainly going to be in a stronger position. Um so yeah, I mean I I I I agree with you, but I think that people aren't being people are still in that, you know, sort of the honeymoon phase of okay, well, it disappointed. But you know, we can still count on it, you know, to get text and maybe best picture or text and maybe acting. And I'm I'm trying to be a little stricter and saying this is purely a tech movie, and I'm not trying to be um, you know, overly aggressive when I say that you have to campaign really well to keep these texts because you you said like a score nomination is difficult to come for for any musical, right? And the fact that it got one last year speaks volumes to how successful they campaigned and how successful that film was and how appealing it was to voters and to general audiences, right? That's off the table, in my opinion. Right, and there are opportunities here to reap a nomination, but they're not secure. Some people have knocked the production design, people are knocking the makeup, the makeup, yeah. Um, people are knocking the visual effects, and so these are not givens anymore. And so to have a musical last year score nominations and original score in visual effects, all those were massive things. Um, and I I'm not as confident that it'll be able to repeat even those things. If if you get a couple of if Anne Lee comes out in December and all of a sudden it finds an audience, this movie's gonna have problems, you know, getting some of those categories that you would think are are done deals.

SPEAKER_02: 20:57

Right. I mean, I wish we lived in a universe where a film like Anne Lee could have the fanfare and the you know the sort of cultural pop pop pop culture movement that you know wicked undoubtedly has. I think you know, but because I think it's one of the best films of the year, we've talked about it.

SPEAKER_01: 21:12

And I I think and I and I enjoy the film, yeah. I enjoy the film just fine and I really admire it. And I'm not saying that it will have that fanfare, but God forbid if it does, right, the nominations are gonna drop even more.

SPEAKER_02: 21:23

Right. But here here here's uh something that me may I I thought about when you were speaking was, you know, again, if we take stock of the Academy history, there aren't many sequels that get nominated for Best Picture to begin with. But now if I have to nitpick and look at films that were, let's just say 58 on Metacritic, sequels that are 58, let's take the sequel part out of it. Films that are 58 on Metacritic, that's a low that that that's a that's a low number of films that can get in with such a low Metacritic score, you know. So what comes to mind is certainly don't look up, which is not a sequel. Oh wow, and and it is it is a poorly received film that's it's in it's in the yellows and Metacritic, okay. Um, but it's a director that they clearly like, um, who's been nominated for best director before and who's been nominated for for for writing as well. Who's a winner?

SPEAKER_01: 22:14

Winner, also right.

SPEAKER_02: 22:15

He's a winner. So he's he he is able to get his and Netflix behind it, is able to get that film into um into the top 10. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 22:23

Uh which I mean, yet also he also has Netflix, Merrill, right, Leo, of course, yeah, Jennifer Lawrence, and quote unquote importance.

SPEAKER_02: 22:31

Right. Right. Um, but my point with that is that if we even just looking at a 58 on Metacritic, the number of films that get into Best Picture with a 58 on Metacritic, uh, it's a very low number. Um, now add to that that it's a sequel. You know, I think that is something that not enough people are paying attention to, at least people who still think that it has a shot at best picture. Now, I agree with you the kind of tumultuous year that it is. I'm not sure that I see a list that excludes both um uh a huge financial moment for Wicked and a huge financial moment possibly for Avatar to be excluded from the best picture list. Right. You know, but in a way, I wonder if Avatar also is in the 50s. Let's just say worst case scenario, it's in the 50s, right? Let's just say, I don't know, I'm not sure that I would picture voters saying, Well, you know what? I have to nominate one of these 50s. Number one, because you know, James uh wicked is not James Cameron, and number two, James Cameron has already been here for this project twice in best picture. So I'm not really sure that I so I think he's gonna keep making them exactly. So I think in a way, I think that even if Avatar doesn't end up being, you know, better than Wicked, and let's just say worst case, it's as good as Wicked, you know, in the 60s on Metacritic and in the 50s and I mean in the 50s on Metacritic and the 60s on Ron Tomatoes, I still not sure that they wouldn't rather welcome a different film that they consider this is a better film. And so I want to highlight it in Best Picture, even if it's not a huge box off success.

SPEAKER_01: 24:04

I understand that point of view, but I will nitpick at it and nitpick at it a little bit in the sense that there are branches within the academy that have very little creative stake in a film, whether it's publicists, executives, marketing um individuals, they also get a vote. And so as long as they get a vote, it's very difficult for me to think that you're not gonna have some substantial financial successes get into that best picture of the academy. It's still a business, and they need to sell eyeballs on the screen the same way that movie theaters need to sell butts and seats. And so if you have a lineup that includes sorry baby, then the a lot of people are gonna feel like we failed to do the job that we're supposed to do. I'm not me, I will celebrate that nomination. Um, but that being the case, could I see Avatar being similarly 55 and missing? I could, but then I would argue the spot opens up for F1 to get in.

SPEAKER_00: 24:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 24:59

The spot opens up for weapons to get in. We already have sinners, which is great, right? And that's what they want. They want original films that speak to massive amounts of audience that sort of are emblematic for what happens when you have creativity operating at its peak, audiences will listen.

SPEAKER_03: 25:18

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 25:19

And everyone wins there, you know? Um, and so we already have sinners, which is great. Um, unfortunately, Frankenstein was a streaming movie, so that's not the best case scenario. But if if the case happens where both Avatar and Wicked are just too critically critically maligned or critically marginal to get in, I would expect a comeback for F1 or Weapons or other big movies like that.

SPEAKER_02: 25:43

Right, right. No, that makes sense. And so starting to get starting to talk a little bit. Well, so that pissed me off. Like it pissed me off to get, you know, I guess I'm not gonna name names, I'll just name publications and little, you know, presences on Twitter, you know, already getting their first peak and saying, Oh, that's it, guys. It's over, it's gonna get this and this and this and this and this. And then it comes out and you give me a 58 on minute credit. That's not a good strategy. That really bothers me. Like, you know, what is this? Either, either these people that are being welcomed to screen it, you know, have their first eyeballs on it, are lying to you, they're lying to your face, right? Or they're just not good. They're not good at detecting, you know, what's good quality or not. Because, for example, like, you know, and I don't need to be again uh impolite, but if you had asked me, you know, come and see this second wicked, and I again I'm not a fan of the first one, um, and I saw the second one, I don't think I could have come out of that screening saying, Oh wow, oh wow, get ready. You know, because to me it's so blatantly obvious that this film is a step down from the first one. And again, you're talking to someone that that doesn't like the first one that much. Um But the you know, the the the step down in quality is is undisputable.

SPEAKER_01: 26:52

I I uh absolutely agree, but I will say that having had the experience of watching the first one, uh I'm not saying it's a perfect movie, but I will say it's an enjoyable movie. And I will say that there are a lot of things that it gets right, and I will say that part of I suppose the job is being able to read the film on screen and then read the room. And when you're one of the select few to watch it at a very exclusive screening, maybe it gets difficult to read the room. You know, sometimes the same thing happens at a festival when you watch a festival and it's a an amazing film and you're watching it there with the audience for the first time and everyone's going crazy for it, and then months pass and it just doesn't resonate with the rest of the general movie going public. That happens, and so maybe you can't read the room, but part of your job is also to read the movie, and so if you read the movie, I don't think there's any way that you can read the movie of Wicked for Good and say they got a they got the same amount of things right, they executed at the same level. That that just is, I think, um factually wrong, right?

SPEAKER_02: 28:03

Right. And jumping off of that, I will say, like I said, I wasn't crazy about the first one. I find a lot of problems with it. I'll just say, um, you know, I did find that it was bloated. I questioned why we had to split it. The film kind of functions in a weird way. I think I think David Ehrlich said that at some point it feels like it's a film about you know finding your broom or something like that to that effect. And it's this idea that, you know, because the film was split into two narratively, it doesn't feel as sound. Um, it kind of feels it kind of feels a film that's really focused on friends to enemies, yes, frenemies kind of thing. I thought there was a sort of juvenile aspect to that. Yes, that sure can be, you know, charming enough or you know, silly enough. Uh uh uh it's a popcorn confection, you know, that you know you can just watch, I guess, and and it's not really it's just you know, you can you can watch it and it's right. Um, but it's it's not I didn't fight personally find it very profound or very dimensional. Um, but I understood why people liked it. Right. You know, it certainly ends on a high note, you know, Define Gravity is a jam. Yeah, you know, um, and and everyone agrees it's the jam of that of that show. Um you know, and so I I certainly had problems with you know some of the text, and you know, some of I just I certainly didn't think it's a film that needed to get an eye for 10 Academy Award nominations, but at least I understood, you know, uh the the fanfare of it all. Right. Um jumping off from there into this one, I still thought that it was a film that was very bloated. Um, I thought it was patchy, I thought it was messy. Worst of all, I thought that it was boring. You know, to me, the film was uh tedious, very tedious. Um, and and and and weirdly enough, also felt rushed. People have have been talking about that in the sense that you know they had to get through a lot of things, it seems. I told you something like that at the end.

SPEAKER_01: 29:52

I said, like, so we went from a movie that's like two hours and forty to a movie that's only two hours and twenty, and this feels like a three hour. 20 movie where like a lot of things supposedly happened and emotionally nothing happened.

SPEAKER_02: 30:06

Right, right. Exactly. And you know, there's underdeveloped character arcs, you know, uh um the character Nessa, you know, comes through this arc that's kind of you know feels really, really rushed. And the same can be said about almost all the characters, Tin Man. Um, you know, yeah. There wasn't certainly an improvement on the visuals side. You know, people had a lot of criticism about the the visuals. Um, so but I I would say that for me, I actually thought that maybe I don't know, maybe it's because we're we're dealing with a little bit more darker themes, but for some reason to me it it looked even more stale than the first one. Maybe it's just that dramatically it felt a little bit inert, like visually a little more stale, or just like that there was a lot of like CGI slop, you know, in in in key moments or just throughout that I thought weren't adding anything to those moments. Um again, I think that you can see this film and say that this split was justified or that the split was anything other than you know, uh this gamble to make as much money as possible, right? Um, which I think really dilutes the entirety of the thing, you know, because it's it just feels so obvious.

SPEAKER_01: 31:14

I mean, I will say that I I agree with the majority of what you're saying, but it's also kind of sad. Like, I watched the first one, and to me, it's good popcorn. It's a good popcorn. I don't think it's you know the one of the best pictures of the year, but good popcorn and and good popcorn gets nominated for for all kinds of Oscars. You know, I'm not a fan at all of Top Gun Maverick. I mean, Tom Cruise, he could have we had to do an hour and a half just for Tom Cruise to be able to save the day. He couldn't save it like 20 minutes into the movie. I don't understand it, but whatever, good popcorn gets nominated, and you know, aerial sequences, beautiful. You know, you can't come out of Wicked Part One and not try to belt out the song on your way to the car. Like you have to do that because the song is that good. Yeah, and uh Cynthia's performance of the song is that good. Yeah, yeah. Um, and undoubtedly it's more successful in what it does, and it's also more surprising because the bar has already been kind of it's kind of low, and so it does surprise you. Um, there's I think there's more joy in it. Um, and I think I remember it telling you, like, yeah, because we had read the the whole, it's about a you know, a witch who finally gets her broom, whatever. I kind of told you that like the movie's over, like, I don't need to see a part two. She got the broom, I'm happy. The song was great, the cape multiplied into 10 times the size that when it was on the ground. I guess whatever it makes sense in the movie, I guess. Um, but I didn't need a part two, and so that's one of the saddest things about it. I agree with so many of your criticisms. I felt the same way. It's rushed, it's slapdash. It I kind of told you, like, it feels like an outline that was filmed in outlined form, and this very quickly, we got to get to the next moment in the outline. We got to get to the next moment with very little connective tissue between moments, between characters. Um, it's also like very isolated, like the story has spread out in such a way where we're putting one or two characters together. Some characters are completely alone. Um, but again, there's no actual connection between them. So, like, whatever's going on between Ariana Grande and Michelle Yao and Jeff Goldblum, there's no emotional connection there. Whatever's going on between um Nessa and um the the other character who's gonna end up exit Tin Man. You know, they're gonna there's very little emotional connection there for me. Whatever's going on between Tin Man and Ariana Grande is very little emotional connection. Um, and so it's also like really sad because they did so much work to make the first one function and be memorable and be a good popcorn film that this second one undoes so much of that. And you talk about greed. I think that's a major theme here because I can only imagine you know uh it being a stronger project had they been fused together, yeah, and had made, you know, maybe uh maybe fine a reasonably three hours fifteen movie and and had been a little bit more um discerning and a little bit more structured. I think you could have made a film that had been exciting enough. Like you would have had three quarters of a film that was great, and then you got to finish a story quickly enough in the last quarter. Um and people are gonna forgive that because the first three quarters are really entertaining, right? Um, and so like it's really disappointing and kind of you know sad because you could have seen the entire version of Wicked giving a Nora a run for its money because it could have made good money, possibly still had really good critics or strong enough critics. Um, and it could have just been again appealing enough, you know, in a sort of crash way, which again I like crash, but people knock it for all the problems that has, but it can still win, right? Right. Um, and so I don't doubt that that might have happened. Same thing with Dune. Like, had you fused those two movies together, you would have given Coda and Power of the Dog a run for their money. Um, but that greed sort of bit you in the butt at the end.

SPEAKER_02: 35:19

Right. I I I I hear what you're saying. I don't I don't know that I personally agree that even if they had made one wicked, it would have, you know, one best picture, just because I think best picture now has to be the win has to mean something I think more profound than I think the slight political allegory that's going on in Wicked Mind. But I certainly think that it would have gotten as many nominations as it did, or maybe even more. And certain categories, maybe some of the acting categories, maybe some of the other tech categories, I think would have been in stronger contention to win those categories. I 100% agree with you. So what they're left with now is, you know, um uh just a shell of what could have been, as you were saying, if they had uh had the guts and the confidence and the well, not greed to make one piece. Right. You know, um, I think every all parties involved, I think, would have been happy with that. I think. Um, certainly on awards, on an awards perspective. Yeah. Um, but so I'll also say that you know, the songs aren't as memorable here as in the first one, but I don't really give it flack for that. You know, I you know, I I can understand that the first show has the more memorable songs, that's fine.

SPEAKER_01: 36:28

Um I can't remember one tune out of this one. I can't. I mean, I remember one, but I kind of told you like it's the most damning part of the film. Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_02: 36:39

Well, of course, the right, we'll talk about that right now. Um, they added a few songs. I didn't think necessarily that those songs were, you know, incredible songs to add. I think they added just more to the package, um, which just gives more credence to this idea that you're just trying to fluff it out to make an entire film of a part two that doesn't need to be an entire film. Um, so certainly the Cynthia Rival song I thought was not good. Um, and the way it was staged was terrible. That's below her. Uh, and then the Ariana Grande song, uh Girl in the Bubble, I thought was just okay. Um, the better of the two. The better of the two, certainly, but you know, nowhere near, you know, I guess the memorable song she had and popular.

SPEAKER_01: 37:22

And they kind of had like, again, with like the popular number, like whenever they sort of film Ariana Grande, they sometimes have like a better concept for how to do it because the way they staged Girl of the Bubble is so much better than the way they staged Cynthia Rival's song. And it's kind of like what the hell would you give her a song for?

SPEAKER_02: 37:39

And I think that's something I'm gonna come back to because I I really want us to talk about it. Um, but I also wanted to talk about well, let's just get into like some of the specific stuff. Uh, you know, hopefully we're not spoiling for anybody, and if we are, just fast forward some of these moments. But I think they're worth mentioning, you know, some of the decisions that the film made, you know, certainly all of the Dorothy stuff, all of the Wizard of Oz stuff is really uh, I thought, sloppily done. Um it was terrible. It was it was bad, man. Some all almost all of the Wizard of Oz stuff is bad. Yeah. Um, not not okay, not so bad.

SPEAKER_01: 38:16

And I think it's because I think they're trying to stay true to the Broadway musical and the way they handled it there, but they should have taken advantage that they were a film, exactly, and that the and then the property has such a stronger film legacy and really played around with it.

SPEAKER_02: 38:32

And I want to and I want to talk a little bit about that and and uh at the risk of spoiling some stuff, so just some spoiler. This is a spoiler selection. But that moment at the end, we talked about it. You know, when the film decides to focus on Ariana Grande, and again, I'm gonna go back to that because I want to speak more on that. When the film decides to focus on Ariana Grande looking through uh a sliver of the door to see the final action moment between Dorothy and Cynthia Revo's character, you know, the witch melting, all that stuff. You know, I didn't like that. That sucked. I thought it was I thought it was really poor. Yeah, but you had said something very interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 39:08

I kind of said after I saw the film that it was really disappointing because there's one moment in the film that is so damning, right? So damning to everything in it, and that is um, well, aside from someone who enjoyed, you know, the reimagining of Wizard of Oz in Wicked One, I'm not familiar with the play at all, right, right, with the musical at all. Right. And so just you know, getting back into the the world of Oz and seeing the reinterpretation, that's really that's sort of, you know, it got my creative juices flowing and piqued my interest. Um, you kind of throw that away with everything they do with Dorothy and some of the original characters here, um, and they're just sort of referenced and awkwardly integrated and whatever. But there is one absolutely damning moment in this movie, and I say this as a person who again enjoyed the good popcorn and has no stake whatsoever in the in the musical or the Broadway property. But the only moment in the movie that that I think ever comes close to working is the moment where Cynthia Revo and Ariana Grande are singing together. Right. And they're sharing the same space, they're sharing the same emotional space, and they're bringing out of each other the best that their performances can give. And it's such a damning moment for the movie because it's at that moment that you realize how poor this movie is compared to the first one. Right. You realize that the film is aware that that is its strength, right? That that's sort of where the magic of the entire thing lies is that one musical moment they share towards that ending scene of the one you're referring to. And yet it's nowhere in the second movie but in that one scene. And so, like, there's nothing worse than experiencing a movie where you have just a tiny little bit of hope and a tiny little bit of magic to remind you how unspectacular the rest of it is. Right, right. And so to me, it is you know the best part of the movie, but it's also the part of the movie that just reminds you of how disappointed you are with the rest of the movie.

SPEAKER_02: 41:29

Right. And of course, you're talking about when they sing for good, which is undoubtedly the most memorable song of the beat. Right, right. And it's a very moving piece, and it's it's it's sung very beautifully by both of them. Um, but yeah, you're 100% right, you know. And I think uh this made me think of something right now, which is that, you know, one of my biggest criticisms for this film is that to me, even though it's a continuation, it's a part two of a one show, a Broadway show, it feels so much like a sequel. I know. It feels like uh, okay, we were done with the okay, we're we did the original film, but now the fans are clamoring for more. So let's let's see what we can do to make this like a new movie. Let's put some of this in here and some of that in here, and let's do some of this, and let's give them some of this. And so then we're gonna make the sequel, and then you watch the sequel, and it's just you know, uh a huge step down from the original, and it's nothing compared to the original, and it just had that energy about it, and this energy of like this big sequel energy, yeah, you know, which is not what you want from a part two continuation of a Broadway show, right? But you felt that way too, right?

SPEAKER_01: 42:34

Yeah, I I did feel that way, and you know, also just some of the story development was sort of like we're going back, we're going backward when supposedly some things were solved. Like, I remember and I told you, like, I don't understand Alphabet's energy in this film at all. Like to me, from the first frame, she reads as defeated, you know what I mean, and sort of like drawn in. And she was just like soaring in the last one. And I expect her to come in here and just like be a boss and be so combative and and sort of like make me think that you know, the wicked witch of the west or whatever, she's not uh she's not evil, she's just passionate and she understands what the right thing to do is, she's committed to doing the right thing, right? But every time that she's in this movie, it almost feels like uh she's again like she just defeated and she's like deflated. Right. And so, where did all of that you know, confidence and power go to that we ended on in the first film? You know what I mean? So to me, there's this whole energy of the film where like we're going backward in this, we're going in a backward energy to where we came from, you know what I mean? Where she was sort of cowering in the beginning of the film um of Wicked One, to you get that that that climactic moment, and now we're back in that same energy. It's not her building off of that power, you know. It's it's oh well, in order to make this movie work, we have to get her back right back to get it, we have to get her back into sort of an emotional box, right?

SPEAKER_02: 44:10

Right, exactly. But uh back to what you were saying, uh you know, after that for good uh musical sequence, we have the ending where Ariana Grande is looking through uh a sliver door and you're seeing the shadows of the destruction of the witch, yeah. Which is probably is it's you think it's similar to the way it was done on the Broadway show? I don't know your criticism. I think it is because your criticism was well, you have a film here. Why would you not take the advantage and use all the tools at your disposal to show a cinematic moment of that nature?

SPEAKER_01: 44:41

Not just that, but also like we're revising, we're revisionists, right? You know, X amount of years have happened. We're gonna go ahead and revise history, and that's exciting and that's interesting. And Quentin Tarantino killed Hitler in Inglorious Bastards. You can revise it, you don't have to like say, well, Hitler never died. You know, Quentin Tarantino just wakes up one night and writes down, and he just dies, you know, and it's a brilliant moment, right? That's why we make movies, right? Right, right. So I just feel like we have this text that's revising Wizard of Oz and revising the original um literary property, which again I'm not too familiar with, but I know I've I've read parts of the Wizard of Oz text that the th the original 39 film is based on, but we didn't make the commitment of making the death scene different or changing it altogether. You could have had the Wicked Witch kill Dorothy for all if you really wanted to. So to me, it was not just was it staged poorly and staged as if it was in a theater as opposed to a cinema, but it also didn't have the again combatic anarchistic spirit of cinema that sort of said, you know, I'm going to make it my own. The same way that that cape, it doesn't make sense for the cape at the end of the film in part one to grow ten times as big as it was on the ground. Like it doesn't make sense what kind of cape that is, but you know, screw the rules, you know what I mean? And so that that was incredibly frustrating, right?

SPEAKER_02: 46:10

And that scene that I mentioned is very interesting and frustrating for me because I think it epitomizes something that I've had a problem with throughout this entire wicked journey, which is okay, this is a moment where a very, you know, uh climactic thing is happening, but the focus is on Glenda and Glenda's emotional response. And I guess I can understand the creative interest in okay, you know, why don't we do something different? Possibly. I don't know again if that's how it's done on the Broadway show, but it brings to question or brings to the forefront a bigger issue that I have with this movie, which is that to me watching it, and I don't know how many people feel like I do, as I know we certainly share that opinion, but watching it, it feels like this film was sometimes prioritizing Glinda and her uh and her character and her journey more than it was prioritizing Alphabus.

SPEAKER_04: 47:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 47:12

And it feels like the original DNA of this project is Alphabet's story. It's not necessarily the Glinda story, it's the Alphabet story, and Glinda is a part of that story. And I get that. But in the first one, to you, to you and to and to me, it felt like a lot of subliminally, it felt like a lot of the movie was shooting for Ariana Grande's character, you know, uh, and and prioritizing her. Again, it was subtle, it was subliminal, but it felt like you know, that character was being prioritized visually, cinematically, thematically, more than more than Cynthia Revel's character was. Right. And that didn't that didn't sit well with me, not only because the film already made a very uh interesting and and profound choice in casting uh, you know, uh a black actress uh of Cynthia Reeves' stature to play Alphaba. And I think, you know, um I think that was intentional and I thought it was uh effective. Um but also because you're you're you're undercutting what the story is, which is Alphaba, Alphaba's story, not Glinda. And so that becomes times 10 in this part too. Yeah, I think it's no longer subliminal, right? Now it's full-fledged obvious.

SPEAKER_01: 48:35

That's what I was exactly going to say was that we had talked about that idea that in part one, you know, there John M. Choo the success of Ariana Garner's performance is just as much good casting as John M. Choo is doing everything he can to sort of shoot around her and edit around her and make her look as good as she is in that film. And uh to a certain degree, in doing that, you can sort of see that there's a little bit more work done to to give uh Glinda's character that stage than Alphabet's. But Alpha at the same time, as a character, she's you know, she doesn't want to be noticed, you know. She wants to be undetected, and so at a certain she's you know just sneaking around and sort of you know in an in a corner until she completely possesses the movie, right? But again, John M Choo knows how to frame that to sort of keep her sort of you know trying to, you know, be in the shadows a little bit until she again she takes complete dominion of the film, and so he stages her perfectly. And Cynthia Reval is is has such a caliber, uh, a caliber of of performance that she's able to sort of like rip the movie away with just a look, with just a gesture, with just um a little bit of movement. And the problem is that in this film, you we we had discussed it, it's no longer subliminal. Like the actual narrative of Alphaba has been given feels like the backseat to the narrative of Glinda. And I think the moment that you were talking about the sliver in the door cements that, and I think it's actually to the detriment of the movie, and I don't think that it helps that in this movie, in this movie, John M. Chew had no idea how to frame Cynthia Revil. Because, like I said, from frame one, she's not the same character that left Wicked One, you know what I mean? So I don't think he did any good framing for her whatsoever, or any good positioning her in the film whatsoever. Um, but then also there's this awkward, there's this awkwardness because you would think as a revisionist text that it's gonna focus more on Alphaba. And so Wicked One starts with Glinda coming down in the bubble, right? And everyone saying, singing the song about, you know, um no one mourns the wicked, right? And you you could think that, you know, Glinda is the movie, but don't Alphaba really takes possession of it. Here, it doesn't feel like Alphaba ever really takes possession of it. It feels like it's kind of Glinda's story, and and Glinda even becomes the more active character after that sliver scene. Right. And I thought, as I told you, like the amount of suspension of disbelief you have to have in this movie for all of a sudden, you know, that that to snap her into being the more active character, um, is is just again, it was too much for me to believe, and I didn't think it was credible. Um, but so that's it, it becomes really awkward and and it to a point where I think people have even talked about how much screen time each of them has, and they were pretty close in that first movie. And I think in this one, they have to be dead even or possibly, or possibly uh Grande has a little bit more. Grande may surpass uh Cynthia Evil by a little bit, but sort of like they had that co-lead energy in part one. I don't think there's any question, at least not to me, that they're kind of co-leads in this movie, right? You know, um, and that there are just huge chunks of this movie where I want to see Cynthia Evil that I did not get a chance to see.

SPEAKER_02: 52:06

Right. But like I said, like the reason that for all the reasons you just stated, you know, that was very frustrating for me because I don't know if I I don't know if we were alone in thinking that, but also it made me feel like universal understood. We have this very talented musician in this part, you know, I want this to be a big selling point, right? You know, as opposed to Cynthia Revo, who's a very talented actor, right, um, and a very incredible vocalist, right? You know, sort of like, oh, she's not gonna put the butts in seats. Right. You know, the butts and seats is gonna come from the megastar, right? Franchise. And in this particular case, the megastar is the pop star, right? You know, Ariana Grande. And so, you know, in a way, I didn't feel like any of these two films, and certainly not the second one, could escape that feeling from me, that nudging feeling that, you know, this was more of a priority than necessarily Alphabet's story or Cynthia Reeves's character or Cynthia Revel's performance as Alphaba. Something about this experience watching these two movies that nudged at me, that bothered me. Like I said, I think in the first one, she's so uh Cynthia Revel is so uh uh powerful in you know her her vocals and her her her acting that she's able to sort of transcend that, overcome that. And here this just you know, you you just can't because the material is just not there, it's non-existent. Um, but that I haven't seen enough people talk about that, but that's certainly something that bothered me. You know, I don't know, and I think we feel similarly.

SPEAKER_01: 53:43

No, I I definitely feel that way, and I think again, it's to a huge detriment of the movie. I will say again, I'm not familiar with the Broadway property, but I will know as someone who was not familiar with the Broadway property, um to have Cynthia Revo's point of view towards the end of that movie, right? Um, to have so much of it come from Glinda's point of view was really frustrating. Um, and again, it just to me, it it sort of silences the most interesting aspect of the movie, right? Um, because I think undoubtedly, if we're gonna make a movie or a project like Wicked that tries to revise the theory of something, I think the biggest revision is Alphabas, right? Right. We've even given her a name, right? I don't think she was ever called Alphaba in The Wizard of Oz. Right. But Glinda the Good was always Glinda the Good. Right. You know what I mean? So that's something that was incredibly I I incredibly disappointing and detrimental.

SPEAKER_02: 54:39

But I think you you bring up a really good word when you say revisionist, but because again, as someone who's not very familiar with the Broadway show, the fit the the the piece itself feels like it's a revisionist story on what you would what you thought was the wizard of oz. This world that you think you know is black and white, this witch is evil, but really no, it's the opposite of what you think. It's much more deep, it's much more profound, it's much more dimensional than you would think. Um, I think that is in a nuts in a nutshell, you know, what the store, the story of Wicked is supposed to be, you know, the right? What it's trying to be. Exactly. So it's you know, it's something that always bothered me, and I didn't hear enough people talking about it, but I I don't know if I was the if we're the only ones who felt that way.

SPEAKER_01: 55:23

I I definitely felt that way, and I'm sure I mean I haven't spoken to anyone, but again, there are people who are familiar with the original project. But I I think that if you're familiar with the Broadway show, and what you're sort of telling me is that there's this whole symbiosis going on between them, and that you know, having uh Alphabet's perspective sort of disappear at the end is okay because it's sort of living through this new perspective that Glinda has. The film didn't the film didn't give that to me, I just did not get that from the film, right? Right. Um, and again, I I I think part of it is that John M. Chew unfortunately was not assertive enough in revising the Broadway property. Um, and that again, he just didn't frame, I don't think he ever framed Alphabet well throughout the second part.

SPEAKER_02: 56:08

Right, 100%. And so um jumping off of there, you know, when we look at awards prospects, we've talked a lot about picture, and I certainly think that with this weaker second iteration, you know, if it couldn't manage a best director or a best screenplay nomination, which in and of itself, for example, a best screenplay nomination for a musical is incredibly difficult, even though I mean the Perez was able to do it last year. That's very rare. It's very, very rare. Yeah. Um, so uh if it couldn't do it for for part one, it's not doing it for part two. Right. So take out director and take out screenplay as well.

SPEAKER_01: 56:42

We will not add those.

SPEAKER_02: 56:43

Right. And so then we're looking at two very interesting uh categories that people have talked a lot about. And I think you and I have a lot of thoughts about, and that's best actress and best supporting actress, which again in this case seems a little weird because Ariana Grande is not a supporting actor, yes. Um uh at the very least, a co-lead. But you know, we'll we'll we'll get we'll we'll we'll touch more upon that.

SPEAKER_01: 57:05

You could run them, you could run them both lead. And I don't think anyone's gonna really complain. I think that, you know, the running time speaks for itself.

SPEAKER_02: 57:13

Right. And so we look at actress, okay. The important thing to remember about Best Actress is that Cynthia Revo is already a three-time Academy Award nominee, and two of those nominations are for acting, one of them is for her contributions to an original song for Harriet. This would be her third nomination. Um, all of her nominations have been in the lead actress category. Uh 2019, Harriet, in uh last year, 2024, for Wicked, and that would be for Wicked Part Two. Number one, it's very, very, very difficult, very rare for an actor uh to have three back-to-back um nominations in the lead category.

SPEAKER_01: 57:57

Um a nomination supporting actors.

SPEAKER_02: 58:02

Like there's no category shift.

SPEAKER_01: 58:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 58:04

And for them to have uh those, for example, three lead acting nominations and never win for any of those first three acting nominations.

SPEAKER_01: 58:14

Right. And it's I mean, to be fair, it's not impossible. It's not impossible. Like, for example, we've talked about it, like um Carrie Mulligan was able to do it. Right, right, right. Right. Um, when she went from an education to promising woman and maestro. Maestro, I think the more damning thing here, right, is time. Right. Right. Because how much time passes between Mulligan's nomination for an education and Mulligan's nomination for promising young woman. Right. You know what I mean? Exactly. Exactly. And so the idea I think that's more more problematic for Cynthia is is not just is it rare for an actor to go three times into a best actress nomination without a nomination supporting. You look at someone like Velo Davis, for example, who bounces between lead and supporting all the time and has a supporting Oscar and will get a lead Oscar in in in in in the future. Um it's uncommon for an actor to go three in a row in lead. What's worse is an actor to go three in a row, the second and third of which are actually the same property. The same are actually the same property. And I was also gonna say consecutive. Right. Because that's insane.

SPEAKER_02: 59:28

Yeah, that that's that's extremely rare. I don't know if it's ever happened, actually. Um, where their second and third nominations happen back to back. Um, I will say that things change a little bit if that actor is, for example, having those consecutive lead nominations and they're going to a win, or they're coming from a win.

SPEAKER_03: 59:48

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 59:48

So, for example, Carrie Mulligan was one of the rare cases that was able to do it in the sense that she was she wasn't coming from a win and she wasn't going to a win either. She was still able to do it.

SPEAKER_01: 59:57

Um They weren't consecutive, though.

SPEAKER_02: 59:59

Yeah, they weren't consecutive. Executive. Um, they weren't the same film. Um, they were different, different characters, let's say. Completely different characters, yes, and let's all and also the third one, and I even believe she was playing two real life figures for an education, I believe, was based on a real life. Yeah, and then uh Maestro, she's playing a real life figure as well. Um, but the point is uh it's very rare to get consecutive lead consecutive nominations in the lead category, and you're not even going to a win or coming from a win. Yeah. And because Cynthia Reeves will not be winning for this movie, because it's just not strong enough, right? Um, and because, of course, as people have already uh said, she has a very there's it's a very competitive best actress uh category this year, uh, with Jesse Buckley there.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:45

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:45

Um, it makes her possibilities of getting that third nomination in lead actress that would be a back-to-back nomination from her last nomination last year for the same property very unlikely.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:58

Um, and so I think some people are still thinking, well, you know what, she's gonna win the Golden Globe. You know, she might go on to at least get a nomination for her work in both films, all that stuff, which again, I I I dispute. Um, but regardless, I just think it's too big of a hill to climb for Cynthia Revo to get that third nomination. Right. I will say that things would have been different if she was going to win for this movie and the film was strong enough. Oh, yeah, and she was going she was the designated front runner best actress winner. Okay, then I then she's actually going to a win, so it makes sense.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:34

So exactly so if the film could match critically what the first one did, then I do think you can make the argument that Cynthia Revo is going to be the biggest competition for Jesse Buckley and that it could be a back-to-back nomination for the same property because, as you said, she's going to a win.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:51

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:51

Um, I just don't think that's in the cards anymore because the film, no matter what, is just not as good as the first one. And so it's tough for me to imagine any voter ever saying that this is the one that I want to give Cynthia Revo an Oscar for. Right. You I feel like most voters are gonna know in their gut that she is going to have a better movie and a better performance. Right. And knowing that, they're not gonna waste, you know, her first win on this particular project.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:19

Yeah, and I also, you know, along that, I will say, as we've talked about several times on this podcast, you know, I uh you and I are firm believers, if we just look at the History Academy Awards, that they are paying attention to how many nominees, how many nominations an actor gets, how frequently they get those nominations, so they're aware that this would be Cynthia's third nomination, that it would be her third nomination in the lead category. So all those things, you know, that I think some people take for granted that voters just aren't thinking about it. I think that voters are choosy about their actors that get more than one nomination. Absolutely. How often they get a nomination, how consecutive those nominations are.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:56

There was no better demonstration on that than last year's best actress race when they said very clearly Pamela Anderson just does not have the career yet to get a nomination for The Last Show Girl. When they said very clearly, Kate Winslett is a winner already, and she's just not good enough in Lee, or Lee is just not good enough a movie for me to nominate her again. Angie Angel Lee has two nominations already and an Oscar, and again, the project is just not good enough for me to put her in. Or I'm not sure I want to give Angie Angel Lee a third acting nomination. Exactly. Searsha Ronin is gonna win an Oscar at some point, right? And last year she was excellent in both folds, yeah, and both films were solid films, yeah, solid to good, possibly to even very good, coming from Steve McQueen and Sony Picture Classics. And they very clearly said, I don't want to give Searsha an Oscar for this yet. I'm gonna wait for the undeniable Searsha Ronan project, even if that means I'm going to give an Oscar to Mikey Madison first.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:01

And so they are being extremely picky about when they nominate you again because they know that, you know, maybe it's an opportune moment to finally give you that win. Right. And so I cannot, you know, it just doesn't make sense for that academy to say, you know, uh I'm going to nominate an actor, you know, uh, without a certain amount of discretion about how many times I'm going to give them that honor.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:25

And there's an aspect to this that's again selective, it's choosy, and it's also sort of, you know, who they like and who they don't like, or who they're willing to give that sort of platform and who they're not. So you put up a great example with Angie Angel Lee. Angie Angel Lee is an Oscar winner and she has two nominations, and they had the perfect opportunity last year to give her a third nomination for best actress. But that to me, if you look at the history also, that to me just sort of displayed that their thinking was along the lines of, I'm not really sure I want to give Angie Angel Lee a third acting nomination just yet.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:01

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:01

You know, I need to see more, I need to see more diverse work, or this isn't this isn't the thing that I want to, you know. They have a class of actor. Like imagine that they have a a little a little category of a class of actor that they consider worthy of multiple nominations. Absolutely. And then another class of actor where, you know, you know, you were in the right vehicle, it was the right moment, and of course you were welcomed with a nomination. But to get that second nomination, to get that third nomination, to get that fourth nomination, they're incredibly choosy about the kind of actor they bestow that upon. Right. You know, and all you have to do is just look at the history to see that those trends exist, whether they do it conscientiously or they do it subconsciously, it's happened, it's there. Yeah. And so again, as we were saying, uh, considering that Cynthia Revill would get her third lead acting back to back, or it would be her third would be a back-to-back from her second for the same property, for the same property of film that's already uh that's that's clearly uh more poorly received than the first. Um, it just doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:01

It's just very difficult to do. I mean, we people bring up Al Pacino for Michael Corleon, okay. Well, there was a category shift, there was a category shift, and there was time in between, they were not consecutive. But I'll tell you what, well, he did get nominated, he did get nominated in between, I believe, for Serpico. Yes, yes, but not for the same, not for the same character, what I mean. Right. But I'll tell you what, if that year of Serpico was also the year of Godfather Part II, could you make the argument that Al Pacino would have gotten nominated consecutively for the for the Michael Corleone role? I think you can. Could you make the argument that had they promoted him to lead for The Godfather, which is where I think he wanted to be, um, Al Pacino for Michael Corleone and The Godfather one, that they could have nominated consecutively, you know, part one and part two, Michael Corleone in the lead role, Al Pacino? Yes. Do do I think that it matters that it's the Godfather and the Godfather part two, two massive best picture winners? 100%. I think it matters. Yeah. You know, if the Godfather and the Godfather part two were, you know, okay, okay, whatever. Then I do not think that it's you they're gonna be able to be that enthusiastic about committing that kind of history.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:18

Right, 100%. And so uh that's where we're at with Cynthia Revel. Um, and then a very interesting uh prospect that some people feel convinced about um is the supporting actress category with Ariana Grande. Um I will say, you know, to the benefit of other people and not us, you know, we did predict that Cynthia and Ariana would miss last year, and we were wrong, and they both got in, even though the prevailing popular thought was that they would get in. So it wasn't a shock that they got in. You and I were outliers and thinking that they wouldn't. Um we had fundamentally sound reasoning.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:54

We had sound reasoning, okay, we had sound reasoning, which now I hope you know people will catch on to even more, right?

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:03

Well, I remember one of the reasons that we thought that was because we believed that the veteran spot in the best actress race, because as we've talked about previously, and as you'll see in our website, you know, these categories, all these acting categories should at least have one veteran presence, an actor that's been there before, having being included in the five. We firmly believed that Marianne Jean-Baptiste would get that nomination for best actress for Hard Truths, especially after her trifecta win of critics with NYFCC and LAFCA and National Science Film Critics. We firmly believed that she would have been the veteran presence. And we firmly believed that Ariana Grande, because she's so new to the film world and to acting, um, and because she's a musician, that she would need to get in with Cynthia Rebo.

unknown: 1:08:51

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:52

That she wouldn't be able to get in by herself.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:53

And that Daniel Deadweiler was still, you know, it was still kind of outrageous that she was a nominated for Till that she would be able to get in for the piano lesson with the category shift as well. With a category shift, with the prestige of uh August Wilson, you know, that all that would help. Right. Um now I will say we underestimated how much actors just do not understand or will not watch a Mike Lee film, unfortunately, which is you know, just which just poorly of on them. Yeah. Um, but I will say that the other argument we had, you know, last year, and that we sort of milked and sort of bit us in the butt at the end, but I think it blew up in our face. But you know, the what's the what's the saying? The chickens are coming home to roost or whatever. Right. Why would they nominate them last year when they can just nominate them for the conclusion in part two? Right. Okay, well, now the chickens have come home to roost. Right. Part two is not as good. There is every reason to not nominate them for it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:56

So sort of that idea that you and I had, which is maybe they can be nominated for it, but I don't think they'll be nominated twice. And why can't they just wait till the conclusion? If that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:06

That was that was pivotal to our reasoning as well, exactly. But um, I will say that when it comes to Ariana Grande, you know, I certainly think that she had a more one-dimensional character in the first one that relied a lot on um, you know, gags that I didn't think were necessarily very difficult to perform, you know, the hair tossing and some of the comedic beliefs. Yeah, you know, some of the hair tossing and some of the little, you know, comedic gags, which again I didn't feel were very difficult for her to perform. Um, she has that great song. She's undoubtedly a very gifted, talented musician, vocalist. She sings beautifully, and that's true for this one as well. Um, uh, she's a uh a Grammy winner for a reason. Um, but so I just didn't feel I didn't see the fanfare for her having to be nominated for part one. I just didn't think she was, you know, contributing that much, especially alongside Cynthia Revo, who was giving this a lot of uh uh this layer performance, which you know really spoke to me. So in this second part, um, as far as Ariana Grande's performance, you know, I thought she I thought she's given uh better material here. She has more emotional material. Um, and I think she's better here in part two than in part one. Um, you know, but I felt like okay, she emotes authentically, you know, she's expressive, um, but the inner life underneath the emotion um didn't feel to me fully developed. Um, there's a lot of surface, surface-level acting that that doesn't have the deeper lived-in texture that you might expect from you know, a more seasoned dramatic performer. Um that's why some moments feel uh felt a little flat or stale for me beneath the surface. Um, I don't know if you felt that way or not. Um vocally, she's very gifted. Obviously, she's you know, she's an incredibly musician, an incredible vocalist, but the vocal performance is stronger than the dramatic inner life. You know, um, uh like to be fair, she is still growing as a dramatic actor and her technique is still, you know, uh catching up to like, you know, her musical expressiveness. Um, and I also say that the character she's being given, you know, isn't written with a whole bunch of dimensionality either, you know, so I'm not gonna lay it all on her feet. Um, but in terms of the craft, um, you can feel that the like the internal architecture, you know, the thought process, the subtext, the psychological grounding isn't always fully realized. You know, she hits the emotion, but not the depth behind it. Um, and that makes sense. Like I said, she's she's early in her, you know, in developing as an actor, and you know, these are muscles that she's still building. I don't know how you felt.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:42

I mean, I agree with the majority of what you've said, but to me, fundamentally, what it is is a misunderstanding from parts one to part two on how to use her. And so she was well cast in part one, and she excels in, for example, I think being the comedic relief and being the quirky energy. Um, and I understand a lot of people who have this um note or this criticism or this observation that they feel that part two she has you know more dramatic material, more dramatic weight. The problem is that she can't sustain any of it. Um and the problem is also that the dramatic material is about paper thin. Um and so in my opinion, you know, I think she can emote well when she performs, when she's um singing. And I think that she's well versed in that in in her more traditional line of work, which is you know, performing live and and performing in front of audiences. But I always felt that even in that first film that there wasn't a lot of layers to the character. Um and that which it works because the film isn't asking there to be a lot of layers. The problem is that the film is putting so much on her shoulders in this film, in in wicked for good, in wicked for good, that she simply can't uh deliver it. Um and part of that is also because again, the film is not framing her well, the the film is not putting her in a position to succeed. Um, and so to me it comes off very flat. So there's very little memorable in the performance in Wicked for Good compared to Wicked. Um, I remember the majority of her musical numbers, and and some people are gonna attribute that to the music itself, but I'm also gonna say that in my opinion, a lot of it is that in Wicked for Good, everything she does is heavy and bloated. And um, I say heavy and bloated because there's actually no real um nothing really interesting dramatically going on that I'm actually compelled by. Um, she has like the wedding thing, and she has like these realizations that I thought we were well past after that first one. You know what I mean? She has all these feelings of of of of of how she wants to help help Alphaba, and yet she does nothing to really move the needle forward until at the end something finally snaps for her. And so I just I I really do feel that she suffers here because you're asking her to do more than she's capable of doing. And in the first film, you knew exactly what she had to deliver, and she and she and she more than delivered, she overdelivered. And here you're asking her to do so much that is outside of her wheelhouse and to compensate for what is just not there behind the direction and not there in the story and not there in the script. You're asking her to compensate for that, and a musical number like Girl in the Bubble, to me, it doesn't have dramatic weight. You know, to me, it just feels like um an Ariana Grande music video that's well conceived, and I and I love the way it was staged. I mean, I think it's interesting, right? It's it's interesting with the mirrors. I thought that was interesting and a good use of visual effects, but I can't tell you that it gave me any more insight into Glinda. And and Glinda, you know, the character still remains an archetype for me. Um, it never evolved past that. And again, the re the the whole revision on Glinda never felt as imaginable to me as the revision on Alphaba in Wicked One, which again part of that is because in Wizard of Oz she's not even Alphaba, she's just the wicked witch. Right. Um, and so I do think that the the performance is um not as good as in the as as the first part um because the material is not as good as the first part, and because she I don't think has the range yet, like Cynthia Revo, to compensate for a lack of strong material. Like I remember in Wicked One, I didn't think Cynthia Revo's material was great, but I thought that she knew exactly what to do with it and how to dimensionalize it. And I don't think that Ariana Grande's performance pulled that off.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:18

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:19

And so a lot of my dissatisfaction with Wicked for Good comes from me not having sort of that anchor emotional anchor in the piece. Right. That she's not able to provide. Right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:17:29

Right. And so, you know, after the premieres and even after the film and even with the critical reception, I feel like so much of social media is invested in certainly, you know, Ariana Grande fans, certainly Wicked fans, but a lot of punditry to me reads as really invested in having this be, you know, the crowning moment where Ariana Grande wins an Oscar. I don't know if it's, you know, I mean, obviously she she has a lot of fans, and you know, she was sort of the uh early front runner at the beginning of the year for many people. I don't know if this sort of like, you know, uh, you know, people really, it just feels on social media like people are really invested and they really want this to happen, for it to be Ariana Grande wins best supporting actress for Wicked for Good, um, despite whatever happens critically or whatnot. You and I have always been of the opinion that for a person like Ariana Grande, it's almost twice as hard to get that uh second nomination so consecutively. As we just stated with Cynthia Revo, they're very particular about which actors get, you know, consecutive nominations, which actors get more nominations, yeah, two nominations, three nominations, and especially which actors get consecutive nominations.

SPEAKER_03: 1:18:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:18:47

You know, uh Coleman Domingo was able to do it uh last year after between Rustin and Sing Sing. I mean, it's it in a way, it's because they want an actor like Coleman Domingo to have several nominations. Right. You know, um, if they so like I said, they're very selective about who joins that group. And so it's just hard for me to see them uh considering Ariana Grande, who's just sort of starting this film career. You know, she's had a few glorified cameos and you know, don't look up, and um, you know, uh, I think Zoolander too, possibly, you know, she's been in some TV shows. I remember seeing her in Scream Queens. She's she had her sort of upbringing in Nickelodeon, I believe it was, or Disney Channel, one of those, um, you know, TV work. Um, but you know, her main uh her main uh skill, her main uh uh uh thing has always been musician. You know, um that's her that's that's sort of the the forefront of of you know the the platform that she's built. Um she has Grammy nominations. So anyway, she's considered a musician first, um, and and not necessarily an actor. And I think you're seeing that because she's getting her feet wet in this uh in this film world, she's already has some some projects lined up. I think the the Meet the Falker sequel is coming up, and so she's very much an actor who's beginning this film career, and so it's really hard for me to see them wanting to give her consecutive nominations for a film career that's just beginning, right? And then add to that that the consecutive nominations would be for the same project, right? They would be for Wicked. So again, if they're selective about who gets uh uh uh consecutive nominations, who gets more than one nomination, and then we're gonna say that those the nominations that Ariana Garner is gonna get, she's gonna have two Academy Award nominations for the same movie. It's almost like, you know, I would imagine that many actors would feel, you know, I need to see more from you, I need to see a body of work from you before I say I want to give you a second nomination in the acting category.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:52

And this is sort of similar to the argument that you know people had with the Lady Gaga thing and House of Crucia, which is again just the idea that a voter, as you said, is going to want a body of work. You know, getting a nomination is difficult enough. Getting two nominations is very difficult. Getting two nominations back to back is even more difficult. Getting two nominations back to back for the same character is extraordinarily difficult. Getting two nominations back to back for the same character where you feel a clear difference between the two products is enormously difficult. And it's not impossible, but it is absolutely enormously difficult. And if this was Ariana Grande Swan song and she's hanging up her acting shoes, then maybe there's every reason to nominate her. But everyone understands that that's not the case. Right. Um, and knowing that, I expect voters to apply that knowledge. And that's sort of the sad thing about Wicked, also. We talk about again, had they fused the movies together and been less greedy, it may have gone from 10 nominations to the same 13 of Amelia Perez, it may have challenged um a Nora for a best picture win. And maybe one of the two performers, or maybe both performers, could have snuck away with the win. Cynthia Revo and Orriana Grande. That just wasn't the case. Um and cutting the project has only hurt it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:16

Um, and so I I agree, I think that for both of them um it it's gonna be an immense task. So much so that at least in my opinion, whatever text it can hold on to if there is something above the line, I almost see as picture more than any kind of acting. Right. And I know some people online are are pitching, you know, acting nominations to still happen. Um and I mean acting wins, I think, is is already out of out of the solar system. Right. It's crazy. And so I actually can see picture a little bit more because you know they they do they can nominate Don't Look Up for Best Picture despite it being massively flawed, but they don't end up nominating Mark Rylance for supporting actor for that film. Right. Um, they just they just don't they don't need to.

SPEAKER_02: 1:23:08

And and and as we were saying with Cynthia Revo, if history was going to be made and they were going to get back-to-back nominations, the same uh logic applies here. If Harriana Grande was going to get back-to-back nominations for the same movie, especially with a career that's just beginning in film, then this had to be uh raves, yeah, and possibly even more raves than the first. At the very minimum of the king. Exactly. Uh at the very minimum uh the same, but possibly even more raves than the first. A film that is possibly going to win best picture. Yeah, you know, then I think you can possibly build the case that it's just that, you know, incredible of a film and incredible of an achievement, right? That something like this history sh can and should be broken. Right. Okay, I guess I can see it, but that's not the case here. Yeah. So, you know, in a way, I find a lot of that talk kind of puzzling to me. Um, I still don't see a universe where Ariana Grande, just again, because I think actors are or the acting branch, Academy at large, is very selective. I don't see a universe where Ariana Grande gets in by herself and doesn't get in with Cynthia Revo. Again, in a way, the Cynthia, Cynthia Revo and her body of work kind of brings in, you know, we can nominate Ariana Grande, who is just beginning in her career because, you know, it's a it's a pair. You know, you're getting in with a more established actor. Right. It makes sense. Yeah. I don't see Ariana Grande getting in by herself. And again, what the the the obstacles that uh Arrivo has to face, in a way, Grande is faced with double the obstacles because she doesn't have that body of work because she is recognized more as a musician. Because again, their class of actors that they consider quote unquote worthy for lack of a better term, to receive uh multiple nominations. It's a select group of people. I mean, we know actors, incredibly talented actors, some of who've uh many who've passed who managed one nomination in their entire career. Yeah, you know, in a way that was their Oscar. The Oscar was that moment when they were recognized for a nomination. Yeah, you know, that's how we believe, and I think the patterns, the the Oscar pattern show, that's how voters look at these nominations. You know, you're being invited into a club because we think that you're worthy, and so it's gonna depend if we think that you're worthy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:17

Yeah, I and I think that's that's the way it's always worked. And, you know, I think when Demi Moore or Michael Keaton score a nomination, it's a massive thing. Yeah, and they have every reason to nominate Michael Keaton back to back for the best picture winner spotlight. They chose not to and give him the win this time, and they just simply chose not to. Right. Because one nomination for Michael Keaton is already a lot, and that nomination for Michael Keaton is a nomination for everything that Michael Keaton has done, including being in an immensely fantastic film like Birdman, the best picture winner. Right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:25:48

And I think there's a a section of people in the academy who said, you know, I'm not sure I want to nominate Michael Keaton for two Academy Awards. I just I'm happy with the one.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:56

Exactly. I'm gonna wait and see when Michael Keaton delivers something that is again undeniable, and I'll nominate him then. Something different. It's something different.

SPEAKER_02: 1:26:04

Um, and but I also I just want to bring up one point that a lot of people say online is this idea that I think a lot of people, I'm not necessarily sure why they don't say it as much for Cynthia Revel, but this idea that Ariana Grande, oh, probably because of the competition in the categories, but that Ariana Grande is more likely to win because of the goodwill for the first one. Um, so that's supposed to be that's gonna supposedly carry over for part two. But I just want to say something, you know, uh that I think not enough people have pointed out. Wicked absolutely overperformed and got 10 nominations. That's indisputable. But are we really gonna say that number one, Wicked part one, was let's say theoretically, there were five five films nominated for Best Picture? Is Wicked in those five? Wouldn't it exactly it would not have been in those five?

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:55

Because it wasn't a DJ nominee and it wasn't a Baptist nominee.

SPEAKER_02: 1:26:58

And and and on that same track, you know, why did Wicked have 10 nominations and only end up winning two? Yeah, but only one costume and production design. Yeah, you know, it it should have won sound. We were predicting a sound nomination. Exactly. Yeah, so why why not win more than just two? And then, you know, maybe this is a little bit nitpicky because you know, I'm not really sure how much you can you can rest on this, but I do remember, you know, when when uh journalists were covering, you know, asking Oscar voters who are they gonna vote for for supporting actors and whatnot. And I remember being really surprised considering the social media fanfare, um, and that people were thinking that, you know, uh Zoe Zaldana shouldn't win and that it should be Ariana Grande, that she is the best in the category, without a doubt. When they asked these voters who should win the category, uh, by and large, Ariana Grande was last. I think she amassed, you know, maybe a couple of voters who said they would vote for her, and the majority of them went elsewhere. Even we were even surprised, even Clayton Davis seemed surprised on variety that it seemed that um Monica Barbera was getting a lot of traction for supporting actors. So Isabella Rossellini. So this idea that social media had that it should have been Ariana Grande who won, that she was number two, that she was runner up, it's a lot of presumption. Yeah, it's a lot of presumption on social on the social media stratosphere that doesn't necessarily there's not enough evidence here to prove that that's true. So if you do if you can't, if we can't know that that's true, and the signs seem to point that we can take an educated guess that it wasn't true, then why are we to assume that this idea that Ariana Grande should win in this category because of leftover goodwill, that that's a sound argument.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:37

I'm not sure that I see that. I agree with you, but I also say, you know, social media is never a good way to predict um the outcome of Oscar nominations or Oscar wins. Right. But also say that, you know, if you're someone who engages in tracking the Oscar race and predicting it, um, a lot of the times, like you'd never go, it's not you don't go from 10 to 1. You know what I mean? You you go through the numbers. And so like the honeymoon phase of wicked being what was supposedly a 10 nominee movie or possibly in a 12 nominee movie, those are gone. And I think people are still holding on to, okay, well, it won't get 10, it'll get seven, or it'll get six, and it can still win one, even if it doesn't win best picture. But if you're someone who started out on, you know, on your best day because of diminishing returns, you're gonna maybe get a six, then a six and maybe a win or two, like Dune got last year, then you're sort of already more comfortable saying, Well, I think it's looking a little bit more like three, maybe five, and maybe you can get one win, maybe, right? Um, and again, I'm just not sure. I think you know, I just think that online and social media, they're a little bit late to that, but things will become more apparent. I do think, like I said, that ultimately the fate will lie in Avatar's hands in terms of best picture. But I don't think, like I said, I'm actually more comfortable saying that there is if there isn't above the line, and that's a huge as if. If there is, it'll probably be best picture and not any type of acting. Um, and the wins may be a repeat costume win, maybe.

SPEAKER_03: 1:30:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:08

Um, I don't think it's a given at all. I mean, Frankenstein's there, so I don't think it's a given. Um, centers, I mean Ruth is right there, so I I don't think it's a given. Um, what I do think is a given is that it'll get substantially less than what the first one got. Right. Um, and I also think, for example, it's a given that uh Arianna Grande I think it's very unlikely that she gets nominated. I think it's near impossible that she wins. But I think that she's gonna get a moment on that stage to perform the girl, uh, the girl in the bubble. Yeah, yeah, the girl in the bubble, which is going to be award enough for the moment. You know what I mean? I I it it and if you kind of think about it, that's kind of what they have reserved for Lady Gaga also. Right. And so I don't think that they're in a in any place to sort of say, oh, well, I I I definitely have to give Ariana Grande an Oscar for what she achieved here and not give Lady Gaga anything.

SPEAKER_02: 1:31:05

Right, but I'll also and I'll also say uh along this point, um, that some people I think are interesting, you know, very perplexed by the supporting actress category. And I guess maybe that's why Ariana Grande to some extent has had more, you know, talk about winning than Cynthia Revel. But I want to say that if you look at the sporting actress category and you look at the reception for Wicked part two, it's gonna be hard for you to convince me that voters aren't gonna be more excited about, for example, the actresses from Sentimental Value, which is a top tier, which is a top-tier top top five uh special film. Why wouldn't they be excited about the two actresses from One Battle After Another, the presumed front runner? Um, why wouldn't they be uh excited about a sinner's, which is uh Wumi Mosaku? Um, why it just seems to me it's a little bit apparent that those actresses would be have more passion behind them because there's more passion behind their films before being having passion for Ariana Grande, who was just nominated last year. Right. This would be Tiana Taylor's first, Regina uh Hall's first, Umi's first, Alfannie's first, Ingrid's first, Inga Ingo's first. So it's it's hard for me, it's gonna be hard for you to convince me that they're gonna be more passionate about Ariana getting nominated, let alone win, than these other actresses in these films that they're going to be clearly more passionate about.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:24

This ain't nothing of the Marty girls, for example, the Marty Supreme actresses. Uh, you know, have already made uh that seems like a top five movie as well. And I think that, you know, going on reputation, there's plenty of reputable people who have yet to be nominated once who people are going to remember. And I think, for example, uh, you know, Glenn hasn't won, Jeff Lopez has never been nominated. But one that comes to my mind automatically, having seen the film recently, like Nina Haas. Again, Nina Haas is everything that she needs to be nominated.

SPEAKER_02: 1:32:54

Nina Haas is an iconic German actress who has never been nominated for an acting award for the Academy Awards, and she's stupendous at HATA. I mean, stupendous.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:03

Kate Blanchett, you know, what'd you say? That's the actress. What did she say about that? That's the actor, that's the actor I want to be. Exactly. So that's just the the the caliber of of actor that Nina Haas is. And again, she just has everything she needs to be 9 for HATA. It's just a question of are voters going to turn it on. And even if they don't, as you said, there's just so many moves. I mean, listen, we're averaging about one veteran academic, uh, one veteran supporting actress nominee. We've been averaging that for I think maybe six or seven years for a while now, I think at least. Um, and what better veteran to like want to put in this year than Amy Madigan? Amy Madigan Weapons, who hasn't been around, who hasn't hasn't had this opportunity in in years.

SPEAKER_02: 1:33:43

Talk about how selective they are with you know who gets multiple nominations. She's 75, her first nomination was in the 80s. She might be getting her second nomination now. Yeah, you know, at 75 years old. Yeah. So that's just the way these things work out. Yeah. Um, so you know, suffice it to say that we don't think Ariana Grande is going to get nominated here. We don't see above the line. I think we're in agreement that we see uh strong contention in I mean, what it would what are you thinking then right now?

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:09

Because there are some texts that I do worry about. Like we talk about the visual effects are getting knocked, the production design is getting knocked. I makeup is great in photos, but it did not. I mean, the the scarecrow looked like visual effects in the film. Yeah, and it's all makeup.

SPEAKER_02: 1:34:24

Yeah, you're right. The makeup on the scarecrow looked terrible in the film. And if you look at the work, it's very detailed work. Like in photographs. Um, I think if I look at the field for some of the tech categories, I feel a little bit more comfortable because there aren't a ton of options in production design that sound, you know, much more tempting than um uh Crowley's work in uh Wicked for Good. I think the same thing about makeup, and I think the same thing about costumes. So if anything, I think those three nominations seem pretty good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:54

I think the bake off, the bake off saves makeup. Because if there was no bake off, I would be worried. Right. But I do think I agree with you. Costumes still one of the stars of the movie, production design. I actually think people knock it unjustly because I see a lot of new detailed work from Nathan Crowley and his team. Right. I think makeup gets saved because of the bake-off. Right. I think the visual effects bake off kind of cooks the visual effects nomination because it it there's there are instances that look very shoddy visual effects in it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:35:24

And I also say that I would be more enthusiastic about a sound nomination if the film was gonna factor more heavily into best picture. I think a musical getting nominated for sound design is very difficult if it's not going to be at the very least a top 10 best picture nominee. You know, you look at a film like Lame is a Rob, that wasn't a top five best picture nominee, but it was a top 10 best picture nominee. Right. So if we're taking Wicked out of Best Picture, then you have to take it out of sound because that doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:50

So you think sound goes the way of picture? So if it gets pictures, sound makes more sense. If it's not going to get picture, then sound doesn't make as much sense.

SPEAKER_02: 1:35:58

Exactly. So I would say uh I I like those four that I'm thinking about. I like original song, makeup, costume, production design. And if I think about it, and I think about a movie like Wakanda Forever, which is a 68 on Metacritic or a 67, and had better reviews than this film and this uh and managed to get five nominations, it's gonna be hard for you to convince me and and didn't get Best Picture, it got five nominations without Best Picture.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:24

Despite a PGA nomination, which by the way, I'm completely think that Wicked will still get a PJ nomination.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:30

100%. Um, because man, money matters. Yeah, yeah. Um uh but so if a film like Waconder Forever managed to get five nominations and still miss Best Picture Um when their first iteration, Black Panther, was actually nominated for Best Picture, I it's gonna be hard for you to convince me that Wicked is gonna get as many nominations as Walconder Forever. I I see it has to be less than Wakanda Forever, um, just because it's a it's a more poorly received film, critically. Um, at least that's the way I see it. I know some people over there saying that they think that Wakanda Forever is the perfect um uh the perfect uh comparison for Wicked that they're gonna they think Angela Bassett, Erina Grande, uh Fortex, four Tex. And I think that there's a big difference between Angela Bassett again getting her second nomination as a veteran in that category um after years of being absent, than there is you know grande getting back to back for the same project. Right, you know, so you know, I don't necessarily see that comparison, but even that again, if that movie did five, I would imagine that this film would do less than five.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:35

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:37:35

I mean, I think I more or more or Doom Part 2, which is unanimously acclaimed, and still only manage five nominations. I can't think that Wicked is gonna get the same as those films, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:46

I I I get where you're coming from, and I think more or less along the lines with you, I do think that best picture nomination will lie on how well Avatar delivers on the anticipation. Right um, but I think if I had to see a fifth nomination, it would probably be sound even without the top ten best picture. I guess I I'd have to check that out to see if I can find a musical that got in. Well, well, yeah, that Dream Girls wasn't a top five movie. Um I guess you're making the argument that it's a top ten movie. That's that's reasonable. Um but I could I could still I I kind of think that there may be just enough muscle in the whole musical to score that, to score that nomination for sound. Um, and again, if we're saying that the sound nomination definitely has to come with a best picture nomination, I don't think that's out of the woods yet. Um, I think it really depends on how good Avatar is.

SPEAKER_03: 1:38:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38:45

Um, but I could see it getting those five nominations and best picture. I can see it getting the four nominations you said. I guess I could also technically see it getting that second sound, that second song nomination. Oh, I don't see that at all. Just to have Cynthia perform a musical number as well at the ceremony. I could see that.

SPEAKER_02: 1:39:06

I could see that. Well, that was our deep dive into all things wicked. There was a lot to talk about. Um, and uh we're very curious to see how things develop.

SPEAKER_01: 1:39:15

All right, well, let's jump into the next part of our discussion, which is um the precursors are about to start um and get in full swing in December, but we're gonna start getting some of our early ones. Um, I think in our previous episode, we discussed the Gotham Film Award nominations a little bit, but we're gonna take a deeper dive and try to get you ready for the actual winners, which are gonna be announced on December 1st. And so we'll run through the categories and talk about who we're predicting to have a good day, and then um maybe we'll touch upon the other ceremony that's gonna happen right on the heels of that, which is the New York film critic circle, which is which is really important um for a lot of critical darlings and arthouse films that are trying to leverage that into um getting attention and getting voters to watch them. Those wins come out on the second, and we'll start talking about who we think we're gonna see there. Um, but let's start with Gotham. Um, and I think the big takeaways I think were remember one battle after another scored six nominations, and that's a record. Um, second most nominations actually went to a producer of one battle after another, um, Sarah Murphy, for producing um If I had legs, I'd kick you as well from A24. Huge hit out of Sundance that had four nominations, including a nomination for Rose Byrne for best lead performance. Right. Um, other takeaways, sentimental value didn't do great, only two nominations, I think, for supporting performances. Um if I had excuse me, um, it was just an accident, no other choice, three nominations apiece. Um, and Marty Supreme, which um we had put up a piece on our website, framesumflicker.com, talking about who we thought we'd see. Marty Supreme actually was blanked. But um, supposedly online, there was an idea that it just didn't qualify because it was not a finished cut that's screened at New York. That's a theory. We haven't heard I think Gotham actually say that that is uh the reason why he didn't show up. But I I guess that's what some people are rolling with.

SPEAKER_02: 1:41:23

And I also believe that the embargo lifts on December 1st for Mario Supreme for critics.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:27

Great. So more stuff to talk about. Right. Um, so um, let's go through the uh categories of the Gotham Film Awards and talk about what we might see.

SPEAKER_02: 1:41:34

Right, and and who you're predicting, right? Um, so for best feature, we had begonia, east of wall, familiar touch, hamnet, if I had legs, I'd kick you, lurker, one battle after another, sorry, baby, the testament of Ann Lee and Train Dreams.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:55

Um really good list. Really, really good list. Um, first off, it's the first time that they're coming up with 10, which was really interesting. A lot of controversy here, right? Because some people were unhappy that you're getting movies as big as Bugonia, and certainly one battle after another, competing against sorry baby and familiar touch sort of felt very um, some people at least online felt that it was very removed from what they sort of the mission of Gotham Film Awards from five years ago, ten years ago. Um, but it is what it is, and these are our top nominees. No knocks on the movies, a lot of interesting stuff here an eclectic mix. Um, obviously, one bat after another leads with six nominations. I think one thing that we're gonna sort of look at at the Gotham's on December 1st is what kind of year we're gonna have. Is this gonna be a spread the wealth year or sort of like feast or famine?

SPEAKER_03: 1:42:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:47

Um, I remember like in 2021, the lost daughter ended up winning four of these, including Breakthrough Director, Screenplay, Olivia Coleman, and Best Feature. Um, Marriage Story also won like three, and that's sort of the opposite of what we've seen. Um, for example, last year, which I was shocked again when a different man scored the win for Best Picture over favorites like Honora or Nickel Boys. Um, and that was the only one it had, and it only had two nominations. Um, so it's gonna be interesting to see what kind of year we're gonna get. I think a lot of people have knocked this best picture list again because they just don't think that the Gotham should be highlighting um films like One Bad After Another or Bugonia or or even Hamnet, maybe, and they should be focusing on um smaller films like East of Wall. Um, it'll be interesting because one thing that we're gonna see play out is A24 has been on a streak, actually, here in this category. Uh, different man, one last year, past lives, the year before that, and everything everywhere all at once. And so, according to that, the favorite here would appear to be legs, I'd kick you. If I had legs, I'd kick you. At the same time, Paul Thomas Anderson's film set the record. Um, Paul Thomas Anderson, last time he was nominated at the Gotham Film Awards was for the Master in 2012. It got one nomination for Best Feature, but they have nominated him in the past. I couldn't find any other reference for a nomination for one of Paul's films. Um, you know, There Will Be Blood was not nominated, for example, but they had strict, a stricter regimen or eligibility um that sort of disqualified a film of that budget level. And so it'll be interesting to see what happens. Are we gonna see the A24 streak continue with if I had legs that kick you? Or are we gonna see um that record for Paul come into play and it pick up, you know, it pick up a win here? Um, obviously they like Paul, they nominated the master. Um, it sort of reminds me of 2006, if you can remember. Um, that was one year that um critics gave a lot of heat to the Gotham Film Awards because they ended up nominating um the departed, uh Little Children and Marie Antoinette in the best picture category, and those films had significant budgets. Um, and people complained that that wasn't the purpose of the Gotham Film Awards. The purpose of the Gotham Film Awards should have been to spotlight a film, for example, like A Prairie Home Companion or Little Miss Sunshine, but instead they were nominating these big, massive studio films that also happened to be autour projects, but they were still very um budgeted uh highly compared to um small films. Yet in that year the winner was half Nelson. Half Nelson ended up beating the departed at the Gotham Film Awards. So I think what we're going to see is we're gonna see if I had legs at kick you win best picture over one battle after another.

SPEAKER_02: 1:45:43

Very interesting. Sort of as a response a little bit, exactly. Yeah, or as a as a response to the controversy, yeah. Very interesting, very interesting. Um, for best director, we had Mary Bronstein, if I had legs that kick you, Jafar Panahi, it was just an accident, Kelly Rikhard, The Mastermind, Paul Thomas Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, one battle after another, and Oliver Lax for Surrat.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46:06

I think it's a great list, uh very eclectic. Um, I think it's worth mentioning this is only the second time that they're handing this out. The best director category started last year. More traditionally, they've always had a breakthrough director category for first-time filmmakers, but this is not that. This is for a filmmaker of uh any point in their career. Obviously, you see Paul Thomas Anderson there competing against Mary Bronstein. I think again, these are the two favorites to win the category, either Mary Bronstein or PTA. I think here is where you'll get the compensation prize and they'll give it to PTA, to Paul Thomas Anderson for one battle after another.

SPEAKER_02: 1:46:43

Right. Um, that sounds very sound. Um for Breakthrough Director, we had Constance Sang for Blue Sun Palace, Carson Lund for Eethus, Sarah Friedland for Familiar Touch, Akina Law, Davis Jr., My Father's Shadow, and Harris Dickinson for Urchin. Great list.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:04

Great list. Um again, not a lot of movies I think will follow um this nomination into possible Oscar attention, but this category has always been part of the ceremony, always been part of the Gotham's. It's great that they still have it. I hope they don't disqualify it, although you never know what the Gotham's are gonna do from one year to the next. Um, previous winners here have been um Past Lives, A Thousand and One, and After Sun. Um, and I think the favorite here is probably gonna end up being Familiar Touch. Yeah, it was also nominated for Best Picture, and so that helps.

SPEAKER_02: 1:47:37

Yeah. Uh for best original screenplay. We have If I had legs, I'd kick you. It was just an accident, The Secret Agent, Sorry, Baby, and Sound of Falling.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:48

Uh, really interesting category as well. I will say this is the first time that the Gothams have split this category between original and adapted. They just they're uh used to be just one screenplay, yeah. So it's nice to see 10 screenplays being uh spotlighted. I think it's also massively interesting to see um so many international films listed here, right? You have um Just an Accident, Secret Agent, Sound of Falling. Um, obviously, the favorite should be If I had Legs at Kick You because it has all those nominations. But I'm thinking that the win is actually going to go to another A24 title, and that's sorry, baby. Me too, yeah, which actually got listed for Best Picture as well. And this feels like the right appropriate place to award it. Ava Victor did not get nominated for Breakthrough Director, but I think which is interesting, right? Um, but I do think that they'll maybe make some room here and give her uh original screenplay.

SPEAKER_02: 1:48:43

Right. I think that's that makes a lot of sense. Uh best adapted screenplay, no other choice, one battle after another, pillion, preparation for the next life, and train dreams.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:54

Um, so again, the temptation I think here is to probably have one battle after another win this. Um, but I don't think that the Gotham's like to give one film so many awards. Um, obviously it could be a feast or famine year, but I think one battle already has the record with six nominations. So I'm thinking that this would be a good place to maybe show some love to No Other Choice, which is a film that they liked a lot. Also, it got three nominations. Right. Um, and so I'm thinking that for adapted screenplay, they'll go in that direction.

SPEAKER_02: 1:49:26

Watch out because I think uh a sleeper here is trained dreams to win best adapted screenplay. Really? Also listed for best picture, right? Because not only that, but uh you know it's certainly having an uptick in discourse. It just came out on Netflix, and it just seems like an opportune place to cite it. So watch out for that as well. Yeah. Uh for best documentary feature, we have 2000 meters to Andrifka, Black News Train Terms and Conditions, My Undesirable Friends Part One, Last Air in Moscow, The Perfect Neighbor, Put Your Soul On, Your Hand, and Walk.

SPEAKER_01: 1:50:01

I actually think this is the best category at uh Gotham. I I think all the films look tremendous. The ones we've seen are are great, but all of them look great. Um, so it's very, very difficult to decide on the winner here. Um, they've been trending a little bit more international lately, like No Other Land won last year, Four Daughters the year before that, and all that breeze, which you loved the year before that. Um, but they have um also recognized, for example, um uh Ramel Ross uh won this category for Hale County this morning, this evening. And so they they definitely do also recognize films that are occurring in the U.S. So it's very tough. I mean, it's very, very difficult to say who could win here. The perfect neighbor is a great choice. Put your soul on your hand and walk, black news, terms and conditions. I think it's gonna come down to the fact that Julia Locktave has been nominated a couple of different times at Gotham. We love Julia Locktave here. Loneliest Planet is great, day night, day night is fantastic. Um, first time I think she's being nominated in the in the documentary category. So look for the win to go to um My Undesirable Friends part one.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51:08

Um, yeah, that sounds that sounds like yeah, I agree with you. That would be great.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:11

And it's yeah, it's uh obviously about um sort of um the Russian government stifling free press in Russia, but it's very much prescient to everything that's going on in the US.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51:24

Of course. Um Best International Feature we have it was just an accident, no other choice, Novelle Vogue, Resurrection, Sound of Falling.

SPEAKER_01: 1:51:34

Again, all of them sound great. The ones we've seen are fantastic. Uh can't wait to see Resurrection. Sound of Falling Incredible. Yeah, I think I think this one is between um No Other Choice and Um It Was Just An Accident, and I think it should favor it was just an accident, and I think they really want to see Jafar Panahi on stage. Um so I think that's the best bet.

SPEAKER_02: 1:51:59

Right, I agree. And uh now a pair of really interesting categories, the the performances, outstanding lead performance. We have Jesse Buckley for Hamnet, Rose Byrne, if I had legs, I'd kick you, Lib Yung Han, No Other Choice, Sope De Russo, My Father's Shadow, Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon, Jennifer Lawrence, Dime My Love, Wagner Mora, The Secret Agent, Josh O'Connor, The Mastermind, Amanda Seifried, The Testament of Anne Lee, Tessa Thompson, I mean all fantastic performances.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:36

Incredible performances. Um terrific, terrific lists. And I think we'll be seeing a lot of these names throughout the rest of the season. Um, and I think this is gonna be a classic battle for I think a narrative that's gonna continue throughout the rest of the year. I think this is Byrne versus Buckley.

SPEAKER_02: 1:52:54

I a hundred percent agree with that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:56

And you got Rose Byrne delivering uh an amazing performance in if I had Leg Zed Kick You, she's in nearly every shot and just almost strictly her face in every shot. Yeah, um, versus Jesse Buckley, who believe it or not, this is her fourth nomination.

SPEAKER_03: 1:53:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:53:13

And so we know that the Gothams had they only had five movies now for Best Picture. If I had Leg Zed Kick You, would very likely still be a Best Picture nominee. Questionable whether Hamnet would have been there or not. It only has two nominations, Picture and Jesse Buckley, but we know that they love them some Jesse Buckley, who has a nomination for um Women Talking, The Lost Daughter, Hamnet, and Um, I'm thinking of ending things. So does Buckley finally win on her fourth nod, or does Rose Byrne win?

SPEAKER_02: 1:53:44

I'm thinking that it's gonna be Jesse Buckley. I mean, it makes sense for it to be Rose Byrne. I think Rose Byrne is you know prepping to be a critical darling this year, um, 100%. But I do think that it's gonna be Jesse Buckley, 100%.

SPEAKER_01: 1:53:56

I think that would be so interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 1:53:58

It's I think I I think they'll split. Yeah, so like if I should you're thinking exactly. If I had legs, I'd kick you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54:05

If that wins best picture, then Jesse Bucking's winning actress. I think that could happen, but I'm kind of going that if I had legs, I'd kick you, wins both, and I'm thinking Rose Byrne will end up winning.

SPEAKER_02: 1:54:16

Um, and then outstanding supporting performance, Benito del Toro, one battle after another, Jacob Alordi, Frankenstein, Inga Ipstadator, Lilias, Sentimental Value, India Moore, Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, Woon Me Mosaku, Sinners, Adam Sandler, Jay Kelly, Andrew Scott, Blue Moon, Alexander Skarsgard, Pillion, Stellan Skarsgard, Sentimental Value, Tayana Taylor, one battle after another.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54:46

Um, I think a lot of these names, again, will continue to ripple throughout the rest of the season. I think it's fun to see, for example, um, some love there for Alexander Skarsgard and Pillion. Yeah, I think the big story. Yeah, I can't wait to see. I think the big story here, though, is will the dual nominations for Sentimental and One Battle cancel each other out? Or will one of them be able to survive and actually pull off the win? Yeah. I think it's uh uh again another coin toss, but my gut says it'll end up going to Tayana Taylor. Um, she's a previous nominee here for uh Thousand and One, which is a film that they really liked, I think listed for Best Picture also. Right. So it just seems like they couldn't be happier to get her up on that stage and give her something. Right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:55:31

And then uh Breakthrough Performer, we have ASAP Rocky for highest to lowest, Sabille Bitayar for preparation for the next life, Chase Infinity for one battle after another, Abu Sangara for Solomon's story, and Tony Tw for Kiss of the Spider Woman.

SPEAKER_01: 1:55:50

I would love to see Tonya too win this um for Kiss of the Spider-Woman, and I think he's a dark horse here. I think all the performances um look great, um, but I think the favorite has to be Chase Infinity with just the amazing year that she's had. Right. And just, you know, the amount of love that one battle has here.

SPEAKER_02: 1:56:08

Yeah, I agree. Um, and that's the Gotham. And interestingly enough, we're gonna now talk about the New York film critics circle, which is not unrelated. Um, absolutely. Uh, I think you'll have vo voters, uh members of the Gotham that are also members of the NYFCC. And I actually think that we stand to see some winners uh who win the Gotham that go on to win awards at the NYFCC and start to sort of certainly uh develop into that critical darling for that category. So try to get some momentum. For example, Rose Byrne could easily get the uh uh win both the Gotham and the NYFCC, and then before you know it, everyone will be talking about how Rose Byrne is the critical darling. Yes. If that happens, we set it here first.

SPEAKER_03: 1:56:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 1:56:54

Um and Tana Taylor, she might win the Gotham Award Best Supporting, and then go on to win the NYFCC Best Supporting, and then she's very much the critical darling. Again, I mean, that's what people will be talking about. Yeah, so the NYFCC.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57:09

Which is, I think, one of our first of the big three NYFCC, well, shortly after we'll have LA, and then towards the end of the month, beginning of the year, we'll finally get our our look into the National Society of Film Critics.

SPEAKER_02: 1:57:22

Right. And it's always fun to do. I I I we always look forward to the NYFCC, the LAFCA, and the National Society of Film Critics. Um, always fun to predict them. Because they have taste also. Yes, because like you can always well, I mean, sometimes they do odd choices like cinematography going to Top Gun Maverick. Yeah. Um, but by and large, they tend to have really good winners and sometimes incredibly great winners. So we look forward to them. Um, shall we start with our predictions?

SPEAKER_01: 1:57:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:57:51

Um, and let's do a winner and uh a runner-up at least. Okay, so for animated film, we're gonna start bottom to top. Um, animated film, I'm predicting that the winners will the winner will be K-pop demon hunters. Um uh I think that they uh tend to sometimes give uh the animated win to you know more popular, you know, uh pick. So K-pop would make sense. My runner up for animated would be Scarlet.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:21

I will say that for my money at least, this is a year that's very difficult to sort of distinguish who the critical darling is gonna be for animated feature. I think K-pop is too mainstream for the highbrow New York film crowd. But I mean, they like they like mainstream sometimes. I don't know. I mean, they did give it to the middles versus the machines, but knowing what that film is about versus K-pop makes me feel that they're going to reject K-pop. I've met a couple of people who do not like K-pop.

SPEAKER_03: 1:58:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:49

Um, that said, I wonder if like Arco is a little too under the radar. I'm not even gonna mention Zootopia 2 um or Elio or anything like that. Um, I'm gonna go with a surprise here, and I think my prediction for the win is actually gonna be uh the Quay Brothers, um, who just released um Sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass this year. And it I know that it played in New York. I was around when it played. Um, and I think maybe a passionate group saw it and are going to petition for it to win. Um, and it I think it'll be the first one for the Quay Brothers in this organization, and that'll make it like even more enticing. If not, I kind of agree with you. I think the one to look out for here is Scarlet from Mamaru Hasada um and Japan. And so I think that's where that's where I see it going. Very interesting. Very interesting. If it happens, you call the first.

SPEAKER_02: 1:59:42

Um uh best documentary. Um, I'm pretty comfortable with this, you know, feel confident that it's going to go to Black News terms and conditions, which has made waves ever since uh Sundance. Um and my runner up would be uh Laura Petra's cover up.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:58

I have both very good choices. And we overlap. I think Black News, Terms and Conditions, has to be the favorite here. Has had a great, great, great trajectory ever since Sundance. I can't wait to see it. They say it's fantastic. Yeah, me too. But my runner-up is actually going to be Julie Lochtaff's documentary, My Undesirable Friends, part one. You know, off the heels of what may be a win out of Gotham.

SPEAKER_02: 2:00:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 2:00:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 2:00:25

For Best International film, this was a tough one because I was between three films that I feel pretty confident one of them will place here. Now watch me could be completely wrong. So my pick, my prediction is that it will be it was just an accident. My runner-up is Sound of Falling. Um, but I wanted to find a place for Surratt. So I'm gonna say it's it's gonna be either Sound of Falling or Surratt for that international pick as my runner-up.

SPEAKER_01: 2:00:53

I'm gonna say that this is one of the most competitive categories at NYFCC this year. There are just so many great international films this year. It feels like it's an especially difficult year to predict this particular category. Um, again, not all these movies qualified, I think, for the Oscar. Um but but all of them are great movies out of Cannes, out of Venice. I agree with you. I think the favorite here has to be it was just an accident, despite the fact that the New York film critic circle have not necessarily been crazy about Jafar Panani's work. I think um it's kind of an irresistible story to have him there. So I think the win will go to was just an accident. My runner-up actually is um is actually gonna be the Brazilian film, The Secret Agent, which it which did really well at Cannes also. Um and I know that New Yorkers like the filmmaker a lot, Clearman D'Antrafil. Right. Um, and so I would not be surprised to see him pick this one up. Now, I will say, like, usually when New York, when they give best film to the foreign film that they also think was the best foreign film, best international film, they'll skip this category altogether. But I do think this year they're they're gonna they're not gonna give it was just an accident best picture and they'll give it international film and they'll go elsewhere for best picture.

SPEAKER_02: 2:02:06

Right, I agree. Um, for best first film, my prediction is sorry, baby, and my runner-up is familiar touch.

SPEAKER_01: 2:02:15

Uh, both excellent choices, and I can see both of them winning. Um, and I always think this is a fun category. I think they always make a quality choice here. Um, I'm actually gonna go with Familiar Touch, um, off the heels of a couple of really good mentions from Gotham Film Awards, and my runner-up, despite how much I love sorry baby, I'm actually gonna give it to Efus. Um, which I think is which was fantastic, and which I think there's something that I think the New York crowd is really gonna love about it.

SPEAKER_02: 2:02:43

Yeah, yeah. That'd be really that'd be awesome. So for cinematography, it was tough. It was between three movies. I ended up choosing um my my prediction, Resurrection from Bayan, uh, which stunned people at Cannes. We unfortunately missed it. I can't wait to see it. Um I I predict that there's gonna they're gonna show some love to resurrection. My runner-up is Sinners as a populist pick that they'd be happy to award something like cinematography to, which they've done in the past.

SPEAKER_01: 2:03:14

I remember when Oppenheimer picked up this award and also Top Gun Maverick picked it up. Um, and so I do think they can go in the populist direction. In fact, I think if Sinners were to pick up any category, it would likely be cinematography. That being said, my prediction is gonna be that the win is actually gonna go to Magellan out of the Philippines. Right. Um, I think there's a lot in the film that um, again, the New York crowd is really gonna admire. Again, very much um subdued, slow cinema that Lab Diaz is known for. Um, but again, beautifully lit, yeah, a lot of naturalistic lighting, a lot of can. Yeah, Sada can. Lab Diaz um also credited as a co-cinematographer here. Yeah, um, so I think it'll be Magellan, but my runner-up, I think, is also resurrection, um, because I think it just looks like such a um such a visual feast. Yeah, I think that it's gonna be hard to forget about it.

SPEAKER_02: 2:04:13

I agree. Uh, for screenplay, my prediction is sentimental value, and my runner-up would be it was just an accident.

SPEAKER_01: 2:04:21

Both good choices. Um, I'm actually this was the one area where like I found room to include one movie that I'm unsure of as to how they're gonna feel about, but knowing that it's a New York story, I kind of felt like I had to give it something. And so we won't know because the embargo lifts, but I can already see the narrative, and if and if it happens again, you heard it here first. But if the embargo lifts and Marty Supreme is as beloved as that New York crowd that saw it at the New York Film Festival made it sound, and it's just absolutely beloved. You know, I would not be shocked if Marty Supreme won best picture and best director and best actor at the New York film critic circle, not at all.

SPEAKER_03: 2:05:07

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 2:05:07

That being said, at the very least, I'm going to predict it for best screenplay. So I have Marty Supreme for the win, and my runner-up is actually gonna be Blue Moon, which I'm not sure is a major Oscar contender, but it's sort of the for screenplay. Um, but it's sort of the well-researched, um, you know, uh old school kind of script that I think the New York crowd is really gonna take to.

SPEAKER_02: 2:05:36

All right. And um for supporting actor, I'm predicting uh my first my prediction is Stan Skarsgard for sentimental value. I think he's gonna be a big um critical darling here for this uh for this uh category. And my runner-up would be Benicio del Toro for one battle after another, who's fucking incredible in that movie.

SPEAKER_01: 2:05:56

Great choices. Um, I think we're of the same mind. I think Stan Skarsgaard should be the favorite here for sentimental value, given um his reputation, given his performance, given the character he plays. I actually have the runner-up being Alexander Skarsgard and Pillion. Um, for some reason, I feel like this film is gonna resonate um with the New York film critic circle. I know you're a big fan of it.

SPEAKER_02: 2:06:19

I I'm I I I fucking adore this movie, but I'm confused as to if it even counts as this year or not. Right. It's so strange. Because it's coming out in February, makes sense for Valentine's Day, you know, but then it looks like A24 is pushing it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:06:35

I have no idea what the hell is going on. A24 hasn't been very transparent about it, which is not surprising. Um, but yeah, I'm gonna guess that it is eligible and I'm gonna have that be my runner up. That said, keep an eye out for Adam Sandler here, like for Jay Kelly. Um, despite whatever critical reception it has, I think there may just be enough um sentiment behind that pick to make it happen.

SPEAKER_02: 2:06:59

Yeah, I agree with that. He was he was lurking for me for supporting actress. I'm gonna go with a surprise pick um that I feel kind of good about. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens. If it happens, again, you heard it here first. I'm gonna go with Woonmi Mosaku winning best supporting actress for centers. Nice, um, which departs a little bit from my runner-up, which is Tiana Taylor for one battle, who I expect to be a big critical critic starling this year this season. But I just think that I expect one battle to show up in other places and that they're going to be more willing in this particular category to cite someone like Woon Me for Sinners.

SPEAKER_01: 2:07:42

Um, I think that's a great pick, honestly. Um, Wound Me could win here, um and then watch everyone go crazy, like, oh my god, just back in the right. I think it'd be very meaningful, to be perfectly honest, because for some reason, like I told you, I think Sinners is more of a they're gonna be like people are gonna be like, but she's number nine on Gold Derby. How's that possible? Well, listen, I we had this discussion, and I think that Sinners is a little bit more of an LA film. I think that LA LA film critics are gonna take to it more. They kind of like their autour blockbuster studio films a little bit more than the New York film critic circle. They tend to be a little bit more highbrow, sort of classic autour films, um, you know, Martis Crusese films. Uh so I I think it's a great pick, and I think it would be huge if it won. Um, but I'm actually gonna go with uh your runner up. I think the win here is gonna go to Diana Taylor and what I think they're gonna think is an amazingly memorable performance. That said, I kind of wanted to give it to Regina Hall for one battle after another, right? But she won recently for Support the Girls in 2018. Um, so that was my only pause. Um, but I wouldn't be surprised, I guess, to see her. Um, I actually wouldn't be surprised if I saw some kind of the women of one battle after another shit. That'd be awesome, actually. I'd love that. Could actually end up happening unless they think it's cheap. My runner-up is actually going to be Amy Madigan in Weapons. Um sometimes they have room for a populist film. I feel like supporting actors is a category they tend to want to play with, you know. I mean, I remember last year I I kind of called um or I felt very good about um the win for Carol Kane in the Temples because she's amazing in that film. But I knew it was gonna be the kind of thing that they loved. Um, and so I'm going with Amy Madigan, former nominee Amy Madigan. I don't know, maybe it's theatrical enough that they'll like it, or maybe theatrical enough that they'll remember it, you know?

SPEAKER_02: 2:09:42

Right. Um, that would certainly be a big, uh, a big get for her. Yeah. Um, for best actor, my prediction is Wagner Mora. I think he is one of the best performances of the year in the Secret Agent. I think he's absolutely going to be a critic's darling. I expect him to win, I think, all three of the top critics prizes. Um, so yeah, I feel pretty confident that he's gonna win Best Actor for the Secret Agent, and my runner-up is actually no other choice. Um Lee Bingyun. Lin Bing Lee Bing Yun, uh, who's freaking incredible and no other choice. He gives an amazing one of the best performances as well. Either end of these winners are gonna be are gonna be great.

SPEAKER_01: 2:10:20

Honestly, actor is such a competitive category. Again, you have two great picks, and it's so difficult for me to pick between them, between Lim Bye-un and um Bagramora. And I know that both films are gonna be well regarded by critics and they're gonna be very memorable, both performances are gonna be very memorable, and I think we'll hear both of those names throughout throughout the critics uh circuit this year. But I'm actually gonna go a little bit on a limb and say that the best actor is actually gonna go to Sergi Lopez um for Surratt. Um and I don't know, there's something about the box pick. It's such an out-of-the-box pick, but there's something about what I think he's being asked to do in the film that might resonate a lot with film critics, maybe New York film critics. And so I I kind of can't decide between no other choice and the secret agents. So I'm gonna go ahead and say that the win goes to Surratt. Um, and then my runner-up is either of those would be would be great candidates. No other choice or the secret agent.

SPEAKER_02: 2:11:32

Wow, very interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 2:11:33

Very interesting. If that happens, that would be amazing. I mean, if for for those of you who for those of you who don't know, Sergio Lopez, um, most of you are gonna recognize him from his performance in Pan's Labyrinth, um, where he actually won uh I mention at the Los Angeles film critics for supporting actor that year in 2006. And so I think what better way to recognize Sarah than to give it to Sergio Lopez?

SPEAKER_02: 2:11:55

Yeah, that'd be awesome. That'd be so cool. Um, for Best Actress, I feel pretty confident that the win here will be Rose Byrne for if I had legs, I'd kick you. Um, I think it'll be off the heels, as we said, of the Gotham win or possible win. Um, and it'll kick start the narrative of her being the critic starling. My runner-up actually would be for Amanda Safried in The Testament of Anne Lee, um, who's incredible in that film. And I think uh certainly these top-tier critics groups are going to be very happy to consider her for a win for the film. I hope so. I hope so.

SPEAKER_01: 2:12:29

I worry that they're gonna think it's like I'm worried that they're gonna be turned off by the musical aspect, which would be a shame. But I love that she got an iron for the Gotham for the Gotham and that the film got an iron for Gotham. I thought that was great. But I agree with you. I think this is Rose Byrne's to lose. I also say that I think Rose Byrne absolutely needs to win this. I think Rose Byrne needs to run the gamut and win all three to survive what is gonna essentially be, I think, a largely unlikable movie. Um, my runner up is actually gonna be sentimental value. Um, I think it's interesting that we both have said no to Jesse Buckley. And I think that's because I think that Hamnet isn't high brow enough for the New York film critics. That reads more to me like an emotional choice made at the LA film critics. I agree. You agree? I agree, I agree. Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 2:13:14

Yeah, for best director, I think that this is this is the the the award I'm most confident about. Um is my my prediction is PGA for one battle after another. I think there's absolute I think he absolutely is gonna win this category. He's never one director here, um, only writing. And uh so this is a chance to give him finally the best director prize. And my runner-up would be Jafar Panahifer. It was just an accident.

SPEAKER_01: 2:13:38

And we, I think for the first time are of a 100% match. I completely agree. I think the favorite has to be Paul Thomas Anderson for one bat after another, and the runner-up should be Jafar Panahifer. It was just an accident. I think you're 100% right. Um, if you kind of look at the trajectory of Paul of PTA of Paul at the New York Film Critics, um, you know, his films have collectively have won supporting actor for Pogue Knights, um, actor for There Will Be Blood, cinematography with for There Will Be Blood. Um, he's won Screenplay a couple of times for Liquorice Pizza and Phantom Thread. The master was a semifinalist for film and director. There will be blood was a semifinalist for film and director. He has never won director, right? And so I think yeah, if they do not give him the award for best director here, when the hell else are they going to?

SPEAKER_02: 2:14:27

I think this, yeah, this is the most no-brainer for me.

SPEAKER_01: 2:14:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 2:14:30

Um, and then finally for best film, my prediction is that one battle after another will win best film and the runner-up will be sentimental value. Um, I am a firm believer that one battle is going to be the far and away uh favorite pick amongst the top critics and amongst the regional critics as well. It'll just be a very uh, you'll be hearing that a lot. One battle winning best picture. Um, and so I think it'll start here at the NYFCC. Um, I will say that the NYFCC has a history as of late of picking the their winners for best picture end up being not the winners for best picture at the Academy Awards. That's been a trend as of late.

SPEAKER_01: 2:15:12

They don't correlate, right?

SPEAKER_02: 2:15:13

They don't correlate. Um, but I will say that I think this year one battle will just be such a behemoth and will win just just you know the 80-90 percent of the critics' groups where that won't matter. Because I I do think one battle will possibly win all three of the top critics.

SPEAKER_01: 2:15:29

I think um, so that's how I see it. I mean, I could very well see that happening. Um, and I agree thus far, I at least with the New York film critics, I think the best picture favorite has to be one battle after another. Again, Paul Thomas Anderson has never picked up best picture here, if not now, then when? Um, I can't think of a better occasion to give it to him. Um, my runner-up is actually interesting, and I think I I bring it up for a couple reasons. Number one, because you dodge the title completely, number two, because can it really go empty? Number three, the embargo lifts. And number four, it's a New York story. And so my runner-up, because because I can't find a film that comes anywhere near one bat after another in terms of how heavy of a favorite it should be. Um, I think my runner-up for best picture is Marty Supreme because I don't know. I don't know what the expectation is yet. And so you went the entire way without mentioning it, and we both left it off of Best Actor, which everyone sort of agrees is its best shot at winning an Oscar. Right, right. And so my question to you is what's up with that?

SPEAKER_02: 2:16:39

Actually, maybe it's because I haven't heard enough about Marty Supreme, but also because I'm I s maybe I just felt that these films were they were gonna be more passionate about. I think they're more passionate about one battle and um uh sentimental value, and it was just an accident and no other choice, you know. So I didn't find the right place to put it without sacrificing one of those films not being mentioned.

SPEAKER_01: 2:17:09

So I think that's why I left it off. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, I will say that I purposely left it off of actor because Chalamet did win for call me by your name, and I did not feel comfortable with him winning two in the same category at such a young age. Um, the Safty brothers did end up surprising here when they won Best Director for Uncut Gems. Right. So I didn't want to repeat them there in Best Director, but I do feel like it sort of signifies that um this critics groups this good this particular critics group um looks highly upon their work. I also think that, let's be honest, they're New Yorker filmmakers, like their films are very much of the New Yorker energy and the New York energy, and I think that that has an effect on how well they do. I think there's a reason why they premiered at the New York Film Festival, I think there's a reason why the crowd absolutely adored it. Um and so to me, I think this film might actually play more New York, like the anti-centers. This will play more New York than Los Angeles film critics. Um I think it was absolutely storybook, and I wouldn't be surprised if you know the movie gods or the Oscar gods or whoever's pulling the strings behind you know the award circuit have planned it so that the embargo lifts on the day that Marty Supreme wins best picture and best actor at the New York Film Critic Circle, and they and they decide to just give Paul Best Director, which I think is a total gip. Right. Because I doubt that Marty can be that good.

SPEAKER_02: 2:18:40

Well, I think Marty's the first and the NYCC is the second. What do you mean? That the Marty the embargo lifts on the first and that the NYCC uh uh is announced on the second, I believe that's how it is.

SPEAKER_01: 2:18:51

Oh, believe it's very interesting. Nonetheless, I think timing it around the same period. Timing would be very interesting. Like you could could you have planned it any better? I don't know. I agree. Um but so part that's the reason why I'm keeping Marty as the runner up. I also think it's the one film that it's still kind of a question mark to me, like how adored is it gonna be? Right at this point, I I understand how how well liked the other films are. I just don't think that they can catch up to one battle yet, right?

SPEAKER_02: 2:19:20

Right. Well, with that, that concludes the uh this episode. Um, going through Wicked and the Gotham Awards and the NYCC will be very interesting to see um who pulls out ahead. And also, as soon as December hits, we'll get a slew of uh critics groups and awards groups. So plan on you know uh hearing a lot about that. We're gonna try to make episodes a little bit more frequently so we can uh make sure that we grab all those uh micro changes and how the race shifts. Um, also uh just a reminder that our predictions have been updated, so go check it out. All our predictions are on our website, framesandflicker.com, and also follow us on Twitter, on Twitter, on Twitter at Academy Anon. And uh yeah, until next time. Until next time, I'm your co-host Joseph. And I'm Jules, and it's been a pleasure. The music on this episode, entitled Cool Cats, was graciously provided by Kevin McLeod and Incompitech.com, licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0. HTTP colon forward slash forward slash Creative Commons dot org forward slash licenses forward slash by forward slash three point zero.

SPEAKER_01: 2:20:48

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