Critical Darlings: The 2026 Oscars Ceremony with Griffin Newman

Summary

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Summary of "Critical Darlings: The 2026 Oscars Ceremony" (Blank Check with Griffin & David, March 17, 2026)

Episode Overview

In this lively roundtable episode, Griffin Newman joins hosts Alison Wilmore and Richard Lawson, plus producer Ben Frisch and special guests, to dissect the 2026 Academy Awards. They dig into the show's major moments, historic wins, trends in Hollywood, event comedy, evolving industry values, political tensions, and, perhaps most memorably, the world of collectible popcorn buckets as the ultimate Oscar merch. The mood is buoyant—reflecting on an awards season that both broke new ground and felt refreshingly invested in celebrating cinema, rather than apologizing for itself.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Oscars: How "Real" Are They?

• “How real is this awards ceremony? How real are the Oscars? And why do we care?” (Alison, 01:31)
• The hosts debate the meaning of the Oscars: as both a reflection and a driver of industry values. Griffin underscores their continued power to spur studios to take creative risks, fueling projects not always driven by the bottom line (10:23).
• Alison notes the awards function as an “imperfect mirror” of Hollywood’s self-perception—not pure art, but a rare spot of institutional meaning:
  • “They are a reflection of how the industry is thinking about itself and how it's changing with the times or not changing." (Alison, 02:41)

2. Historic Wins & Changing Hollywood

• The episode highlights major 2026 Oscar milestones:
  • First woman winning Cinematography.
  • Michael B. Jordan joins a very exclusive list of Black Best Actor winners—only six. ("That's pathetic," Richard, 02:06).
  • The significance of blockbuster Best Picture nominees ("Sinners" and "One Battle After Another") also having artistic credibility.
• Griffin: "Even the worst people in the industry still want to win an Oscar… it gets major studios to be like, can we allocate 5-10% of our budget to something that might turn out well?" (10:56)
• The group reflects on Chalamet’s continuing near-misses and how Oscar voting appears to be driven as much by vibes as merit ("You run the mental simulation... you imagine the speeches they're gonna give," Griffin, 15:44).

3. The Ceremony: Tone, Comedy, and Vibes

• General praise for the ceremony’s positive mood and lack of desperation:
  • “These are very specific reference points… assuming you cared about these movies.” (Griffin, 08:59)
  • A noticeable absence (and at last, lack of nostalgia for) the endless “why are we here” jokes that have self-lampooned the Oscars for a decade (06:12).
  • The self-hating, “out-of-touch” humor has faded. This year’s show felt made "for the people who want to watch it" rather than chasing ratings. (07:53-08:37)

Comedy Highlights: Conan O'Brien

• The hosts rave about Conan’s bits (06:25–07:00). Griffin:
  • "I've been waiting 20 years for them to bring back host runs through the movies. And they literally did it." (06:53)
• Conan’s sincerity and audience-aware comedy are contrasted with the more detached, reflexive snark of prior hosts.
• Jokes that assumed viewership and cinephilia were praised (“It was an award show that assumed you had seen the movies,” Alison, 07:25).

4. Awards Outcomes: Best Actor Drama & Industry "Vibes"

• The Michael B. Jordan vs. Timothée Chalamet narrative is unpacked in depth.
  • Chalamet’s red carpet fit and “swagger” perceived by panel as signaling "not the right energy" for a win (13:10–14:05).
  • Griffin: "There's a question of is he fundamentally unserious in a way that we can't reward him until he gains that peace?" (15:09)
  • Griffin connects Chalamet’s arc to Oscar history ("Young and egos went out of control," 16:07), comparing his trajectory to Dreyfuss and Brody.
• The Jordan win is seen as overdue validation—particularly for his collaborations with Ryan Coogler (22:09–25:25). The crowd notes his ability to maintain “serious movie star” status with little personal controversy and consistent box office draws.

5. Best Supporting Actor: The Sean Penn Conundrum

• Discussion of Penn’s absence and whether the show should reward winners who don’t appear (33:48–37:03).
• “If you don’t fucking show up, the next person down the list wins. Unless you have a real reason for not being there." (Richard, 34:28)
• Kieran Culkin’s deadpan introduction noted as “the right spirit.”

6. The Show’s Political Pulse

• Oscars politics largely present in presenter remarks more than acceptance speeches.
  • “[Javier] Rodem being like, ‘No war and free Palestine,’ explicitly.” (Alison, 39:00)
  • Conan’s jab at Ted Sarandos made for sharper industry commentary than overt “woke” pronouncements—“He kind of had the right targets.” (Griffin, 45:21)
• The group discusses the pitfalls of the Oscars as an activist platform and the cynicism bred by “oh, here we go again” reactions to political speeches.
  • “If you get up there and say anything at, like, the woke Liberal Academy Awards, is that just gonna become fodder for Fox News…?” (Griffin, 40:20)

7. Popcorn Buckets: Merch of the Year

• Rebecca Alter’s “Popcorn Bucket Corner” is a loving and hilarious rundown of the best (and worst) promotional popcorn buckets among this year’s Best Picture nominees (87:35–105:41).
  • Detailed discussion of design, practicality ("Dream big, eat small"—Rebecca, 93:18), and collectibility.
  • Top picks: Netflix’s Frankenstein skull, Marty Supreme sphere, Gary the Snake from “Helio,” Jurassic World incubator cup, Avatar: Fired Ash Banshee.
  • “The only important recap of the year in movies.” (Richard, 106:41)
• Reflection on the culture of movie merch and the way blockbuster art and commerce collide.

8. Other Show Features & Moments

• In Memoriam: Thoughtful handling noted (69:41–73:27), including Billy Crystal’s tribute to Rob Reiner and a cameo by Barbra Streisand.
• Memorable Presenters: Bridesmaids cast reunion, Chris Evans & Robert Downey Jr. double act, Bill and Lewis Pullman’s odd father-son pairing.
• Rare Oscar tie in Best Live Action Short, handled by Kumail Nanjiani with good humor (78:51–79:34).
• Talk about the new Best Casting category’s meaning and predictive value (50:47–54:34).
• Musical performances praised for showmanship (76:55).
• “Champagne problems” of a year where the public had actually seen the front runners, generating real suspense (12:43).

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On the Oscars' importance:
  • "Everyone kind of wants to win an Oscar. The worst people in the industry still want to win an Oscar." — Griffin Newman (10:56)
• On Oscar comedy:
  • "The comedy in the Oscars for a decade plus became lamp shading about how irrelevant the Oscars were... I'm watching this!" — Griffin (06:12)
• On Chalamet’s loss:
  • "He’s not winning tonight." — Griffin, on Chalamet’s vibe (13:35)
  • "Young and egos went out of control." — Griffin, on Oscar history (16:07)
• On Michael B. Jordan’s win:
  • "There was all this pressure on the idea of Timothée Chalamet as the last movie star... Is Michael B. Jordan getting in on the back of the movie? He's overdue." — Griffin (23:02)
• On Conan as host:
  • "We've been waiting 20 years for them to bring back host runs through the movies. And they literally did it." — Griffin (06:53)
• On the shift away from montages:
  • "A ceremony fairly devoid of montages." — Griffin (04:01)
• On popcorn buckets:
  • “Dream big, eat small.” — Rebecca (93:18)
• On Best Supporting Actor absenteeism:
  • "If you don’t fucking show up, the next person down the list wins." — Richard (34:28)
• On Oscar politics:
  • "Do we all need to be tweeting all the time, turning everything into a press release? What is actually gonna move the needle on any of these issues?" — Griffin (44:46)

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Important Segments (Timestamps)

• [01:31] – What Do the Oscars Really Mean?
• [02:04] – Historic Wins (First Woman in Cinematography, Michael B. Jordan)
• [06:00–08:37] – Ceremony Comedy and Tone: Conan vs. Kimmel, “Runs Through the Movies”
• [10:23–11:38] – Oscars as Industry Motivator
• [13:00–15:44] – Best Actor Race: Chalamet’s “Vibes,” Red Carpet Judgment
• [22:09–25:25] – Michael B. Jordan’s Career and Win
• [33:48–37:03] – Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn Not Showing Up
• [39:00–45:21] – Political Speeches and Industry Targets (Conan, Sarandos)
• [50:47–54:34] – New Best Casting Category
• [69:41–73:27] – In Memoriam: Billy Crystal, Streisand, Industry Mortality
• [87:35–105:41] – Popcorn Bucket Corner (with Rebecca Alter): Reviews and Bucket Lore

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Tone & Atmosphere

The discussion is witty and critical but not cynical—passion for both film and film culture abounds, laced with playful snark. There’s self-deprecating humor (about their own Oscar pool failures and podcasting tropes) and a running joy about pop culture minutiae—whether lampooning red carpet fits, cataloguing popcorn buckets, or poking fun at Oscar “villains.”

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Transition Announcement

At the episode’s close, the hosts announce Critical Darlings will spin off into its own standalone podcast feed, covering new movie releases and “the state of the industry”—encouraging subscribers to “join us on this journey” (109:46).

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Conclusion

This episode of "Critical Darlings" is a rollicking, wide-ranging analysis of the 2026 Oscars: celebratory, insightful, pragmatic about the intersection of art, business, and celebrity, and hilariously reverent about popcorn buckets as the true award season icons. It’s required listening—or, at least, reading—for both Oscar obsessives and those seeking to understand what the Academy Awards say about Hollywood (and us) in the 2020s.

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Transcript

[Alison Wilmore]

Welcome to Critical Darlings, a conversation about the awards season. Conversation one contender at a time. Please welcome to the stage your hosts, Richard Lawson and Alison Wilmore.

[Richard Lawson]

Marie Barty. Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction coming to us via satellite from London at this time, we are joined again by our wonderful producer, Ben Frisch. Hello, Ben.

[Griffin Newman]

Good morning.

[Richard Lawson]

And our special guest, Griffin Newman. Welcome back to the podcast.

[Griffin Newman]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me here.

[Richard Lawson]

All four of us watched the Oscars together.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Richard Lawson]

Which is the first for all of us, right? Yes. I normally watch it just on my couch at home at this point. Stay tuned to the end of the episode. We're going to have an announcement about the future of Critical Darlings. And also throughout this episode, we had Ben Frisch recording during our viewing party of the Oscars. And you're gonna hear some special, I don't know, correspondent bits from Blank Check universe's own Ben Hasley. So keep an ear out for those.

[Griffin Newman]

And near the end of the episode, we're gonna be doing a popcorn bucket review both for the Oscars. Popcorn buckets. And for just some of the best, brightest popcorn buckets with Rebecca Alter.

[Richard Lawson]

But, Alyson, what's your big question about this year's Oscars?

[Alison Wilmore]

I wanted us to bring us back to my recurring question. How real is this awards ceremony? How real are the Oscars? And why. Why do we care, I guess is the essential question. We've spent hours now talking about films in the context of the Oscars.

[Richard Lawson]

I mean, it's pretty high. There were some significant things happening last night, like the first woman to ever win the cinematography Oscar, Michael B. Jordan joining a very small class of black, you know, best lead actor winners.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, six in total.

[Richard Lawson]

I mean, that's nothing. That's pathetic.

[Griffin Newman]

It's six. And it does feel like the six are all, like, hugely historic.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah. And I think that, you know, if you want to compare, like, Michael B. Jordan winning that to, like, Denzel winning it for Training Day. Like, Training Day is a movie that people probably still watch and think about, but like Sinners was like, one of the huge movies of the year. It had all this other awards momentum behind it. And so it felt like it wasn't just this lone standout to give a beloved actor a prize. It was. He was one of several representatives for a movie that was widely beloved, which I think is even rare.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, for me, in general, the Oscars, I'm not like an Oscars trivia junkie. I have really not Great stores of historical awareness about them. I wish I could pull up last time someone won. Or this. They are interesting to me always because they are a reflection of how the industry is thinking about itself and how it is changing with the times or not changing with the times. And what it considers valuable and prestigious is its own kind of extremely imperfect mirror. And every year, and it's, I think in that way, an incredible check in. And this year, yeah, I mean, I thought it was a really good ceremony. I thought it was one that the vibes were good. It felt very invested in the idea of the movies being important without being self important about that, without being all cloying. There are lots of times when they're doing cinema, the movies, the history and all of that, where you're like, oh, forgot sake. Like, like, let's move it along, please. And in this case, I felt like it was all coming from a place of sincerity, but also from a place where it didn't feel like it needed to reach out and be like, come on, guys, remind us of why, you know, you think this is important too. I think it was understood this was

[Griffin Newman]

a ceremony fairly devoid of montages.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Which I usually am. A person fighting for the montage. Because the montage is always. Almost always make me tear up.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It feels like this is the one time a year I go to church

[Richard Lawson]

they do the Henry V music. Or like one of those other classic scores from Dragon Heart, weirdly, is one

[Griffin Newman]

that they've used a lot. And you get eight minutes of like the best high fives or eye contact in the history of movies or whatever.

[Alison Wilmore]

Or like speeches. Battle. Battlefront speeches. Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Any of those things I love. And I've always been like, no, we need them. They're important to the Oscars. But there literally might not have been one last night.

[Richard Lawson]

And I also felt outside of immemorial. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Which had to be 20 minutes because last was a bloodbath straight up into the first three months of this year. The amount of people in immemorium who passed away just in the last six weeks was absurd.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

But I also felt like it was the most comedy they have gotten into an Oscar ceremony in a long time and certainly the most successful comedy. I don't think the ratio has been this strong of good versus terrible. And I think all the things that were failures on the comedy front were basically overly confident presenters.

[Ben Frisch]

Yes.

[Richard Lawson]

Overly confident. Underperforming.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. Yeah, exactly. Every Conan bit was great. And I feel like there's been a reticence to the comedy the last 15 or 20 years. Can you even pull this off anymore? Do people want this? Is this a no win job? And then you'd get like two or three big segments and the rest of the time the host feels like they're kind of gone. And I felt like there was comedy throughout the show last night that was all kind of like appropriately judged and actually funny.

[Richard Lawson]

It's a simple metric, but I think the difference between a Conan versus a Jimmy Kimmel is like Conan, I think genuinely cares.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Richard Lawson]

And genuinely is like, you know, he's a sort of Harvard guy. Like, he's like, he has a high mind for art, you know, and that counts for a lot. But also just throughout the show because he put in little jokes wherever he could fit them. It means. Oh, he's invested.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Richard Lawson]

Like he wants to be an entertaining, worthwhile show. Whereas, you know. Yeah. Kimmel being like yet another monologue joke about why are we all here year after year. That got pretty tiresome.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, yes. That's a great way of putting it. It felt like the comedy in the Oscars for a decade plus became lamp shading about how irrelevant the Oscars were or how self congratulatory they were. And I'm like, don't deflate this. I'm watching this.

[Rebecca Alter]

Right.

[Alison Wilmore]

Exactly. Like, this is insulting me as someone who is invested in this. I think especially I hate the jokes about like, oh, here's a bunch of movies we never watched. Like, ha ha ha. I didn't watch this best picture nominee. And I'm just like, I don't really want to hear that.

[Richard Lawson]

The only person who pulled that off was Hugh Jackman when in his opening musical number where he was like the reader.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes.

[Richard Lawson]

I couldn't believe it.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Alison Wilmore]

That is like the one exception. Yeah. But I mean, something that I appreciated about this year is, you know, of the Conan bits like the opening, the weapons referencing opening, which I thought was terrific.

[Griffin Newman]

We've been waiting 20 years for them to bring back host runs through the movies. And they literally did it. They literally.

[Alison Wilmore]

So good.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. Run through them.

[Richard Lawson]

I wrote about it on premiereparty.com People can read now online. But I was like, about that bit, I said, it's one of those things where you're like the minute it starts, you're like, of course this was the only way to open the show. It's perfect.

[Griffin Newman]

It reminded me a little bit of the opening to an MTV Movie Awards or something complimentary.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes, yes.

[Richard Lawson]

In the golden Ben Stiller days.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Well.

[Alison Wilmore]

And it's Also notably, that is a bit from the ending of Weapons. And the award show closed off with a bit from the ending of one battle after another. This was an award show that assumed you had seen the movies. Like, you would not get the jokes unless you.

[Richard Lawson]

He ran through the end of Hamnet, too.

[Rebecca Alter]

Yeah, exactly.

[Griffin Newman]

This was a great point you made in the moment, though, Alison, which is like, there's both a. I've been very frustrated for the last 15 years or so with the Oscars being self hating.

[Alison Wilmore]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

It goes beyond even these jokes we're talking about of, like, calling out like, no one cares. We're just here patting each other's backs. But also this assumption of we are out of touch. There is no longer this overlap between what we deem important and the popular culture. They've gotten further and further apart. And the Oscars tying themselves into knots of, like, how do we get people back in if we nominate this, do they watch? You know, if we don't nominate this, if we bring on these stars or all of these things that felt like, just let the Oscars be for the people who want to watch it. And I think this year, you both organically had a crop of nominees that felt like they stuck more to the culture that people actually saw and were invested in. And also the Oscars just felt like they chilled out about all of that.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't know if part of it is that, like, the YouTube deal is done. ABC is in its final years. This idea of trying to chase how do you get it back to 1997 ratings is never gonna happen. And it's no longer a long term thing they have to solve. But it just felt good to be like, these are very specific reference points, not from the trailers, but from the endings of these movies.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

That we're assuming both because they actually were widely seen and because who watches the Oscars if they don't actually care? This is a spoiler safe space.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Alison Wilmore]

And that was nice. I mean, it felt like we were all in this together. Like, we do all care about this.

[Richard Lawson]

We know the assumption that we were all there. I think that maybe the mistake that the Oscars made for a long time was a reaction to both the Ricky Gervais Golden Globes years, but also kind of the Tina and Amy Golden Globes years where, you know, Ricky and his sort of, you know, iconoclastic. I mean, that guy. Did you know that he doesn't believe in God?

[Griffin Newman]

Richard, you can't say that on.

[Richard Lawson]

Sorry, Sorry. Oh, like, I'm gonna be held liable

[Griffin Newman]

for these slanderous comments.

[Richard Lawson]

I know, but, you know, obviously he just mocked it, you know, just sort of in this really, you know, kind of acidic way. And then Amy and Tina made it, you know, they would come out and be like, hello, you entitled brats. You know, whatever. That works for the Globes, which genuinely don't matter.

[Griffin Newman]

That's the great difference.

[Richard Lawson]

But the Oscars, I mean, look, none of this matters, quote unquote.

[Alison Wilmore]

But the Globes are, are much faker. They are much less real than the Oscars in terms of how they work.

[Griffin Newman]

But also, if, if we, if we treat the Oscars as unreal, then this entire thing falls apart.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

You know, I mean, the thing is

[Alison Wilmore]

like, also as if you're going to attach any meaning to an award show, the Oscars, where it is made up by people in the industry voting on their own work essentially, like, is as close as you can come to something that has some weight or meaning.

[Griffin Newman]

Totally. And, and I mean, to your point of like, you know, how, how real is this and what you astutely say all the time that like, the Oscars are interesting as a reflection of how the industry views itself in that moment. I think beyond that, the Oscars existing are one of the only things that still gets studios to take risks.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

There is still an ego involved in the industry. As much as people become sociopathic, crass, you know, like mega conglomerate, how do we just make everything for cheaper and faster and worse? Everyone kind of wants to win an Oscar.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, the worst people in the industry still want to win an Oscar. Many of the worst people in the industry have won multiple Oscars. And it's still this one thing that gets major studios to be like, can we allocate 5%, 10% of our budget a year to making things that might turn out well and that promoting them with a kind of care and delicacy that we don't otherwise apply.

[Alison Wilmore]

Right. But also the idea, it is the thing that makes these extremely bottom line focused businesses do things that are not in the interests of their bottom line. I mean, like, the Oscars ob. Do provide a certain boost, but like, they're not really like you probably, if you were going to zoom in on the stuff that like, makes reliably, like, you know, the most money, it's not going to be.

[Richard Lawson]

It probably accrues some value in the cat as a catalog. Yeah. You know, sure. But yeah, no, it is more about a certain sort of pride and ego. I mean, one of the nice things about this here was that you know, well, depending on how you break down budgets. But, like, one battle after another did make some money. It was seen. Sinners was obviously an enormous hit. Those being the two front runners. It meant that there was a sort of populist momentum behind, you know, kind of joining the arti, you know, the sort of ego driven thing. I would say there was a slight downside to that, though, in that I think in the age of social media, that heightened scrutiny made it like, when the show was over last night, I was like, thank God. Like, I enjoyed watching the show. I was happy with most of the winners, but I think there was such an exhausting kind of world surrounding that and such a huge lead up because the Oscars, you know, we're recording this. It's what, June 20th?

[Rebecca Alter]

Of course.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah. It was just so. It felt so delayed that, like, I almost found myself bitterly wishing for, you know, just a few years previous when no one had seen anything and we could just be in our little bubble.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, I mean, that's. It's the champagne problem, literally. But you and I turned to each other when Best actor was about to get announced and I was like, I'm genuinely nervous. We're like, our hands are shaking. There was just this feeling of like, what's about to happen and what is going to be the discourse cycle around.

[Richard Lawson]

This is genuinely nervous.

[Griffin Newman]

And they announced Michael B. Jordan. He gets up and we're like, this just feels right. This feels good. This is going to age well. This feels good in the moment. He's nailing the speech, right?

[Alison Wilmore]

The speech was like, very classy, but earnest and heartfelt. I showed you a picture of Timothee Chalamet arriving. It was like the getty photo from the red carpet. And he had the sunglasses on. He had the kind of like dirt baggy facial hair. He was in a white suit stealing Wagner Mora's like, signature move. But it was like a kind of hypebeast fit, like, baggy. And he was just standing there like this. And you immediately were like, he's not gonna win.

[Griffin Newman]

I said, he's not winning tonight. And I had the exact same thing last year with a complete unknown. I don't remember what he wore, but just him showing up with a Jenner on his arm and just feeling a little too swaggy, you know, a little too big for his britches. I was like, even though they're not obviously voting at the moment, he shows up on the red carpet, this is the exact thing they don't want.

[Richard Lawson]

That's the energy made Manifest. It is. It is.

[Griffin Newman]

And it's the reason they're gonna keep making him wait.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And I think, you know, Even though when DiCaprio would go to the Oscars, he would play grown up very well.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

But I do think if I can invoke it again for the second consecutive week, I do think the pussy posse stuff haunted DiCaprio for a long time. Where they were like, it's in what you're saying of like, the academy is picking what they want to represent how the world sees the film industry. There is this feeling of like, is the association bad here?

[Alison Wilmore]

Right. I mean, this is. It is like their testament to what they want in a movie star. Right. How they think a movie star should behave right now. And clearly they looked at what Timmy did. And for all credit to Timothee Chalamet, who I think is great in Marty supreme and who also, through like sheer force of swaggy will, powered that movie in the box office to like, heights that I don't think anyone would have expected for a, you know, a period piece ping pong saga. But it was not the right energy for the Oscars. As you're clearing for a while, probably.

[Griffin Newman]

I think there's a question of is he fundamentally unserious in a way that we can't reward him until he gains that peace? Right.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And obviously we talk about these things as if the academy is like, you know, 800 people in robes who all sit around a long table and go, how do we feel about the way Timmy is dressing? It's, you know, there's a sort of collective unconscious. But also there is something about as much as people think like, Chalamet was great, that's the best performance of the year. And then you get your link and you open up for voting and you look at the five, and suddenly there's this sort of like, wait a second.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

You run the mental simulation. You imagine the speeches they're gonna give. And sometimes I think you make an impulsive decision based on, like, vibes.

[Richard Lawson]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. And I think you look at the two other. The two youngest best actor winners of all time. The people that Chalamet would have been in the class with are Richard Dreyfus and Adrien Brody, who are both cases

[Richard Lawson]

loved figures where they gave it to these guys.

[Griffin Newman]

Young and egos went out of control.

[Richard Lawson]

They truing them arguably were already bad like before. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. And I think, to me, a current state is better than either of those two guys in his sort of like, he has more humility and what he's doing is more theatrics and.

[Alison Wilmore]

Right. He's self. Aware. Yeah, he's self.

[Griffin Newman]

Aware. But I think there is that concern, especially when last year they brought Brody back and then this year he wanted to do five minutes of self referential bits about how much he sucked last year.

[Alison Wilmore]

I mean, I laughed. He's not great at like that delivery, but it still was pretty funny.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah. And like not to. I don't know, who knows what the voter thinking was. But you know, I had this thought a couple days before the Oscars. Against better judgment, watching deposition video of these two doge assholes, these like 20 something guys you could watch smirking.

[Alison Wilmore]

I got so angry right away.

[Rebecca Alter]

Oh no.

[Richard Lawson]

I mean, I watched maybe three minutes of each one being deposed and I was like, you know, that's not exactly Marty Mauser energy, but it's not too dissimilar. And then you compare what Chalamet's character is doing in that movie and he plays it very well, but maybe people are sort of passing some sort of moral judgment on the character. And then you can, you know, to what Michael B. Jordan's two characters. One a tragic figure who becomes kind of a villain, but not really. Really. And then, you know, this kind of avenging hero who, you know, sacrifices himself, you know, whatever. I just, I have to think that there was something subconscious even in voters minds that were like, I don't want to give it to this little pipsqueak piss ant asshole, you know, and even the. Not even just on a Chalamet level, but on a character level.

[Alison Wilmore]

On a character level. Oh yeah, for sure. People really struggled with Marty. I feel like even understanding that he was clearly not like the movie was not being like, here's a broad endorsement of everything he's doing. People really struggled with that character. Yeah. I will say this is going to guarantee us many more Timothy awards campaigns. Like just like all in ones. I mean, not this coming year, I do not think. No, like June 3rd does not seem like it is necessarily going to be a best picture.

[Richard Lawson]

Well, there was a joke online that he's gonna. Now he's guaranteed to do an Inary 2 film.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, I mean that's. Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

Which like. Yeah. I mean. Okay, so if I can brag for a second, please. My predictions premiereparty.com, i got only three wrong for the whole night, which I'm proud of. One of them was best actor. And I had to do a little analysis of that when I wrote about the show after the broadcast. And I Think that one of them was. I was reading sort of tea leaves about, like, BAFTA and SAG a little bit wrong or a lot wrong. The other was, I think there was a subconscious thing where I was like, I just want. I'm not. And predicting and wanting is not the same thing. But I kind of confused them. I wanted Chalamet to win solely so we wouldn't have to have this discourse anymore that we could finally be done with it. Because, like, we all chilled out on Leo, and that was in a much younger social media age than we are now. But, yes, you're right, that didn't happen. I think the ultimate. The end result was the better one. But, yeah, I sort of do dread already what the next. But maybe he learned, you know, I

[Alison Wilmore]

mean, we were talking last night and we're like, is the next move. He did the biopic. He has done, like, this, like, really kind of brash. It challenges, like, abrasive, tonally challenging.

[Griffin Newman]

Play gay, kind of arguably.

[Alison Wilmore]

I feel like what's next is physical transformation. Right. Like prosthetics. Yeah. Well, I feel like it's either gonna be gaining a lot of weight for the role, which is a tried and true narrative.

[Richard Lawson]

Right.

[Alison Wilmore]

For your actorly transformation skills, or he's gonna bulk up.

[Richard Lawson]

He's gonna get, like, really, some sort of suffering for the art.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, exactly.

[Richard Lawson]

You know?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Can I throw out, I think, his three nominated performances? And it is wild that he is 31 now and has three Best actor nominations. But Calling by youy Name, Complete Unknown and Marty supreme are, I would argue, three very different performances. But they're all digging into what his core movie star energy is, which is a weird balance of brashness and incredibly sensitive emotionality. Right. Like an almost transparent with a charm

[Richard Lawson]

sort of woven in there.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, Right. And it's different versions of that and very different films, but they're all digging on. That's what David Fincher likes to say. The quality that's still gonna be there in an actor at 3 o' clock in the morning when you're on take 100. Right.

[Alison Wilmore]

David Fincher should also not make people do a take 100.

[Griffin Newman]

That's a whole other conversation.

[Alison Wilmore]

But, yes, like, David Fincher, just go home, send everyone to bed.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, he casts people for that. And that movie stars are often about, what's the thing that's still gonna be there at 3 o' clock in the morning, no matter what? Because it's not an act. It's their core kind of being that makes them a little interesting. I Think to win now, he almost needs to find a performance that's outside of that. Rather than transforming in some demonstrative, you know, external way, he needs to find a performance that has an entirely different energy. And that's when I think they'll also be like, oh, you grew up.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Because the defining thing about those three performances is that's the kind of energy we ascribe to overly confident, unaware young men.

[Alison Wilmore]

The thing is, like, he's, like, boyishness has been his chief quality for such a long time, and I feel like

[Richard Lawson]

he and I have that in common.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, you both are. You're young, sprightly lads. But I feel like it's not necessarily something he's gonna be able to shed. I feel like he needs to maybe grow out of it.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Alison Wilmore]

You know, and so, like, we might be waiting around for a while for that type of role, possibly.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah. Another question is, what does this do for Jordan?

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, I want to throw out a couple Jordan thoughts here. I remember sitting with you at a bar. It was when we had the first conversation about doing this podcast in person. And you had just come back from Venice and Toronto.

[Richard Lawson]

No, just Toronto.

[Griffin Newman]

Just Toronto. And we were sort of like, I was getting your opinions on what you had seen and where you thought the Oscar race was going. And you said to me then, beginning of September or maybe end of September, I feel like the Oscars might circle all the way back around to Sinners. You had seen one battle. It hadn't come out yet. We didn't know how it was gonna do at the box office, but it was like, this is beloved. But I feel like there could be a kind of everything everywhere, all at once. Horseshoe especially, because it's a blockbuster. And, like, these are, you know, Sean, fantasy on Big picture keeps pointing out that, like, Ryan Coogler's key crew has started to become like Spielberg's key crew. You know, where you're like, Ruth Carter's winning multiple costume awards under him by Ludwig Goranson. You know, like, right.

[Richard Lawson]

These two. I mean, two for boosting.

[Griffin Newman]

And I feel like in the last month, there was the vibe shift of is everything gonna swing Sinners? But at very least, it felt like something major has to swing Sinners. They can't just give it the best original screenplay. That felt kind of like a lock. And does that mean the picture's gonna swing? That director is gonna swing that. Michael B. Jordan's gonna swing that. Maybe. It wins both supporting categories. And I think part of what worked for Michael B. Jordan was there was all this pressure on the idea of Timothee Chalamet as the last movie star and the movie star that Gen Z connects to and the guy who drives box office and brings legitimacy. And he pulled off Making Marty Supreme a hit. And there was this kind of like, is Michael B. Jordan kind of getting in on the back of the movie? He's the fifth nominee. He's overdue. It was a kind of performance that I embarrassingly said in some episode of Blank Check to Sims, like, I question if he's gonna get in there. And it was.

[Richard Lawson]

I mean, we didn't know.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, my thinking was, in a way, it felt like the kind of yeoman's work performance of a movie star who's also a producer who's carrying all the weight of the film, but is generously allowing the supporting performers to really get the flashy stuff. And I kind of comped it to Mark Wahlberg in the Fighter, snubbed all of the supporting people nominated supporting wins. De Niro and the Irishman Leo in Killers of the Flower Moon all kind of like nomination morning surprises where an A list movie star who willed that movie into existence in close kind of tandem with the director was snubbed for just sort of holding the center of

[Richard Lawson]

the movie and being taken for granted totally.

[Griffin Newman]

And I think the two things I weren't considering were, one, there's the stunt factor of Michael B. Jordan playing two characters really subtly that was kind of hiding in plain sight. And it felt like in the last six weeks they, like, hit the gas on that narrative. Hey, have you noticed, like, how skillfully he's differentiating these two characters? And even, like, Delroy Lindo and Wumi Masako going out in interviews and explaining what the process was like suddenly made people go, oh, that performance is better than I realized, preventing people from taking it for granted. The other thing I think supercharged him is you could argue this is the overdue Oscar after three previous Michael B. Jordan, Ryan Coogler snubs. Yeah, you could argue that he should have been nominated for Fruitvale Creed and Black Panther.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And that he was snubbed all three times. And that here we have something that generationally feels similar to, like, Scorsese and De Niro if none of the performances were nominated before Raging Bull.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, right. I mean, I think the tricky thing with Michael B. Jordan is that he is someone who has been so good working with Ryan Coogler and then has made some other things in between that, like, have gone basically unnoticed, you know?

[Richard Lawson]

And I think all the way from like Tom Clancy's Without Remorse to just Mercy. A perfectly well intentioned journal.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, exactly. Like these movies where you're like, they might as well not like, like just Mer is a great example. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. You know, it's about Stevenson, right? Bryan Stevenson, the civil rights attorney. But it is like just an incredibly boring movie. Like, it is like very dutiful. It's like very well intentioned and just like has very little spark of life.

[Griffin Newman]

It is a true Oscar bait movie. It feels self consciously Oscar bait.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Alison Wilmore]

Or even like, I mean, he did that HBO Fahrenheit 451. Ramin Barani directed.

[Griffin Newman]

Great director.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. Just an incredibly kind of like lifeless movie. So I feel like the tricky thing with Michael B. Jordan has been that the movies in which he really just has that you're like, oh, you're such a movie star. Have been either with Ryan Coogler or when he's directed himself in Creed iii, which is a really interesting movie, you know. And I feel like the biggest test for the kind of movie star he will be, which I think we are still kind of learning, is his Thomas Crown Affair.

[Griffin Newman]

Totally. Which he's directing.

[Richard Lawson]

Again, I mean, the potential for that to just be like a weirdly, you know, like almost in reverse order. Like, I mean, he's already a movie star, don't get me wrong. And. But now he has the Oscar and then we can kind of go back to be like, oh, right, but you're also fun and sexy and I want to pay for it. Like, you know, to see you on a Saturday night, you know, at the theater. Like, I, I really hope that movie works out because, like, you know, the more recent remake, you know, from the 90s, like, that's a really great movie. And I, and I, I just, you know, there are big shoes to fill, I guess.

[Griffin Newman]

But we covered that on blank check, I guess, a year or two ago. And it's a real like, why don't we have this in the ecosystem anymore? Here is a movie starring grownups that

[Richard Lawson]

came out in August and Bill Conte just freaking at every bar of that score is just like sexy.

[Griffin Newman]

And it was a hit, you know, and it does feel like that's a very. A strategic move on his part to try to identify what his movie stardom is. I think you're right that there was this kind of recognition of the industry's been putting all this pressure on can we identify the next generation? And what it wants more than anything is to be like, can we have a Tom Cruise where no matter what, everything he makes will cross $100 million domestic? DiCaprio being able to do that, mostly working with prestige directors and sort of more high brow fare, you know, Julia Roberts, what have you. And I think there's been this pressure for Chalamet to be that because the track record was building towards that. And maybe people looked back and they were like, you know, we've been like hard on Michael B. Jordan when there were like minor missteps, but the missteps are small. Every major movie he's made has been a major hit.

[Richard Lawson]

There is no bomb that people associate with Jordan.

[Alison Wilmore]

Correct, Right.

[Griffin Newman]

You know. Correct. And if you just look at the Coogler work, and especially the last three, you're like, that's billions of dollars. And then you add in that he made like two successful Creed sequels where he basically took over as the main crit of voice fully on the third one. I think there was this feeling of like, this guy has quietly, you know, through quiet little ups and downs, proven himself as if not the definitive star. Certainly a definitive star. And also, we don't really know about his personal life. He's not out there grandstanding when he does press to promote his movies. It just feels like he's a serious, focused, you know, disciplined. Like, this is a actor we want to present to the world as. Look, here's our new serious leading man.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. And I mean, you could certainly also say that, like, black actors are punished more, are not allowed the kind of leeway to act out the way Timothee Chalamet has. Well, and then be kind of taken seriously. But I do think that, yeah, like, up there on stage giving that award, like, Michael B. Jordan was like. And like, kind of explicitly putting himself in this kind of history of these, like, you know, like milestone, like performers.

[Griffin Newman]

And yeah, the full list is Poitier, Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Jamie Foxx, Will Smith. Yeah, and Michael B. Jordan's the Six.

[Richard Lawson]

And Will Smith, that win has been pretty memory hold because of, you know, what preceded it.

[Griffin Newman]

But if you remove Forest Whitaker, who's a phenomenal actor and was like, fully deserving of that award, but is more of like a serious actor. The other five, Michael B. Jordan included, are like generational, definitional movie stars. They are people who, like, change the culture.

[Ben Frisch]

Hi, this is Ben. We're doing Broach Corner. Everyone's been calling out tonight. And I fully agree that this is a night for brooches. The boys and their brooches. Big ones, small ones. Shiny ones, back ones, front ones, side brooches. And I love it because here's the thing, often men are just boring and they wear a tux, throw a little brooch on it, spice it up. Adrien Brody wearing very shiny stupid brooch. Michael B. Jordan wearing the back brooch. I like that on the back of his collar. God, I don't know. Yeah, it truly feels like every actor was rocking a brooch. It's like, oh, you know who had the like pro Palestine VR aviar. I like that. It was cool. It was like a handmade one and it was political and it had a good message because it was. Often people are showing a little bling, right. To, to like have a little pop with like a neutral color, a black or you know, white colored suit. I think I would try to go for a first place rosette so that no matter what, even if I don't win, I'm number one. I'm, I got first place in my own heart. So that's what I would, would go for.

[Griffin Newman]

David.

[Ben Frisch]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

We're trying to thoughtfully build a wardrobe.

[Sponsor Representative]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[Richard Lawson]

Obviously that's true.

[Sponsor Representative]

And they should be everyday essentials that feel effortless to wear and dependable even as the seasons change, as they are doing currently in New York. They've got lightweight cashmere sweaters. I've got a couple of those. They got short sleeve Mongolian cashmere polos. I think I might need to get some of those linen bottoms, shorts, tees and 100% Pima cotton.

[Griffin Newman]

I won't settle for 99 European jersey linen.

[Sponsor Representative]

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[Griffin Newman]

That's all it is, just quality clothing.

[Sponsor Representative]

Cashmere is 100% Mongolian. So that's the luxury stuff. Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

They only partner with factories that meet rigorous standards.

[Richard Lawson]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

For craftsmanship and ethical production.

[Sponsor Representative]

So I've got all kinds of quint stuff, as I point out all the time. Also my bed sheets.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, okay.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Sponsor Representative]

My comforter quints.

[Griffin Newman]

And they're hitting.

[Sponsor Representative]

Yeah, you're hitting.

[Griffin Newman]

I love being in bed, falling asleep.

[Sponsor Representative]

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[Richard Lawson]

If we want to shift gears a little, I'm curious, what did you guys think about Sean Penn's speech?

[Griffin Newman]

I thought it went a little long.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alison Wilmore]

It is funny that after all we've talked about, about, like, what the Academy wants in, like, its Best actor, like, to be like. The opposite apparently is true for Best Supporting Actor. Sean Patton showed up for the Golden Globes, smoked in the room, didn't win. Did not show up for the other things that then he won.

[Griffin Newman]

The ones he won. Bafta.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

The SAG Actor Awards and the Academy Awards.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Zero speeches.

[Richard Lawson]

And there was some concern in the room last night, like, oh, I heard a rumor he's not well or whatever. And then people are like, no, he's in Ukraine.

[Griffin Newman]

Boots on the ground.

[Richard Lawson]

Boots on the ground. I will say that there is a part of me and maybe this. I think if you don't fucking show up, the next person down the list wins. Unless you have a real reason for not being there.

[Griffin Newman]

The ceremony suffered from not having someone give a speech in that slot, especially because you considered the other four guys would have probably given a very memorable speech.

[Richard Lawson]

They plan out the order of awards. They're like, okay, and then we need the actor speeches are. The supportings are their tent poles in the sort of first, roughly half of the show.

[Griffin Newman]

We need two famos in the first hour. We need two the next two hours, where we go and craft a hard play and then we circle back together.

[Richard Lawson]

Exactly. A friend of mine was texting last night and he was like, I don't know, I just feel like something's off. And I was like, it's because we've only had one actor speech so far.

[Griffin Newman]

That's why.

[Richard Lawson]

And not that Sean Penn would have given some rousing you, but both of

[Griffin Newman]

his speeches were memorable the two previous times he's won.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, yeah. I was years ago. This is a sort of silly anecdote, but years ago, I was traveling abroad with a friend and I just had this little sound sort of echoing in my head, and it was just, rise again. And I just kept thinking it and saying it, and I was like, what the hell is that from? And as we were on a train going from somewhere in Italy to somewhere in Italy, I was like, sean Penn's Milk speech, when he was talking about Mickey Rourke rises Again. And she was like, what is wrong with you? Why is that in your head? But no, you. I think it's. Yeah, he does kind of give, like, somewhat like, you know, memorable speeches, interesting speeches.

[Griffin Newman]

And.

[Richard Lawson]

And I think it. And that was also. Milk was what, over 15 years ago?

[Griffin Newman]

It was 2008.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah. So it would have been interesting to hear from him, especially at a political time. I will say that there is. I've seen some criticism, and I maybe have it myself, where the show did skirt around political stuff to some extent. I mean, do we want them weighing in on all this? But Sean Penn, he would've done it.

[Alison Wilmore]

You know, I wanna get to that in a second. But I will also say I did appreciate that it was Kieran Culkin giving that award. And he did not pretend to be gracious about.

[Richard Lawson]

He does wanna be here.

[Alison Wilmore]

No, but, I mean, that felt right to be, like, this asshole not being here.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And that also made the rhythm of the. Because Kieran Culkin was like, I don't

[Alison Wilmore]

know, let's get this thing over with. Sean Penn.

[Griffin Newman]

The whole moment went by so quickly that it almost felt like a hallucination.

[Richard Lawson]

I was doing the tally in my head sort of toward the end of the night, and I was like, wait, but they haven't done supporting Actor yet. And it's like, oh, no, they did. It was just about two seconds.

[Griffin Newman]

There was, like, no moment that shook from that. I mean, I think as a performance, he's kind of undeniable in that film. Isolated. It's not like an embarrassing win in any way. It becomes the sort of, like, how many Oscars does a person need? Especially when that category contains two, like, historic actors in their 70s who have never been nominated before, getting their first nomination and giving, like, a great performance and a Best Picture nominee. And then, like, Elordi, who's another one of those. Is it the Future guys, and Del Toro who'd be winning for the second time, but fully 26 years later, there's more of a distance. And, you know, he's certainly a towering figure. It felt like any one of those guys would have given an emotional speech. And I saw people speculating that Pen not showing up at the other events after getting called out by Nikki Glazer at the Globes, chain smoking and looking like a bag of garbage was strategically like, the less people see of me, maybe the better chance I have at winning. And then it was so funny that it's like, no, we're just assuming all this shit on him. He just actually kind of doesn't care.

[Alison Wilmore]

But so with the politics, I mean, I feel like whenever I'm asked to write about the Oscars, like, the next day, the take is always just like, the Oscars were surprisingly apolitical or the Oscars were very political. They are like, the two takes. And what was interesting about the editor

[Richard Lawson]

who fired me once said, I want any Hollywood story to be one that everyone in D.C. cares about, which is like, there's. That no such thing exists anyways.

[Alison Wilmore]

But it was funny in the beginning. Like, I think in his opening, Conan, like, was like, this might get political Tonight might get political. But, like, these Oscars were. The politics came through much more from the presenters than they did in the speeches. Like, there were a few kind of

[Griffin Newman]

doing his, like, isn't it funny that Trump's angry at me thing.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes. Yeah. Or like, you know, Javier Rodem being like, no war and free Palestine, like, explicitly.

[Griffin Newman]

That was the moment that I think people thought was gonna be happening across the show.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

And I do think he did exactly what you should do, which is just get out there, say the thing you want to say, and then read off the teleprompter.

[Alison Wilmore]

Exactly.

[Richard Lawson]

Chopra looked a little thrown.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes. Yeah. But, you know, she rolled with it better than I would have guessed. She did not seem like someone who would. From afar, who would have necessarily.

[Richard Lawson]

Excuse me. I'm sorry. Priyanka Chopra. Jonas. I apologize.

[Griffin Newman]

Stuck in the past.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

I want her to be single,

[Alison Wilmore]

but I feel like it actually worked better that way in that. But I feel like one of the things that having a political speech, like, what is challenging about that, is that someone wants to also get out the thank yous, and I'm so grateful. And then also, here's a political statement, and those don't go together very well. Like, they often feel like you're just trying to serve these two enormously different purposes. So having presenters feel more freed up to make jokes about. Well, without ever mentioning Trump by name, you know, like, it did feel like it offered some relief in terms of the expectations that are on the people giving speeches. Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

Like, the assumption that people had seen the movies. There was assumption, like, look, obviously, like, we're not. Everything's a fucking mess. And, you know, we can. We can acknowledge it wryly or directly, but, like, we're not gonna make that the theme of the evening because that's giving him yet another thing or whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

I think that's a big part of it. I think it's. There's this feeling of it's a vicious cycle but it's like, if you get up there and say anything at, like, the woke Liberal Academy Awards, is that just gonna become fodder for Fox News and, you know, sitting members of the

[Richard Lawson]

administration or for Brendan Carr to, like, truly, you know, pull abc?

[Griffin Newman]

What are you accomplishing here? In a weird way, does it become not like an echo chamber, but does it just become fuel for them to stoke outrage in their own base?

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I also think it's fascinating to look at, like. Like early 2000s during the Bush administration. There would be these very fiery political speeches and the audience would turn on them.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Like, it was. Hollywood was no less liberal, but there was this feeling of, you're being unpatriotic. Don't politicize this. And, you know, Michael Moore is a famous one of those.

[Richard Lawson]

When he won for Bowling for Columbine. Right. He gave basically explicitly political speech and was booed in the room because Iraq had been invaded, like, that week.

[Griffin Newman]

What do you say? We're engaged in a fictional war with the fictional president. Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

People booed him. Yeah. Was it a year later, two years later, that he was nominated for Fahrenheit and he was 9, 11, and was greeted as if, like, you know, Jesus returning to Jerusalem for Easter, you know, or for Palm Sunday. And it was just. Yeah, like, like the, The. The. The Oscars are not traditionally that polite to that kind of sentiment.

[Griffin Newman]

No, no. And then, you know, Sims and I were recently 2001, when Robert Altman was seen as the best director, front runner of, like, it's time.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Here's the lifetime achievement award for Robert Altman. And then in the run up, he won the Golden Globes. It was like, here we go. He did a big interview where he criticized the war and Bush and everyone turned on him. And there was this energy of, we can't give him an Oscar. Who knows what he's gonna say on stage. Right. And then I think in the last 10 years, the Oscars got more overtly political. You had these moments of like, you need to take a stance, and there's a little bit of possibly a step back, like, what did that accomplish?

[Alison Wilmore]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, which isn't saying it's not worth saying something and speaking truth to power, but it does. We just live in a time that is insane, and everything becomes, like, weaponized and picked apart.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And I don't think people were, like, strategically going, like, I don't want to get political because it will hurt my career, or, we need the Oscars to be inclusive or anything like that. I think there's genuinely a moment after, like a kind of 2010s of, do we all need to be tweeting all the time, turning everything into a press release? Like, what is actually gonna move the needle on any of these issues?

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Is it gonna be whoever wins Best supporting Actress?

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like, I also feel like, like, obviously I support anyone who wants to, like, go up there and make a political statement. Use that, use their time to do that. But I feel like, like it was telling that the first really political speeches came from the documentary winners because there's just a very obvious and easy way for them to speak to how their work, you know, has relevance. I also.

[Griffin Newman]

The overtly political films, the films about Russia and Putin and about school shootings in America.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alison Wilmore]

And I, you know, I feel like. And maybe this is just me being too generous, but like, I. There was just a definite feeling in the room more so this time of being like, everyone understands, like, everyone is like, like on an approximately same page about their feelings about what's happening in the world right now at least. Certainly, like within like the presidential regime. And that kind of provides. You don't need to keep saying it out loud. You know, I mean, like when Jimmy Kimmel came up and like told his. Yeah. His jokes, like his late night jokes.

[Griffin Newman]

He's gonna hate this.

[Alison Wilmore]

Right. And I was just. It felt kind of like.

[Griffin Newman]

It feels a little glib and pat. I think there's another thing too, which is like, everyone's sitting there going, I don't want to be Adrian Brody.

[Alison Wilmore]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

It's not even like, I don't want to speak out for fear of career repercussions.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It's. It's a thing that's talked about a lot of, like, these aren't our elected officials. These are like actors and creatives. And even if they're smart, they're not necessarily like political science majors. And if they get up there and give some, like, self indulgent speech where they completely muddle their own point and the audience is like, what are they saying? What does that accomplish?

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. I feel like it was telling that the bits that felt the sharpest were not aimed at the larger political world, but, like the more immediate ways in which corporations have been affecting the industry. Right. Like Conan's bits. By the way, they should bring Conan back forever as often as he wants to continue hosting these forever hosts. Yes, exactly. Until Mr. Beast steps in, of course, that, you know, the bits about, like, his job at, like, Ted Sarandos being like, Here is a movie theater. You're like, yeah, Zest on it. Where I was like, oh, you genuinely dislike, like, what this man has done.

[Griffin Newman]

He kind of had the right targets. Yes.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, yeah. And the. I mean, I loved the Casablanca is maybe like a little easy as like the film to like riff on. But like that bit was really funny performance.

[Richard Lawson]

And they did it live.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes.

[Richard Lawson]

You know, like it wasn't like a pre taped thing, which I thought was fun.

[Alison Wilmore]

And The Jane Lynch YouTube ads also very good. The flashlight that killed bin Laden stuck in my head forever. Like those bits were funny, but also they felt like there was both legitimate grievance and a way to make those have zing while also working as jokes.

[Griffin Newman]

We were talking about right before we started recording how fascinating it was that it did feel like ultimately, despite, you know, us very confidently deciding the Hamnet episode will be about Hamnet being the Oscar villain that is clearly positioned as the Oscar villain this year. And one of the episodes in this miniseries needs to focus on that phenomenon. Things absolutely came around to one battle being seen as the Oscar villain, which was fascinating. I was arguing that to Sims that the last time that felt like this was 2007, where no country and There Will Be Blood were the presumed frontrunners. And you were like, you have two movies here that are just sort of like adored and held in really high esteem by serious film people that also had some level of like popular crossover box office success where it's not like there's a low brow movie and a highbrow movie and which one's gonna win. It's two highbrow movies that feel like in conversation with each other. And those two, like weird modern American Marfa westerns were that and sinners in one battle. Very much feeling conversation.

[Richard Lawson]

Well, they were fighting, but then one of them said marfa and they said, how do you know that name?

[Griffin Newman]

I filmed there.

[Richard Lawson]

Nice.

[Griffin Newman]

A thousand comedy points. But yeah, it felt like a similar kind of thing. And I think in the last month there was a lot of like, what are the politics of one battle? And what is the statement if we give this the award? And in his first of three speeches, I feel like PTA summed up succinctly, whether or not you like it, what that movie is about, which is the feeling of like, did we fuck this up?

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Have we fucked this up for the next generation?

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Is it done? Or is the next generation the one that's going to fix this? You know, have we put the burden on them? Or are they the first generation? That's ready to sort of solve things.

[Richard Lawson]

And he mentioned his children, which, like everyone, including myself, had read into that movie and put it in reviews or write ups of the movie. And I. And I. I don't always want, you know, PTA can be kind of an elusive storyteller, and you don't always know what he's getting at. In an intriguing way, it's, you know, what he's. People coming back to his movies. But, like, I appreciated that given, you know, the political tenor of the evening and what was happening outside the evening and all that. I appreciated that he was like, yeah, I'm gonna give you a little bit of an answer to the question.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm gonna give you the thesis without

[Richard Lawson]

being self important about it or grant, you know, self aggrandizing about it. I'm gonna humanize it because I genuinely believe that's why he made the movie.

[Griffin Newman]

100%. Yes. No, it's coming from a really real place of like, in their own ways, have the DiCaprio character and the pen character fucked up things equally. One of them was doing it maliciously and one of them was doing it kind of fearfully. And, you know, at the end of the ceremony, he calls out at Best Picture, Chase Infinity, the heart of the movie. He gave her kind of the ultimate. My American Girl has now replaced Linda Cardellini as the Heart of Green Book.

[Alison Wilmore]

Jesus Christ.

[Griffin Newman]

She is the new heart of the well.

[Richard Lawson]

I want to see Chase Infinity's husband fold a pizza in half. That's all I'm saying.

[Alison Wilmore]

I know. I mean, like, that few images more iconic, really, in this celebration of cinema that is the oscars.

[Griffin Newman]

Green Book 2, Justin Culkin.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah. Oh, can't wait.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Griffin, Allison, reveal your ballots. How'd you do?

[Alison Wilmore]

I can't remember how many missed. Definitely a lot more than Richard did. I just did not do as well as Richard. I. I went for Teyana for Best Supporting Actress. Found Amy Madigan's speech delightful. Love that, you know, weapons got its one win, but, yeah, I don't know. I love Tiana. I think Tiana's amazing. I love her in like, during the ceremony, like when PTA won, just like, you know, giving him like the.

[Richard Lawson]

She was also standing one or directly one person away from her, directly next to DiCaprio, who had just lost Best Actor, like, vocally cheering on Jordan on stage. And I was like, great, good. She was. You know, I used to. When I did the 20 years ago recaps, I became obsessed with how good Sharon Stone was at Being at the Oscars, just the most enthusiastic clapper. A great presenter who really took it seriously. She would do fun fashion things. And I'm like Teyana Taylor, if you want to come back to these Oscars every year because you're a great. She's a great audience member.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I did call out. Speaking of political speeches, I did call out. When Amy Madigan wonder if she had real backbone. Her and Ed Harris would stay in their seat refusing to clap for her own win.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Arms crossed.

[Richard Lawson]

I do wonder how did you did okay in your balance?

[Griffin Newman]

I think I missed five or six. I swung Sinners for best picture. At the last second on a vibe, I went Stellan. I thought they were gonna give him the life of the achievement award. I got the other three acting categories. I got director, both screenplays. I think I missed animated short. I missed casting, which was sort of.

[Richard Lawson]

Well, I wanted to bring that up one of the three that I missed. I missed four in the room because I switched to F1 winning editing for some reason. But in my official predictions, the ones that counted anyway. But I think a lot of predictors, prognosticators, gold derbyites got casting wrong. And I think part of that is that Sinners has this amazing ensemble that probably had to be found more than like, you know, PTA making a few phone calls or Safdie making a few phone calls. It didn't win and one Battle did. And then it won best Picture. And the question is, like, okay, with this new category for the time being, is it just like, I don't know, whatever I'm voting for, for best picture wins Best casting.

[Griffin Newman]

I said this in the room. I wondered if. Cause when that won, it felt like, oh, one battle has best Picture locked

[Richard Lawson]

in the way it kind of used to for like editing or something like that.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. There's always been this Oscar metric that editing and best picture line up more than any two other categories. Because even director, sometimes they'll swing a different way to spread the love. But editing rarely swings to like an editing focused movie that doesn't happen to be the best picture front runner. And in the way that very often, not always, the SAG Ensemble award feels like a good predictor of best Picture because it represents the acting branch, which is far and away the biggest branch in the academy. Is that gonna be a one to one? It might be a thing where it takes five to 10 years before we understand how the casting category works. Because. And they called this out in the presentation, which I thought was really good. They had an actor from each of the five nominated films. Talk about the casting director specifically. But they said it's like invisible architecture for these movies. And what is casting? Right. In which cases are you, like, their job was negotiating 10 difficult contracts. In which case is it you had to find one unknown person, discover a key star? In which case is it the amount of cast? Is it the strength and the cohesion of the ensemble? Is it like, you know, Marty supreme is like five people, you know, and then like, 50 speaking roles that are mostly street cast?

[Alison Wilmore]

Well, that's the thing is, like, when you watch Gwyneth Paltrow on stage talking, you know, at Jennifer Vendetti, you're like, okay, but, like, like, did Jennifer Vendetti reach out to Gwyneth Paltrow? I'm assuming, like, sadly not. You know, like, that movie has, like,

[Griffin Newman]

three kind of real actors.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And then everyone else is someone you know for something else, but not really acting first and foremost, or people they literally, like, found in a park muttering to themselves.

[Alison Wilmore]

I mean, I think it just. It raises that question of, like, yeah, what are we talking about when we're talking about casting? And I do feel like one battle had this thing that, like, the search for. Yes. This. The heart of the movie that was just such an irresistible story. So, like, even if I think, like, my vote, if I had, like, you know, would probably go to the Secret Agent, which is like a movie that is, like, filled with these incredible faces. But, yeah, like, it's something that would be like.

[Richard Lawson]

You would have voted for the only man.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yep, exactly. But it is the women.

[Griffin Newman]

It is the question of, like, right, is this award gonna represent best discovery? Is it gonna represent best cast, or is it gonna represent some understanding of what made the casting director's job difficult? And I think one battle might have just the best mix of all three. It's got a really, really strong core ensemble of known actors. It has this one big fresh face discovery who's probably gonna be a movie star for decades to come. And it also has a lot of people you've never seen before giving, like, five line performances who are like, who is this interrogator? Turns out he's a real former interrogator. You know, both of the nurses. You know, these people who, like, really pop in these small moments. It might just be the one that's checking all three boxes at once. Or it might just be that this category always lines up for best picture.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, we'll have to see.

[Richard Lawson]

We don't. We only have one thing. I mean, you Know, maybe Paul Thomas Anderson called Jim Downey, but maybe the casting director called Tony Goldwyn or whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

But I think those were the ones I missed. Plus documentary. I predicted Perfect Neighbor instead of Putin.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah. Going back to the Amy Madigan win, I think that, you know, I mean, Sam Sanders would disagree, but you could say that Sinners is a horror movie. If that's the case, two out of the four best acting winners were from horror films. And that is, you know, there have been horror winners in the past, but it's rare. And I do think that there's something being said perhaps about the industry that like these two great performances, but in very successful financial films in the genre space. I turned to you, I think, last night when we were watching it and I asked if like, does Madigan winning sort of blow the door open that unfortunately Toni Collette couldn't, you know, et cetera.

[Griffin Newman]

It was a fascinating moment. Cause I feel like you're less hot on Weapons and that performance. But she wins. And you turn to me and you're kind of smiling and you're like, that is kind of cool. Like you had this moment where of this does feel big beyond just her being an actress who's overdue. Right. Of like, that's cool that someone won best supporting actress for playing a witch in a Summer. You know, Black plays a vampire.

[Alison Wilmore]

It's part of his multiple. Yeah, I mean, a vampire, like coming in in an incredible period sweater. Like, there's like a kind of silliness to that that is like, great that it can be part of it.

[Griffin Newman]

But a vampire and a witch winning two of the four acting categories does feel representative of something. I think you're right. I think it's. I think it's part of a larger kind of like, has the idea of elevated horror now settled into something more sustainable.

[Richard Lawson]

Right.

[Alison Wilmore]

But then do you. Is Weapons elevated horror?

[Griffin Newman]

No. I think now we've come back around to these movies. Don't have to dress them up in a certain sense of self seriousness. They can be personal and they can be about something. But they can also exist as genre entertainment, be well made, but not have to be like, we're not like these other horror films because both of those movies engage in things that are very traditional, gory, silly, over the top, ecstatic. They're not kind of these very earnest, austere sort of. Yeah, they're not a 24.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. I will say, like the Amy Madigan win does very much rhyme with Ruth Gordon winning Rosemary's Baby, you know, so like, there is precedent There as well.

[Griffin Newman]

But also that's so many decades ago.

[Alison Wilmore]

I know.

[Griffin Newman]

You can't even play point to another performance in between. That's close.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, I saw some stat that in supporting actress Madigan is the first lone nominee winner. Like she's the only nominee from her film since Vicky Christina Barcelona, which was practically 20 years ago. That's the trend. I mean, horror, yes, would be great, but like in general, I would love it if like, you know, in April or June or even November, if any of us saw some great supporting or lead even performance and we're like, wow, that would be so cool if that got awards attention in years past. You know, for decades we'd be like, but that'll never happen.

[Griffin Newman]

But now for us was another one where you're just like, this felt really close. And how could they ignore this? Obviously Daniel Kaluuya got in for get out, but that's him playing the straight man in a horror movie. It's an unbelievable performance. But like the person playing the creature, the big bad, you know, I mean,

[Alison Wilmore]

I will say the real test of this will be if we can get any serious traction for Ralph Fiennes for 20, 18 years later, Bone Temple. He is incredible.

[Richard Lawson]

Incredible. That would, I think it needed to make more money.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes. I'm still gonna, still gonna hold out for it.

[Richard Lawson]

I mean, New York Film Critics circle, we could always.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, we can make the case.

[Griffin Newman]

But I mean he should have been nominated this year for supporting actor and next year for.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, I don't know. I, I do like that. Yeah. Like something like Sinners or something like One Battle. They do work as genre films, you know, like there is no question that they work as entertainment.

[Griffin Newman]

And I think the big thing is they're not embarrassed to be genre films.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah. And I think the only really traditional in some sense Oscar win of the major categories was Jessie Buckley for Hamnet, which it's funny that we did sort of couch our Hamnet conversation weeks ago at this point as an Oscar villain narrative. And now it's like, oh, why were we ever worried about that it was just gonna win that. And yes, it's an old fashioned kind of movie and an old fashioned kind of win, but that's fine. Cause it fit into the mix the sort of coll way better than it initially seemed like it was going to. And that's not to say that it didn't deserve to win other things. But like, you know, I think that all told, Hamnet winning best Actress kind of passed by with no friction, which is, you know, not what people thought. You know, a few months ago, it

[Griffin Newman]

felt like a fait accompli, that it's like, Buckley's winning and otherwise the movie is, like, happy to be there. And so any sort of animosity towards Hamnet felt like it most likely dissipated.

[Rebecca Alter]

Right, right.

[Griffin Newman]

I also. I think it was 2005 or 2006 is the year where Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker win the two lead categories. And that was the last time, in my opinion, that, like, movies screen at the earliest festivals in the fall, and immediately upon site, people are like, they're winning. And then they just won uncontested. They won every precursor. It was like a done deal. And in those cases, it was like, yeah, Helen Mirren and Forest Whitaker should have Oscars. No one's angry about this. It's fine. But there was a real lack of drama throughout that whole season. This year, at least the other three categories felt so up in the air that the Buckley thing didn't feel as boring.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And she's, you know, in a certain way, obviously, it's. Why give it to her now when they know they're gonna have to give it to her for the Bride as well next year? They're sort of in a Tom Hanks situation of like, do you really want the same person winning two years in a row? That's the only criticism I would throw out.

[Richard Lawson]

Well, no, but they'll give her. She is a producer on the Bride, so when Best Picture, they'll have.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

So, yeah. So, yeah. No, you're right. That is a tricky thing.

[Griffin Newman]

Right. Because she'll win lead actress, supporting actress for the other voice she does for playing Mary Shelley.

[Alison Wilmore]

Of course.

[Richard Lawson]

I think they're just going to have a special bride Oscars. Like, I think it's all the acting. Like, I think that.

[Griffin Newman]

Here comes the motherfucker.

[Richard Lawson]

I mean, actually. Actually, the Bride, I probably. They could. They could run in every category.

[Alison Wilmore]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

And that movie is very good. I do like that mental exercise sometimes of what if the qualifying period for next year's Oscars ended tomorrow? Does the Bride get into, like, 10 categories by default?

[Alison Wilmore]

And then you have getting a lot of Golden Globes.

[Richard Lawson]

Certainly you have a second year of people on the Oscar stage holding trophies, thanking Frankenstein.

[Ben Frisch]

Hey, this is Ben Hosley, fashion correspondent for critical darlings. I've decided to give myself that title. So we have Chalamet and Givenchy wearing his big boy bar mitzvah look,

[Griffin Newman]

looking

[Ben Frisch]

like, you know, a grown boy. You know, Tiana and Chanel, and then Kidman. Also, and Chanel and Demi and Gucci, all rocking feathers. I thought they all looked really great. I was hoping, though, when Demi presented that she would have done a bit where she spit out a feather. Chase Infinity looks incredible. And Louis, Louis, truly just like a lavender dream. She's so young and just like, really, I'm so excited for her. I think she really looked great on the red carpet. I haven't done this before. This is funny. I'm like, I'm like really channeling Joan right now. Michael B. Jordan, I mean, he always wears like stylized, very like modern kind of cute cut sort of suits. But to me, the accessory other than the brooch, chain, wallet, Pedro Sands mustache. Kind of crazy just to see his face like that. That's fucked up. Wearing a brooch. And I'm taking this joke from Richard, but it's worth repeating. Wearing an ewa looking brooch, a giant, like dandelion, like pedal brooch. So, yeah, had to shout that out. Conan all night he was wearing color, which again, men are always just so boring. And I am really inspired where I want to get my own velvet sports jacket because he was wearing like a, like a kind of midnight blue, you know, full velvet suit. And it looked so good. And then I want to end on Sigourney. Unfortunately, the dress, not so great. To me, it kind of looked like the optical illusion dress, the one famously where people couldn't tell if it was gold or blue. I saw it as gold. But I'll leave it to the listeners out there to make their own decision. But yeah, that's, that's my fashion corner.

[Griffin Newman]

Thanks, Ben.

[Ben Frisch]

Yeah, of course.

[Griffin Newman]

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[Griffin Newman]

It is a load bearing product in my life.

[Alison Wilmore]

Exactly.

[Sponsor Representative]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[Richard Lawson]

Right?

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[Alison Wilmore]

I do think something that this year did well is that it folded a lot of the kind of anniversary tributes into the like being presenters. Like that made it so that, I mean, I do love a montage as well, but I feel like it does stop the thing dead. Like momentum dead. And so instead to be like, we're going to get the bridesmaids. Except for Wendy McClelvan, Wendy McClendon Covey, who iconically posted on Instagram during the ceremony, like, the reason I'm not there is because I get a necklift because, quote, I'm tired of looking like a melting candle. So I had to skip the Academy Awards. No drama. Everything is fine.

[Griffin Newman]

So you read that out, but I didn't hear the beginning where you said the name. So I thought you were saying that was Sean Penn's explanation for why he had missed.

[Richard Lawson]

He's fine looking like a melting.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, melty is, is his thing.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, I always argue he looks more like a bootle left out in the rain.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I agree that I think they, they those sort of like the bridesmaids thing was really fun. I thought that doubling up presenters doing two categories I think helped keep the

[Griffin Newman]

show moving along, especially Downey Jr. And Evans, who were really just kind of charged.

[Alison Wilmore]

The chemistry between those guys really just made me long. What's it called?

[Griffin Newman]

Joke about it on Twitter what it's called.

[Richard Lawson]

Actually it is like, I mean maybe it doesn't matter because just RDJ was under rehearse or whatever. But like, man, 10 years ago when everyone was eating out of the palm of their hands, like that would have gone over so well. And this time it was like, who what? Oh, right, you guys like the superhero stuff. Like, who get like, it was just very interesting.

[Griffin Newman]

It feels like a mirroring of the response to the first Avengers doomsday trailer revealing that Chris Evans was back and they clearly thought that was the ultimate mic drop. And instead the public kind of responded by like, has he not been in these.

[Richard Lawson]

What's.

[Griffin Newman]

He was gone from them. You know, it's the same thing where they're coming in, like, victory lap. Like, aren't you thrilled we're back together again?

[Alison Wilmore]

We're like, the culture has moved on.

[Richard Lawson]

Add to the fact that, like, Robert Downey Jr. In the second bit, made a Magic Mike joke and it was like, what year do you think it is, my friend?

[Griffin Newman]

And then they throwed a Chantum in the audience and he nails his part.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, he did.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, that's like four successful laugh lines.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, he saved the whole thing. He saved the thing that said it is something to watch. You know, either a bit that doesn't work like that or a bit that does. Like the bridesmaids and they go on for some length and then have literally the mic dropping and the lights going off when someone's in the middle of their acceptance speech. Like, I did think there were some pretty rude cutoffs, like five or six times.

[Griffin Newman]

That also led to awkward television where people didn't know where to cut. They cut to Conan on the side and laughing. Like, just be, like, throwback to them.

[Alison Wilmore]

Well, and then, like, the. The one for the golden win was just the most egregious where they just

[Richard Lawson]

spoke and then he was like.

[Alison Wilmore]

And they just, like, turn the lights off on him and pull the camera back, and we're just like, absolutely no way. Like, there's just not.

[Richard Lawson]

And they didn't budge, you know, wide

[Griffin Newman]

shot for 20 seconds as they turn the lights off for him. And I'm like, right now you're showing us silence from the back of the room.

[Alison Wilmore]

Right. And he could be finishing his speech.

[Griffin Newman]

He wrote one of the things that's saving movies. This is golden winning best song.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Like, this is why, like, 10 year olds are tuning into the ceremony from Korea.

[Richard Lawson]

And, yeah, that felt ugly. And I guess one sort of hope for the YouTube Oscars in 2029. Right. Is that there wouldn't be run. There won't be run times. You know, like, just let it go.

[Alison Wilmore]

You know, there are downsides to that as well, but you don't want to

[Richard Lawson]

be watching for five.

[Griffin Newman]

Can we talk about in Memoriam briefly? Because I think this also was a big reason there were less montages in other areas is everyone just kind of knew going into this. How are they even going to tackle it? Because it's been such a, like, Red Wedding. 12 months of historic people that kept piling up. I thought they handled this really well. Yeah, I thought it was smart to kind of, like, do A few spin outs into, like, spotlight sections. To start with the Rob Reiner thing with Billy Crystal, that was so emotional.

[Alison Wilmore]

Love. That they skipped no north.

[Richard Lawson]

And then stopped at American.

[Alison Wilmore]

And stopped. Yeah. Then they're like, that was it. Y.

[Griffin Newman]

That is exactly why we have always said we can't cover him on Blank

[Richard Lawson]

Check because it gets really bad. Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

You know, after he, like, tragically died, a lot of our listeners were like, but you have to do him now.

[Alison Wilmore]

Right?

[Griffin Newman]

And I'm like, it would be so rude to be like. And after 1997, we ignore.

[Richard Lawson]

Just do it all the way up to his first presidential administration. Right. With Michael Douglas.

[Griffin Newman]

And stop.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. No, it's tough when you're like, now we have to do LBJ starring Woody Harrelson, you know, like. But yeah. And then you're like, no, he did like that stone cold run of masterpieces. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Which was important to call out. I thought Crystal's speech was, like, beautiful.

[Alison Wilmore]

And then having the cast members.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, that's lovely. And then you go in and I

[Richard Lawson]

am sick of having Daphne Zuniga's presence at the Oscars every year, year after year. Daphne Zuniga is always there. I mean, of course, Thorne Smith sometimes, totally. But basically the Melrose Place cast just needs to get away from the Oscars. It's crazy.

[Griffin Newman]

It feels like sometimes Daphne Zunega gets thanked more than God at the Oscars with these heathens.

[Richard Lawson]

That's the kind of nation we live in now. But that was nice. I think Rachel McAdams was lovely. And she spoke to, you know, about, you know, Catherine o', Hara, her fellow Canadian, Diane Ladd, and Keaton, because she was in Morning Glory with her. And.

[Griffin Newman]

And family Stone.

[Richard Lawson]

And family Stone, of course. Right. Yeah, I thought that was nice. And then I guess we were. We were talking while we were watching, we were like, okay, so who do they get for Redford? But then it seemed like, oh, Redford's just in the montage. He's just the last person in the final segment of the montage. And then Babs came out.

[Griffin Newman]

Well, actually, Richard, she hates it when you call her that. I don't know if you caught. It was a subtle shock.

[Richard Lawson]

She gave me permission.

[Griffin Newman]

I heard the time. She gave only you permission to let her.

[Alison Wilmore]

Oh, what a legend. I love that. She comes on, she tells this, yes, lengthy story about. And she's like, fine, I will allow you, Robert Redford, to call me Babs. And then she starts singing.

[Richard Lawson]

She started singing in a way that was like she was at a lectern with a mic. But then she had a hand mic and it was like stage managers better. I'm sure she didn't really either show up for rehearsal or, you know, whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

It also there had been rumors they're gonna have her sing Memories as part of the In Memoriam. And it felt like the way it manifested on the final ceremony felt like there was a lot of back and forth of like, I don't know if I want to do it. Maybe I wanna sing a little bit. Maybe I just wanna do it.

[Richard Lawson]

I'll see how I feel.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Real. I'll see how I feel. Energy. It ended up in a way I liked feeling like a wedding toast of like she's kind of going on and on and emotional and then she grabs the mic and you're like, is she about to sing? You're like, is she gonna sing the whole thing? Is she gonna walk over to the band? And then it just kind of wrapped up.

[Richard Lawson]

But I thought it was great. And it was in a show that had a lot of modernity to it and a very contemporary sense of comedy and all that and pacing even just to have this old fashioned, kind of schmaltzy but meaningful sort of Oscar moment. I think it was just the right amount of things that in the show.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, well, I mean especially you're like watching her. I feel like you're just acutely aware of this thing that is. Has been causing panic in the industry for a long time, which is like you have this class of like larger than life celebrities and movie stars and filmmakers in her case as well. Right. Historic. Who are all dying, you know, or older. And there is this real question of like, we will never have that back. You know, like you may have. Have a Timothee Chalamet, but like he is not going to be Robert Redford.

[Richard Lawson]

He's not going to engender that same. Yeah, well, I was asking you guys like last night so when. And I'm not putting this out in the universe. Many decades will happen. Yeah. 400 years from now when La Streep goes, they're just going to have to do a fucking 40 minute segment at the Oscars. Right. Like, like. Because the most nominated actor in history, no one will ever, ever beat that record, I don't think. I think that record is permanent. Like that's like, what are they gonna do? You know?

[Griffin Newman]

And.

[Richard Lawson]

But the thing. But then you think about all the other people. What happens when Tom Hanks died? What happens when, you know, and it's just. Yeah. Died in an Accident?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, in space. We started talking about this last night and you said, actually no, we have to keep this for tomorrow. And the point I started to make was I think we're in a somewhat unique time where our octogenarians are still present, they are still active. They feel they are deceptively older than they feel. You know, some of that's advancements in cosmetic work. Some of that is just people used to retire, you know, and it's like Cary Grant didn't make a movie for the last like two decades of his life. Greta Garbo. It was like four decades. You know, a lot of these people would retreat or they would just do

[Richard Lawson]

one movie after they move to Paris or to like Topanga or something like that.

[Griffin Newman]

They felt like elder statesmen who would mostly come. Come out at the Oscars and remind you they were still alive. And when they died, it was sort of sad, but it was. Of course, they've exist as prepared for it. They feel like former presidents. Right. And there is a class of people who are all like in their 80s. And a lot of them have started going, but like De Niro and Pacino and Dustin Hoffman and Nicholson, you know, and we've lost Hackman and Duvall and Diane Keaton and all these people recently who still feel very present to us, who still feel modern and active, even though they are historic, they're not stuck in the past. Which I think is gonna make it feel all the more shocking when they go. And we're just living through a time now where we have people who tragically are gone far too soon and people where we almost aren't conscious of the fact that they are now entering or close to entering their ninth decade.

[Richard Lawson]

I mean. Yeah, it's something that I sort of briefly touched on when I wrote up the show is that like, we just have to steel our. That these in memoriam bits are gonna be hard ones for the next, you know, 15 years. Like it's gonna be every year is not gonna. Maybe not as big as this one fell. Cause it just happened to be, you know, an extinction level event. But like it's gonna be. It's gonna be rough, you know, and like you said, Alicent, like there's not a ton of iconography coming up behind them.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. Not in the same way. We're just not going to have that kind of relationship with.

[Richard Lawson]

Just doesn't exist.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Alter]

It's just different.

[Alison Wilmore]

Can we. Before we bring on our special guest, I wanted to speedrun a few topics.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Alison Wilmore]

The two live musical performances. How did we feel about them.

[Griffin Newman]

I thought they were both excellent. I mean, I always think it's a little rude when they don't let the other nominees perform. Especially, you know, you didn't want to hear the.

[Alison Wilmore]

The aria.

[Griffin Newman]

It would have been good tv even if no one has heard of this movie.

[Richard Lawson]

Well, I was joking that Angelina and Jolie should have just come out on stage to do it. Like, you said, you sang live for Maria, so right now's your time. I mean, Train Dreams would have. It would have been a bit like when poor Elliot Smith got sort of like pushed out on stage to perform the Good Will Hunting song and he was like, what am I doing at the Oscars?

[Griffin Newman]

But like, Jeannie Mann always talks about, like, how getting to perform at the Oscars that year basically made her career. You know, she's still touring off of that. Obviously, she has had an illustrious career before that point. But there was a level of mainstream exposure that an Oscar nomination gives a musician that is unique.

[Alison Wilmore]

But I appreciated the showmanship of these two, where they basically staged both the numbers. I Lied to you from Sinners and Golden, a bit like they were in the movie. But also to be like, this is going to be. These are here. Because it makes for a good show.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It had NBC live musical event energy in a good way. And I love wanted to see how are they going to pull this off.

[Alison Wilmore]

And I love the audience with the

[Richard Lawson]

lights For Golden Lights, it seemed like Gwyneth Paltrow. Like, it was. Yeah, that was fun.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. How about the orchestra playing the scores live for the nominees?

[Griffin Newman]

Because I loved that.

[Richard Lawson]

I mean, I love that. I sometimes do wish they would give a little more time to that. Like the 20 years ago that I recapped Yitzhak Perlman plays selections from each nominated score, like, and it was like, oh, well, they're really giving the scores their due. It maybe does eat up a lot of time, but yes, some sort of nod like that. That is, I think, kind of key.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. I mean, just like having the orchestra. I like. I mean, that kind of, like, showmanship

[Richard Lawson]

and involving the orchestra like Conan did with, like, the Marty supreme joke and, you know, the bum drum.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. The tie for best live action short, very rare occurrence.

[Richard Lawson]

Seventh total.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. Yeah. How do we feel about the way it was announced?

[Richard Lawson]

I did.

[Alison Wilmore]

We.

[Richard Lawson]

I think we all felt sort of pity for the other four because he's like, we're going to call one winner and they're going to go up to the stage. And then the other four were like, oh, wait, did I win.

[Griffin Newman]

Suddenly I have a one in four chance. But also, if they don't call my name, I know I didn't even come in second place.

[Richard Lawson]

Right. I can't even comfort myself with that.

[Griffin Newman]

It was good showmanship. It made for an exciting TV moment. And Camille was a good person to be stuck in that situation because he was able to throw out, like, five good off the cuff jokes about it.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, no, it. I think it was. And it was exciting and, you know, a funny sort of bit of cosmic irony that the shorts took really long. You know, I don't know. We were talking, like. So the most famous probably tie was Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn. Barbra Streisand won for Funny Girl, right?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

And luckily, Katharine Hepburn never went to the Oscars. She was hanging.

[Alison Wilmore]

Never did.

[Richard Lawson]

She used to have Sean Penn over to the House of Connecticut and they'd smoke cigarettes and talk about whatever. No, but. So Streisand got to give a speech as if she was the sole winner. But when you have both winning parties there, it gets a little hairy.

[Alison Wilmore]

I guess I appreciated Kumail's just like, don't panic. This is what we're gonna do. He really, you know.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah. I wonder if they had told him beforehand.

[Alison Wilmore]

They must have, right? I kind of hope so. Bill Pullman and Lewis Pullman. What was up with that?

[Richard Lawson]

I mean, Lewis Pullman's really hot. I don't know.

[Alison Wilmore]

I just felt like you would be like. Their timing just felt so off throughout that. And you're like, do you guys just not talk that much? Like, why?

[Griffin Newman]

Two dry guys in their sensibility and their humor who maybe need a more boisterous person to play off of. I also think it's just like the third rail of the Nepo conversation, where almost any time a Nepo tries to address it head on, it just makes everyone more uncomfortable. It's a little bit of like a Kobayashi Maru no win discussion.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah. And also, Lewis Pullman is not famous enough. I think if Ann Lee had been, like, a player at the Oscars and he's like, oh, he's one of our characters this year, Lou Spelman, it would have worked better. And maybe they had even, like, booked him before. Like, I don't know.

[Griffin Newman]

Is there some percentage of audience members who are only realizing for the first time when they come out on stage? Oh, right. Those guys do have the same face.

[Richard Lawson]

I saw several posts on social media to that effect. Like, oh, I never put that together. And it's like, okay, so the joke doesn't work if. If people are learning that information for the first time.

[Griffin Newman]

Pullman's a very familiar face at this point, but maybe not a household name by name. And Bill Pullman is infamously the guy who was always confused with Bill Paxton, where even though he is a historic. That guy.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

There is a little bit of a. Oh, wait, they're both named Pullman thing.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, yeah. And I. Bill Pullman, I mean, he has a new movie that was at. Was it Berlin?

[Richard Lawson]

I saw it at Berlin. Wonderful.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

It's like one of his best performances,

[Alison Wilmore]

but it's been a bit little while since he's just his name has. He's been floating around in public awareness.

[Richard Lawson]

He's trying to get Jin up support for the Casper sequel. Legacy sequel. Yeah.

[Alison Wilmore]

Who had better speech laughter Jesse Buckley with the giggles or Amy Madigan with the Cackles?

[Richard Lawson]

Oh, coo. Cackles.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, Cackles. Was Timothy Shalam ragged on Enough about the ballet comments.

[Griffin Newman]

I think just the right amount.

[Alison Wilmore]

Just the right amount. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

[Richard Lawson]

He has had to. Yeah. I mean, I. Look, we talked about it last week. He. His sentiment I don't disagree with. He just phrased it badly. But he did have to sit there and like, he, like, it was a requirement of the evening that he get a little bit of direct, you know, fire for that. And yeah, I think it was just the right amount.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. And finally, did anyone else think about when Paul Thomas Anderson admitted that there was a pleasure to having the Oscar in his hand? Did anyone else think about Fiona Apple's story about how he threw a chair across the room when they were watching the 1998 awards together because he lost to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for a screenplay for Good Will Hunting.

[Richard Lawson]

I did think about his Oscars at past, you know, like the famous, you know, FionApple sort of making fun of the winner, whatever, while they're sulking the audience. But I also think that in a way, it's nice to think about that past because, like, I think that he's shown a lot of that. He's matured as a filmmaker and a person, and it's like, yeah, you can be the brash young thing, and then, you know, time and experience changes you.

[Griffin Newman]

It comes full circle back to the Chalamet conversation, too, which is just like, this guy was a prodigious talent, and the Oscars were like, you're so convinced you're a genius, we don't want to give you that validation yet. And it felt like we're already dealing

[Richard Lawson]

with enough fucking Quentin Tarantino, dude, just sit, just wait. Okay. Right, right. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It felt like he had settled into the exact right place. Yeah. In terms of his own, I don't know, relationship with himself and his work. I also, I appreciate the candor of it without it being a, like, finally it's about to happen.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think clearly everyone in that room wants to win.

[Griffin Newman]

That's a thing. You know, people come up.

[Richard Lawson]

Except for Emma Stone.

[Alison Wilmore]

Except for Emma Stone who is clearly like, please file a shot.

[Richard Lawson]

I'm kind of surprised she went in a way.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

Like, I'm sure she was just there to like support the film. But. But it was kind of like just

[Griffin Newman]

don't let, just don't.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

No, but I think a lot of people get up on stage and go, oh my God, I never believed this could possibly happen. And it's like you don't really go into any film related line of work without at one point going like, what if I won an Oscar?

[Alison Wilmore]

Thinking about what your speech would be.

[Richard Lawson]

I don't think has thought about it.

[Griffin Newman]

Eight trillion.

[Richard Lawson]

I don't think that Kate Hudson would bring her husband Grogu to the event if she didn't think there was a chance she would win. Right.

[Alison Wilmore]

What a couple though. A beautiful couple.

[Richard Lawson]

Just so funny to think about that there was some puppeteer hiding under a fake auditorium seat being like, what am I doing?

[Griffin Newman]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[Richard Lawson]

And.

[Griffin Newman]

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[Richard Lawson]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[Richard Lawson]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[Ben Frisch]

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[Griffin Newman]

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[Alison Wilmore]

Is it time?

[Griffin Newman]

I. I think so. We're going to do a very special segment, a kind of award segment of its own, an award ceremony of its own. The great Rebecca Alter from Vulture and popcorn critic extraordinaire has cultivated for us a look at the best the academy award nominees of 2026 represented in Popcorn Buckets.

[Richard Lawson]

Amazing.

[Alison Wilmore]

We are honored to have Rebecca Alter here, popcorn bucket correspondent extraordinaire, to run Popcorn Bucket. Sorry, I can't believe I forgot to run us through the rarefied popcorn bucket award season offerings.

[Rebecca Alter]

Thank you so much. This is the only aspect of the Oscars I feel qualified to comment on at all. And something exciting about this year is this is probably the first year where something like half the nominees for best picture had a corresponding promotional popcorn.

[Richard Lawson]

Because last year was just brutalist.

[Rebecca Alter]

Right, right, of course. And it was the model.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Alison Wilmore]

If they had really made that, it would have been the best collector's item of all time.

[Rebecca Alter]

It is really fun in sort of Oscars party menu. Way to imagine what the bucket would

[Griffin Newman]

be for each one.

[Richard Lawson]

For each one.

[Rebecca Alter]

Sentimental value is like the father's head morphing into the daughter's hamnet.

[Richard Lawson]

Oh, yeah, that's good. Just a child's body.

[Alison Wilmore]

What if it's like the dead hawk and like that kind of.

[Richard Lawson]

No, it's the skull that. It's the skull that Hamlet holds.

[Alison Wilmore]

Sure.

[Rebecca Alter]

Oh, duh. Well, speaking of skull, we could start with that, which is. Which is one that was really difficult to acquire, like on the black market, secondhand market, ebay, which was Netflix's Frankenstein Bucket.

[Richard Lawson]

Oh. Because barely a theatrical. I mean, it did. It did have some theatrical play, but

[Alison Wilmore]

apparently did fairly well. Give us like, given the Netflix of it all.

[Griffin Newman]

Now, apparently when it was screening at the Egyptian, they gave the buckets out to people for free for the opening here at the Paris in New York. They did no Such thing. They put it up on their website. It sold out really quickly. And ebay, it was going for hundreds of dollars. And also for a while, the Internet was riddled with 3D printed fakes. People were ordering buckets and subpar quality was shocking.

[Alison Wilmore]

Wait, will you talk us through what this looks like?

[Rebecca Alter]

So it is sort of a pretty generic looking skull. I like the detail on the eyeballs which are sort of rolled into the back of the head. You don't normally see a skull with eyeballs.

[Alison Wilmore]

I have some questions about that. But yeah.

[Rebecca Alter]

And of course, the most delightful thing about this is the popcorn coming out of the head looks like brains.

[Griffin Newman]

That is good.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, I like that.

[Griffin Newman]

It is not a representation of Frankenstein's monster. It is seemingly just like a prop recreation of another experiment Victor Frankenstein has in his lab, which feels like a slightly weird choice. I think we'd all love to eat. Eat out of Elordi's skull.

[Alison Wilmore]

Absolutely.

[Richard Lawson]

Some of us have.

[Alison Wilmore]

Or even do you know what? Like that one guy that he has open with the spine exposed on the table. Like that would have. I would have loved to have eaten out of that exposed picture.

[Rebecca Alter]

Oh, that would have been great. Out of it.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Rebecca Alter]

This is actually the one out of the ten best picture nominees I haven't seen. So I'm just taking everyone's word at it. There's a ship. Could have been the true.

[Alison Wilmore]

There is a ship.

[Richard Lawson]

And if you went to the Egyptian and you asked, if you knew to ask for it, you could eat popcorn out of Christoph Waltz. Like, he would just be there.

[Alison Wilmore]

Come on. He was there. Guys had to hang out.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

Essentially feed you popcorn.

[Rebecca Alter]

You sort of fit him in your lap.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rebecca Alter]

Next best picture I'll bring up is, of course the Marty Supreme Bucket had a real viral moment. A 24 on the back, Dream big on the front. It is the orange ping pong ball, which played a big role in the marketing. Doesn't hold a ton of popcorn, I gotta say. Also has to be. It has to be the ball.

[Richard Lawson]

The hole is a little small. I feel like it would, you know, getting your hand in there would be a little, little bit difficult in the dark. I don't know.

[Rebecca Alter]

Would anyone like some popcorn from a screening of the secret agent 24 hours ago?

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, wow.

[Alison Wilmore]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Rebecca Alter]

You're like, oh, wow. It's fresh.

[Alison Wilmore]

I'm okay, thank you.

[Griffin Newman]

I feel like you talk a lot about in your bucket reviews, the sort of accessibility. Right. Literally, like, how easy is it to get popcorn in here and get popcorn out of Here with your hand. This does feel, despite the opening being. Now it's a clean, unobstructed sphere.

[Richard Lawson]

Your hand did go in clean. It's a clean hand also.

[Alison Wilmore]

I mean, like, I appreciate that you can close it and then travel with the popcorn. Like, that is a nice feature, and

[Rebecca Alter]

I love that it's just a sphere. I think this is very elegant, and it speaks to the sort of the

[Alison Wilmore]

bestow, the round themes of the movie.

[Rebecca Alter]

The round themes, the spherical themes. This is the ovum from the opening credits.

[Alison Wilmore]

Nice.

[Richard Lawson]

So this is the really, like, element. Elegant, bespoke, you know, this is the tasteful one.

[Rebecca Alter]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like the hype beast bucket, for sure.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Alter]

All right. Another bucket that we have in studio. I'll veer away from best picture ones for a bit.

[Richard Lawson]

That's fine.

[Griffin Newman]

And I'll just call out. I tried to, out of the blank check, production funds purchase the two other best picture nominated buckets, the F1 helmet and the Sinner's guitar case. And both of them were purchased over 10 days ago and have yet to arrive. I've been getting constant delivery updates that they're running behind. So thankfully, I'll just have these buckets arriving probably the second this record finishes.

[Rebecca Alter]

They're still printing the 3D models.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. But here's a common complaint I've read from bucket fans, and I've spent a lot of time on R Buckets, as I assume you do as well. The Marty supreme, the Frankenstein, the sinners, and the F1 have a commonality with which is too small, is the complaint. And very often the collectible bucket is supposed to be equivalent to a large popcorn, and you're getting that amount of popcorn inside.

[Rebecca Alter]

In my bucket reviews, I also do measure how many cups can fit into each bucket and correspond that to, you know, is that a large? Is that a medium? A lot of them come with a large. That's just in a separate bag. So it's defeating the purpose in the theater. Kind of like I feel like people aren't even opening half of these in the theater.

[Richard Lawson]

No, they're.

[Rebecca Alter]

But I do think Marty specifically came with a small. Like, they're sort of channeling skinny Timmy.

[Alison Wilmore]

Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. He just does not look like a guy who is eating a large popcorn in that movie.

[Griffin Newman]

So dream big, eat small.

[Alison Wilmore]

Exactly.

[Rebecca Alter]

Dream big, eat small. Next up, we have a best animated nominee. And maybe, you know, counterintuitively to the bucket game, there were not many buckets of animated films this year because a lot of them, you know, we had two sort of European RD ones. We had Helio, which I don't think

[Alison Wilmore]

it was not very merchandizable.

[Rebecca Alter]

Well, they were putting all their effort behind Stitch at the time. There was Stitch stuff. And K Pop was Netflix.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I do find it a little offensive. Just circling back to Frankenstein for a second when Netflix throws their hat into the bucket game where I'm like, you don't get to do this if you're telling us to stay at home.

[Alison Wilmore]

Right, right.

[Griffin Newman]

I have my own bowls.

[Alison Wilmore]

Exactly.

[Rebecca Alter]

Yeah. These are the in theater experience.

[Griffin Newman]

Exactly.

[Rebecca Alter]

Okay, so we have Gary Disnake. It's very cute. I think this was my first. You know, I learned about the character through the bucket before I saw the film and was instantly endeared to him. He's coiled around the popcorn.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

It's elegant, I think.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, I like that. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a classic bucket and it's a kind of earned organic design.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Alter]

I like anything where you can pretend to feed the bucket creature by putting the popcorn in his mouth. That's actually a huge deal. You can do that here.

[Griffin Newman]

Voiced by former Oscar winner KE Kwan. Yeah, yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

Very well.

[Griffin Newman]

A very anointed bucket. Great performance. Yeah.

[Rebecca Alter]

So I'll add that there, there was another Zootopia bucket I saw at a Cinemark that was. It was the little Italian coated rats walking into a little movie theater that's going. And I thought that was very fun. Next up, we have the two in one. Jurassic World, Rebirth, Earth, which is a sippy cup and it's very involved.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. Wait, so just to like.

[Richard Lawson]

It looks like a. It looks like a watermelon.

[Alison Wilmore]

Like, describe it. It's like, like. Yeah, it's. It's got clear. Yeah. Like plastic case to encase the dinosaur fetus.

[Griffin Newman]

A test tube dinosaur.

[Rebecca Alter]

Yeah, it's an incubator.

[Alison Wilmore]

And then on the side is like, what is that supposed to be? Like a.

[Rebecca Alter]

Well, so it detaches and sort of almost looks like an 80s cell phone.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. I was going to say it has like a walkie talkie, like vibe. But that's like the drink. Okay.

[Rebecca Alter]

Has the classic logo on the side.

[Alison Wilmore]

Sure, sure. But so when you put the popcorn, like you have to go around the fetus. Yes.

[Rebecca Alter]

And when the light was still working, you know, it's sort of lit from underneath.

[Alison Wilmore]

Sure.

[Rebecca Alter]

I found there to be a horrible plastic taste to this one. Even popp the top open, you get a sort of plastic smell.

[Richard Lawson]

Do you remember the price point on this?

[Rebecca Alter]

It was probably in the 50s.

[Richard Lawson]

Okay. That's that's, That's. That's high.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

But it. It is a pretty elaborate.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, I mean, I appreciate the idea of it. It just feels functionally like it would be inadequate.

[Richard Lawson]

Is this a. Is this a. Is this well liked in the collector community? This one, the Jurassic one?

[Rebecca Alter]

I think so. And certainly compared to some of the other Jurassic Jurassic bucket offerings, which one other was like a generic dino head.

[Griffin Newman]

So this clearly reviewed that one and that one was. Yeah, it certainly lacked.

[Rebecca Alter]

Yeah, it just doesn't. It doesn't compare. But speaking of expensive, I will get to another effects nominee. Effects winner, which is the Avatar fired Ash Banshee bucket, which. Does anyone want to guess how much this cost? I feel like Griffin knows off the top. 80. Yeah.

[Alison Wilmore]

Really?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, that was my guess.

[Rebecca Alter]

Oh, wow. So this was an $80 bucket. It is of course a banshee, which are also known as. Are they Ikran?

[Griffin Newman]

The Mighty Ikran.

[Rebecca Alter]

The Mighty Ikran, Yeah. Which are the dragon type things that they ride in the movie. And it has a basket strapped to it with a sort of harness a la something the wind traders that we were introduced to in the third movie, which craft. And it is carrying popcorn. And it also looks like a very inadequate amount of popcorn, especially for a movie of that length.

[Alison Wilmore]

Seriously, you'd have to go back at least twice to get refills.

[Griffin Newman]

Especially that size. We had a miscommunication where I thought you had the bucket and you thought I had this bucket. I in fact purchased every bucket that came out for the way of water. All of which now live permanently in the display of the blank check offices. But this was the Regal one, which is pretty minimalistic, but I liked. It's just kind of a translucent blue water bowl. But it lights up. It has a nice bioluminescence.

[Alison Wilmore]

I love that.

[Griffin Newman]

Then or no, I'm sorry, that was AMC Regal had this tin bucket covered with.

[Richard Lawson]

Oh, Regal, come on, step up.

[Griffin Newman]

A water life. It has.

[Rebecca Alter]

What you must understand is that was this 2022.

[Alison Wilmore]

It was a different era.

[Rebecca Alter]

We had not, you know, we had not entered this type of territory making these elaborate molded things. Even the dune bucket, people don't remember. They have cultural amnesia about this. It is just a tin bucket. It is a normal tin bucket with a fun topper on it.

[Griffin Newman]

But this was the one that I really liked. I think this was Cinemark. Cause I had to get it online. No Cinemarks in the tri state area. But it's the Banshee's nest, which I thought was a really good form. Factor.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. I mean, it recalls a bit. You know this Gary Desnake. Yeah, Gary Desnake.

[Griffin Newman]

Becca, can you show off the images of the sinners and the F1 that did not arrive in time?

[Rebecca Alter]

Yes, I absolutely can. I've got Sinners. Sinners. And this is tin.

[Griffin Newman]

This is tin.

[Rebecca Alter]

It's a guitar key.

[Richard Lawson]

It looks huge.

[Griffin Newman]

It's covered.

[Alison Wilmore]

It looks enormous in.

[Griffin Newman]

As if it were stickers. Every poster for Sinners. But it is weirdly not super big.

[Rebecca Alter]

It's like ukulele. It's smaller than ukulele's.

[Griffin Newman]

Exactly. The other thing is this was not a product available when the movie came out. It was when they re released it. They put it back in IMAX theaters, I think, in January, which speaks to how much maybe everyone was taken by surprise, the massive success of Sinner.

[Richard Lawson]

Because when it came out, it was just the Lola Kirk bucket, right?

[Griffin Newman]

Yes, yes, yes. It was just her skull. Yeah.

[Alison Wilmore]

Okay. Beautiful.

[Rebecca Alter]

And we have F1, which I will pull up again.

[Richard Lawson]

Another sort of head. Sort of.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rebecca Alter]

So this is the helmet I actually have upstairs. A Project Hail Mary helmet.

[Alison Wilmore]

That looks very nice.

[Richard Lawson]

All right.

[Alison Wilmore]

I do like that the visor alone allows you to see the popcorn inside.

[Griffin Newman]

It's nice.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. That's a nice. Like the. The lid is on top a la the. The Marty Supreme. Kind of like that kind of lid. But hold that up and see the popcorn quickly.

[Griffin Newman]

I also. I appreciate that's the best of both worlds of you want visibility of the popcorn. But if there were a micro Brad Pitt skull inside that you had to root around.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, that's just awkward. I mean, it would be a fascinating choice, but. And the implications about what happens to Brad Pitt's character in F1 would be significant.

[Rebecca Alter]

But I do think next year every movie should just have a skull of one of the actors.

[Griffin Newman]

That's a good one.

[Alison Wilmore]

That's a good point. Yeah. It's a classic.

[Griffin Newman]

Because we have goes wrong. No. 1 battle bucket this year. Sinners took a long time to get there. We had four out of 10 best picture nominees, which feels like major progress for sure. But there's so much further we can go.

[Alison Wilmore]

Do you.

[Richard Lawson]

You could get the Train Dreams pot of beans if you went to see it.

[Griffin Newman]

Do you have outside of the Oscar omnis a pick for what the best bucket of 2025.

[Richard Lawson]

Ooh.

[Rebecca Alter]

Ooh. I mean, a really exciting moment in buckets last year was.

[Griffin Newman]

It's up there on the shelf. Galactus. Galactus Theater of Worlds, who is also

[Rebecca Alter]

$80, but he is half as Tall as me or more.

[Griffin Newman]

Can we bring it down quickly? Is that possible?

[Alison Wilmore]

For those listening at home, it's the galactus head.

[Griffin Newman]

It's Ralph Innocent skull from Fantastic Skull.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, it is another skull, but it's

[Griffin Newman]

huge because it's truly bigger than your head.

[Alison Wilmore]

Helmet wings that come out on either side.

[Rebecca Alter]

He also lights up. The button is tastefully hidden.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, that's nice.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, the eyes light up.

[Richard Lawson]

And I respect. You know, you're someone who lives in a city and I don't know that you have a car, but like, this is designed for someone to put in their car after a movie, not carry on.

[Rebecca Alter]

Fold down the third row of seats in the office.

[Alison Wilmore]

I do like the idea of someone trying to eat it in the theater. And you would be bumping both of your neighbors all of the time.

[Rebecca Alter]

Yeah, this would be. Yeah, it would be very antisocial to see over.

[Griffin Newman]

No, that cost 80 as well.

[Rebecca Alter]

That cost 80 as well. And there I really do see the value because that could become an amazing planter.

[Alison Wilmore]

Is that the current ceiling pricing?

[Griffin Newman]

For now, nothing's for now.

[Rebecca Alter]

But it's so interesting to see these 2022 ones. And they're all priced at 2024 and now.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, it does feel. Yeah, things have changed. I. My favorite bucket of last year, which I might be wrong here, I don't think is one that you. But from the same film. The Herbie Bucket from Fantastic Four.

[Rebecca Alter]

Oh, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I believe was only $50. It has sounds. You press a button, it plays a sample of the Michael Giacchino score. You push a different button, it projects the Fantastic Four logo onto a wall.

[Richard Lawson]

And it's exactly what you want during a movie.

[Griffin Newman]

100%.

[Rebecca Alter]

And it had three compartments.

[Griffin Newman]

Three compartments. So included in the $50 was your choice of candy, popcorn, and soda. His head is the soda with a straw on top. And then his body. The front is for candy, the back is for popcorn. So I sat in a theater with a robot on my lap, pouring all these things into it because I insisted. This is how this film's supposed to be watched. You need to be eating and drinking out of him and then just had to carry it around with me for an entire day.

[Rebecca Alter]

I love that it's fun. I love that it's interactive. I got a spongebob one last year that has a viewfinder in it.

[Richard Lawson]

Good.

[Rebecca Alter]

And the thought of sitting at a movie and like doing viewfinder, well, that's a great type of sort of old school second screen.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, I appreciate that. All of these are, of course, like the Most important part of supporting the theatrical experience, like you gotta come so you can get your expensive collectible.

[Griffin Newman]

Another one that was really good on the same lines, Mission Impossible, the Final Reckoning had a lot of buckets, but I know the ones at amc, it was the cup had binoculars on top. Like spy binoculars.

[Richard Lawson]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

Which I tried to use during an IMAX screening as if they were opera glasses.

[Richard Lawson]

Oh, perfect.

[Rebecca Alter]

Don't tell. To me it harkens back to like Inspector Gadget, Happy Meal toys where they were all little spy toys.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Rebecca Alter]

I was thinking of another, but I forgot it. But one more sort of a bucket that came out last year that I am claiming for one of the best picture nominees is it was the 50th anniversary of Jaws and we got an encouragement. Incredible Jaws bucket.

[Griffin Newman]

Perfect.

[Rebecca Alter]

And that, you know, major motif in the Secret Agent.

[Alison Wilmore]

Top of mind.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Richard Lawson]

No, it's rel.

[Rebecca Alter]

I'm saying this is the Secret Agent.

[Griffin Newman]

So we got to 5 out of 10 nominees.

[Rebecca Alter]

Like with Gary to Snake, you can make him munch the popcorn.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. And that's, you know, classic design. You want to put your hand in Jaws mouth. So just not your leg. Just not your leg.

[Griffin Newman]

If I'm not mistaken, the teeth are kind of rubbery, right?

[Rebecca Alter]

No, the teeth are sharp.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, I like that.

[Alison Wilmore]

I like that. The threat of injury makes the popcorn more. More delicious.

[Griffin Newman]

You have to work for it.

[Rebecca Alter]

Dune had the rubbery phalanges.

[Richard Lawson]

Well, that's because it was.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, well, well, yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

It's being used in different ways, but yeah, I think that's my favorite. I also think that if you wanted, you could mount it on the wall. Oh, head out.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, sure, yeah.

[Alison Wilmore]

Oh, that's great.

[Sponsor Representative]

That's lovely.

[Rebecca Alter]

There was also a naked gun beaver that was. Would look really handsome on a mantle.

[Griffin Newman]

We could also. We could reclaim that as a train dreams bucket as well. It's him chomping on a log, right?

[Rebecca Alter]

Yeah, yeah, he's got a little stump.

[Richard Lawson]

Oh, I love that scene where Joel Edgerton eats that log. So beautiful.

[Alison Wilmore]

I like that the future maybe of popcorn buckets is repurposing them for smaller movies. Yeah, like we can. We can go rogue. We don't need to stick with established branding.

[Griffin Newman]

Is there anything you'd like to say to the bucket companies in terms of what you think they can do better going into the future? Future? What you'd like to see in 2026.

[Rebecca Alter]

I mean, I don't know if it's possible, but whatever happened with the rubber plastic smell and taste here was a real Misfire. So I would like them to be using, I don't know, food grade plastics.

[Ben Frisch]

Sure.

[Alison Wilmore]

Fair. A fair ask.

[Rebecca Alter]

Yeah. Imagine recycled plastics. A possibility. Probably not. We can't have it all.

[Richard Lawson]

Not from ingen. They're corrupt, horrible company.

[Alison Wilmore]

Established. It's their slogan, actually, which is weird. You know, just in general, we're evil

[Rebecca Alter]

and I would love them to not, you know, let's try to keep it at 80. People are strapped. People already complain. Yeah, people already complain about, oh, you're taking a family of four to the movies. And with the this and the that and the that, it's like $200. They will use these as further fuel to make that complaint, which is not helping.

[Griffin Newman]

No, I think the Herbie model is a way to look forward to of. Don't charge $80 for an amount of popcorn you couldn't possibly finish within the runtime of a movie. If you're getting over 50, at least have it tackle multiple areas of concessions.

[Alison Wilmore]

Sure.

[Griffin Newman]

Give me the all in one.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rebecca Alter]

And I will always prefer, you know, a sort of custom molded thing with nice little details like the sort of scarring and the gills on the shark, for example.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, it's well made.

[Rebecca Alter]

Versus, like, this even has the look of those. Those 3D printed dragons that people sell on Etsy. Like, I like. I like quirk and personalize it.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, yeah. Give us some texture.

[Richard Lawson]

Well, this is a great recap of the year. I think this is the only important recap of the year in movies, so thank you. This is. I hadn't seen most of these before, so I'm into them.

[Griffin Newman]

You're doing the work. And thank you for coming here, for sharing your work.

[Richard Lawson]

Keep doing the work.

[Rebecca Alter]

What the movies are really about.

[Alison Wilmore]

Of course, merch me all know that. All right, so, I mean, guys, award season is over. This means we'll never be able to see each other again.

[Richard Lawson]

Nope, that's it. We're done. We're no longer darlings. Or. Or we could keep going.

[Griffin Newman]

We could keep going.

[Alison Wilmore]

I.

[Richard Lawson]

There. You know, there are other movies coming out. No, like, for the whole rest of the year.

[Alison Wilmore]

Not even sports movies.

[Richard Lawson]

Well, maybe some. Some are saying already.

[Alison Wilmore]

I mean, nothing could top the Bride.

[Richard Lawson]

Well, sure. And of course we are going to do the spinoff podcast about the bride. Yeah, but you know, there are movies like, I don't know, Project Hail Mary that some people are already kind of being like, well, reserve a spot in the best picture 10 for that one. You know, who knows what else is coming this spring? Can't the Cannes Film Festival might reveal some things to us. So we kind of figured, like, why not keep going and talking, talking about stuff that's coming out, new movies.

[Alison Wilmore]

I'm game if you are.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

I. I compared it last night to Howard Dean giving his speeches of the States.

[Richard Lawson]

He was playing with.

[Griffin Newman]

We're going on to Project El Mary. We're doing Super Mario Galaxy movie.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[Alison Wilmore]

And that worked out very well for him. Yeah. As we all know.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

He's our patron saint. Yeah. I mean, look, there's a lot to talk about that will, you know, not necessarily always bend back to the awards, you know, campaign and all that, but, like. But often these days you can make the case for a lot of different things.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah. But I think we would love to continue talking about new releases and taking the same tactic we have here, which is to put them in this kind of larger context in which they're arriving. Not always awards, sometimes awards, but also just. Just how are they landing? And like, what. Like, how are we looking at them?

[Griffin Newman]

And what does it represent in sort of the state of the industry right now, which I think you guys have done a great job job of doing. Sort of. What is the larger conversation behind each of these movies?

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, Like, I think one topic for Project Hail Mary might be, like, the strategy behind, like, showing a movie to this group of people three weeks out and then another group of people one week, you know, like.

[Alison Wilmore]

Or the. The idea of the. The quote, unquote, four quadrant movie. You know, like the. The movie that can please a whole family.

[Richard Lawson]

Men over 40, men under 40, rock monster fans and Sandra Hooler fans.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yes, that's it. Those are the classic, the classic demographics out there. Yeah. Yeah.

[Richard Lawson]

Anyway, so we're gonna do it, you know, same, you know, once a week kind of thing. And what we're gonna do is we'll be covering new releases the week after they come out. So you'll have an opportunity. We'll tell you what we're gonna talk about the following week. You'll have an opportunity to see it that way. We're also helping keep the theaters alive, hopefully, also.

[Alison Wilmore]

And if there are sometimes movies that are getting a platform release, we'll try. And more time there so that it's not just open.

[Richard Lawson]

No, I don't only. I only want New York and LA listeners. I don't care about anyone.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah, screw the rest of you guys. Sorry. Coastal elites.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah.

[Alison Wilmore]

So we will try and give enough windows so that you can see the movies and talk. Join us, you know, to talk about them.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, we want to be talking about these things together. Together, you know.

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And we should also acknowledge that up until this point, Critical Darlings has of course, lived in the safe banshee's nest of the Blank Check. But moving on to this next stage, Critical Darlings is going to exist as its own standalone feed. So it is very important to say the thing.

[Richard Lawson]

Sarah Jessica Parker showed up. Cause Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw hired. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Hired her. And now we are push it out of this. No longer a failure to launch. We're going to have our own apartment.

[Griffin Newman]

Exactly. But to say the rote thing, but really mean it this time. Please subscribe. And we're going to put links to the new podcast feed in the description of this episode. So if you want to go click down there right now and subscribe, that would really mean a lot to us. We're really excited about moving forward.

[Richard Lawson]

Please do.

[Alison Wilmore]

Please find our new feed and subscribe if you would like to continue joining us on this journey.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, we're going to have great conversations, great guests.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Alison Wilmore]

We'll have people from the Blank Check Extended Cinematic universe and beyond. It's going to be a great time, guys.

[Griffin Newman]

And I just want to quickly call out because the sinners and the F1 popcorn buckets did not arrive in time. But there was another big production cost, production value cost. I put down at the beginning of this run, which, you know, has gone. We try not to put too much of an emphasis on it, but this incredible kind of set dressing that I contributed the day before our first.

[Alison Wilmore]

These are this beautiful set of trophies

[Griffin Newman]

from Trophy World in Brooklyn. And Peter at Trophy World, who hooked me up, they had just moved locations. They were truly, truly like active construction site, setting up their new home. And he was like, everything's in boxes. I have these three lying around. And I was like, perfect, I'll take them. But if we can grab those off the back line quickly. I want to award the three of you.

[Richard Lawson]

Oh, my goodness.

[Griffin Newman]

And much like the Oscars and people, I don't know if they know this, when you win an Academy Award, they hand you the statuette without any kind of plaque inscription. And then after you give your spirit, you go to some back alley and some guy's like, how do you spell Paul Thomas Anderson? But I would just like to quickly award the three of you, Ben Frisch, an award for the best Ben Doocer in podcasting Critical Darlings division.

[Richard Lawson]

Thank you.

[Alison Wilmore]

Well deserved.

[Griffin Newman]

Richard Lawson, best co host in a leading role.

[Richard Lawson]

Oh, thank you. This is my Volpe cup.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. And then Allison, best leading co host.

[Alison Wilmore]

Oh, thank you.

[Richard Lawson]

Okay.

[Alison Wilmore]

It means a lot.

[Richard Lawson]

I think that's a fair.

[Alison Wilmore]

I actually. I've practiced this speech a lot and I deserve it, is what I wanted to say. And screw the rest of you losers.

[Griffin Newman]

Absolutely. Can we give an honorary award also to Anne? Absolutely. The great Anne Victoria Clark here at

[Alison Wilmore]

Ulcer, who has been so patient with us in doing these recordings. Here in the Vox offices, we are

[Griffin Newman]

actively at work at a gift of appreciation for you, Anne. That is not just an oversized trophy. So know that something will be coming soon.

[Richard Lawson]

It's a smaller trophy.

[Griffin Newman]

It's a smaller trophy.

[Richard Lawson]

All right. So all that said and done, no more talk of 2025 movies. We're moving to the future. We're going to space. Next week. We'll be back here in a new feed talking about Project.

[Alison Wilmore]

Critical. Gentlemen, Darlings is a blank check. Production in association with Vulture, Hosted by Allison Wilmore and Richard Lawson. Produced by Benjamin Frisch. Executive produced by Griffin Newman and Neil Janowitz. Video production and distribution by Ann Victoria Clark, Wolfgang Ruth and Jennifer Jean.

[Ben Frisch]

To critical darling.

[Richard Lawson]

And to Critical Magical darling.

[Griffin Newman]

Long may she reign.

[Ben Frisch]

Make a speech. Hey, make a speech.

[Rebecca Alter]

Speech.

[Griffin Newman]

Speech.

[Ben Frisch]

Speech. Speech.

[Alison Wilmore]

Speech.

[Griffin Newman]

Speech.

[Alison Wilmore]

Speech.

[Griffin Newman]

Speech.

[Richard Lawson]

This is the best thing that's ever happened from a drunk text message I sent to Griffin and David after I lost my job. But seriously. Actually, I didn't think they would take it seriously, but they did, which is very nice.

[Alison Wilmore]

Super fun so far.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah, we're not done. We're going to keep going, hopefully in some fashion, Right?

[Alison Wilmore]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Now you got to do the Howard Dean.

[Richard Lawson]

Yeah. And we can announce our third host, Timothy Chalamet.