Introducing Critical Darlings

23:23Alison Willmore:I also of course feel much more invested in awards when I personally get to influence them you know so like when one of the littler awards comes up and I was like would you like to be on our committee this year I'm always like yes even though that's a lot of work for nothing because I would like to feel more powerful yeah I mean I've definitely been yeah I've had my hands on that power a couple times too. And it's pretty, it's, you know, like... It's heady. But it also, I think, really instructively, and maybe this will come to bear as we continue to talk about this season throughout, you know, in the next few weeks.

23:54But like, it also reminded me of how sort of arbitrary it all is. Because there's sometimes when I'm going to vote for something and I haven't really made a game plan and I'm just kind of deciding on the fly. And it's like, oh, right, that's definitely, you know, a significant portion of the Academy is filling their ballot out that way. Sure. You know, like, what am I into this morning basically yeah um so you know so is I think the the long games definitely like the campaigns definitely help but also it can be a whim and so you you never

24:21Alison Willmore:really know ultimately what the how it shook out yeah and I feel like there is this fascinating like social dynamic there as well which is that you are watching reflections of an industry but you're also watching reflections of a whole group of people who are see each other as colleagues but also there's like an enormous like power gradient right amongst them and i think that the the ways in which people who are voting are part of this industry but also fans of this industry or also like begrudge this industry um i mean those those are all like totally unpredictable you know currents that that ultimately affect people's votes do you do you feel like a responsibility as critics to serve as sort of mediators in some way of the award the awards generally or the awards season you know when you're growing up and reading variety or whatever those writers were presumably influencing you do you feel like that sort of responsibility for young film brazilian film twitter or whatever well first of all that do you know what a variety subscription costs i was not just like swimming in money that i could get a kind of professional wait how much how much is a variety it was quite expensive i think yeah you You were getting like a, was it like a week?

25:37Alison Willmore:Yeah, like this. Sometimes you were, well, in the old days you were getting a daily print issue. Oh, wow. And now it's weekly, I think. And also it's like priced in that way that it's assuming your company is paying for it and then you are expensing it. So, yeah. Like a Getty subscription. Yeah. I don't know how many members of the public actually get variety. I'm sure they are hoping to get more members of the public to do that. But yeah, I think like the actual subscription, I would love to be like, that would be such a great weirdo origin story for me to be like, I was 12 years old and I told my parents that I needed several hundred dollars.

26:09So it's like a Bloomberg. Right. A bit.

26:11Alison Willmore:Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I had no idea. Yeah. But I mean, and now these days, I'm sure it doesn't work like that in the same way. But yeah, I feel like my responsibility as a critic is only just to comment on them. Like, I don't feel. I mean, I guess in theory, we could have some some kind of input on there. but like I don't have any way of gauging that and I don't really set out to try and do that you know to be like I can make a case for this if I'm gonna make a case for like I you know like um uh last year I wrote a piece about how much I thought uh Marianne Jean-Baptiste should get an Oscar nomination and that worked really well of course yeah they instantly uh nominated her of course um but I think that's just more me wanting to write about that performance that I you know I hadn't I've gotten a chance to write about it.

27:02Alison Willmore:And I just thought she was so incredible. So I think that's more how I approach it is I don't really have any input here, but I will comment on it in the same way that I am also commenting on the movies. I think that like, ideally, I would say the same thing. But the reality is that like I the bulk of my film criticism career minus two, three years was at Vanity Fair. And that magazine is very closely tied to the Oscars in that there's a big after party every year that is very well-attended events and other things throughout the season. and, you know, and I did an awards podcast. And so inevitably, not that I was writing reviews with awards in mind necessarily, but I think a lot of times how those reviews were packaged, like how they were headlined, what the, like the subhead was, where it arrived in the year, like usually from a film festival that's sort of an Oscar precursor.

28:01Like, I think inevitably my reviews tended to get rolled up in that, you know, maybe more so than other publications that are a little bit, just a tiny bit further away from the Oscars. But I don't think that I was, when I would sit down to write, that that was top of mind. I was able to keep that hat on and then if an editor wanted me to write something specifically Oscar-focused, like, who are the frontrunners this year, I could put the other hat on.

28:27Alison Willmore:Okay. Hopefully. Did Leonardo DiCaprio always come to the party? Would they cancel the party if he couldn't come? That's a great question. I've only went to the Oscar party twice in 12 years. Because they were not like, please, Vanity Fairstaffers, come to the party. They were like, you're still. Yeah, no, I had to work, but I had to do live stream on-camera hits both times. That was why I was there. I do remember a Leo's VF party story, though, involving Cannes. So one year, he used to come to that party whenever he was in town. And I was at that same party one year, and Leo came, and he was in like—and it's not black tie.

29:07it's like Mediterranean cocktail chic he shows up in like shorts and a baseball cap and a t-shirt which like whatever

29:14Alison Willmore:Leonardo DiCaprio he wasn't like coming from a premiere I think he had just rolled down the hill at the Hotel DiCap like from his room like to the pool deck party he sat and stood in a corner smoking or maybe he was vaping complained that the music wasn't cool enough because it's like it was our DJ Mateo who like always DJs the parties and it's for like an older set it's like lively and fun, but it's not like... Cha-cha slide. It's straight for four hours. They just played on the loop. But I guess DiCaprio complained that the music wasn't cool enough. I think he wanted more, something with a beat, maybe some hip-hop or something.

29:51Eventually, he decided to just round up every young woman at the party and leave with them, like Tide Piper style.

29:55Alison Willmore:Yeah, I would imagine that he could just kind of like hold up a sign, you know, like a poor guy. And then they all just turn around. And they all got on his bus and drove into the night. Yeah, but I don't think I remember seeing Leo at the actual Oscar party, I think mostly because I wasn't really supposed to talk to, like, even, like, really, like, notice talent at those things. But you couldn't help, you know, but standing five feet away from Oprah, talking to Jane Fonda, talking to Steven Spielberg, talking to Anita Hill, you know, Jeff Bezos is standing behind them like a weirdo, you know, like, Joni Mitchell being there a couple times when I was there was pretty amazing.

30:30But anyway, see, this is what I'm saying is that a job at VF, like, is inherently more tied to that stuff than is another critic job somewhere else. So I'm probably, I was probably always a little compromised.

30:40Alison Willmore:Yeah. Whereas I feel like I'm mostly just attached like a remora to award season as it swims by, you know, gaining its nutrients. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's, I guess, what you could call it when I do a moderate a Q &A for, you know, an award screening. That is me getting some delicious krill or whatever. But in terms of responsibility to younger readers, I do think that I don't know if I don't know who the younger readers are because I feel like they're all kind of having conversations with themselves and they're on letterboxd and they're on film twitter and so you know they're so incredibly and a lot of them speaking portuguese yeah so do you ben do you know about like brazilian film twitter i've only heard tell i would love for you to explain it's probably the funniest and most heartening in a way phenomenon that's sprouted up in recent film memory for me in that it first became apparent when like allison and i would vote for the new york film critic circle awards which are announced during one you know weekday category by category as we vote.

31:38And the responses on Twitter to each one, with each passing year, just more and more people from Brazil who seem young and they're like, if there's a Brazilian film in the mix, forget about it. But they're also diehard fans of American actors or whoever. And they just all have their horses that they're rooting for. They can be kind of nasty, but they're for the most part really enthusiastic. And it seems like there are thousands of them. Yeah.

32:03Alison Willmore:And they will all also, it's like when you happen to step on the edge of a Stan war, you know, and you're like, oh, these people are already involved in like so many layers of deep of lore about the fights that they're having and the battles on behalf of their respective teams. I can't even understand what they're upset about. But then you will be like, oh, we gave the prize, you know, for best cinematography to this. And they'll be like raging in the responses. Like they have really strong opinions about that. And you're like, I don't know what they're so upset about. I thought it was just good cinematography.

32:36Alison Willmore:I do love that. I feel like there are other pockets of international film Twitter. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there was one year where there were a bunch of kind of like people in the Philippines, who were just like deeply invested and also like very displeased and scornful of our picks. And I was like, I accept it. I appreciate it. But yeah, I don't know. I love the idea that there are just whole enormous pockets of international Twitters that are just wildly invested in like kind of whatever horse race is going on in whatever category of the Oscars, you know, we're heading towards. Yeah. So we're doing this podcast for them.

33:13Alison Willmore:Yeah. Solely for them. Yeah. This will be AI translated into Portuguese, I'm hoping. Although they all seem to speak very good English. But yeah, it's a funny phenomenon. And I say heartening because like, you know, there are big questions about the future of film. right now and to young people. Well, actually, it does turn out that young people are going to movies more than older people, actually. But, you know, when you see something like last year where I'm Still Here, a Brazilian movie was up for a bunch of awards and it won one, and then there's video of the Oscars being projected on the side of a church.

33:46I think it was in Rio or Sao Paulo, and there's a huge crowd that would, you know, typically the size of a crowd watching football or something, cheering as it wins and, like, partying in the streets and it's like i really wish we could you know kind of take an inspiration in america to that sort of film culture which i think we've lost if we ever had it at all no well i mean

34:05Alison Willmore:maybe it'll happen again this year the secret agent which is for my love uh is is definitely gaining momentum in ways that uh i would not have expected when i i first saw it at can uh yeah so who knows maybe we'll have another season of uh yeah i mean but i have to confess i saw the secret agent it can i should maybe put the word saw in quotes because i was jet lagged that movie can be a little slow and it's it was like a later screening i feel like it's around the time where yeah you run out of steam and i was not dead asleep but i was slipping in and out of lucid consciousness pretty much the whole run so i didn't review it i've been kind of i was kind of quiet about it all summer when people talked about like potential awards movies because i was I don't really feel like I've seen that movie.

34:55I finally rewatched it in New York with some sleep. And I did really like it. But I apparently had absorbed less of it than I thought because I walked out of it. I said to my friend, I was like, oh, so he wasn't a spy. My memory was that he had been some sort of actual secret agent. And it turns out he's not really. I mean, they do kind of set him up like he's going to be.

35:17Alison Willmore:And then it becomes something more complicated to explain. I will say my version of this movie was Leviathan, like a 2014 Russian film. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. Like I remember it was at Cannes and I was sitting down. It started and my eyes just kind of, and then I spent the whole thing like kind of lurching back into consciousness like every few minutes and then something would be happening and there would be like, you know, very upset Russian people talking to each other. And then there was like bones of a whale. And then it was over. And I was like, whoops. Yeah. My first can, we didn't know what we were doing.

35:49And so I flew in late and left early and it was just a whole debacle. But I remember getting into town, putting my suitcase down, going to get my badge. We were staying, you know, two miles away, which was really stupid. And we didn't, you know, so we're walking. I was walking back and forth all the time. Anyway, the first movie that I could have seen was Winter Sleep, the three plus hour Turkish movie. And I at least had the presence of mind to be like, I think that's maybe not the best thing to see right now, just based on the title alone as my first movie at Cannes. It sounds like going to festivals like that is just a marathon.

36:23Yeah. And I'm curious about how from a filmmaker or director standpoint, how they're thinking about like, when do I premiere my movie? Obviously, I don't think they have, they don't get to choose their time slot necessarily. But in terms of like, why do you premiere some things at certain festivals? How does that whole system work? I think people attack it from different angles of thought, you know? I mean, from my perspective, it is a total, it can be a grind, you know? I mean, it's also a privilege and it's really fun to be at those festivals. I have in recent years started to question whether or not I was doing the right thing by turning around really quick reviews from festivals because many times I would reassess later when I had more time to think and feel very differently about it.

37:11So that's from my critical perspective. But from a studio's perspective or a filmmaker's, it can kick off an awards campaign, which is germane to what we're talking about on this show. um it you know it shores something up with good reviews hopefully it can it's a risk because it can sink it too um but it's really the most high profile way with the most amount of journalists and the most amount of everyone else there photographers all that to premiere a film you know and it also is prestigious and the filmmakers care about that prestige to walk the can red carpet to get the standing ovation right there or at venice or wherever um it means something to them and also there is a way to game when what time slot you get at a festival.

37:51If you just say, if you have big talent, you just say, well, they're only available on Saturday evening. So if you want the stars on the red carpet, it has to be the big, you know, Saturday night premiere slot.

38:00Alison Willmore:Oh, that's smart. Yeah. I mean, sometimes they also really only have that, like Highest to Lowest premiered at Cannes this year and like Denzel Washington was on Broadway at the time. Yep. So they had this window of like when the night the show was dark, they basically like, as soon as he did his previous show, I think they put him on a plane. He slept on the plane, walked the red carpet, got back on a plane back in New York. Did Broadway. Yeah, did Broadway. So sometimes, yeah, you really just wrestle over getting your talent there. But I would say that most films, I'm not sure how many films turned down Cannes.

38:34Alison Willmore:I think if you're ready in time for Cannes, you go to Cannes because it is the glitziest, it is the most prestigious. It is not the one that is closest to awards, season, but I think lately it has proven a better launch. It is absolutely possible to, you get well received there and then it's fine. You can carry momentum across all the way through into fall. Because you can premiere at Cannes and then release the movie six or eight months later. You premiere at Cannes, you kind of lie dormant all summer. Maybe your film plays at one of the smaller European regional festivals. Then you can resurface at New York Film Festival or Toronto and restart the kind of awards campaign.

39:14Alison Willmore:And then open in theaters. And then open in theaters with even more glowing reviews, kind of whatever. And as the Academy has gotten more international, it's no surprise that Cannes has become so much more relevant on that front, you know? Because if you look back, like, even 10 years ago, there was usually one Cannes movie that was, like, a Best Picture contender. But nowadays, I mean, yes, they've expanded to 10 nominees in Best Picture, sure. But, like, nowadays, it can be, like, upwards of five, which is crazy. How French is Cannes? pretty French it's very French I mean are you you're not having to like get around in French a little bit I try and then they say no and respond to me in English the most French thing about the festival is that they tier all of the press members into a selection of like color coded badges that indicate basically how powerful they see you as and it determines the order in which you get into screenings and the order in which some screenings that you can only access.

40:13Alison Willmore:And so it is like a giant psych experiment without the electroshock, as far as I know. But it is one in which people torture themselves over their status that they've been granted by the festival. And that feels to me wildly French in a way that I appreciate, you know? Yeah, I mean, I'm the kind of person who, as much as I complain about how rigid and horrible Can can be, and look, they do genuinely bad things. Like, they can be pretty racist and, you know, and sexist and all that stuff. but their formality is is it can be appreciated in a way where i go to like toronto or sundance so a north american festival and i get kind of annoyed by the like earnest volunteers who were just kind of like happy to have a headset and a clipboard and you're just like bring back the uniformed french people who were just like stern and you know organized and usually wearing some very stylish uniform too uh yeah i also you know can is the only festival where i've seen people get into a physical shoving match over trying to see a Jia Zhangke documentary about factory workers in China.

41:15Alison Willmore:And I feel like you cannot... That's how we met. That's what it is now. I'm sorry. I said I was sorry for knocking you down the stairs, Richard. But is there a correlation between doing well at Cannes and then winning Best Picture or being nominated for Best Picture? There didn't really used to be, to be honest. It was rare that a Palme d 'Or winner was even an Oscar player. Because it was usually too arthouse or two international or yeah but now that has changed i mean anora won best picture at the oscars at one palm door at can um this year's palm door winner it was just an accident the jafar panahi film from iran um i have that on my best picture 10 list right now i think it's it's really good it's one of the best movies of the year and i think it's a contender so yeah something has shifted ben and it's just like now that people i think also it's it's not just the academy has gotten more international and thus and and like also the internet audiences you know movies have kind of crossed borders more easily whatever i think it's also just that hollywood isn't really putting out enough uh awardsy movies to fill 10 best picture slots anymore yeah like that the kind of version more recent version of the uh oh my god these movies are too small no one will care crisis has been yeah when you have like a few sundance movies right like movies or i mean it won but like coda is like yeah that was an anomalous year but obviously but like that's like not the kind of movie that they see themselves like wanting to build the oscars on you know it's just it's too small to support the oscars i watched the fugitive the other day the harrison ford yeah and that i didn't realize that that had been nominated for best picture yeah that was a rare occurrence back then for something like that to get in there but But it was such a phenomenon and well enough made that, and I guess probably Tommy Lee Jones and eventually winning the Oscar definitely, I think, helped that movie's momentum overall.

43:09But I guess like Unforgiven had been the year before, right?

43:12Alison Willmore:Yeah, I feel like it's easy to think that the dynamics that we deal with now were always the dynamics with regard to like something being too pop, being too commercial, being too this and that. But yeah, they're always being reshaped. And I should point out, like, we've just talked about the festival circuit a lot, but, like, you don't have to go to the festivals, too. You know, like, One Battle After Another is not a festival movie. Sinners is not a festival movie. And they are both, you know, in addition to being enormous kind of commercial. Well, we can debate how enormous a commercial One Battle After Another is.

43:47Alison Willmore:We're not accountants. Yes. You know, it certainly made more money than most of the can releases. It made more money than I make an ear. So that's saying something.

44:22We'll see you next time. your spring with low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. Exclusions apply to home depot.com slash price match for details. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. No matter how you do game day, on the couch, in the crowd, or manning the snack table, Athletic Brewing fits right in. With a full lineup of non-alcoholic beer styles, you can enjoy bold flavors all game long. No hangovers, no buzz, no subbing out for water in the second half. Stock the fridge for tip-off with a variety of non-alcoholic craft styles available at your local grocery store or online at athleticbrewing.com.

44:58Near beer, fit for all times. Is there continuity between the types of movies that win Palme d 'Or that go on to win Best Picture, like Anora or Parasite, I think? Well, Anora and Parasite are really entertaining, for one thing. They're propulsive. Parasite's kind of genre. that probably helps um you know i mean this year's palm door winner the iranian film like is among iranian new wave movies one of the more propulsive plot you know driven kind of movies that come out of that film movement so i think it it benefits from that if there's some extra hook i mean in nor is english language and you know from an american director so that i don't know But it feels like there has to be a little bit of extra juice.

45:47Alison Willmore:Yeah. And I feel like you are right, Richard, in that what you said, where I feel like part of this is not even necessarily the kind of greater footprint of international films and is more just like the falling away of Hollywood offerings. Right. Right. Like if we were getting, you know, two Philadelphias and three Forrest Gump's and whatever in any given year, we would be having a very different conversation. But like those movies just aren't coming out. I mean, if we want to talk more broadly about this year as an example of all of this strangeness, like, I do think, like, right now, number 10 on my best picture predictions is weapons, because I think that maybe Hollywood wants to claw back a little bit of their Oscar, you know, position and say, like, let's get more of our movies on these lists.

46:33And yes, it's a horror movie. And yes, there's a crazy witch lady in it. But like, we kind of want to nominate the crazy witch lady. And so the screenplay is pretty good. And so why don't we just nominate the movie as a whole? Because it's another Hollywood triumph, you know, versus one of these damn Ferner movies. Yeah.

46:48Alison Willmore:I also, it's a good movie. I like weapons. I love weapons was nominated for best picture. I just think this year out of many, like, like, there is a tension between traditional Hollywood Oscar fair and the kind of new Oscar fair being like Cannes movies or whatever. And the company that, you know, the two the two major American companies that are sort of propping up the American side of the narrative, ironically enough, are Netflix and Warner Brothers, which are trying to get married and have babies. and I don't know if I want them to get married and have babies but you know Warner Brothers has weapons it has one battle it has sinners Netflix has Jay Kelly and Frankenstein and I guess House of Dynamite but not really that's Train Dreams like so that's kind of the story I think of Best Picture this year at least is like on the American side is these two companies that are trying to merge are the only ones really producing the stuff that keeps the Americans in the race at all Yeah, well, it's also, it's funny that Warner Brothers has had all these wildcard movies, you know, these like really bold original films, these like big swings of movies and Netflix with all of these resources, its slate of awards films, all of which sound great on paper.

48:03Yeah.

48:03Alison Willmore:Kind of fizzled out. Aside from, I guess, Train Dreams, which is one they acquired and how they seem to be kind of pinning all their hopes on. and I don't mean to discount A24 which has Marty Supreme and Neon you know which acquires a lot of those canned films they are an American company so there's a lot of American interest involved past Netflix and Warner Brothers but I don't know that seems to be the big narrative and speaking of going to festivals and whether it's worth it or not I think one of the main stories of this year Oscar wise is like how unreliable festival reaction was because like I if you would talk to me out of Cannes I'd be like, I think it was a pretty weak year.

48:42I saw maybe a sentimental value from Norway. That probably has some decent Oscar chances. But past that, I don't really know. I'm saying a very different thing six months later, because I had a chance to see movies where I wasn't sleeping during them and stuff like that, catch up on stuff I missed. And then Venice, that was where all of Netflix's big movies premiered, and they kind of fizzled there. But then Jay Kelly seems to have gotten a sort of change of heart campaign and ditto Frankenstein. And so I think this year has been really marked by a lot of up and down unpredictability.

49:19Alison Willmore:Yeah. I feel like also Venice is, I don't know, it's the place where you're supposed to be able to do a big glitzy launch of your festival film now or your fall film. And the stars go there. There are boats, you know, there are parties on islands uh but it still has a smaller set of american press like in particular yeah then for sure then can and then a lot of festivals because you know it's venice it's a it's a trek to get there i and although the secret is cheaper to go to venice than go tell you right yeah yeah um but because of that i think it creates a sense that there's a bit more of a bubble there um yeah and and this year in particular i saw people writing about how oh you'd hear about like every movie there, you know, getting seven minutes standing ovation, 14 minutes standing ovation.

50:08Alison Willmore:And then when it actually plays here, everyone's like her. Yeah. Well, I was, you know, I was one of the people I'm, I'm embarrassed to say, but it's, it's, it's historical record. Speaking of the Venice bubble, I was one of the people who on the water bus home from the lead out to the main city of Venice, where I was staying, starting to write my review on, on my phone. I genuinely worried if the movie Joker could incite the, because that was what everyone was saying after that first screening yeah and i was like i kind of i see it like i believe them and so i didn't like actually say that the movie was dangerous but i just sort of you know rubbed my hands together with worry and sort of said oh could this movie be do something bad um and then joker i think then it next played at toronto like a week or so not even a week later and everyone there who was seeing it anew was like what the fuck were you talking you guys are such dorks is it because maybe you're seeing these movies in these these like go to European settings I don't know would it be different if you just like saw it at a mall 100 % because it's not just that like you're in a different setting and it's that that different setting costs money to be there and a lot of effort to get there and you're burning the candle at both ends and you want all of these things to be significant you know you want them to be glorious masterpieces or troubling visions of you know so you wanted Joker to I think subconsciously I wanted Joker to be a reckless and irresponsible movie.

51:31Yes, I did. I mean, I wouldn't have ever said that out loud, but I think in hindsight, we all sort of went there. I mean, the Reddit people are going to go insane. But there was not a conspiracy to call Joker dangerous, I promise you. What I mean is that subconsciously, that pump had already been primed by a lot of press leading up to the premiere that, oh, it's about incels, it's about this, it's about school shooters, it's about that. that that was definitely in the back of some of our minds. And when we saw the movie, it seemed, I thought it was well enough made that it seemed to confirm that.

52:05And thus, you know, but had I seen it a couple weeks later when the stakes weren't as high, I probably would have felt very different about it.

52:11Alison Willmore:I can't believe we've blown this conspiracy wide open. I know. I'm going to get us in so much fucking trouble. Yeah. Well, I think also, I think that Richard's point though, you want these movies to be major, whether they're good or bad. Like the worst thing is being like, Like, oh, I flew, you know, thousands of miles away and I'm sleeping three hours a night and like churning out all of these reviews of movies that no one will ever care about. And there are certain festivals where I have kind of lost interest in going because I felt increasingly like I am doing this for movies that are not going to have most of which are not going to have a major footprint.

52:47But when you're watching these movies, in your mind, are you like, this performance feels best supporting? Are you like, oh, I am.

52:53Alison Willmore:I am not. Yeah. Yeah, because I'm VF-brained and also just like me-brained. And like, you know, Kyle Buchanan, who's kind of, he writes about awards for the New York Times. Like, that's a fun sort of post-screening game for us. But that's not the number one reason why I'm seeing these movies. But it can be a fun little side convo. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I mean, it's also like you are the first audiences seeing something. And so I do feel like the more a film kind of has this journey and plays for different audiences in different contexts, the more it is kind of freed up from the pressure of being like, you have to decide where this film exists in the world, right?

53:37Alison Willmore:Because there are a lot of different people who have a lot of different opinions on where it exists in the world. whereas when it's brand new and all you know about it are the kind of like little stories that have gone up or sometimes nothing at all. Sometimes you are sitting down to a movie where you're like, I know basically nothing about what this is going to be. And that's exciting. But I think it also means that you are just like, you're like, you know, footprints in fresh snow, basically. And later, everyone else will trudge over them and what you say will matter. Nothing at all. And I had, for the first time in a long time, I sort of had more of the civilian experience this year with a lot of these movies because you know i lost my job in august i had to cancel my trip to venice so i that meant i wasn't at the first audience for j kelly or for house of dynamite or for frankenstein or for hamnet um and i didn't really have a chance to catch up with many of those in toronto because i had other assignments to do for freelance stuff And so, like, there were maybe half, a third of a lot of the big awards movies of the season, at least from the American side of things, that I saw either at a much later festival or sort of on my own and had very different reactions to it because, again, the stakes were so low.

54:53And I found that like really instructive, actually, if less exciting. That's the thing, you know, that is the tradeoff is you don't get all the pomp and circumstance, but maybe it makes you a better assessor of like, you know, Frankenstein being terrible. long. Can I ask about two categories in particular that have always sort of confused me? Yes. Best foreign film and best animated feature. What are the rules around those movies being eligible for best picture as well? Anything is eligible for best picture as long as it's a feature that played for a certain amount, which is just a short amount of time in the United States theatrically.

55:32But wasn't there some rule about best animated stuff not being eligible? I don't think so because like Beauty the Beast was nominated for Best Picture. Toy Story 3 was nominated for Best Picture. Up was nominated. So there have been that has happened in the past. It's just doesn't happen often, I think, because of a bias against the form. Yeah.

55:53Alison Willmore:I mean, like a joke almost every year when they introduce that category, the Oscars are like animation. It's the thing we show to our children over and over again. Every animator in the audience is like, thank you so much for that. What are the odds that we get like a Chainsaw Man? Or something? That, I think, I think that we'd have to have all of, like, you know, Twitter, film Twitter vote on the Oscars for that to happen. Like, I don't, I think that the animated category is in a kind of weird position right now because this year in particular was not great for animation. At least the mainstream, you know, American studio animation.

56:30Alison Willmore:But at the same time you have K-pop Demon Hunters, which is a legit phenomenon. on and like barely should it shouldn't technically qualify though because it didn't release theatrically it went onto netflix first but it but they kind of grandfathered them in right like for some reason yeah because they want golden to be performed at the oscars which i don't blame them i too i too want that to happen but yeah yeah it's and and then otherwise i don't know i mean i think the thing is with it is true like to your point uh i think that you make a really good point which is like the biggest animated films of the year aside from like you know uh k-pop demon Hunters and like I don't even know which Zootopia.

57:07Alison Willmore:Yeah Zootopia 2 the kind of like sequels to the established kind of franchises that are more aimed at children the biggest animated films of the year have been these anime films that have been screened mostly as like kind of Fathom event style screenings like event screenings and that are often like a feature film continuation of a hugely successful series right and it really is a whole other universe of animation and movie going because it is like all of these people who have already been really invested in these characters and in this world getting to get together and see something in person you know as a group in this like kind of i don't know communal setting i feel like most of those movies are just like totally opaque to the average academy viewer who has not yeah you know already watched some of that series describe for me the average academy viewer you mentioned amel earlier what yeah that's kyle buchanan's construction that like like a vast portion of the academy who votes are the sort of under you know regarded like males of west la you know like just guys in their 70s who've been in the industry a long time live in their little bubble in santa monica or wherever um and have pretty conventional taste uh one could say um and i think that they're probably not the guys who are or and gals who were going out to these like you know fyc events and you know being you know wined and dined i mean some of them get definitely go but i think that's the voter that we know is out there but is very hard to access in terms of like what they're thinking yeah exactly yeah i think also there is an interesting phenomenon where a lot of like younger viewers of film and television have tastes that are maybe, like, becoming more interesting and, like, animation skewing and international skewing thanks to streaming, right?

59:01Alison Willmore:Like, they're kind of outstripping what the average male might be interested in, you know? What they might even think about viewing. Whereas, you know, a lot of people who are younger who are watching, like, all of these anime series on streaming are watching foreign language television shows, which is something that was, like, you know, now is like so widespread and was just like not available for so much of um yeah you know like my my growing up and uh i think that really normalizes a lot of interest in things that an older academy member might not even consider you know as important um i also think that there's a question of film grammar and storytelling grammar, where a lot of stuff from East Asia, let's say, is just following a sort of different storytelling rubric than people in the United States, Western people are used to maybe.

59:58And you see that in anime. You see something like Parasite, which kind of very successfully merges traditions of storytelling, how to kind of lay out a plot. You see something this year, like No Other Choice, the Park Chan-wook film, which I think is not trying to do that quite as much. It's a little bit harder to kind of parse. I also think that Secret Agent from Brazil is also sort of challenging an American understanding of how a story like that is supposed to be laid out and told. Younger audiences who are more steeped in international stuff, I think, kind of already have that wired into them.

1:00:35They can parse a story from anywhere around the world. But I think older voters are like, wait, but I don't understand why this plot didn't show me X event happening and just only made us infer that it happened in the way that I find. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Allison, but like, I feel like a lot of Chinese and Korean cinema and Japanese cinema to a lesser extent, like, aren't going to hold your hand through every single matter of the plot. Whereas I think an American film does. I mean, at some point, does the Academy kind of have to recognize that stuff? If only because Demon Slayer that came out this year and is the highest grossing foreign film ever.

1:01:13I think they're going to start looking pretty irrelevant if they don't.

1:01:16Alison Willmore:I think it's also the fact that the way a lot of those anime films work as like a feature film spinoff of a series puts them in their own kind of unusual category because I do think most of the viewers of that are ones who saw this show, right? Like have kept up with this series in some way. And I feel like it's a lot harder to be like you're an Academy member and you're like oh I got the screener for this thing you know like and then do you start like is it how how good an experience is it watching that if you have no idea what what you know the franchise is I don't know but I also think uh I like like it can also depend on like how mainstream these international films are meant to be as well, you know?

1:01:59But I think, I don't know.

1:02:02Alison Willmore:I feel like we are seeing audiences that are getting exposed to more of the fact that there are different things allowed tonally, especially in different international cinemas. I think that's the true tone. Yeah, I happen to moderate a Q &A, speaking of my Remora career, moderate a Q &A with Javar Panahi or, you know, it was just an accident. And he was talking about how audiences in the U.S. laugh at that movie a lot more. I think, which is a movie that I think is a very solid streak of like dark comedy in it. But they laugh at that movie a lot more than say when he took it to Japan and people were like silent.

1:02:45Alison Willmore:They did not kind of think it was funny at all. And I think that, you know, obviously things will always be received differently depending where you go. So the U.S. has like coasted on this kind of, you know, soft power exporting of Hollywood standards for a really long time. And this assumption that everyone would, of course, you know, follow and accept and take as the norm Hollywood storytelling. But I think that's not necessarily the case anymore. Oh, I think it's almost like we're nearing full reversal, you know, of the engines. um you know china's sort of starting to really reject a lot of american movies and then america trying to like figure out what they wanted and you know that that that's had some effect but i think it's more just about a lot of young people are like i have no no trouble parsing what an anime story is you know or how the how the plot plays out you know or and i think you know squid game being so successful on tv helped although that's pretty linear that's pretty straightforward but but yeah i mean i do think that my question is and not to sound doom and gloom is like whether or not the Academy catches up before the whole thing kind of goes away, like the Academy Awards, or at least as we know them.

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1:04:54Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. Well, they're going to be on YouTube soon, so.

1:04:59Alison Willmore:Yeah. Are you happy about that? Like, do you think that's a good thing or a bad thing? So this is in 2029. YouTube has attained the rights for the Oscars after, what, three decades four decades at abc um i think on the one hand sure great attract younger viewers uh there is a sense that like uh younger people actually are going to movies more than than is sort of conventionally thought of we thought i thought it was older people you know keeping theaters alive it turns out it's actually kind of the opposite so if they have better access to the oscars because otherwise they don't know how to find broadcast tv i think that's great um i worry a bit about and maybe this is just me being you know middle-aged about it but like i worry a little bit about um youtube feeling a little less prestigious and you know a little bit jankier i think the the netflix award shows they've done the sag awards a couple times the sound quality is not great the picture looks a little too kind of motion smoothed um it just feels a little kind of clunkier and i i do know that youtube invested a lot of money in this and so hopefully they'll treat it with a bit more care than netflix does to the sag awards i think they'll definitely get a big audience like if if if uh if the oscars were on youtube this year you would look at like the graph of people watching and then when golden was being performed it would be like up here and then it would go back down any marty supreme thing and marty yeah timothy chalamet obviously a big draw um so i i think look the academy needed to figure out how to move this ceremony into the future you know they've tried experiments on abc that haven't really worked i think stylistically then they kind of went back to more traditional oscars which i love and the ratings actually have been pretty decent in recent years they've they've ticked up even a little bit still one of the most watched live events i mean it it pales in comparison to football but otherwise it does pretty well compared to other things but um but yeah they need to modernize and i think maybe the youtube of it all is what's going to force them to do that yeah have the the host directly address the chat there you go that's yeah that would be good i love uh i think there's nothing more compelling than when you're watching someone on a live stream like peer at like the sidebar you know and just be like as comments are flying by being like oh yeah uh-huh yeah yeah you guys are right that's a it's it is like goku 420 says it was just an accident it's the best picture of the year come to Brazil come to Brazil yeah exactly um yeah I I have no idea what to think but I am very curious about what it will look like for the structure of the Oscars to no longer be beholden to the kind of formal rhythms of network television you know totally I mean I would assume that they would have ad breaks.

1:07:45Yeah, they will have to. Because not everyone will be paying for premiums, so they'll be served ads. Also, people have to pee.

1:07:52Alison Willmore:Sure. And the celebrities have to go get drinks in the lobby. The superpowers are a critic. Well, exactly. Yeah, actually, that is a superpower. Some critics don't. Yeah, yeah. Well, Sims will get up out of a mood, you know. Yeah, no, no, I don't do that. No, no. I refuse. I have really bad bladder problems because of it, but... It's worth it. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know. Swears at the Oscars, you know, that'll be kind of strange. Yeah. I mean, runtime can go on. It can go on whatever. For eight hours. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it would. No. But I also think that like Nate Bargat's hosting the Emmys, was it this year, where he had like the charity money numbers going down the longer you go over time.

1:08:40Alison Willmore:Yeah. that felt like i like funny on paper but in execution like really kind of rude to also like the opposite of what you actually want which is right like like you're like the point of this is not to hurry through well it's this non-fan of awards show thinking about how awards shows should work we're like who want who gives a shit let's just get through this you know and it's like no i want i want melissa leo still on stage accepting her best supporting actress from 15 years ago like that's what i like that's what i want you were like that that speech should still be going on right now. A 100 % you should be able to walk into the Dolby Theater at any time 24 hours a day and she's on that stage in that white dress still smoking.

1:09:16Alison Willmore:That could actually be really good for the museum as just having her as a permanent exhibit I think. We should write to them. Melissa what's your housing situation like right now? Would you want to move to LA? Yes. Got a room set up for you. It'll be great. What's her name? She lived in a glass cube for a minute. Tilda Swinton. Yeah. No I think we're on to something here. So YouTube if you're listening respected actresses in Glasgow. And they live there. It's really got to be at least a multi-year commitment. Yeah. It's the future of awards. And it's almost made me kind of like impatient for it.

1:09:51Where like I'm excited about Conan hosting again this year. And I'm invested in some of the narratives that we'll be getting into over the course of the next few weeks. But I don't know. I'm sort of suddenly really eager to see what the YouTube version looks like. and now it's, you know, three years to wait.

1:10:09Alison Willmore:Yeah, we will. We will get there. I'll be so old then. Oh, if I maybe, I may not make it. Oh, well, we'll try. Let's both try as hard as we can. Well, I have a really pressing question for you, Richard. Okay. Because obviously one of the reasons I watch the Oscars is to look at what everyone is wearing. Mostly the dresses, because let's be honest, men's fashion has like come a bit further on the red carpet than blankets and all. But I got sick of the harnesses in this sort of like big billowy pants that the guys were doing. Also, I feel like there's a lot of, there's been a kind of retrenchment to like wearing just like a standard tux anyway.

1:10:42Alison Willmore:Well, look at Chalamet. He's just completely reverted to... He's growing out these days. Yeah, yeah. What do you think? Orange tux for the Oscars this year? Oh, I bet he shows up in like a mesh basketball shirt and like long jean shorts. Wait, a tux made entirely out of mesh basketball? I think that would be incredible. If you're his stylist. Rachel Zoe, if you're listening. We're giving off some great notes here. We could say who the Oscars, personally. What is your favorite Oscar dress? I have sort of one is, well, I have two answers. One is sort of more sentimental. One is more technical. I think technically the Cate Blanchett yellow dress when she won for the Aviator is incredible.

1:11:27It's very pretty. In hindsight, a really weird win. if you have you watched clips of her in the aviator like in the last let's say 10 years no it's like basically snl like it's it's not like a very subtle performance but uh you know when they say now where people are in biopics like they're not doing an impersonation they're capturing the spirit of the person yeah she's doing an impersonation but anyway uh i'm glad that she got her first oscar and she looked amazing but then the more sentimental one which also I think is technically, fashion critics like it is the Valentino dress that Julia Roberts wore when she won with the white strap with the kind of little like V cut out, otherwise black, beautiful dress.

1:12:11Alison Willmore:Yeah, that is a good one. Yeah. My favorite, and I'm just discovering that there is a Wikipedia page for this that is definitely not translated from AI by AI from French. Ivory Jean-Paul Gaultier dress of Marion Cotillard. Oh yeah. It's always the of. Yes, yes. Yes, where you're like, there's no like possessive. It's, yeah. You know, Marion Cotillard, one of my top five French 9-11 denialists. Sometimes she's number one. And moon landing. Yeah, sometimes she's number one, but I don't like to commit to that. But that was the year she won for La Vie en Rose. She wore this, yes, it was like kind of like white and silver.

1:12:51Alison Willmore:It had like, it was like a mermaid dress and it had kind of like fish scale inspired. and it was like so beautiful and in this way where it was both like very elegant and glamorous but just a little kind of organic looking and unsettling as well I think that is still like my favorite Oscar dress. That's a really good choice and I think a rarer choice you know my Blanchett and Juliet those are pretty common I think. No but those were also very good dresses I don't remember the last time I saw The Aviator is this something I should rewatch? It's a curiosity at this point I think. Can we redeem the swan dress i think it's been redeemed from the by the people who who matter yeah yeah like us mostly yeah uh but i think also i mean part of the issue with the swan dress is that like we are now in an age where everyone has like a stylist and every on so many people have like relationships with these like giant fashion houses and are committed to only wearing so there's a lot of like less daring choices you know like uh the emmys are weirder Yes.

1:13:53Because the Emmys, you have drag queens showing up in like Green Goblins or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

1:13:58Alison Willmore:I mean, I do, I doubt like... Travolta hasn't been to the Oscars in years, so... I feel like the kind of weird theme dressing that people have started to do, which they don't usually bring to the actual Oscars, but like the Challengers kind of like tennis-inspired fashion that some people call us, whatever Timmy has been doing this year with the Orange. I feel like I would like to see that. I would like to see that brought to the red carpet. You know, I want some bolder choices here. You know, like I think about there was that costume designer who wore the American Express card dress. Remember, it was all the gold American Express cards that she'd sort of sewn together into a dress.

1:14:35That was really cool. But then you also had like Sharon Stone wearing like her husband's like gap button up shirt. There was also a turtleneck she wore with a with a fancy skirt one year. And it was a gap top and a fancy skirt. And the top was cheap and whatever. I'd like to see more of that where it's a little bit less stylized and maybe trying to be less on trend and more individualistic.

1:14:58Alison Willmore:Yeah, I think that's the thing. The thing that's made it a little less fun is the degree to which also, yeah, there's so many brands involved and brands that are like, you know, kind of like, they're like, here's our representative. And I'm like, that's a lot less interesting than someone being like, I love this dress, even though, you know what? Everyone says, don't do it. I'm going to wear it. And I'm like, I want that. There was one Oscar year not too long ago. I might be confused. Maybe it was a Golden Globes or something. But where like it feels like two thirds of the famous women were wearing some mixture of white and red.

1:15:29Yes. And it was like, OK, so all these stylists are just like talking to each other or and thinking that they're the only ones doing it. But then everyone, I don't know, it just felt very like accidental collusion or something. So, yeah, more, more, more swan dresses, I say. No.

1:15:46Alison Willmore:So we should give people a little sense of what these episodes are going to look like going forward. Obviously, it's going to be 45 minutes of me talking about different dresses every time. But like after that, maybe we will also get around to a movie. Well, that's like most Blank Check episodes are that too. Just me coming in, barging in first and being like, I have some thoughts. Yeah. So, you know, we're going to talk kind of broadly about like various things at the Oscars. Backlash, campaigning, all that kind of that we've experienced, you know, from the behind the scenes. But also because, you know, our parent podcast is Blank Check and they devote most episodes to a movie, we kind of want to do that as well.

1:16:30And Blank Check also has not really been able to talk about a lot of the movies that we think are going to be in the Best Picture race. So probably we'll be talking about 10-ish movies over the next 10, 11-ish weeks. but each of those movies be it Marty Supreme which we assume is going to get nominated or Hamnet which we assume is going to get nominated probably will make us think about some sort of bigger topic that surrounds either the movie or the awards season because they each kind of in their way all these frontrunners represent something different in how we're thinking about the Oscars and the industry these days.

1:17:10Alison Willmore:Yeah and I'm looking forward to revisiting some of these movies because as weird as it is to say, I feel like they've already had, some of them have already had full arcs, you know, like they, the movies do not change themselves, but they're like a relationship to them or like the public relationship to them can change so much. A movie can go from being a favorite to getting the backlash. It can go from getting a backlash to somehow like getting over that and rising in esteem again. So, you know, I think there's something really interesting about revisiting a movie after, you know, that initial reaction, which for us can sometimes be like back at a festival a long time ago.

1:17:49Yeah. And now more people have had a chance to see these movies and weigh in on them on their own. You know, the hamnet backlash is real. I'm really curious in that movie's case. Like I saw that movie in Toronto. I got in line for it at 7 a.m. I'd gotten four hours of sleep because I was up late writing. And so I wept like a baby at the last, you know 10 minutes or whatever um will that be the same if i watch it again now that everyone has backlashed against it and i may i don't know i'm just very curious if it'll have the same

1:18:19Alison Willmore:you'll be you'll be swayed you'll be you'll be backlashed into uh we shall we'll find out yeah yeah interesting um so yeah we can't really we don't really know if we're going to be able to do one movie a week maybe we might have to double up on a couple occasions because we are going to do an episode when the nominations come out kind of breaking those down we'll also do an episode obviously doing a postmortem of the actual ceremony uh in march uh but yeah in between then we have these movies to talk about we have sag awards we have golden globe awards we have guild awards from the producers guild the directors guild the writers guild which really help sort of any predicting anyone wants to do um so yeah it's gonna be kind of all things 2025 oscars which i think will be fun it'll be great and we should also say for upcoming episodes too we'll be recording uh in a different location we're at the blank check studios right now yeah we'll be recording um with our friends at vulture uh in their video studio yeah so there will be some clips of us floating around yeah which is a terrifying uh uh thing to think about but yeah i have to go to turkey and get everything reworked yeah i was going to say i'm also going to go to turkey yeah i was thinking about getting a new let's can we do this from turkey yeah let's do yeah yeah me with the head bandage on yeah there will be clips floating around we won't have full video episodes but the full episodes will just live in audio form on the blank check feed but yeah if you want to head over to the Vulture socials there will be and if you want to see you know Richard's face looking more and more gassed as I give some bad take on him that will be the place to look maybe I'll be sobbing again who knows yeah I hope so I hope I really moved me last time I'm dead inside I'm sorry well no I mean, more and more it seems like I'm actually in the minority there.

1:20:02But, yeah. We'll find out. Big year for dead child cinema. Yeah.

1:20:08Alison Willmore:It's always a big year for dead children. Manchester by the Sea, baby. Yeah. That was dead children, too. Oh, yeah. That's true. That's how you know you're really going for an award. One is not enough. You're really committing. But, yeah, Surratt, that's a shocking one. And the dog, too. Surratt really went for it. Oh, God. I can't wait to talk about that one. I have a weird hunch that just before we sign off, we didn't really get a chance to talk about the shortlist stuff, which we will, but on the shortlist of what's eligible for casting and cinematography and all that stuff, Surat showed up a lot, which is this Spanish film that was at Cannes that won a bunch of awards at Cannes, and I was surprised by that.

1:20:48I think it has an actual shot, even though it's such a brutal, strange movie.

1:20:52Alison Willmore:Yeah, I had not expected either The Secret Agent, which is a much weirder movie than it seems like it will be at first. Or Surat, which is also actually a much weirder movie than it seems like it will be at first, to make that kind of headway. But people seem to be really responding to them. And do you know what? I find that really exciting. I'm really excited to see Surat of Kang Ding-Rae, the techno artist. Oh, okay. Well, actually, next time we talk about Surat, you have to tell us about techno artists because I don't know anything about that. Sure. We'll have to consult your expertise for some of the soundtrack things because there's some real actual musical artists involved this year.

1:21:34Alison Willmore:I've got breaking news, by the way. In 1997, the annual subscription rates for Variety magazine in the U.S.,$1.99 a year. In 1997? That's like$5 ,000 in present day. Yeah. That's a lot. That's so much money. Surface Delivery Worldwide, 279. It's like, I guess, just international. You could just get your... Wow. All to learn words like prexy and... Yeah, exactly. Shinkle. Yeah, so this was a real investment. This was not happening at the Wilmore household in suburban California. Entertainment Weekly, on the other hand. Yeah. That was a song. Yeah, you could get like a real deal. Yeah. You could also sometimes scam your way into free subscriptions to things.

1:22:17Yeah, that's a weird... The good old days. All right, so we'll be back next Thursday, right? in video form from the Vulture studio, at least in video clip form. In the meantime, I feel like we could plug things, right? Where people can find you, Allison?

1:22:35Alison Willmore:My work is at vulture.com and what do I have coming up? You can be found walking in the park with your dog. I can be found walking in the park with my dog. And then, yeah, I have a George Clooney essay coming up. I have a interview that I did with Kevin O 'Leary, the villain in Marty Supreme, a.k.a. Mr. Wonderful, and probably some reviews out there, I'm sure. That's theoretically my job. One of the best to do it. Well, so I just started a newsletter called Premier Party. That's premierparty.com. We somehow got that domain name. I'm doing three posts a week, two of which are paid subscriber only, one of which is anyone who just gives me their email can read.

1:23:22so come on by it's reviews it's some Oscar talk it's some other things I'm going to be doing recapping in the in the new year well now that it is the new year I think it'll be fun cool and maybe we should say that next week we're going to be talking about Marty Supreme oh yeah yeah so if you want if you want to watch along with us I will go see Marty Supreme again even though it's very long wow no I'm excited to actually

1:23:43Alison Willmore:yeah okay well I am excited to talk about my lunch with Mr. Wonderful I guess oh I'm well I'm excited to hear about it. Spoilers. He ordered a$190 bottle of wine. At lunch. Yes. Love it. Well, that's the Shark Tank way. It is. It seemed very on brand.

1:24:08Critical Darlings is a Blank Check production in association with Vulture. Hosted by Alison Wilmore and Richard Lawson. Produced by Benjamin Frisch. Executive produced by Griffin Newman and Neil Janowitz. Video production and distribution by Anne Victoria Clark, Wolfgang Ruth, and Jennifer Jean.