Podcast: The Irishman, Terminator Dark Fate, and Oscar Buzz

with Murtada Elfadl & Nathaniel R 

Index (60 minutes)
00:01 Murtada's New Fest jury duty
03:00 Martin Scorsese's The Irishman and why it should have been called I Heard You Paint Houses.  Thoughts on the running time, Thelma Schoonmaker's editing, the de-aging visuals, and the performances of Anna Paquin, Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino. And a trend in 2019: directors revisiting their favourite themes reflectively this year: Scorsese, Almodóvar, and Tarantino
23:30 The Best Supporting Actor Oscar race: Pacino versus Brad Pitt? Plus tangents about Marriage Story, Ford V Ferrari, Dolemite is My Name, Just Mercy and Honey Boy
43:00 Best Actor and Best Director races and what The Irishman's true competition is
50:00 Terminator Dark Fate  and Harriet
57:45 The Best Actress race - is Cynthia in?

READ: A thoughtful positive review of Harriet from K Austin Collins
SHARE: Two tweets we mention...

Harriet is not my favorite film of the year but if you gave hours of your life to see Darkest Hour and The Theory of Everything, you have time for a Harriet Tubman movie.

— Murtada Elfadl (@ME_Says) October 29, 2019

TERMINATOR DARK FATE not giving us an ass shot of Gabriel Luna (the first time traveller not to get one in the franchise) is homophobia. pic.twitter.com/5bR2hgcxGl

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) October 23, 2019

 You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

I Heard Scorsese Paints Houses

Top Ten: Greatest Supporting Actors of the Decade Who Weren't Oscar Nominated

A truth. Year after year, Best Supporting Actor is the category with which we have the most disagreement with Oscar. Before our hearts are broken anew this impending season we wanted to celebrate the decade that's nearly behind us. We tend to view it Best Supporting Actor as the category wherein the Academy acting branch is at their absolute laziest each year, though we've never quite figured out why so much of their laziness funnels into this category ("whoever's in a best picture! YOU")

Today, for fun, a grumpy what-coulda-been list celebrating ten performances that rank among the best supporting work this decade...

10 BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR PERFORMANCES OF THE '10s
THAT WERE NOT OSCAR NOMINATED

10 Tracy Letts, Lady Bird
Oscar nominees he was superior to that year: All but Willem Dafoe in The Florida Project

Want to buy him all the "World's Greatest Dad" mugs for this performance. This kind of warm performance easily finds a home in Supporting Actress but "Supportive" fathers are a no go for voters for reasons we've never been able to ascertain apart from basic toxic masculinity... and that being supportive is just not considered an interesting or valuable thing in a male role... 

Click to read more ...

Al Pacino May Meet Oscar Again

by Murtada Elfadl

Oscar may call an old favourite's name again this year. Al Pacino, an eight-time nominee, has not been recognized by his peers in the Academy since he won for Scent of a Woman (1992) more than a quarter century ago. However in Martin Scorsese The Irishman he finally gets a showcase part that will likely bring him back to the ceremony. 

In this story of American moral decay and gangland infiltration into all structures of American society, Pacino plays Jimmy Hoffa the controversial leader of the country’s strongest union, the Teamsters. The film tracks his involvement with the mafia particularly his friendship with hitman Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro). It’s not only a great part but a flashy and memorable one particularly in comparison with the quieter tones that his co-stars De Niro and Joe Pesci have to play...

Click to read more ...

Best Actor / Supporting Actor - Chart Updates!

by Nathaniel R

Netflix would like to have 80% of the BEST ACTOR field (Driver, Murphy, Pryce, DeNiro) but that will prove impossible.

The new predictions are in. Best Actor is more exciting and competitive than Best Actress this year which is a strange and unusual development... and we don't like it! We kid. The male actors deserve their moment in the sun occassionally, even if they're not as fun to shine light on. The strangest thing about the leading actor competition is, at least at the moment, Netflix literally appears to have about 1/3rd of the entire competitive field. But since their can be only 5, we think that this shotgun approach will only result in two nominees at best. Right now we're going with Adam Driver (who feels like the ultimate winner... though let's not pretend anything's locked up yet in late September) and Eddie Murphy (who could easily not happen given Netflix's other horses in the race).

As for Supporting Actor. It isn't that much different than Best Actor this year. This year has been fairly heavy with duet films for men (The Lighthouse, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Ford v Ferrari, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Two Popes) so naturally a few of the co-leads will definitely block out supporting players for the coveted nominations. We're mostly giving the side-eye to Willem Dafoe. He's the most egregious category frauder this year since you can't be a supporting actor in a cast of two! (There are technically a few other actors that appear in The Lighthouse but they're non-speaking cameos. It's a duet film from start to finish). It's a shame that Dafoe is competing supporting because we think he'd still be competitive for a nomination in lead despite the strong year. The only traditional-sized supporting role that we think won't be hurt by the co-leads muscling in is Alan Alda's divorce attorney in Marriage Story. In some ways he's the film's most loveable character, and Alda has been nominated for less (The Aviator). At 83 he'll have sentiment on his side, too.

UPDATED CHARTS
PICTURE | DIRECTOR | ACTOR | SUPPORTING ACTOR | INTERNATIONAL FEATURE | ALL INTERNATIONAL FEATURE SUBMISSIONS 

Oscar Trivia, Weekly: Double Oscar winners... How long does it take?

For today's utterly random weekly Oscar trivia, how about two-time acting winners? For the purposes of this list we're ignoring the rare third wins (that list only includes six people: Streep, Hepburn, Nicholson, Bergman, Brennan, and Day-Lewis) and focusing on the gaps between the first and second Oscar wins. What is most common for the double-dippers?

Marlon Brando's two wins...

ALL THE DOUBLE-WINNERS
+ GAPS BETWEEN OSCAR WINS 
FROM LONGEST TO SHORTEST

01
Helen Hayes (38 years: The Sin of Madelon Claudet to Airport)

02
Katharine Hepburn (34 years: Morning Glory to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner)

03 
Frances McDormand (21 years: Fargo to Three Billboards)...

Click to read more ...