The Tenth Annual Blank Check Awards with Joe Reid

Coming to you live from Brooklyn, New York, it's the 2025 Blankies.

Wada!

Wonderful night for Blankies, Blankies, Blankies, who will win?

And some of the possible nominees are,

Oh, Amelia, Amelia Perez, affirming your gender and singing.

Oh, Amelia, you ran a cartel.

Guacamole smell, run a charity.

I was very surprised that's what that movie's about.

When the girl gets on top and she grinds till you pop, that's a Nora.

When a rich Russian boy treats your heart like a toy, that's Honora.

Anora is a vampire now.

I also did a more for Minari, I believe.

Yes.

Yeah.

Skip ahead.

Conclave.

When there's white smoke, it signals that there's a new pope.

Conclave.

Conclave.

Ray Feines leads the Catholic Church through changing times.

Conclave.

He sure does.

I don't think you're ready for this shelving.

I don't think you're ready for this shelving.

I don't think you're ready for this because my style is too brutalistic for you, babe.

That was a respectful nod from David.

I'm watching Wicked Tonight.

I'm watching Wicked Tonight.

I'm watching Wicked Tonight, but just part one.

All I can say is that

I liked a real pain.

Cocaine and Eisenberg stayed in their lanes.

Yeah, that's good.

He's a young Bob Dylan conquering the world of folk.

Wants to go electric.

Pete Seeger's saying no.

He sleeps with the girl named Joan.

Girl named Joan.

Plot of a complete unknown.

This is a danger zone.

Okay, I was like, what is it?

I was trying to find out.

I got it.

I got it.

Okay.

Here's the big one.

What are the nickel boys?

Nickel boys.

The school is real bad and real racist too.

Racist too.

They mess kids around.

And then worst of all, worst of all, the film is all shot from their POV.

P-O-V.

I see what they see.

Empathy.

Okay, I'm typed out.

Oh, that was great.

That was great.

Thank you.

Congratulations.

Now, let's acknowledge.

A thrill ride as a business.

For the first year, for the 10th annual Blankies, we brought in our Bruce Valange.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

And who's that?

Sean Clemens of Hollywood Handbook.

How many of those did he come up with?

Almost all of them.

Okay, great.

Nickel Boys was all me.

I I did some adjustments on a couple of them.

This was almost all.

Last year, he was like, hey, I heard you struggle to come up with the songs.

I like song parodies.

Feel free to activate me earlier.

And I remembered to text him last night.

So Nickel Boys to build me a buttercup.

Yeah.

I see what they see was the big, that came to me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that was.

P-O-B.

The school's bad.

Shut it down.

I was trying to figure out how to fit that lyric in there.

I was, yeah, I want to make it clear.

Close the schools.

That's what I'm saying.

Shut it down.

Close the schools.

Yeah.

Close the schools.

Right.

What if you didn't like Nick?

You like Nickel Boys because you don't like any schools.

Yeah.

Right.

Shut them all.

All right, Linda McMahon.

Hey,

hello.

Welcome to the 10th annual.

People are pointing out that this is actually the 11th year of Blank Trek.

Right, but we didn't do a Blankies award in our first year.

Which makes this a 10th annual.

But people are saying, why are you talking about all this Decade of Dreams shit?

This is year 11.

Decade of Dreams is all about looking back, much like the 10th annual blankies, which are about looking back to 2024.

Right, it's like we've done 10 years and one day and two days, right?

But so it's a decade, it's a decade of.

I hate people listening to this show and commenting on it.

This is all

turn it off.

It's also how birthdays work and have always worked.

It is how birthdays work.

Thank you.

That's how

and everything else.

Check my watch here.

Well, well, well, uh-oh, it's my birthday today.

Happy birthday, Griffin Newman and Blankie Awards.

Well, well, well, and what a great gift I got this year.

The episode that stresses me out most

yearly.

Oh, this stresses you out?

You get too stressed out about these assignments.

I'm making these tough, tough decisions.

I'm moving things around still.

Well, it's tough out there to make those decisions.

I understand that.

But we, of course, are.

3-6 Mafia would say.

It is.

It's hard out here for an awards body.

They're hard out there for a Griff.

I want to lay.

That's good.

how is three six mafia doing great they have three academy awards they each have a trophy what do you mean like yeah their last album was released in 2008 okay all right yeah but you know what they can do they can look on their bookshelf and see an academy award it was a deserved win as far as i know it was good movie i wonder if i would like it now but i have not seen it you know what i actually didn't like it at the time but now i'm curious if i'd like it more i liked it a lot yeah uh you liked the hustle maybe not so much the flow You weren't into the flow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Did you like hustle and flow, Ben?

Did you ever see hustle and flow?

I did.

You know, it's hard out here for a pimp.

It was, I liked it.

I like, I love a gritty movie about a bunch of riffraff.

Maybe the flow this time around can be a bunch of animals on a little boat

hustling to make it through.

the floods.

And you know what?

I love to see scrappy audio production.

Oh, well, I mean,

make it work culture was happening in this studio studio right before we started recording.

So that is true.

Ben Hosley.

We had a little bit of equipment failure, but thankfully we had an extra part and

we were able to get things back on.

I red Hulked out for a second there.

People might be worried that now

that Captain America Brave New World has come out and we as a culture have entered a brave new world, that the Rolk reference riffs might end.

Never.

I want you to know, first of all, we have maybe six episodes in the can where we talk about Red Hulk.

I'm looking at him thinking about him.

I'm looking at him right now.

Yeah, he's losing

me.

Our friends at Regal sent us a Red Hulk popcorn bucket.

He's out of his back.

Oh, is that bucket connected to the Red Hulk?

No, that is an avatar bucket.

Oh, okay.

This is literally just a bust, a very detailed bust of Red Hulk Harrison Ford, and there's a slot in his back, and you can reach.

Oh, God.

God does not approve of that.

Hey, our guest today.

Hey.

Returning to the show for the 10th time.

Getting better with age.

I think so.

Getting better with age.

Yeah.

Let's see.

Co-host of This Has Oscar Buzz.

Yes.

Had Oscar Buzz.

This Had Oscar Buzz.

But, you know, today we'll talk about things that also had Oscar Buzz, and it either

came to be or not.

He is also the godfather of the Cinematrix.

That's true.

Indeed, I am.

Godfather.

Father.

Speaking of things that are turning one.

Hey, today is also the birthday.

I said last year when I recorded The Blankies was the very first day that Cinematrix went live.

Everything's happening.

Joe Reed, aka Reading Ranger.

Thank you.

A nickname that I solely uphold.

The only person to call me that.

And you know what?

I appreciate it.

Hey, that's what I'm here for.

Guys, was 2024 a weird year for movies?

Yeah, you know, just I'm thinking about that.

I'm thinking normal.

It's the first time.

Yes.

No, it was weird, right?

It was an odd one.

Very odd year for life.

You know what?

That's a good way of framing it.

Bit of an odd year for movies.

Why was it?

I guess the strike that, you know, I think a lot of it is a lot of weird stuff got kind of like gummed up.

A lot of it's the strike.

I think

when

things,

the strike,

the studios foolishly, hubristically thought they could avoid and then went on so much longer than they thought that when the machine started up, it was just like, we have to finish five, temples,

and everything else was just kind of like backlogged.

You also hear all these stories of just nothing getting fucking green lit anymore.

And during the strike, there was a lot of talk of like indie waivers.

Well, the indies get to go.

But what people don't know, I had good friends who were ready to make a feature.

And the strike happened.

And I was like, well, can't you guys go?

Can't you get an indie waiver?

And they were like, the indie waiver list is so fucking backed up.

Oh, wow.

Right.

Especially because all these stars were like, get me on an indie.

A24 got a couple things through the pipeline, you know, like there were things that happened.

This thing's got approved.

But like, they needed to be one by one approved.

And so even the indie offerings were backed up.

And 824 had about 12 movies this year that you were like, well, this is probably going to be an Oscar contender.

And they had a weird year.

They're all competing with the inside the same house.

They had a weird year and then they just bought something at the last minute and just put everything on that.

Yeah.

And and venice i think right yeah you're right yeah yeah both whatever who knows everything yeah it was a weird year i mean that that is the number one reason and also we've like as we talk about every year the last 10 years have been very transformative for the oscars and you now basically have this body that's like at war with itself and is like every year swinging back and forth on what it is yeah they're so in they're so international now they're so very much like and now all of a sudden this is why the oscars are much more an extension of cam than they used to be.

They're younger and artier in that you still have old fuddy duddies.

And sometimes you have a movie that seems like a critics darling art house festival play that then comes out bombs and then the fuddy duddies reclaim it.

One of the weirdest award season arcs of all time, in my opinion.

Yes.

Especially in the fact that like

it seemed at times that like, Do you even know what you like about this movie?

Like, because I don't know if you necessarily do.

But like, Netflix definitely thought buying Amelia Perez, this is

at least

Anatomy of a Murder best case parasite.

They didn't think we're green book this year.

Right.

Right?

Well, because it was like, listen, it's on the cutting edge of, you know, we are being radically inclusive and we are telling it's a trans musical drug cartel.

It's in Mexico.

It's all, it's international yada yada yada and every little element of this the component communities were like don't want it just to be clear we're talking about hot frosties yeah we're talking about hot frosties netflix is riskiest bet you like pee so i saw it last night i'd been playing it off this whole season okay and i finally saw it here's what i'll say yeah i did not like it it's very french i didn't it is a very french movie i didn't despise it no i don't know if that's

because i have seen it so late in the bell curve that my expectations were most offensive yeah incompetent and coherent movie ever made it's a really bad musical and i really don't like that about it is a disastrous musical you could do a subcategory this year of like the broken musicals of 2024 yeah amelia perez

joker folly a duh and moana 2 oh which i still haven't seen three musicals in crisis where it's like you can't figure out why you're a musical yeah i think joker 2 comes out the best out of those three as a musical or as a movie both wow okay david's making a stinking.

I would take Amelia Perez if you're like, I liked Amelia Perez more than Joker and Falio do.

Watching Amelia Perez made me respect Falia de even more.

Have you seen Moana 2?

The songs are so fucking bad.

I know.

I waited till the Oscar nominations and then it didn't get any.

And I was like, that's a movie I do not have to see this year.

I complained that Falio de Todd Phillips didn't have enough conviction to really like own the cinematic language of it being a musical.

And then watching Amelia Perez, I'm like, he went for it much harder than ODR did.

That's a movie that feels embarrassed to be a musical in a way that is weird to me.

Well, perfunctory more than maybe embarrassed.

I just think they don't know how to sing.

Right.

That's like the major issue.

But also, the songs are bad and the numbers aren't shot in any sort of like out.

There's a couple exceptions.

I disagree with it.

I think they're two.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Joker Volume just stinks.

The songs are so poorly chosen.

I will not get on board with the like reclamation of that movie.

It's so annoying to me.

It's such a dull fucking movie.

I'd have like it's better than Amelia Perez.

that's fine but like i don't like either of those movies so i don't that's like a not a conversation to me but amelia perez is at least an original musical with songs written to match a plot

i'll give it that like that's i can give it that i don't like that movie i think it's also dull for a movie that's like so bananas like i found it like dreary especially the last yeah half i think i just committed harder to the songs in the intro to the blankies than amelia perez does to its musical numbers the the actors can't sing musical numbers.

That's not the issue.

That's not the only problem.

There are 10 issues.

But I mean, I'm just with the music.

I'm just kind of like.

It felt like watching the musical cut of I'll Do Anything where like you lift this and the movie plays the same

for Amelia Perez, yes.

Yeah, this was Ackerman's take, which I think is really dead on, where he's like, It's single biggest issue in a lot of ways is it's like complete failure dramatically as a musical in that the musical numbers,

aside from them not being good songs, not being well said,

not being well said.

They're not better than like plot movers.

They are just stating things.

Like, it's not the classic, the fundamental, like, musical should be, this is the only way to express a thing that narratively pushes the plot forward.

And the musical numbers are just characters restating things

without any truth.

I also just think, whatever.

Which is what I'll do anything feels like.

It felt like watching that.

It's so weird that that movie got fucking 13 Oscar nominations.

That's mostly, I just feel annoyed that I had to discuss that movie at all.

Like, it should have been just like,

oh, yeah, that, yeah, well, that thing didn't really work, did it?

Right.

Let's kind of put that in the, you know, forgotten book.

Richard Brody, I think, hit the nail on the head where he just pinpointed it.

Its fundamental issue being that it is a deeply incurious movie.

Incurious.

Which I was like, that's the whole thing for me.

Incurious bastards.

Right.

But it's a lot like Green Book, where I'm like, I don't find this movie offensive.

I find it stupid and glib.

I find the people who elevate it to profundity to then be offensive.

Sure.

Except I think one of the people elevating it to profundity is Jacques Odiard.

Yeah.

Here's the thing I didn't know.

And also Carlos.

Until yesterday.

He's 72 years old.

Yeah.

Man's been around.

He's been around.

He's been around.

I spent literally like months evangelizing the sisters, brothers, though, because we rewatched

Oscar Buzz.

And I was like, I fucking love this.

I love almost all of his films.

And I was so high on Odiard at that point.

And Amelia Press came along and I was like,

he had like 20 years in France writing crime movies and stuff before he in like the mid-90s starts directing.

Like he,

his first writing credit is in like the 70s.

And I don't really know like why he spent so long, you know, like not directing before he finally was like, you know what, maybe I'll

started pushing out.

A lot of interesting movies.

He's made a lot of interesting movies.

He's also made, you know, a couple misfires.

I'm going to call this one a misfire.

Sure.

I think that's fair.

But have any of us nominated Amelia Perez for anything today?

Zeronoms, goose egg.

Ben, admit it.

Sweet.

Yeah, it might appear in a category.

So luckily, we do not have to bow to the Oscars' love of Amelia Perez.

I'm discussing it too much, but you did see it.

You did your homework.

I did my homework.

It's not good.

No, it's not good.

And, you know, I watched a lot of these movies.

Like, 2024 is defined by me like in the middle.

My twins are born.

I go on leave.

Wait, I'm sorry.

I miss.

Thank you.

I'm hearing this for the first time.

I go on leave.

I miss like fall festival season.

I miss all the awards movies.

I catch up with them all like with their buzz kind of calcified, right?

You know,

usually you're usually like,

oh, I'm taking the temperature with, you know, but uh, like, I go see the thermometer, Anora, just like in the movie theater.

Like, it was just kind of fun.

I was like, great, this is great.

I don't have to like worry about, oh my gosh, am I, you know, whatever?

Like, am I going against the grain with this one?

I go see Honora and I'm like, ah, it was good.

I can see what people liked about this one, right?

Like,

but then like other things like Amelia Perez is me going like, okay, I guess

it's on Netflix.

I guess I'll get around to this.

I'm just watching it being like, I don't have a lot of time right now.

This is what I have to be doing with my time, which was Joker too as well.

Sure.

So we're here to do our Blankie Awards.

Joe Reed is here.

Have we?

Reading Ranger?

He did the Reading Ranger.

Yeah, I did it with you.

Ben Hosley's here.

Ben Hosley, the great Ben Hosley.

He's just been.

I got a box.

I got a thing of peanut butter cups from Trader Joe's.

Yeah, it's a bold move.

Yeah.

It's a bold move by me.

And we should kick off.

We don't need to do too much prelude, but we all agree 2024, weird year.

Weird year.

Yeah, here's my one qualifier.

I always resent doing qualifiers.

I regret doing it immediately, but I'm going to throw this out.

I have had a rule that I've enforced only for myself in every year that we've done this, that anyone who has been on the show is disqualified due to bias.

Oh, okay.

So who does that entail for this year?

Well, I saw the TV Glow was very much one of my favorite movies.

Oh, just put it in your list.

I have just, I have exempted

Jane in director and screenplay.

You do.

With the personal nominations, that was my one move.

I did.

I get it.

So just read into that snub as you will.

I felt it was unfair.

I put it in other lists.

My close personal friendship with Ryan Reynolds has forced me to disqualify Deadpool and Wolverine and also if.

My close personal friendship with

the purple guy from If

has caused me to also reject it.

Isn't his name Blue?

I couldn't make it.

Can I tell you about movies that I haven't seen this year?

Yeah, one of them is If.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I also did not see If, which features George Clooney.

We were all busy that day.

Yeah, somehow.

If lagged out some box office, I will say.

Like it

muscled through me to.

It was the highest grossing original film in some year.

I mean, we thought.

There's some way certainly to be like, right?

Like, it's based on no IP except riffing off other IP, I guess.

Right?

Let's see.

Let's take a look because it's like

a whole box office list.

Yeah, because like Wicked, beyond it being based on a musical, it's like, it's also, you know.

Playing with toys we know.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's based on a thing that's based on a thing.

That's based on a thing.

It's an adaptation of a musical.

It's an adaptation of a book.

That's an adaptation of the original.

It ends with us crushed, but but it's based on a book, based on a bestseller.

Right.

And it crushed.

We all loved it.

I never saw.

Did not.

Yeah.

But it did incredibly well at the box.

Red One is based on Santa Claus.

That's true.

It's based on our creative mythology.

Right.

It's also, right.

It's also based on quality, the notion of a high-quality product.

Red One falling.

Just short of 100 million domestic is very funny.

You know what?

I hadn't been keeping track because I 96.

I gave up at some point.

I was like, fuck, it's going to cross it.

That sucks.

I'm really happy it stalled out.

Sorry, 97.

The other one that stalled out that I kind of feel bad about stalling out is Nosferatu because that got up to 95.

It's still in theaters.

It's going to need to get an infusion of something to get to 100 million.

An infusion?

Come here, but I think it's also hanging right around.

It's hanging right around.

It's a good bit voice.

It will never get old.

Has anyone called out that Nosferatu sounds like Watto?

That it is dramatic, Watto.

You, you, uh, oh, what's what is what I say?

Um, mind tricks don't work on me.

Only money,

no money, no parts for sale.

I would buy a ticket to Nosferato, though.

That is just the Nosferato, Red Boy, Sibulba cannot be beaten.

I wish Nosferatu.

I wish that Graph Warlock complained about Cebula a lot more.

I got so much money on that motherfucker.

Sebulba.

Oh, boy.

You know what's funny?

What?

Sebulva.

Sebulva is really funny.

That's someone who spends too much time doing Watto comedy.

Do for a comeback.

Sebulba?

Let's bring him back.

I really, you know what?

I thought it was brave of Brian Cox in that interview to say that it's time to un-cancel Sebulva.

Yeah, no.

Brian Cox actually went to

he won't stop saying it.

He's done it five times in the last two months.

And meanwhile, Guy Pierce is like, I have some nails for a coffin for you.

Look, I know he had his weirdnesses, but Suboba's one of the great pop racers.

I do have a Watto question for you.

Please.

Are you taking care of your voice?

That's a lot of...

It's a really well-trained muscle.

It just sounds like it would hurt to me.

The answer is that

at this point, I don't.

I have found a modified version that is easy to sustain.

Okay, good.

Right?

So I'm just like, Watto in the movie is like, eh, no money.

I just don't want like that tension would hurt to do that.

That sounds like a nodule.

that's why

that's why i'm like hey hello welcome to the jordan okay it's much more triumphy i've gotten good at how to do it hey let's start out best supporting actor what should we do first

best supporting actor

Let's mention that Nasferatu is hosting the awards this year.

Usually we have the past winners present this year.

It's all back to the winner.

But it's five Nasferatus coming out to present each individual.

Can we present, can we say who our winners were last year?

Can we

pull that up?

I'm 100% sure that we can.

But don't we usually start with like a supporting actor or whatever?

Yeah, so I'm saying, why don't you pull up our supporting actress Nasford?

I'm going to.

I appreciate this.

Oh, so you want to know who won supporting right, who the so best supporting actress last year.

Wow, it is a real trip down memory lane because some of these movies I haven't thought about.

This is why I like doing this.

Griffin, who is Julianne Moore from May, December presenting your best, you know, who are what's she saying?

Oh, here.

Okay, so we're getting.

I'll say all.

All right, fine.

Mine is, of course, Maura Tierney from The Iron Cause.

Of course.

And Joe's, of course, was

Penelope Cruz in Ferrari.

Another person with a normal accent in the movie.

Very much.

I was sort of coin tossing between Cruz and Moore.

And then once you pick that,

I put my chips down.

Okay, I'm doing this last second edit.

which is just removing the person who got the Oscar nomination, whose performance I love to fight for my guys.

There you go.

Best supporting actor in a motion picture.

Supporting, supporting actor.

And I'm just, I'm ready for right out the gate, David, to make a stinky poo-poo face on me.

I'm so angry.

I'm going to be so angry.

David, neutral face, please.

That was the least neutral face I've ever seen.

My nominees for best supporting actor.

Tom Hardy in the bike riders.

Okay, his face stayed still.

I appreciate it.

Mark Edelstein Anora.

That's his name, right?

It doesn't have a longer name.

Maybe.

No, I think.

Yeah, no, you're right.

You're right.

He just has a lot of extra.

He's just a lot of letters in there

in an interesting way.

Jack Haven, I saw the TV glow.

Credited as Bridget Lundy Payne in the film, citing this just for lack of

clarity.

Yes.

Adam Pearson, a different man.

Chris Hemsworth, Furiosa, Mad Max Saga.

Now, he is supporting, right?

I mean, I wondered about him because

he's sort of

the lead of like

he's also not in it for a while it was obviously my least favorite movie of 2024 you hated it you will see it receive six spiteful nominations from me this year i saw it three times in theaters across

with a grimace on your face every time across the three times i was like let me do the math not stop watch but like really feeling is he supporting or lead the first act he is absolutely like running right because he really disappears for like furious it doesn't even really the middle hour plus i think it's firmly supporting much more so than perhaps the person who is about to win supporting actor at the Academy Awards.

All right, I've come around on this.

I think there is a

solid argument to be made that Karen Culkin is supporting in that movie.

I mean, it's sort of a Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, like when you have a two-hander, someone sort of becomes automatically supporting.

Yeah, I guess.

I think you could almost argue that Culkin is more the lead than Eisenberg, though.

And I'm not stopwatching.

And the movie's about Eisenberg.

It's about Eisenberg.

And it's about Eisenberg taking Culkin in and trying to make sense of him it's just me what makes the lead dissupping to stop it does begin and end with Culkin it does does it see the other thing is I saw that movie more than a year ago and I do not remember it very well except for the my the only scene in the movie I truly loved which involved Jesse Eisenberg so I walked away being like

dinner kid up yeah you were calling him you think Eisenberg was going to win best actor no I was calling him to make the five and then I was kind of like who knows there was a while there where it seemed like that that was a very good it was when it was pre-Timmy, you know, pre-theylon movie hitting for anyone where everyone was like, who's even getting nominated?

Like, there was this brief period where it was like, is this the weakest actor field ever?

And then it kind of, everyone settled down.

Sure.

Right?

Like, everyone kind of settled down.

They settled their asses down.

Who's presenting Joe's nominees?

Joe's nominees are, I said, Penelope Cruz.

Penelope Cruz.

Penelope Cruz.

I'm sorry.

So Penelope Cruz is coming up.

I will not be doing an accent.

Weird, but we're trying to.

My nominees, Griffin, you will appreciate a lot of these.

Mark Eidelstein in Anora.

Chris Hemsworth in Furiosa, Karen Keraguelian in Anora.

Love that guy.

Love that guy.

Baker is going to be making a fucking Marvel movie, and he'd be like, there's a rump hold Armenian guy, okay, who's stressed out for much of this.

He's a conflicted relationship with his wife.

That's the Captain America we need and deserve is Karen Keraguelian.

Guy Pierce in The Brutalist and Adam Pearson in A Different Man.

Guy Pierce was my last second book.

Right.

I mean, that's a great performance.

And I think we all love Guy Pierce.

Like, right beyond liking that performance, we're just like, it's kind of nice to have Guy Pierce landing a punch.

It is certainly my favorite of the five nominees and the one I want to win.

I bumped him just purely because

we're going to talk about him.

You bumped him out of spite.

I bumped him out of spike.

Yeah, Guy Pierce is interesting.

So you like, I guess.

Wait, who?

Who are the five nominees?

My five nominees?

No, no.

The five nominees.

The five.

Yes.

Edward Norton, who I do really love

in a complete unknown.

Jeremy Strong, who I also really love.

It's good five, and Yoruburisov, who I assume we all enjoy.

I like all the Anora guys.

I just wanted to give the.

Because my thing with Yoruborisov is like, you know, he's

already hot.

He's already hot.

This is the thing.

God doesn't need to give with both hands all the time.

He's already super hot.

So let's give it to you.

I feel bad that Mark Eidelstein has been like the forgotten one.

Like Karagulian even at least got a couple of things.

I think Eidelstein was so good at playing his character that everybody was like, fuck that.

This is my take, but we'll get into this.

I think you're right, that everyone was kind of like, he's,

is this just what this stupid kid is like?

I kept talking to people.

Our friend Tim Simons was like, man, you're who's always got normal takes.

Right.

Perfectly dictated into his phone.

Yeah, with no mistakes.

That's right.

He was like, man, you're a Berosev's like amazing.

And I was like, really, Mark Eidelstein's the one who like kind of blew me away.

And he went, yeah, but isn't that just Baker finding some kid who's just like this?

Which Which I guess is Baker's reputation, right?

Totally.

Yeah.

And I kept hearing people say that.

And Tim is such a great actor and such a good judge of acting.

Right.

But like that guy.

But he's like a Russian actor.

He's classically trained.

He is like the Timothy Chalamet of Russia.

Yeah.

He's like the big, young leading man.

This part is like totally out of his wheelhouse.

And I thought it was like kind of the most electric, like new-to-me performance I have seen in a very long time.

Yeah.

And the whole movie runs on the peaks and valleys of just.

But also that.

Yeah.

It runs on Duncan.

Yeah.

But there probably was a lot of Duncan on that.

Dunker aside.

Jokes aside, yeah.

Yeah, they were probably dunking.

The Brighton Beach Duncan was a test.

It was a Duncan contest, I think.

But yeah, no, the whole movie hinges on being like, I can't figure this guy out.

Is he for real?

We love it.

So my five nominees.

Presented by Maura Tierney.

Mauritier.

Oh, gosh.

She comes in.

She's so good.

We take her for granted.

Wasn't she good in something this year?

I feel like I just saw her pop up in something again.

I think you're right.

What did Maura Mauritiery just pop up?

I was very excited to see her pop up in something.

What was Mara Tierney doing the pop-up in?

All right.

I'm going to figure it out while you're in the middle of the day.

You know what?

I just saw her in the Criterion closet and she must, well, Twisters.

It was Twisters.

It was Twister.

The only problem with Twisters is literally meant to be Helen Hunt's.

Well, that's true.

That is very true.

But is that it is not, and right, it wasn't Helen Hunt's thing like, well, actually, I wanted to direct Twisters.

And they were like, well, we weren't interested in you doing that.

Right.

So

my my only problem with Twisters, they should be canonically in the movie Glenn Powell and Mortierney have fucked.

Yes, even though it's obvious to right.

Like Glenn Powell and Mortierny have enough chemistry in that movie that you're kind of like, oh, I can go, but he actually should be like, oh, I know your mom.

He's like, all right.

Biblically.

My five nominees are, and I'm also,

just for the record, kind of basically kicking Guy Pierce and Yuri Versov out, who are both performances I like.

Look, once again, like, it's just, why not take the time on these microphones to vouch for the people who aren't getting credit?

We're recording this at the tail end of Oscar season.

But Guy Pierce would be my winner out of the five people they nominated.

I think all five of those nominees are great.

I do too.

I really like Jeremy's forest.

It's maybe the best lineup of the four acting categories.

And yet I think Kieran's going to win, and I think he's my least favorite performance, although I

don't mind the performance, and I like Kieran.

I think the pendulum's gone, again, a little bit more against him than I think it should.

The whole, you know, oh, he's just, he's just playing the same guy he always plays.

Like, I don't know if I necessarily go with that.

Love the guy.

I've been holding stock for so fucking long.

Yeah.

It will surprise no one to hear that AB Goes Down left a very big impression on me when I was fucking 12.

I keep trying to rope you in to do that to this head Oscar Bus.

Whenever you are ready to be on Zoom again,

come on over.

Yes.

We'll figure it out.

My thing is, and I feel like I've said this before.

With Oscar performances, I either want to see something I've never seen them do before.

Yeah.

I want to see them do the absolute best version of it they've ever done where i'm like they've never gone this deep before i don't buy into the blank is just playing themselves because it's all acting like kiran kulka is not playing himself acting is casting way more than people totally understand he is doing his thing which he has never had this good of a vehicle to do in a movie at this length It suffers in comparison to him just having finished a five-year run of what I think is the best case of his thing, which he got a ton of awards for.

So there's just just the only at the very end, though.

He was undervalued on that show for the first several seasons.

The last season, really put him front center and he won his awards.

He went out on top, swept the whole thing.

It just happened in the last year.

So there was the part of me that's like, he's undeniably good in this movie.

I have nothing against him.

I just sat there being like, I'm going to be blown away.

This is sometimes how the Oscars work.

Totally.

Like, that's sort of, and again, like, we sort of push up against the weakening of TV in sort of prestige has led to this thing where where people get this sort of like halo effect win of like mcconaughy being pushed over the edge in the dallas buyers club year because of true detective even a performance that i really love like regina king in beal street was the culmination of her being like great on like four or five tv shows leading up to that and i feel like there's another one i'm forgetting recently but yes it's starting to happen more and more

yes Don Johnson Rebel Ridge.

Oh, that's a good one.

That's been an iron lock for you for like six months.

That's a good fucking performance.

Yeah.

Brian Tyree Henry and the fire inside.

A performance that, when I saw it, I was kind of like, I think this could like waltz to a nom.

I know partly a strong field.

Yeah, partly, I feel like the film kind of getting a raw deal in its release and stuff like did well at festivals, but then like, you know, it kind of gets lost.

There was festival, there was a festival word for Brian Tyree Henry in Toronto.

Beautiful performance from an actor who never

misses.

One of our best.

Yeah.

Edward Norton in a complete unknown.

The one nominee I cannot leave.

Because that

he nailed me to the wall.

Yeah.

He's great.

J.

O.

Sanders.

Oh.

His three daughters.

David, I'm glad you did that.

An embarrassing movie.

Swinging in like a wrecking ball.

A movie I know I would love, and I never got around.

And a movie where you're like, oh, and does the dad ever show up?

And you're like, oh, he shows up at the end, played by J.

O.

Sanders.

And you're like, I bet that's good.

Yeah.

And

David Weber in hard truths.

The most undersung hard truths.

This is the husband.

Purd.

Purd?

What's the character's name?

Hercules Purdue.

Is it Purd?

It's Kirtley.

Yeah.

He's incredible in it.

Incredible and the most incredible carrying a bathtub down the stairs action of the year.

Yeah.

Just amazing stuff.

Yeah.

But no, just a performance that we're like the tiniest.

Yeah.

When he and going up against someone who's essentially playing like, you know, Nosferatu, right?

And like the tiniest ripples of emotion on his face.

Why are you trying to sell me a couch?

Pansy, you are so mean to me.

Oh, well, now he's Nosferatu, too?

Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.

It's a family of Nosferatu.

It would be funny, right?

Pansy's like, why do babies have pockets?

Why?

They don't need them.

What are they carrying?

My

late cut for me was Javier Bardam and Austin Butler in Dune Part 2, a movie that doesn't get enough acting acclaim for its great performers.

Austin Butler was very, very close for me.

My winner is Edward Norton, though.

I just could not believe how much I love that performance.

That was that movie blew me away generally in terms of like I'm walking in going like, I hope this isn't long.

Like, oh, yeah.

I have to see this.

What an obligation.

We've talked about it so much, but the arc of Edward Norton is just so fascinating to me from being like, he is Brando, he is De Niro to being like, no one is better at playing kind of earnest, straightforward people than Edward Norton, the king of overcomplicating things in the 90s.

Wes Anderson unlocked something in.

But it's incredible.

I'm like, he went from being like Stanley Kowalski

times a million to being howdy duty.

Yes, but I, but like, he's so good at it.

I don't think you get this Pete Seeger unless you get him in like Moonrise Kingdom.

I agree.

You know what I mean?

Also, he was like last second sub-in.

Like, Benedict Cumberbatch dropped out like a month before filming started because this was a strike-delayed movie.

Clumberbatch.

Yeah, Flumberbatch.

Which, like, Clumberbatch looks more like Pete Seeger.

He does.

You could see that casting.

Honestly, he's a good idea.

I wouldn't think he might have done a good job, right?

Norton gets the kind of like simplicity, the clarity.

Pete Seeker is a guy who's really important to me.

Grew up with his music.

Taught you it was okay to be weird.

He did teach me it was okay to be weird.

And right, when I heard it was Edward Norton playing him, I was like, well, I don't like that.

Like, that does not strike me.

And so I just real due credit to the guy.

When did you ever think you would describe an Edward Norton performance as like without vanity?

Because I think like that's like lovely, lovely, right?

Like generous.

Yeah.

Like, yeah.

No, I just like that he's got two modes now, basically, which are mocking his reputation as

an obsessive, right, self-impressed, right, right, blowhard, or playing the nicest guy.

Yes,

yes, it's it's amazing.

Who are your winners?

I think, at the risk of being sort of boring about it, it's Guy Pierce and the brutalist.

He really just sort of like comes in that movie and, like, just the you hit another energy level with that.

When hello, I'm America.

I'd like to buy you.

Subtly, I might be bad.

There's a tinge of plain view in there, right?

It's great.

Yes.

My name is Colonizer Genocide.

President Q Evil.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Guy Pierce for Joe Reed.

Mark Elstein's my winner.

You love that game.

It just kind of knocked me out.

I was like, who the fuck is this guy?

I just thought it was electric.

And also the kind of thing where I'm just like, I've never seen someone like this before.

I've never seen a performance like this.

It made perfect sense to me for a character that doesn't like explain itself all of his behavior, which I think a lot of people maybe wrote off as like, he found a guy who's quirky.

I'm like, I think that is like very smart analysis, like behavioral analysis of the way this guy would act out.

Well, and the way this guy sort of learned to operate in the world and, and the ways he's never like, the parts of his personality that have never formed, have never hardened into like human being because he's never had to.

He's just sort of been this little, like, you know, rich baby.

My other nominees, Tom Hardy and the bike riders.

Welcome back.

Just nice to see him doing fucking.

There's a lot of really good acting in the bike riders, too, and he's really great.

There's a lot of really good actors in it.

Yeah.

Okay.

But I thought Hardy was great.

And it's like, this is the guy I was like all in on six years ago who has kind of disappeared down a well of jujitsu and venom.

No.

Yeah.

And I enjoyed him in the first venom.

I loved

You look and you're like, he basically has done no non-venom movie since 2019.

Yeah, it is a good welcome back.

Yes, I like that.

Jack Haven, I saw the TV glow.

Great.

Movie we all adore.

Yeah, and I love that performance.

Yep.

And it's kind of like, it's another performance that the whole movie hinges on in terms of the energy.

It's a lot like Mark Edelstein, where it's like.

you have this main POV character who's basing everything off of the energy that this character is giving and the shifts they go through,

especially

their return later in the film, I felt incredibly impactful.

And has to be a little bit

mysterious, right?

A little bit unknowable.

Yep.

And

played with specificity.

Like what I look for in those types of performances is like, I can't pin this down, but I have a sense that the actor has it figured out.

They're not being vague in their choices.

With Tom Hardy, it's like...

It's been bad.

If you ignore the sort of beautiful tapestry that is Venom,

and like, I love him in Dunkirk, but that's, you know,

a small supporting performance in a way.

It's also his last Nolan.

He hasn't done a Nolan since then.

That was 2017.

I know.

Oh, I know.

He was.

The explosion and

Lappenheimer, though.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was just going, boom, boom.

It's like

the revenant?

You're going over a decade.

Yeah.

It's like, right?

Like, and

the first

performance that was sort of like, you know.

When's the drop?

I think he's very good in the drop.

The drop is 2014.

It's the year prior.

They never see you coming, do they?

Like, that's the whole thing.

That kind of like that run of like Bronson to, you know, the Revenant or whatever, where it's like six or seven years.

They're like, man, this guy has got so much.

Look, I don't like the Revenant, but like, I think he's great in that.

I was so happy where I'm like, okay, you've broken the seal.

He's a guy who's getting nominated now.

Warrior is my favorite performance of his.

But yes, that was my guy.

When this show started,

I was like, undeniably my favorite leading man.

And it feels like he's on like the beginning of his elevation.

Yeah, I hope so.

Is there anyone else?

Speaking of getting back, Chris Hemsworth taking the new male part in Mad Max, but doing an insane kind of inversion.

Was that always him, or did he get, did he replace it?

That was definitely always him.

Tom Burke replaced Yahya Abdul Mateen.

Gotcha.

But it was always Hemsworth.

I

desperately wanted to play Mad Max in Fury Road and hadn't yet popped.

And you see in that performance, I think, the energy of an Australian kid who grew up just being like, all I want to do is be in a Mad Max movie someday.

And his lack of vanity.

Like, you feel him being totally unleashed in that.

I know some people ding the nose, and I think we said this in the episode.

I think the nose allowed him to be freed of being Chris Hemsworth in a way that unlocks that performance.

Which is great.

The first place.

I historically approve of weird noses and movies being the hours' number one fan.

So I get it.

Adam Pearson, my last nominee, it's just like fucking funny performance.

It's so good.

And it's such a, it's such a like unshowy energy performance because the whole movie, once again, hinges on when this guy enters, you immediately go, oh.

Sebastian Stan could have been happy.

Well, and not only that, this guy is so effortless in his sort of like joie de vie.

He can't be too effortful.

He can't be too big or else the comedy really falls apart.

You really need Sebastian Stan to fall to pieces over this guy who's just being himself, but like,

which is

showy about it because you don't want it to be like Owen Wilson meet the parents, like, oh, fuck this guy.

Yes.

This guy's too slick.

Right.

You have to have the plausibility of like,

if he knows what he's doing, he's doing it really.

This movie slyly.

It basically hangs on him entering and you immediately going, oh, Sebastian Stan's character sucks.

You don't like

have contempt for Adam Pearson.

You're like, this guy we've been hanging out with is a bummer.

It's a great movie.

Do you gentlemen want to run through your other nominees?

Oh, J.R.

Sanders, I already shouted out.

Check out that movie.

That's another movie where it's like, I saw that like a year and a half ago.

And I like that movie.

I think it's good.

His scene just kind of, you know, is the showstopper for me.

Don Johnson, Rebel Ridge.

Would be so easy for you.

I'm surprised he wasn't your winner.

Dornton came in and snatched it.

Snatched it like Aaron Pierce snatches the gun out of John Johnson's hands in Rebel Ridge.

Have you seen Rebel Ridge?

No, I still have one.

You'd really like it.

Netflix.

It's the Netflix.

I'm the same with the daughters.

I'll watch it at some point.

Netflix to the point of like Rebel Ridge is getting nominated for like TV awards.

Like as a, it's being considered a TV

do win, which is so fucking dumb.

Can I do my impression of Edward Norton snatching the award away from Don Johnson?

Oh, excuse me.

Let me just take this win quickly.

There we go.

Can I also just say about Hemsworth?

Because I...

The most gentle yoink of all time.

I'm not the Furiosa fan that y'all are, and that's fine.

I'm going to give myself permission to do that.

Yeah, let everyone get angry at you instead of pretending that we hate the movie.

Wait, do they think you hate the movie?

We hate the movie.

Go on, Joe.

I'm sorry, guys.

I listened to that podcast and I'm like, they're being real fucking lenient on fucking Furiosa.

What were you going to say?

The thing I was going to say about Hemsworth is, I thought he was getting real lazy in the last few Thor performances.

And I was worried that this was just going to be an extension of that.

And I think, somewhat like Tom Hardy, I saw him sort of get reinvigorated by this in a way that, like, we sort of like, we kind of infused Hemsworth with more of that, like, that movie star and energy that we love.

Bombs, and the following Tuesday, they announced that Chris Hemsworth will be the live-action lead of the G.I.

Joe Transformers team-up movie.

Wait, is that real?

Yeah.

I mean, there's no further updates.

I know Transformers uh beasts teased that rice the beast ends with a business card that says gi drew on

hollywood's working so hard come on

wasn't hemsworth the voice of correct optimus prime and transformers long

a great performance yeah he was good he was locked in yeah i mean i guess but i'm failing this guy he's trying to evolve i know i know i feel like there's another thing he just announced he's doing that i'm like okay chris hemsworth has tried.

He has over his entire career

worked with major directors to make non-franchise stuff like Rush and In the Heart of the Sea and stuff.

And it's just often just not his credit.

He's bad times of the L Royale.

He gets

tourist big budget studio movies bankrolled on his name.

Like he's not doing weird indies, but he's doing weird studio movies.

And then he retreats back to like Men in Black International.

The other one he's doing is the fucking live-action Prince Charming movie directed by Paul King.

Well, that sounds fun.

Sure, but I'm like, like, Paul,

Paul!

No, I'm disappointed in all those.

Anything you want to do, I will see.

My arms were on Maya.

But I also, like, I had that same reaction to Wonka.

I was like, Wonka.

I'm like, I fucking loved Wonka.

But so I, as I texted to David the other day, if Paul King had stayed on Paddington 3, maybe the pandemic wouldn't have happened.

Well, you know, it's just funny that we're all like, I wish Paul King had made a sequel, right?

Like, we're like, you know, how dare he try to do other things?

Back to the blankies after these messages.

Ben.

What's up, Griff?

This is an ad break.

Yeah.

And I'm just, this isn't a humble brag.

It's just a fact of the matter.

Despite you being on mic, oftentimes when sponsors buy ad space on this podcast, the big thing they want is personal host endorsement.

Right.

They love that they get a little bonus ben on the ad read, but technically that's not what they're looking for.

But something very different is happening right now.

That's true.

We had a sponsor come in and say, we are looking for the coveted Ben Hosley endorsement.

This is laser targeted.

The product.

We have copy that asks, is the product a porch movie?

It certainly is.

And what is today's episode sponsored by?

The Toxic Avenger.

The new Toxic Avenger movie is coming to theaters August 29th.

Macon Blair's remake of

reimagining, whatever.

Reboot of the Toxic Avenger.

Now, David and I have not gotten to see it yet, but they sent you a screener link.

Yeah, I'm going to see it.

We're

excited to see it.

But Ben, you texted us last night.

This fucking rules.

It fucks.

It honks.

Yeah.

It's so great.

Let me read you the cast list here in billing orders they asked, which I really appreciate.

Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay,

Taylor Play Page, with Elijah Wood, and Kevin Bacon.

Tremblay is Toxie's son.

His stepson.

His stepson.

Okay.

Wade Goose.

Yes.

Great name.

Give us the takes.

We haven't heard of them yet.

Okay.

You got fucking Dinklage is fantastic.

He's Toxie.

He plays it with so much heart.

Yeah.

It's such a lovely performance.

Bacon is in the pocket too, man.

He's the bad guy.

He's the bad guy.

There's a lot of him shirtless.

Okay.

Looking like David.

David sizzling.

Yep.

And then then Elijah Wood plays like a dang-ass freak.

He certainly does, he's having a lot of fun.

Tell us some things you liked about the movie.

Okay, well, I'm a Jersey guy.

I just gotta say, the original movie was shot in the town where I went to high school.

Yes, yes, that's right.

The original film.

Yep.

I grew up watching toxic and trauma movies on porches

with my sleazy and sticky friends.

It informed so much of my sensibility.

Your friends like Junkyard Dog and Headbanger.

Yeah, exactly.

Making Toxic Crusader jokes.

And so when I heard that they were doing this new installment, I was really emotionally invested.

It was in limbo for a while before our friends at Ciniverse rescued it and are now releasing it uncut.

But I feel like there have been years of you being very excited at the prospect, but also a little weary.

They're playing with fire here.

Yeah, it's just something that means a lot to me.

And they knocked it out of the fucking park.

Okay.

It somehow really captured that sensibility, that sense of humor, even just that that like lo-fi, scrappy kind of nature that's inherent in all of the trauma movies and the original Toxie movies.

And they have like updated in this way that it was just, I was so pleased with it.

It's gooey

gooey.

Tons of blood, tons of goo,

great action.

It's really fucking funny.

It just, it hits all of the sensibilities that you would want in an updated version.

Cineverse last year released Terrifier 3 unrated.

Yeah.

Big risk for them there.

I feel like it's a very, very intense movie.

And a huge hit.

More interesting, yeah, theatrical box office phenomenons the last five years.

Want to make that happen again here?

Tickets are on sale right now.

Advanced sales really matter for movies like this.

So if y'all were planning on seeing Toxic Avenger, go ahead and buy those tickets.

Please go to toxicavenger.com slash blank check to get your tickets.

Blank check one word.

In theaters, August 29th.

Yep.

And Ben, it just says here in the copy, wants to call out that Elijah Wood plays a weird little guy who says, Summon the nuts.

Can you tell us anything about that moment without spoiling it?

Summon the nuts is in reference to a

psychotic new metal band.

Hell yeah.

Who are also mercenaries.

Cool.

And drive a van

with a skeleton giving two fingies up on the grill.

And that's all I'll say.

Okay.

And they are the most dang-ass freaks of dang-ass freaks.

I'm excited to see it.

And your endorsement, I think, carries more weight than anyone else's in the world on this list.

Seriously, get your tickets now.

Go to toxicadvengure.com/slash blank check.

Do it, do it.

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And we're back to the 2025 Plankies.

We have to move on.

As usual, we're taking too long.

John Johnson, I just wanted to say, could have played that one-dimensional

doesn't watch that movie.

He doesn't play it one-dimensional at all.

And you've probably not seen The Firing Side either, you little twerp.

I haven't.

I miss that because

it's hard.

When I had my fucking dental surgery, when I was in recovery, he blames the dentist.

Well, that movie was like in theaters, out of theaters.

It was very close.

I'll say this.

My little cousin George, our second finest movie critic, took him to see maybe it was Sonic 3.

And we walked by the poster.

And he went, is that Creed 4?

And I said, what?

And he said, isn't like the next Creed going to be the daughter?

I forgot that the Creed movies are setting up that the daughter is going to be a boxer.

Oh, I didn't see the last two Creed movies.

But I was like, no, that's like another movie.

It's supposed to be good.

And he was like, really?

Because it looks like a Creed ripoff.

And then I looked at the poster, and it is Amazon MGM, who released the last Creed movie.

Yeah.

And I was just like, they are in the marketing making this look like Creed rubber.

Amazon's not very good at marketing.

Right.

I think they totally missold that movie.

You keep bumping lights, Camera Jackson, down the list of our finest film critics.

He's going way down.

He's just getting an alarming speed.

Yeah.

All right.

Should we move on to the blankies?

Oh, no, or I'll give you the blankies after the choice, the reader choices, listener choices.

Jesus.

After we do supporting actress,

best supporting actress.

Do you want to hear who our supporting actor winners were last year, Griffin?

I would love nothing more.

Okay, well, apparently, Griffin's winner was Ryan Gosling and Barbie.

Hell yeah.

My winner was Awuga, Honk, Honk.

Get your goggles on.

Colin Farrell.

Robert and Euro and Killers of the Flower Moon.

Taking the 430 autogyro to Prussia, yeah.

And Joe's winner was Charles Milton in May, December.

Three of the big performances that year, I feel.

So who is Ryan Gosling telling us about Griffin for supporting actress?

My nominees for supporting actress are Alicia Witt in Long Legs, Allison Pill in Trap,

Renata Ronsva in A Different Man,

Ramuna,

excuse me, Romina DeUgo in I Like Movies, and Michelle Austin in Hard Truth.

Now, what is I Like Movies?

I know you like this movie.

The Great Champion.

I do like it.

I like, I like movies.

Canadian Filmmaker.

Yep.

A movie that played at TIFF like two years ago and finally got a very limited release, but is watchable on PVOD

and is like a great

sort of

inversion of the kind of Romana Clef

autobiography.

Canadian Kid Works in a video story

of pain in the ass.

Yes.

It is like, it is the

incredible kind of like response film to a lifetime of special little guy movies that I grew up loving.

Have you seen it?

Yeah.

She's amazing in it.

Yeah, I like it.

She has that incredible monologue she gives in the video store where she explains her history.

It's the best Maria Dizia performance not given by Maria Dizzy.

That's a great way of putting it.

This was an actress I was not familiar with before,

and it knocked me out.

Yeah.

No, I really liked that movie.

Knocked you out because he a doctor.

My nominations are Michelle Austin, R-Truth, Dolly DeLeon in Ghost Light.

Oh, there you go.

You know what?

A late fill-in for someone else.

Borderline Insane.

I consider Dolly DeLeon for Between the Temples.

Oh, nice.

She is insanely good.

She's very good in that movie.

Yes.

Elizabeth Olson in his three daughters, Tilda Swinton in Problemista, and Emily Watson in Small Things Like These.

I'll say the Tilda in Problemista was on my long list, and I was like, Joe's going to cover it.

I don't need to do this.

I had the exact same movie.

Yep.

and I really liked that performance.

Yeah, she's great.

Uh, okay,

that's that's great.

Your nominees are my nominees are

Angenu Ellis Taylor in Nickel Boyce, Michelle Austin in Hard Truths.

The only one in all three, yeah, I mean, undeniable.

Sophie Acanedo in Janet Planet, also strongly considered and left off because I knew you'd go.

Yeah, I had that one covered.

One of my favorites.

Monica Barbaro, Phoenix Herself in a Complete unknown.

A movie where these guys ended up getting the noms, but I'm still just kind of like, yeah, look for you in your big studio Bob Dylan movie.

Hey, but I liked it.

Yep.

And,

you know, it's like, do I go weird or do I go normal?

No, I'm still.

Go weird and then tell us the normal you.

The normal one is Ariana Grande in Wicked, who I really think deserves, you know, a firm handshake for the great work that she did in Wicked.

But not even having heard the weird one yet, I feel confident in telling you to go weird.

I don't know.

I can't.

Who's your weird?

My God, stop yelling at me.

Like, you guys took my two weirds, I will say, which is great.

You took Allison Pill, a performance I really like.

And you took Tilda Swint.

I mean, nobody took her.

Nobody can ever dare take Tilda Swint.

She can't be.

Tilda takes.

Tilda takes you.

Yeah, exactly.

So I guess, like, at that point, I got to go with Grande.

I mean, you know, I don't know.

I mean, I could go with like, no, I don't know.

I'm going with Grande.

I will say I went into Wicked as a real sort of bitchy little i don't like ariana grande person and i walked out of that movie being like well she's the best like she's interesting so fucking entertaining in that movie she's very good at the comic stuff i i've always been neutral on her i guess would be my yeah my grande take

right

i don't know yeah i yeah I like the movie.

Okay.

I know you do.

You like it?

Okay.

Yeah.

Oh, the movie's got its ups and downs.

I'll say that.

But like, she's definitely an up.

She's a big old up.

Ups and downs.

I thought it defied gravity.

I'm like, you know, it's like.

It should be staying in one place right in the middle.

You know, I'm looking at my other choices here, and it's just, you know, like my other kind of.

I had Renata Reinse very close.

She's good.

I mean, I love her to be, obviously, love her.

My three people I knocked off, but I was like, that felt like a pretty strong five to me.

It felt pretty locked in.

Joan Shen and D Dee, a movie I know I like a lot more than you do, David.

It's a lovely lovely performance.

A lovely performance.

I thought she's great, but like the movie itself didn't entirely do it for me.

Ayla Brown and Furiosa, who's young Furiosa.

I kind of want to throw out:

is that a great performance?

Is that just great direction of a kid?

Because she's so quiet and intense.

And yeah, she's great.

Here's what I think.

I thought about like Sophie Thatcher or Chloe East and Heretic.

Both of them are good, but they're both kind of the leaders.

So I couldn't really.

Can I throw out the one I couldn't quite justify, but I was seriously considering?

I think Zoe Deutsch in juror number two is one of the best making something out of nothing performances.

She's really working with very little.

She is working with very little.

And I love her.

I love her.

I'm in the bag, but it's like such a stock character.

You know that Eastwood's giving her half a take.

And she's playing.

That was his directions for her in a scene.

And he's doing that in the middle of the time

into a microphone.

Right.

I just think she is playing an internal conflict.

The scene with her and Tony Colette is better than it needs to be.

I had a hard time sort of figuring out what I wanted to do with the three actresses and his three daughters, a movie that I really loved.

Like loved, loved, loved.

Yeah, it's a good movie.

And they're all good.

And they're all really good.

They're all plausibly leads.

They're all plausibly, you could do, they're all leads.

I think like Kuhn is undeniably a lead.

And I think Leone is a lead.

Olsen is the one where I'm kind of like, she's sort of more supporting.

The Julianne Julianne Moore in the hours, where it's like the less, the less of equals kind of thing.

Or with Shalene Woodley and Big Little Eyes, where you're like, she's like a lead, but she has the sort of

thinnest arc, I guess.

Yeah.

But when she has her couple moments in that movie, she really nails it.

As a spoiler ahead, I had similar issues.

Well, I had issues with the Enora guys and also the three people in Challengers.

Just trying to, there's a lot of movies.

I was like trying to like sift through.

I did as well.

Loved her, not Orion's of a Different Man.

She almost made it for me.

Loved Anjanu Ellis Taylor and Nickel Boys, the

hug of the year.

I mean, come on.

I love, I love a good hug in a movie.

I shouted out Maria Dizia already, but like Maria Dizia and Christmas Eve and Miller's point is still.

I like that movie.

Yeah.

I like that movie.

Yeah.

And she's really good.

You know what?

She's always good.

She's good in my old ass as well.

Yeah.

All right.

I think that's

that movie just invited.

I had to read my old ass out at the New York Film Critic Circle voting a bunch.

You know, like, my old ass.

And everyone would laugh every time.

You can't help but laugh.

Have you seen it?

No, I haven't seen it.

I'll say this.

That was a movie where people kept telling me it was good.

And I was like, yeah, yeah, I get it.

Like, I was being very

lazy about it.

I know what that movie is.

Sure, sure, sure.

And then I watched in my post-dental surgery phase where I was like, what do I want to watch?

Let me just watch like coming-of-age movies that mostly went to streaming that I missed out on.

Yeah.

And I watched that and it kind of

David call a doctor knocked me out.

It was, it's, it's a much like wiser, deeper film than I was expecting.

You know what?

I'll give Supporting Actress my fifth slot to Sienna Miller for Horizon, American Saga, chapter one.

Like that.

And I'll say this, David, that investment will pay off when you see chapter two.

Oh, that's right.

You see chapter two?

Horizon, an American saga, chapter two.

And she's really, she's got a fucking barn burner monologue down there.

I love her.

For an actor who's given bad performances and like for a long time seemed like a total zero right like it was like oh they tried to make her happen it didn't happen yeah no she's really

bad performances have either of you two seen ghostlight no uh that's a movie i haven't seen because it seemed i know it i'm i know it's going to be good but it seems like it's completely i think you i think i think it's the kind of movie that both of you would really like it's also uh kelly o'sullivan is the writer and co-director who did a movie called st.

Francis St.

Francis, I think.

Oh, sure.

And which is incredible.

And I was on the Gotham's jury for many years on their first film, Jury.

And that was a first film that i would not have seen if i had not been serving on that jersey journey jury and i love gentlemen who did you pick as your winners my winner is michelle austin for hard truths great pick joe it was very close between michelle austin and tilde swinton for me but i think i go with michelle austin A byproduct of us now having done this for 10 years is we've started to develop our own internal overdue.

Oh, you're like, right, I haven't actually given the trophy, the Griffey to explain.

My winner is Renata Reinsville, which I think is my favorite performance of these five, but also I did just double check and I gave best actress to Rebecca Hall for the Nighthouse that year.

Oh, yeah.

Over worst person in the world.

A choice I defend and stand by, but I think Renata Reinsva is so good in A Different Man.

I think the, like,

the whole movie, it's another hinge performance, but that's kind of what I like in these supporting performances.

The whole movie hinges on him reappearing and her suddenly presenting an entire different backstory and changing all these details to him and the realization of like, what the fuck is going on with her, which the movie never quite answers in a way that actually says a ton, if that makes sense.

She plays a villain in a really um it is not judgmental performance.

It is not a judgmental performance.

It is a very recognizable kind of like familiar villainy, which is just sort of like she's taking shortcuts and she's sort of, she sees an opportunity to succeed in a way that sells out somebody.

And she's a quieter version of what's going on to him, which is just like everyone has an idea of how they could reset their life and reframe themselves the way they want to be.

And she does that in a way that she doesn't understand is so fucking painful to him because she doesn't know who he's talking to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The Blankie voters, the listeners of the show have a 10.

you know, person list for best supporting performance that I will now read from bottom to top.

So 10, Mike Feist in challengers.

9, Ariana Grande and Wicked.

8, Margaret Quawley and the Substance.

7, Kieran Culkin and A Real Pain.

6, Jack Haven and I Saw the TV Glow.

Hell yeah.

5, Adam Pearson and A Different Man.

Hell yeah.

Four, Guy Pierce and the Rutalist.

Hell yeah.

Three, Yura Burisov and Anora.

And now I have to say hell yeah for everybody or I saw Zach Brady.

Two, Hemsworth, and

one, Josh O'Connor in Challengers.

Now,

that's not a supporting performance.

Big cocked eyebrows.

eyebrows

that got run.

I think maybe MGM sort of

ran all three, or do they run Zendaya's lead?

No, they ran Zendaya's lead because she got the Golden Globe nomination in lead.

All three of them are comedy, which is another conversation I'd want to have.

Feist the one

make the argument.

You can talk me if you want to spread it out.

But I think Honor is unpleasant.

I think you can

put a pin in this and get to it.

I think the pin is planted.

And look, we can look at

MGM, Amazon's award strategies askance, but I think we can all agree it paid off beautifully for them checks notes here blanked at the office.

Zero nomination.

What a fucking disaster.

Well, they did release my favorite movie of the year.

I guess I'll give them that.

Yep.

MGM.

Pinning that as well.

They released two of my five favorite movies of the year.

Okay, so let's move along to what should we do?

The screenplays?

What should we do here, guys?

Yes, your screenplays.

Fine.

Best original screenplay.

Best adapted screenplay.

I got six in both.

I'm going to to have to make a hard cut at this point.

Oh, you poor moment.

I know.

Right.

All right.

So, original screenplay.

Here are my original screenplay winners.

Then this is obviously being presented by the winner of adapted screenplay last year, isn't it?

So that would be, oh, Eric Roth.

Shuffling out.

Perfect.

Get Eric Roth out there.

Let's see.

Who are my adapted screen?

And he wrote so much of that movie.

Yeah.

My adaptive screenplay nominees appear to be, I'm worried I like didn't give this a once over.

uh dune part two hitman fire inside furiosa nickel boys which is my winner spoiler alert

i'm gonna stand by this my adapted screenplay nominees are sing sing

furiosa nickel boys the people's joker a radical act of adaptation right

is that sort of just nominally adapting like the character of Joker Larry.

It is undeniably an act of adaptation and a movie about that in a way uh and my fifth nominee sometimes i think about dying is that based on something it is weirdly based on based on a thought that you sometimes have it is weirdly based on i believe a one-act play that is just i can i can see that but but here's what's weird it was written by someone else and the one-act play is just about the party scene playing murderer.

You know what I'm talking about, David?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

And then that

got like optioned, and then a new writer came out and was like, what if I spun this character out and that scene becomes the centerpiece?

I love that film.

There's a movie I saw two years ago, I think, but I like that movie.

Yeah, it came out January 2023 at Sundance.

Well, right.

It played January 2023 at Sundance.

It was released theatrically January 2024.

Right.

So even you saw it along the way.

Even I saw it a year ago.

But yes,

I give it more credit as an active adaptation because it is unfurled from such a weird specific piece with a couple different writers.

I thought that I was seeing that movie and the movie that I actually saw was the feeling that the time for doing something has passed.

A movie I have not seen.

A movie I did not care for.

Okay.

So, Joe, you're

screenplays.

Conclave, Conclave.

Conclave.

Conclave,

Peter Strong.

Dune Part 2.

Denny Villeneuve.

John Spage.

John Spetz.

It does sound like you're just sort of supposed to.

Third name listed here, Muab Adib.

Muad Deep.

That was close.

Nickel Boys, Ramel Ross, and Jocelyn Barnes.

Sing Sing,

which is screenplay by Greg Quadar and Clint Bentley, with the story credit to Quadar, Bentley, Terrence Macklin, and John Devine G.

Whitfield.

And then Small Things Like These, who's Enda Walsh and Claire Keegan.

You know, I got sent that book by the swag team behind Small Things Like These.

They did not.

Gonna read it.

It's good.

Yeah, I mean, the movie's great.

Yeah, I didn't see it.

Too busy.

But you saw the book, the cover.

There it is.

Yeah.

Sitting on my desk.

And who's your winners, guys?

I forgot to ask.

Oh, first, for adapt.

I mean, it's got to be Nickel Boys.

It's a really, really interesting way to adapt that book.

The only one, all three of us not made.

Is that your winner?

No, David, what's your winner?

Nickel Boys.

I think my winner is People's Joker.

Sure, great.

Between that and King Sing.

I adore People's Joker.

I strongly implore people to seek it out.

I went to see it assuming it was just going to be like a fun act of cinematic fuck you.

And what I love about that movie is it really is kind of an argument for why, like,

I refuse to call it IP,

but it is worth adapting works and reinterpreting them through different prisms.

It's sort of a movie about, like, there's a reason we go back to the same stories because we find things that we can only express through those sets of characters.

And it makes you frustrated about how often these things are rebooted in the same derivative ways over and over again.

But I think it's like an incredible self-reflexive piece of adaptation.

The Blankies picked Nosferat 2 5, Furiosa 4, Nickel Boys 3, Conclave 2, Doom Part 2 was their winner.

Great.

Doom Part 2 is a sneaky, like, really interesting adaptation.

And it's a really complicated thing.

They really keep what he's not.

Yeah, yeah.

They move it around in some different ways.

To end that movie on the note that it ends on is

pretty ballsy.

What he did with Chani is...

Yes.

That's specifically, yes, Chani's character.

Yep.

Best original screenplay.

Uh-oh.

Uh-oh, Spaghetti Os.

My, of course, adapted screenplay winner last year was.

Oh no, I already did.

I did this wrong.

Okay, yeah, my best original screenplay is Wes Anderson.

So here he is.

Hey, look at that.

What is a life?

My winner last year was.

It looks like it was

Wes Anderson.

I also went Wes Anderson.

Okay.

Asteroid City, great movie.

Joe went.

Joe, you went.

Your adapted screenplay winners, by the way, were Blackberry for Griffin and Barbie for Joe.

Hell yeah.

And Joe, you went with May December.

Great screenplay for original.

So my best original screenplays of 2024 are Annie Baker for Janet Planet, Justin Karitska's potion seller for Challengers, Jane Schoenbrunn for I Saw the TV Glow, Mike Lee for Hard Truths, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi for Evil Does Not Exist.

Joe.

Mine are Challengers, Justin Karitsky's.

A different man, Aaron Schimberg, his three daughters, Azazel Jacobs, I Saw the TV Glow, Jaden Schoenbrunn, and Problemista, Julio Torres.

My nominees for screenplay are A Different Man, Aaron Schimberg, Challengers, Justin Koritskis.

You want to speak up a little bit?

Yeah.

Well, I'm just realizing I'm going to forget the names of some of these people.

Just keep going.

Keep going.

I can tell you the names.

Thelma.

Thelma.

I don't know who wrote that.

Oh, well, Mr.

Eisenhower.

Thelma was, of course, written by Josh Markland, who I believe also directed it.

Yes.

Hardruts.

I forget.

Oh, that's who wrote it.

Okay.

And Hundreds of Beavers.

Oh, who wrote that?

Is that a screenplay movie?

Mike, can I make this cake and Ryland 2?

I'm going to make the case.

It is a silent film.

It is a pure silent film.

It is like one of the most beautifully structured films.

You watch it.

I'd heard a lot of hype.

I'm so resistant to this movie, Griffith.

This movie is so fucking good.

You guys

are going to eat

it.

Well, I don't.

Now I really don't want to watch it.

I sat there and I was like, people have told me this is fun.

It starts and I'm like, is it really going to be this the whole whole time?

How long is this thing?

Like 72 minutes?

It's like two hours long.

It not only doesn't run out of steam, it grows.

There are like concepts in that movie that are so fucking complicated that are communicated with such elegance and wit, it blew my mind.

I've seen it twice in theaters now.

It plays like a fucking rock concert.

I hope it is a movie that will continue making the rounds theatrically for years because it feels like a perpetual midnight movie touring thing.

And it is, it's incredible to watch with the a crowd because it starts basically with silence of everyone reacting the way I did.

And then by the end, it's undeniable.

My worry is that watching it with a crowd will make me like it less.

I think you're wrong about that.

Okay.

My only question is how it plays alone.

Sure.

My winner is Annie Baker.

Who's your winner?

My winner is

Ozzy Lil Jacobs for his three daughters.

It's a screenplay movie.

And I'm not saying that to

save the directing.

I think I saw a lot of like this play, this feels like a play.

And I'm like, to me, I'm like, that's fine.

You know, that does not diminish my enjoyment of the movie.

Feels like Griff's picking Beavers.

I'm a little inclined to do Beavers.

There are three other things that are in there that I also know are going to win a different award for me.

So I'm like, is there a spread the wealth argument?

I think Challengers is a really, really intelligently constructed screenplay that really nails the ending, which is the hardest thing to do.

And that was his ending.

And he, you know, insisted on it.

That's my I think I saw the TV glow.

It was brilliant.

I got it, but I did.

I exempt it from this category.

Okay.

Yeah.

He exempts it.

Yeah.

Exempted.

But Danny Baker, she's my favorite living writer, and she wrote a movie for me, and I got to watch it.

She gets the trophy from me.

I'm going to do Beaverse here because this is the one place where I can kind of make the case.

That makes sense.

Although I will say it also should have been nominated for best original song.

Oh, there's an original song.

There's a B-verse.

No, it's not what you think.

Original song nominees are.

David, you think you know what it is?

And it's not what you think.

I honestly don't think I know what it is.

Yeah.

The score and

the song in that film are uh exceptional, but yeah, no, hard truths, challengers, different man are all kind of fucking Hall of Famer scripts for me.

The blankie pick that I will give roses in other places were a different man, five, brutalist four, I saw the TV glow three, a Nora two, and Challengers one.

Back to the Blankies after these messages.

David, what?

This episode of Blank Check with Griffin David Podcast Belphographies is brought to you by Booking.com.

Booking.y.

I mean, that's what I was about to say.

Booking.

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God, I'm trying to think of anyone in my life, perhaps even in this room.

Ben, who's like, what's an example of someone I know who maybe has a very particular set of demands?

Bringing me in, and there's only one other person in the room.

Who's one other person in the room?

My wickedness is so rude.

I sleep easy.

I'm definitely not someone who insists on 800 thread count sheets.

No,

that's an example of a fussy person.

Look, people have different demands.

And you know what?

If you're traveling, that's your time to start making demands.

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a partner who's sleep light, rise early, or maybe, you know, like you just want someone who wants a pool or wants a view or I don't know.

Any kind of demand.

Lynn and I need a room with some good soundproofing because I'm going to be doing some remote pod record.

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Maybe you're in Europe and you want to make sure that's very demanding to be in Europe.

You got air conditioning.

Well, I can't think of one person in particular, although it's really both of you.

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You got to have air conditioning.

I need air conditioning if I'm in the North Pole.

Look, Look, if I can find my perfect stay on booking.com, anyone can.

Booking.com is definitely the easiest way to find exactly what you're looking for.

Like for me, a non-negotiable is I need a gorgeous bathroom for selfies.

You do.

You love selfies.

As long as I got a good bathroom mirror for selfies, I'm happy with everything else.

Look, they're again,

they're specifying like, oh, maybe you want a sauna or a hot tub.

And I'm like, sounds good to me.

Yeah.

Please.

Can I check that book?

You want one of those in the recording, Stupid?

That'd be great.

You want to start?

You want to be

in the sauna when we record.

I was going to say, you want to be the Dalton Trumbo podcast.

You want to be Splish Splash.

You would look good if I had a sauna and a cold plunge.

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And we're back to the 2025 Plankies.

Next.

Last time was a best animated feature.

So let's do that again.

Best animated feature, guys.

What a year for animated features.

Stinky poo-poo it's a kind of a tough year i limited myself to i have five i couldn't do more the highest grossing ones were almost the worst ones in my opinion monitor and inside out to and uh minions eight or whatever yeah and i feel like there's another one that did well that i didn't care for let's see um you certainly right like it's not like i mean inside out to

smashing through every record was the moment Every like the entire industry sort of trend line went from like, God, this year's a disaster to like, oh, I think everything's fine.

Like, you know, it was crazy.

That's why I'm like, I'm grateful for Inside.

Sure.

But it's also funny that it was Inside Out 2 that did that.

Right.

You know, which I thought was fine.

I think I liked it more than you could.

I think that movie kind of profoundly doesn't work.

Let's see what the other big answers.

Here are my five nominees.

Give me your nominees.

Give a proper five.

Oh, Kung Fu Panda 4 must be the other one.

Yeah.

Yes.

Right.

I started.

I mean, it's white.

Right.

It's a two, two, twos, two fours.

And what's the other one?

I don't know.

Of the highest grossing, uh,

uh, Moana 2, Inside Out 2, Despicable Move Me 4, Kuna Fu Fanda 4.

Uh, I don't fucking know.

There's one other one we just listed.

I forget.

I don't know.

Whatever.

Who gives a shit?

Fuck you.

The Garfield movie's up there.

That movie sucks.

I regret to say, at a certain point, I was like, let me go through more of the qualifying films because maybe there are some hidden gems here.

And the deeper I dug, the less I liked what I found.

Garfield being a movie about reconnecting with his deadbeat dad is almost as infuriating as Super Mario Brothers being about Mario proving to his parents that he can.

He's a good plumber.

Yeah, he's a good plumber.

It's almost like the people who run these animations for you have bad relationships with their father.

Almost like, almost like.

Don't respect them going into animation.

I'm good at Cartoon's dad.

Sonic 3 is the other one maybe you're not that animated film.

I didn't see it.

I don't know.

Joe, how dare you?

I'm surprised you would talk so rudely about Vic, my favorite character from the Garfield strips.

We all love Big Vic, Garfield's dad, an important character.

My five nominees for best animated film are Memoirs of a Snail, which spoiler is my winner.

Flow, which I admit is undeniable, but also had the most ill-time bath and break of my movie-going career.

Like you come back and like it's the apocalypse or whatever.

I came back to the director's credit on screen.

Oh, no.

It's not a long movie.

No, but I was like, it's hard to pin how long this has been going on.

And then I saw another wave coming and I was like, oh, it feels like there's maybe another 20 minutes left.

Let me run to P now.

And I came back and the movie had ended.

Oh, disaster.

I later uh watched it.

Uh, The Wild Robot, Transformers One.

Oh, okay.

Which I think is far and away the best movie of the animated IP slop, if I can call it that.

Yeah, no, a movie, Rock.

Uh, and Look Back, which rolls.

What's that?

Oh, that's the Japanese movie.

I haven't seen that yet.

It's like 52 minutes long.

Okay.

Well, sign me up.

Wait, that sounds great.

You can watch it three times.

I'm just going to watch it right now.

Just play it while we do this episode.

But Memoir of a Snail was always my favorite.

It's really, really fucking good.

Did you guys have voiceover performance nominees?

I can do that in a second.

Okay, we'll list your animated films.

Yeah, let's see.

But it will tie to mine.

Yeah, because my anime, it's rough.

It's just Flow, Wild Robot, both of which I liked.

Transformers 1, which I liked.

Wallace and Gromit Vension's Most Foul, which I liked.

It's a step apart.

But I could have some with it being better.

Do you agree with my note?

Yeah.

What's your note?

It is the one Wallace and Grommet movie that isn't actually about their relationship.

And at the very end, it tries to pretend it is.

Yeah, it kind of tries to squeeze it in there.

But also, it's like, what's there to say left about their relationships, right?

You know, I mean, I liked it more than the bakery one.

I loved Vengeance Most Foul.

I loved it.

I find it very entertaining.

Yeah,

I think it's at the exact wrong size between being feature and short, and it kind of can't decide.

I think Inside Out 2 is my fifth nominee by Devolt.

That's insane.

I mean, I don't think I saw any other animated movies.

Joe, your three?

So, my three are.

Oh, I saw War of the Rohirim, but that thing is

pretty.

Oh,

I heard such bad things about it.

That is a homework-ass movie.

I was excited for the concept of it, and then I heard just the worst things.

I was just like, if you're going to make an Ash Can movie, you could still make it good.

And it's like, it's like, not.

It's very, very broad.

Do you guys know about This Christmas?

Is that what it's called?

I think it's called This Christmas.

The short?

It is a Netflix feature film

in which Brian Cox is the voice of Santa Claus.

I'm Santa.

Ho, ho, ho, fuck off.

And it's based on three different Richard Curtis short stories.

That's right.

And it that are kind of really mushed together.

Wow.

It's like trying to do animated love actually with children.

I'm going to watch that next Christmas.

But this is like one of the, I'm like, this looks like trash.

It's bad.

This is what I'm saying.

I was like digging and I was like, Garfield's from Mark Dinner.

Is there anything?

There's a reason that Flo rose to the top.

It's like, yeah, you know, there was space for a movie like that to break through because all the animated offerings were kind of whatever.

Yeah.

My three are Flo, Wallace from Grabit, Vengeance Most Foul, Justice for Feathers McGraw, McGraw, the greatest character in medic history.

And then the Wild Robot.

My thing with

Wild Robot is a manipulative movie that I was very happy to be manipulated by.

I was just like, that's a good way of putting it.

Bring it on me.

I think Memoir of a Snail is a very well-made movie that, to me, is excessively miserable in a way that I...

did not appreciate.

It definitely is, and I think it is reflective of the way you and I differently respond to miserable movies.

That makes sense.

Yeah, I called it the a little life of stop-motion animation, and I stand by that.

Yeah, I'm definitely not watching it now.

I'm to that degree, it's just like pile it on, pile another one on.

Yes, like, yeah, he has his thing that he does, and it works for me.

I could see it being cilantro for people.

You know, who's great in Transformers 1?

Brian Tyree Henry.

Brian Tyree Henry.

I had no idea Transformers 1 was good.

I totally ignored it.

I put it on the window of things I don't have to pay for.

Directed by Josh Cooley, who made the great Toy Story 4.

Okay.

Yeah, I love Toy Story 4.

It's one of those things where it starts where it's like, we're just two Transformers.

My name is like Optimus Prime,

you know, Berg.

Like, his name's a little different.

Your name is Megatron Assance or whatever, you know, right?

And we're just, we're gonna get those cogs.

I wish I had

minors.

Right.

Yeah, we'll never do anything.

By the end of it, you're crazy.

By the end of it, you're like, I can't believe Megatron would do that.

I'm going to check it out.

There is truly

there is that moment where you're like, I am angry this movie has like

childhood friends optimist prime and megatron It's a it's an origin story for them although I think transformers lore is so like deep that it's kind of like a reboot of the lore

transformers law is transformer's lore is so deep is a sentence that is both incredibly true and sounds insane and just be clear I don't like fuck with Transformers lore at all I don't know what I love to throw out random transformer names that I think are funny but I can't track any of this shit I think the whole thing with transformers stuff is just like no one was really minding the shop, right?

So like someone else would come along and be like, I'm going to do this.

And everyone would be like, that's fine.

We don't care.

But overwrite whatever has been written.

I like everything this movie is doing.

It also looks good.

It does.

Anyway, here were my five nominees for voiceover performance.

Oh, yeah.

Go ahead.

Jackie Weaver, Memoir of a Snap.

I give you that.

Which is my winner.

She's 100%.

She's fucking believable.

She's great.

Maybe the most emotionally affected I was by any performance this year, possibly.

Maya Hawk Inside Out 2.

Compelled to make her my winner.

I think she's the only reason that movie even partially works.

I think her character, though, is a huge problem, but her performance is quite good.

She paralyzes the kid with anxiety.

She can't play hockey.

Papers over the fact that the script was not figured out.

Right.

I think she plays incredibly well.

I'm going to give it after, you know, I so rudely snubbed him for best actor

when you guys gave him the flowers years ago.

And I think this is the time to properly give him a sort of career achievement.

Oh, boy.

A return of the king style nomination for best voiceover performance, I'm nominating Tom Hardy as Venom in Venom, the Last Dance.

That movie

is kind of garbage.

Yeah.

But like anytime he's talking, I was like, right, this is the whole thing.

Just do this.

It is.

Lapita Niango for the Wild Robots.

Yeah, really great.

She's fantastic.

I was very compelled to also put Pedro Pascal in there, who I think is incredible in Wild Rob.

Could not place him.

Which one is he?

He's the Fox.

Oh, yeah.

I don't sound like him.

It's transforming.

And that's really good and really funny.

But it felt a little slow to do double nomination.

So I, in my fifth slot, put in Robbie Williams as the narrator.

Yeah, Robbie Williams deserves it.

Is that how he's credited the narrator?

Well, so because he's the monkey, isn't it?

The singing is his old recordings.

Right.

The character of Robbie Williams is voiced by the actor who did the movie.

Jamo Frey, I believe.

Oh, that I did not know.

No, the Jamo Frey is the cinematographer of Nickel Boys, whom I think.

His name is Jono.

That's why I'm confused.

Wilson?

I'm looking up.

Yeah.

It's Jono Summer.

Jono Davis.

Davies.

But Robbie Williams is specifically just doing the narration, which I thought was excellent.

And we'll talk about that later.

Robbie Williams is so overflowing with charisma.

Like, he's so good at getting you through that movie.

Like, if you're like, what is going on?

Anyone complaining about I don't know who this guy is?

I'm like, his narration alone is explaining to you through the energy why he became so.

Robbie Williams was not as famous in America as he was in Britain.

That does not mean that he was not famous in America.

He absolutely was.

Yeah, but I feel like he was more famous.

He was famous enough to like remember who he was.

But famous for sort of not happening.

A lot of people at Tiff were texting me like, can you explain who Robbie Williams is to me?

Including, I believe, Joe Reed.

Me and Katie, but we were not asking, we were asking, explain the Robbie Williams extent of the Robbie Williams phenomenon.

This is so crazy, right?

That this guy is so big in England, so big in Europe.

He comes to America and no one gives a shit about him, right?

And this movie's based on a true story, and people were like, shrug, I don't care.

I don't know who he is.

And I'm like, this is incredible that this really happened, that there was a random monkey born who could sing and dance

and became a pop star and a sex idol.

You'd think more people would have remembered that.

That's a fascinating story.

But Britain's always got shit going.

It's like, what's up with them?

Ah, they all like a monkey.

I was like, yeah, it sounds like something they do.

Sounds like right.

I've been sitting on that bit for two months.

Great bit.

I'll nominate.

I like all your John Hamm is great in Transformers 1 as the villain.

Oh, Ryan Pax?

Sensional Prime, of course.

Orion Pax, I think, is Optimus's name before he moved.

That's correct.

And of course, Brian T.

Ire Henry is D16.

He's not called Megatronicus or whatever I said before.

I would also say if we're doing narrators, Isabella Rossolini and Problemista is an incredible

incredible narrator.

Almost just a layup for Julio to use hers and

so perfect.

Again, casting is often.

And the last I just love Paul Walter Hauser in Inside Out 2.

He was great.

Who was he in Inside Out 2?

He's an embarrassment.

He doesn't really.

Can I do my impression?

Did the Blankies pick anything there?

They...

I don't think so.

You fucked up, Blankies.

I don't see it here.

Okay, so.

Can I just, while I was on the subject, give out Best CGI Monkey in a movie to Better Man?

Great.

Sure.

Do you have a win?

First of competition.

No.

Oh, yeah.

Who's the one?

King of the Plan of the Apes.

I was going to say Wicked.

The VFX Oscar category could have been five monkey movies.

It could have been five monkey movies.

And it was.

declared or two monkey needed a couple more go-rounds.

Can't either

have two different monkey entities, one real and then a bunch of them CGI.

Well, let's move on to, well, before we get on to the big performers, do we want to do like music or cinematography or ensemble or anything like that?

I did write down cinematography nominees because I always feel like I'm caught shorthanded with that.

They seem to be pretty obvious ones.

I have Nickel Boys, I have Brutalist, I have Challengers, which is actually really tremendous tennis match photography that culminates in a moment that just could never actually happen that i find like incredible for the movie but the thing where they're volleying back and forth like like a foot apart of each other i'm like that's good that it's not possible that doesn't happen but it's fine

they want to do because they make you fall for it yeah dune part two and then um my one stop to the uh Oscars, Maria is not a good movie, but Maria's cinematography.

Ed Lachman

is incredible.

Yeah, I would put TV Glow in there, but I think that's an excellent five, Joe.

I got Nickel Boys, Dune, Part 2, Trapped, Brutalist, Janet Planet.

But Trap, of course, is shot by the guy who shot Challengers in one of the most versatile, like, decent performances of the year.

Incredible.

Do you guys have music pics?

Oh, the blanky cinematography picks were not

too very dark.

Nickel boys, dropping down,

Challengers, and Dune Part 2 anamorphic.

No, Hundreds of Beavers,

I put music because that's a movie that really has to be carried by its music.

Can I say a thing that might turn you on to Hundreds of Beavers, David?

It uses 8-bit video game language in a way I think is really smart.

Sounds cool.

I'll see you.

It's like we are conditioned as a generation to understand things visually minus dialogue from video games in a way where that's a cleaner kind of jump to aid silent comedy.

You got any score?

Or is there other score picks though?

Challengers.

Challenger's Brutalist, I think.

I think Wild Robot's a really good score.

The Furiosa score is once again fantastic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I also had, I like the I Saw the TV Glow score a lot by Alex G.

I love that as well.

I like the Nosferatu score okay.

Yeah, I don't know.

This is a really, really bad year for original score or song at the movies, at the Oscars, but it could have been quite easily better if they just like Last Showgirl is not a movie that I liked, but I liked that Miley song in it quite a bit.

There's a song in Wild Robot that they could have nominated, and it could, it could have been like, you know, an okay year for original song.

And so they opted for like a really bad year.

Yeah, they're starting to make the argument themselves for taking that category out behind them.

And they had rehabbed it for a little while there.

They had gotten it back to like

they'll never kill it because there'll always be a year where like Taylor Swift wins.

They're like, we can't get rid of this.

And then there's like two bad years again.

Last year where they're like, we can have Billie Eilish and a whole big, another Barbie number on top of it.

Can we say it?

Does it feel like Diane Warren might win this year?

That's crazy.

I feel like

it's Amelia Perez, isn't it?

For which fucking song?

I don't fucking know.

I don't remember the names of those songs.

These are bad and two of them are nominated and no one can tell the difference.

It does feel, so if you look at the FYC stuff that Amelia Perez has been sending out, El Mall, which is the Zoe Seldania number.

That's the number at the like fundraiser dinner?

Yes, where she's in the red and she's doing the yes.

Where she's like, fuck you.

I mean, that song sucks.

She just dances well.

She performs it very well, but that's the one they're going with.

I mean, you gotta win if I'm not.

My mind also feeling like watching this movie less than 24 hours ago.

I was like, all these songs are 55 seconds long.

And they do feel short.

And

they don't linger.

Which is part of it's like embarrassed at being a musical where it's like, don't worry, we'll get this over real quick.

Yeah.

I also threw down some needle drops.

The tattoo needle drop in Honora is one of my favorite things.

That's

the movie that used this year.

Baby Girl also has several incredible needle drops.

I just think Diane Warren seems to be campaigning harder than usual this year and is campaigning with a very smart strategy of, come on, guys.

Right.

And that's sort of like.

But like, is her song this year remotely good?

Isn't it for the Tyler Perry movie?

Is it for the Tyler Perry movie?

That's awful.

Yeah, it sounds fine.

Whatever.

It doesn't matter.

There's no stronger nominee.

No, I understand.

Even if you like Amelia Prime Minister.

I understand the argument.

Yeah.

But Joey sent me a link from like a clip from the six triple eight.

And it really, like, his movie's really

crazy.

Because now he attracts this like top shelf talent.

I guess, because he has a budget and he's like.

It's also weird that it's like he used to make three movies a year.

Right.

Right.

And they were made at the level, like the correct level.

You know what I mean?

Like his style.

But now he makes like one movie every three years and it's worse.

They're bad because like he's trying to make an Oscar movie.

But also, he's what, single-handedly, quote-unquote, writing and directing every episode of television himself for like 20 series.

Yeah.

I'm sure they're so good.

I'm sure they're so good.

I love his annual pile of scripts post.

I don't even know what that is, but every year he's like, here's everything I wrote this year.

And it's a pile of like 40 different episodic scripts.

And then a bunch of guys in the comments are like, hey, thanks for not crediting me for hiring like scab writers and not letting them into the fucking union and not giving us credit.

how dare you should we do best actor or best actress tyler ferry's never done anything wrong i'm sure uh let's do best

actor first

best actor

best actor first so best actor

uh for 2024.

uh your winner last year griffin in actress

was lorel calami in full-time what What a good pick.

Good movie.

I picked Lily Gladstone and Killers of the Flower Moon.

The Oscars did too, I'm pretty sure.

I won't check my notes.

And you picked Margot in Barbie.

Do you remember that?

I do.

I was mad that she didn't get nominated.

I thought Margot was great in Barbie.

She was not nominated.

You and Hillary were fighting that fight together.

Me and Hillary always, like arm in arm.

Yeah.

But this year,

I can go first.

I've been making Griffin go first.

Poor Griffin.

Justice Smith and I saw the TV glow.

Josh Hartnett in Trap.

Aaron Pierre in Ripple Ridge.

Nicholas Holton Juror, number two.

And Sebastian Stan a Different Man.

Which rhymes when you think of it.

Yes.

In fact, it does.

My three are

three of my five.

Yeah, just do five.

Add two.

No, I'll do five.

Mike Feist in Challenger.

Wow.

Killian Murphy in Small Things Like These.

Josh O'Connor in Challengers.

Wow.

Justice Smith in I Saw the TV Glow.

And Sebastian Stan in a Different Man.

Okay, I'm going to do this because you nominated Josh, right?

I nominated Josh Hartnett, yes.

And you nominated Josh O'Connor.

He's the best.

So then I'm going to drop Josh Hartnett because at least someone else called him out.

My nominees are Josh O'Connor and Challengers, Glenn Powell and Hitman, Sebastian Stannon and Different Man.

What is this?

A crush list?

Justice Smith and I saw the TV glow.

Duty Brigade?

Wait till you get to my best actress picks.

Oh boy.

Justice Smith and I saw the TV glow and Coleman Domingo and Sing Sing.

Coleman Domingo a very close sixth thun.

Very good performers.

Yeah.

Because you guys didn't nominate Glenn, right?

I didn't.

Although I'm going,

I love you.

So I put him in there so someone called him out and I didn't put him in the screenplay.

I love him.

That was my sixth pick for screenplay.

I saw that movie at a WGA screening where I was in plus one, where the QA afterwards was with screenwriter Glenn Powell, and it was moderated by our friend Esther Zuckerman.

Glenn Powell walked out looking like $8 trillion.

He can do that.

I was like, the movies are alive and well.

And then proceeded to talk so fucking intelligently about story in a way that wasn't like save the cat bullshit in a way that was like interesting and challenging.

Where I was like, oh, this was probably largely a link later script.

That's right where Powell's like jumped onto hanging out.

And it made it so clear it was the other way around where he was like, Rick, can you help me hear the link later?

And everything I like about that movie came from him on the screenplay level, which is why, of course, I'm nominating him in best actor.

It's undeniable movie star performance.

Yes.

But also at one point in this QA, he went

to Esther.

He reached out.

I think he might have touched her hand and said, sorry, I cut you off.

What were you saying?

And Esther went,

and look, Esther is a pro at this stuff.

Yes.

She is unflappable.

I watched her melt and I walked out and I was like, buy all the stock you can.

This guy is running.

He's going to be the president of fucking Hollywood.

I'm all in.

Hitman is just a fucking show reel for him in so many ways, but God is compelling on that front.

Another movie that Netflix put on Netflix, and then a bunch of people watched it on streaming and were like, I don't get it.

And I'm like, see it in a fucking theater then.

I saw it once in theaters, and it certainly plays like Gangbuster.

Yeah, I saw it both times in theaters, but the first time was a TIFF where no one knew it was going to happen.

Played like a whiteboard.

And it really did.

Like the scene, the, you know, the iPhone notes scene really played like to screams and yells.

So wait,

all three of us nominated Stan and Smith.

We love the guys.

Yes.

And then you didn't nominate either of the Challengers boys.

Yeah, but I like them both.

I've been a Justice Smith fan for like a long time ago.

I always tell the story he was in.

HBO used to do this series of little short documentaries on Young Arts, which does a mentorship thing where they put five, like select five people.

Is he in it?

He's in two separate ones.

He's in the one with Anna Devere Smith, where she has them.

interview each other, also play each other in the like Anna Devere Smith, you know, one woman show style.

He's incredible in that.

He's also in the Alan Alda one.

So I've like had my eye on him since that, since he was just

his best performance.

He's so fucking good and versatile and like

just has to do, has to tackle so many different, really specific emotional states.

It's also, it is like a performance that is painful to watch.

And it is in a way where when it starts, I was like, is it just going to be hard to make it through this movie with this character?

I also think he's like, he's so constrained and tight-knit and is playing it sort of like so small and pulled back that you're like, is he doing something accurately that will actually be to the fault of the movie in like pulling back too much?

And he just like makes it fucking work.

Well, he does the thing that the movie does really well, which is like through specificity, it gets at something that is universal.

Let's talk about Sebastian Stan.

This fucking guy

talking about people

mayors of Hollywood, right?

Some people.

Sebastian Stan, you guys may or may not know, plays Bucky, aka the Winter Soldier in the Marvel films, right?

Now, he's in The Martian, he's in Ricky and the Flash, he's in Itanya, he's in movies where people have said to me, like, well, I liked him in that one.

And I've always kind of been like, not me, bonky.

Has been my thing.

Never disliked him, but was just sort of like, he doesn't

really pop.

Yes.

Like, and then there's other stuff I'm looking at here.

Like, he's in Destroyer, the Karen Kasama movie.

I saw that movie.

Yeah.

I did not remember he's in it.

Oh, he's good in that.

Yeah.

I don't, I believe you.

Now.

I am one one of those people who you've been bonking away from

USA original series Political Animals

The NBC I know you were in that one but the NBC series Kings King two separate shows where he plays the gay scions of political dynasties Kings was one of those right kings was a show where everyone seemed high on goofballs and you were kind of like I can't believe this exists and then it got canceled and you were like of course it did

of course it did yeah bye-bye this guy's been around for like 20 years right because he was in gossip girl

And Black Swan, he, of course, originally tested for Captain America and was one of the finalists.

And then they found out he was not USA-born.

Right.

He's Romanian.

And so they were like, we'll give you Bucky as a consolation prize.

Right.

My big takeaway from this year, besides just him like totally coming into his own, proving himself, two movies that clearly got financed like on him.

right like off his attachment you can get a little budget because you have sebastian stan totally those are not big budget movies now i'm suddenly like all in on him as a guy.

Anything he wants to attach himself to, I think, is interesting.

These are both like bizarre thunderbolts, baby.

Challenging movies.

Well, look, honestly, like, I'm like, not immediately excited, but I'm like, if he's in it, I'm suddenly more.

I have heard from, and I don't even know if this is from Reputable Reverse, but like, I have heard that it's like the best of this next crop, which is like, you know, that sounds incredible.

So it's a three out of 10.

It's such fake praise.

But like,

I laser targeted David with that.

Jesus Christ.

Have you seen, you still have not done a 4DX?

I had bought tickets to enter the Brave New World this time.

His scene in that film is...

Oh, he's in it?

He shows up for one scene.

Okay.

And as people have pointed out online, but it's still insane.

Bucky is apparently running for Congress.

Bucky, who I believe canonically assassinated JFK

is running for Congress.

Also, like assassinated Tetrala's dad, right?

He assassinated howard stark like it's like you couldn't be a famous dad in these movies without bucky blowing your damn skull open here's what i want to say about this he's like i want to represent the good people of michigan or whatever the he's doing here's what i want to say about stan he is his one scene in brave new world you're like god damn like this is more interesting than anything else i'm watching figured it out i think he's figured out himself as a performer he's figured out the kind of material he can get excited about uh he brilliantly navigated this awards season yes where it felt like he was going to get double snubbed.

He did some of the savviest campaigning.

He fucking gave his deserved Golden Globe speech for a different man as if he'd won for The Apprentice.

Right.

Knowing, I think that, like, well, that's my Oscar play.

So I really should shout it out too, right?

You know, but my big line on him is he's arguably number 16 on the list of Marvel actors relative to the juice they carry, right?

Like he's like the 16th most important Marvel character at best.

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, certainly not top 10.

Yeah.

If everyone fucking above him was using their juice the way he is right now, we'd live in a much better fucking era for movies.

He's good in those Marvel movies.

Sure.

He's always good in that.

But I'm also like, Chris Evans, not to concentrate that.

He's finally this year, like doing the fucking Cohen Trisha Cook movie and the Celine Song movie.

And I'm like, this is what I'm talking about.

Can all you guys fucking do this, please?

Also, Spatial Stan revealing that he's been attached this whole fucking time to the Elaine May Dakota Johnson movie that kept

insurance.

Yeah, the Elaine Maya.

Just because Elaine May is 4,000 years old and is never seen in public.

It's weird.

I hear she mostly eats powder.

Wait, can I?

I'm not joking.

I've heard that.

That she eats bags full of powder and is like, I'm going to lip snap.

Powder.

It's funny.

It's a good bit.

Guess what color the powder is?

I don't know.

Not normal ones.

That's what I thought.

This ain't your normal colored powders.

Sebastian's hand, very good and a different man.

Yeah, Hartnett's my winner.

Hartnett's very good.

Hartnett was on the long list.

I want to sort of make my justification for challengers.

No, I don't think any justification is required.

They're obviously the leads.

They're obviously the leads.

I also, though, like, Josh O'Connor fucking rules in that.

This guy's on fire.

So I don't watch The Crown.

No, I didn't.

I stopped watching The Crown before he showed up.

I find in the crown, he's good.

Luxner is embarrassingly one of my biggest blonde pops.

Oh, he's so like that.

He's quite there was one other thing he was in that I didn't see.

So I've just seen still pictures of this guy, and everyone's telling me he's like a heartthrob and that he's got a lot of stuff.

Oh, that's interesting.

You're going in like really dry on this.

He's goofy as hell.

How am I going to be able to do that?

You know, who goes in really dry?

It's Josh O'Connor in God's Own Country.

That is true.

Right, that's the other one I hadn't seen.

Yeah.

So, like, I was just like, I don't know if I'm buying this Josh O'Connor thing.

He walks in two seconds.

I'm like, this guy's a fucking movie star.

This guy rules.

This is Challengers.

Is a movie that Emma?

Did you ever see Emma?

No.

Oh, yeah.

I've missed like all of his shit.

He and Callum Turner are both in Emma.

And for most of that movie, I kept being like, which one is this guy again?

Which is no slight against either one of them because I actually think they're both really good in that.

Challengers is a movie that gets types of tennis players.

And I think they get the tennis dirtbag and the tennis

sort of professional really well.

I think Feist has been undervalued in this movie because everybody's like, Patrick Zweig, fucks.

His job is to be the unshowy one.

His job is to be a little fucking good at that.

And I also yeoman's work.

And I'm kind of also the person who's like Justice for R.

Donaldson because he put in the work and he's the best tennis player in the world.

And like, he won all those grand slams and he deserves it.

So, um, no, I love him.

And I've loved him in Westside Story.

I loved him on stage in Evan Hansen.

He plays a great little journalist boy in bike riders.

I'm all in on five.

He's got a good stench.

Did you run through all your nominees?

Killian Murphy, small things like these, which

I was going to say.

I'm sort of

carrying the banner alone, but like that is one of those movies where I watched it and I'm like, this dude just won an Oscar and I just now saw his best performance, The Year Sister.

Not no slight at all against his Oppenheimer performance, but he's in a very different type of movie.

Very like, it's this is about

he's he's lives next door to one of the Magdalene laundries and sort of um, uh, takes in this girl who runs away.

And he has to make this moral decision of like, am I going to allow this thing to go on by just sort of looking the other way?

Or am I going to like, you know,

stuff good.

Yeah.

And Emily Watson plays like the terrifying nun who runs the

you're currently doing a better job advertising this movie than anyone

you're making both of us get activated.

Yeah, like check this movie out.

It's Rad and he's awesome in it.

So it was a Lionscape film.

I'm sorry, Blaker Blaker Street.

I didn't mean to follow you there.

It just kind of felt like a Blakeer Street.

Yeah, it's got huge Blaker Street in it.

BSE.

Oh, boy.

Okay, so you finished your five, David?

I just want to, I mean, Aaron Pierre started making stuff in Rebel Ridge.

Nicholas Holt had an amazing year, but I do think, like, I'm always really great Clint performances given how, like, as you said, with Zoe Deutsch, like, how little they're probably being told.

Cared for.

Like, we agree on Holt being amazing in that movie, right?

Yeah, I also think look i think that is his first successful leading man performance i think there has always been a divide between when the thing is put on his shoulders and he's sort of being positioned as like conventional matinee idol i think he tends to go a little blank and he's always good playing weasel what are you thinking of in in that though

and slayer i don't find him very compelling in the x-men movies yeah no i think yeah i like him in warm bodies which is

i'm like renfield and warm bodies are getting closer to how to make him work as a leading man which is like he needs to be a likable weasel, but he's best as weasels and cucks.

That is what he is great at.

Sorry, Nick, it's true.

This year was like king cock shit for him, getting cucked by the law, getting cucked by Nosferatu, and getting, of course, cucked by his cat Garfield, lest we forget that Nicholas Holt is the voice of John Arbuckle.

The weirdest shit.

Wait, when you say cucked by the law, do you mean in juror number two by the legal system?

Do you mean by Jude Law in the order?

That as well.

well good in the order great call

um yeah here's my impression of nicholas holt and the garfield movie garfield what are you doing sounds good why did what why is nicholas holt because illumination is addicted to casting british people as like american icons for some reason it's so

bizarre um who else do you want to shout out graffiti poo uh i feel like you guys covered all my nominees my winner is coleman domingo i caught up with sing sing very late it was another movie that I was sort of cynically like, yeah, I'm sure it's good.

And then I saw it and it is just like

it avoids.

It's the best version of that kind of a movie.

It avoids all clichés.

It is just like elegantly, intelligently made and told.

And in a way, I was like, I love Coleman Domingo.

He's a guy that I've like long been like, is this guy quietly the best actor alive?

I'm glad he got this nomination after getting the nomination he got last year for Rustin.

I couldn't feel good about that one, Pierre.

I feel the same way.

And I feel great about that.

I feel great about him being a two-time nominee.

He's like, he's in the firmament.

It's not a fluke.

Absolutely.

But I also think this is like a deceptively difficult role to be the one actor mostly working against these real guys playing themselves.

and to like not stand out in either direction.

His character stands out, but in a way that I think benefits the movie, where he's really elegant, this guy.

Like

you see where he frays at the edges as as the movie goes along, but he's a, he's a really elegant kind of character, calling him beloved.

Like he's, he's

properly,

he is quietly kind of this elitist who's like, I'm not like these other guys.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Like he, he is propping himself up in his own mind as part of the program.

I don't belong here.

I'm not like them.

Look at my empathy in connecting to them.

But he thinks he's more like the Paul Racy character who is also incredibly good in this.

And then, yes, to watch his like unwinding in the final 30 minutes of the movie, no spoilers, and it goes through multiple arcs, but like this guy finally gets pushed to a breaking point and emotionally kind of like unravels and is he's he's just phenomenal.

He's one of my favorite actors and I think this is the best work I've ever seen him do.

Yeah.

Very good actor.

There's a moment I almost just spoiled that I just was devastated by his silent reaction shot to.

It is in his parole meeting.

I think you guys can probably guess which line I'm talking about.

And they ask him a question and his face and response to it, I literally gasped.

He's incredible.

David, your winner?

Josh Hartnett, baby.

High wire acts.

Oh, I love him so much in that movie.

I do want to shout out.

Nobody mentioned it.

You said your winner was.

Oh, my winner is Justice Smith.

That's another great book.

Great performance.

I love it.

We're spreading the wealth.

Good work here.

I almost nominated Megaro for September 5 because I really, really, I'm just a Megaro.

Still haven't seen it.

I saw someone on the Reddit say recently that they genuinely thought it was me until the end credits.

Or like September 6th out of 10.

You know, that's, I, David,

he over the story from behind.

Shattered the backboard.

I just thought that movie was okay.

And then have either of you seen Woman of the Hour, Diana Kendrick?

I have not.

Was busy that day.

I was busy that day and the subsequent.

No, I understand the reticence to it.

It's so much better better than you think it's going to be.

And the guy who plays the killer in that movie, Daniel Savato, is terrified.

He's like having like D'Onofrio.

I'm very pro Zavato.

Yeah.

He was in the rowboat with me in the

chiller original

beneath.

We were fighting that killer puppet fish.

But he's also in station 11.

He's the

following.

He grows up to be the cult leader in station 11.

Yeah, we're watching station 11.

He's really good.

Apparently, he's an excellent actor.

Yeah, I like him a lot.

Let's see what else he's doing.

He's in He's

in Ladybird, apparently.

The chiller original.

Oh, yeah.

He's the guy who's Jonah Ruiz.

He's the band that

I think he's kind of the off-lead in the Pope's Exorcist.

Okay.

Which I saw.

He breaks an ore in half and tries to craft the fish.

Watch Woman of the Hour if you haven't.

I'm going to convince these guys.

We'll fuck it up.

Sassy little nobody.

Sassy little nobody.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Back to the blankies after these messages.

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It's the Blankies.

Best Actress.

Best actress.

My best actor winner last year was Jason Schwartzman in Asteroid Shitty.

Jesus.

Shocked by Dick Poop, I guess.

R-A-P.

We can still make it.

I'm sorry.

Come on.

Schwartzmann had another great year.

Between the Temples, great.

I really enjoyed his crazy work in queer.

I'm going to put a pin in that because I have a bespoke notice for him.

What was another?

I feel like he had another thing this year that.

Well, Megalopolis.

Hey, man, he was there.

He was there.

Along with everyone else.

He did the pre-recorded audit.

He did the look that someone stands up to do.

Yep.

My nominees for best actress.

Oh, can I just call out two

best actor also rans very quickly?

Ethan Harisi and Nickel Boys.

Yeah.

I mean, those guys are both amazing.

And it's, you know, a little tough because by the nature of the performance, he's not on screen that much, which is maybe the only reason I cut him.

But I think he is so fucking impactful, especially when we wait so long to see his face.

And the moments he has has to like sell you on the idea of the ripple effects of this guy's presence over decades, not to spoil anything in the film.

Kind of knocked me away.

Isaac Yang and D D, a movie I liked quite a bit.

And I was like, oh, this is like a good got a teenager and gave him a natural, awkward performance.

And then I dug in, this guy's a fucking chameleon.

i keep forgetting this is the same kid but he's good in everything

he's in wallpecker's clifford the big red dog he is in uh good boys where he plays the cool kid yes yes uh jacob trombla's good boys yeah correct he was uh the best voice in raya and the last dragon

He's just like a really, really good at young actor who I'm very excited by every time he shows up.

Apparently he was in the Santa Clauses.

Yeah, I haven't seen it.

Okay.

Wouldn't know.

My nominees for Best Actress.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste for Hard Truths.

Mikey Madison for Anora.

Julianne Nicholson for Janet Planet.

Ilinka Manalake.

I have no idea if I pronounced her name right, for Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.

And I got to give it to her.

Naomi Scott for Smile 2.

Oh, my God.

I almost did Naomi Scott.

Wonderful performance.

Great nominee.

Haven't it.

Wonderful performance.

She will never be.

Smile 2 is

such a jump up from smile.

It's amazing.

Yeah, I mean, for me, it was a jump up from like a two and a half to a three, but I thought she was really good.

I could not believe how there are sequences in that movie.

There's a lot of like, there's some real good fucking sequences.

There's a lot, though, of where she thinks, she's like, why are you smiling at me, weird?

And then everyone's like, what are you talking about?

And then they do that 18 more flesh.

And then every time she had me on the hook.

One of my main complaints about the first smile was that there wasn't enough smiling.

Like there weren't enough moments of like

smile factor.

Like there's a lot of fucking smiles.

Yeah,

yeah uh best actress true all right i have marianne jean-baptiste in hard truths i have demi moore in the substance i have hunter schaefer in cuckoo i have june squibb in thelma and i have fernanda tores in i'm still here i'm still here

and little loopy i will admit that like cuckoo just missed me entirely i did not care for i just like did not get it i like hunter schaefer a lot i think hunter schaefer i like hunter schaefer better than i like the movie but i like the movie pretty well i liked um i liked Hunter Schaefer in that movie.

I also thought the movie looked good.

I just thought it was stupid.

It is stupid.

I hate to say this.

No, it is.

Again, though, a movie with like two or three really, really rad sequences, one of which is unfortunately given away in the trailer.

But I think just like she does not only the final girl thing, but also has like really amazing sister energy.

Can I give out an award on behalf of Ben or maybe it's in tribute to Ben?

I'm sure Ben will have his own awards.

Can I give Dan Stevens the DAF performance, the DFA award, the dangass freak award for performances most

like directly targeting Ben Hosley's family?

Dan Stevens is a German, you know, fully German, like, well, whatever the fuck he is in Cougars.

Collected awards

as like a Godzilla dentist.

A monster then Godzilla X-Cong.

And then an Abigail, a sleaze bag.

And like, hey, I'm from the Bronx.

What's the matter with you?

He's got sunbasties on his side.

Dan Stevens and Melissa Brera carry that movie on their shoulders.

That is not a movie I liked, but I

also think

Catherine Newton, I think, is really good.

I think everyone's good in it.

Yeah, everyone's good.

I just am frustrated by that movie.

Ben, am I correct in thinking you saw zero of those three movies?

Correct.

Those are three performances of Dan Stevens yelling and waving his arms and going, Ben, pay attention.

I'm your favorite actor.

Well, you know what?

He's on my radar, so I'll have to check out his movie.

All three of those movies don't work for me, but what he's doing in them, you'd be into.

It's just like, if you saw that guy in Downton Abbey, you know, 15 years ago, going like, oh, well, I sure hope that I get to be part of Downton Abbey.

And I was like, yeah, this guy plays like a Bronx cop who fights Dracula's daughter.

This is why.

The same year that he pulls Kong's tooth.

And he's also

a guest was a very important and impactful movie.

That movie is set the template.

And I will say this with respect: pornography.

my best actress nominees yes and i'm wiping my glasses here because for this lineup i could mistake it for tuesday night at the olive garden oh oh oh if you catch my dream pasta dinners galore best actress zendaya and challengers sir sharonin and the outrun daisy ridley and sometimes i think about dying i'm front loading the three pasta dinners but here are two more pasta dinners coming June Squibb and Thelma, Marion Jean-Baptiste and Hard Truths.

My winner is Marianne Jean-Baptiste for Hard Truths.

Oh, I mean, yeah.

We're unified in that.

That felt like immortal luck for all three of us.

Yeah.

That's the performance of the year.

It is.

Yes.

The most egregious snob.

It was a performance that was so much the best performance of the year that it almost got nominated in a way that, like, well, of course, nobody's going to nominate it.

Like, she's so, like, she's so

she's pushing you away so hard.

It's flooring.

And it's like, of course,

people are voting for awards.

I'm not going to do this, but like, they almost did.

It came pretty close.

I feel like, yeah, yes.

And with that thing getting like a very limited, very late release from a smaller distributor, it was fighting a lot of uphill battles.

Uh, and I thought the work was so undeniable that it was going to punch through.

Um, but yeah, it's, I mean, it's incredible shit.

Uh, it is, it's the most incredible screen performance of the year.

I'm really, I probably should have nominated it Zendaya, but

I gotta give it to Naomi Scott.

I put her in there, yeah, yeah.

Um, no, I saw that.

The TV Globe.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Your actor winner, by the way, was Killian Murphy, and yours was Koji Yakshuko.

Yakusho.

Yakusho for Perfect Day.

Who was yours?

Jason Schwarzman, baby.

Yeah.

It is.

It did not get a very wide release.

I feel like a lot of people didn't get the opportunity to see it with a crowd.

It was kind of fascinating to watch how much of that movie successfully plays as a comedy where you like watch it and you're like, where is this going?

At first, you're like, am I really going to spend the whole movie with this woman acting like this the whole time?

Isn't this going to get exhausting?

The biggest out loud laugh reaction I've heard, I heard in a movie this year was the what's a baby need pockets for.

The middle chunk of that movie, it's like everything she's saying is like fucking Bernie Mac Def Jam, like just like three-point shots, right?

And then it makes it all the more astonishing when the bottom can totally fall out in the last act and like really make you kind of like interrogate this person how she ended up like this.

And I think it's really smart about like the answers it provides and the clues it gives and the things it leaves unexplained.

And yeah.

I mean the way that, you know, the way Lee works, the creative process of it is, you know, the actors are very have big stakes in the story being told.

But it's a performance that shouldn't work.

Sure.

You're like, it should be repetitive.

It should be

kind of crazy that you're right.

Like you're never like, I fucking get it.

I get it.

She's mentally ill and really, really difficult to be around.

Yeah.

It is a performance that should make the audience act the way David acts when episodes have hit three hours where he's yelling like, Basta, enough.

Basta.

Yeah.

David, just check the clock.

Mikey, oh, I love to check the clock.

We're doing good.

I gave Mikey the nod.

Obviously, she's the breakout star of the year and she's got Oscar Noms and she won a BAFTA.

She was on my show.

Yeah.

It's funny that that's the one.

The BAFTAs were like, oh, we don't care for a nora much, except for you, Mikey.

You were making a prediction right before Air.

Do you want to say it here or do you want to save it for

a episode?

Yeah.

No, I'll make it here.

Well, this awards season has been so goofy.

So insane.

So with the obviously bottom falling out of Amelia Perez.

Unsurprisingly goofy given that there never was the movie.

So it is a movie where it's buzz just ping pongs.

Can I say one thing about the Amelia Perez bottoming out?

Yeah.

This same kind of thing.

Do you think it has to do with those tweets that laden sent?

Not as extreme.

But this is the exact same point that Green Book was at in the arc before it then won Best Picture.

But nothing like that happened.

Nick Valalanga had the fucking tweet where he said, I saw Muslims cheering at the moment.

I'm aware of the crap purchase.

I agree.

I said, not the same.

That's

posted.

It was one of those things where, like, is there something she didn't post about?

No, everything.

I said, not the same scale, but I went back and read some of the articles post the Valalanga tweet and people being like, I guess that's it.

Greenbook's done.

No.

And people forget that also, Mahershala Ali, who later went on to win Best Supporting actor, at one point issued a press release basically apologizing for being in the movie.

Zoe Saldania didn't do that, but she also has been like very skillful about like distancing herself.

Here's the thing about Green Book.

Emilia Perez does not Green Book times 10.

There was also

a weirdly like 2024 election-esque like thing with Green Book where people were like, I'm going to silently push back against

stop telling me I can't enjoy that.

That's exactly that was, and I don't think you're getting that with Emily.

Emilia Perez has always had a more polarized fan base or whatever.

Like, there's some people who just love it.

I just refuse to believe it's 100% dead.

Oh, I think it's dead.

It's the way you feel about John Wick,

where you're like, they're going to bring him back to life.

I'd love to see that body cut into pieces and spread around the earth before I'm like, he's dead.

They had him, what, sit on some stairs?

I'm like, he's alive.

I don't care.

Fade to white.

Yeah, exactly.

But so the state of the race currently is Honora wins PGA and DGA, and everybody's like, done.

And the critics' choice.

And And the critics' choice.

Well, nothing can be more important than the critics' choice.

But it was somewhat surprising because it was similarly kind of like it didn't win anything else.

And that's what I mean.

It didn't win best pictures.

Kyle Buchanan tweeted, or whatever,

blue skied,

is Anora ever going to win anything at one of these televised awards minutes before it won Best Picture?

And I literally like, Kyle, you turned around this entire Oscar season.

Done in the middle.

With that three pictures, it felt weird.

And I went on Katie's podcast and was like, it's too good a movie to win best pictures.

It's just not going to happen.

early.

Right.

Yeah, exactly.

It was kind of the first one, right?

And so that hurt it.

It's like weird that it's winning zero precursors and then suddenly it starts winning everything.

And it's only got a handful of nominations.

So my thing that I want to get on.

But it got more than I thought it might.

Like it got that Borisana.

It did get that Boris.

Say your thing on mic because then I'm going to put out the counter and I think this is an interesting thing to pin at this moment in time.

I'm saying there is a non-zero chance and like I'm putting it out there that I think it is possible that Enora does a grand hotel of winning best picture and nothing else.

I last night was like, that idea hit me.

And I was like, I could see that happening.

I could see Corbett getting director.

I could see Demi getting actress.

I could see anything else getting editing.

I think editing is totally up for grabbing.

Yeah.

And I could see Real Pain getting screenplay.

Yes.

Me too.

Yes.

Well, Real Pain got the BAFTA

screenplay.

Yeah, I think it is.

I don't think it's the most likely scenario, but I think it is.

No, it could happen.

It may be that.

What's interesting is Fantasy on a recent big picture called out that

Sean Baker stands to be the single person to win the most Oscars in one night for one movie.

Sure, right.

He could win four.

Picture director

screenplay and editing.

Yes.

Coron had this chance.

You know, it's happened like a couple times.

It's when you edit your own movie.

You know, Cameron won three Oscars for Titanic.

He didn't win screenplay, obviously.

Right.

And like the only sort of asterisks, Disney won four in one night for different films.

He doesn't count.

Yeah.

And Bong, there's the international award that doesn't technically go for into career.

But he accepted four times on stage.

Right.

I could see Baker winning all four, and I could see Anora only winning best picture, and I could see a British

best zero.

Equally likely.

Right.

It's like, it feels so random.

Right now, I would, I'm betting on some flip of Anora and Brutalist for picture and director, but it does feel like it could go any of those ways.

Speaking of the Oscars, I have current best actress frontrunner Demi Moore in the substance.

That's your winner?

I don't know how either one of you guys feel about the substance.

Am I like on Trust Ground?

No, no, no.

I love the substance.

Here's the thing.

I'm like, that's a movie I would have nominated in like six categories.

And then when the Oscars went here to camping, you're like, they don't need favorites.

It didn't make me like, well, it's obvious now.

But I was just like, cool, I can open up space for something else.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, that movie totally works for me.

And she's very good, and I know you love Demi.

I do love Demi.

I've been doing this little side podcast on Demi.

The funny thing about it is I'm not doing this podcast because she's like my favorite actress.

She's just so 90s coded that like, and that's a period of filmmaking that I love thinking about and talking about.

I just remembered I wanted to do a song parody of just dance for substance.

It's going to be okay, Griffin.

It's going to be okay.

That gringo into your spine.

Substance.

Oh, you're doing Bowie and I was doing Gaga.

Sorry.

Sure.

You can do either one.

Yeah.

But I think she's really fantastic in that movie.

I love that she's getting an an awards narrative when she never, even when she was at the height of her popularity, was never an awards actress.

Yeah, I also think

like all of the kind of like, I say this lovingly, but the like mad TV aspects of the performance, I'm just like, I never knew she had this in her.

I never knew she could do like Grand Gagnol.

She gets to play so many different phases of the character.

And then on the opposite end of that, just like her standing in the mirror wiping the makeup away is probably why she's going to win the Oscar.

It is so sticky and it is just an actor tapping tapping into a moment that feels so poignant and resonant and is done wordlessly that there's just such range in that performance from an actor who I've always kind of liked, but I've never seen her do either of those extremes.

Back before I agree.

I agree.

I'm going to reach across our divide and say, thank you for doing Thelma.

Well, thank you for doing June Scribbing, June Squibb and Thelma.

Hey, I mean, she fucking rolls in that movie and that movie is

charming.

It's so charming.

It's so charming.

It's the most charming movie.

It's incredibly charming.

Came very close to putting Fred Heschinger on my supporting actor.

Is it incredible.

Love him.

Heckinger.

Is it Heckinger?

It is.

All right.

And Brown Tree also, R.I.P.

Great performance.

Oh, Brown Tree.

He's so good in that movie.

Oh, my God.

Darker Posey's really funny in that movie.

Yes.

There was,

I'm going to say this.

There's maybe half a second, and it got foiled by scheduling where I was going to play Malcolm McDowell's grandson in that movie.

Really?

And I was just like, I just kind of can't make it work.

It was like right around the same time I did the movie Turn Me On, now available on PVOD, directed by Michael Tabrosky.

That's the only reason I wasn't in Thelma, basically.

A much bigger role is

in Turn Me On.

But when I saw the movie, my biggest regret was fuck.

That was my one opportunity to get punched in the face by Richard Rouse.

It was R.I.P.

Unless you build a mind out of that for me.

Unless I build a time machine.

Yeah.

I think instead of Shaft in Africa or something.

Yeah, I'd be really good on that set.

You know what that movie needed?

More white guys

in position of power.

Didn't like John Garriman direct that?

I don't remember.

We talked about it.

It's directed by a white bridge, man.

Whatever.

The Blankies picks for lead performance.

I'll go from 10 to 1.

Coleman Domingo, Rafe Fiennes, Conclave.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Joshi Hartnett, Zendaya Challengers, Justice Smith.

People forget that her last name is Challengers.

That's right.

Sebastian Stan, Adrian Brody, and the Brutalist.

A performance I really liked.

Yeah, he's great in it.

Yeah, it's undeniable.

I think none of us actually mentioned him.

Nope.

Demi Moore in the substance.

Mikey Madison and honor is the winner ah she's great the blankies loving ingenou do the oscars maybe she'll win yeah well except this year they didn't love ingenue ellis taylor which honestly they up

now before we get to picture director yeah some bespokes what are some other things we want to shout out well you called out right before we started recording

a panic Hard to pin down a putters and murmurs.

I have one.

I have one too.

I looked at the list while we were recording and I was like, wait a second.

Why didn't this jump out to me immediately?

What's yours?

Hiding in plain sight.

Timothy Chalamay as Robert Zimmerman and a complete unknown.

If

fucking Bob Dillard himself is not the king of puttering and murmuring.

And if Chalamay did not invoke it well, then what are we even doing here?

Hey, Woody.

I was very proud of

Timothy's work.

I'd like to marry

to your woody.

Says that in the movie.

Who's your putter and murmur?

Bill Camp and drive away dolls.

Hello?

i think i've given camp a pn m of course the man is practically guaranteed a nom every year yeah but he is so i mean for one bill camp not getting famous earlier he deprived us of him being in a lot of cohen brothers movies like he would have been really good in pretty much any cohen brothers movie that ever existed i made this point on uh vulture slack yesterday in fact like literally yesterday you know nomative determinism the thing that like you're the way your name determines your personality he's the opposite of he's the least campy.

He's the least campy person in movies.

That's a great take.

He plays Curly, the owner of the Driveaway.

You know, have you guys seen Driveaway dolls?

I did.

I did not really care for Driveaway Dolls, but Bill Camp is great.

I both stand Driveaway Dolls and love his two scenes, one where he's with the girls, and then after, he says, won't somebody save Curly?

is his line incredible.

Holman's also great in that.

He is very funny.

I considered both of the female leads in that movie.

I really love Geraldine because I love Geraldine because it's fun with them.

Margaret Kauley is dropping jars of mustard on the bottom.

She's got a cricket bat.

That's the kind of swings she's taken.

She's got like a kid's plastic hollow, like big slugger.

She's having fun.

She is.

Who else, though?

Putters and murmurs or puttersers and murmursers.

I have, as I tend to do, sort of a lead up.

I think you could plausibly say that Monstro Elisa Sue in the Spirit.

Is that not more of a Sputters and Bleeders?

Sputters and Bleeders become Sputters and Bleeders.

100%.

I also thought you could do a thing where you combine Sebastian Stan in the first act of A Different Man and Justice Smith in the last act of I Saw the TV World

into

a little combined sputters and murmurs.

None of these are your winner.

This is all no, this is all

Leah Harvey, Eldridge Eldge as Liam Gallagher in Betterman, Slurrs and Sneerers.

Here's the Betterman, watching that movie as someone who is not deeply entrenched in British pop, that's like the most shocking twist I've ever seen.

No, that was news to me.

I knew that they hated each other, but I didn't know that it was like over the.

I think Betterman works better if you don't know any of it.

Kind of.

I'm pro-Robbie in that fight.

Isabella Rossellini and Conclave, copies and curtsies.

What a great curtsy she.

Look, I was like, she's almost a putters and murmurs.

There's something there.

Yes, because she takes a long time to speak up.

June Squibb, Western Country, and Thelma, Snazzies, and Jazzies.

They're on their little jazzies.

I had Todd Phillips in Joker Folly Ado just puttering his way through that movie, making

murmured most of his direction.

Just absolutely just zero effort.

My pick is Dave Batista in The Last Show Girl.

And when he putters and murmurs, it's good.

Blade Runner 2049, it's good.

I have not seen it yet.

I will watch it before.

Sag voting this weekend, because of course it's been nominated for two

SAGs.

That is the one reason I'm looking forward to watching it.

He's the best part.

Not to be rude.

Yeah.

And I'm all here for the Pam revival campaign.

Very excited for her being a naked gun.

But Batista in a drama, I'd love to see it.

There's an obvious winner, but it's in a film I guess neither of you saw because I think a lot of people did not see it.

Anthony Hopkins in One Life.

One Life's a good movie.

The James Hawes true story movie.

It is a good movie.

It's a great example of that kind of movie.

Correct that we didn't see it.

Right.

This is a movie about.

Joseph.

This is a movie about a real guy who did a thing

that's interesting to think about and important to honor.

But also, the first 20 minutes of that movie is Hopkins.

Where'd I put that male?

Yeah.

When are we going to flash back to the young guy who plays me?

Your letterbox vlog of this movie really stuck out to me.

Let me find out if you can play it.

It's very much the classic original Griffey Noom's definition of putters and rubbers.

No, that's what what I'm saying.

It's actually

straight down the line.

My letterbox was sorry, but if you have Anthony Hopkins in a slow-moving English drama that builds to a quiet but devastating emotional climax, I'm going to like it.

It's exactly right.

You're exactly right, David.

Yeah, that's that is sort of the,

you know, Samuel L.

Jackson in the piano lesson is a Putters and Mermaid.

It's the other thing I need to watch before SAG votes.

And I liked that movie.

I did too.

I liked it better on Broadway.

Talk about a movie that just like evaporated in the race.

Netflix is fucking Netflix.

I know.

But he is kind of right.

You know, he's playing.

I think a lot of people are surprised by that performance, assuming, oh, Samuel Jackson in August Wilson.

Is he going to have like tons of crazy loud mock projects?

He nominated for a Tony.

He's good.

He might have, I don't think he won the Tony, but he's definitely nominated for the Tony.

But he's really good.

But other bespoke awards.

Here are some other bespoke.

Okay.

Best Godzilla

of 2024.

I'm giving to Bisexual lighting Ozempic Godzilla and Godzilla X Kong.

I'm going to give it to Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truth.

Biggest mistake of last year's awards, I'm going to give to forgetting to do the best Godzilla category in the year that Godzilla minus one came out.

Biggest mistake of this year's awards, I'm going to give to making the bisexual lighting Ozempic Godzilla and Godzilla versus Kong joke.

It's just kind of an easy joke.

It's very dumb.

Have you guys seen that movie?

Best Power Godzilla.

I haven't.

You know, I think I maybe saw the end of it on TV.

Godzilla gets all like pink and blue and skinny.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, my Sergeant Shroom Award, named after Vin Diesel's performance in Billie Lynn's long halftime walk, it is performance that I most wanted to give a nomination to, and I can't quite sell it.

Now, usually it's more of a like, there's just nothing there.

Sight on scene, I wanted to believe in it.

This is someone where I'm like.

The performance is really good.

If I'd put it in and not included Adrian Brody, who I'm already snubbing from my five, people would have asked for my head on a pike.

Giving to Michael Keaton and Goodrich.

But a good performance.

This is the thing.

It's genuinely a good performance.

Me putting it in the five would have been overselling it a little.

Best airplane movie as in movie to watch on an airplane.

Giving that to Goodrich.

Goodrich, two wins, one year.

Wow.

I got to see that movie.

Best performance by Megalon in a supporting role.

I'm giving it to Megalopolis.

There's nobody in Transformers 1 called Megalon.

It's funny that Megalon is just kind of a thing in that way.

Yeah.

What do you mean?

It's how they make buildings and stuff.

That's not the main thing.

It's how they feel skin.

It's just one of the many things that movie is throwing out.

Megalon in a supporting role.

Best thriller where the villain is time.

Saturday night.

I don't know if you know this.

That movie's not a comedy.

It's a thriller where the villain is time.

And most destructive movie.

It ends with us.

Well, it does.

It's just fucking like...

It ends.

Everyone.

Well, that's true.

Everyone who saw that movie in theaters turned into a

curse upon their family.

I heard that Lauren is going to fire Jenny Slate again.

Oh, no.

Yeah, I have a couple of bespokes.

I don't want to step on Ben's toes at all.

The bespokeies.

The bespokeies.

Best conveyance of information by an object in a film.

Which is a little busy, but hang with me.

The flyers for Horizon in Horizon and American Saga Part 1.

The photocopies in Conclave.

The portrait of Bill Clinton in Long Legs, which tells you exactly when this movie is taking place.

It is taking place when Bill Clinton's president.

It does get bigger every time they cut back to it, I believe.

I firmly believe.

Obviously, the notes app in Hitman.

Can I just call a shot quickly off of what you said?

I want to pin,

praying that it gets a qualifying release.

Rubisi might have next year's putters and murmurs in the bag.

The Horizon Putters.

The thing I'm most excited for in Horizon 2 is Rubisi, to find out what Rubisi is going to do.

Here's a spoiler.

You're not going to find out a lot.

It's the...

He is not on screen much, but most of it is puttering and murmuring.

It's the little Yakuza Yakuza boss in that Simpsons episode where the Japanese mafia comes after Marge Simpson and her pretzel wagon.

You just want to see what he's going to do.

You know what's going to be good?

I would have been so angry at how little he has to do in the movie if the end didn't stick the landing so fucking hard.

Okay.

You seem genuinely enthused in Psyche Horizon 2.

Thrilled by watching it and just immediately being like, slot machine payoff.

Like, it's like the movie starts and at like minute two.

Can we please not do this?

Come on, let's stop talking about a movie no one has seen that didn't come out that'll come out.

Don't worry.

My fifth nominee in best conveyance of information by an object in a film is obviously the tennis ball against the neck of the racket and challengers, which is a neck movie.

Best necks.

Best necks.

Challengers.

Very good.

This is like some nature.

That's a great example of

people like to think that screenwriting is about dialogue.

That is a screenwriting decision.

That is like beautiful, like structure and setup and payoff.

Yeah.

That whole last match is no dialogue and it's perfect.

When he did that move at the end of the film in a close-up, and you know he's going to do it, the crowd I saw it with burst into applause.

It was the most astounding.

I had that reaction from me.

I had a movie theater last year where all of us were responding to like, fuck, Google,

that's what

I'm doing.

Like, nothing thrills me more than when a movie can build its sort of like...

its obstacle course so perfectly that at the end one single image can mean 20 000 things without any words yep Yep.

And we just all know it.

Almost as if Challengers was a great movie and its director should have stood by it more in the award season.

Luca is a really normal and not order guy who makes normal decisions.

And also, to be fair, in his defense, he could only stay above water on ground for so long before he was going to get caught.

Hey, you see,

why are you winning my bike race?

He couldn't campaign for two movies and also check in with his fish pen.

That's true.

With my Rudolph and Jim Gaffigan?

There you go.

The most Italian sea sea monsters.

Good movie.

It is a good movie.

That movie rolls.

Super cool kids.

My other bespoke category is best performance.

Wait, who's the winner in that category?

Oh, sorry.

My winner in that category.

It's a tennis ball.

It's the tennis ball.

It's perfect.

Which is kind of a huge upset because, like, no, I did not think anything was beating Notes app after I saw that.

But this is, by the way, good category.

I think that one's a perennial.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Best performance by an actor of another actor.

Austin Butler playing Stellen Skarsgård in Dune Part 2.

Pretty good.

Nicholas Podani is the guy's name as Billy Crystal in Saturday Night.

I went to see this film.

It's

a subtly accurate portrayal.

That movie is quietly a thriller in the villains time.

What?

But it's my favorite, secretly, a Western of this year.

He comes on screen.

There's a lot of people playing famous people.

A lot of movies.

He comes on screen, says two words, and I went like, holy shit, right?

Like, I was

like, I can't believe he's nailing young, not famous Crystal.

And I'm also like, right, so realized

in real time, like, I've never heard anyone do a crystal.

Right, I guess.

Right.

Well, I hear someone do it at the top of Blankies.

But this is what I'm saying.

Like, that's what I'm expecting.

I'm like, some guy's going to come on and be like, Sally.

Yeah.

Mickey Mantle.

He is like stunning.

He's great.

He's great.

I love him.

Aaron Taylor Johnson doing.

I'm the new guy who beats me up for every role I want.

Go on.

He's a great actor.

He's good.

Aaron Taylor Johnson is Matthew McConaughey and the fall guy.

Endlessly amusing.

I thought it was.

Yeah.

Talk about another guy who needs to not be a leading man.

Oh, he's so great when he shows up at a like pinch hitter kind of.

Did you like him in Nosperatu?

I did like him in the Speratu, actually.

You know, enough of this Nosperatu nonsense.

Yes,

I fucking hate this shit.

You know what I didn't like him in?

What?

Craven the Hunter.

Yeah.

I haven't seen that one.

You should go hunt it.

I've tried.

I tried to.

I fucking was texting Showtimes to Alex Perry as they dwindled

unless they pulled some from the sun like 1040 a.m.

or bus yep and then he was just busy and then that was that i was gonna go with a crew to see it in 40x and we all got a head cold and all canceled like 10 of us had bought tickets you would have been the only box office for that movie yes and then it was gone the next day

uh there was one performance in that movie you you will love and i bet you can't guess who it's from

Who else is even in there?

Russell Crowe.

Oh, I'm sure I love that, of course.

You're going to fucking eat that.

Much like with Thor and everything, you know, post-Excusey is just playing another Greek diner owner.

No, he plays a Russian monster.

But he's always Greek diner owner.

It is.

Yeah.

The Last Exorcist is very much like that.

And David would say it's a sensitive thought.

Joe, sorry.

Two more.

Jason Schwartzmann playing Stanley Tucci in Queer.

Interesting.

Jason Schwartzman.

Who knew that Jason Schwartzmann playing gay is just Stanley Tucci?

It's fantastic.

Okay.

And then Jodi Comer playing Bill Schwirzki from The Superfans in The Bike Rider.

A very, a very close best actress candidate for me.

She's good in the movie, but the accent is insane.

She's absolutely, she sounds absolutely insane.

So best actress.

She's so good in it, David's high and crack for not respecting art.

I like Jodi Comer, though.

It was just a matter of wonderful movie.

It does make you feel like it's a good thing.

Yeah, good.

I feel like I'm sitting back in the multiplayer.

I feel like I'm sitting back and closing my eyes and dreaming of other things during that boring ass

quigloon of a film.

I'm leaning in.

Yeah, I'm leaning in and falling out of my seat.

You can't do both directions.

You can't say you're asleep in both directions.

Yes, I am.

That's the one movie that made me asleep in both directions.

Movie's good.

David's rude.

Jeff Nichols, keep making more movies.

Thank you.

Yep.

Keep making those C.

Oh my god.

The second C plus.

Doctor, you're rude.

That guy is a cheap supermarket because

he's C-Town.

Wow.

Wow.

Is that going to travel or are there only sea towns in New York?

I know it seems like town outside of

the supermarket.

I did my best.

Do you guys want to give me your best directors or do we have any more?

No,

I'm out of bullets.

Yeah, you know, best going live on Instagram goes to Lady Raven for Trap.

Yep.

Zachary Levi?

Zachary Levi, of course, gets best crayon?

I don't know.

I don't want to get that guy.

We need to get that guy something.

Can we find five other nominees fast?

He needs some medicine.

We need to fuck him out.

There's no one who's more anti-medicine where I'm like, you might need some medicine.

You need to go to the doctor.

They are following the exact wrong path.

Separate Levi showed up at the fucking Horizon Chapter 2 earlier, and I was like, don't make me feel like I'm not allowed to like.

He's jump scaring people there.

He's so tall.

Yeah, he's very tall.

Okay.

That sucks.

Yeah, that's why he gets to play fucking Shazam or whatever.

Best normal chills sculpture to have in your house, Oddity.

Did you guys see Oddity?

I liked Oddity.

I wanted to see Oddity.

Wooden Man in Oddity.

Oddity, which definitely is.

I think it's.

Is it Australian?

I think it's Australian.

Okay.

It's not Welsh.

It might be fucking Welsh.

I don't know.

It's something or other.

Something.

No, it's Irish.

Maybe it might be Irish.

I think it's a horror movie about someone who gets the most fucked-up sculpture in the world and puts it in their house.

And they're like, it's like a vengeance.

I don't think anything's going to go on with this.

Don't kill a witch's sister is basically the uh the lesson of that movie um oh a best uh exposition about um like the past uh and mythic stuff uh ty

Olwin Fure

in both The Watchers and Tarot

shows up in both movies to like dispense like, here's the lore of the movie.

Is that the old lady?

And

she's good.

She's good.

She's like this non-legendary ever.

No, the Watchers rocks.

I'm pro The Watchers.

Okay.

Did you see The Watchers?

I still haven't seen it.

Gotta check it out.

Yeah, I don't know.

Best Baseball Cap, Jason Bateman, and Carry-On.

I still haven't watched that either.

You just said that.

You haven't watched that, buddy?

Hey, buddy.

And I haven't caught that one.

Yeah, I don't know.

Is there anything else we want to share?

That's stuck in the Netflix pit for me.

Yeah.

Look, I'm happy Clint Sarah is back.

What was the thing I saw?

Best movie that for 10 minutes you're like, we are fucking cooking.

And then it kind of gets a little boring.

uh

natalie erica james's apartment 7a oh i didn't see that uh which like for and to be we all love the first omen uh directed by a friend of the show arkasha stevenson and that one similarly you're like oh she's doing stuff here like this is actually more than just like a sort of rote tv prequel to rosemary's baby has this amazing sequence uh in the middle of the movie but some of it's a little boring there was something i saw what was it now i'm trying to remember but it was oh oh you know what it was it was flight Risk.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm like, if Colette Server directed Flight Risk, it would be winning best picture next year.

It was just directed by some bum called, oh, Mel Gibson.

He's an Oscar winner, I'm seeing here.

No, I checked the poster recently, and I think it's from the director of Apocalypto and Hacksaw Ridge.

No name needed.

Uh-huh.

Who are your best directors, guys?

Best director.

My best director nominees are Luca Guadanino.

I was thinking about making another Pixar joke and why I put that word disrespect on his name.

George Miller for Furiosa, a Mad Max Saga.

Oh, sorry, I'm reading off the wrong list.

Worst directors of movies I hate.

Mike Cheslick for Hundreds of Beavers.

Rommel Ross for Nickel Boys.

Mike Lee for Hard Truths.

It's a very hard truth.

It's the hardest truth of all.

Yeah.

My list is Brady Corbett for The Brutalist, Luca Guadanino for Challengers, Julio Torres for Problemista,

Romel Ross for Nickel Boys, and Matthew Rankin for Universal Language.

Oh, I need to see that.

I think you're now in theaters.

A Canadian Iranian film that I've been told is really, really good.

My nominees are Andy Baker for Janet Planet.

Radu Jude for Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.

Luca Guadanino, all three nominees for Challengers.

Mike Lee for Hard Truths and Romel Ross for Nickel Boys.

My winner is Romel Ross.

My winner is Rommel Ross.

My

My winner is

Luca Guadanino for Challenge.

Yeah, well, it's a great, great movie.

And you know what?

I'll say

you can feel the presence of a director on that.

Oh, interesting.

But not in his other films.

No.

Not a showy filmmaker.

Should we just go straight in the best picture?

Because I feel like these are overlapping conversations.

Yes, we should.

I will say I watched his first movie, The Protagonist, because he was on Mubi.

You know how Luca kind of tried to make good movies for 10 years before he suddenly started making them?

I didn't see any of them before I Am Love.

Same.

No one has.

Yeah, that was the first movie.

But they put the protagonist from 1999.

Width Elders Wenton on movie, and I'm like, how bad could it be?

And 10 minutes?

And I was like, oh, no, this stinks.

Whoa.

But hey, isn't that part of the fun of doing this podcast when we see someone come out of the dirt?

But you're like, I don't understand how the filmmaker I love.

Yeah.

Like,

it's trying stuff.

So you're kind of like, I guess he was trying stuff and not doing a good, but there.

I mean, Park Chan Wook's another example.

Stanley Kubrick's another example where the first movie almost feels like they have to do every single thing wrong to then, by process of elimination, emerge like seemingly fully formed.

I'll give you the Blankies nominees were Ramel Ross V.

I'm going from the bottom up.

Romel Ross, Sean Baker for Nora, Jane Shombren, Denny Villeneuve, Luca Guadaninho.

Best Picture.

So your top tens for the year, basically, is what we're going to do next for Best Picture.

Do you want to do them bottom up?

I'm going to do bottom-up.

Okay, you go first.

Number 10, Better Man.

Wow.

Loved it.

Monkey.

Loved it.

Monkey.

Loved it.

Number nine, The People's Joker.

Number eight, Hundreds of Beavers.

Number seven, Long Legs.

This is a Griff list.

This is a real Griff list.

Number six, A Different Man.

Number five, Furiosa, Mad Max Saga.

No, number 500, you mean.

Oh, yeah, sorry.

Number four, hard truths.

Number three, I saw the TV glow.

Number two, Nickel Boys.

Number one, Challengers.

At the end of the day, I just like, that was the most transcendent experience I had watching a movie.

And I kept being like, is that still my number one?

It feels kind of poppy to be my number one.

But like, open that pop.

God, I love soda.

Exactly.

Drink that bubbly soda.

Yeah.

Starting from number 10, my number 10 is I Saw the TV Glow.

Number nine is Nickel Boys.

Number eight is universal language.

Number seven is hard truths.

Number six is I'm Still Here.

Number five, a different man.

Or Challengers.

three, his three daughters, two, the brutalist, and my number one movie of the year, which I watched this morning just to make sure it was problemy stuff.

Wow.

What a great movie.

Past love.

Possibly future guests.

I'd love to get Julio back.

Why not?

I think I recently rescheduled it.

Yeah.

I think I recently realized I somehow don't have any of his contact information.

But what was that?

It was like, how did we get him on the first time?

Did we literally like whisper into a pigeon's ear?

It kind of was.

We did basically whisper into a pigeon's ear or like write something on a Lego brick and leave it on the subway like we dm'd him i think we like there was a twitter someone had a twitter and swears i mean i've known him for a while

swear at one point i had some direct contact but i think it was a social media contact like i don't think we've ever had a phone number because i've not even convinced he has a phone no no

no nothing about him would indicate that he was got a pocket full of precious gems

you know what was the movie that he that scissor handed it's one of those episodes where like the day before we were like Are we just going to do that one without a guest?

And then Julio was like, Sure, come on.

Right.

There was another movie I feel like this year where we were like, fuck, that'd be a good time to get Julio back.

And we talked about it.

And then I was like, I actually don't know how to reach him.

I love Julio Torres, as do you, as do I think everybody here is a great guy.

But I was really blown away by how like emotionally intelligent and beautiful problemist was.

Yeah, I will say this.

I obviously did not like it as much as you did.

And I was like, this is like a good first movie.

He's like working out some stuff.

And then, like, the last 20 minutes, I was really impressed by how hard it all paid off.

There are certain ways in which I think it like

the setup is almost to the movie's detriment.

It needs to hold back on certain things in order to make that payoff work.

But I was like, the last 20 minutes of it worked for me so fucking hard.

There are so many ways that he could have just sort of rested on

quirky, strange, you know, I'm Julio Torres, I love shapes, like that kind of a thing.

I think

it's an incredibly funny movie is the other thing, though.

And it's like, there's so much like actual overt, like out loud comedy.

And then

to pull it together and really sort of like,

there's a lot of good insight in that movie.

There's a lot of insight in that movie to

his specific experience and like the specific experience of people trying to emigrate to the country and like stay in the country.

But also

universal creation of that movie is so well observed.

Yes.

Yes.

And like Tilda Swinton's character, who is like simultaneously a dragon lady cartoon and also

admirable in certain ways.

Same with the race.

And understandable.

Which could just be a kind of offhand note, the amount of time it spends in investing in this character who's gone.

Yeah.

David, you're 10.

My 10 are from bottom up.

Red Rooms, number 10, which I haven't mentioned on this podcast.

I got fucking nominated as Juliette Gareppi in actress, but I had to give Naomi Scott her flowers.

But a great, insanely freaky Canadian horror film that I think a lot of people are discovering, including me late in the race.

Number nine, Evil Does Not Exist.

Number eight, Trap.

Number seven, I Saw the TV Glow.

Six, Dune Part Two.

Five, Janet Planet.

Four, do not expect too much from the end of the world.

Great Romanian movie that everyone should watch.

You should, you'll like it, Griff.

It's got a

view of society that I think you'll respond to.

Three challengers, two hard truths, one nickel voice.

Director was so overflowing with people I wanted to nominate for best director.

I thought so many of these, like, I don't always subscribe to the like the best movie is the best directed movie always.

Like, at some point, I love the movies that I love so much, and certain movies feel like they have more of a directorial chance.

You're taking a little bit more of a chance as a director, or you're like.

taking on, you know, maybe a bigger sort of project.

But like Aaron Schimberg for a different man, Jane Schoenbrunn, Coralie Farjah, obviously Villeneuve and Sean Baker, and, you know, Walter Salz for I'm Still Here.

Have you guys seen I'm Still Here?

I saw it last night.

I liked it.

I really was so engrossed by that movie.

I thought I was just like, it really does like, you know, grab you by the shoulders.

I'm going to say this, and I don't mean this in any backhanded way, but this was like my profound takeaway from watching the movie in a certain way, right?

The Academy's changed so much.

It's gotten so much more international.

It used to be so rare that a foreign language film crossed over into any other categories.

Now it's obviously more commonplace, right?

And it used to be that when it would break through, there was this air of like, this is the kind of shit that could never get made in America, right?

Not that it was like,

the studio system would never support this.

Foreign.

Right.

So these other countries are artier and whatever.

And I watched that and I was like, this is the kind of movie that studios used to be great at making for 30 years.

Yeah, sure.

And then for 30 years after that, it was supplanted by like Focus and Searchlight and the mini majors making them.

And now it kind of like we need to import

our like incredibly sturdy, intelligent.

It's been happening since, you know, the Miramax year of the 90s and all that.

And it feels like much like last, last year, this was

the, what's the cooking movie, The Taste of Things?

Yeah.

Oh, true.

Every year there's a movie where I'm like, Harvey Reinstein wants to break out of prison to run the Oscar campaign for this movie.

He's like, I'm going to call a congressional hearing.

I'm going to have a roll card.

That's so true about the taste of things.

God,

The Taste of Things was, I was like, are we sure Harvey's in jail?

And I love that movie, to be clear.

I'm just talking about the kind of sort of middlebrow

adult foreign drama that Mira Max.

I'm not saying that I'm still here is middlebrow, but I'm saying there's a degree of being like.

It's not high art.

Yeah, it's

incredibly well made.

It's like a very affecting story.

The casting at the end is very impactful, not surprising to me.

I also saw it like

maybe two days after the election so the what uh yeah uh there was a there was an election um it hit particularly hard certainly harder than when i saw um doctor strange the day after the last time uh yep i did one of those

give me the news look it's a good time for movies at the top and there's lots of interesting stuff in the middle this was not my favorite movie year wasn't me either.

It was not my number one favorite movie year of all time.

Which, of course, was 1928.

What a great year.

But I do feel like people sort of, I've heard quite a few people calling it like a bad year for movies.

And I just can't, I can't get it.

I don't think there's ever a bad year for movies, is the thing.

No, not really.

If you just slice off the top.

Except for 2011.

Like, that's the only bad year for movies.

But no, I think there's, yeah, you slice off the 12.

Wasn't 2011, Margaret and Moneyball, or was that 2012?

No, 2011.

It wasn't Margaret and Money.

It's a really bad Oscar year.

It's a very bad Oscar year.

But 2011, yeah, my top 10 is Margaret Moneyball, Certified Copy, Tree of Life.

Certified Copy is so good.

Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, Ghost Protocol, Uncle Boone Me, Archipelago, Tinker Taylor, Fast Five.

That's a great topic.

I mean, Fast Five was obviously in my 10.

I'm trying to remember.

I feel like I had my top five were all in movies, and now I'm trying to remember what the other ones would have been.

But Martha Marcy Mee Marlin.

Off the top of my head, I like Margaret.

Is up there, Martha Marsy.

Certified copy, Hannah.

Joe writes, Hannah, is that your

Hannah?

Warhorse, of course.

Look, there's some positive takeaways from this gear.

As we said, the Inside Out 2 lesson.

Dave is doing a slide whistle oh it's my penis on the mention of war horse going

first of all we that was kind of impressive david mined the slide whistle really well i did this

but he was doing the motion yeah no it was good it was good

yeah um

yeah there was there was good stuff this year and i think there were good takeaways and i feel like uh

as you said there was like a this this feeling of catastrophe when all the may movies underperformed

and then immediately it was just like, no, people showed up in fucking droves for Inside Out 2 and Twisters and Deadpool and Wolverine and It Ends With Us and some other things.

Movies of the exact same level.

Look, you can't automatically trick people into a fucking blockbuster anymore.

You have to give them something they want to see.

And if they want to see it, they'll show up in droves.

And I think the things that people are showing up for is diversifying a little bit.

It's not just the same couple fucking tentpole franchises.

And I think also that all that doomsdaying was forgetting that like Dune and fucking Godzilla were just like genuine blockbusters in the first three months of the year.

The thing I'm always pointing at is like January, you had Beekeeper and Mean Girls both make like 80 million domestic.

Labor

is this close from 100 million domestic.

And like Mean Girls and Beekeeper were supposed to go straight to streaming.

And I was like, here's the lesson.

Make more movies like fucking this.

Make mid-sized films.

Well, the things that encourage me is Nosferatu 95 domestic, Complete Unknown 71 domestic.

Like,

you know, those kinds of movies are still getting, you know, they're not, you know, knocking it down like, like Oppenheimer did.

David and I were talking about the sort of like rise of like quote unquote auteur horror, which is like the horror, which used to be this autopilot.

Every horror movie opens to 20 and makes 50, basically, had like more kind of like actual flops.

But the through line is like movies are being sold on Oz Perkins, on like Damien Leone, you know, like all these people, which is like exciting.

It's like it speaks to a culture that is engaged with the idea of like movies are made by people and visions and all that sort of stuff, all that sort of stuff.

Oh,

movies are good, Ben.

Can you save us?

Yeah, Ben, do some stuff.

You got some stuff, planned, right?

Yeah.

Uh, so it's that time in the episode

of our Blankies episodes where

relaxing,

I do some of my original categories so to start things off as i do every year we have of course the weddies

the golden mop right the slickest flicks of the year i love when he says slickest flicks it's the movies that soak through

what splished what splashed right okay good right questions good questions who dunked

keep going rubber dub dub i'm taking a bath i don't think i quite understand the parameters of this category can you the films are wet a little more it's the wettest films.

All right.

So number one, Twisters.

Okay.

Not only is there rain, okay, which there's an abundance of rain.

That's true.

But Glenn, he's not just giving.

My man's pouring out Riz.

This is true.

Oh, you're so you're saying his

acting is so charismatic that he's wet.

It's stripping Riz.

He's wet with stripping Riz.

I like that.

He's glistening with Riz.

I like this.

Okay, number two, the substance.

Yeah.

It's a moist movie.

It's a squishy movie.

It's just, there's so many fluids being represented in this film.

Various colors, a rainbow of fluids.

Yeah, a cornucopia.

Going in, going out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Number three, challengers.

It's a sweaty movie.

Sweaty.

A lot of beads.

Very sweaty.

Right.

But in the best way.

Yeah.

Right.

Because often on the show, we label movies as sweaty because it's just like sauna scene.

Half-baked.

Right.

We're not on heart.

Sweating.

Yes.

But yeah, the actors are hot, right?

Not only are the actors are hot, but I walked away perspiring after seeing that.

Okay.

Number four, we live in a time.

Oh, the

time.

We live in a time.

So now, when I say that I ugly cried during.

Yeah, you shouldn't have seen that one, Ben.

I would have kept you away from it.

Ugly, like Donald Trump's heart ugly.

Wow.

I'm getting political.

That's destroyed.

Truly destroyed.

Clean up on aisle, my ass.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, okay.

And then number five, unfortunately, is Moana 2.

No.

That's a lot of water.

It was wet.

It's extremely wet.

Yeah, please.

I just hoped it's a movie for losers.

But it will mention The Young Woman in the Sea, which I know you haven't seen.

Oh, yeah.

That's a swimming movie.

I missed that one.

I missed that one.

I think you'd like it.

Yeah.

Well, if you like wet movies.

The show is very wet.

Yeah, Flow.

Flow at Kim, you haven't seen it, right?

You'll enjoy that.

Friend of the show, Jordan Fish, had suggested it.

I think you'll really like it.

It's a cat in water, basically.

I know, I know.

You'll cry, but there's a bird.

You'll cry at moments.

It's not we live in time crying.

You'll cry at moments of like, oh my god, the cat is scared.

You know, sure.

You'll cry at moments of intimacy.

Okay.

All right.

Can I throw out a couple I'm surprised you didn't include?

Well, may I just finish my point on Juanitu?

And then, yes, please.

I just wanted to, though, say,

Can I Get a Chi Ho has maybe some of the sweatiest lyrics of all time?

That's a song?

Can I Get a Chiho?

It is indeed a rap song performed by Dwayne,

sure.

It's built around his famous catchphrase, which you remember definitely was there in the first movie.

He does say it in the first movie.

Does he?

I've seen Moana, you know, one to 200 times.

Yes, he says it.

He says it 800 times in this movie.

I would say he probably says it like three times in Moana.

He says it when he's about to turn into something.

Okay, because in this, it feels like a Marty McLeod chicken thing.

Sure.

We're like, you're telling us this was your deal the whole time the song sucks uh but what are some other uh albums look flow is a big snub but you just haven't seen it yet uh rude to pool man he hasn't seen i'm not gonna go see pool man it's it's wet i'm sure it is that guy's fishing out leaves the whole time yeah uh also ghostbusters frozen empire Well, the water is frozen in that one.

Yeah, but here's, imagine what happens at the end of that movie.

Honestly, I saw it.

If they stop the day, it's going to start melting.

City's about to get wet as hell.

You know, I saw that movie, and I could not tell you a single thing that happened in it.

It is gone.

I saw it.

I remember being like, this is better than I thought.

I also don't remember it.

But it's gone.

Slimer almost is a Putters and Murmurs candidate.

What else you got, Benny?

Okay, well, I think I've sort of...

decided that, you know, of course, there is the films that should be remade with, and then I, you know, pick out all of these kind of

absurd

safeties.

Yeah.

Right.

But again, I'm going to say like I did last year, I just, I'm sick of remakes.

I'm sick of just everything being so IP driven that as in a protest, I will not continue to generate more content.

I like that.

Also saves you some time.

That's right.

Okay, but moving right along, we have, of course, the um no thank yous.

Number one at the top, Amelia Perez.

Never before have I avoided something that somehow also doesn't exist.

It's as if the culture is telling me, look, ghosts exist.

And I'm like, sorry, what?

Because I'm wearing noise-hansling headphones.

Number two, blink twice.

I did, and suddenly the movie stopped playing because I had left the theater.

No, there you go.

I got out of there fast.

Yes, I did.

The movie's not very good.

It's not very good and with a horrible ending.

I would agree with that.

Azure Arhona is kind of incredible in it, though.

Half consent nominated.

No, she's very good.

She's very good.

Number three, The Apprentice.

Methinks no one asked asked for this.

I do think it's quite a good film.

I like people.

But I made the,

in retrospect, great choice to see it four days before the election.

I could not imagine watching it now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Number four, Nasfera Hong Shu.

Boring.

How dare you call my movie boring?

You try to sleep with me atop you like a weak.

What a like,

what a beautiful looking movie.

Sure.

Like,

great costuming.

It's fucking dirty and shit.

Stinky.

But it was boring.

No, come closer.

Take 20 minutes to come closer.

Boring like a job.

Oh, slow down.

Slow down.

Not that fast.

You open my coffin.

You can take your time.

Sorry.

That's fine.

Okay.

And then lastly, I was thinking about how sticky that mustache would be with all the blood.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Blood, the bugs.

Blood and the bugs.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in that.

Okay, so lastly, I just struggled, and it ended up just kind of being a three-way tie between Mufasa, if, and Red One.

And what of the year?

Well, just like what they all share for me is I would for the Nobel Priest part.

Yeah.

What they all have in common for me

is that I would prefer to go to prison than watch any of those movies.

Well, because at least there you can put on good plays.

I have also not seen any of those movies.

I think Red One is my dead bottom of the year.

It has to be.

I think it's one of the worst things our culture's ever produced.

My bottom of the year currently is Joker Falio Doo.

Carry on, Ben.

My second to worst is Ricky Stanicky, a movie that we should not let get away with its crimes.

It might have gone under the radar.

Well, because nobody saw it.

Zach Afram?

Is that Ricky Stanley?

Okay, yeah.

Okay, so honorable mention, Saturday night.

I had fun.

I thought it was good.

I had fun with Saturday night.

I will agree with you, Ben.

Okay, it's not like reinventing the wheel.

It's a stupid, predictable biopic, but fuck it.

I liked it.

Is it a biopic?

Because I think of it more as a thriller than

who's the villain there.

Tyne.

No, she didn't ought to.

Sorry.

I mean, Tyler.

I didn't care for it.

This is carrying over from last year.

I guess it's become now a new award.

Violator Achievement Award, movies that remind me the most of the relationship between Violator and Spawn.

Last year, the winner was Boy in the Heron.

Yes.

Who had Violator Energy this year is karen kulking and yeah uh a real page my friends he's not wrong what an absolute monster of a person and of course when i saw jesse eisenberg come on screen in that film i went man this guy's got huge chains and ectoplasm energy never before as a character felt more like whoa the prince of hell himself

no i think you're right um megalopoulos i love when an artist sees through their vision uncompromised by coherence vision doesn't need to make sense agree yeah

especially if you lose one of your eyes as he does that crazy put the wow platinum in the world that you want to see

um wicked little letters what

a fucking steaming bag of fun you saw that i did some of my favorite insults include you really are a tricksy older you belong in hell probably and you're a sad stinky bitch as well that movie went uh direct to cobble hill cinemas that's a joke by 10 people I was angry at myself for not seeing that.

I was like, I bet I would love it.

It's a fucking delight.

Okay.

It's Olivia Coleman and Jesse Buckley writing mean letters to each other.

In like an English town.

Yeah.

Sounds cool as hell.

It's so good.

I almost made it my annual TIFF Cozy Watch when I'm too far into TIFF and I'm too stressed.

And this year was the Steve Coogan movie with the Penguins.

I was about to ask.

I saw a trailer for that yesterday before I'm still here.

That's the most Sony pictures classic assumption.

I know.

I have ever decided to go see that.

Yep.

Wait, am I the only one that saw this movie?

Look at the letters.

That's crazy.

That literally never happened.

When did you see it?

Did you see it?

My dad told me about it.

And I realized this is a major like, my dad was like, I saw this really funny movie.

So check it out.

And it's very like, my wife and I debated seeing that film and I think picked something else.

I have not gotten around to it.

Did you see it in theaters?

No.

Okay.

Other

just swear words to our favorite swears or insults.

You aging aging fucking softcock streaks of a hot horse piss.

This is all in that movie?

Correct.

And I'll leave you with you mangy old titless turnip.

Wow.

God, are we going to have to like record an addendum to this episode when we all see it and it sweeps every category?

Depiction of Kendrick versus Drake, wicked little letters.

Amazing.

Wow.

But that's it.

That's it.

Wow.

Okay.

Wow.

What a year.

What a year.

What a year.

What a year it has been.

What a year for film a decade of dreams decade of dreams continue joe thank you for being here

every year i have such a good time at this

hey joe thank you for being here it's me bob dylan and uh that's actually a shockingly to me as i'm really excited about our guest we have here today he loves to give out awards and talk about

you peach shut up and play this guitar until you get mad

good movie that appeared on none of my uh categories oh complete

I like simply done a tremendous amount.

It really worked for me.

I literally walked out.

I texted people.

I'm like, I liked it.

I don't know if other people are going to like it, but like, I think I liked it.

And then I thought it was like, other people also liked it.

I was happy with that.

Joe, this had Oscar Buzz.

This had Oscar Buzz.

Oh, come on, Graham.

I just want to use Zoom episodes, but I got to do it.

I got to understand it.

Especially after Kieran wins.

I hate the little window.

I can't box on the screen.

I feel like I'm a benefit box in a box.

I did enjoy dropping into Doughboys via via Zoom because I was watching you guys for a minute before I got to drop more than a minute, like 10 minutes.

But also you not knowing the most famous conversation and then getting brought into it, that couldn't have gone any better.

It was so organically funny because I did not know what you were talking about.

I listened to the episode and my reaction that it's bubbling up two hours later.

It was great.

Gairdner and Weiger texted each other and were like, I have a conspiracy that Griffin came to LA with the explicit goal of recording the longest episode of each show.

And I said to you in confidence, my goal was like, I want to be on really good behavior.

I want to come in tight on rails, deliver normal episodes and silence the haters.

And I fucked up.

Well,

I fucked up.

You fucked up.

You fucked up.

I fucked up.

I do want to also, if Snake is more famous than Pokeball.

If the Blankies want to sign up for another Patreon,

yes.

Demi, myself, and I chugging along three episodes a month for $5 on Patreon.

I've got some blank check, uh, uh, familiars there.

I just had Fran Hoffner on to talk about

uh, the Scarlet Letter, Katie Rich is on uh, often, Richard Lawson was on to talk about disclosure.

Um, just lots of real good, fun.

We're in the thick of the like 90s stuff, so um, 90s, yeah, 90s, not a great decade for her at the end, yeah.

The end was bad.

The early part, she was raking in money, uh, hand over fist, so yeah, yeah, I'm really close to Count von Kount, I realize.

One.

Two.

Cookie Monster and Count von Kount combined is kind of the oral.

I have killed Mr.

Noodle.

Ben, next week on the calendar is

the first time.

The film after E.T.

the Extraterrestrial is surely

Indiana.

Oh, no, it's the Temple of Dead.

Temple of Doom with Olivia Craig.

Nice.

An episode that will make certain people very angry at us for being.

We don't like that movie very much.

I don't like the movie that is annoying.

I feel like that's the Indiana Jones movie.

Most people don't like that.

That's right.

But then there's lots of people who are like, it's secretly the best.

Oh, guys.

And I'm like, it's the best at annoying me.

This real secret is shut up.

Anyway, it's a fun episode.

We talk about a lot of stuff.

Listen to best.

I promise this.

We talk about a lot of stuff in that episode.

And it's on topic.

We recorded that, like, I don't know what I'm doing.

We recorded that five times.

I don't know if I can remember when we recorded.

Yeah, listening to you guys these days is really a journey to the past kind of Aaliyah style.

We somehow recorded the Temple of Doom episode before David and I had met.

It's amazing.

Anyway, this guy seems to be pretty smart.

I don't know who he is.

The episode ends with you going, weird, I got a text about videology trivia.

Want to come with me?

Amazing.

Anyway, Decade of Dreams.

Hey, this episode will be coming out kind of quickly after we record.

We recorded.

Yeah, this is a quick turnaround.

Yeah.

yeah good job by everybody good job everybody i love you guys all right love you love you joe and yeah we'll see you next year for uh blankies uh edition 11.

11.

a new decade a new beginning a new beginning and you know what people keep asking for we did our decade best of blankies for the 2010s we did and it brought on the pandemic it it did unfortunately bring on the pandemic yeah that and paul king not making pennington three

We got our culprits.

It would be another five years before we could do the 2020s Blankies.

True.

But I do feel like

I hear cries for people begging us to go backwards and to maybe in a future year do a

2000s and 90s and 80s or something.

I think it'd be fun to, I'm just picking up.

You know, I don't quite have the spreadsheet.

The

spreadsheet

has, but

I could do it.

I've got a word document.

I've got an unruly word document that.

stretches back into the 90s and 90s.

I stayed on text edit for too long.

Yeah.

Oh, I know.

I've lost a lot of my yearly.

I've got to transfer to Google Sheets and it is a problem.

Now, I use uh the notes app, which is better.

You are my affliction.

Uh, thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe.

Didn't you pre-record that shit?

And so we don't have to do it anymore.

Yeah, but this is the one part I say at the end.

This is how I don't credit everybody.

The crediting of the people who work on the show happens in a pre-recorded segment.

You keep not having the confidence that I know how to end the episode, which then stretches the episode out longer.

Count, just so you know,

we haven't locked those credits in yet.

Oh, great.

So I'm the one who fucked up.

It's quite all right.

Okay.

Well, let me go die on a bed of fire now.

But not before snacking on a depth.

And as always, let me snack on a depth.