The Sunday Story: And the Winner Is ...

I'm Aisha Roscoe and you're listening to The Sunday story.

Thank you.

Yes, hi Aisha, thanks. Hi. Not just colleagues, friends.

Thank you, thank you so much. So let's start with, like, you know, the big picture on the Oscars and really the best picture, so best picture nominations. The only ones that I've seen are Barbie and I saw poor things for work, but liked it.

Well, for me, I think Killers of the Flower Moon was probably one of my favorite movies of the year. That's Martin Scorsese's film, an epic, really. That is about the Osage County Native American murders that occurred in the early 20th century.

What is that?

I was sent down from Washington, D.

Hmm.

Let's see what about them.

It's just really to me, it's really stunning, it is very hard to watch. It's over three hours long, so I get why. You may not have gotten a chance to see it, Aisha, but it's totally worth checking out. And I think to me, I would love to see it win, although I'm not sure it will win.

Yeah, I do, and look, there are no duds on this best picture list, and there are years when there are duds and there are no duds this year. But the two that I would highlight, I think, would be Past Lives. Which is a very, very kind of intimate and touching story about a woman who is happily married, but she gets an opportunity to visit with her childhood sweetheart.

He was just this kid in my head for such a long time, and now he is a physical person.

It's really intense, but I don't think that that's attraction. I think I just missed him a lot. It's much more complicated than that, but that's sort of the basics and then the holdovers. Which is about a grumpy teacher and a grumpy student, and a very kind and generous woman who works at the boarding school where the kid attends. And the three of them wind up stuck together at the school over the holiday break.

I heard you got stuck with babysitting duty this year. How'd you manage that? Oh, I don't know. I suppose I failed. Someone who richly deserved it. Rich and popular combination around here.

And, you know, as you would sort of think, they create this little kind of family unit. I think the movie is very charming. All three of those lead performances are really wonderful, from Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa and Devon Joy Randolph, who is probably going to win best supporting actress? I would guess, so those are the two that I would highlight.

And the thing of it is we just talked about. I don't want to do math, but maybe about five movies there, and there are 10 overall. That's part of the reason why it can be difficult to see all of the best movie categories, because there are so many of them. Why did the academy decide to make that change and to expand from five nominees to 10 nominees?

I don't know whether this is Aisha's sense also, but my sense is that it's pretty widely accepted that. The reason was partly to make sure that well-made blockbusters had a chance to get in to the best picture field. This was around the time that The Dark Knight had come out, it was not nominated for best picture.

Shame.

In the first few years after they expanded the field, it didn't really go that way. And what happened instead was that. You got more really little films, which is also okay. But then you did get Black Panther, you got Top Gun, Maverick, and this year you get Oppenheimer and Barbie, which are both kind of very different big blockbusters. So that's my sense of what it was for and that this is a year when it kind of worked.

There's a time when blockbusters, or at least movies that did really well at the box office. It didn't necessarily have to be thrillers or action movies, but they were also considered Oscar-y and overlapped. I think of something like Titanic, American Beauty, Lord of the Rings, Brokeback Mountain. They were on various levels of success in terms of box office, but they were movies that most people had seen. And so that's less true now, in the sort of marvel franchisification of everything. And I think having 10 nominees now makes it much more likely, like Linda said, that we are going to get a top gun Maverick or a Barbie.

Hi ken.

Hi Barbie. Hi Barbie.

Hi Barbie, Hi ken.

Hi Ken, I feel like Oppenheimer probably would have gotten in anyway, maybe just because of the subject matter, probably. Yeah, probably. But it's still Christopher Nolan. He's known for bigger action movies than some of these other directors in this category as well.

And we should. We didn't know that at the beginning. But there are two Ayeshas in this thing. So you just have to pick up on the social cues of who they're referring to.

I think it's going to be really interesting to see because this is the first one. That, to me, is post-Twitter. Because although Twitter as X still exists, it's certainly not what it was. It's not nearly as popular with the people that I used to follow as it was, so this, for me, is a post-twitter Oscars and I do think it'll be different.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me.

Would it have been a smaller deal, bigger deal? What do you think, Aisha?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if Twitter x, whatever is quite dead yet, because, unlike Blue Sky, you can't post GIFs and stuff. I do think, though, from an academy perspective, they've resorted to some embarrassing tactics in the past few years to try to appeal to social media. Linda remember the fan Favorite and cheer moment categories that they added in 2022 against everyone's wishes? Basically, they had people vote online and they chose winners for fan Favorite and cheer moment.

Do you think that the academy wants the super dramatic thing to happen? Maybe not a slap, but just to get people to tune in? Do they need someone falling or someone kissing or something?

I think a fall is probably great.

Like a safe fall. Like Jennifer Lawrence, that was her thing for a while.

Jennifer Lawrence tripping up the stairs, I think, is fine for them.

You guys are just standing up because you feel bad that I fell and that's really embarrassing, but thank you.

I don't think that they would want, maybe they would want another thing as dramatic as a slap. I was going to say, maybe not the slap, but like something else, dramatic.

Well, a moonlight la la land, Oh yeah.

I don't think they want that.

There's a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won best picture.

The mix-up, Oh my goodness.

Yeah, but it was quite a moment, it was quite a moment.

It was.

People paid attention.

Moonlight Best Picture.

You're listening to the Sunday story. When we come back, we'll dig deeper into this year's nominees and share a few predictions for tonight's awards.

Well, yeah. It's been more common in the last few years to see international films, and in this case, I specifically mean films not in English, which is not the same thing as an international film. But that's kind of what we mean here, whether it's films like Parasite or Roma. And in this case, this year, both Anatomy of a fall and Zone of Interest are nominated for best picture. Those are both international films, primarily not in English. And of course, you have the international feature category, but also the documentary nominees. The documentary feature nominees are all international films this year, and they're all wonderful.

And do you think that it's reflective of a U?

I really hope so, and I would love to think that. The fact that people now, maybe on Netflix or something like that, have more access. I think you see more people who are going to watch a K-drama at home that has subtitles, or a show from France or Israel, or Russia, or something like that. It's foundationally a good thing for people to be willing to watch things that aren't in English. Because it is a very important part of expanding your knowledge and your experience. So I sure hope so.

It also seems like a little bit of a spillover from what we were talking about earlier in terms of opening the best picture category up. Because oftentimes, those types of films might only have a shot at getting the best international film prize. And now, that's not necessarily the case. And I think something like Anatomy of the Thaw might have been one of those films that got stuck in that one category, as opposed to multiple categories.

Which of the films nominated for best picture surprised you most this year?

I would say for me, I think Barbie was a much more thoughtful film than I expected it to be. Maybe not. Once I knew it was Greta Gerwig doing it because she's always a thoughtful director. But when you first hear there's going to be a Barbie movie, you don't necessarily expect it to be as thoughtful and emotionally complicated as it turned out to be. You have to be thin, but not too thin.

I did not kill him.

I loved that movie and then I was, you know, as I mentioned the holdovers earlier, that was one that kind of snuck up on me and that I loved more than I expected to.

Yeah, for me, I think the movie that surprised me the most was the Holdovers. I think Alexander Payne, the director, has been very hit or miss throughout his career. But this film really snuck up on me and it felt like a throwback to the kind of crowd-pleasing adult dramas of the 90s and early aughts. Where you have these great performances from Paul Giamatti, Divine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa. And it also just strikes a really nice balance between sentimentality and wit. And it just feels, you know, like the type of movie that 20 years ago would have made a lot of money at the box office.

You know, you can't really talk about the Oscars without talking about snubs. People have been talking about Barbie being snubbed for best director and best actress, and people have all sorts of feelings about Barbie. I think that maybe it's hype. Kind of. Got it and ate it up a little bit. Because it was hard for people to take in after that. Because they expected, I don't know, they expected something amazing.

Well, I loved Barbie, as I said, and I would have cheered if Greta Gerwig had been nominated or Margot Robbie had been nominated. But the movie was not snubbed, right? It made a gazillion dollars. It's nominated for best picture.

Yeah, for me, I didn't get to see this until January. But Origin Ava Duvernay's really sweeping drama that's based on Isabel Wilkerson's book cast. I don't know what happened. I think the way that rollout went out, it just kind of flew way too under the radar and didn't have enough steam. For award season, it's been really kind of shut out from much of the award season.

I will say that I don't necessarily have a lot of favorite best pictures because what I like does not get recognized by the academy. It's snubbed all the time. You know, they're not going to nominate fast. furious. They're not nominating. No, they're not.

For me, I have to go with all about Eve or the apartment, they're just some of my all-time favorites. Yeah, I know it's very predictable, but if we're talking more recent, for me, it would be everything everywhere, all at once, which won last year.

Yeah, I think for me, if I actually am saying favorite, favorite. I would probably say something that I've seen a million times, like the sound of music or something like that. But if you are talking more recently, that would be, as Aisha mentioned, Moonlight or Parasite, both of which? The wins for those two movies were like, it was so invigorating as somebody who loves movies and wants to love the Oscars. Both of those moments were just terrific to feel like that could happen.

So you feel like they were kind of the underdogs and they won, well, they were underdogs.

And Parasite, again, is a film not in English. There's not a long history of that being a best picture, you know?

Well, it was the first, I think, it was the first one, I think.

So listen, it just. It is exciting anytime you feel like an institution. As stodgy as the Oscars can grow, and so seeing that kind of growth, it is exciting. You don't want to care about the Oscars, but then you kind of want them to be better.

I know that you guys always do a whole episode of pop culture happy hour with predictions, so definitely, you know, everyone should go and check that out. But are there any predictions that you want to share here? Maybe a controversial prediction or one that you would put money on will definitely happen. Just give us a little preview.

I think that a lot of the categories this year have clear frontrunners, and I expect most of those frontrunners to come through. I don't think there are going to be a lot of big surprises. I expect Oppenheimer to win best picture. That's just my expectation, although he'd never bet against Martin Scorsese.

Yeah, that's the exact same thing that I'm feeling now as well. And look, Emma Stone is really fantastic in board games. Agree? So if she won, I wouldn't be upset, but I do really want to see this for Lily Gladstone.

But we will see, and we'll hold you both to account for your predictions.

Oh boy.

Thank you.

All right.

Aisha Linda, thank you both so much for being here and sharing your thoughts today. It's always great to have you.

Thank you, it's always great to see you.

Yes.

This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Andrew Mambo. it was edited by Liana Simstrom and Bilal Qureshi. The engineer for this episode was Robert Rodriguez. Our team includes Jenny Schmidt and Justine Yan. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer.