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#94. The Substandard on the Oscar Nominees
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Dudes Chatting — Oscar nominees breakdown: A micro-episode reacting to the newly announced nominations. The Shape of Water leads with 13 nominations and is the frontrunner; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri won the SAG ensemble award and has the largest Academy voting bloc behind it. Dunkirk is technically strong but thin in the major categories. The hosts note the surprise Best Picture nomination for Darkest Hour. Sonny delivers a deadpan summary of Call Me By Your Name as "a touching story about a teenage boy preyed upon by an older man." Vic admits he has barely seen anything on the list. Sonny's Oscar predictions: Greta Gerwig will win Best Director for Lady Bird over the more deserving Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman); Frances McDormand is a lock for Best Actress; Gary Oldman is a slight favorite for Best Actor but faces a real challenge from Timothée Chalamet; The Shape of Water wins Best Picture because it "squares the circle" among Academy factions. Sonny shares his personal ranking of the nominees: Dunkirk first, then Phantom Thread, Get Out, Darkest Hour, Lady Bird, The Post, The Shape of Water, Three Billboards, and Call Me By Your Name last.
Full transcript
JVL00:00:00And the Oscar goes to...
Vic00:00:05Hello, and welcome to another micro-episode of The Substandard, sponsored by Quip. I'm Victor Matus, along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a quick reminder that full episodes of TheSubstandard are available every Thursday at 11 a.m. So, this morning, Tiffany Haddish and Gollum, or Caesar, or... Was it Andy Serkis? It was Andy Serkis. I missed the show. I totally missed it. They have to get up. It's one of those things where they get up at what time to announce the Academy Awards at 5 a.m. or something for them, right? They get up at 4 or 3. And then they announce the nominations. I saw it live through Variety. And that's when I realized I've seen almost nothing that's nominated. So. That's good. Is it because... It's good that you're here. My question to you is, and I want you to be honest. The question is, is it because I'm getting older, or is it because the nominations are just really, really becoming more obscure?
Sonny00:01:13I do think that there is... Well, both. I mean, the answer is both. You are getting older, and you're going to fewer movies, which is... I mean, this year, you should have been to more movies, because you're doing this show.
Vic00:01:22None of them nominated.
Sonny00:01:24Well, I guess we didn't... Few of them. We didn't really do a Three Billboards episode, or a Shape of Water episode, or...
Vic00:01:29There was no King Kong nomination. The Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman caper, heist, heist caper, that did not get nominated. Yeah, it's a shame. It's a shame.
Sonny00:01:40But it's... I mean, look, there's... You have... It is... In the post-expansion era of the Best Picture nomination, it is... You have a pretty clear divide between the bigger or biggish films. You know, the films that did relatively well at the box office, like Get Out and Dunkirk. And then you have the smaller films, and the smaller films are most of them again this year. I mean, you know, just looking at the figures here, the...
JVL00:02:10Isn't that the opposite of what we thought would happen? No. The idea was when they opened it up to 10, the idea was to create space for more populist
Sonny00:02:18movies. So after The Dark Knight was not nominated for Best Picture, they opened it up from 5 to 10, and then a couple years later, they cut it back from... From 10 to at least 5, and however many... At least 5 and up to 10, and you had to get 5% of the Best Picture votes. They do it like an ordered preference. And so most years, you get 8 or 9. And the idea was, okay, we want to have more populist movies. We want to have bigger films. But as anyone who has ever studied human nature should know, you don't get that. Instead, you just get more of the same. And more of the same in this case is... A bunch of movies that grossed $10 to $30 million, kind of fighting it out amongst each other.
JVL00:02:59I have a question. Yes. Question. Question. If you remove Dunkirk and The Post from this list, what is the largest budget left among these movies, and how big is it? I mean, I don't know that number off the top of my head, but... No, I mean, just as a guess. If I had to guess... You'd look at it, and you'd probably say Darkest Hour. If I had to guess, it would be either Darkest Hour or Shape of Water. I mean, I...
Sonny00:03:24But cheap movies. Shape of Water probably costs between $20 and $30 million. I don't know actually what it costs. You could probably look it up, but... These are very...
JVL00:03:33Yeah, these are very... They're affordable. They're entry-level movies.
Sonny00:03:35They're very modest. I mean, Dunkirk was budgeted at $100 million, and that is probably about as much as... The rest put together. Almost the rest put together. Probably not quite that, but close. It's crazy. Yeah.
Vic00:03:48Do you have predictions? You're feeling what's going on here based on the last trend of, say, Golden Globes, SAG Awards, going into this, it's going to be...
Sonny00:03:56All right. So, The Shape of Water is the putative frontrunner because it had 13 nominations, and it racked up a bunch of the technical awards, obviously, but it is also nominated in all the major categories pretty much, except for Best Actor. So, in theory, it is the movie that has the best shot at running the table. It's the sort of film that appeals to our political climate. It's about a bunch of misfits going up against the military-industrial white man complex, and it is a very well-designed and well-put-together film. I don't like it for...
JVL00:04:32Where is it on gay marriage?
Sonny00:04:34I would assume it's pro, but, I mean, it's definitely into weird sex. It's into weird fishman sex. This is Troy McClure's. As you know, this is Troy McClure's favorite movie. So, you know, I don't care for the movie that much because it is so obviously loaded and heavily weighted, as I described it in my review. It really is like a fairy tale for adults. It's intellectually shallow, but also vulgar. So, it's got that going for it.
JVL00:05:02That's pretty big.
Sonny00:05:03Yeah. So, the other frontrunner, I think, is almost certainly Three Billboards, outside of Ebbing, Missouri. And the reason you have to say this is because it's won a lot of awards. I mean, it won at the SAG Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and Screen Actors Makeup. It's the largest chunk of the voting body of the Oscars. So, you have to give that a real consideration. And, again, it's nominated in all of the major categories. It didn't get as many of the smaller technical categories, but that's because it's not an effects feature. It's not, you know, well-known for its set design, et cetera.
Vic00:05:46But it's not all about woke films. I mean, there's Call Me By Your Name and Get Out. What's that about?
JVL00:05:52Call Me By Your Name. I didn't see that. I think it's a trip. It's like a road trip movie. Sonny, what's Call Me By Your Name about?
Sonny00:06:00Call Me By Your Name is the touching story about a teenage boy who is preyed upon by an older man.
JVL00:06:06Oh, it's the Kevin Spacey story.
Sonny00:06:08The Kevin Spacey story.
JVL00:06:09It would be amazing if this year Hollywood decides to give that best picture. I would, yes. Please, God.
Sonny00:06:16Please, God, do it. I thought that, I actually thought for a little while that it might have a shot. But it got shut out of the supporting actor categories, and everyone thought Michael Stuhlbarg was a shoe-in for a best supporting actor nomination. So I don't think that's in the cards. I mean, the best movie of the year is Dunkirk. Dunkirk got the second most nominations, but it got a lot of those in the technical categories. Where is it on Gay Marriage? It's, I would assume, anti, because it's set in England. So how could it be the best movie of the year? It's set in France.
JVL00:06:52I don't understand.
Sonny00:06:53I don't know, man. I don't, look, I'm just, I'm just telling you what my read on the situation is here.
JVL00:06:58Can I ask you a question? Yes. Question. Yes. Is it possible that an incredibly strong lead actor performance like Gary Oldman, which is, we all, I think the strong, if you had to pick a favorite, like the largest favorite to win in any of these categories is probably Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour. No? Would you disagree with that?
Sonny00:07:21In the major categories? No, I would say Frances McDormand. Frances McDormand is much more of a shoo-in. Oh, you think more of a shoo-in than, okay. I think Timothee, I think Timothee. Timothee Chalamet. Timothee Chalamet is going to mount a strong challenge in the best actor category. I do think that that is, that is going to happen.
JVL00:07:35Okay, well, I was just, well, then I'm, my, the whole premise of my question is gone, which is that, Kun, can an overwhelming favorite for a lead actor or actress category pull a best picture over the line? I don't think so, because the problem with, or does it cut the opposite way, which is we feel like we'd give up. We've given that movie its award, and so we don't need to.
Sonny00:07:55The Darkest Hour, Darkest Hour has a bunch of things going against it. Its director wasn't nominated for best director. This is the big strike against three billboards as well. Martin McDonough was not nominated for best director. And on top of that, it is the lesser of the two Dunkirk movies released this year. So if you were, if you were like, I think, I think Darkest Hour is more likely to act as a spoiler for Dunkirk than the other way around.
Vic00:08:18Yeah, I was worried that Darkest Hour and Dunkirk would split the vote on that particular theme, and then the winner is going to be The Shape of Water.
JVL00:08:25So Darkest Hour is the Ralph Nader of this Oscar. Something like that. Something like that.
Sonny00:08:31But I mean, I like, I would say that Darkest Hour getting a best picture nomination is one of the bigger surprises of the day. Because again, this means that at least 5% of the Academy voters said that this was their favorite movie of the year, which is...
JVL00:08:44Question. Yes. And I mean this sincerely. I'm not just trying to troll here.
Sonny00:08:49Yes, JBL.
JVL00:08:50How surprised are you that Wonder Woman didn't... Didn't get a nomination?
Sonny00:08:55I'm modestly surprised, but not shocked. I mean...
JVL00:08:57No, not shocked, but like, is there like a 20% of you that's like, geez, huh? I kind of thought Wonder Woman did.
Vic00:09:01Certainly under director, I thought possibly director.
JVL00:09:04Oh, the Brett Ratner stuff torpedoed that, don't you think?
Sonny00:09:07Yeah. No, I don't think so. I think that... I just think that there is still an enormous prejudice against comic book movies. And I actually don't think that this was even the best comic book movie of the year.
JVL00:09:16I thought you were going to say against women directors.
Sonny00:09:18Well, I mean, I think Patty Jenkins should have been nominated over Greta Gerwig, who directed a very nice sitcom episode in the movie Lady Bird. Wow. Wow.
JVL00:09:27A very nice Netflix sitcom single camera show episode. I was going to mention...
Sonny00:09:34That movie... And she's going to win because it's going to be like, oh, it's the year of the woman.
JVL00:09:38We need to, you know...
Sonny00:09:39Obviously. I mean, if she doesn't win, I would be somewhat surprised.
Vic00:09:43And best actor, I think, will go to James Franco. Oh, wait. He was a nominee, wasn't he?
JVL00:09:48I like to think of Patty Jenkins sitting at home stabbing a voodoo doll as Greta Gerwig wins best director for her little movie.
Vic00:09:56Could happen.
JVL00:09:57Because, you know, that's an achievement in terms of managing finances and production venues and scouting locations and ordering around a crew of 500 people. Same.
Sonny00:10:08Yeah, same, same.
Vic00:10:09Really quickly, you wanted to talk about...
Sonny00:10:12It's truly a visual experience, Lady Bird.
JVL00:10:14You really go into the theater and you're overwhelmed by the majesty of the, you know... It's so densely packed. Every inch of the screen...
Vic00:10:22I want to see it. I thought that's the only movie I looked at.
Sonny00:10:26Comfortably Smug keeps trolling me about Lady Bird on Twitter, and he's about... He's going to make me snap one of these days. Maybe it's trash.
Vic00:10:34Did you want to...
Sonny00:10:34Very nice trash. Wait a minute.
JVL00:10:37I'm sorry, Victor.
Vic00:10:37I thought it was a great movie, and then...
JVL00:10:39I want to interrupt one more time before I let you drive.
Sonny00:10:42I never said Lady Bird was a great movie. How dare you suggest I say that?
Vic00:10:45Did you review it? No, I don't think I did.
Sonny00:10:47I can't remember.
JVL00:10:48James Franco. Yeah. How much of a price... How much do we think he paid in this?
Sonny00:10:54I don't think that movie was ever... I don't think that that movie was ever a serious Oscar contender, and I don't think his performance was ever a serious best picture, or best actor.
Vic00:11:01You can't compare him to Gary Oldman.
Sonny00:11:02No best screenplay? I just... You don't think... No, no, no.
Vic00:11:05The show got nominated for one of the other awards.
Sonny00:11:07It was a Golden Globe favorite because it could pick up nominations in all the musical comedy categories. Oh, it got adapted screenplay. I'm sorry. Yeah, adapted screenplay. They did get that. Okay. But I don't... It's not going to win. It's not going to... Call me by your name. That's like a surefire lock. That's a 100% lock. It's call me by your name.
Vic00:11:25Is Army Hammer, is he nominated again? He didn't?
Sonny00:11:30Call me by your name, I think, only got nominated in adapted screenplay, actor, and best picture. All right.
Vic00:11:37Let me throw one more thing at you. If that wins, it would be a real come from behind victory.
JVL00:11:40I think it's possible that the answer... That was terrible.
Vic00:11:45He made it listening.
JVL00:11:47You're not even listening. He made it gay sex joke. You're not even listening. Go ahead. Good thing there were no hand motions to help describe it, because it's on Facebook Live. That's right. If you are thinking about the politics of this, your normal, beyond pensong, Hollywood voter has to navigate the scilla and cryptis of Get Out and Lady Bird, correct? Because if you pick one over the other, then you're getting into dangerous. Terrible territory. And so maybe the Fishman movie really is the answer.
Sonny00:12:25No, this is why The Shape of Water makes the most sense, because it kind of squares that circle.
JVL00:12:31Yeah, no, this is exactly. I'm trying to support your point. Victorino, what was your favorite of all of the Best Picture nominees?
Vic00:12:40Well, again, I've only seen two.
JVL00:12:42Darkest Hour and Dunkirk. Which was your favorite trailer of all the Best Picture nominees?
Sonny00:12:47All right, I'm just going to rank them. I'm going to rank them real quick. Oh, he has a rank. Okay. From worst. A mini-episode ranking. Worst to best. All right, go, go, go. Number nine, Call Me By Your Name. Number eight, Three Billboards. Number seven, Shape of Water. Number six, The Post. Number five, Lady Bird. Number four, Darkest Hour. Number three, Get Out. Number two, Phantom Thread. Number one, Dunkirk.
JVL00:13:07I'm sure it's fine.
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