Rachel Weisz, and Other Things That Happened Last Year
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The Academy Award nominees were announced a week ago today, so theoretically we should have had a sufficient amount of time to mull over the various categories. However, this podcast offers something of a collective scratching of the heads at the hodgepodge of different Best Picture nominees. Host, Lady P, is joined by Oscar enthusiasts, and fellow UW-Madison Graduate Students, J.J. Bersch and Tim Brayton, to help sort through the good, the bad, and the Green Book of this year’s contenders. Together they suggest reasons why there is so much incongruity in the major categories and discuss their favorites among the contenders.
Plus, since we never got around to it last year, we are finally doing an abbreviated year-in-review show wherein we chat about A Star is Born, Spike Lee, Minding the Gap, and of course, Miss Weisz.
If you want to hear more movie talk from Tim, here’s a link to his regular podcasting gig, Alternate Ending. Also, he made a previous appearance on Flixwise for our Oliver & Company/The Hunchback of Notre Dame episode.
And if you want a change of pace from movies, click here to listen to J.J’s fantastic music playlists.
Though I only saw it once, I’m not quite sure yet how I feel about The Favourite.
For one thing, I didn’t feel myself invested the plot or the characters, and generally didn’t buy into the conflict. The movie introduced so many “Checkov’s guns” that never really went anywhere (like the actual guns), and by the end I felt frustrated . As far as performances go, Colman was, of course, fantastic, but I found Stone and Weisz rather unremarkable (as much as their character development felt “forced” at the end of the movie).
But perhaps the greatest issue I had is that I couldn’t help myself comparing it to Barry Lyndon, which made The Favourite seem like a disappointment. The comparison is unfair, I know, but for whatever reason my brain could not detach the two while watching the film.
Anyway, great episode, and can’t wait for the next BFI film discussion!