Academy Vs Audience

The decade wraps up with one beautifully crafted but disturbingly hollow Best Picture, and one beloved franchise returning with a controversial entry. Recurring guest/victim of scheduling Munsi Parker-Munroe is back for the takes, joining Claire, Erin, and Dan in being mad at how well made American Beauty is in spite of the troubling central themes and lead actor, then digging into Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, looking for the few...

It's 1998, and was all fair in love and war? Some say no, as Harvey Weinstein launched an Oscar campaign of attrition to get himself an award for theatre kids' ideal romcom Shakespeare in Love, while also slandering rival Steven Spielberg's intense war movie Saving Private Ryan. Claire, Erin, Dan, and returning guest Kevin break down both, ask whether Shakespeare deserves the hate it got for defeating Private Ryan, w...

While Erin and Claire are busy on a stage, Dan succumbs to his ongoing Titanic brainrot, and drags his Recovered co-host Keith along for the ride by asking: did Titanic need or warrant a remake? Not the movie... the BOAT. Dan and Keith walk through how a replica Titanic is not equipped to compete in the modern cruise market, something it was never designed or priced for, and why one right-wing Australian politician has spent the la...

The day Erin's been waiting for arrives as she, Claire, and Dan dig into the third of three Joint Champion Juggernauts, James Cameron's Titanic. A star crossed romance between Jack and Rose is plagued by class differences, a cruel fiancé, and oh yes the boat they're on plowing into an iceberg. Records are smashed, feelings are felt, Dan's only a little bitter about one of the other nominees being defeated, and t...

Another year, another Oscars has come and gone, and returning guest Olav Rokne of the Hugo Book Club blog is back to help Erin, Claire, and Dan break down how each nominee did, and how they should have done. What does everything think should have won? What won too much? Can Claire, cursed by witches to watch no movies outside of this podcast, tell us anything about them? Also someone even manages to cape for Emilia Perez. Someone n...

It's 1996, and Dan is yelling "Elaine was right" as Claire, Erin, and he dissect Harvey Weinstein's first big Oscar win, The English Patient. Was this an early example of the current hip category fraud, where a co-lead ran as a supporting actress for an easier Oscar? Does cheating on young, hot Colin Firth make sense? Those questions answered, the far less clever but far more fun Independence Day claims the box ...

1995 wasn't the best year for Hollywood. The Oscars (and only the Oscars) decided to go with Mel Gibson cosplaying a biopic in the epic of Braveheart, loved by dudes and hated by the Scottish ever since. At the box office, audiences were split, with the domestic crown going to rookie studio Pixar's story of toys come to life, while international audiences flocked to John McLane's third outing, which managed to re-dis...

One year after Schindler's List, the Academy chose to take it easy, and go with a heartwarming crowd-pleaser, in fact the biggest hit of the year, Forrest Gump. A film beloved by millions right until it beat Pulp Fiction at the Oscars. But while the USA enjoyed this streak of boomer nostalgia, international audiences were here for Peak Disney in the form of The Lion King, a simple story buoyed by iconic songs and incredible an...

In 1993, everything was coming up Steven Spielberg! The king of blockbusters won his first Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture with his look at the Holocaust and those who survived because of two men's efforts to save who they could, teaching us that when times are dark, you do what you can and save who you can, even if it never feels like enough. But on the lighter side, Spielberg also smashed box office records with th...

Erin, Claire, and Dan look back at the films they watched over 2024, both new releases, old classics first seen, or the stuff they watched for this, for you, the listeners. Claire visits classic horror, Dan breaks down some possible Best Picture nominees and what they have going for and against them, Erin reflects on franchises she's seen for the first time, and as a bonus nobody talks about Megalopolis. This time. Join us in ...

Season's greetings from your Academy Vs Audience film historians! While turkey was eaten and presents unwrapped and schedules attempted to align, Erin went deep into Non-Christmas Christmas Movies, movies that might not seem to be about Christmas until you realize they (sometimes) are. Erin presents a tier ranking, and neither the top nor bottom may be what you expect.

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It's Clint Eastwood vs the Disney Renaissance as we reach 1992. Clint returns to the western genre in order to deconstruct its myths and tropes with a story of the west, violence, and how the stories we tell grow beyond the truth in Unforgiven, which Dan thinks would have fit right into the Legacy Sequel Era but it's probably for the best it isn't one. Then after four years, the Disney Renaissance finally claims the ...

Two very different classics take the titles in 1991 as traditional Oscar bait has not fully developed. The Oscar goes to classic thriller Silence of the Lambs, thanks to riveting suspense, a stellar cast, and a performance from Anthony Hopkins so iconic you forget how little he's actually in the movie. Gina Stewart is back to explore changes from the book, while Dan has a theory about why this is the only Oscar-caliber Hanniba...

While the gang takes a minute to catch up and prepare to get further into the 90s, we present a special mini-episode of Dan's Extra Credit Corner. A quick and dirty ranking of the Predator franchise, a look into why no film since our next entry has managed to win the Big Five Oscars, and for the feature presentation, an excerpt from Dan's deep dice into Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis, one movie guaranteed not be ...

It's another triple-header, as the Oscars went for the first Extra Long Kevin Costner Western, while audiences were split between Christmas hijinks and the first big Sexy Halloween Monster. Dances With Wolves managed to be the second western to win Best Picture, while flipping the script on the genre's treatment of Native Americans, but could Costner act and direct at the same time? International audiences went for the ge...

At the end of the 80s, the Oscars found themselves short on meaningful, artful, epics, tried to find some heartwarming story about ending racism, and settled for Driving Miss Daisy. Meanwhile, Hollywood began to pay attention to the worldwide box office instead of just the US, and we have our first split between domestic and international box office champions. Batman and Indiana Jones battled for box office supremacy, and who are w...

It's the one Joint Champion of the 1980s, as neither Oscars nor audience can resist Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise teaming up for the road movie Rain Man, which also serves as perhaps the first major pop culture depiction of autism. Here to help Claire, Erin, and Dan break down the movie's efforts to examine neurodivergence is Dan's big brother Dr. Chris Gibbins, psychologist specializing in this exact topic, so a fun...

In 1987, both Academy and Audience were making questionable choices in very different directions, so Kevin Weir's back to help Erin, Claire, and Dan get into it. The Oscar went to The Last Emperor, chronicling the uniquely tragic life of China's final emperor Puyi, and the gang accidentally watches the longest possible version. The audience goes far lighter with Three Men and a Baby, about three bachelors trying to take c...

In 1986, Hollywood was in two minds about the military. Oliver Stone won an Oscar for his ground-level examination of the destruction and darkness of the Vietnam War, via one idealistic recruit being ground down by perpetual horror and atrocity. Tony Scott went another way, with whizz-bang planes that go fast and hot shot fighter pilots flying and fighting and erotically playing beach volleyball in Top Gun, which won over the crowd...