1995 Bonus Podcast !
Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 6:00PM 
We're spoiling you with two podcasts this week. We'll talk Ant-Man and Southpaw tomorrow night but here's an extra bonus episode in which Nathaniel, Nick, and Joe each recommend a 1995 film they remember loving that they'd like to revisit or wish that more people would talk about. The conversation wanders, as it does, to the Best Actress race, Scorned 2 ??? "Meryl's third Oscar!" talk (duh), and the films of Michael Mann ???
Contents (45 minutes)
00:01 Mia Kirshner in Atom Egoyan's Exotica
04:30 Kathy Bates as Stephen King's Delores Claiborne
07:45 Lili Taylor of The Addiction
10:55 Random loved titles: Babe, Nixon, etcetera
14:10 Actresses of 1995 outside the Best Actress nominees: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Toni Collette, Holly Hunter, Parker Posey, Rene Russo, Ashley Judd, and more...
31:11 Get Shorty
34:30 Michael Mann films and Heat
Ashley Judd in "Heat"
You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversation in the comments...
Reader Comments (32)
God this was fun! I remember everything!
I would say Kidman was sixth, Bening seventh and Collette maybe eight. Jennifer and Julianne were too raw for Hollywood at that time. Even Sandra Bullock had a better shot! Well, maybe I'm pushing it...
I totally subscribe the love for Dolores Claibourne and The Addiction. I was very into Sciorra and Taylor back then and Ferrara was so interesting.
I love these retrospective podcasts so much (this, or the 2004 podcast last year), but they give me a bit of not-enough-time anxiety, trying to bump all these titles to the top of my priority list while still managing to eat, sleep and not get fired.
I've never seen The Addiction or Delores, so good advocacy, guys. I'll get to them soon, I hope. And I agree with Nick that everyone should see or re-see Exotica right now. It's perfect.
There really is no blog online offering better film education than y'all.
a) 1995 was seriously stacked for leading ladies. Anne Marie could do a performance a week blog and still not have covered the year.
b) "I watched it twice and bought it because I wanted to see it again, but I don't like it." Nick, you are my doppelganger. I almost feel obligated to buy books and movies I've read/seen once and liked, even if I don't intend on watching it again.
c) Collateral and Mighty Aphrodite are both available for purchase.
d) Okay, now I'm really wondering about the off-the-record bit.
Nice podcast! Loved the mentions of so many films (Exotica, Copy Cat, Nixon) that I liked a lot, but which are rarely discussed any more.
And interesting thought re: 1994 and Nell. I also wonder if Foster would've won, if she hadn't already had two Best Actress Oscars.
Aw, "Copycat". I saw that before I really knew the performers' various careers, but I did see it around the same time as "A Life Less Ordinary" and remember thinking of Holly Hunter - "That woman is kind of a lunatic, and I love it".
My horrifying "movie poster in my college dorm" story: the solo character poster of Zellweger in "Chicago".
Heat is pretty great. Easily Mann's best over The Insider, Collateral and the Last of the Mohicans. I wouldn't consider any of his filmography masterpieces but Heat comes closest. You should watch it!
The retrospective podcasts are always great! It doesn't matter whether they're more organized, like the 2004 one where you had lists prepared, or like this one, where you just randomly sift through the year.
So happy you guys enjoyed!! This was suggested a few weeks back by Joe, so credit to him, but was undertaken completely spontaneously this morning. More '95 action with next week's Smackdown podcast!
Great podcast!
I caught Dolores Claiborne a couple of years after its release and assumed that Kathy Bates and Judy Parfitt must have received nominations even though I was only marginally interested in Oscars at the time.
I remember seeing Muriel's Wedding trailers on TV all the time. It definitely made some splash in the US.
Ashley Judd has had such a strange career. Except for her action movie phase, her choices have always confused me. I first saw her in 1996 in HBO's Marilyn Monroe movie. In the late 1990s there was a sense that she would win an Oscar soon.
What was that off-the-record bit? Inquiring minds want to know. LOL
But what did Nick say at the end of the recording?!
Nice talk guys. It seems 1995 is a year filled with a lot of "dude" movies as well as "feminine" movies. For some reason films like Braveheart, Casino and Heat seem to appeal to dudes but not me and I found one of them awful and the other two weaker attempts by the directors. 1995 for leading actresses reminds me so much of 2011 because of how competitive it was. Look at 2011 where we had the nominated (Streep, Davis, Williams, Mara, Close) sure some were quite weak but then when you look into it other performances from the likes of Binoche, Theron, Swinton, Coleman, Olsen, Wiig, Jones, Wasikowska, Dunst, Paquin, Oduye and Yun.; So many brilliant performances that you could fill the category three times over. It sort of love that no one can find Mighty Aphrodite because it's a terrible film that should remain forgotten. I have not seen the Addiction but it sounds like a good double feature with A Girl Walks Home at Night from this past year. Both black and white about vampires.
COCO -- oops. LOL. I didn't cut that off quite at the right spot. obviously what's off the record stays off the record.
Thanks for reminding me of The Black Dahlia. Horrible film but the Supporting Actresses were great. And I don't mean Swank or Johansson - I'm talking about Fiona Shaw, Mia Kirshner, and one-scene-wonder Rose McGowan.
So entertaining guys! Even though I've only seen the most prominent movies from 1995. It'd be awesome if you could carry on with a parallel podcast series of retrospectives to different years (your mention of the odd 1994 line-up made me very curious to hear you guys discuss this). I know you're all busy, but one can dream! :)
Whatever Happened to Ashley Judd?
That's okay. We all know it's Nick admitting he sold his entire "Women who lie to themselves" DVD collection"
Heat is not a "dude movie". It's a modern samurai movie, a deeply human and felt movie that also happens to be an action movie, like, you know, Collateral, Miami Vice and Blackhat, that is also this year's best movie. I can cry to that ending just by remembering it.
And Nathaniel - Michael Mann is a very very romantic director. It's all about love stories. Have you seen Miami Vice? It stars with a suicidade of a guy that just realized his girl was killed, and then it's about two love stories. Public Enemies is about Dillinger and Billie, and Blackhat is about that couple, too.
And I know I am biased since I love all his movies, but it bothers me when people complain about arcs and plot in Michael Mann movies, like he was just a plain regular action director and not a major stylist director. If you look closer, you can develop a much more abstract and visual relationship with his movies, with the way he deals with time and human passions, with the mesmerizing lights of the night and things like that. His movies are much more closer to those Wong Kar-Wai action movies (Ashes of Time and As Tears Go By, for example) than to the regular blockbuster.
Can you name a movie that took the time to such a beatiful and compelling scene as the one in which
SPOILER
ViolAa David dies?
SPOILER ENDS
It's not about the bullets!
I *loved* Judd in Bug. The last thing I could name that she impressed me in.
Cal -- Blackhat had its moments, i wouldn't argue against that. But great moments do not necessarily great movies make. Mann's movies can be great but to be great I think they have to work on levels in addition to great visual style. This is also true of Wong Kar Wai whose movies are just breathtaking but not all of them are great (In the mood is a masterpeice but it's working on more than just the visual style level).
Sometimes Mann is willing to be really offputting visually which can make him a hard sell even there. My Mann feelings
GREAT - The Insider, Last of the Mohicans
VERY GOOD - Ali, Collateral
GOODISH BUT UNSATISFYING FOR VARIOUS REASONS - Miami Vice, Public Enemies, Blackhat
WOULD HAVE TO SEE AGAIN DO NOT REMEMBER - Manhunter
NATHANIEL HASN'T SEEN SO HE'LL SHUT UP NOW - Heat, The Keep, Thief
I choose to believe the "off the record" bit was about that studio executive back in 2008 trying to convince Nathaniel that Jessica Biel was gonna win best actress for Nailed / Accidental Love .
Yeah, I want to hear more about that studio meeting!
It's so hard to come up with a Best Actress shortlist for 1995. I think mine would consist of Moore, Streep, Sarandon, Thompson and Silverstone, but I feel so bad for leaving out Kidman and Delpy.
1995... my Oscars would have been...
Picture: Babe
Director: Chris Noonan, Babe
Actress: Susan Sarandon, Dead Man Walking
Actor: John Travolta, Get Shorty (one of the coolest and most iconic performances of the 90's)
Supp. Actress: Mira Sorvino, Mighty Aphrodite
Supp. Actor: James Cromwell, Babe
I quoted Dolores Claireborne before I actually saw it--the "Sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on to" I was a senior in high school when it came out, so the fact that I would quote that line liberally without having seen it is beyond ridiculous.
My pick for my seminal 1995 movie was "Strange Days". I had the Ralph Fiennes "you know you want it" poster in my room all four years of college. It came out in October of my freshmen year and I got the poster at a free college screening. I loved Kathryn Bigelow so much that people actually texted/Facebooked me congratulations on Oscar night 2010 for "my" win.
The only thing I remember about Get Shorty was Bette Midler. And she didn't even get an onscreen credit for it!
basically went into cardiac arrest at the idea of cher and carol in line together at a mall jesus christ
OMG! I work in a Theatre in London and Daniel Lapaine, who played David Van Arkle in Muriel's Wedding, is seeing the show tonight. It's really cool as it's one of my favourite films.
@jtagliere: I had that poster on my wall all four years, too! Movie opened the month after I started school and was *everything* to me. I just lost the poster last month to some water leaks in the apartment but it will always be a favorite. Felt like I was watching an old school friend win on Oscar night in '09.
1994 is my favourite year of the '90s, but '95 had the best actress category. (Muriel's Wedding was '94 for Australians).
This was a GREAT podcast. I was getting increasingly worried y'all would just forget Kidman in To Die For. Phew.
My "movie poster in my college dorm" was Brad Pitt as Mr. Smith -- my roommate helped me put it up if I would help him with his English paper. The gay thing was never awkward after that.
Great post indeed