Podcast: JoJo Rabbit and Oscar's Screenplay Races

with Murtada Elfadl & Nathaniel R 

Index (38 minutes)
00:01 Taiki Waitit's JoJo Rabbit. Is its satire successful? We're mixed on just about everything within it including the actors though we both loved Scarlett Johansson as the mother to a little Nazi boy.
16:00 A Parasite tangent "It's so metaphorical!" 
19:20 JoJo Rabbit's Oscar chances hard to read, right? It could be anywhere from 2 to 8 noms
21:50 Adapted Screenplay - The Irishman, JoJo Rabbit, Little Women, etc?
27:00 Original Screenplay - Marriage Story, Parasite, Bombshell, etc?
35:00 Randomness: Hustlers, Dark Waters, and Cats
37:00 Off to Campaign Events!

Related: Oscar Screenplay charts

 You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

JoJo Rabbit and Screenplays

The Look of "Joker"

by Cláudio Alves

In 1989, Tim Burton envisioned Gotham City as an Expressionistic nightmare, something necessarily unreal. Three years later, Batman Returns showed a different sort of urban reverie, one tainted by quasi fascistic imagery, an appropriate dark meaning for a darker film than its predecessor. Joel Schumacher's sequels would see Gotham go through another transfiguration, from a gloomy nightmare into a candy-colored hallucination. This process of growing artificiality would end when Christopher Nolan revitalized Batman for a 21st-century audience.

Nolan's trilogy shows us a Gotham that's a foreigner's idea of an American metropolis and one can almost chart, throughout the films, how the city goes from being a dream of Chicago to New York City 2.0. Todd Phillips' Joker perpetuates this configuration of Gotham as DC Comics' version of Manhattan, but he isn't looking to the real contemporary city for inspiration. The film is set in a New York of yore, a fantasy built from nostalgia and the cinematic legacy of New Hollywood's urban dramas. Gotham is never just a city, rather the idea of one…

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The Best Production Design Oscar Race

By Cláudio Alves

Will a Tarantino movie finally be nominated for Best Production Design?

Let's take a look at the Best Production Design Oscar race. While period pieces and fantasy extravaganzas dominate the costuming category, production designers are more open to other styles, too, like sci-fi, contemporary excellence, and even superhero movies. That said, at least in regards to the films that have already opened, the major contenders are roughly the same as with the Best Costume Design Oscar race. 

THOSE WE'VE ALREADY SEEN

Rick Heinrichs designed Dumbo's spectacular sets.

Rick Heinrichs won an Oscar for a previous collaboration with Tim Burton (Sleepy Hollow) and his designs for Dumbo are quite good, like nightmare visions of an Art Deco Disneyland. I’m less enchanted with Gemma Jackson’s pseudo-Arabian designs, but it would be foolish to count Aladdin out of the race...

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"Cats" trailer tease doubles as its first FYC ad

Universal is not fooling around with Cats. There's a (presumably) gargantuan budget on the line but an insanely high level of brand awareness will help it turn a profit and they surely know that Oscar buzz wouldn't hurt toward that goal, either. This promo for the teaser (due Friday), which has no actual footage from the movie, is playing just like an FYC ad for the film's cast and crew...

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Yes No Maybe So: Knives Out

by Ben Miller

Director Rian Johnson can do what he wants these days.  After helming a Star Wars movie, directors have the cache to explore different realms of entertainment.  Johnson decided to go with Knives Out, an original story inspired by Agatha Christie murder mysteries.  Let’s break it down with our Yes, No, Maybe So™ system...

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