25th Anniversary: Quiz Show (1994)

Best Picture nominee Quiz Show (1994) was released 25 years ago. Here's Anna with a look back...

The year is 1958 (it should be 1956; Redford condensed the three-year scandal into one). Households across America tune in to watch Twenty-One. Everyone is fascinated by the wisdom from reigning champion Herb Stempel (John Turturro). Well, almost everyone; producers Dan Enright (David Paymer) and Albert Freedman (Hank Azaria) as well as the show’s sponsor think it’s high time for some new talent on the show. Enter Columbia University instructor Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), who had auditioned for their other show Tic-Tac-Dough. And this is when Enright tells Herb to take the fall, which he reluctantly does. But how long until keeping the truth becomes too much for Charles?

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New Podcast: Poms, The Hustle, and Under the Silver Lake

by Murtada Elfadl and Nathaniel R

 

Index (50 minutes)
00:01 Diane Keaton and Jacki Weaver and Pam Grier (sort of) in Poms
10:30 David Robert Mitchell directs Andrew Garfield in bizarre red-herring filled hallucinatory noir called Under the Silver Lake
24:45 Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson in The Hustle 
34:00 Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir starring Tilda Swinton's daughter
40:22 Olivier Assayas' Non-Fiction
42:30 Ralph Fiennes's Nureyev biopic The White Crow
48:18 Bye for now! 

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? 

Poms, The Hustle

Sundance: Keira Knightley has "Official Secrets"

Abe Fried-Tanzer reporting from Sundance

As if there wasn’t enough going on in today’s American and international politics, events that happened a decade and a half ago seem to be coming into focus again. The start of the Iraq war and its implications were covered in the Best Picture nominee Vice and are the subject of two new films premiering at Sundance. Murtada just shared his thoughts on The Report, which focuses on the investigation into torture practices used by the United States. Official Secrets takes place across the pond, following the fallout of one British intelligence translator’s decision to leak an NSA memo detailing plans to blackmail United Nations security council members into voting to go to war in Iraq...

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Was 1993 the Best "Best Supporting Actor" Lineup Ever?

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of a rather amazing Oscar lineup, here's Ben Miller...

There have been several iconic Oscar nominee lineups throughout the years.  Best Actor 1967, Best Actress 1939, Best Director 1975... a wholly fearsome lineup comes around but once every couple of decades or so.  One of them is celebrating its 25-year anniversary this season: the 1993 lineup for Best Supporting Actor.

Before we get to the nominees, look at who just missed the lineup...  

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Beauty vs Beast: Lady (Bird) You Are Doing Just Fine

Jason from MNPP here, fresh off of standing five feet away from Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach just hanging out at MoMA yesterday (Baumbach had actually just done a Q&A for The Meyerowitz Stories, so "hanging out" might be a stretch I suppose) to take us yonder Sacramento way. I think it's time for Lady Bird to get the "Beauty vs Beast" treatment, you guys.

The film has a perfect score at Rotten Tomatoes and it just crossed 10 million bucks at the box office, which is about what it cost to make. So it's all profit from here on out for Greta & Co, and all signs points towards plenty. It's in around 800 theaters and doing terrific - I can see it playing well all holiday-season. Hooray for good things doing good! Now let's pit the film's complicated mother/daughter core (and eventual Oscar nominees) against one another.

PREVIOUSLY You guys surprised me! When I wrote last week beside our Bigger Splash poll that I figured I knew who you'd vote for I really thought you'd go for Ralph Fiennes. I suppose in retrospect it was silly to underestimate the pull of Matthias Schoenaerts in very small shorts, which drew almost 70% of your vote. Explained Dancin' Dan:

"Yes, Harry is more fun and more interesting than Paul (and Fiennes gives by far the better performance), but he's also INFINITELY more exhausting. I don't think I could stand to be around him more than a few hours. So I'm gonna have to vote for Paul, and the less clothes he wears, the better."