Praise for "Project Hail Mary"; Predicting the Oscar Shorts; SXSW Preview

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0:01

Welcome to Screen Talk and do our weekly podcast bringing you up to speed on what's going on in Hollywood. I'm Ann Thompson in Los Angeles.

0:35

And I'm Ryan Lattanzio in New York. Anne, it was so great to have you in New York last week to do a live video podcast where we got to trash the Bride, which has. Yeah, we. We might have beaten it.

0:43

We went over. We went overboard. I apologize to Maggie Gyllenhaal.

0:56

Don't. I. Don't. I stand by everything I said.

1:01

We didn't point out that her first movie was really good and that's why she was given this kind of leeway. Not that. Shouldn't have read the script. I'm not. All right. We're not going to go back.

1:04

I didn't think the first movie was that good, having read that book. Whatever. Whatever. This is a different conversation. The movie did terribly at the box office. It got 7.3 million domestically. It was expected to do maybe 10 million more than that. And it's obviously going to drop egregiously. Yeah. In the second weekend. But we don't need to belabor that point. We are here to go through some of the Oscar predictions that we didn't talk about last week, including Animated Feature and Song, but also the short films, which we've now seen all of them. And so we can assess our favorites there. And we get to talk about Project Hail Mary.

1:14

And I'm really looking forward to doing that. I love Hill. I'm gonna say it up front. I'm a big fan. In fact, why did Amazon, MGM wait so long for the reviews to drop? They're very good. It's at 80 on Metacritic right now.

1:56

Well, let's just go there right now and tell me your thoughts about this movie.

2:14

Okay, so I'm a big fan of the original novel. And so this is the same writer Weir who did the Martian. And I loved the Martian. And maybe I'm a little bit of a science wonk and I don't mind, you know, going into outer space. And what this is all about is this guy who ends up on this incredible journey way the hell out in outer space. A reluctant astronaut, someone who really didn't train to be an astronaut. He's played by Ryan Gosling.

2:18

And.

2:52

And in the course of saving humanity, the stakes are very high. He has to figure out this sort of biological puzzle of how to fix what's going wrong with the sun, you know, and, you know, they do a great job with this because it could be too scientific, it could be too smart for the room, it could be too difficult to get through. They keep it accessible. They keep it. It's much funnier than the novel, and I think it's because we've got Lord and Miller. Lorde and Miller are very good, and they have all of this experience in animation, and so this is actually a very dense movie. They cram in a lot of stuff. It's visually beautiful and entertaining and ambitious and expensive. It's also got this great performance from Gosling in the middle of it. It's got a great performance from Sandra Houler as his handler back in America. Not America, back on Earth. And then you have this alien named Rocky, who he names Rocky. And you know, Ryan, how difficult that is to pull off. You know, that's where the animation comes in, I think the training that they have. These are the people who made, you know, across the Spider verse and Lego Man. What was it called? Lego Batman. Yes, it was called Lego Batman.

2:52

All movies I haven't seen. And, you know, actually they're. They're. Phil Lord and Chris Miller are directing together in the. For the first time in maybe more than 10 years since they did 22 Jump street otherwise.

4:21

Talking about live action. Live action.

4:32

Live action.

4:34

Yeah, yeah, but they're. They're very hands on when they do these animated films. Features. Yeah, but people are talking as if they don't know who Lord and Miller are. I mean, these are the people who got fired from Star Wars. The one they were supposed to do, which I always thought was. I would have loved to have seen what they would have done.

4:35

A cursed job.

4:54

Right. So anyway, I love this movie. It's a rare one in the sense that it is. They pull off the alien, for one thing. They go a little bit. All right, sorry. They go a little bit. They lean into the emotion of these two lonely characters in the middle of outer space to a degree that perhaps is more sentimental than some people would like. It's more than the book, for sure. The book is much more about fixing problems and figuring out the science and just being incredibly ingenious. And there's a lot of that in the movie too, but. But it's more about. The movie's more about this sort of love story between the alien and the human. And. And it worked for me.

4:56

No, this movie does work very well. I sped read through the Andy Weir novel to get a sense of what I was dealing with, especially because the science fiction in this movie can be a little complicated, but it does give you a couple chances to understand it. Right. Because we see something happening between him and this alien, Rocky, who's basically like a crab that's made out of rocks. That's sort of the idea. Right. But then Ryan Gosling does a video diary where he sort of digests everything that just happened. So if you weren't paying attention, you're going to be a little bit lost. This is a very faithful adaptation in terms of plot to the book, almost to a fault because I would say it's a very long movie. It's almost three hours. It's. I'm not saying I definitely wasn't bored, but. But at the end you do feel there are a number of endings happening. And if it's meant to be a family movie, I, I don't know. Three hours is a bit of an ask for a family, especially when you add 30 minutes of trailers. These kids are going to probably want to look at their iPads. I will say Ryan Gosling is very good. He also looks quite good. Good in this movie. He. I think he's relaxed on the fillers and Botox a little bit for this performance. And it's nice to see him at the lead of something again. Right. Because he was very good in Barbie, but that was a, a supporting role. But I do feel that maybe a more confident filmmakers would have found a way to scratch some of the Earth stuff a little bit to get the running time down. That said Sandra Healer, who plays his sort of like correspondent on Earth, that is forcing him into this mission that he doesn't really want to be part of. She's very good. She's going to have a very good year with the Berlin movie. Also that I talked about a few weeks ago, Rose. So you know, anything she's in. I'm, I'm, I'm down for. I like this movie.

5:43

Me too. Me too. I'm. I'm glad. I'm glad you like it. I think it will be very, very successful. It is expensive, but 200 million is what they're claiming, even though it's probably a bit more than that with, with tax exemptions and all. That sort of thing. But this could be the biggest play that Amazon and MGM have made. And so it. It should do. I think it'll do very well. I think it will reach everybody. I think it'll be. Even though it's a really smart movie, it' funny, engaging, human entertainment. And I think it will. I think people will embrace it.

7:31

I will say it's a little hard to buy Ryan Gosling as this loner teacher who can't get a woman. Like, hello, it's Ryan Gosling. He looks the way he looks.

8:06

We all know that. Yeah.

8:16

That didn't. I don't know about that. That part didn't ring true to me. But what I did like was the cinematography by Greg Frazier. The Dune DP is very good.

8:18

Yep.

8:29

And we're switching between aspect ratios. Apparently the bride did, but actually that aspect was totally lost on me. But it does. I didn't even realize it was doing that. But in this movie it works very well.

8:29

Yeah. Also they did a lot of practical effects, which is probably part of what made it more expensive. But it gives you a certain kind of tactile feel when they're inside the spaceship. This could have been claustrophobic. This could have been boring. He's alone. It's a little bit of a castaway situation before Rocky shows up. And I interviewed Drew Godd and I had a great time with him. He's the one who did the adaptation of the Martian and they came back to him and it was a smart move on their part. He did a good job with this.

8:41

Yeah. Being in space with this movie and IMAX works very well. And I liked the alien ship design. I thought that was very innovative. No, there's a lot of good stuff here. I totally recommend it.

9:15

So we have gotten some more intel on what to expect from the Oscar show. It's sort of hard to believe I had to get my hair cut today. I have to make sure my suit is. Is clean. You know, I've. The Oscars are on Sunday. Finally. Finally we're doing.

9:27

I did my predictions.

9:44

I know.

9:46

In debt.

9:47

I know. I did my anonymous ballots, you know, so I'm sick of it too. I know. I know. So, you know, I made some calls at the end of the day. I remember on this podcast, I think I was predicting Stellan Skarsgard at one point on this other panel derby Gold derby debate, I was going for. For a. For Delroy Lindo. And now I finally have collapsed into the Sean Penn camp because I want to do well on my Oscar ballad I don't want to lose. I don't want to lose.

9:48

Just give in. You don't want to lose. He's going to win.

10:19

So that's, I talked, I had various conversations with people where I found out. I realized why Sean Penn is going to win. He's going to get the Stake Eater vote. He's going to get all those mainstream voters, the folks who like big, robust, juicy performances like his.

10:22

Is he even gonna show up?

10:38

Maybe not. He has shown up each time he's won. I think there's, I think he lost twice and won twice. I might have that wrong. But he showed up the times he won.

10:40

Having been to the Oscars, I'm sure it's very hard to get readily to a smoking section. You really, you have to go through a lot of security and there's a

10:53

danger that you will be drinking. And drinking is a, is a talent, is something. He's tempted.

11:01

You know, he'll be drinking before and during.

11:07

Speaking of which, there's this old, old interview with Amanda Seyfried on Conan. Not on Conan, on David Letterman. That's how old it is. It's the very, it's a 26 year old Amanda Seyfried admitting that she gets drunk every time she goes on a talk show. And I was very amused by this. Yeah, I'm sure it's no longer true.

11:12

Well, I don't know. I, you know, I always think about, I don't remember who won, but the year that Al Pacino was nominated for Serpico, he didn't win. And also he said that he had been on huge amounts of Valium throughout the ceremony and drinking. And so he was desperate to not win. And now when you look back at that moment of. I don't, again, I don't remember who won. Yeah, he, he looks a little intoxicated.

11:35

The one who went up drunk was Steven Soderbergh when he won for Traffic that year. So he admitted that.

12:01

I don't think of him as like a, a story drinker.

12:09

We will, we will move on from that. So, so, so Marcus Jones and I interviewed the show's executive producers, Raj Kapoor and Kate Mullet, Katie Mullen. And this is their second time around on their own. And, and a few days later there was a press conference with the host, Conan o', Brien, who's doing his second round. And I'm delighted by that, by the way. I loved him. I thought he was great. I think he'll be even better this time. They're talking a lot about how much more time he had to prepare. And it's a great writer's room and all that good stuff. But he admitted that he's going to have to ride the rails of how to acknowledge the politics around us right now with everything that's going on in Iran and all that. And he's going to try to be comforting and entertaining and not, you know, that's going to be the sort of tightrope walk that he has to do. But I didn't realize. I forgot at least that last year. At least he's home again this year because he was dislodged during the fires last year. He's back. He didn't lose his home, but he had to be temporarily dislodged. So the show is going to indulge in two elaborate musical celebrations of K pop demon hunters and sinners, which they all obviously expect to win some things, which I'm sure they will. And they worked really closely with both, more than usual with both of the creative teams to mount those numbers. So that should be interesting. There's going to be reunions of Bridesmaids and Marvel and some kind of alien will be present. I was positing that it might be Rocky if they were promoting Project Hail Mary, but maybe it's an old alien, a former alien.

12:15

Yeah. Well, hopefully we just don't get any jokes about the ballet or opera, because

13:59

I bet we do.

14:04

Tired of that.

14:05

But I'm sure poor Chalamet is going to get a lot of ribbing. Poor fellow. But we're going to remind everybody that anything that happened with him came after the ballots were closed. The pylon did. It was after the ballots were closed.

14:06

After the ballots.

14:22

If he loses, it's not because of that specific thing.

14:23

The pylon will linger. But that just means that he is a star in the way that he is. Right. It wouldn't linger for someone that wasn't important.

14:26

Exactly. Right. Because if you're a star, it means that people can write about you and get clicks and it's very tempting to do that. Okay, let's do the Oscar shorts. Yeah.

14:34

You know, I looked at all the shorts across live action animated and documentary short, and a lot of these were very good. Actually, there's a lot of standout titles this year, but we can start with animation. There is one movie, Papillon or Butterfly, which is a kind of Holocaust drama about an Olympian swimmer who is a survivor of the Holocaust. It's gorgeously sort of water, watercolor painted. This is one that a lot of Gold derby experts have pegged to be winning, but the stop motion animated romance, the Girl who Cried Pearls from Canada is actually very beautiful. And this is one where I'm going to say that the one I think should win is the Girl who Cried Pearls and the one I think will win is the same.

14:46

Well, this is very boring because I picked Butterfly as the one that will win. This Jewish competitive swimmer overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds. It's very moving and it moves through time in a very beautiful, effective way. And I also adored the stop motion period short the Girl who Cried Pearls, which delivers twisty storytelling and enchanting animation. So we agree on this one. I think it will be the one that wins though, will be Butterfly.

15:29

The other one that's very good actually is retirement plan, but I don't see that one necessarily winning.

16:02

I liked that one too.

16:07

Yeah, me too. I really did.

16:08

That's a beautiful, you know, very spare line drawing kind of thing.

16:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

16:14

Very clever.

16:14

So moving on to the documentary category. These are a lot of very depressing movies about heavy subjects. But the one that I think will win and I think probably deserves to also win is directed by sure to be documentary Oscar winner Geeta Gunbier, who also directed Perfect Neighbor. She co directed this movie with Crystal and Hampton. And it follows a security detail in an abortion clinic after the overturn, the overturn of Roe v. Wade, as she's dealing with protests and various other incoming restrictions. It's a very tight documentary, but it's done very well.

16:16

That's my favorite. Also. I found the woman who is. She tells it from various different points of view. It's very clever the way they do it because it's basically an observational verite over one day. So they start with the woman who opens it up in the morning and is worried about security. And you feel all the anxiety and the stress and the. That they all have to go through. And you hear constantly this barrage of protesting outside and they're trying to keep the women who are coming in safe. And it's a. This one woman, the one who starts it off and closes it up at the end of the night after a very long day is very moving. I was very moved by her. So I really think that will win. But a lot of other people think it will be all the empty rooms. And that's the one that involves this sort of obsessed journalist who tracks school shootings and he ends up Steven Hartman. He ends up pursuing various, you know, various parents. Allow him and his photographer and his camera into the ghost like rooms where their children used to be. And it's very, very moving and I think could be a winner.

16:53

Almost all of these movies have a very relevant, timely, political time in Armed with Only a Camera. That's a kind of cine memoir about a journalist who died covering the war in Ukraine. Children no More is about people in Israel protesting Israel's, you know, response to attacks from Hamas and the war on Gaza. And then there's a curious one called Perfectly Estrangeness that is about donkeys. And if IO didn't stave your craving to see them, because that will do it. But I do think donkeys.

18:11

Donkeys wandering around the space. What are those?

18:44

Observatory. They're wandering around an observatory.

18:50

Various different ones, aimlessly.

18:52

But I do see the devil as busy as winning this one.

18:54

Yeah. And so as far as the live action shorts are concerned, I think crowd pleaser singers could be the winner with Netflix behind it and they even threw an Academy party for it after the Spirit Awards. So I would. But I would, if it were me, if I were picking myself, if I were voting, I would go for the stylized black and white sci fi thriller. Two people exchanging saliva. What did you think of that one, Ryan?

18:57

Oh, I love Two people exchanging saliva. This is a movie.

19:24

Thought you would.

19:27

Yes. No, I adored this movie. And it is begging for a feature adaptation, which apparently is already in the works throughout the season. We also saw Julianne Moore and Isabel Huert joining it as executive producers.

19:28

Oh, good.

19:40

Yeah. And this is a black and white movie that's set in a dystopian world where kissing is forbidden and where a form of payment involves slapping. So there is an erotic frisson between a woman who works in a department store and one of her most moneyed clients, who of course is covered in bruises from being slapped many times for her payment. But they are not allowed to have this attraction because of, you know, the repression of women and the rules in this society. This movie is very good and it's the one I think should win. And I'm also going to say it's the one that will win.

19:42

No, it's too chilly. I've spoken to people who didn't understand it, who absolutely didn't get it. You have to be aware of. Some of. You have to take that leap into the sci fi imagination. You know, this, this movie is. Is. You have to figure it out. You have to. You have to go along with it. You have to be willing to follow these. It isn't apparent right away what those rules are. And you have to figure it out. So I just think it's a little too smart for the room, which is why something like singers, which is it allows you to sort of discover these unexpected, you know, songbirds in a bar. You know, it's very musical and very moving, and that feels more like a crowd pleaser to me.

20:17

It's definitely more accessible. But I'm just trying to give the academy some mileage here and suggesting that they might be open to something that's a little more complicated. But I agree, singers is very good. There's. There's a number. I mean, any of these movies have a. Well, not. I wouldn't say all of them. There's a movie called Jane Austen Period Drama, where. Funny, it's cute. This woman gets her period in a Jane Austen world and her suitor thinks that the blood is an injury. I'm kind of tired of this Kitchaflu of Jane Austen. Right. It's like, to me, her novels are very furtive and they're sort of about exchanging gossip with your best friend behind closed doors. But we're seeing all this sort of body fare that's being spun out of them, which you could argue Bridgerton is part of that. And finally, there's another one, A Friend of Dorothy with Miriam Margolis and Stephen Fry. It's very heartwarming, but I didn't feel serious.

21:05

I responded to that one. But it. It felt like something that could have been made 20 years ago. It felt like an old version of the story of the young man who discovers his sexuality and someone who allows him to find it. And she's great in it. I love Miriam Margulies. I know her well from the Graham Norton show, where she can be really insane.

22:00

Oh, yeah. She basically asked Alexander Skarsgrd if he was gay.

22:26

She did. She went right up to him and asked him.

22:30

Yeah, so that cleared up that question.

22:33

She's clear. She's clear. She knows that she's expected to shock everyone every time she goes on the show, and she usually does, but she's relatively demure in this one.

22:35

All right, well, everyone should probably listen to Anne about this category. I'm just saying, I think two people exchanging saliva is going to win, and I'm hope mostly because I'm hopeful. But finally we can move on to some categories that we didn't talk about last week, which are pretty fait accompli and easy to get through, which are Animated feature and Best Original Song. And both are going to go to

22:48

K Pop Demon Hunters.

23:09

Which also just announced a sequel that is coming to Netflix in partnership with Sony.

23:11

So, you know, even the Oscar producers know that K Pop Demon Hunters and the Music from Sinners are going to play very well on the show. So we, we shall see. Before we dive into our recommendations for next week, Ryan is going to talk about south by Southwest, but we need to figure out what Universal just did with the theatrical window for its films. So they were notorious during the pandemic and this was under the direction of the guy who's under duress, by the way, over at Paramount. Jeff Schell was in charge at the time. So Jeff Shell is the one who made a deal with AMC to begin with and eventually all the exhibitors to have a three week window and then go to pay per view. And that was a short window and they believed in it and they followed it. Unless they had a really big hit, if it went over 50 million opening weekend or something, or unless it was a Christopher Nolan movie, obviously that was an exception. You will note that coming up in the next year, they have a Christopher Nolan movie, the Odyssey. They also have a Steven Spielberg movie, Disclosure day. So there are reasons for them to suck up to those two filmmakers. If I may be so bald, but I think they would not be doing this if they didn't do the math. That's what all these studios do. They crunch the numbers. They have decided that this is gonna get them more bang for their buck. To play the movie in the theaters longer for five weeks or seven weeks a year is going to be better for them and it's certainly going to be better for the exhibitors. So I applaud this 100%.

23:17

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure he came out of discussions with this very director. As you just mentioned, Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg. These are people that are pushing for these kind of windows. And so, yeah, it's great. I mean, my insights kind of end there. We need to kind of see how it plays out. There's obviously one studio where we don't really know what's happening with the windows, which would be Paramount overtaking Warners, even though there is some promise of keeping fealty to how the windows have been.

25:02

They'll do the 45. They'll do the 45 days.

25:28

The other kind of asterisk in this story in the Times about Universal is that Focus Features is promising only 17 days in theaters.

25:32

They're sticking with the same model. And what the story said, which I found depressing, I don't know how you felt. It basically said that these movies don't last in theaters anymore. These art films, these specialty films, they used to play for a long time. That was the. That was the model for, you know, you built up word of mouth over. Over a long period of time. So I find that a little bit depressing. But they make money on pay per view with those movies.

25:40

Yeah, I mean, it is depressing. But now you have Hamnet on Peacock, which, you know, my mom texted me, I saw Hamnet because she watched it there. So there's gains and losses.

26:06

But what does she think, Ryan?

26:16

She found it to be as overwrought as I did. So the apple didn't fall that far from the tree.

26:19

But she's also.

26:25

Someone has to. She gets tired and has to keep rewinding movies and going back. The one that she hated was if I had legs, I'd kick you. She really did not like that.

26:26

That's a tough one for any parent to sit through.

26:37

I would admit she hated that.

26:40

But even if you found it difficult to sit there, you couldn't miss what a great performance it was. And even though Jessie Buckley is going to win Best Actress, a lot of people are voting for Rose Byrne. She is the second one there.

26:42

She would be the spoiler. Yeah, totally.

26:55

And I also want to say that as far as Universal and Theatrical and Focus and everything is concerned, we want the theaters to survive. So, you know, let's see, let's see. I wish. The CinemaCon is coming up in April. That should be interesting this year.

26:58

Yeah, no, there's always something. Right. Well, before we close off, we normally talk about something we want to recommend to listeners. And I'm going to use this moment to talk a bit about south by Southwest, which is launching on March 12th. That would be today, but by the time you hear this, it's tomorrow. I would be remiss not to acknowledge it. And this is also a festival that is owned, partially owned, by Penske Media Corporation, which also owns Indiewire. But curiously, they are not interested in subsidizing journalists to attend. So therefore, I am not going. So with this festival, there are seemingly hundreds of movies across various sections that don't have any distinction. And like, God bless all the publicists out there, but I get a lot of emails and I don't know how to parse them. There really is no curation here. I have seen the opening movie, I love Boosters, which neon releases on May 22, which is directed by Boots Riley and is a kind of zany, socialist stoner movie with very good Performances from Kiki Palmer, Naomi Aki and Taylor Page. But it does kind of start spinning its wheels late in the film with a lot of high concept sci fi allegories about anti capitalism. I don't know that that your standard fare audiences are really going to go for this movie, especially one where you kind of need to be a little stone to enjoy it. But my other word of caution for this festival is that it desperately needs to get off Oscars weekend. You have first time filmmakers that are really trying to make an impact, which is basically impossible when you have journalists and the industry. Basically everyone is tied up in the Oscars. So I just, I don't know.

27:20

That makes no sense to me.

29:02

They need to not have this event the same week as the Oscars. It needs to end if it's going to survive.

29:03

It used to be huge, but there used to be this whole tech side of it and then there was this whole music side of it and then the film side was really small all along. From the beginning it was never huge. And it was always more commercial movies, more mainstream studio movies than independent films. Really. I mean there were some. If you're an independent film launching at south by, it means you didn't get into Sundance. Basically.

29:10

No, it's. It's the end of the road.

29:37

Unfortunately, the ones that don't get into south by go to just try back.

29:39

Yeah. Okay, well, that's the end of the road. No, I went last year and there is no movie I saw that was better than like a C plus. It was a really. It was rough offerings.

29:44

Okay, well, on that note, I'm going to recommend a television movie which is on Nat Geo, so that's on Disney and it's Werner Herzog's latest documentary, Ghostbusters Elephants shot on location in Namibia and Angola. And it's about this obsessed guy. It reminds me a little bit of

29:55

the Burden of Dreams. Right.

30:15

Well, there's a part of it that's like Burden of Dreams where you see these people carrying all this stuff through the forest and over the rivers and you know, onto their various. Yeah, they start with trucks and then they get onto motorbikes and then they get onto boats. You know, that part of it where they're lugging everything reminded me of that. Know, it reminded me a little bit of Grizzly man where you have this sort of obsessed guy looking for these giant elephants from another strain of old elephant DNA and he's got like crazy blue eyes and he's trying to, you know, and eventually, you know, hopefully they're going to find them. I could listen to Werner Herzog narrate anything. It's a lot of fun.

30:18

Yeah, I know. I'm excited to watch that one. I love everything that Werner Herzog does. Except for Queen of the Desert with Nicole Kidman. That was a mistake.

31:06

But narrative films are a different matter. Although I will always vouch for Bad

31:14

Lieutenant, Bad Lieutenant is amazing. I love that movie. That is one of my favorite movies ever. All right, well, on that note, and I hope you have fun at the Oscars. I'll be coming from home, but I'll be looking for you.

31:18

We'll be doing the heavy listing. I'm going to have a good time. I'm going to have fun. And then the next day, I will write up whatever happened. And if you're curious for my final Oscar picks, they're out there on the site somewhere. Don't get mad at me later if I don't turn out to be right.

31:31

Yeah, same.

31:50

Because this year it's a big crapshoot, right?

31:51

Yeah, I agree. It's almost done, so we'll talk to you after.

31:55

Okay, bye. Bye.

31:58