The Big Picture · Discussion
March 12, 2024/ 93 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins · Joanna Robinson
Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins are joined by Joanna Robinson, live from South by Southwest, to recap the 2024 Oscars telecast (up 4% in ratings, down in the 18-49 demo, and for once matched almost category-for-category by the BAFTAs), then run a way-too-early look at a 2025 Best Picture race led by Dune: Part Two. The back half is a mailbag: the Sydney Sweeney-era case that movie stars are back, the Holdovers plagiarism story, whether the Academy should release its vote totals, and a long detour through Bradley Cooper, McDonald's, and the fate of the In Memoriam segment.
33 films across 3 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
The 2024 Oscars telecastratings, the ceremony, and a BAFTA reckoning
Seven wins, including Picture, Director, Actor, and Supporting Actor. Sean notes it broke his long-running theory about the Academy nominating and awarding the biggest movies; the show did climb to 21.5 million for the final half-hour. Zimmer's win and the 'can you hear the music' story get folded into a later argument about whether Dune II could have threatened any of it.
The 'I'm Just Ken' number is the reference point all night. Sean cites the data that 'What Was I Made For?' pulled roughly 10x the YouTube views of 'I'm Just Ken' the day after, and the group riffs on Ryan Gosling's dream-ballet extravaganza as the telecast's second-best moment.
Won Production Design (over Oppenheimer), plus makeup/hairstyling and costume, wins the group later games out as vulnerable had Dune II been in the field. Robinson flags it as a Yorgos Lanthimos film that leans British despite a Greek director, part of why the BAFTAs matched so cleanly this year.
Jonathan Glazer's film is Sean's example of a more European-leaning slate that helped the BAFTAs align with the Oscars. Later, discussing releasing vote totals, he says finding it at No. 2 in Best Picture would be 'tremendously revealing'; his gut is Glazer ran second for Director.
Last year's Oscar sweep and, Amanda argues, a film the BAFTAs would never embrace for reasons of genre and their history with race, one reason the two bodies matched on zero of six major categories in 2023 and 11-of-12 this year.
Lily Gladstone's Best Actress loss to Emma Stone is the one true showdown of the night. The hosts credit Stone's acceptance-speech performance and note Gladstone wasn't even BAFTA-nominated, which made that precursor hard to trust.
A way-too-early look at 2025 Best Pictureoff a list of 38 possible contenders
The one 2025 contender they've all seen, and the axis of the segment. Sean floats a 'Return of the King' theory: the Academy may hold the top prizes until Villeneuve finishes the trilogy, rewarding it below the line as the first film was (six craft wins in 2021). Talk of acting cases lands on Javier Bardem in supporting and a campaign for Rebecca Ferguson.
The rival Dune II may split the craft categories with, the way Fury Road once swept them. Reactions to the trailer have been mixed, but Sean notes nobody expected the first film to do what it did either.
Francis Ford Coppola's decades-in-the-making, maybe-final film. Impossible to read as an awards play or not sight unseen; Robinson is 'holding space' for it, Sean claims he holds space for nothing.
Sean sees it Thursday and plays coy on whether it's an Oscars film ('the Oscars don't like tennis and sex and Rihanna'). Recurs in the mailbag as the trigger for the movie-stars-are-back argument.
Steve McQueen's World War II film with Saoirse Ronan and Harris Dickinson, which Amanda 'bought' in the movie auction. The Academy's spotty McQueen history (12 Years a Slave, then ignoring Widows and Shame) tempers expectations; it's an Apple release and reportedly not headed to Cannes.
The A24 film about staging Shakespeare inside a prison, buzzing at South by after a warm TIFF reception. The consensus Sean keeps hearing: Colman Domingo gets nominated and could win off it, a nominated-this-year, wins-next-year trajectory.
Ridley Scott's sequel, filed under 'we'll see.' Sean is struck that Napoleon was all over the below-the-line categories yet felt like it didn't exist; Scott 'spends the money, if not the time,' directing from a van.
The prior Ridley Scott film, cited as a cautionary tale: heavy in craft nominations, invisible in the culture. Evidence for how his output can land in the categories without registering as a real contender.
Ali Abbasi's 70s-and-80s Trump film with Sebastian Stan, Maria Bakalova as Ivana, Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, and Martin Donovan. Sean 'calls his shot' on it as a fall-festival, election-season play; he cites Abbasi's serial-killer film Holy Spider as very Fincher-influenced.
Barry Jenkins's entry, mentioned via the household Lion King obsession. Amanda's daughter is drawn to the villains, so it's an open question whether she'll accept a movie about her non-favorite character.
One of the more genuinely interesting titles to Sean, floated against the assumption that the year's real contenders are the obviously prestigious ones.
Named alongside Inside Out 2 as the kind of unexpected film that maybe deserves closer attention than the jokey-Joker or Furiosa lane.
The Oscars mailbagmovie stars, plagiarism, vote totals, and McDonald's
Connor's question about the plagiarism story Variety published the weekend before the Oscars. Amanda, self-described daughter of two lawyers, finds it flimsy: the email timeline looks bad but the scripts side by side don't. Sean recommends David Hemingson's earlier Time piece on the film's real-life inspiration.
Sean's lead example of an under-40 movie-star movie. Amanda wishes the whole film were the closing Natasha Bedingfield montage; she credits the 'only in a movie' set pieces while noting the Sydney Harbour bit wasn't that funny.
Cited with Twisters as proof of Glen Powell's rise, part of the argument that a new generation of stars, Sydney Sweeney, Powell, Zendaya, Timothee Chalamet, Florence Pugh, can sell a movie off their name again.
The other Glen Powell vehicle in the movie-stars-are-back case, alongside his Hit Man breakout.
Jenna Ortega's entry in the new-movie-star roll call.
Kingsley Ben-Adir, from Barbie's Kens to leading man, singled out for 'crushing it' on Oscar Sunday as another under-40 star arriving.
Sydney Sweeney as a possessed nun; Amanda is seeing it that night at the Egyptian, where Sweeney is scheduled to appear. Sean's read on Sweeney: a self-aware bombshell who sent 'internet column writers' into a tizzy, and proof that people simply like watching hot people in movies.
The pivot into the leave-Bradley-Cooper-alone question. Amanda didn't care for it but wants him left to keep 'plumbing the depths of his own psyche'; the McDonald's-sweats bit later gets an 'I could hear the music' callback to the film.
The plastic-baby scene stands in for Cooper's box-office peak, a movie that made $500 million while audiences openly noted the doll. Sean's recurring gag: just put a gun in his hand and let him work for the FBI.
Amanda's aside that Cooper 'was good in The Mule, which Sean loves to talk about all the time,' which Sean seconds as one of the best films of the 2010s.
Louis's question about Sean's years of Rango defense. Sean recounts seeing it at 34th Street with a 'cool girl named Charlotte' he never became friends with, and declines to recruit Amanda: 'we stand in a fraternity of solitude.'
In the discussion of directors 'due' for a sweep, the David Fincher film he really cared about and that didn't go his way, souring him before he inevitably cares again.
Fincher's 'misunderstood' follow-up, shut out at the Academy. Sean's tangent about the Egg McMuffin sends the whole mailbag into a McDonald's spiral; he half-jokingly credits Fincher with a world of inspiration deserving of an Oscar sweep.
Sean's counterexample to studios abandoning mid-budget prestige: it made roughly $65 million in America. The smoking section at the Parasite-year Oscars was, he says, the heart of the party.
The Paramount Vantage model Sean wants studios to revisit: legacy studios opening smaller prestige shingles (Focus, Searchlight) to back grand stories at modest budgets, made to be in business with Paul Thomas Anderson rather than to gross $500 million.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Franchise-finale comparisons (the Dune III question) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the KingReturn of the JediThe Empire Strikes BackStar WarsMad Max: Fury Road
Steve McQueen's Academy history 12 Years a SlaveWidowsShame
Studio-economics touchstones CODAGet Out
Bradley Cooper's other roles American HustleDungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Name-checked in passing Anatomy of a FallThe Boy and the HeronAmerican FictionIndependence DayRicky StanickySkyfallHoly SpiderThe Lion KingThe Horse WhispererSpanglishWedding CrashersLicorice PizzaRolling ThunderLove Lies Bleeding
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV Abbott ElementaryPan AmKitchen ConfidentialAliasShogunEuphoriaSmall Axe
Podcasts House of RTrial by ContentThe Prestige TV PodcastJMO
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